We ditched the 9-5. The conversation that started it all.

Jan 21

Written By Ben Webby

New Zealanders don't make money online.

We do not work remotely.

We are not taught to be ambitious.

We stick to the same life plan.

The safe, traditional path.

Why?

Because the poppy must not grow tall in Aotearoa.

You stay humble, work hard, and follow the script. The same script everyone else is given.

Drive to the office, the building site, or the cowshed. Clock in. Clock out. 40 hours a week. Week after week. Payslip comes on time. A little to KiwiSaver. A lot to the taxman. The rest to the dealer for a dime.

Every week - you trade five days a week for two days of freedom.

And rightly so!

How else are we supposed to pay for anything on this expensive little island?

Plus, there aren’t any alternative routes…. right?

***POV: your freelancer friends at 10am on a Tuesday.***

To help you understand what the fuck i’m talking about, here’s what my life path looked like at 18 years old in New Zealand:

The ‘Kiwi Dream’

Leave High school.
Go to University, or become a Pro Rugby Player.
Marry in my twenties (preferably to a high school sweetheart).
Give rimjobs to my boss for a decade as I climb the corporate ladder.
Earn under $100,000 NZD a year for most of my working life.
Buy a house in Auckland and sell my testicles and third grandson to the bank for a mortgage.
Pop out a couple of mini-me's.
Enjoy an incredible FOUR whole weeks of vacation a year (Coromandel, Qtown, Mount, Gold Coast)
Spend a third of my life in a cubicle building someone else’s business.
Become a CEO.
Retire.
Travel the world.
Take up some hobbies.

And then, well then you go for a ride in the funeral car…

R.I.P.

Now, in case you haven’t noticed.

I really wasn't feeling that shit.

But at that point in my life, there was no other option.

So, I followed the script and spent four years at university, bashing my skull in.

Life as a University Graduate in NZ

In 2019, I left Otago University with a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing and Finance.

Saying goodbye to Dunedin was like leaving a party alone at 4 AM - the fun's over, and all you're left with is a hangover, the early jitters of a comedown, and a vague sense of regret.

You want to stay but the hosts threaten to call the cops if you don’t fuck off.

I had -$994.20 in my bank account.

The life script I'd been handed was falling apart.

No big companies called my name when I finished uni with a B- average.

No pro rugby teams called my name when concussions ended my career.

Lost as fuck, I packed up my flat for the last time.

I said goodbye to Dunedin, and the 'Scarfie' lifestyle and stepped out into the real world.

I booked a flight back to the my home town. I would spend the summer on the farm there, in an attempt piece together my life.

A task I assumed would be easy.

But that's the thing - life is one funny motherfucker.

A true comedian. You gotta love it.

I just wasn't ready for the jokes he was about to throw my way.

That year, my family was torn apart by a raging mental illness I knew nothing about.

For the first time, I saw my parents as real humans who didn’t have their lives all figured out.

Does any one actually have this life shit figured out or are we all pretending?

Much to my dismay, I was thrown into the role of parent at the age of 22.

A parent to a 17-year-old girl with an eating disorder.

Two months ago, I was going to the occasional lecture, playing fortnite on repeat, hanigng with the boys. Not a worry in the world.

Now, I had to attend weekly family therapy sessions, go on constant trips to the hospital, sit through tube feeding sessions, and violent outbursts.

I put in an 8 month shift at the mental asylum and did everything I could to support my family.

But I wasn’t gonna wait around and make this the rest of my life…

I needed to change this reality I was living.

Fast.

Can someone point me to the start line of the rat race?

I’ve always hated the thought of writing out a CV, putting on a suit and tie, and walking into bullshit interviews.

You get on your knees, open your mouth, and beg them for a job you don’t want.

If they like you more than the 500 other applicants who just left university with a B- and a failed sports career - they will call you back.

They will offer you around $48,000 NZD a year (but only if you relocate to Auckland or Wellington).

Yes, that is approximately $30,000 USD for an entire years work…

So, no.

I did not hurry to race the rats.

I did not craft myself some bullshit CV, start my LinkedIn page, or sign up for ZipRecruiter.

I needed to get off this damn island and rewrite this life path. ASAP.

The idea of a fresh start somewhere else had grown increasingly appealing.

Thats When The USA Came Calling

I wasn’t the only one who wanted to escape NZ.

My best mate Moz - a Guam native - held a US passport in his back pocket and was ready to leave.

All I had to do was wrangle a visa to the land of the free and I could join him over there.

Thankfully, the US offers NZ graduates a special visa (J1 Visa). This allows NZ citizens who have graduated from university in the last 12 months to travel to the USA and get work experience.

If accepted, you can work and travel in America for 14 months. The only thing is they don’t tell you how hard it is to get jobs as a foreign immigrant in America…

I sent the embassy $2000 NZD and after a quick interview, I was given my ticket to the free world.

It took 9 months to save up enough money for USA.

By the time our departure date rolled around in August 2019, we had somehow wrangled three more of our best mates to join us on this adventure.

Little did we know that Jenny would steal every single one of our dollars and leave us homeless in Cali within two months.

But let's not hurry along, I’ll tell you more about that phat-ass later.

The Traditional Overseas Experience (OE) for Kiwis

I saw this over and over growing up.

An older cousin, family friend, sibling, the cool kid a few years older than you at school is about to head overseas!!!!

After slaving away at a job they hated for 12 months they’ve finally stacked up enough little New Zealand pennies to fly the coop.

They stopped buying eggs benes on a dusty sunday, didn’t go and see the boys at the pub 3 nights a week, put their TAB account on pause, and deleted their dealers number.

Monk mode. Savings time.

Once their sentence is up, they board their flight to Europe or the US, walk into the currency converters and halve their money instantly.

Six months of savings, gone.

Poof.

As if that part of your life never happened.

They proceed to spend the next 6 weeks to 3 months (depending on their budgets) rampaging and ransacking a new city or country or state every 2 nights.

A blur of festivals, pubs, packets, strip clubs, boat parties, hostels (don't even get me started).

Until one day, the poor little Kiwi wakes up to a message from ANZ…

“Hey idiot, remember us? You're accounts in OD.”

The IRD also left a lovely little diddy on your voicemails.

“Chur fuckboy, uze didn't think that student loan was free, did you?”

And just like that, they are on a flight home to New Zealand.

12 months at a cubicle or job site that they hated, for 50 days of drunken fuckery, drug debauchery and comedowns that'll make you feel like Robin Williams.

All they have to remember the trip is countless new Instagram pics, a dodgy ankle from falling off a bar in Barcelona, a scar from a street fight in Lisbon, a nice tan, and a cute little wart next to their shaft.

Was the big OE all worth it?

Not for me. I wasn't about to do the drunken Kiwi stumble from pub to pub, leaving behind nothing but a trail of empty packets, ciggie butts, and a few questionable tattoos.

I wanted this adventure to be a long term one.

It took me 9 months to save $12,000 NZD, when that ran out, my visa would allow me to work as a US citizen. But even that didnt satisfy me.

I HATED THE THOUGHT OF HAVING TO STAY IN ONE PLACE TO MAKE MONEY.

Like, seriously, who made that rule?

Was it etched in stone somewhere I hadn’t seen?

Mid-thought, I blurted out, “Who the fuck made that rule?”

“What?” Moz replied, eyes focused on the road ahead.

“Huh?” I said, looking at him with blazed eyes.

“What rule?”

“Oh,” I said, realizing I had been thinking out loud. “Who made the fucken rule that you have to stay in one place to make money?”

For a moment, I wondered how long he'd been privy to my inner thoughts….

“Now you're asking the right questions, Web.”

“Right?”

“Fucken aye. This is the dream. We have nowhere to be for the next few months. Nothing to do but explore. I've got no clue what’s about to happen. I just know that I don’t want it to end…”

“I feel ya. The thought of coming back to NZ in 12 months and ending up back where we started scares the shit out of me, bro.”

“Me too, Web… There has to be a way for us to make money while we just travel around… But how?”

That was it – the golden question.

How do we break free from this bullshit script?

Like Jim Carrey in the Truman Show, we were about to venture to the edge of the map. Just to fucking see what lay beyond.

We didn't have the answers, but we knew exactly what a life of nightmares looked like to us - job, mortgage, marriage, kids, divorce, death.

And we were going to do everything in our power to rewrite our story.

At that point, there was no way Miniature Moz and Miniature Web could have known, but that conversation was the first step towards a life of freedom. The first step to making over $100K a year online, and traveling to over 30 countries in the next four years. The first step to never working a 9-5 again.