In 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion.
Soon after, he fired 80% of Twitter staff. That’s upward of 6000 people.
This isn’t the only case of tech layoffs or layoffs in general. Headlines are flooded with news of companies deciding to downsize, stripping people of their livelihood and leaving the general population worried if they’re next on the chopping block.
Along with that, there are a few other interesting predictions.
- Freelance work has increased from 36% of the workforce to 46.6% since 2020.
- The creator economy is projected to double from $250B to $480B by 2028.
- Prominent figures predict AGI – or Artificial General Intelligence – by the end of this year.
Now, some say development is slowing down due to high costs and may take 2 or more years to reach AGI.
Either way, whether we live until we are 500 years old or have robots doing our chores in the next 4 months or 10 years, the only solution is to take matters into your own hands. What you should have been doing in the first place.
It’s no wonder why people are so worried about being replaced.
Their skills are becoming outdated. They are on the verge of losing their means to survival. Their family, lifestyle, and ability to find new work is on the line.
It all adds up.
It’s crucial that we understand these 3 takeaways.
Understanding them will benefit your future even if they don’t directly apply to you.
1) The entry-level is going extinct.
It’s becoming harder and harder to get an entry-level job.
It doesn’t matter if it’s programming or marketing, AI can (or is very close) to being able to perform basic specialized work in most domains.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean the entry-level is leaving; it just means the bar is being raised.
What used to be an entry-level position is now a junior – and soon-to-be senior – level position.
The existing workforce will be composed of highly skilled and highly paid individuals who have a certain set of traits.
So, what traits do these “highly-skilled” individuals have that you don’t?
What do beginners do to make an income?
How do developers, writers, marketers, salesmen, designers, and other creative and technical workers survive?
2) People aren’t educated.
If you don’t create a purpose, you will be assigned one. – The Art Of Focus
Only slaves were expected to perform one task for their entire life.
They were taught career-specific skills like growing wheat, herding sheep, and riding a horse.
Our current education system reflects the education of slaves.
Today, we are taught to be useful workers.
We are taught to obey the authority.
We are conditioned to get good grades out of fear of punishment.
A free man is expected to have a purpose and learn whatever is necessary to achieve it.
A purpose is a goal that has a positive impact on others.
Most people don’t choose their own goals. They are programmed at a young age to have an employee mindset, to do what they’re told and only learn in that narrow domain.
A goal implies knowledge and skills that must be learned to solve problems that prevent you from achieving the goal.
If you don’t choose your own goal, you do not choose what you learn or what problems you solve. Your mind remains narrow by default because the goal is narrow. Your destiny is decided for you because the only potential you know is the one you were assigned.
So, what do we learn?
And how do we protect ourselves against the dangers of AI?
3) The future of work belongs to one-person businesses.
There are almost 7B people on this planet. Someday, I hope, there will be almost 7B companies. – Naval
A business is a legal structure that allows you to:
- Build what you want
- Solve valuable problems
- Profit from both
Why am I telling you this?
Because I’m tired of people thinking that “business” or “entrepreneurship” is reserved for those with startup capital or a certain personality.
For all I’m concerned, stop thinking of making an independent income as starting a business. Think of it as becoming valuable, packaging up that value, and engaging in value exchange – the action that has been around since the caveman days, not just when the legal requirement became a thing.
Social media, the creator economy, and technology have allowed a singular person to attract and monetize an audience, a distribution channel.
This isn’t a new fad business model, this is the reality of the modern world.
You have the ability to learn anything on the internet, build anything on the internet, and accept payment from anyone on the internet.
And yes, you can start with $0 to your name.
We still have much to discuss as we are just setting the scene.
Here’s what you will learn in the coming sections:
- How becoming a deep generalist will future-proof yourself.
- What skills you must learn to make a living with any interest or passion you have (and how to learn them fast).
- Why AI isn’t as special as you think it is and will only replace those who deserve to be replaced.
- How to turn yourself into a one-person business so you can take matters into your own hands.
- How to go from $0 to $100K to $1M while working an average of 4 hours a day doing what you want.
None of this would be possible at any other point in history.
Welcome to the future of work.
The Future Proof Skill Stack
Traditional education and hyperspecialization is a way to make people subservient to the dominant paradigm / system. Study the generalized principles of nature and be a deep generalist. – Daniel Schmachtenberger
I want to introduce you to a certified genius, inventor, and philosopher. He designed the geodesic dome that revolutionized architectural design by being incredibly stable while also being lightweight.
His name is Buckminster Fuller.
In his book, Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth, he illustrates a metaphor about The Great Pirates.
The Great Pirates were just that, pirates, who understood many things like geography, celestial navigation, biology, the men on their ship, the ship itself, history, and science as those were necessary topics to succeed in trade and dominion.
The men on they brought to work on their ship were stupid on purpose. The pirates didn’t want them to understand their strategies and contrive to overtake them and their wealth. They were expected to follow orders without question, and they did.
Pirates had global knowledge as they could sail to different lands. They were generalists. The rulers of the land knew only about their land and what the pirates told them (and the pirates can lie). They were specialists.
This gave the pirates great power and made the land rulers rely on them for trade and knowledge.
The pirates influenced the land rulers to give prestigious roles to the brightest minds in their kingdom as a way to keep them narrow-minded. They would give the bright minds roles like “Royal Historian” or “Treasurer” so they spent their days studying that singular niche, rendering themselves only useful to the land rulers and pirates. Like the men on the pirate’s ships, this prevented the bright minds of the land from overtaking the pirates because they were specialists, not generalists.
The bright minds were happy with the prestige.
The land rulers were happy with having “smart” people serve them.
The pirates were happy with having control over both across multiple lands.
The lesson:
Schools were created to enslave the brightest minds by promising the prestige of specialization. That way, they remained narrow-minded, didn’t choose their own purpose, and, therefore, didn’t learn multiple interests and skills that would allow them to overthrow those who assigned their purpose.
This explains why specialization is still highly encouraged. This explains why “high-paying jobs” are the first thing on teenager’s minds when thinking about what to do with their future.
You’ve been programmed to be replaced.
Let’s learn how to reverse the damage that’s already been done.
How To Become A Deep Generalist
The difference between an animal and a human is that animals specialize, or niche down, to survive.
The problem is that overspecialization leads to extinction in certain species.
Like a long-beaked bird that can reach fish in shallow waters, so they stay in that environment. Then, they breed, and the longest beaks survive, but the beaks become so heavy that they can’t fly, and the children’s beaks become so small that there isn’t any food left for them.
On the other hand, humans build tools to make up for their shortcomings.
In the past, we learned to throw spears so we could eat. Today, we learn to text our social circle on our phones so we aren’t seen as outcasts. All technological advancement around you was a hedge against the extinction of the human race.
A question there:
Are you building something valuable to prevent your replacement?
Or are you content with a single skill as a cog in someone else’s machine awaiting extinction?
Humans are natural generalists. They thrive at an intersection of overlapping niches and can adapt to new ones by building tools, acquiring new skills, or learning new information.
I want to tell you exactly what to learn to become a deep generalist.
What I am about to share are a stack of skills, from big picture to technical details, that will allow you to make your own decisions, think for yourself, and secure your future.
In Devon Eriksen’s opinion, the seven liberal arts (or “liberating arts,” as he coins, because they are much different from the near-worthless information being taught in liberal arts schools) are, quote:
- Logic: how to derive truth from known facts
- Statistics: how to understand the implications of data
- Rhetoric: how to persuade, and spot persuasion tactics
- Research: how to gather information on an unknown subject
- (Practical) Psychology: how to discern and understand the true motives of others
- Investment: how to manage and grow existing assets
- Agency: how to make decisions about what course to pursue, and proactively take action to pursue it.
If you want to learn these skills, you must hold them in your mind as you dive into the unknown.
If you prepare yourself with a future-proof mind, whatever technical skills you think will be lucrative or useful in the future are irrelevant because you can adapt as necessary.
To learn the liberating arts, these are the skills I acquired:
- Marketing & sales – if you don’t know how to attract and persuade, you will never get what you want, and your only option will be for an employer (or the government) to give it to you. (Rhetoric, psychology)
- Writing & thinking – the ability to communicate the value in your unique mind. The foundation of getting in front of other people. (Logic, research)
- Entrepreneurship – the process of taking my future into my own hands, hunting for my survival, and building products that I want to see in the world (that others care about). (Statistics, agency, investment)
Entrepreneurship may not be a “skill,” but it is a meta skill. It teaches you to be high-agency, identify problems, sell the solution, systemize your work, and cultivate the other traits that make you enemployable, and therefor irreplaceable.
Now, nobody can tell you how to write, think, market, and sell. They can only tell you how they do it.
Meaning, to learn these skills, you must embrace a self-experimentation mindset.
Your job is to:
- Research processes that others have found success with. Read books, use Google search, binge YouTube tutorials. Self-education must become a daily 30-60 minute habit. This isn’t optional.
- Experiment with various techniques. Implement the processes you learn and attempt to get results.
- Identify patterns and principles. Note the similarities between each and double down on them.
- Create your own process. Tailor what you learn to your unique lifestyle and situation.
- Contribute to true education by passing it down. Give people education that can’t be taught in schools with a fundamental grounding in critical thinking.
With entrepreneurship as your vessel, you set the scene for true education and sovereignty.
With writing and thinking, you continuously create, test, and iterate on the value you have to offer.
You are required to learn practical psychology – marketing and sales – to understand the minds of yourself and your customers.
You then persuade, not force or deceive, to inspire people to care about the value you have to offer.
Technical Know-How & Personal Interests
With the foundation of a future-proof skill stack, the next step is adapting to the times with technical skills.
In this digital renaissance, that means:
- Social media – building a name for yourself as your storefront for the value you create. The command center for your business.
- Content – writing, design, or video to educate, entertain, and inspire people to see your value.
- Email marketing – newsletters or sequences to nurture the audience you acquire.
- Visual design – illustrating the vibe of your brand to spark emotion in your viewers.
- Funnel building – creating landing pages, websites, and fueling them with other technical skills like content and email.
The requirements to learn these skills are bound to change as artificial intelligence shakes the industry. They won’t go away any time soon, but the general competition will increase due to the ease in acquiring these skills.
If you only learn these skills without learning the previous marketing, sales, writing, and entrepreneurship, the skills will lose potency.
These technical skills are how you start building your own thing as an entrepreneur.
Now the questions you’re asking are:
- What do I write about?
- What do I market and sell?
- What do I email, design, or leverage technical skills with?
The interests you can’t help but tell others about.
The books you can’t pull yourself away from.
The ideas that flood your search history.
The projects you dream of building but can’t seem to find – excuse me, make – the time to build.
If you want my systems for writing or building products, you can find 2 Hour Writer and Mental Monetization on my site.
You are the most profitable niche.
The creator economy – not to be confused with the influencer economy – is characterized by individuals who pursue their interests and document their knowledge.
Creators attract people to their vision, their story, their goals. AI is not curious. You must give it the context of a vision, story, or goal to work. Curiosity and generalism are your edge in attracting like-minded people who have problems you’ve solved in your life.
Business and value are problem solving. That’s how you make an income.
Nobody wants to follow a glorified search engine that talks about the same thing all the time.
Many creators tell me they are afraid to branch out into new interests. They have trouble seeing how that will work.
All you have to do is look at everyone you follow. Are they talking about one thing? Are they actually?
Or are they giving their opinions, beliefs, knowledge, and snippets of their life experience packaged up into impactful content?
“But Dan, what do I sell then?”
We will talk about that soon, don’t worry.
You don’t “find” a profitable niche. You create a profitable niche through persuasion. You write persuasive arguments for why your interests benefit others lives, you sell a product that aligns with that interest, you deliver both through technical skills like social media, email, and design.
If you understood the future-proof skills, and therefore human nature, you would understand that you can control the perception of your interests.
Interest is generated. Interest is programmed. You are interested in specific things because of how you were raised and the information you were exposed to.
You are interested in them for a reason. That means others can become interested in them with well-placed writing on social media. This has happened to you before. Go scroll the timeline and tell me something doesn’t persuade you to change your behavior.
You spend time, attention, and money on your interests. That means others will spend those same resources on you if you are valuable enough.
Free people don’t niche down.
But What About AI?
Let’s do a thought experiment.
You are an entrepreneur, not an employee.
You have multiple products you want to build in your lifetime, either before retirement or before death (because you’ve found that retirement is an illusion, work is a necessary counterbalance to rest, and if we never worked, we would be miserable. We just work on the wrong things).
In order to build those products, you need:
- A brand with a mission, vision, and philosophy for their ideal customer.
- Writing, speaking, ads, video, designs, and emails to attract and nurture customers.
- A persuasive marketing message that helps you stand out from the rest.
- A product that continues to iterate based on feedback.
- And more, repeated across all products you plan to build.
The common question people ask on social media right now goes like this:
“Will writers be replaced if AI can write a landing page or term paper?”
“Will coders be replaced if AI can build an app?”
And the answer is, yes, some of them, if they aren’t in control of the vision.
Computers are hyperspecialists. Humans are deep generalists. A great combo but not too effective on their own.
Computers will only replace those who deserve to be replaced.
AI can help you write the term paper, create the design, or edit the video faster, giving more power to the individual using the AI and making $10M one-person businesses possible, but there still has to be an individual orchestrating the path toward the vision for the future.
The fundamental misunderstanding with people worried about replacement is that there will always be problems to solve. You don’t know how to hunt. You are trapped in a repetitive string of known tasks assigned by someone else. It’s obvious why you are a prime candidate for replacement. You don’t grow or evolve. There’s no novelty, no iteration, and no building toward a vision that exposes you to solvable problems that can’t be found when you are at a standstill.
If you rely on someone to give you a problem to solve, you will be replaced.
You need a purpose, agency, and creativity.
AI can write a book, but it is only valuable if it is part of a larger purpose written for, marketed to, and distributed to an audience that perceives that book as valuable through persuasion.
Try to have AI write a bestselling book for you.
I’ll wait… for a while… because a bestseller is not just about the writing.
You need hooks, connections to companies, brands, and creators with distribution. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In the meantime, use AI to do your employed work faster so you have time to get out.
I already know what you’re going to ask.
What do I work on to get out?
Productize Yourself – The One-Person Business Model
If you’ve solved a problem in your life, you’re qualified to start a business.
Not just any business.
An education business.
As one person.
With zero startup costs.
With the knowledge you already have in your head (regardless of experience level).
Most people try to build a “startup” or some crazy idea they came up with after a night of drinking with their friends.
They think their idea will change the world, but they’re usually delusional because they don’t have any prior business experience.
If you’ve had the idea with zero experience (meaning your mind can only have so many good ideas… you haven’t built anything that leads to better ideas) then I can almost guarantee someone has already tried and failed with it.
There are special cases of course, but it’s better not to bank on luck here.
There’s a reason people are making millions solving fitness, productivity, career, money, relationships, and lifestyle problems:
Because every person has them.
Because AI can help with the dissemenation of tools and knowledge, but it can’t actually change the behavior of an individual. That’s what writing, information, systems, and products from a like-minded individual (creator) does through education.
Because they prevent the average individual from doing the only thing they want… enjoying life.
What better (and more profitable) problem is there to solve than one you experience every day?
0 To $1 Million Working 4 Hours A Day
If you’ve gotten results in fitness, sell a fitness program.
If you’ve gotten results with focus, sell a productivity course.
If you’ve gotten results with a skill, sell a tutorial.
If you’ve gotten results with psychology, sell a journaling prompt.
If you’ve gotten results with spirituality, sell a meditation.
The list goes on.
You can see people earning a living doing what they love every day, because that’s one of the few irreplaceable paths left. AI is solving the problems humans don’t want to solve, leaving us with one option: enjoy ourselves and find meaning by contributing to humanity with our unique gifts.
“Dan, everyone is selling an information product nowadays… it seems like a scam.”
Again with the lack of perspective. You don’t have the experience that allows you to make sense of the industry. You don’t understand that information and education are the foundation of everything. Learning is the foundation of the human experience, and most people aren’t having a very good experience, mostly because they don’t educate and improve themselves.
Rather than opening your mind and changing your life, you have an immediate programmed reaction, close your mind, and stay where you are. You don’t want to change, it’s obvious, but atleast be honest with yourself about it.
It also shows that you don’t understand Business 101: sell what’s already selling. Especially if you’re just starting out. Don’t chase blue oceans, there’s a reason money isn’t flowing there and you aren’t smarter than Mother Nature.
The school system is failing.
Education is the foundation of humanity.
Creators are the decentralized school system.
You complain so much about how “[insert any real-world problem here] should be taught in schools!”
And now that it is, at a fraction of the cost of formal education (if not free) on the internet, you call it a scam.
The only real scam is you not taking responsibility for your future with the plethora of information available to you outside of schools.
In my eyes, the one-person business is for those who value self-reliance, time freedom, and location freedom.
We use:
- Social media for building leverage, attracting like-minds, and building a name for ourselves (from nothing)
- No-code tools and software for digital real estate, product hosting, and email lists (that can’t be taken away like social media)
- Lifestyle design to create a work schedule that best suits the individual – usually 2-4 hours of work a day at the start, sometimes more if you get into the flow
It is an incredible time to be alive.
The internet has given everyone the ability to become an entrepreneur, choose their working hours, and earn an income based around their obsessions.
No two people are going to be obsessed with the same crevice of reality. And as you evolve and experience more, no two people are going to be obsessed with the crevice of reality that they gained awareness of (through action and doing).
There is no saturation… when done correctly.
3 Paths To Start A One-Person Business With Zero Experience
The biggest killer is that people don’t believe that business is for them, or that they don’t have enough experience.
First, stop thinking of business as anything more than an exchange of value. A business is a legal structure to build what you want. Our ancestors had businesses, they just didn’t need a legal structure to exchange value. You get something useful, I get something useful. If you want to truly make a dent in a world that revolves around money, drop your noble charity act. Acting selfless to feel good about yourself is just another version of selfishness.
If you’ve helped your friends or family with any topic that you’ve ever learned about in your life, you have enough experience.
Even more, how do you think you gain experience?
I’ll tell you one thing, you don’t gain experience without stepping into the arena. You gain experience by practicing your skills in a real-world setting.
If a freelancer can reach out to clients with zero experience (to gain experience) in exchange for money, why can’t you post something valuable online without expecting anything in return?
Make it make sense.
Your imposter syndrome is self-deception.
If it helps, don’t think of your writing as teaching. People will inherently be educated. Instead, think of it as taking notes in public, or sharing the ideas that impacted you the most. People with different goals and personalities find different ideas impactful, so, by just sharing your ideas, you are unique, because your mind is the most unique thing on this planet.
Here are the 2 paths you can take:
Path 1) Skill Based
This is the most common route that people tell you to take.
- Learn a skill
- Teach the skill
- Sell the skill
This is great, but as I’ve said, you don’t want to end up one-dimensional. You don’t want to be a slave to client work that can’t be scaled. You don’t want to pursue something else with absolutely nothing to show for it. It happens all the time. Freelancers earn an income through cold email and referrals, and when human nature kicks into play, and you want to change direction, you are starting from scratch all over again.
You can start as a freelancer, but you should be building a rather diverse audience to both land clients and evolve out of it when you have enough distribution.
Path 2) Development Based
This second route is more my speed.
It’s based around the 4 eternal markets.
The 4 eternal markets are where burning, profitable problems exist. They are where people have lofty goals that you can help them achieve.
- Health
- Wealth
- Relationships
- Happiness
AI cannot solve human problems. It can give us tools, but it can’t cure our lack of meaning, clarity, and other intrinsic traits that stems from disorder in consciousness. We are entering a purpose / human economy where we transcend our basic needs and have the mental energy to focus toward our growth needs – challenge, understanding, and meaning.
Path 1 only pays attention to wealth. Marketable skills to help people make more money. By default, you build a one-dimensional brand.
With path 2, you quite literally pursue your own goals in life (brand), solve your problems as you are pursuing those goals (content), and create a system to help others do the same (product).
That is how you be yourself, improve yourself, and profit off of yourself.
“But Dan, I’m just starting out!”
And?
It’s not like you have to write content on “How I made 1 million dollars in 3 days.” Less and less people care about that nowadays. They register it as a scam in their mind.
Branding and content are all about perspective. Or “positioning” in marketing. All you have to do is be honest.
What is going to perform better?
“How I made 1 million dollars in 3 days”
Or
“How I plan to make 1 million dollars in 5 years”
Which one would you click on? Which would you follow? Which would you relate the most with? Which would you believe and implement for yourself?
Self-awareness and behavior change are the great determinants of your brand’s success. Are you aware of how YOU would view your brand or content as an outsider? Are you putting out content that will actually change people’s lives?
Path 3) Both
The beautiful thing about a one-person business is that you are forced to become a generalist.
You need to learn all of the skills that make any business a success. You become future-proof by default.
- Design for your website, profile photo, and banner
- Persuasion and marketing for your bio, content, and web pages
- Sales for your products, services, and networking endeavors
- Operations by systemizing the entire process down to a few hours of work a day
And of course, writing, which is the foundational skill for any business success (that I teach in 2 Hour Writer). You use it for content, emails, newsletters, ads, video scripts, and almost everything… because at the end of the day you’re just typing at your computer to build this thing.
Why is this beautiful?
Because you talk about your interests and goals to build an audience. By building an audience, you have marketable skills you can charge other people for. You also have an audience of interested people ready to pay for a way to achieve the same goals you have. In other words, you can monetize your broad skillset or knowledge in more ways than one – that’s powerful.
Jose Rosado, as an example, made a full time income selling profile banners, then transitioned into web design and made multiple 6 figures. Then transitioned again into digital products. The one person business model favors your personal evolution. That’s what makes you unique from everyone else.
If you don’t see the opportunity, it’s because you aren’t in the arena. The opportunities can’t register in your awareness because you’re in tutorial hell and haven’t started, failed, and improved for 3-6 months.
The barrier of entry to anything good in life is half a year of failure.
The 4 Pillars Of A One-Person Business
For those that want to do what they want and help the people they can help the most – traditional branding, marketing, content, and offer creation will lead you in the wrong direction.
The personal brand is the most powerful storefront in our times. It builds a human connection.
The traditional business model will have you create a customer avatar based on someone with a profitable problem you can solve.
My way, The Experience Model, turns YOU into the customer avatar. Your experience and story turn you into the niche.
That way, you can solve your own problems, attract people that are on a similar path as you, and help them do the same.
Another bonus, you don’t have to spend countless hours doing market research to understand what will sell.
Does that make sense?
You pursue a goal, achieve it, talk about it, attract people with that same goal, and offer them a solution to reach it faster (a product or service). That’s how you make an income. You help the people you can help the most improve, but faster than you did.
Pillar 1) Branding
Your brand is who you are, what you do, and what you are doing.
What goal are you working towards?
Why are you working towards it? What is the desired outcome that you are trying to achieve? That is what people are going to follow you for.
The thing about branding is that it doesn’t have to be directly stated in many places. Maybe on your website where you can explain your brand message, but aside from that – people will pick up what your brand message is through your content.
Pillar 2) Content
Beginners need to understand this:
Your brand (especially on social media) is formed through 1-3 months of content.
Content compounds. And I don’t mean in terms of views or reach. I mean the message compounds in people’s minds until your entire message clicks.
People aren’t going to understand you from one tweet, video, or article alone.
You need TIME in the game if you want to have a shred of authority.
Now, what do you write about?
You write about the interests, skills, and topics that you plan to master. The ones that will help you achieve your goals in a way that is unique to you.
Remember the tweet from above? The one about not finding a problem, but setting a goal?
All content (and human attention / behavior in general) revolves around problems. Problems are the starting point of your content, but you and your followers must be working to similar goals for those problems to be relevant.
Everyone can have the same goal of “living the good life,” but how are YOU going to make that a reality?
For me, it is by studying the human mind, philosophy, and creative work.
For another person, it could be web design, mindset, and fitness.
And another, it could be automation, marketing, and productivity.
If you put 5 people at the bottom of a mountain and asked how they would get to the top, they would all draw a different path.
The unique combination of these topics IS your niche.
They are broad because we want to build a large, leverageable, and flexible audience – rather than putting ourselves in a box and be limited in what we talk about.
If I ever wanted to pivot into fitness, turn my training regimen (that I’ve experimented with for years) into a course, and sell it for an income, I could. I would market it to my audience (who has similar goals and interests as me) in a way that would appeal most to them.
But HOW do you write about these topics?
In Digital Economics, I teach about the Domain Of Mastery.
You choose 3 broad topics that you can then break down into principles, mentors for inspiration, and sub topics.
Then, you can research books, podcasts, articles, and social posts to see how others are talking about those topics.
This is more than just business. This is how you get paid for improving yourself, learning how to think, and creating a meaningful life.
Understand that this is just a starting point to get you moving forward. You will pivot when you become aware of something you truly want to do (because you weren’t aware of it at the level you were at before).
At the beginning, your job is to emulate what works.
You need to build authority in the topics you talk about by writing beginner-level content that has guaranteed growth time and time again.
Go look at your favorite YouTuber.
Did they grow their audience at the start with cool little vlogs?
Or did they make it their full-time job to educate their audience and teach them about new skills and interests?
Pillar 3) Offer
No, you don’t have to wait to start monetizing. I’m tired of hearing that sh*t. Gatekeeper mindset.
You NEED something to iterate on. You need something to build, improve, and make more valuable.
An offer is your product or service. It’s what people receive in exchange for their money.
Your first offer WILL suck. There’s no escaping it. You should get that first crappy iteration out immediately.
You can’t improve something that doesn’t exist.
You need to learn what it’s like to sell. You need a real-world vessel to apply all of your marketing and sales learnings to.
“Okay Dan, but what do I sell?”
Let me introduce you to the Minimum Viable Offer.
The MVO is either a:
- Single-skill freelance service that you can sell for $500-$1000
- Single interest/skill consulting, coaching, or tutorial service where you can sell a pack of 4 calls for $500-$1000
I would almost always recommend option 2 if you are joining the creator economy. I would not start off with time-sucking client work that makes you feel like you don’t have time to create content.
(And, if you’re anything like me, you like to learn and experiment for yourself. Most, not all, creators do. I don’t like having work done for me).
Health, productivity, mindset, and business consulting are a given.
But, you can still do this if you want to sell a skill as opposed to an interest. You would simply frame it as “tutoring.”
You can tutor or mentor people on how to build websites.
You can tutor or mentor people on how to write.
You can tutor or mentor people on how to start email marketing.
What’s the beauty in starting with an MVO, especially if it is a pack of 2-4 consulting calls?
1) You can start monetizing immediately.
No need for a landing page if you understand the sales process. The ability to DM someone, a questionnaire software, and a calendar booking link is all you need. (And a way to send invoices of course).
You get on the calls, help people with their problems, and dedicate yourself to researching effective solutions for those problems. You don’t need all of the answers at the start, you just need more time than the other person has. They don’t have the time to solve the problem themselves. That’s why they pay for your service anyway, speed, convenience, and accountability.
2) You can build out a scalable product based on what gets results.
To increase the value of your MVO, you will be outlining a curriculum of sorts to help organize the structure of calls. You should also create things like worksheets and Notion dashboards to help your clients get more results.
These can be turned into a product that you can sell as your audience grows. The product buyers can lead into your consulting and become clients.
That means, less time spent on prospecting and more free time if you choose to decrease how many clients you take on (your prices will skyrocket too, of course.)
Pillar 4) Marketing
Let’s imagine you created your MVO.
You want to sell programming tutoring, teaching people how to code.
Now, you need to build authority and trust in order to sell that service.
So, you write a weekly newsletter on a beginner-level programming topic (so that it can reach more people, 90% of the market are beginners).
You network with others in the programming space to get eyes on your content with their audience.
If you promote your service at the bottom of a thread and get 100,000+ impressions (on the LOW end) on your thread, you’re almost guaranteed to land your first client.
Boom, with the right strategy and not listening to the limiting beliefs in your head, you just made a third of the average salary. If you do this on a weekly basis, within 3 months you can outearn most salaries.
Unlike freelancers, you are building an audience along the way as well. Your content and promotions are not going to waste. You have future potential to sell new things as you grow.
The point being, you need to promote yourself on a consistent basis.
If you don’t promote your offer, you aren’t going to make money.
Simple as that.
0 To $1 Million Working 4 Hours A Day
The path to $1 million as 1 person working 4 hours or less:
- Do not work more than 4 hours
- Start with client work
- Get results, make money
- Build your audience
- Productize your work
Repeat steps 3-5 until you reach $1 million.
Then, don’t stop.
Koe’s Law: creative work evolves to earn more in the time allotted for its completion. This demands creativity, growth, and skill acquisition to solve problems that prevent this evolution.
We’ve all heard of Parkinson’s Law.
That work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
But that’s only the first layer. Your work expands, but your income doesn’t.
The 4-hour workday has been my philosophy for quite some time.
What people don’t realize is that with technology you can work that same amount of time while making as much money as you want.
The problem is that people get trapped in business ideologies.
They start as a freelancer, that’s all they know, they bias freelancing above other models, and complain when they can’t escape the feast or famine cycle with just enough income to survive.
Because they identify as a freelancer, their mind can’t open beyond that to perceive opportunities that allow them to better leverage their skill set.
They left the 9-5 to pursue freedom and created a new 9-5 for themselves.
Let’s break down how Koe’s Law works in practical steps to evolve from $100K per year to $100K per month.
Stage 1) Start With Client Work
As one person without an audience, client work is the best option.
You can use manual client acquisition strategies and charge between $1000 and $10,000+ per client.
You only need 2-3 clients to replace your income.
In my eyes, it’s best to skip the freelancer stage and go straight to coaching, consulting, or tutoring as illustrated in the last section.
Your time is allocated as such in a 4-hour time frame:
- 1 hour per day prospecting for new clients
- 3-5 hours per week on sales calls
- 2-4 hours per week on client calls
- 1 hour per day writing content for audience and clients
- The rest is filled with pour-over from any of these
The key is to hold the intention of evolution in your mind so you don’t get trapped in this stage.
Stage 2) Build An Audience & Evolve One Layer
As a client business, you can only take on so many clients with 4 hours of work.
And if you want to stay as one person, you need to identify the route that allows you to maintain that work time without hiring employees.
I’ve discovered this route for you, so you don’t have to go through the years of trial and error.
- Build an audience with writing – don’t waste time on video editing and graphics yet. Use writing on social media and a newsletter to build an audience. If you need an example of this, just look at my Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.
- Use a new client model – create a program, tutorials, or curriculum and take on more clients in a group coaching setting. This brings your client work down to 1-2 hours a week.
- Evolve your fulfillment – decrease pricing a bit, remove time-suckers like 1 on 1 calls, introduce a group chat or community, and attempt to restructure how you deliver to your clients without removing any value.
Now, thanks to Koe’s Law, you’ve increased your earning potential form $100K per year to $300-$500K while working the same 4 hours.
Stage 3) Productize With Your Audience Growth
Distribution = freedom.
An audience = distribution.
You can turn your client work into a digital product at any time for extra income (and potentially more clients that needed to learn more before hiring you), but that won’t be your main source of income at first.
In this third stage, you:
- Create a cohort-based program – you charge less than before but take on more customers. Thanks to your larger audience, you earn more than a group client model while working the same amount of time.
- Build a standalone digital product – use your teachings and results from your client work to build a successful product. You build it once and it sells while you sleep, adding to your income.
- Leave client work if you want – you may see a dip in income at the start, but that newly allotted time is used to diversify platforms, increase revenue, and improve audience growth speed.
Again, thanks to Koe’s Law, you’ve increased your earning potential from $300K per year to $1 million+ per year.
This is where rapid iteration comes into play. You must detach from manual labor and solely bank on your creative ability.
Your time is allocated to:
- 1-2 hours per week fulfilling your cohort program
- 2 hours per day writing content to fuel growth
- 1-2 hours a day building projects that take you even further
You can build new products, branch out of the one-person business, or just enjoy life for a bit until early retirement bores you enough to start meaningful building again.
You’ve build so much leverage and distribution that you can sell whatever you want.
Hire a team to build software.
Work with a product developer to launch a physical product.
Write a book to solidify your legacy in the space.
Then do it all over again because money is a tool to build what you want but doesn’t exist. Ignore anyone that tells you you don’t need to make more. Especially if the end result is benefiting the evolution of society.
– Dan
