Employee to Entrepreneur

Chapter 1The future is here

‘The only thing that is constant is change.’

Heraclitus

This isn’t a book about building the next billion-dollar unicorn. I’m a first-generation Australian, the son of working-class Eastern European factory workers. I grew up in a socioeconomically challenged suburb in Melbourne’s west, and went to public schools where illegal playground transactions were common. Several of my fellow alumni would be glorified on TV shows about Melbourne’s underworld such as Nine Network’s Underbelly series. I earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at universities that don’t feature in the world’s top 500. Despite this inauspicious start, I managed to hustle my way into gigs with powerhouses such as EY, KPMG and Macquarie Bank before starting and building my own business, hosting an award-winning podcast and writing books like this one.

In other words, if I can do it, anyone can.

This book is about earning your freedom, progressing from being miserably comfortable in a cushy corporate gig where the only thing getting you out of bed each morning is your salary, to running your own seven-figure business, all while doing something you love and find meaning in.

Let’s go on a journey.

Exponential change

If you took a one-metre step today and doubled the distance every day for 30 days, how many metres do you think you might have walked by the end of the thirtieth day?

I’ve posed this question, inspired by XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis, to corporate executives and entrepreneurs ...