When I am looking at the new reality we are all facing and living in different priorities emerge. As an IDEAL Wealth GROWER, I was most concerned about how my tenants would be able to afford the houses they rent from me, their food and car payments, and other things of regular life that may have stopped or change with the crisis.
Next came the preservation of the business itself. That included emergency support, paycheck protection, stimulus checks. There are probably lots more to do if we want to keep moving forward towards a new future sometime soon.
Now I am looking at how work is emerging these days and wonder where it might go, how it will be organized differently, and what we will be looking for. For the mentoring program in the IDEAL Wealth GROWER system as well as my consulting work for corporations, I already have a long history of working from the home office and hope this part of the “new” work will stick and expand into the future.
With that being said and imagining how work and investing as an IDEAL Wealth GROWER might be different in the future, three possible changes that I find exciting have come to mind. It excites me to imagine how they will really evolve. Let me know what you think about them.
- Reductions of dependence and increased self-sufficiency
I need to let you know that our family has become quite fond of a few YouTube channels that are showing the life of regular people in different locations across the country. There are many but the ones we are following and particularly like are titled:
- Lumnah Acres
- Wild Wonderful Off-Grid
- Life Uncontained, and
- Red Poppy Ranch
What they all have in common is the desire to be independent and to the extent possible, self-sufficient. That typically means finding a piece of land to build a modest house, then develop part of the land to grow food, have a few animals for meat, and in case it is possible, using solar systems, rainwater collection, and storage, food preservation like caning, etc. to be able to live very healthy and free. In none of these cases is there any goal to be a “prepper”. Nobody wants to shun public schooling, the local economy, or the local groups. Participating in interests like dancing, sports, arts and craft, local markets, or even services like car repairs, woodworking, firewood supply doesn’t change. In some cases, there is a mini-economy where things that were raised or grown are sold or traded for other things the neighbors or people in town have or might want.
When taking these inspiring stories and the families that chose to get on this journey of self-sufficiency into consideration through the lens of the IDEAL Wealth GROWER, it is conceivable that future investment properties might have increased desirability when they offer a large garden or some land that can be used for small scale farming. Even raw land might be an opportunity. All the families and shows mentioned above have one thing in common: the people and their goals are normal and modest. They aren’t millionaires or inherited fortunes to allow for this “back to the basics” – approach to life.
There might be a place for them to start the journey through an investment approach offered by an IDEAL Wealth GROWER that is based on a ‘rent-to-own’ offering. It’s a win-win concept that accelerates the development of a property. The beauty is that the tenants would be there for a long time and even if they ultimately outgrow the property, what they have created in the meantime will probably benefit any newcomer to the ideal of self-sufficiency.
How small the property and the associated house can be to still work in this model remains to be seen. Still, this approach would allow me to make money from home and work from the home office as well a developing an environment that is organic, healthy, and in better harmony with nature.
2. The ecological work-life community
In the past, we have grown used to lifting in a place and ‘going to work’ in another location. Yes, there are some cases where that distance can be very short or sometimes just downstairs, but the majority of people still commuted to and from work. The goal of independence and self-sufficiency probably lives in many of us but not everybody wants to become a gardener or farmer, at least not for a lot of the time of the day.
I thought about and wondered what history can teach us or how we can update historic ideas to modern times. Before industrialization took hold it was normal to live in “small-town America with Main Street in the middle and small locally owned stores and service providers supporting the community”.
This kind of life went away so we could get the heavy industry started, build a lot of stuff, and create cities. AS density increased everything was scaled up – from the single-family home to large apartment complexes to high rises. From the small local store that had a little bit of everything and ordered what it didn’t cary from a catalog to mega-stores like Walmart and mega malls. From individual food preparation, preservation and storage, to Amazon eat, Uber eat, frozen, and dried same-day delivery. From only the administration and or the post office having telegraph services, a fax machine, or later computers too high-speed internet based on large scale server farms.
The increase in density allowed increases in scale, speed, access, etc. With the current crisis, a lot fo that stopped, and we were told to go back to our apartments and houses in the suburbs. Yes, we can live there but we don’t have the same life.
What if IDEAL Wealth GROWERs were to develop concepts where we take advantage of the now available technology to change the way we live. If more and more work can be done from home, why commute. If more and more things we like to have and consume can be ordered online and delivered to our front door, why commute? When SpaceX has completed the first major phase of the Starlink system that will provide high-speed internet services to all of us no matter where we live, why commute? If the electricity we consume is generated on the tools of our houses and stored in battery packs on the garage wall, why commute?
That leaves the choice to order food, which is fun every so often, or growing healthy organic food as described earlier. What do you do if you don’t want to become a homesteader or farmer?
I think we should consider co-living and co-working communities that IDEAL Wealth GROWERs can develop and offer. They would have a footprint large enough for the member of the community to have food and generate what is needed to survive. It’s basically the small town we read about in the history books but updated with all the latest technology services and approaches. I call the “ecological work-life village”. It would be a dream of mine to develop this concept and offer it to people who don’t want to own assets but appreciate and benefit from the holistic approach to life and work that will be needed in this new normal.
3. Location independence
When reflecting on work and life and the new normal one can’t exclude the substantial difference in quality that we can find when looking at America. We sing about ‘sea to shining sea, majestic mountains, fruited plains, undisturbed wilderness, and alabaster cities.’ What if you wanted all of that in one location? That could be hard but San Diego is one of those areas. Actually, if you look at the cities along the coasts around the country they often have a bunch of those things. That’s also the reason that makes these locations more or most expensive to live.
What if you like most of those things part of the time but don’t want to leave to start a homestead in the Caribbean, find an ecological community but like the city life most of the year.
It is probably further in the future and still hard to imaging, especially in the current situation, but location independence is in our future. This morning discussing an opportunity to collaborate internationally and develop IDEAL Wealth GROWERs across the globe, we wondered how long it would take. See, the starship that SpaceX currently develops is supposed to fly humans to Mars. To make that happen costs a lot of money and SpaceX is a private company.
One way is to complete Starlink, which will provide high-speed internet to everybody on the globe. At that scale, every user would not have to pay much but it would still bring together a lot of money each year. Subscription services are beautiful :).
Another way is to advance to the next level of travel. We were used to getting on planes. The Starship will have 100 – 150 seats. More importantly, it can fly to any point on the globe in about 60 minutes.
With that in mind, now imagine you like to live like in San Diego or Los Angeles or San Francisco, but at a fraction of the cost. You could hop in a Starship and less than 1 hour later open your laptop, connect to the Starlink system and begin work form your new home in San Paulo, Rome, Lisboa, Panama, or any other location with all the marvelous attributes you are looking for and normally only find in the most expensive places in America.
How cool would it be to be part of a global network of IDEAL Wealth GROWERs who provide the residential real estate for any of these three options? I love that vision of the future. Let me know if you like to join me. Let’s talk in one of my complimentary strategy sessions.
The first thing we would address to determine if you are a fit for the program and qualify to learn and develop this new future will be the “G” of the GROWER part of the system. It stands for “goals” but really means “BHAG”. (Big Hairy Audacious Goal).
Let me know what your BHAG is and how you would like to participate in the creation of a wonderful future while becoming an IDEAL Wealth GROWER in the process.
Be well and be safe.