How To Build A Life That Governments Can’t Touch

Escape Velocity Issue 1 - Independence Day

The 2020s: Crisis or Catalyst?

What do you make of the 2020s so far?

We’ve seen a global pandemic, wars erupting in Europe and the Middle East, governments drowning in debt to prop up unsustainable welfare systems, and a United States turning inward under radically new leadership.

But that’s just the global picture. Zoom in, and the dysfunction becomes personal. I was born in Britain in the 1950s. The country I see today is unrecognisable.

During a recent VE Day commemoration, I watched the few remaining WWII veterans and wondered what they must think. The country they risked their lives for now imprisons young mothers for social media posts. Its spiritual and cultural foundations—once rooted in Judeo-Christian values—have been eroded by decades of political neglect.

Mass immigration, long ignored as a sensitive topic, is finally drawing protest. And it’s getting ugly.

Meanwhile, our economies stall. Growth has flatlined under the weight of taxation and regulation. The state expands, feeding on the middle class to fund its growing appetite.

Then comes AI—not as science fiction, but as economic revolution. IBM replaced 8,000 HR staff with algorithms. British Telecom is eyeing 40,000 AI-driven redundancies. If you think only factory workers and taxi drivers are in danger, you’re not paying attention.

From Drifting to Definite Purpose

So what do we do when so much seems out of our control?

That’s where this newsletter comes in. Welcome to Escape Velocity.

After five decades of building businesses, making mistakes, and staying ahead of the curve, I’ve learned one thing: You can’t afford to drift. You must live with a Definite Purpose.

Retirement? Not for me. Here in Portugal, surrounded by expats playing padel and sipping vin rosé by noon, I see the cost of aimlessness. Boredom. Decline. Regret.

When you’ve lived a life of challenge and contribution, you can’t just switch off. You need a new game worth playing.

That’s why I’ve established Escape Velocity. And that’s what I’m offering you.

It’s appropriate that we are launching on Independence Day. Our life as Sovereign Entrepreneur Investors starts today…

What Napoleon Hill Got Right—Almost a Century Ago

You may have heard of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It’s a classic, built from interviews with industrial age giants like Carnegie, Edison, and Ford. But it’s Hill’s lesser-known book, Outwitting the Devil, that holds the most urgent truth for today.

Written in 1938 but hidden until 2011, the book condemns the fear-based conditioning of schools and churches. It argues that most people live as drifters, slaves to fear and conformity. To break free, Hill says, you must claim your Definite Purpose and access what he calls your "Other Self"— a higher version of you, activated through faith and courage.

Sound dramatic? Maybe. But look around: 100 years on, our schools still fail to teach basic financial literacy. Instead, they push ideological conformity while ignoring real-world survival skills.

As a man of faith, I connect with Hill’s use of prayer to tap into Infinite Intelligence. Whether you call it God, Spirit, or simply your higher mind, the principle stands: we are not here to drift. We are here to rise.

You Are Not an Oak Tree

You didn’t choose your country of birth. You can choose where you build your life.

You didn’t choose your parents. You can choose your beliefs.

You are not an oak tree. You are mobile. You are adaptable. You are free.

But only if you choose to be.

That’s why having an Escape Plan is no longer optional—it’s essential.

The Three Pillars of Escape Velocity

Every Friday, I’ll help you build the three assets that make escape possible:

1. Cash-Generating Businesses
   Learn how to build location-independent ventures that print money while giving you control of your time.

2. Contrarian Investment Portfolios
   Forget cookie-cutter advice from High Street IFAs. Discover strategies for building durable, global wealth.

3. Global Freedom Strategy
   Where you live, where your business is based, and where you're taxed might end up being three different places. In fact, there’s a very useful formula that builds on this idea:

Why This 1980s Formula Is More Relevant Than Ever

It’s being spoken of in plain sight.

Yet 99% of the population refuses to see it.

I’m talking about the mother of all conspiracy theories, World Government imposed by digital control.

It’s a mix of technologies designed to monitor and control everything we say, everywhere we go and everything we spend:

- Facial recognition becomes our unique digital ID

- Cameras on every lamppost monitor where and how we travel

- And the piece de resistance, programmable central bank digital currencies

All being justified by the manufactured hysteria of a climate crisis. At its core, we find supra-national entities like the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, The Bank for International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund.

Don’t believe me? Think my tin hat is showing? Search Youtube for a documentary called The Agenda. Spoiler alert – you’ll need a strong constitution to make it to the end.

Add in bad actors taking control of the capabilities of AI and realise that it’s time for defensive, pre-emptive action.

How long have we got? I’d say five years max.

The good news is that we’re not the first generation to feel this paranoia. Back in the 1980s an American investor and financial journalist called Harry Schultz could see the direction of travel and realised it was time to spread his bets.

The overall goal – no one government has full control over you.

What Harry recognised was that, if so-called democracies were going to exert increasingly strict control over their citizens, we need to engineer a situation where no single state can exercise power over every aspect of our lives.

His first response was the Three Flag Theory, where you choose separate countries:

- To live your best lifestyle

- To best protect your assets

- To be a passport holding citizen

We’re all comfortable with the idea of a diversified investment portfolio. Harry took it a stage further and said we should avoid putting every ‘egg’ of our lives into a single basket.

He called it the Three Flag theory because the idea is that you plant a flag, in other words establish some kind of presence, in several countries.

There’s a lot to be said for this thinking, because some countries have unstable governments, others have weak stock markets, some have volatile currencies and some have a terrible record on human rights.

The idea is to treat the world as your chess board and elevate your thinking to a meta level to decide where you place your pieces.

As the world became more complex, Harry expanded his thinking to the Five Flag Theory so that we now consider separate nations for:

Flag 1 – Citizenship and Passport

This becomes your home base so you are looking for the most flexible passport in terms of visa free travel but without being too demanding about how much time you have to spend in the country.

You also need a country that won’t tax you to the eyeballs if you are not resident there.

Of course, changing your nationality or obtaining a second passport is rarely free and is not the work of a moment. For example, I can only apply for a Portuguese passport after being resident for five years and taking a challenging language test. I’ve decided the gain is not worth the pain.

(Watch for lots more articles about second passports in future issues of Escape Velocity).

Flag 2 – Legal or Tax Residency

Here, we’re looking for no or low taxes on overseas income.

One of the key attractions of tax residence in Portugal when we arrived was the previous version of the Non Habitual Residents scheme which offered 10% tax on pension income and zero on dividends from overseas companies.

Escape Is A Project, Not An Event

The goalposts keep moving on these schemes which is why escape is a project, not an event. A project that it’s never too early to start.

Another example of politicians changing the rules is Italy, which recently doubled its fixed annual tax scheme from €100,000 to €200,000. That said, it remains one of the most popular destinations for UK millionaires escaping the Starmer/Reeves/Rayner trifecta of pain.

Flag 3 – Where Your Business Lives

A cornerstone of my philosophy is that you build one or more businesses to throw off funds, you invest those funds to build long term wealth and you use that wealth to build the life and legacy you desire.

So the right location for your company, and the kindest possible tax treatment of your profits, are key to the speed at which you can turns your goals into reality.

When it comes to business, tax is not the only factor. We need strong rule of law, especially in contract law, intellectual property protection and proper corporate governance standards so that your assets cannot be stolen by bad actors.

Flag 4 – Where Your Wealth Lives

This is all about protection of your investment portfolio.

When it comes to hard assets like real estate, some geographic diversification makes sense. Mine is spread across six countries, some producing rental income and some for personal use.

My allocated gold and silver with BullionVault is held in Zurich and Singapore.

My Bitcoin is obviously the most highly portable, with the current benefit that crypto profits are not taxed in Portugal. Not that I’m selling any time soon...

The legend of banking secrecy in Switzerland and Lichtenstein persists, but the reality is the days of the James Bond villain demanding payment to his numbered account in Zurich are sadly long gone. Best to assume your bank details and balances will be visible to all relevant tax authorities across the countries in which you have a presence.

Flag 5 – Where You Live Most of the Time

This is where you go to have fun. It might be Italy, Portugal, Bali or Thailand.

You love the climate, the cuisine, the culture.

Friends ask us why we don’t go on holiday as much as we used to. That’s because we’re on holiday all the time here. Who wants the hassle of airport security and lost luggage?

As you may know, unlike most of the expats in the Algarve, I reject the concept of retirement. A strong broadband connection is all I need to stay in business. If you love what you do, why stop?

If you don’t love what you do, choose something else. Trust me, even in paradise, without an intellectual stimulation worth getting out of bed for, you’ll go into rapid decline.

This Week’s Action Steps:

1. Take 15 minutes to journal your Definite Purpose. Not your job title. Not your past roles. But the deeper reason you get out of bed each day. If you can’t define it yet, that’s okay. That’s what we’re here to figure out together.

2. Set up your Escape Plan project and do an hour of online research about potential countries for each of your five flags.

Let the Escape Begin

You only have one life on this planet.

Let’s make it count.

And leave the drifting to the Mediocre Majority.

See you next Friday.

Graham

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