THE FREEDOM LABS BARCODE EXPERIMENT
BARS.
I Be. I Am. I aRe. I iS.
I’ve been a millionaire. I’m bankrupt.
Now I’m rebuilding in public.
The aim: island life, remote businesses, freedom on my own terms. I’m opening up the process and sharing what I learn so you can put it to work in yours.
I don’t identify with who I think I am. I identify with the proof I produce.
MIKEY BARS / MY LIFE, ON RECORD
THE
RECORD.
I’m documenting the rebuild as I go: what I’m trying to accomplish, why I’m making the decisions I make, and what actually happens when I put them into practice.
I’ve got a plan for where this ends. Getting there is the part you’ll get to see.
The Barcode Experiment
FREEDOM 2029
Follow the experiment by email.
I’M STARTING AGAIN.
I’M NOT STARTING FROM NOTHING.
Before any of this, I was making music and trying to figure out how to afford the life I wanted. I built a business because I needed the money to create—and eventually, the time to actually do it.
That business became a much bigger part of my life than I expected. Here’s what I built, and one thing I rebuilt after it fell apart.
Explore the receipts
From the first $1,500
Over $8M in company sales.
I started with $1,500 and zero experience. By the time I closed, the business had generated over $8 million in sales across all locations. Near the end, we averaged $1.2–$1.6 million a year.
Lifetime company revenue—not profit or personal wealth.
See the original shop photos
Lifetime company revenue—not profit or personal wealth.
I’ve had the money, the business, the body and the freedom to travel. I know those things are possible because I’ve lived them. I also know there’s more to deciding what to do with your life than proving you can achieve something.
FREEDOM 2029EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS
WHOSE CODE
ARE YOU
LIVING BY?
We’re all born into a world
that already has plans for us.
I worked my ass off to build a life I wanted. When parts of it started sucking the life out of me, I had to decide whether I wanted to keep them just because I’d worked so hard to get them.
That’s a strange position to be in. You spend years trying to change your circumstances, finally change them, and still have to ask yourself what the fuck you’re doing.
I’m asking that question properly this time. What do I believe? What am I here to do? What do I want to accomplish before I die—and what kind of life will let me do it?
Those answers are what I’m building around.
I believe The Barcode can change the world. We inherit so much of who we think we are: expectations, labels, ideas about success, assumptions about what’s possible for people like us. I want people to be able to examine that code, choose what belongs to them and develop their own.
I can spend the rest of my life trying to convince people, or I can live what I’m talking about and let them decide whether there’s anything in it for them.
So I’m starting with me.
Follow the writing and the rebuild.
MY VALUES, PLANS AND STANDARDS.
WHERE YOU COME IN
BAR
RAISERS.
You don’t have to want my life to find something useful in how I’m building it.
I’m going to keep writing, building and putting this into practice. As I go, I’ll make the thinking available: what I’m working on, why I’m doing it and what happens when the plan meets my actual life.
You can question it. Try something in your own life. Decide I’m wrong. I’d rather give you something worth thinking about than tell you what to think.
If you want to follow along, start with the email. I’ll send you my writing and updates as I publish them.
And if you want to talk about what you’re doing with it, there’s Bar Raisers. Bring your own work, your questions and your experience. My life is the one you’ve just been reading about. It doesn’t have to be the only one in the conversation.