How To Think Like A Billionaire...

Entrepreneurship is a long, challenging journey, requiring perseverance, resilience, and a clear long-term vision.

Bill Gates once said, “Most of us overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what we can do in ten years,” a quote that resonates deeply with my entrepreneurial path. From my early days at Microsoft to founding my own ventures, I’ve learned that success in entrepreneurship often unfolds over a decade or more.

?

During my time at Microsoft from 1998-1999 and 2002-2004, I witnessed firsthand the impact of consistent, long-term planning. My career path was greatly influenced by both my father, Bernard Humphreys—a brilliant man who came to Canada from Antigua on a scholarship to earn his B.Comm from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute—and Bill Gates. I learned invaluable lessons from both of them, shaped by their advice and experiences. My father, for example, recommended the University of Toronto’s business co-op program, steering me away from my initial plan of pursuing International Development Studies. This led to my co-op placement at Microsoft Canada as an Anti-Piracy Marketing Associate (1998-1999), an opportunity made possible by winning seven scholarships to UofT’s co-op Management program—a testament to my father’s encouragement to pursue business.

?

My father’s journey left a lasting imprint on my own.?After being laid off from his job as an auditor for Devry in his forties, he found himself underemployed as a taxi driver for the next twenty-five years of his life and struggled with depression – trying to end his life twice. This motivated me to follow his advice to me: study business, build wealth and use that wealth to help the poor, much like Bill Gates. Ironically, Gates himself visited Microsoft in 1999, reinforcing this vision. I honoured my father with this poem at his funeral after he passed away of pneumonia on Nov.27th, 2014 with me at his bedside – My Father.

?

A defining moment in my life came when I decided to plan my career on one document I called a “target resume,” outlining the milestones I wanted to achieve—including becoming Prime Minister and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. It was such a mind-blowing vision it literally blew my mind and I was schizoaffective psychosis disorder in Centenary Hospital – the same psych ward my dad had gone to with depression when he tried to end his life when I was in high school. You can learn more about my personal battle with my mental health I overcame after 4 breakdowns in total – 1998 after my grandmother died, 1999 when planning my career blew my mind, 2004 when someone deleted my work at Microsoft when I was on vacation in Antigua and I got fired for a verbal outburst on the floor, and 2011 when I had my 4th and final breakdown the first few weeks of trying to teach at my church’s private school. Listen to my story in my two minute poem “Billionaire Maker.”

?

In 2002, one year after graduating with distinction from UofT, I returned to Microsoft, managing 100 certified Quebec partners. That year I also founded Toronto Poets as a poetry club I’d later incorporate as a non-profit corporation in 2007. Inspired by a racial profiling incident that made me question whether I would be able to achieve my dreams, in 2002 I performed this poem, “Maybe I”.

Over the years, we organized over 100 Toronto Poets “Increase the Peace” events, and in 2005, we won a $10,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to produce the compilation album?Love, Peace and Freedom – Increase the Peace?with U.M.O.V.E (United Mothers Opposing Violence Everywhere).

?

In 2010, at age 33, I launched the?Dream Decade Challenge, and wrote down on our website on Jan.1st, my Dream for the Decade was to get our?Saturday Night Love?show on TV. In just 4 months our Asian Summit was aired for free on TV after being covered by Asian reporters in Toronto. This success showed me that I had been dreaming too small, but despite my growing ambition, I struggled to find investors for my next project—a world tour. So I decided to sell my house and pay off my roughly $25,000 in debt and start over in an apartment with my mother.

?

2011 marked a turning point in my personal and professional development.?Inspired by a success story of an online guru who went from homelessness to millionaire by reading?Think and Grow Rich?by Napoleon Hill, I began devouring personal development books. In 2011 I started Penspowerclub.com as a for-profit decided to helping people rise to be healthy, wealthy and wise and live their God-given dreams. Over the next decade, I read over 100 books, including?Rich Dad, Poor Dad?by Robert Kiyosaki and?The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?by Dr. Stephen Covey.

?

In 2016, I adopted a “house-hacking” strategy inspired by?Rich Dad, Poor Dad,?purchasing a four-bedroom home in Pickering and renting out the top while living in the basement. The pandemic of 2020 hit hard, and like my father, I found myself laid off in my forties. This, however, provided me with the opportunity to invest in my future. I managed a $220,000 renovation on my home in 2021 from a friend’s house in Georgia, and I sold it for $1 million in 2022, retiring to Antigua at the age of 45. I founded the?Phreedom 45 Think Like A Billionaire Program?at?Phreedomacademy.com, setting an ambitious goal: a billion-dollar valuation for Dream Livers Club Inc. by 2030. Incidently I only learned in 2020 that decades are considered to begin on the 1s – i.e. 2011, 2021, 2031 etc. So that means my Dream for last decade that I wrote down online on Jan.1st, 2010 to get our show on TV, didn’t actually come true in 4 months when our April Asian Summit was televised. It actually came true 8 months before the decade even began!!! Wow!

?

Today, I’ve consolidated everything I’ve learned from reading over 100 books on personal development into a comprehensive entrepreneurship curriculum?that teaches 7 biblical principles for success in life that won me 7 scholarships in 1996 and enabled me to retire at 45 with the world’s first 25-year legacy life strategy book-course, “You’re Gifted So Think Phreely-The Course” complete at Thinkphreely.net and $25,000 scholarship program built at Phreedomacademy.com. It teaches 5 Steps To Phreedom from Emotional Abuse and Misuse in Pre-Engagement Counselling and 7 Steps to Entrepreneurship Milllions at Phreedomfridays.com. This curriculum is part of the?Think Phreely Gifted Program?for teens and?Think Like a Billionaire?program for adults at?Phreedomacademy.com, which includes a $25,000 scholarship program to coaching that takes place on Friday evenings on Zoom at Phreedomfridays.com, giving students the whole week to apply the curriculum long-term in school, work and/or entrepreneurship, and the weekends for rest and church -so they have the balance I lacked which led to my 4 mental breakdowns. ?

In September of 2024 at 47, two years after retiring to Antigua, I’ve enrolled in film school in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, to turn my books into movies, aiming to broaden my reach and continue promoting peace and prosperity. My corporations are structured to give me time phreedom. I did two things Bill Gates said he would do if he had to start over. First, he said he would not recommend dropping out like he did. He would finish school and work for other companies first and then start Microsoft when he was older and learned from how other CEOs ran their companies – as I did. Second, he said he would not structure Microsoft to have any full-time employees. He would use multi-level marketing instead. Microsoft has approximately 228,000 full-time employees worldwide. Technically I am president of Phree Shares Inc., Toronto Poets, Penspowerclub.com, Phreedomacademy.com and Dream Livers Club Inc. – 5 companies. And I have zero full-time employees all of them combined. I pay $500 USD for referrals to students in Phreedomacademy.com at Phreedomfridays.com and $50 USD for referrals for investors in “You’re Gifted So Think Phreely-The Course” at Thinkphreely.net and I am only scheduled to coach students on Friday evenings virtually at Phreedomfridays.com.

?

I plan to run for Prime Minister of Canada by 2040, driven by a ten-year plan to help Canada take the Dream Decade Challenge. I’ll have a written plan for Canada at the time, like I have a written plan for this decade at Phreedomacademy.com.?My journey—from interning at Microsoft to retiring in Antigua with a million-dollar sale 23 years later at 45 (Phreehouses.com) —is a testament to the power of having a definite long-term vision you write down as the bible I read and believed since the Gideons gave it to me on Dec.1st, 1986 in grade 3 instructs, “Write the vision, makes it plain”. The wisdom of Bill Gates’ quote rings true every time I look at how long I expect my plans to take: “Most of us over-estimate what we can do in one year, and under-estimate what we can do in ten years.” Through perseverance and a commitment to my dreams, I’ve proven time and again that success is possible if you stay focused on the long game. My own quote and our guiding principle at Phreedomacademy.com is, “If you do what you were created to do, what you create will do what you create it to do.” So what we were you created to do? God inspired me to write my answer to that question down since I wrote my first book in grade 5 about becoming prime minister, David and the Well from 1988.

?