We recently connected with Peter Young and have shared our conversation below.
Peter, thank you so much for making time for us. We’ve always admired your ability to take risks and so maybe we can kick things off with a discussion around how you developed your ability to take and bear risk?
Risk tolerance is the skill I credit most to anything I’ve accomplished. It was a muscle that had to be developed across five phases of my life.
The first phase came at 18, when I decided I was never going to work for someone else again. I restructured my life to make money obsolete by asking the questions: What does one really need to survive, and how can I obtain it without money? I learned methods of obtaining food, clothing, and shelter that usually involved risk. I moved into a well-maintained but abandoned home owned by the Department of Transportation and lived there surreptitiously for two years. When your entire existence is illegal, your risk tolerance builds quickly.
The next phase was getting involved in animal rights activism. Myself and several friends quickly realized that protesting was ineffective in saving animals, and escalated to illegal “direct action” to save them. This began with small scale sabotage (e.g. breaking into slaughterhouses to steal the instruments used to kill animals), and escalated to live liberations of animals from fur farms. Consistent breaking and entering, trespassing, and “burglary” taught me that with stealth and planning, most risks can be mitigated into irrelevance.
My third phase of risk taking was my life as a fugitive. I was indicted on “animal enterprise terrorism” charges at age 21, and went on the run. Facing a possible life sentence under the RICO act, I had to further strengthen my ability to withstand risk as a wanted fugitive. This period involved obtaining real IDs with forged documents, contacting old friends through clandestine means, and knowing any misstep could result in prison. A 7 year cat-and-mouse relationship with the world’s largest investigative agency (FBI) will build a tremendous tolerance for risk.
My eventual prison sentence threw me into an entirely new environment of risk exposure. Previously, my freedom had been at risk, whereas in prison it was my physical safety. Navigating an unfamiliar and always dangerous environment was a new test.
Lastly, the risks I incurred starting businesses. After prison, all the lessons in risk I’d learned up to that point were channeled into my life as an entrepreneur. Business is all risk, with a low odds of success. I gathered up seed money (in part from selling products I found in dumpsters) and hired a software developer to build a tool that filled an unmet need in a small market. I put ⅓ of my small net worth into an idea with an unlikely chance of success. Several years later I was able to sell that business for 215x what it cost to build, and retire at an early age.
From all this, I learned the biggest risk is in not taking big risks.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Professionally, my official title is “retired from business, starting over at life.” But neither are precisely accurate.
After exiting my last company, I launched a new software business (also by outsourcing the development – I still can’t write a line of code). This one is less about money and more as an experiment to confirm I didn’t just get lucky the first time. “Once you’re lucky, twice you’re good.”
I help others looking to escape the tyranny of a 9 to 5 job start and scale their businesses. I was entirely self-taught, with no mentors, and I enjoy shortcutting people rapidly through the learning curve. Freeing people from the fate of working for someone else until they die is one small thing I can offer the world.
I continue to advocate for animals in various (now legal) forms.
Today I have the good fortune of having a home base (after so many years of being legally homeless) and the time to travel, and spend about 50% of the year on various out of town adventures.
And a multitude of smaller projects, from an autobiographical book in the works, a vegan hip hop album, a small book publishing imprint, and more.
Nothing specific to promote, but for anyone interested in the animal liberation movement, the two books (of several) I publish that I recommend most are:
* Liberate: Animal Liberation Above The Law
* The A.L.F. Strikes Again: Collected Writings Of The Animal Liberation Front
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Circumvention Bias: Never taking an obstacle as a dead end, and always looking for the creative loophole or hack to bypass it.
And not only is the indirect path sometimes necessary, it is usually the best path to success. There is always a “back door” to everything you want to achieve, and it is often either quicker, or lower risk.
In activism, we found there was always a way into any building we wanted to access. And it was rarely the front door. This is a metaphor for all obstacles.
Reframing Ridicule: Resistance from the masses is an indicator you’re on the right path. When most people don’t live lives you want to live, and don’t accomplish what you want to accomplish, then their criticisms are contrarian indicators – their mockery is an encouraging signal as to what you should be doing.
When I began building my internet business, I heard it all:
* “It takes investors to start a big business.”
* “You didn’t go to school for business. This will never work.”
* “That’s risky.”
None of them are people I would trade lives with. So I knew I was on the right path.
Every one of those people is still working a 9 to 5 job.
Explorer Mindset: Erring in the direction of novelty and variety over custom and convenience. The more experiments you take, the more success you will have. Luck occurs in proportion to the number of situations you put yourself in where luck can be allowed to occur.
When I found the abandoned house I would live in rent free for two years, I didn’t have any leads, or even evidence such a thing was possible. I just decided to walk every streets of my town until I found an empty house to live in. I allowed the opportunity to present itself, and it did.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Always offering free mentorship to vegans who want to build a personal-freedom-driven or fundraising-driven business.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.peteryoung.me
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peter.young.forever
- Twitter: https://www.x.com/peterdyoung
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
