Project Shekel: From Bronze to Blockchain

Money solves problems. It also creates many of them. It's a double-edged sword that most of us spend our time fumbling around with and end up getting sliced. Our wounds bring us anxiety, uncertainty, and doubt about our future. That's why I'm starting my own media & education service centred on breaking down the core principles of investing & personal finance all wrapped up in a philosophical twist: Project Shekel.

Now, before you understandably roll your eyes and think: "great, another dude on the internet pitching another get-rich-quick scheme", I want to make 3 major clarifications.

1. You only get "rich" slow: The only way to create money sustainably and have a good relationship with it, is to accrue it through sustainable long-term habits. I’m pitching, quite literally the polar opposite of a get rich quick scheme. Financial advice must be a philosophical contribution. “There’s no get rich quick schemes. That’s just someone trying to get rich off of you.” - Naval Ravikant.
2. This isn't about money: It's about freedom. Being rich isn't about having boatloads of money or being a money guzzling sociopath like Jeff Bezos. It's about not being riddled with anxiety and fear every time you open the banking app on your phone. I don't want people to get "rich". I want people to feel secure and empowered by their knowledge.
3. Being "rich" isn't all that anyway: “My assessment is that the incremental benefits of having a lot and being on top are not nearly as great as most people think. Having the basics — a good bed to sleep in, good relationships, good food, and good sex — is most important, and those things don’t get much better when you have a lot of money or much worse when you have less.” - Ray Dalio, billionaire investor & founder of Bridgewater Hedge Fund.

Why Focus on Money?

First, The Buddha was a prince. He started out enormously wealthy, and that granted him the "cushioning" required to wander off into the woods and achieve enlightenment. I'm not saying for a second that you need to be a silver-spoon fed member of a royal family to achieve your highest potential, I'm just saying that being free from crushing financial issues goes a long way in helping you achieve what you want.

Second, a hefty portion of all modern anxiety stems from something called "perceived poverty". The little touch screen device that spends hours in our hands every day gives us unfettered access to a 24/7 stream of others' success and good fortune. We wake up and go to sleep with the rising and falling of different people flexing. Social media acts as an infinite digital vacuum for the fleeting seconds of “good stuff” in the lives of others to come rushing in, all bouncing around and bonding together like highly energised, univalent atoms. This forms the new elemental and emotional structure of our time: perceived inferiority, covalently bonded with jealousy and anxiety.

Third, Millennials and Gen Z'ers are staring down the barrel of a combination of decreasing wage growth coupled with wildly increasing asset prices. This sort of financial insecurity creates a deep sense of pessimism and squashes the entrepreneurial spirit of an entire generation.

The American Dream is now the American Nightmare.

The seminal advice of the previous generations: "Work hard and you'll make it" is now worthless. In fact, it's just pale-faced lie.

Younger generations are being offered very few useful options in the face of their impending financial squalor. They will earn less than their parents and that money will be less powerful relative to the near exponential increase in general asset prices. This is an extremely bleak portrait of the future to paint for our young humans.

In the face of all this, I want to offer my own and other professionals' advice when it comes to dealing with the modern financial world and the now technology-centric human condition. I have had a relatively good deal of success in the world so far, having built and sold my own business and I want to help pass some of the limited knowledge I have on to others.

I'm also a rational optimist. I truly believe that teaching young people through an entertaining and gripping medium will help them understand that their individual, daily financial decisions have some of the deepest impacts on the trajectory of their lives.

There are still so many things that people can do in the face of this scenario to bolster their finances, give themselves an opportunity to be entrepreneurial and solve the problems of the modern world.

I don't want to just help people regain control of their finances, I want to create a place for the practical wisdom of philosophy to meet the complexity of finance and create real world solutions.

Hold up a Second, Isn't This More of a Systemic Issue?

Studying a double degree in philosophy & international economics brought the terrifying and gargantuan complexity of human systems to the forefront of my attention.

Having recently wrapped up my studies, I looked back upon the concepts that had shown up repeatedly and studied the questions that had been left largely unanswered.

At the core of every discussion in the world of politics, economics & philosophy there was an eternally heated debate concerning one main concept: power. Almost always, power came down to a split between political influence & financial capabilities. A good deal of the world's most pressing issues; climate change, vast economic inequality & a whole swathe of global conflicts have been created because of the greed that springs from people wanting more money (capital), and the subsequent power that grants them.

It's easy to put money as a concept in the evil category, but like all multi-faceted concepts, it's just not that simple. Almost every issue we currently have will also be solved with money. Wide-scale human ingenuity is unlocked when the world's smartest people have access to the financial power that they require. Renewable and clean energy technology grow in capability every few weeks, thanks to healthy streams of capital pouring into those industries. We put man on the moon because people believed in it so strongly, the American public were willing to hand over 640 billion dollars to the mission. Money, when used for the good of the world solves problems.

Now, to address the systemic nature of this issue that I mentioned before; the broad scale policy change I believe is necessary to create a prosperous economic & financial domain for young people to participate in is not something that can be achieved overnight. Nor should young people like myself think that we have the capabilities to alter the shape of the entire world before we come to understand it relatively well. If we take a quick glance into recent history; the philosophers and politicians, even with the most noble of ideals that tried to change economic and political systems too quickly have often resulted in devastating impacts on hundreds of millions of real people.

The way I see it, helping individual people feel empowered and stable in the face of complex financial decisions is a much more realistic and achievable goal for a fresh grad like myself, than changing the economic fabric of the entire world.

American & Australian Charts?

Quick side note. You may be wondering why I've included graphs of both the United States and Australia in the infographics above. Well, that's because I'm an Australian, but my target audience is anyone with an interest in learning how to invest and have better control over their finances and life more generally.

American markets are the largest in the world and they are also the causal factor in changes that occur in the rest of global markets. You cannot study investing and finance without first understanding the American financial system. By understanding American markets, investors from every country can have a deeper understand of macroeconomic trends and broad scale financial movements that impact the growth of their capital.

Getting Rich Slow

Now, as I mentioned above, one of the core principles of being "rich" is not chasing after illusory sums of money. It's about building up sustainable, long-term, repeatable habits that make you feel good about your day to day existence and grant you the opportunity to pursue more of what you really want in life.

Think of your money the same way that you would think of nutrition and fitness. You quite literally cannot become a mega-shredded, ultramarathon destroying beast in a matter of weeks. It takes years of work, patience and dedication of your time, all while navigating negative influences and managing temptation. Getting wealthy operates on the same principles.

The same way that beginner gym-goers or keen newbie runners go out and overtrain and up getting injured, investing is much the same. There are so many pitfalls, traps, and incorrect “form” that beginners can get stuck in for long periods of time without ever realising. This another reason as to why I want to offer my assistance. I’ve been studying and writing on investing and finance deeply for a good span of time, but just like everyone else I’m still very much learning.

Project Shekel: Breakdown

Ethos: Life-Long Learning & Radical Honesty

I take the concept of life-long learning very seriously. Whenever you think that you know everything about a given concept or industry, is ultimately when that thing will come and bite you in the ass.

Arrogance and the inability to learn from failures are the enemies of success, especially in the world of investing & finance. It's my unwavering goal to teach a wide array of people and investing newbies how to make sensible, realistic decisions with their finances and not get caught out by swindlers pitching magical "get-rich-quick" schemes. I will do this by imparting my own knowledge as I learn more and by conducting interviews with financial professionals and extracting the most useful information from them possible.

I will also maintain 100% transparency with my finances and investment decisions. My portfolio and subsequent decisions will be updated weekly, with all losses and gains recorded for all to see.

Furthermore, I'm never going to push a "hard sell" to anyone on any of the products I offer. If they want to support my work, they are more than free to do so, but I want it to remain completely optional so that people don't ever feel pressured into buying my stuff. Whenever this sort of stuff is pushed too hard it blurs the lines between education and opportunistic money grabbing.

I want to maintain an eternally distinct and bright line between real financial education and the plethora of swindlers and fraudsters only doing this to make big sums of money for themselves...

The "Project" Part

It’s not just me sitting around telling people how to invest. I will be 100% transparent with my own finances and earnings the entire time, so that people can see the intricate details of how I work with money. Next, I’ll be investing every last cent that is earned from the YouTube channel into a portfolio that people can track in real time and watch how my investments go. A given percentage of all my investments will be stable long-hold style, and a smaller margin will be invested into speculative (risky) stocks that require day by day tracking. It’s my goal to show people week by week how money works (or doesn’t) if certain investments go belly up for me…

Either way, it's my goal to create a distinct and interesting narrative that is completely unique within the world of finance and investing, layered with useful actionable information as well as interviews with financial professionals and real-life investors from around the world.

Platforms

• YouTube: A channel dedicated to sensible financial & investment information that helps young people mitigate risk and grow their money safely over time. I will provide a mixture of videos that go over everything beginner investors need to know and slowly increase the complexity of content as my audience grows and my knowledge increases. I will also conduct interviews with people that work in the finance industry and have far greater knowledge than my own. You only learn well when you surround yourself people who know more than you do.
• Podcast: The podcast will be dedicated to long form interviews with professional investors and other interesting / knowledgable figures in financial & technological industries. My aim is to provide deep insight into the world of finance and emerging technology, doing so in a way that provides actionable and practical lessons for listeners.
• Medium: I currently have a publication called, surprise: Project Shekel in which I write long form articles about the core concepts and principles of investment, cryptocurrency and everything money related. I provide well-reasoned, evidence backed examples of first principles and work to expose the pitfalls and scams in the current markets, especially cryptocurrency.
• Website: My website (currently in development and going live July 1) will be an aggregation of all of my work and a directory / archive for people to view whatever it is they need. I am opting for an extremely clean and intuitive theme so that people can find relevant information and services easily.
• Memberful: if this goes well.

So... Membership?

I'm approaching the membership from a slow burn, high yield perspective. I want the vast majority of memberships to purchased based on the contribution of value that I provide and through people wanting to support my work. Creating extremely high-quality content that provides real world & actionable value is the ultimate foundation of Project Shekel.

However, as the content base grows, I plan to offer a variety of unique opportunities for listeners & viewers through different tiers of membership:

• Exclusive content: These aren't just regular old videos, these will be entertaining deep dives into little known history, principles, and my own unique application of philosophy. You won't be able to find this anywhere else! I'll also create custom content for subscribers of Memberful.

• AMA sessions: Once viewership grows I will host AMA sessions where I can get in touch with community and figure out ways to offer better content, deal with any queries and take feedback. I am extremely open to community feedback and see it as the most important element of a successful long-term business or enterprise.

• Featured call ins: I'll conduct monthly episodes where I feature questions recorded by premium members and answer them on my publicly available videos / podcast.

• Merchandise: I want to offer merchandise, well, because it's fun. I have a keen interest in graphic design, and I've formerly run a drop-shipped t-shirt company that sold ironic historical tees in my local area. I've figured out all the kinks when it comes to creating good quality merchandise and it's another aspect of deep branding for Shekel that I also really enjoy.

• NFT's: (Non-Fungible Tokens) You may or may not have heard of NFTs. They are essentially a unique digital token that appear in a wide range of forms. Many are completely useless. When I create NFTs for project shekel I will ensure that smart-contracts are built into them. It's my goal to understand NFT's well enough to create and offer a series of premium NFTs that allow members to win transferrable, smart-contract based, life-time memberships to Project Shekel. If you didn't get any of what was just said, I guess you'll jut have to tune into my video on NFTs (coming soon).
• Giveaways: I've had a reasonable shares of success thus far in my short life, having already built and sold a successful business in my local area. I have no qualms with giving away sums of cryptocurrency that I hold to viewers and listeners. I plan on utilising a series of "raffle-style" giveaways as a marketing strategy to those who share my content and drive engagement. I have moderate holdings in crypto at the moment and am willing to pay well for engagement via these assets.

Key Dates

The Youtube Channel is going live on the 1st of July. There will be an average of 2 videos per week added to it.

The Podcast's first episode, with CEO of Novum Alpha Patrick Tan is scheduled for release on the 7th of July. We will discuss the state of cryptocurrency and how young / new investors should approach it. I plan to release 1-2 podcasts per week.

I currently have a publication on Medium where I write daily articles on an array of topics finance-related. I have now recruited an additional 2 writers (and counting) on Medium so that I can focus directly on Youtube, Podcasting and my own investing.

I look forward to seeing and hearing from you all across my channels in the future. I can't wait to create unique and empowering content for everyone.

Tom Mitchelhill

Investor | Business Builder | Writer | Existence Enthusiast

Get in touch with me