You are chasing status.
It is an immutable principle in human nature that has persisted since the dawn of time.
To think that you aren’t chasing status as a noble pursuit is still a status game. The desire to kill the ego is still a desire of the ego. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It means it’s natural, and once you accept that you begin to be rewarded for it.
And whether you like it or not, people judge you based on your relative status. To not accept this is to accept the other option: a life of being treated unfairly while having little impact on the world.
You have a status in your social circle.
You have a status in your job or career.
You have a status in your religious organization.
People assign you a status when they first see you. This is out of your control, but you can position yourself to increase the likelihood of being perceived high status.
People determine whether they want to engage and offer you opportunities based on that status.
People determine whether they want to hire you, pay you, or help you based on that status.
Even if it was unintentional – which I doubt it was based on their high level of awareness – leaders that we glorify like Jesus Christ, Eckhart Tolle, Naval Ravikant, Alan Watts, Jordan Peterson, Ken Wilber, and most others who come to mind were and are playing a status game.
How else would they gain such mass attention, attract a hierarchy of followers, and change the direction of evolution for the better? I don’t want to hear your edge cases of high-status people who miss the crucial piece of inner work and personal development to balance out the chaos of status.
In other words, if you want to contribute to humanity on a large enough scale, status is important.
If it does not involve status, it is doomed to die off.
Status is wired into our survival as a species, and once that becomes conscious, you can impact the world and minimize the negative effects of your pursuit.
If it remains unconscious, you will manipulate and cheat without knowing it.
You can show me images of the “consciousness scale” all day long and persuade me about the dissolution of self, but that scale is still a hierarchy of varying status and a static representation of the complexity of blending states of consciousness, and you are still persuading me that something is better than something else.
Status is not a static and evil construct. There are higher and lower levels. But nobody starts at the top.
The Value Equation: How To Make Anything Valuable
The path of the problem solver, or value creator, is how you escape the world of replaceability. Fall in love with the challenge that problems present, from superficial to metaphysical, and your ideal future will create itself. – The Art of Focus
Looks come before depth.
A nice car can have a billion-dollar founder approach you and ask what you do, opening a world of opportunity.
A nice body can get you in the door with a partner who values health, strength, and discipline.
People love to close their mind to material or superficial pursuits but don’t realize that those are the only starting points. You don’t start digging from the core. You dig from the surface. Material is the barrier of the immaterial.
Becoming valuable, or increasing the impact of both looks and depth, is how you play the game of life.
Don’t hate the game. Don’t hate the player. Master them both.
Status, as far as I’m concerned, is your experience level in the game of life.
The Macronutrients Of Value – Perspective
When you understand how to create value, you can:
- Change your life
- Help others change their lives
- Write, speak, and think with clarity
- Create content, landing pages, or marketing that sells
- Navigate relationships in a mutually beneficial manner
- Understand your emotions and move past them
The framework I’m about to teach you is how you create solutions to problems.
It is the foundation of human behavior, business, and communication.
Value is truth.
Value is story.
Value is progress.
Value is transformation.
Value is reversing entropy.
Value is a signal of meaning in your psyche.
Our mind has little ideas floating around inside of it that are waiting to be connected.
When they connect, you feel the clarity. It all makes sense.
Whenever you are failing to achieve a result like making more money, improving your health, or motivating yourself to act on a better future – it’s because you are missing one of these pieces that make it all click:
- Problem – A limitation or challenge that creates pain when unsolved.
- Goal – An impactful end result that allows the recipient to evolve beyond the problem.
- Process – A creative system that breeds knowledge, skill, and awareness to bridge the gap between problem and solution.
If you want to improve your life, you must identify a problem, direct your mind toward a goal, and experiment with solutions until you create a path to achieve the goal.
If you want to make money, you must help others identify a problem, direct their attention toward a goal, and give them the clarity to act on a better future.
If you want to better a relationship, you must both realize the problem, share a goal in your head, and both put effort into solving the problem.
A problem, goal, and process provide the structure for anything you do from writing to marketing to behaving to building a product to telling a story.
If you’ve read The Art Of Focus, you’ve seen this before as the “Purpose, Path, Priority” chapter.
Now, if you want to make this more impactful, utilize the micronutrients of value.
The Micronutrients Of Value – Perception
Value boils down to perspective and perception.
If people are not aware of the problem, believe the goal is possible, or have the clarity to achieve it – they will not be able to perceive the importance of the value you have to offer.
Use these as a way to shape the perception of your readers:
- Concept – a way of packaging up and naming your value in a way that captures attention and sticks in people’s heads.
- Proof – giving people the belief it’s possible through personal or peer results.
- Risk reversal – reducing the perceived uncertainty, friction, and difficulty of getting results.
- Pain points – amplifying the problem to illustrate how the problem is impacting their life beyond the surface.
- Benefits – increasing the desire to reach the solution, making motivation sustainable if these are repeated.
- Awareness – The amount of people who suffer from the problem, can benefit from the solution, and are ready to receive the clarity to act.
If I want to sell a new product to earn a creative income, here’s how I would map it out.
- Problem – I hate working long hours.
- Goal – Work for 4 hours a day.
- Process – Start a business, learn the required skills, and focus on high-leverage tasks (you can and should get detailed with this).
This helps me frame the content I write to help others adopt the same perspective.
All of these can be used as individual social posts, outlines for a newsletter or video script, and anything else that requires you to illustrate your value.
Concept
Example: The 4 Hour Workday.
When you name a concept, like “The Eisenhower Matrix” or “1% Better Every Day,” you increase your likelihood of making people remember you.
I use concepts like the One Person Business or The Value Equation (for this letter) to bring a novel perspective to a boring topic that will change people’s lives.
This works well for headlines, video titles, or hooks to catch attention.
Proof
Example: I’ve helped John Smith prioritize tasks to work less and increase revenue.
In my newsletters, I often start with a problem based on my personal experience and how I overcame it. This gives people the belief and relatability to do it as well.
Use whatever you can – statistics, client stories, or personal experience – to show what’s possible.
Risk reversal
Example: You only need 10 minutes each day to start.
People need clarity more than they need motivation. How can you reduce the perceived risk and friction to make a change?
In marketing, people use money back guarantees.
In writing, I attempt to make things so stupidly clear they don’t have an excuse to remain mediocre.
I teach you how to write to build an audience (to distribute your value for profit) in 2 Hour Writer.
Pain points
Example: You don’t have time for family. You don’t have time to pursue other goals. You don’t have meaningful work to focus on.
On my landing pages, I start with a bullet list of pain points to make people realize the impact of their problem. This opens a curiosity loop and makes their mind desire a solution.
Remember that the examples I give are one of many. All of these are to be treated as creative firepower for your creations.
Benefits
Example: Choose when you work. Choose what you work on. Choose who you work with.
Here’s an example social post I could write using benefits. This is what most people should start writing to establish authority in their topic of choice:
You started a business because you want to:
- Choose when you work
- Choose what you work on
- Choose who you work with
Don’t forget: entrepeneurship isn’t about working long hours.
It’s about taking control of your time, money, and enjoyment.
(I’m scheduling this as a post right now, go to my profile to see if it did well. Notice how there is an implied problem, goal, and process that people will learn if they follow me.)
That can be a part of a sales page, newsletter, or used as a social post to prime readers for your value.
Awareness
There are 5 levels of awareness:
- Level 1: Unaware of the problem.
- Level 2: Problem aware.
- Level 3: Solution aware.
- Level 4: Product aware.
- Level 5: Most aware.
Most people will fall between levels 1-4.
Your job is to speak to each level at various stages of your bio, content, website, emails, DMs, calls, and the rest until they are aware that your product (or value) is the one they need to implement.
If someone is in level 2 (problem aware), here’s a post I would write as an example for The 4 Hour Workday concept:
If you hate working long hours:
- Add to your skill set
- Finally start a business
- Work on it for 1 hour each day
- Fire your boss from your life
- Work whenever you want
You will never work less if you don’t create your own way of doing so.
Notice how I used a “process” to give them a solution to the problem.
Use the value equation to fill holes in your mind, business, and life.
If you want personalized guidance to become a synthesizer (or value creator) as a career for 12-16 weeks, apply for Kortex University.
The Lifestyle Of The 1%
There is one lifestyle that all high-value individuals have.
They reverse entropy on a daily basis.
They pursue goals on a daily basis.
They solve problems on a daily basis.
They hypothesize, test, and create solutions to distribute to others on a daily basis.
This lifestyle demands constant learning, building, and distributing of value.
Value is reversing entropy.
Entropy is the decline into chaos.
Entropy is reversed by creating systems to achieve goals by solving problems. That’s the Value Equation.
There is one career that will never go out of style: earning in accordance with nature. That is to say, reversing entropy by solving an endless series of problems, turning the solutions into potential profit, and distributing the value you create to others.
No matter where the economy goes, no matter how many jobs AGI replaces, no matter how worried you are… because that worry is just a problem that others also suffer from, you can solve for all parties, and profit handsomely from with education and meaning content and products.
Nobody is going to give you the time, you must take it.
Start with 1 hour every morning before the distractions wake up.
Solve a problem in your life that births a profitable solution.
Build an audience by distributing your value with writing and content.
Turn your solution into a product and iterate until you make as much as you want.
Don’t rely on a paycheck for your survival.
Transcend your survival through entrepreneurship and remove the earning limit from your life.
And lastly, enjoy the rest of your week.
Dan
