Self-reliance is a value of mine.
I would argue that it is the driving force behind what I do.
When people would say things like:
“It’s time to scale your business! You need to be hiring! Why aren’t you running ads?“
I doubled down on building digital assets, leverage, and products that required less time from me.
“You have to keep doing client work. High ticket is where it’s at bro!”
I stopped freelancing after transitioning to consulting. I turned my consulting into a hybrid program. That hybrid program is now a cohort.
Each iteration increasing the value delivered while decreasing my time invested so I can focus on building more leverage (like writing my book and growing on multiple platforms – which is NOT what you should be focusing on as a beginner).
“You need to be going hard on TikToks and reels! The future is headed that way.”
So I doubled down on long-form newsletters, podcasts, and YouTube videos.
Lesson: if you want to “do what you love,” don’t fall for the short-form content trap. Focus on creating depth and authority. That is what people will pay for.
(This is only for business btw. I’m even more stubborn in my personal life).
The greatest thing I did for myself was to ignore everyone’s advice. I didn’t care about hiring someone to fix a part of my business, I wanted to figure it out myself.
Stubborn? Yes.
Time intensive? Yes.
(Well, sorta, it took about 3 years to get to where I am now after making my first dollar with creative work. That’s still less time than a 4-year degree. The unpredictability is what scares people off.)
Did I learn more than any other solopreneur out there and enjoy every second of it? Yes.
I kept to my vision for the future (as I always encourage you to do):
- 3-4 hours of fulfilling work a day until the day I die
- The flexibility to build whatever I want and get paid for doing so
- Having more than enough money to live worry-free. Building a billion-dollar company doesn’t appeal to me.
- Having more than enough time to pursue the important things in life like spirituality, self-development, and nurturing real-life relationships
- Not relying on anybody (be it employees or people in my network) for my personal and professional growth
These may not be possible at the start, of course, but that’s the point. It’s a vision that must be actualized over 5-10 years. You have to climb the rungs of the one-person business ladder.
That’s what we are here to talk about.
Business As An Extension Of The Self
There is one thing that humans can do better than any other being:
1) Have an idea
2) Make it real
Through consciousness, attention, and focus we have been given the power to build, create, and make.
Does this not blow your mind?
We can have a vision, gather resources, and build layer by layer the world we inhabit. Both immaterial and material:
Language, buildings, technology, products, services, marketing campaigns, culture, society, school systems, science, philosophy, etc.
It seems that our role on this Earth is to solve local problems. Knowing that problems are systemic, not personal, and that solving local problems leads to solving global, and even cosmic, problems.
Anyone can do this.
The problem?
Limiting beliefs, programmed minds, and a lack of self-belief hold most people back.
Everyone was an entrepreneur before the industrial revolution. We would hunt for the resources necessary to sustain our life.
With many basic needs covered from the start along with the creation of the dollar bill, things have changed.
We have the psyche of our ancestors trapped in a modern environment. Like a monkey in a cubicle that mentally decomposes with time due to a lack of intrinsic motivation (and the neurotransmitters involved in said motivation).
Why is this happening?
Cultural and societal conditioning. We’ve been conditioned to rely on everything except for ourselves.
We were graded on performance and adherence in school. We obeyed our parents and more than likely adopted their belief system without question. Even those who did question still have some residual unconsciousness that impacts the progress they could be making.
What is the answer?
Self-reliance on all fronts.
Sovereignty, personal responsibility, self-awareness, self-confidence, self-education, self-interest, and a set of values, goals, and priorities that you can work towards, learn from, and pass down your lessons (enough so that you can make an income from it).
This is what a one-person creator business is built from.
Your brand (how your business is displayed) is created from your vision in goals. What are you building? What are you leading people towards?
Your content (how you attract people to your brand) is created from the interests and skills you are refining to actualize your vision and goals. Your purpose is to educate, entertain, and inspire along your self-development journey. Leaders attract followers.
Your product (how you get paid through value) is created from your map of reality. That is, a process, system, or tool that people can use to solve their problems faster. The ones that you were stubborn about solving that led to having a unique perspective and solution.
The most profitable niche is you.
As a divine creator, your job is to make forward progress, expose yourself to new ideas, and use those ideas to further the progress of humanity.
By passing down tools that will accelerate the learning of your followers, the world will continue to evolve as it should.
I have an inclination to believe that social media was created for this reason. The problem of global communication was solved, potentially for money, but with an impact that nobody could have imagined… that is, an idea was had and made real, opening up room in the realm of infinite possibility for something to be built on top.
Are you going to do your part?
The Entrepreneurial Method (Get it? Like, the Scientific Method?)
Most people have a goldmine of information, skill, and experience at their fingertips.
The only people that don’t are the one’s that haven’t improved any aspect of their life (by their own doing).
Everyone is an entrepreneur, some choose to display their value in public.
For those that are still with me, here is a 5 part cycle for turning yourself into a business:
1) Find A Problem
All stories, marketing, and products revolve around solving a problem.
“There was a cold spot on the side of the bed.”
If that was the start of a story, it implies a problem. It opens a curiosity loop that makes people want to discover more.
Problems are the root of human behavior, real or not. They are what lead to forward progress. Creativity is about creating the best solution, or providing the most clarity.
Don’t like your situation? In comes dopamine, making you feel good about the desire you have for fancy cars and mansions.
Don’t like how you look? Want to make more money?
Are you not curious on what life would be like if those were solved?
Whatever the problem may be, don’t deny or label it. Move into it.
Move in a forward direction towards those desires. That is the only way you will discover if you actually want them.
Of course, you will find out that’s not what you want, but the only other option is to stand still.
Yes, you can and should enjoy the present moment, it’s there when you need it. But suppressing your desires will not lead to anything good, or anything at all.
You must dissolve that karma to move closer toward revealing your true purpose.
2) Experiment With Different Solutions
The worst way to solve a problem is to study one perspective and treat it as dogma.
Like with business.
If you start researching how to fix your money problem and only choose to learn from 1 person that is teaching 1 business model, you are shooting yourself in the foot.
Your job is to pull from multiple perspectives and let the truth accumulate in the middle.
From that crossover of perspectives, you will notice patterns.
Those patterns are what you need to pay attention to. They are the lever-moving fundamentals that get results. They are also where creativity comes into play, like connecting the dots, making a new discovery, and having a solution that you actually remember.
Let’s say you study 3 different perspectives (business models) for solving the problem of money:
- Freelance ghostwriting
- Starting an eCommerce brand
- Starting a marketing agency
You will notice these patterns:
- You need a compelling brand to attract the right people
- You need valuable content that establishes authority and gets shared
- You need an offer that people actually want (and that gets the results you say it will)
- If you aren’t building an audience with content, you need a strategy for acquiring customers (like ads, SEO, sponsored posts, etc)
- You need to understand human behavior and apply it to everything we listed above
From there, you can approach a business model that suits you best. Your focus will be on the fundamentals, and you will grow faster than those drowning in tactics.
3) Document How You Solved It
If I could go back in time, the one thing I would change is to start building an audience earlier than I did. It’s difficult for people to take this advice seriously because all they see is a huge gap.
People see that I have hundreds of thousands of followers and leave it at that (innacurate perception can hurt your decision making).
What they don’t see is that I’m a regular ass dude.
- I identified a money problem in my life
- I was a young, broke college student with less than $0 to my name
- I persisted with freelancing to solve that problem
- I saw results and wrote about it online
- I pivoted my brand in a way that reduced my time spent on client work
- I ignored common business advice, questioned how people told me to do things, and created profitable offers by following step #2
- I continued playing the audience growth game and now people perceive me as some sort of celebrity
All I’m trying to tell you is that you have to step into the arena. That alone will open a new world for you. After that, it’s a matter of staying in the arena.
Side note: Someone asked me recently if they should start growing an audience. They asked how long it would take and if it was worth it. My friend, you tell me. Does it matter how long it takes if this is something you are going to be doing (and enjoying) for the rest of your life anyway?
Even if you lack experience. You don’t have to write about “making 6 figures as a freelancer” if you don’t have those results. You can, however, educate people on the skill you are freelancing with and talk about what you’ve learned growing a freelancing business.
People learn the best when it is from someone that is 1 step ahead of them, not 10. (We all know how trying to skip 9 steps goes, get rich quick scheme alert!)
Not only does this build authority and make it 10x easier to land clients, but you are building a name for your authentic self.
4) Distill Into A Replicable Process
The best thing I did for myself in business was to be stubborn and self-reliant.
I would purchase courses and coaching for strategies, but use them as guides, not law. No teaching is absolutely true, and most systems can be made better.
But, I would never hire someone to do the work for me. I wanted to create my own writing, website, landing page, product, email marketing, promotions, and the rest.
If you hire someone to do it for you, you miss out on real-world experience that can be leveraged into something monetizable.
Again, this is why I always emphasize learning by doing, or stepping into the arena and actually building something.
Once you have the know-how (through direct experience) and results, you can self-reflect and teach others how to do it faster.
This is when free consulting, content, and help comes into play. You have to test that process on people and see if it gets them results.
Then you ask for testimonials, refine your process, start charging more, repeat, and productize once you have traffic courses built up (through content, audience growth, and building an email list)
Personal growth = business growth but only when you post online.
5) Give It To Others That Want To Be Helped
What is the meaning of life?
From the patterns I’ve seen from studying multiple perspectives while trying to solve this problem (see what I did there?), it comes down to 2 things:
1) Raising your consciousness
What, exactly, does that mean?
It means that you are actively exploring reality, the unknown. You are solving your own problems (that distort reality), making forward progress, and becoming directly conscious of the lessons, insights, and patterns that reality presents.
You are making the unknown, known. The unconscious, conscious. The unpredictable, predictable. The non-sensical, sensical.
You fulfill your basic survival needs (see: Maslows Hierarchy Of Needs) so you can help the world from a non-needy state. Authenticity.
Then, you can move on to step 2.
2) Raising the collective consciousness
In essence, you pass down your map of reality so others can navigate it faster.
This is a feature of raising your own consciousness, as you will be contributing less and less to the spread of falsehood, while impacting those that interact with you on a frequent basis.
When it comes to business, and with the internet being a thing, you can accelerate this “raising of the collective consciousness” by writing about your experiences online.
You are helping people solve their money, relationship, health, and happiness problems with free content and paid products.
Content is pieces of the map.
Products are the map itself.
People pay for aggregation, convenience, and speed. (If you don’t believe this, I know that you haven’t started your business yet).
The thing is, you can only help people that want to be helped.
If someone is not at the experience level where the problem you are solving registers in their awareness, your teaching won’t make sense to them.
And with that, you have to accept that people hate what they don’t understand. Queue the negative comments from the sidelines!
I will end with this:
“The lips of wisdom are closed except to the ears of understanding.”
The Kybalion
Enjoy your Saturday.
Dan Koe
What Happened This Week
A new YouTube video went out called If You Are Uncertain About Your Future, This Is For You.
A podcast dropped on how your mind is a supercomputer running the game of life (with practical insights on how to play the game well). I also have 2 more podcasts recorded and ready to let loose 🙂
Inside Modern Mastery, I posted How To Network, Grow, And Get Eyes On Your Content (Without Paying For Shares). This strategy will help you grow as a beginner if you have $0 to invest.
If you are ready for more advanced help, check out my free + paid products below.
