Book Review: Overlap

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When I was younger, I would spend hours upon hours read­ing books. All sorts of books from YA fic­tion to biogra­phies to ran­dom books like Monop­oly strate­gies (I need­ed the help- my mom is killer at Monop­oly!). This love of read­ing con­tin­ues today, even though I don’t get to get lost in a new book for hours anymore.

So, when some­one emailed me and said, “hey, I have a book com­ing out soon, want to read it and review it?”, I said of course! If it was a bad book, I’d waste a bit of my time and send the book to a friend who reads bad books on pur­pose for the explic­it pur­pose of review­ing them. If it was a good book, I’d get to read a good book and then share the results with you, my readers!

For­tu­nate­ly for my lim­it­ed time, it was a good book. It’s called Over­lap by Sean McCabe.

The entire pur­pose of the book is to get you think­ing about what kind of busi­ness you want to run and get­ting it off the ground — before you quit your day job.

As some­one who’s dab­bled in mon­e­tiz­ing var­i­ous side hus­tles while work­ing, this book is price­less. I love to read about oth­er peo­ple’s expe­ri­ences so I don’t have to rein­vent the wheel (and make the same mistakes).

There was one part that real­ly stood out to me. I was lis­ten­ing to the audio book ver­sion dur­ing my car rides while feel­ing so many emo­tions. I lit­er­al­ly want­ed to quit my job right then and there and get start­ed.… but that would kind of defeat the pur­pose of over­lap­ping, so I haven’t. Yet. I also got kind of upset I could­n’t do the exer­cise while dri­ving, so this is me, doing the exer­cise in the book. It’s going to get real­ly per­son­al.…. but that’s the whole point of this blog!

The Exer­cise

“Take a step back from think­ing about your pas­sion. Imag­ine all the mon­ey you need is in your bank and you can snap your fin­gers and have what­ev­er you desire. Remove all lim­i­ta­tions and fast-for­ward ten, fif­teen, or twen­ty years into the future. Project a vision of the life you want. Spare no expense. Real­ly think about this for a moment.

If you can have any­thing you want, then:

• What is your per­fect life?
• What is the life you want to have?
• What is your health like?
• Where are you living?
• What car do you own?
• What does your ide­al day look like?
• How much mon­ey are you making?
• What are your goals?”

My Response

My per­fect life does­n’t involve me work­ing a tra­di­tion­al 9–5 for some­one else. I’ll be work­ing on things, but it will be things I’m inter­est­ed in and pas­sion­ate about. My per­fect life would be me mar­ried to a great guy with a cat and maybe a few kids. We’d have a charm­ing bun­ga­low with space for a work­shop for me to explore said inter­est­ing pas­sion projects. I’d have the free­dom to vis­it friends and fam­i­ly far away while also being able to host any­one com­ing through town.

In an ide­al life I’d be in prime shape. With no 9–5 job to take up time and men­tal ener­gy, my health would be a pri­or­i­ty. I’d be noth­ing with­out a healthy body. We’d be eat­ing food grown on our prop­er­ty (gar­den, fruit trees, and chick­ens come to mind).

We’d live some­where incred­i­bly walk­a­ble so we can walk and ride our bikes as much as pos­si­ble. It would­n’t be a big city, but it would­n’t be a tiny town in the mid­dle of a corn­field either. I’d love to live in a com­mu­ni­ty of like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als so we can share and pool our resources. If this is my list of wants for a per­fect life, an FI-based com­mune is def­i­nite­ly on it. I’d love to live some­where either by ski areas, or close to a big air­port so I can eas­i­ly and cheap­ly fly to ski. This would also come in handy for the afore­men­tioned vis­it­ing people.

If I have a car and don’t bike/walk every­where, I’d have some sort of eco­nom­i­cal and prac­ti­cal car that can trans­port every­thing from peo­ple to 8 foot boards from Home Depot. Some­thing like a Sub­aru Out­back or sim­i­lar small SUV/hatchback.

My ide­al day would look some­thing like this: wake up, work out, show­er, write/read, eat break­fast, work on a project for a few hours, eat lunch, do some chores/work around the house/run errands, play some video games, eat din­ner, hang out with fam­i­ly, and go to bed.

We’d be mak­ing just a bit more than we need­ed to live off of so our invest­ments could con­tin­ue to com­pound for the future. I don’t think I could put a dol­lar sign on that amount with­out know­ing a ton of dif­fer­ent vari­ables. Ide­al­ly this would come from a vari­ety of sources like rental income, pas­sive invest­ments, and project work (think speak­ing fees and stained glass commissions).

My main goal would to be liv­ing a hap­py and stress free life. If we have kids, I’d want to raise them to be respon­si­ble, pro­duc­tive mem­bers of soci­ety. Anoth­er goal would be to gain some form of pub­lic­i­ty and recog­ni­tion for my cre­ative endeavors.

Every­thing Else

This is a huge book, and I’m afraid I can’t do it jus­tice in a short blog post, but I’ll do my best to hit the high­lights. Just check out some of the chap­ter titles:

• Defeat Scarci­ty Mindset
• Don’t Poi­son Your Passion
• Stay Moti­vat­ed
• Increase Your Focus
• Prac­tice Deliberately
• Cure Per­fec­tion­ism
• Get to Your New Zero
• Sell Prod­ucts
• Choose What to Be Known For
• Rule with Reciprocity

I did­n’t even include all the sub-head­ings! This is not a book to read once and for­get about it. There’s so much use­ful and action­able infor­ma­tion in this book that I could­n’t even take it all in the first time through. I will be ref­er­enc­ing it over and over again. I have a feel­ing I’ll be com­ing back and ref­er­enc­ing each chap­ter as I advance in my side hus­tles. I know next to noth­ing about con­tracts or mar­ket­ing, so those sec­tions are incred­i­bly useful.

He also just has real­ly great advice in gen­er­al to give on every­thing from pro­mot­ing your work to how to price things. I think my favorite sec­tion was on cur­ing per­fec­tion­ism. I def­i­nite­ly strug­gle with per­fec­tion­ism when it comes to doing things for oth­er people.

The book is now avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic and I can’t rec­om­mend it more. You can find the book at his web­site, Overlapbook.com.

Have you ever tried to start a busi­ness? How’d it go? What’s one thing you wish you had known before you start­ed? Sound off in the com­ments below!