"The modern superpower is your ability to focus in a world of distractions. Scrolling isn't going to train your body. Tutorials aren't going to build your business. Notifications aren't going to bring you peace. Only a meaningful goal, clarity on how to achieve it and unbreakable focused effort can do that for you." — Dan Koe
I spent 6 months to acquire 6 high income skills.
When I started learning online, I wasn’t chasing money. I was chasing purpose and clarity.
I was tired of being told what to learn, where to work, and how to live. Every job felt like a script written by someone else.
People don't know what skills to learn because they've been told what to learn
their entire life. Their mind was narrowed on a goal that was assigned to them by their parents, teachers, and society. If you understand the mind, you understand how disastrous this can be.
The model of our public school system was adopted from a Prussian military state. It reflects the education given to slaves, people who are expected to do a few tasks for the rest of their lives to achieve a goal they did not conceive of. And even if that were false, the result of schooling is just that: people who are dependent on the institutions and the authority for their survival. Schooling pushes people's minds into narrow niches and discourages exploration of interests.
So I began experimenting — studying, building, failing.
- Learning to code to build my website
- Learning to write to build my brand.
I started experimenting with sales online as soon as possible.
That’s when it clicked for me.
Freedom isn’t found in a secure or safe path. It’s found in skill and distribution.
The moment I decided to learn skills the world valued, not what school or society dictated, my life, perspective on work, value, money, purpose and profit was reshaped. My life was transformed.
And that’s what most people miss.
They want freedom but avoid uncertainty.
They want progress but fear looking foolish.
You grow fastest when you move toward the unknown with intention. I believe all transformation is the result of 4 things:
- awareness
- intention
- decision
- discipline
Every moment you build something you chose, not what someone for you,
you reclaim a piece of your mind, your time,
your life.
Your greatest project isn’t your job.
It’s you.
Focus Is your savior
In a world filled with distractions and cheap dopamine hits, focus is your savior.
Being able to intentionally direct your attention at will not only save you time, but money.
Why?
- Mainstream news outlets monetize your attention through fear
- Social media accounts steal your attention through "relatable" and often self-deprecating content
- Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook know exactly what colors, topics, and content delivery style make you tick.
There is always something to fill the void that comes with boredom.
Just now, I clicked over to check my Facebook notifications.
From a top down point of view, this is the big problem that the modern world faces.
In terms of mental health, people focus on their thoughts instead of the reason behind the thoughts.
In terms of physical health, people focus on short term pleasure instead of long term energy.
In terms of monetary health, people focus on get-rich-quick schemes instead of sustainable business growth.
But, we are here to talk about focused work, but you can see the problem that the attention economy has created.
Focus is a currency and we must invest it wisely.
Minimum risk, high potential reward
The attention economy is only disastrous if you are on the consumer end.
Opportunities are springing up like weeds and in order to take advantage of them, you need to produce.
You need to focus your attention on building something with minimal risk, but with the potential to pay off big.
These are called asymmetric bets.
You need to build a project.
A project could be anything: your relationships, physique, mental health or business. For the purpose of this letter we will focus on business.
A narrow understanding of business
If you want to be in control of how much you make, you need a business. Plain and simple. Unarguable.
If you start a business, it demands a much different character than a 9-5 job. You are responsible for everything. You must manage yourself, develop yourself, and learn to love the emotional highs and lows that come with business.
You will be rejected.
You will question if you should quit and go back to your just-comfortable-enough-to-survive-and-just-painless-enough-to-stay-the-same life.
Please, for the love of all things holy, commit to the one thing you know you need to do to take control of your life.
This is your way out.
You’re going to build an audience on social media.
That’s lesson one of business: you need traffic to send to your product or service. Building a website or designing a logo is not a productive use of your time right now.
You don’t need a million followers to start, but I guarantee you will want a growing audience for the future.
"Patrick, I want to start a business but I don't know how."
Instead of starting a company that requires huge startup capital, start as one person.
If you can't turn your interests into income, you don't have the skill to start a business that requires 10 times the resources.
You as an individual have the ability to attract an audience to your work and put a valuable product in front of them.
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.
Acquire the skills to solve the problems in your life, which is an automatic filter for value.
Then turn the solution into a product for others.
Making money is a skill
Most people struggle to make money because they don't see it as a skill they can learn.
Making money is something everyone wants to do, but few people see as a skill that can be learned, because money (as with other life-changing skills like social dynamics) is deeply intertwined with our self-image, emotions, and survival.
It's difficult to see money as something within your direct control because we carry the burden of conditioning from our parents, teachers, and life experiences that influence our perception. We don’t control our reactions to impulses, so it creates a veil that disguises money as uncontrollable.
Money flows to those that provide value. That's what the company you work for does everyday. Value can be rendered in the form of a product or service.
These are things you can learn. If you work at job, you've probably mastered the skill of providing value but haven't connected it yet.
A sustainable way of making money is in a business.
And business requires 2 things:
- A product/service
- Audience.
If you provided the same service you provide at your job under your name, you'd make more money than you do today.
Maybe the question you struggle to find answers to is how you'd get people to find what you provide as valuable and patronize.
Building an audience is also a skill.
If you mastered how to create a product/service and how to build an audience, you'll become unemployable. You could start your own business, become in control of the important decisions you make in your life: when you to on vacation, how much you earn, how much time you spend with your family and who you work with.
Build an audience for your work
I would argue that every beginner should build an audience.
Even if you don’t have a product.
Even if you don’t feel ready.
Even if no one knows you (yet).
Why?
Because building an audience is the best way to learn the actual skills that make any business work:
- Persuasion
- Writing
- Design
- Psychology
- Human behavior
- Offer creation
And you don’t learn these in theory.
You learn them by showing up online, posting content, testing ideas, and observing what resonates.
How do you actually get started?
Writing.
Writing is how you practice thinking.
Writing is how you document your development.
Writing is how you attract supporters for your work.
The benefits of becoming a creator right now are difficult to contain all in one list, but I’ll try.
- You are forced to learn every skill required to run a modern business. This is easier than ever thanks to courses, tutorials, and ease of access to tools for practice.
- You build an audience, AKA social capital, so when you want to build a startup or the business you’ve always dreamed of, you don’t need personal capital or venture capital. You have users for your app and customers for your products.
- You have a network beyond your audience. You can reach almost anyone on the internet for what you need. If you have 10K followers, and each person following them has 500-1000 followers, and the same for the people following them, you effectively have a network of 10x your audience. (No, you obviously don’t need a lot of followers to earn a living).
- You can do what you enjoy, attract like-minded people, introduce new people to your skills and interests, and create a meaningful business model you love showing up to every day, even if it’s difficult at times.
- Since your only levers are writing and building products or services, you can cut your work times down as much as you want. If my audience is growing with 30 minutes of writing, and I send them to a good product, I technically don’t have to work any longer than that – especially if my 30 minutes of writing generates more traffic than someone writing for 8 hours on a book that won’t be seen by anyone.
I’ll leave it at that for now.
Thanks for reading.
-Patrick.