Who is Shawn James and What is MySelfReliance.com?

Description

In this video, I explain who I am, what my life philosophy is, what self reliance means to me and why I created MySelfReliance.com and SelfReliantMillionaire.com

Tags: self reliance,shawn james,my self reliance,self reliance millionaire

Video Transcription

hi i'm sean james from my self-reliance calm and self-reliant millionaire calm a lot of people have come to my website especially if they come through youtube or facebook and maybe even twitter might be a little confused when they get to the website and see that it's not all just about health new ink and hunting and fishing and doing it or stuff camping hiking it's it's about an entire lifestyle got four categories on my website some health well homesteading and freedom and there's a reason for that I believe self-reliance is not about bushcraft skills and going to the bush and living off the land for a couple of days or a week or longer those are all great skills to have and I have them and I think they're worth working on but that's that's just the start that that you can't survive just on bushcraft skills in this day and age it's about fending for yourself but also working with others it's about community it's about self-reliance is about it's about growing your own food declaring your own food it's about having the resilience to to withstand any kind of impose stresses like natural disasters or social unrest war to natural disasters I'm in Ontario Canada and we're in a very safe area we don't have much social unrest we have a good implicit infrastructure prosperity lots of wealth here lots of opportunity now we don't get many natural disasters but that being said we've had a few in especially if you look across Canada we had the recent Fort McMurray wildfires forest fires that caused evacuation of 80,000 people had some local fires actually here in Ontario that that caused some small-scale evacuations as well it's always something tornadoes we get occasionally and if your course of your from the states you you see all these types of natural disasters on a regular basis depending on where right so it's wise to be prepared for those things but to me self-reliance is not just about survival it's about prospering but built a log cabin from scratch when I was younger and lived in and kind of lived off the land and that was great had a great time love to do that again even for a short period but there's so much more to life and I you know I'm 46 now I did that when I was in my early 20s I can't imagine having given up everything I've done over the last 25 years if I hadn't stayed in that cabin more to life to it than that so I did build a life living kind of a middle-class lifestyle but and I didn't give up my values I kept my outdoor activities up and you know pass that on to my my kids a couple of daughters and you know I'm proud of that but you know what forty-six become what I consider almost entirely self-reliant I earn my own income I don't have an employer I don't rely on government assistance I don't need a government pension I've built businesses from scratch and sold them and I've maintained a couple of small online businesses that that I recommend everybody has that's great passive income does take some work I'm sending out my computer right now updating the website and answering questions on on the courses that I sell and so long but yeah it's about creating a passive income so I've sold and built and sold businesses that have allowed me to retire at 41 essentially I do some some consulting work now I do sell these courses online and I you know I like I said I do work closely with with with the students and but it's fun I'm working from home sitting in my backyard right now my wife's just driving my kids off to school and I'm sitting at home in the backyard it's gonna be 29 degrees Celsius Oh today beautiful morning you can hear the birds chirping in the background it's

late June now but this is great this is what I set my life up for I've got a great vegetable garden I'll show you some pictures of that lots of provide a lot of our own healthy vegetables we've got chickens in the back corner of the yard we're just living in us in a suburban subdivision we've had property fed boats we've had other opportunities to live elsewhere we could have up sized many times could be in a big mansion in Toronto if we wanted to but chose to live in the suburbs of Ontario and we we want to raise our kids here and to me it was one of the keys to my self-reliance and said we set ourselves up in an area in and then a house that we could maintain and manage and that was had a good access to all the outdoor activities I want to do but also to to major urban centre where I could earn a great living I've done that had to commute had to work hard but you know I never sacrificed my values and I'd read from the beginning I made a promise to myself to my family that they weren't gonna suffer for to my ambition so had built businesses and I yet I never are rarely missed a dinner and never missed a kid's soccer game or a music lesson I think that the secret to that success is really its efficiency and proficiency it's becoming good at the skills that you need for self-reliance and I go back to when I started building the shelters and living you know in the bush for a night or two at 12 years old I've been fishing since I was three four or five years old and I didn't have an awful lot of influence from my parents not regard they did take us camping but I just we lived in a you know small town and I just walked over to the woods and and practice bushcraft skills so it gave me that confidence that I could really do anything in life I think it stems from that went on to play sports and I did well in in hockey and soccer and they were great for for confidence building as well but I think they go door skills are really what gave me confidence to know that I could be self-reliant if it shit hit the fan I we could go into the boys and live live off the land for as long as I needed to and I have the ability to protect myself my family a lot of people that are that that come to the website come through through my camping and canoeing exploits and that I that I post on Facebook and Instagram and so on they may not be comfortable with what hunting and guns but to me that's an essential part of life it's it's not unique to Americans you know it's so I am just telling you I am a hunter and a fisherman and I do harvest game for food and when I was younger it was as much about the sport as anything but I but it would always primarily it was about sustenance and and getting out in a church and learning the full of cycles Nate natural cycles and then then harvesting game for food so Fish and Game so that's that's a bit of my background I think what I really want to teach people the most and want to people to take away from the website it's not just again it's not just about camping and canoeing and hiking or fishing and hunting which I don't post a lot of because I'll get into that later I'll add more of that to my website over the years but that's not I don't want people to think that's my prime the primary goal of their primary focus of the web sites really web sites really about self-reliance and all regards so it's ordered in the way it is for a reason health is essential to have good health if you don't have good health and you can't do anything else you can't you can't help your family you can't prosper you got to take care of your health first absolutely number one even ahead of family like I said you useless to your family if you're not healthy so in health I consider food nutrition number one and exercise number two and of course general overall health like our health and respiratory's at health and so on is obviously top at the top of the list but I think that's all generally supported by fitness and

and food nutrition next category again I would put it ahead of homestead and even the freedom fun part because if where they wealth in this day and age it's about the money to pay for the things that you cannot produce yourself for in a day and age where we rely on everybody around us our government our community here global economy our food comes from elsewhere typically people without the without oil which were I'm not harvesting myself and neither are you or the world just does not operate the way it is or we have over seven billion people on the planet now and carrying capacities less than a billion where they're without fossil fuels which were headed for over probably the next generations lifetime so like so essentially we're reliant on money and to me what's the best way to be self-reliant it's to earn enough money to to be self-reliant there are enough money to pay for those things that you cannot produce or acquire yourself and earning money should be efficient shouldn't go to a job in my opinion worked 40 to 50 hours a week for an employer who's also tight and stressed because he's paying for employees and I've had night up to 93 employees at one time and it's not fun it's a lot of stress there's a lot of risk and liability at business owners taking on so I'm not here to crap on business owners and bosses and I think you should appreciate that as well that most of them are assholes for a reason they're assholes because they're under a lot of stress and they have to perform so to me it's about self alliances about earning money efficiently on your own if you can or you as the boss and you have employees and passive income is the best way to do it if you can set up a business that keeps earning you money while you're not working and then you can work as well or you can work on the things that that bring you satisfaction or

or the most value for the work so for me I'd rather grow vegetable back in the garden here or go hunting and shoot a deer that's gonna provide meat for half a year for my family rather do that then go to you know commute for two hours to a workplace and do something that's completely unrestricted like to do and my primary focus on these webs on my web sites self-reliant millionaire calm and my self-reliance calm is to help you acquire the skills to start your own business either a bricks and mortar business like a physical business where you have employees and working in an office and so on or a service business where you have trucks and equipment or you know I've got a real program for that and I'll be releasing that course on my self-reliant millionaire website soon exactly how I started I've earned millions of dollars selling businesses that's why I'm retired at 41 now 46 just working at home managing investments and online businesses but it it isn't it it can be taught it's very simple to start a business from the scratch and there's one particular business that I started first took very little of my time risk is low I had no employees and I earned at least $15,000 extra passive income while I was earning a six-figure income as an Operations Manager for a contracting company so I was able to do that on the side and my wife did a little bit of the administration and managed it the following year turned it over to her and still was mostly passive and we earned over $50,000 in profit that next year and it I'm telling you it was so simple it's a few phone calls and some and some accounting and invoicing so it was very very simple yet we were able to make that kind of money so from that I was able to leverage leverage the money we made there and leverage the business experience we gained there to startup other businesses and few years later and made a million dollars over a course of a couple years just what I paid myself and salary the company made a couple hundred thousand dollars a year now I sold that business and liquidated it to get into an even better business big story behind all of that and had some corruption and and it went into a big personal debt to to start that neck next business but it paid off and Here I am sitting at home in the backyard talking to you so it's a very simple system to duplicate it's hard work but it can be done by anybody and if you have a mentor like myself then and I've got everything I've got spent years developing all this software for estimating it's a service business calculating your energy needs so all kinds of stuff and then all the legal documentation so I provide all that within the course itself or lamian air courses and you know it's it's something can be taught so I love mentoring at other people so they can have a success that I've had it's a it's a life worth living it's fantastic no matter where you are with some limitations of course but most places in the world that we in modern society you can duplicate these systems and and you know most of my students and followers are in the US and Canada like I said I'm in Canada but it can be done anywhere and the businesses that I'm doing now and that I want to encourage you to do or online businesses so they're really it's a global reach global customer base and you know once you earn you enough money to retire it's not about accumulating a massive amount of money that just gets stuck under your mattress and you spend it throughout your lifetime that's not sustainable then unlikely you'll be able to fill that cup amass that kind of wealth where you don't need to invest that money so you need to keep earning money of some kind even when you retire I like doing that through owning businesses rather than investing the stock market because I believe the stock markets about the creator again very soon 50% or up to 90% of your value could be wiped out if you're in the stock market real estate values are at peak I think that opportunity's almost played itself out in fact you can't find a property these days that gives you a 10 percent return if you can't get a 10 percent return on your money in something that is risky and takes actually a fair bit about fair amount of work and to me it's not worth doing I'd rather invest my money in businesses or keep operating businesses I call it retirement but really I am working I'm doing mostly writing having fun I always wanted to write and Here I am doing that in earning money and I earn enough money from the websites that I don't need to work the beauty of it is whether it worked 20 hours 10 hours a week or 80 hours a week it's all my time I'm literally sitting in my backyard writing and talking to you and my daughter daughters are going out tonight and I have to stay up late to pick them up afterwards so I work tonight I might go canoeing today I might go I don't know I might I can do whatever I want my wife doesn't work either so if we can go and do whatever we want anytime we want and there's always time to fit work in when you have 24 hours a day seven days a week at your disposal you don't have to drive anywhere you don't sit in an office or won't work on a unit on a construction site every day for eight or ten hours you can choose your time to work and time is yours if you get to design your life now we'll often go out especially in the summer winter to winter we'll snowshoe during the day and then I'll work you're right at night or in the morning I get up early five o'clock a lot of time to start writing first thing in the morning and this time of year we'll go of canoeing and kayaking during the day so I might do a little bit of writing in the morning and order I don't do any I don't have to work every day lots of days I don't you see my trips I go off for three days five days six days eight days hunted and fished across not across Canada but Manitoba Newfoundland we go south fairly often especially with the kids so when I'm doing those things I'm not working at all

and but the rest of the time I choose my hours and and love the flexibility when I'm not planning on going anywhere today unless it's driving the kids somewhere so that's that's that's the message I wanted to get across I know the website can be a little confusing I like I said especially if you came to it through one of the channels that talked mostly about my outdoor exploits or bushcraft if that's your thing that's all you're interested in great just look at that part of the website or just read those posts lots of inspirational post we look I love doing that love inspiring people all the photographs and videos on the website or our own and my wife helps me with some editing and I take most of the pictures in the video and that's funny I'm Celeste as I'm filming this my wife just got back from dropping the kids off and she came up asked came out to ask me when are the lattes that are gonna be ready so another great thing about not having to work at 46 years old still healthy and I've got a great marriage and family life but we sit we have our little routine and get up in the morning have a tea do some meditation and yoga get limber for the day and then spend the morning catching up on social media a lot of times too if I'm not writing and then I make a great breakfast from scratch we have her frittata you would have seen that on the website or Facebook page that's their staple we do that almost every morning to cut up all the fresh vegetables get eggs from the chickens and and have a really healthy high-protein breakfast and then then about 10 o'clock or so I'm only through earlier than that right now but about 10 o'clock we have an espresso machine so I make us a couple of lattes again one of those little self-reliance things instead of spending five bucks a drink so ten dollars a day on lattes the Starbucks is somewhere else we make them from home and they cost us it's pennies I work today we don't post it on the websites pennies compared to dollars for for our lattes and they're actually better so that's our routine we'll go sit on the porch if the weather's warm enough if not we'll sit by the fire in the house and have her lattes every morning and we're home for lunch and then we go pick the kids up from school if they're in school still early afternoon and then we make fantastic dinner of grass-fed beef from a beef that would be ourselves so arrays themselves or or some meats or fish that I've harvested from the wild and that's our that serve routine so I don't live extravagantly you might see some things and think oh he's not richer what's he talking about paddles a canoe instead of driving a yacht and you know I live in a regular subdivision in a regular subdivision home but I don't want to work rest of my life and I don't think anybody should yeah I could I turn down opportunities all the time to get with ex-partners especially in under business associates they've all made money off of me and I've made money off of them and they'd like to continue to do business and they can't understand why I'm not willing to while I'm not driving into an office every day like there because I've done it with them and they've moved on to other things after we sold our last business made us all wealthier but I'm just not interested in doing that it's people don't understand it but so don't be confused by my choice to live simply it's it's it is a choice night let's stand by it I can't imagine saying well I want to go back to with the yacht that I used to own I want a bigger home want bigger vacations or bigger or more expensive vehicles done all that it's not worth it all that is a stress and that end requires me to work harder and longer so we do live simply a big part of this website is teaching people what I've done to live simply to cut costs and to earn more money and graham sitting at home as a result and like I said might go canoeing today might like tug will set up a trail camera and over this week I'm looking at the weather there thinking hmm should I take off for another couple days on another canoe trip for a few days I can do whatever the hell I want but other than family responsibilities so great lifestyle I'd really recommend it for anybody so I and it really starts with with their earning passive income or or starting a business that you can leverage the leverage employees and and other profit making measures to to increase your your income exponentially it means you're working for a wage you work you get paid you get paid a fixed amount when you own a business you set your wage you set your profitability of the company with market within market conditions can be tough but the opportunity is

it's almost unless you're doing it completely wrong you generally do make more money by owning your own business or consulting anyway I've got lots of different suggestions on how you can make money legally that will give you this lifestyle and it might take five years it might take ten years in fact I suggest a ten year plan that's a reasonable amount of time to do it right do it safely do it with limited liability and to make enough money to retire on so I strongly suggest you check out self-reliant millionaire not all the courses are up yet I'm developing the the one that I'm most proud of it's gonna be called self-reliant millionaire and it's not that title is not me brag you saying I'm a self-reliant millionaire self-reliant millionaire to me is a concept it's about living prosperously having wealth but but also being now self-reliant but not self-reliant and destitute and I think anybody can be a self-reliant millionaire so the courses there are really designed for that there's the freedom section as well which you which I'll like keep adding things like canoeing and kayaking and photography all the things I love to do give classes paid some lots of free classes and courses and then some that you should pay for because it it's expensive to create that content and I hope you find that reasonable I know you can find free stuff on the internet but it's about to me it's frustrating searching for that I pay for courses and my wife pays for courses all the time it's if you find somebody that you like and you trust and and really is looking out for you then it's worth paying for a course or a book in the e-book so you know I recommend you check those things though and hope you stick with me and and like what you see here