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 close-to-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 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?
Solve Your Own Problems & Sell The Solution
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.
The list goes on.
“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.
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!”
Now that it is, at a fraction of the cost of formal education (if not free) on the internet, and can only be built out by a vast number of individuals who solve their own problems with direct experience… you call it a scam.
The only scam is you not taking responsibility for your future with the plethora of information available to you outside of schools.
On Experience & Imposter Syndrome:
People learn best from those who are similar to them.
I used to think fat personal trainers were a silly concept, but I don’t think the average individual wants to be trained by a bodybuilder. They’d be insecure the whole time and can’t resonate with their identity.
In short: students will get better results by learning from someone a few steps ahead of them.
It doesn’t matter if you aren’t a productivity guru with a billion-dollar company.
It does matter if you can focus for 2 hours and help someone who can only focus for 15 minutes.
Imposter syndrome is solved with honesty.
Your marketing strategy should be solely based around where you are in your journey and exactly what you help others with.
The industry has enough false and attention-grabbing promises.
In a market of extremes, if you want to be outstanding, all you have to do is be average.
Education Businesses Are The Future Of Schooling
We’re going to see 10 person billion dollar companies pretty soon. In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends, there’s this betting pool for the first year where there’s a 1 person billion dollar company. Which would have been unimaginable without AI. – Sam Altman
You don’t need statistics to observe reality.
The main pattern of reality is division and reunion.
Centralization and decentralization.
In The Art Of Focus, I illustrate the uncommon sense of the rain cycle. We all know it, but we often see it as a superficial process of life rather than an indicator of life itself.
The ocean evaporates into divided droplets, reunifies in the clouds, divides into rain, and rain continues dividing and reuniting in plant life, our homes, and more.
This happens in all dimensions and scales of reality.
In my prediction, backed by 4.5 billion years of evolution, the centralized school and economy are decentralizing thanks to the emergence of new technology.
The internet, code, and now AI have allowed for the creator economy.
Comprised of one-person businesses educating, entertaining, and inspiring the masses (while making thousands to millions a year doing so).
The conventional education and employment path doesn’t make sense anymore.
Humanity needs education, but not some idealized and regimented form that antagonizes the wiring of our psyche and makes us hate learning – the one thing that fuels all areas of your life.
From corporation to individual (yes, public schools are corporations) reality is decentralizing. Individuals who realize this can hop on one of the most profitable shifts in history.
The Massive Evolutionary Problem: Labor Work
The objective of work is usually to sustain our lives biologically, an objective we share with other animals. But the objective of leisure can and should be to sustain other aspects of our lives which make us uniquely human: our souls, our minds, our personal and civic relationships. Leisure is therefore wasted if we do not use it purposively. – Aristotle
Work is a financial necessity.
Finances are a necessity for survival.
Money is not to be demonized, but earned and used as a spiritual energy.
Work and rest should not be seen as distinct opposites but complementary.
Creative work is the future in a tech-enhanced society.
Evolution is problem-solving to reverse entropy, and humans have been solving problems that make their life miserable since the dawn of time.
We want to avoid suffering, so we’ve built technology that allows us to do what nature calls us to do: pursue personal development, expand our sense of self, and do meaningful work that allows others to do the same.
“We need more plumbers and construction workers!”
I agree, but at some point, maybe in our lifetime, those jobs will not exist.
Should everyone bank on creative work as the only path to meaningful work that doesn’t have an income cap? No. But smart people should.
With the advancements in robotics, and factories like Tesla being over 75% automated, I don’t see why robots can’t completely solve the problem that has plagued humanity for a long time. It also doesn’t seem far off that we will have personal robots doing our laundry, cleaning our houses, and automating labor-intensive tasks so we can focus on creative work and self-actualization.
Yes, I’m sure some pleasure seekers will end up in VR headsets with Coca Cola mainlined into their bloodstream, but wise people who flow with nature would never submit to that life. Success is reserved for the creative.
Your psyche craves creativity. It feels good to create. By all measures, creating something of your own lights your brain on fire. That is enough of a sign that humans are meant to do this.
My proposed way of life is using the internet as a creative extension of yourself:
- Learn skills that can’t be taught in schools
- Solve your own problems for personal evolution
- Get results that can’t be achieved in employment
- Put your personality on the internet to attract people like you
- Help them solve their problems for collective evolution
- Earn a meaningful independent income doing so
This is not another dogmatic business model, this is a way of life.
To become a vessel of creativity that solves problems (or removes limitations) in your own life and others. Most people still see the internet as a shallow place to numb your mind when it is the digital world is the next stage of consciousness.
I’ve written about this extensively in the past and break “how to do it” down in 2-Hour Writer and, if you have a skill set and value to provide – we help you even more over 16 weeks in Kortex University.
In the context of this letter, you need to know how you can turn your skills and interests into an education business:
- Sell a tutorial (tutoring) – Sell a beginner-level tutorial of a specific skill, practice, or interest. Web design, building cars, Photoshop, guitar.
- Sell a program (coaching) – Sell an action plan or program that people can adopt as a daily routine. Fitness, productivity, self-improvement, etc.
- Sell a system (consulting or freelancing) – Sell a system that people can implement into their work or business. Lead generation, content creation, etc.
Observe the people who are doing what you want to do.
Reverse engineer how they are doing it. Buy their courses. Dissect their funnel. Study their content. Educate yourself along the way so you can understand what they are actually doing.
Koe’s Law – Work Evolves To Earn More In Less Time
Koe’s Law: 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. Because education and teaching are pillars of the good life, it makes sense to integrate them in your work.
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 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 from $100K per year to $300-$500K while working the same 4 hours.
Stage 3) Productize With Your Audience Growth
Distribution = freedom.
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, restructure time-consuming aspects of your work, and 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 built 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 who tells you you don’t need to make more.
Money is energy, and we will discuss that more in the next letter.
– Dan
