Category: Lifestyle Design

I only realised last week that it’s been 4 years since I left the 9-5 life.

I quit my Facebook job in November 2019. To pursue my passion of helping others not settle & live true to themselves.

Starting with the Physical Freedom Program, then the Mental Freedom Course, and finally the Lifestyle Design University.

I track all my stats. A quick look tells me: 

• 133 clients across the 3 pillars
• Client results I am extremely proud of
• €126,339 in total revenue

Pfff. What do you think younger Marcus?! Have you got something to say? Something to share? Or who are you to do anything eh?!

I have clients in the Lifestyle Design University at the start of their coaching journey. Overcoming the same limiting beliefs that I had back then.

I share to show you that it’s what everyone feels. It’s part of the process.

I’d actually be worried if you DIDN’T have those thoughts. The dunning-kruger effect bell would be ringing.

Things are going pretty well now. I would say I am content, but not satisfied.

I still want to push on and progress myself and the business. But I am at peace, proud of how far I have come, enjoying life, and excited for the future.

I will never forget how it started though. I still remember: 

• my first client: a friend’s Auntie I was helping for free who forced me to take €50 and wouldn’t take no for an answer
• my first rented space: an old smelly clubhouse in a tiny chess room with leftover jam sandwiches on the table.
• Having no reputation. No social proof. No “degree” in this industry
• Competing against people who have gone to college and have years/decades in this industry

Would you choose a degree and get no results, or get results but they have no degree?

My own journey to physical freedom taught me what really matters. Following the results over all else. 

I knew the truth from the start: Time will either promote you or expose you.

Even though I was at the bottom starting off, I knew time was going to promote me. Because my heart was in the right place, and I hunt for results over all else.

And I knew that it would expose a lot of people who stick to dogma & ego over actually helping the client.

Over a long enough time horizon, the cream will rise to the top. And I had no timeline, no end date for when I would give myself permission to quit. I was playing the long game. Like I still am now.

There are some moments in life that define who you are. And November 2019 was one of mine.

Quitting my Facebook job where I was saving 2k a month. Set up for life.

With all the vices of man available to me, I chose my integrity over all else.

I can’t be bought. I can’t be manipulated. I can’t be deterred from the purpose I feel in my heart.

Those are the men I respect, and that is the man I chose to become.

A dying breed in our time unfortunately. As we live in a ‘genocide of authenticity’ as Gabor Mate elegantly put it.

But I am being the change I want to see in the world. I am doing my part. 

From the outside, you wouldn’t have bet on me 4 years ago. You’d expect me to end up in the statistic of not making it past 3 years. Like the vast majority of businesses.

But if you could see inside my head and heart back then, you’d have put the house on me.

I had quit on my soccer career before, quit on myself. So it’s not something that I always had. I’ve had broken, lifeless, aimless periods of my life.

But when you follow the path you are told to take, get high up that ladder, and find out it was all an illusion, you know the only path forward in life:

Not settling anymore. Living true to yourself at all costs.

I settled up to 23. But from 23 until I’m 6 feet under, I made a promise to myself to live true to myself above all else.

I talk a lot about the don’t settle attitude now, as it has been the foundation of success for me ever since that moment.

At least in the worst-case scenario now, I will have gained my own self-respect. I will be at peace.

No matter the outcome: I will be happy & proud of who I am, instead of filled with shame, guilt & regret like before.

The biggest recorded deathbed regret of humanity is: “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”.

It’s one thing hearing it. But you’ll really learn this lesson once you experience it for yourself.

I will write a separate newsletter on “How I quit my Facebook job and made the same take-home pay 3 years later”.

That will be all the business strategies etc.

For the purpose of this newsletter, I will cover the life lessons I learned from going through the journey.

Let’s get to it!

Life Lessons From 4 Years In Business

1) Live True to Yourself Over Money 

At 23 I was 2k in debt, soon to be 4k shortly after.

This road looked bleak. Forced to work forever in jobs I had no passion for?! Fuck that.

That’s when I dove into how to achieve financial freedom, and got to work implementing it in my own life.

After about 4 years of smart work and the grind, I had set myself up pretty well: 

• 30k saved
• Saving 2k a month in FB (climbing the corporate ladder + implementing saving strategies)
• Income from my side passion meeting the bills

I would have saved 25k a year minimum going forward from that set-up (as I didn’t include bonuses, shares, etc).

If I stayed in the 9-5, my net worth would be around 130K now.

(the 30k saved + the 100k saved in the last 4 years). And I’d be saving 3 or 4k a month now.

If I took that path, the calculation for when I would become a millionaire would be 24 years from now. At 55.

This obviously isn’t including the cost of a mortgage in future & kids etc. But I also didn’t include any increase in salary, compound interest from investments etc too.

Anyway, you get the point. The ‘promised land’ was ahead of me.

So how did I feel with all that laid out ahead of me? When I finally sorted my life out and got myself into a good position?

As I sat in Facebook eating my hotel-level dinner, after doing Jiu-Jitsu at lunchtime?

I felt fucking empty. I felt sick in my stomach at times. I was living a lie.

I have all this passion inside. All these things I love and want to do, but I push them down. Nobody sees who I really am, because if they did, they would know this isn’t the place for me.

So I’ll play the game, keep the peace, and spend my life here right?! Because money, mortgage, pension, bla de bla?!

Near the end I was talking myself out of quitting each week. Slowly selling my soul for money was becoming harder and harder to rationalise.

“But Mark……..it’s fucking 2k a month!!!! for a job you can literally do in 4 hours!!!”

That logic only kept me for so long.

I hope you have a moment like this before you get too old. So that you can see the truth that we all hear but don’t internalise.

Money doesn’t make you happy. It’s the freedom money gives you that does.

It’s not the physical notes in your hand, or the digital numbers on your screen. It’s the freedom it gives you: 

• The freedom to do things you are passionate about each day
• The freedom to drive, eat, do whatever you want
• The freedom to have complete autonomy over your life
• The freedom to do whatever the fuck you want

And once you sort your own financial freedom to a level where you have these things, the money ceases to matter.

Studies show that your happiness increases with your income, but then it plateaus at a certain level.

Once you hit this level, no amount of money makes any difference. And that was my exact experience.

When I was 4k in debt dreading life, the money was a huge driver for my own freedom in life. And it makes sense, as I was on the lower rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

But as I sat there in the Facebook building seeing 2k a month go into my savings account, I didn’t give a shit anymore.

I was up near the top of the needs ladder now. Self-actualisation is what I wanted, not more money.

You are going to spend on average a 3rd of your life working. You have 2 choices: 

• help someone else build their vision
• build your own vision

And I decided that I wasn’t going to spend any more time dedicating my life to building someone else’s vision. It was time to take the plunge and build my own.

I had already set my own personal financial freedom goal that I would be happy to leave with.

This is what I teach you in the financial freedom section of the Lifestyle Design University: how to set your own financial freedom targets, along with all the strategies I used to hit them.

Because it’s your life, and nobody else’s. You decide how you want to live it. You have to live with the regret otherwise, the people you are listening to don’t.

My financial freedom trade-off point where money would no longer take priority over living true to myself was: 

• 30k saved
• Income from my passion meeting the bills 

Once I hit that, I was gone within a few weeks. 

2) Continue to Follow Your Internal Compass

A quick snapshot of the 4 years are:

2019 – The vision is born (still just a passion)
2020 – 1st year in business
2021 – Momentum
2022 – The year of serious business
2023 – The year I build

2019 was when I knew I wanted to help people in things I am passionate about as my career.

I cultivated the don’t settle attitude, and committed 100% to this.

The outcomes don’t matter, timelines don’t deter me, I will follow this path to the end.

2020 was my first official year full-time. The transition from passion to business and trying to find my feet.

2021 was when the small gains started adding up, and I knew I could make this happen. That I can make a decent living from my passion.

2022 was when I signed up to a fitness business mentor and aimed to reach 10k a month in income. I achieved it for one month that year (turned out to be 8.5k).

I also made the same take-home pay that year, that I did in my last year at Facebook.

Made it right?! Nope. This path wasn’t the one I wanted to follow. I wanted to do things differently long-term.

I had to remind myself that I left Facebook years ago to live true to myself over money. I was nearly getting caught in essentially the same trap here.

8-10 hour days. Getting some clients into my business that weren’t the best fit etc.

My business compass was drifting away from my internal compass. So I left that mentor group, instead of implementing things they wanted me to.

I follow my internal compass over all else (integrity, vision & values).

I show you how to build your own internal compass in the vision section of the Lifestyle Design University.

2023 was the year I recalibrated my internal compass with my business compass. I took a step back to build the foundations of a successful business true to me.

I solo travelled Asia for 3 months. Worked 2-4 hours a day. And started building the foundations for a business more in tune with my internal compass: 

• these deep dive valuable newsletters, over shallow gimmicky sales tactics 
• branched out officially to other programs (Mental Freedom Course/Lifestyle Design University)

I’ve made less money this year than last year as a result of following my internal compass.

But I am extremely proud of the clients I have helped, the programs I have built, and the future impact I will have through this path.

I’m set up well with my financial freedom strategies, so there is never any fear.

This gives you space to make money in a way that’s true to you, over selling out from fear and the need for money like the majority do.

3) Perfectionism

“Perfectionism is procrastination masquerading as quality control” – Chris Williamson.

I didn’t realise that I suffered with this until year 3 in business.

I had so much information in my head that I would tell clients. I would show them everything in the sessions, from exercises to teaching the theory.

It was all down to me and my expertise. If I died, all of it would have gone into thin air.

I had never put it down properly into educational vidoes, or exercise videos, as I wanted it to be perfect.

My mentor at the time encouraged us all to build out our programs with an education hub, and I felt the block again.

But when I went through his own education module called “the imperfect program”, it really hit me hard.

The whole point being that your program & coaching will never be perfect. So if you wait for that point, it will never happen.

You are leaving value on the table for your impact with clients, all because you can’t overcome your own mental limitations.

Oooof. Harsh truth accepted.

How did I actually go ahead and start building the education hub for the Physical Freedom Program back then? I told myself I’d redo it all in time!! That’s it’s just for now.

It’s what let me drop the perfectionism and just do it.

As I tell Lifestyle Design clients who are on their coaching journey: the truth is that I already had more than enough knowledge in my head to help 99% of humans overcome chronic pain & injury.

But I understand how it doesn’t feel like that in the moment.

Now through the Mental Freedom work, I clearly see this block and how to dismantle it and move forward. But back then, I was never even aware of it.

Hence why I branched out to the Mental Freedom Course. I wish I had this at the start of my journey, not the end.

I would have been able to play life & business on medium/easy mode, instead of hard mode.

4) We Learn from the Extremes (Finding Your Balance)

This is leading on from point 3.

I had heard of perfectionism before, and how you shouldn’t let it hold you back. But that didn’t help me learn the lesson did it?

Hearing something isn’t enough unfortunately. A lot of the time we have to go through it ourselves.

I mean who signs up to the Physical Freedom Program? People who have never experienced chronic pain & injury?! Or people who have experienced and been plagued with it for years or decades?

You can’t skip the experience a lot of the time. You have to go to the extremes to learn the lesson.

After all, how can you find where your ‘balance’ is, if you haven’t gone to the extremes of the spectrum?

We learn from the extremes. This is where our perspectives are changed.

I’ve gone to the extremes and learned where my ‘balance’ is for a lot of things in the last 4 years:

• Training
• Money
• Routine
• Relationships

I’ve gone to the extreme of training like a disciplined machine towards my goals. Tunnel vision. Nothing will stop me.

And of course I made great progress and achieved the front front splits, handstand pushup, close to one arm chin up etc!

Great right?! Yes & no.

The ‘no’ being when I look back and see how I neglected other areas of my life at times. It was extreme, even though it appeared normal to me at the time.

One of the extreme moment for me: telling someone I loved to get out of my apartment and come back later, as I’m not finished training.

What kind of girlfriend comes over in the middle of a 2 hour one-arm chin up session anyway?! Selfish women eh?

Hmmm. I found out months later that she went home in tears.

I couldn’t look back on that memory without welling up myself for a long time. I am a kind, caring man deep down. But I struggled to show it to those I cared about all my life. And I would get stuck in my tunnel vision towards my training & business goals.

During my most intense training periods, I treated those I loved like an afterthought.

And the shame & guilt ate away at me for a long time when I came out of tunnel vision. When I realised how I had hurt people I care about the most.

The Mental Freedom work was the only way for me to: 

• to forgive myself & gain peace
• to finally understand why I was the way I was & how to change
• how to access all parts of myself and show love to those I care about

For money: I went to the extremes of making a few hundred a month, to a month where I made 8.5k.

This taught me the lesson for my own balance for this season of my life: 2-5k. (my total expenses are around 1.5-2k)

For routine: I went to the extremes of working 30-60 mins a day or so on my passion while I worked in Facebook, to 8-10 hour days in the highest income months.

This taught me the lesson for my own balance at this season of my life: 4-6 hours while prioritising other areas of life.

For relationships: I realised from being around people all the time, to being a lone wolf forging my own path, that social connection is an integral part of life even for introverts. 

As one of the biggest studies ever completed showed us:

“The Harvard study, having spanned over 80 years and multiple generations, clearly recognizes good relationships as the most significant predictor of overall happiness, life satisfaction, and well-being” – Waldinger & Schulz, 2023

I learned that lesson the hard way. Sipping a beer to celebrate my 8.5k month from my room in Rome, on my solo travel around Europe.

Everything I wanted for so long. Physical freedom, the lifestyle design I wanted, money, whatever.

And how did I feel? I felt lonely.

I only wanted one thing: the company of the woman I treated like an afterthought and broke up with.

Hindsight is 20/20 eh?!

You can see this point in the true story of Christopher McCandless too (made into a film: “Into the Wild”).

After graduating college and set to enter the 9-5 life, he decided to give most of his money to charity and head off into the wild on his own path.

When his body was found after he died from starvation, they found his last diary entry:

“happiness is only real when shared”

That wisdom hit me hard, as I had a less extreme version of it as you saw.

I finally designed the life I wanted……but for who? Just me?!

I realised how lonely that life was going to be, how I had missed the bigger picture. And that’s the moment I started to prioritise relationships in my life.

From family, to friends, to romantic relationships. I am open to finding my life partner for the first time in my life now. 

5) The Seasons of Life

When you are in a certain stage of life, it’s hard to imagine that you will change.

Just like a fish doesn’t understand there is a world above the water.

But you will in time. And when it happens a few times, you will start to become aware of (and appreciate) the different seasons of life.

I will bring you through the stages of life I have gone through over the last 4 years: 

• The monk mode phase (forging my own path)
• The grind phase (training like a madman. Tunnel vision)
• The business phase (10k a month aim. Business focus)
• The masculinity phase (protect, provide, procreate)

I am only entering the ‘masculinity’ phase this year. At 31.

I’ve done all the things I dreamed of years ago: I can be anywhere, I can do anything. Financial freedom, location freedom.

And what did I want to do after the 3 months in Asia this year? 

(watch the Asia Solo Trip Recap & Takeaways YouTube video here)

Go to Australia? South America maybe?!

The truth is I just wanted to come home. So I did.

I wanted to live back in Ireland: 

• in my own routine
• working and training
• and being around my family & friends

The ‘masculinity’ phase for me, means that the focus is coming off me.

I detached from the world at 23, and put myself over everyone & everything for the first time in my life.

But now at 31, it’s not just about me anymore, it’s about my future family. 

I am moving into the protector/provider/procreator role. I am setting up my life where I can protect & provide for my future family.

The moment in Rome showed me what I really value now: It’s not all about designing the life I want by myself anymore, I want a life partner to live it with. I want to build a family & legacy.

And if that never happens, cool. But I will get all the pieces in place anyway. As this will set me up in a good position in life regardless.

Now in the last 6 months I have: 

• Bought my first car
• Moved into a double room instead of my single
• Got private health insurance
• Many more other small things to set me up to protect & provide for others

I know a car isn’t an asset, it drains money from you. That’s why I had most of it in index funds before.

But now that my values & season of life have changed, that overrides the goal of saving money. And puts the emphasis on my future family.

7) The Don’t Settle Attitude Is Your Foundation

None of the other points would have been learned if I didn’t have the don’t settle attitude in the first place.

It’s your foundation in life to being your true self, and learning the lessons life teaches you along the way.

Many examples would have derailed me along the way otherwise. Two that spring to mind: 

• My Dad not wanting me to leave Facebook.
• Covid wiping out all my in-person clients that it took 18 months to get

Along with the other ups and downs of business & life that are part of any journey: the doubts, the imposter syndrome, the insecurities.

But it always came back to my own personal anchor belief:

“You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you settle for”

Nothing is owed to me. The world doesn’t care. If you want something in life, it’s down to you to make it happen.

No matter what happens: I don’t settle. I take ownership of everything in my life, and I keep moving forward in a way that’s true to my internal compass.

Most people give up because their vision is like a little plant in the ground, but mine is like Jack & the fucking beanstalk up into the clouds.

King Kong couldn’t pull this shit down! Never mind the opinions of others or world events.

That’s why the Lifestyle Design University starts with the ‘Vision’ pillar./

The other pillars of “Self-Development” and “Levers to Freedom” are pointless without building your vision and aligning the don’t settle attitude behind it first. 

Lifestyle Design University

I hope you learned some insights from my wisdom over the last 4 years.

If you need some guidance on your own journey, sign up to the Lifestyle Design University.

It’s what younger Mark needed but never had.

The Lifestyle Design University is the blueprint to systematically design the life true to you: 

• Design the life you want, not the one society/your parents set out for you
• Follow your own path, instead of being forced down someone else’s
• Live a life true to yourself, not the life others expect of you (biggest regret on people’s deathbed)
• Build your vision and be the change you want to see in the world, instead of building someone else’s
• Monetise your passions if you want. Gain financial & location freedom to live life on your terms

I’ll see you on the inside!

Don’t Settle,
Mark