Callum Macdonald for the Alternative MBA program

I began travelling initially to save money. I was caught in a pattern of behaviour that I found very difficult to break. That pattern involved spending far more money than I was earning and so I was creating debt.

My travel now is motivated by different reasons. I feel like this is the time in my life when travelling will be the easiest. I've structured my professional life such that I can be completely geographically liberated. All of my work is online, so I'm able to move freely so long as I stay within reach of an internet connection.

At 26, without children or a life partner, I'm very able to move around the world. In years to come travelling will become more logistically challenging.

In seeing different parts of the world, different cultures, different ways of living, I hope to better inform my own choices. I hope to be able to make an educated choice as to where I want to live, how I want to live, with whom I want to live.

Professionally, I work with WordPress because that's the way it happened. I started an IT company when I left school at 17. I helped people get connected to the internet, showed them how email worked, taught them how to use the web. Over the years that business grew and evolved and got involved in building web sites. When I landed in Bangkok and needed to find work, I met a guy running a web design business. They worked with open source content management systems.

When I left Bangkok I started working through RentaCoder.com. My own blog runs on WordPress and so I had some experience with the software. I found that a lot of the work I was getting on the site related to WordPress. Then SmartHippo approached me and said they wanted to give me a job building a custom WordPressMU site. When that was done, I came across Incsub who were looking for WordPressMU developers.

StraightPress is born out of a few things. One, my frustration at maintaining a handful of WordPress sites by hand. I host sites for family, friends, charities and groups. I saw an opportunity, an economy of scale in hosting many sites in an automated fashion.

Since my IT support days, I've been reconsidering the type of business I want to be involved in. Automation is one of my priorities, and I believe that WordPress hosting offers a unique opportunity to combine human intelligence with automation in a very powerful way.

I also believe that freedom of communication is one of the most fundamental human rights. I believe that empowering people to communicate online will have a significant impact on the world. If every charity, NGO, social movement, and community group, all over the world, were empowered to communicate to a global audience, the effect would be staggering. When schools in Africa are able to connect directly to their supporters, funders, volunteers, and partners, amazing things will happen.

I see StraightPress as a vehicle to both empower people to communicate, and to earn income to support a lifestyle.

[Picture The Open Road by Stuck in Customs]

I believe in the power of books. I think there is more knowledge in a single library than any person can consume in a lifetime.

My intention on this program is to take theoretical understanding and learn it in actuality. Do it, feel it, be it. To know it.

I'm excited about this program because it's hands-on, real life, practical learning. Not academic exercise.

I'm excited about the opportunity to work with you Seth, but I'm very excited about the opportunity to work with the other members of the program. The opportunity to spend 6 months working closely with a small group of other highly motivated people, wow, that's the real gem for me.

I have no specific aims as to what I hope to achieve. I hope to deepen my understanding of how people are motivated, encouraged to take action, how people respond to communication.

[Picture learn by aaron schmidt]

My plan is to have no plan.

I hope to approach each moment freshly and purely. I hope to use the knowledge and experience I have built throughout my life to be the change I wish to see in the world.

I believe we can only work on ourselves. We can only bring ourselves closer to our true nature. Through that process, we can inspire others. By acting from a place of pure intention we can connect deeply and directly with others.

I hope this program will deepen my understanding of the world in a truly practical, hands-on way. I hope that this understanding will help me to connect with other people more clearly, to communicate more openly and more honestly.

It is my belief, that through this process, I may inspire change in the world. I believe those who have inspired the greatest changes in history were deeply connected to themselves, to their own nature, their own motivations, fears, desires.

So in pragmatic terms, I hope this program will help me learn to lead. What I'll specifically do with that leadership I don't yet know. The issues that I feel most strongly about are around:

• Enabling communication


• Freedom of speech


• Alleviating poverty

I was a difficult teenager. I was a difficult child. I had great difficulty connecting with other people. My intentions were fairly pure, but my manifestation was confused, scared, uneasy. Social dynamics were a mystery to me, I had no understanding of why or how people responded to stimulus.

I tried to leave school at 16, the youngest legal age. I was a bright student, academically smart. The school thought it best I stay on, as did my parents. I was offered a week to consider my decision. I spent that week working with my father in the garden. I went back to school.

During that last year I met Chris Hill. Chris turned out to be a long standing acquaintance of my mother's. He'd known my father as well back in their hippy days. Chris is both a wonderful and wonderfully odd character. One of his passions is cycling. He was active with Spokes, the local cycle campaign group. His pet project was Safer Routes to Schools.

Safer Routes was a nationwide initiative to get children to school more safely. The biggest danger en-route to school was other parents driving to school. So the safest way to get everyone to school was to get all the kids out of their cars and onto the pavement or a bicycle.

I'd long cycled to school, at my father's insistence. As a teenager, unable to drive, a bicycle offered me a great sense of freedom. So when I met Chris, sparks flew. I immediately got involved with the safer routes movement.

I trained as a cycle instructor. I helped local schools on cycling trips. We worked with underprivileged schools taking kids cycling. I visited areas I'd never before been to and found that real people lived there. They weren't the warzones I had imagined.

I came into my own in that last year of school. I found something where I could make an impact, where I could make a difference. The year passed quickly and then I was out into the big wide world.

I went back to my old primary school, a place I had left 5 years earlier. I met my old head teacher, and proposed a safer routes initiative within the school. I rallied a group of parents and one teacher. We were off.

Over a period of 18 months we ran a number of initiatives. We held open days, published newsletters, offered cycle training, ran cycling trips, invited speakers to come into school. We put the initiative in front of the whole school.

In parallel, we lobbied local government. As part of the nationwide safer routes project, budgets had been allocated. We steered a portion of the budget to our school. The council installed speed bumps, improved the local street crossing, and marked cycle lanes around the school.

Bicycle parking was installed at the school. More and more children were walking and cycling to school.

I was 17 when I lead, often badly, the Blackhall Safer Routes to School Group. It was my first experience of voluntary leadership. The lessons were invaluable.

[Photo bicycle ballet by by raysto]

Yes

I wrote this very section, clicked save, and somehow it disappeared. So typing this even better the second time is a mini-dip in itself. I had chosen the picture first time and only now see the irony! :)

...

Business studies was compulsory in high school. Once a week we would trek up to K Block and try not to fall asleep for an hour. Typing was the most boring of all. Place a piece of paper over the typewriter and type FRFRFRFR until you remember where the keys are. Then move onto DE and repeat. Then repeat some more.

I got into computers when I was young, probably around 13 or 14. My father brought a computer home one day and eventually we were to use it. It was immediately obvious that I was a computer person. Computers do as they're told, they're perfectly logical. I got them.

Very soon I realised that if I was going to spend any quantity of time on the computer, I'd be spending time typing. I had to learn to type. I understood the principles, I'd learned that much in K Block, but I couldn't actually type.

I made a decision. From that moment forwards, whenever faced with a keyboard, I would use the correct finger on the correct key. No more two finger hunting and pecking.

It was painful to start with. It slowed me down horribly. I'd have to find the key, then instead of just pressing it, find the right finger, and then press it.

My persistence paid off. Within a few weeks I was back to my old speed. A few more weeks and I was getting faster. For a few months I still looked at the keyboard while typing, but slowly I weaned myself off that.

Today, I type faster than the average typist. When I see somebody struggling to type an email with a few fingers I'm reminded of my decision all those years ago. The dip was undoubtedly worth it.

[Picture just take one dip and end it by peyri]

I discovered Business Network International when I was about 20. BNI is a high energy, breakfast networking club. Local chapters of up to 40 business people meet once per week, from 7:00am till 8:30am with the sole purpose of generating business referrals for each other.

The meeting is very structured. The core of the meeting is the 60 second presentation section. Every member is given exactly 1 minute (there's a timer) to help their fellow members to generate referrals for them. Then the referrals are literally written down, recorded and passed round the room. Money is made in each and every meeting.

The membership fees weren't cheap, but I was sold. A structured group of people out there generating business for me. Wow, what an opportunity. I joined.

The leadership of each chapter rotates every 6 months. Finding volunteers to take on the three leadership roles was always a challenge. I stepped forward for the position of chapter director. The current chapter director, now a longstanding friend, supported my application. The regional director (franchise owner) said I was too young. I took on the role of membership director instead.

6 months later, I was back. Now about 21 years old, I was, once again, proposing to lead a group of 40 local business professionals. I certainly wasn't shy! My persistence won out, there were no other volunteers, and I had proven myself in the number 2 slot. I was nominated and voted in as chapter director.

A new leadership was emerging within BNI. An ex chapter director from Aberdeen was working his way up the system, and eventually bought all the Scottish franchises. He was looking to expand aggressively. I applied for the position of local Assistant Director. I was responsible for managing a handful of existing chapters and creating new chapters. I was paid according to the number of members in my chapters.

There I was at 22 years old, leading groups of business people.

[Picture Bonaerenses by Eduardo Amorim]

This is hard. There are so many things. I try to be optimistic, positive, upbeat, happy. I'm not often "wishful".

I wish people were nicer to each other, more tolerant of each other, more forgiving of each other's mistakes.

I believe I can make this wish come true. I will, for the next 7 days, make a conscious effort to be more understanding, more accepting, more sympathetic and more compassionate to the people I come into contact with. Change happens within.

[Picture Seifenblase (Bulle de Savon, Soap Bubble) by Photoclinique]

I'm sitting here listening to the conference call and every fibre of my being is telling me that I'd be a near perfect fit for this program. I'm giddy with excitement.
...
Now I've had lunch, I've calmed down a little. I'm sure there are hundreds of people who are equally as excited, and probably even more convinced they're the right person for the program. So I'll spare you the sales pitch, I'll try to be as honest as I can be in this. If you feel like I'm a good fit, it'll work. If not, it won't. That's ok.

Here's my commitment.

Firstly, if you'd like to interview me, I'm willing to pay almost $800 and fly 2206 miles to be in New York City with a few days notice.

Secondly, if you choose to accept my application, I will be in New York City for the 6 months of the program. I will make the time to meditate each morning before I come in for the day. I will make every effort to bring my very best self to the office each morning. More than just showing up, I commit to give this program one hundred percent.

Not pure, unbridled enthusiasm, but calm, collected dedication. A commitment of mind and body. That's my offer.

References

• RentaCoder - feedback from clients, both sides have to submit their feedback before it's published, double blind.


• CouchSurfing - vaguely personal feedback


• My blog