Let’s get one thing straight.
Most people are anxious about the future.
Most people are concerned about the security of their job.
With AI and AGI in the news everyday I feel it's pretty normal for people to be concerned about these things.
Your brain is finally waking up to the reality of the times.
Decades ago when you could rely on your boss to generate attention, using the marketing department to sell products and ensure you get a paycheck.
The landscape has changed.
Today, your role is being assigned to an Ai because your boss knows Ai can perform your role 10x faster than you.
Companies are downsizing to reduce overhead cost.
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.
In 2019, I hit a breaking point.
I was fed up with my progress in life. Each day felt like I was barely moving forward, and it became clear: if anything was going to change, it had to start with me.
I saw that there was an opportunity on the internet but I really couldn't figure out how to tap into it. I'd seen a few people started doing well on Facebook back in 2019. They were not depending on platform monetization but were leveraging their popularity to sell their products and promote their business.
I knew that if I could get a lot of people to know about me, I could sell something to those people who follow me on Facebook.
So I decided to sneakers. Around that time I'd quit my job to start Skillembassy so the only option I had was to start something from scratch.
I was very hopeful it would be successful, but let me pause that story here for another letter.
Even though at that time I didn't have a solid idea how audience building can be leveraged to business growth, I had the intuition that could be a thing.
Build Distribution Then Build Whatever You Want
Distribution is the new leverage. And your audience is the engine that powers it.
Boomers are quietly making millions with just:
- A valuable skill
- A growing personal brand
- A digital product or service
And here’s what should shock you…
Even the billionaires who built empires in the old world are now building audiences in the new one:
- Elon Musk → 219M followers
- Jeff Bezos → 6.9M followers
- Bill Gates → 66.1M followers
Why?
Because attention is now the most valuable asset on the internet.
It multiplies your impact, your income, and your influence.
In the Industrial Age, you needed machines. In the Digital Age, you are the machine.
This is how modern wealth is created: Not by waiting for opportunity—but by becoming the opportunity.
You have permissionless leverage.
How To Kill The Ai Anxiety. Become Autonomous
Stop thinking of building an independent source of income for yourself as building a business if that doesn't resonate with you.
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.
If you want financial freedom start a business.
You cannot truly be free if you don't start a business
Use your weekend to build what would work for you.
Spend your weekends learning to upgrade yourself, and spend your weekdays working for your respective employer and you will never suffer should you lose your job.
You may not have been able to avoid a job altogether, but you could sure as hell get out of it before other life responsibilities start to pile up.
Many people believe financial freedom comes from a stable job but that is an illusion.
Real freedom is about controlling
- when to work
- where to work
- how much to be paid
If you can solve a problem in your life, you have what it takes to start your own business.
If you can solve a problem at your job you are qualified to start a business.
Every job comes with challenges.
If you’re solving problems that alleviate the pain points of your company’s customers, you’re already on the path. Those solutions can be the foundation of your own venture.
Think about it: the skills and insights you’ve gained from your job are directly transferable to running your own business.
You know what works, what doesn’t, and how to make things better.
Starting a business puts you in control.
You decide the direction, the pace, and the vision. It's not just about financial freedom, but the freedom to create, innovate, and live on your terms.
You cannot have freedom depending on paycheck to paycheck.
Don’t wait for permission. Use your skills and start building the life you want.
One step. Two steps. Then you are on the way.
Your Idea Of Business Is Flawed. The New Rich
We no longer live in a world where execution matters more than ideas. We live in a world where quality of ideas, distribution of ideas, and iteration of ideas lead to a rich life.
The digital world has no limits, especially as we continue to outsource specialized tasks to AI.
You can become top 10% in any skill or interest with focused study on the internet.
You can build a one-person business as a creator (we often forget that this wasn’t a possibility just a few years ago, now almost anyone can do it. If they can’t, skill issue).
Most people don’t know what to do to generate new wealth.
I would argue that you do know. You’re looking at it right now. But you still have the “consume and save” mindset that limits how you perceive the gold rush happening right in front of you.
“But Patrick, not everyone can be a creator!”
If you zoom out and think, yes, they can. I’ll save my logic for another letter.
All new fortunes are being built in the digital space.
We're at a critical moment in history.
It is very good to have a skill or posses a technical skill but if no one knows what you do, people can't patronize you.
The Internet has given everyone the opportunity to do what they love.
If you don't promote your work, talent, skill or business, no one will patronize you no matter how good you are.
Build where the people are – build in public.
There aren't many shortcuts to wealth creation, but this is one of them.
Build A Personal Brand And Start A Business With $0 Cost
It's the easiest path for beginners to take control of their financial future.
All you need is:
- An internet connection
- A few ideas
- The ability to stick it out until the end
The best thing you can do to achieve freedom is to build your skills and your brand.
That's your insurance for dark times.
There’s a common piece of advice that goes around that I think is quite narrow and dumb:
“Build something offline, then start online.”
In other words, people don’t realize that social media (or the internet) is a perfectly viable way to start a business in today’s world. I’d argue it’s one of the best ways all things considered.
I don’t think it’s wise to unnecessarily go through the pain and suffering of building a brick and mortar business, or a physical service (like pest control, car detailing, etc), or even freelancing or agency work with endless hours of manual outreach.
Even then, those businesses can get on social media whenever they want to acquire customers. They don’t need to wait until they meet your standards of success before they start posting in the new town square.
It just doesn’t make sense to ignore social media as a way to attract anyone, connect with anyone, and build distribution for whatever your work is.
Of course, I recommend thinking for yourself, pursuing your interests, and turning that into a business with the right skill set.
I don’t recommend accepting someone else’s outdated business ideology that narrows your mind from seeing your potential.
In other words, I recommend choosing the problem you want to solve and the solution you want to provide. I recommend not even starting a business. I recommend treating any skill you learn, any problem you solve, and any solution you create as value that can be given to other people as your life’s work.
There’s no need to do anything other than solve the problems in your life, acquire the skill to do so, and pass down those lessons as content and products to earn a living doing what you enjoy.
You Need 3 Pillars To Succeed Online
When it comes to building internet wealth, you need:
A skill
A bulletproof mindset
A way of capturing attention
But 99% of people fail to execute all three.
They get fixated on just one.
Whether it’s starting a service, building an audience, or trying to get their mindset right. But this couldn't be further from the truth.
You see, each of these elements is a pillar that supports your online business. Without any one of them, the whole structure crumbles.
If you don’t have a skill, you can’t make money.
If you can’t capture attention, nobody will know you exist.
And without a bulletproof mindset, you’ll sabotage your success before it even begins.
It’s time to pay attention.
1. Skill
Many people focus on ''mastering a skill''. They think to make money online they have to become the best video editor or digital writer in the world. They must have deep marketing knowledge and persuasion skills to thrive.
The common "10,000-hour rule" suggests it takes approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve mastery in any field, whether it's playing the violin, writing, programming, or playing a sport.
While mastery is a noble goal, focusing on it can be overwhelming and unrealistic for most people. The sheer magnitude of 10,000 hours can make it feel like an impossible mountain to climb, especially if you’re balancing other responsibilities like work, family, and social life.
Because of this, many people give up before they even start. They carry the burden of thought that they’ll never be able to reach the level of a master.
Instead of focusing on the distant goal of mastery, a more practical and effective approach is to aim for consistent improvement.
The "1% improvement rule":
Small, incremental improvements compound over time and lead to significant progress.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand exponential growth." —Albert Bartlett
For example, if you improve at something by just 1% each day, that might not seem like much in the short term. But over the course of a year, these small gains can add up to nearly 37 times better than when you started, thanks to the power of compounding.
Focusing on practice and practical application, rather than mastery, makes the process less intimidating and more achievable.
It allows you to appreciate the journey and the progress you're making along the way. Each practice session is an opportunity to learn something new, refine your skills, and get a little bit better.
Don’t let the idea of mastery paralyze you.
Focus on showing up, practicing regularly, and getting a little better each day. Over time, these small improvements will accumulate, bringing you closer to your goals, without the pressure of achieving some lofty, distant ideal.
There 2 ways you can start practicing any skill:
1) Client Work
However, when you’re just starting out, it can be difficult to land paying clients. That’s why I advocate for offering your services for free in the beginning.
By doing this, you remove the mental resistance clients might have about paying you without proof of work, and you also reduce your own anxiety about whether or not you can deliver quality work.
Offering your services for free might seem counterintuitive, but it’s powerful. When you deliver outstanding results for a client at no cost, you build your confidence and establish a track record of success. This, in turn, allows you to charge premium prices in the future. It’s a process of gradually building your reputation and value proposition.
But practicing a skill doesn’t only happen through client work.
Another approach to practicing a skill is to build in public.
2. Build In Public
For example, before I started teaching skills to other people through Skillembassy, I posted my process on LinkedIn. This was my training ground, where I could experiment and improve without the pressure of delivering for a client. I was uploading my projects on Github. By the time I started offering my services, I had already developed a high level of proficiency.
Let’s say you are a copywriter. Download Threads and Instagram. Optimize your profile. Then, focus on 2-3 key topics that align with your interests and expertise, and commit to posting consistently.
Over time, as you refine your skills and build an audience, you can start offering paid services.
You've demonstrated the ability to capture attention through persuasive writing, which has enabled you to build an audience. You can offer your writing services to others, helping them build their own audiences.
Which leads us to stage 2…
2) Attention
My biggest issue is that most people believe that if they are good at what they do, success will naturally follow.
But that’s not how it works.
You can be the most talented person in your field, but without attention, your skills will go unnoticed. Having a skill is no longer enough.
You need a personal brand.
''A digital identity.''
A representation of who you are, what you stand for, and how you think.
Nobody knows you.
You have the skill but who knows you have the skill?
Most people complain they can't make money online because of the single reason that nobody knows you have the skill.
You have to make people aware of you.
The most accessible path is to learn, build and share in public.
If you want to start freelancing, learn a skill.
If you want to start a YouTube channel, make videos.
If you want to grow on Facebook, start writing.
If you want to avoid the 9-5, start building.
Nothing good comes in life without intentional action.
People are drawn to those they can relate to.
Those who share their values and perspectives.
Capturing attention is much easier In the past, gaining attention was a laborious process.
You had to physically go out, knock on doors, and pitch your services.
Today, the internet has simplified this process. You can reach a global audience with a single post.
You need to be strategic about how you capture and sustain attention.
How To Capture Attention
To capture and sustain attention, you need to consistently produce content that reflects your values, expertise, and personality. This content serves as a window into your world, allowing others to connect with you on a deeper level.
Identify what makes you unique.
What's your story?
What are your experiences?
What can you offer that others can’t?
Then, create content that showcases this uniqueness and resonates with your target audience. This connection is what ultimately drives people to reach out to you, not just for your services but for the value you bring as a person.
For example, most of my bootcamp student found me through my Facebook post where I mentioned the use case of writing in audience building and Internet business.
Writing, in my opinion, is the best way to:
- Learn new things fast
- Attract people to your skills and interests
- Take advantage of the growing internet
If you don't know what to learn, start writing.
Not because writing is a great skill to learn, but because writing teaches you how to think, how to learn, and how to inspire people to care about what you do—and those are the only skills that will save your future.
lf you learn how to write online, you'll never go broke again.
Because writing leads to:
- Attention
- Trust
- Sales
Your words can build a business.
Business requires 2 things:
- A product
- An Audience/distribution
No matter how good your product is, if you don't have distribution your business will collapse.
Build a brand and sell your product under your brand.
You can do this with just writing.
But…
While attention and skills are essential, your mindset is what will determine whether you succeed or fail in the long run.
3. Mindset
The third, and arguably the most critical, pillar to making money online is your mindset.
It’s the driving force behind every decision you make, every action you take, and how you respond to the inevitable challenges you’ll face along the way.
1) Move Quickly
Successful people don’t wait for the perfect moment to take action.
They create it.
When inspiration strikes, they move quickly to test their ideas, gather feedback, and iterate on their approach. This is because action is the catalyst for progress. It provides the feedback necessary to refine your ideas, improve your skills, and make better decisions in the future.
Too often, we fall into the trap of overthinking our ideas. We create elaborate plans in our minds, imagining all the ways we’ll conquer our market, serve different types of clients, and scale our business to new heights. But this kind of thinking can be paralyzing. When the complexity of our plans becomes overwhelming, we often fail to act at all.
The key to overcoming this paralysis is to validate your ideas as quickly as possible.
If you want to create an online course, don’t spend months perfecting it before you know whether there’s interest. Post an Facebook or send an email to your list offering a low-cost workshop. If people aren’t willing to pay $19 for a live workshop, they’re unlikely to pay hundreds for a full course.
Acting quickly allows you to fail faster, which is crucial because failure is not the end.
Failure brings you closer to success by showing you what doesn’t work, so you can focus on what does.
Btw, the same principle applies to content creation. Don’t waste time obsessing over every detail of your posts. Put your ideas out there, see how your audience responds, and adjust accordingly.
Most content won’t go viral, and that’s okay. The goal is to learn from each post, review your dashboard, refine your message, and gradually improve your engagement and conversion rates.
By adopting a mindset of action, you position yourself to win.
2) Stay Patient
In the digital age, where instant gratification is the norm, patience has become a rare and valuable trait.
One of the biggest challenges you’ll face is staying patient while you wait for results. It’s easy to get discouraged when your efforts don’t pay off immediately.
You might find yourself questioning whether your ideas are good enough, whether you’re on the right path, or whether you should just give up and return to the comfort of a traditional job.
But this is where your mindset comes into play. You need to cultivate a mindset that embraces the journey, not just the destination. This means understanding that success is often invisible for long stretches of time.
You might be putting in hours of work every day without seeing any tangible results. But that doesn’t mean you’re not making progress.
In fact, the small steps you take each day are building on each other, compounding over time, and slowly but surely leading you toward your goals.
3) Play The Long Game (But Love It)
Successful people are those who are willing to play the long game.
They plant seeds today, knowing that it might take years—or even decades—before they see the fruits of their labor.
They have the patience to stay in the game, to outlast the competition, and to keep pushing forward even when it feels like nothing is happening.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is expecting everything to go according to plan. The reality is that life is complicated, and things almost always take longer than you expect.
If you’re constantly counting the days, weeks, or months until you reach your goals, you’ll run out of patience before you get there.
But this is not a reason to give up. It’s a reason to be patient, to stay resilient, and to keep pushing forward.
You need to be prepared to spend the next 10 years pursuing your goals. This is why it’s so important to pursue something you genuinely enjoy. If you don’t love what you’re doing, you won’t have the patience to stick with it for the long haul. You won’t be able to endure the long periods of slow progress.
But when you’re passionate about what you’re doing, the journey becomes much more enjoyable. You’re not just working toward a goal; you’re doing something you love, something that fulfills you, and something that gives your life meaning.
4) You Have To Do It Once
Yes, success is going to take a long time.
But here’s the thing:
You only have to do it once. You only have to get rich once. You only have to be right once. And that’s why the game is so much fun to play.
“One thing that’s important in entrepreneurship: You just have to be right once. You get many, many shots on goal. You can take a shot on goal every three to five years, maybe every 10 at the slowest. Or once every year at the fastest, depending on how you’re iterating with startups. But you only have to be right once.” —Naval Ravikant
The game you’re playing needs to be worth the payout. You don’t want to win a trivial prize if you win. It’s better to fail at things that could change your life than to succeed at things where the prize is too small to matter.
Find games where the rewards are massive, and then play those games until you win.
From someone who has built multiple online businesses, you've got this.
Thanks for reading.
-Patrick
One more thing.
Applications for the Fullstack Creator Bootcamp opens on 16th June.
If "what you want" involves talking about your interests, building an audience for your work, or having an organic method to get more customers for your business, consider enrolling before price increases.