I Had To Learn These High-Income Skills (If I Wanted To Make Money)

Failure Comes Before Success

00:00My business journey was simple. I tried everything and failed. But as we all know here, failure is a blessing. It is a data point that reveals what can be improved. Those that don't fail don't succeed. It just doesn't make sense when you think about it.

00:16To expect success without failure. When success only exists from a reference point of failure. If you were successful since the day you were born, which you were in many ways, would you see it as success or would you see it as normal life? You must set a new goal as a high embrace, massive failure as a low and dance through the struggle to marry the meaningful contrast.

00:38This brings up an important point, which is self-reliance. Rich kids, as an example, aren't self-reliant because they didn't teach themselves to be. Success is normal to them, so much so that they don't have new potentials to discover in their life.

00:53They don't have that journey to go on. They don't have a goal of making $1,000 a month doing their own thing and embracing the one emotional labor that comes along with that and learning from that and increasing your emotional tolerance. And second, just all of the failures that come along that that lead to nuanced understanding and experience, that when you achieve that goal of, let's say, making $1,000, then the next one that reveals itself is the aim of your life.

01:22It's what gives you meaning is to consistently make progress. And not all rich kids are depressed and socially inept. But many, many, many are because they didn't have a reason to cultivate a skill set that would allow them to reach a self-generated goal.

01:36Nobody can teach you self-reliance, otherwise it's not self-reliance to become self-reliant in any domain, from money to relationships to health. You need the skills that bridge the gap between where you are and what you want. Most people don't know what they want, and even more don't see where they are as a problem.

01:54Notice the word need in that paragraph before there are skills that you need to learn in order to achieve self-reliance. They aren't optional. I repeat, these are not optional skills. These are fundamental and they are something that you should at least have a big picture understanding of and learn first so that when you learn any other skill set or let's say you want to learn Photoshop, you need to learn the skills that we're going to talk about in order to maximize the effects of Photoshop.

02:23These are the meta skills, that umbrella every other modern skill that changes every ten years that you will learn. And these are also the skills that you should have a big picture understanding of regardless of what kind of company or business you are building.

02:40If you're building a one person business like I recommend, then you're going to have to understand all of them. But even if you're going to hire out something or eventually hire on a team, you need to understand how to get results for that business in the first place.

02:51I feel like you should have a big picture understanding of the skills that you're going to hire for, so you can hire correctly. So I failed at seven ish different business models, and the reason that I failed with them is because I didn't understand the skills that led to success with any business model, because business has a specific skill set attached to it.

03:09That applies no matter what technicality you go into. Like if you're doing email marketing, freelancing or doing graphic design freelancing or you doing something else, what is the glue that makes those business models work? And so once you understand what we're going to talk about in this video through your own study, I can't give you I can't give you 50 to 100 hours worth of information in a 30 minute video.

03:32It's not how it works. And so once you truly understand these skills and practice them and gain experience in them and see results, then you can really make money whenever you want.

The Evergreen Skills

03:42So let's talk about the evergreen skills and to frame this, I am building a software company right now and I have no idea what I'm doing. I have some idea of what I'm doing, but I'm figuring it out along the way because hiring for a company and actually structuring it like a company is different from one person business or self-employment or freelancing where it's just you.

04:02You don't really need anything crazy for it. But when it comes to hiring and legal compliance and all of this other stuff, these are things that you can learn on the go in that I am learning on the go and I'm talking to people and understand doing it and starting to learn.

04:16But all of the other skills that make the business work aren't something that every single person can figure out and learn. Just step by step on the fly. That's the point. That's the perspective I'm trying to paint here, is that there's actually starting and running a business, and then there's what allows you to make sales and money.

04:33So what I'm saying is that the technical skills that you learn to start a business are different from the evergreen skills that allow you, that require creativity and experience, something that can't be outsourced. It's something that must be cultivated.

04:46Those are the drivers of business success. So the first two skills that we really need to understand and harp on here is marketing and sales. They require creativity, experience and big picture understanding of your industry to make work. Marketing and sales are the differentiating factor between those that make money and those that don't.

05:04So let's take a tech startup, for example, and why. It's always weird saying like, why all I will be so far ahead of other startups is that most startups or even just most coders, let's take developers, coders, programmers as an example where they're like, I'm going to build an app and it's like, That's awesome.

05:21I'm going to make $1,000,000,000 doing so it's like, okay, you're a little delusional there because you don't understand marketing sales. You don't have the experience, you don't have distribution. So they build an app, they launch it and crickets, and then they can't sustain their life's work simply because they haven't studied marketing and sales and have given attention to the content side of things.

05:39Because on the Internet there's code content you need both in order to create product and attract people and all of that fun stuff. So for me, when I'm building a tech startup, I'm going to make a video going over my entire strategy of how I'm going to make it work.

05:51I have 3 to 4 million followers that have built up over the last 4 to 5 years. Years. I have sold products and services that have changed the lives of people that I will sell the product to. They understand my value. They understand the power in the systems that I can offer.

06:07And me turning that into a software to make their lives easier. The marketing strategies already tested, validated, laid out for me. I already know what's going to sell because I made millions of dollars already selling it in a different medium that isn't software.

06:18So as an example, I have a course which took me $0 to create and making millions from it, taking the system from that course and just turning it into a software which takes me a bit more money now that I have it, in order to create that. So I already know the software is going to sell because it's sold before.

06:37So with developers or coders, they don't have an audience. Trust them, they don't have promotions that catch the attention of their target market. They don't solve the specific burning problem. They don't plan to raise problem awareness over time.

06:49They don't create their own customers through content, and they don't have any of the firepower in place that would allow them to write good content ads and turn viewers into customers. So with that, marketing and sales paired with writing and speaking is how you create value.

07:04Marketing and sales are the psychological kind of cortex or meta structure of what you're going to write or speak so that it is impactful and persuasive and valuable because marketing is perception value's perception. So you saying something and being able to use marketing principles or psychology to frame what you're saying, to catch attention, hold attention and make what you're saying valuable and understandable.

07:30That is the most valuable skill, because I'm not you're not only think about this, like actually think it through. I'm not saying marketing, sales, writing and speaking. So you go and start a social media brand. How that is important, right?

07:41That's a very good thing to practice this thing on. I'm speaking to you here. I wrote the script for this before this, but what about everything else? When I'm selling a course, do you think all of that knowledge just goes out the window and my curriculum is just a load of an unorganized mess?

07:57What about texting or messaging? High level business people and getting what I want from them in exchange for something else? Value exchange. What about every single fucking thing you do? Because communication is writing or speaking, and if you don't know how to do that correctly from any medium, even if it's just a software or selling the software, whatever it may be, you need to understand these skills if you want to see any form of success because if you want money, someone else has the money that you don't have and you need to be able to persuade them to give it to you in exchange

08:28for something valuable that you created called a product or service. And whether that's just in a social situation where you're not exchanging for money, but you're exchanging the value you have to offer packaged up in your head, distributed via words in order to get them to do whatever you're doing because you're a survival based creature and you're manipulating your environment at any given moment.

08:48I'm manipulating you guys right now, not in a hopefully negative way, in a positive way, mutual benefit. And that's what you're doing in any situation. I'm tired of saying marketing, speaking, writing, sales is are the skills to learn, and then someone else comes in.

09:03They're like, Oh, email, email marketing will make you $10,000 a month. It's like first that's writing and speaking and marketing and sales to email marketing is such a myopic way of viewing the skill set that comes along with those. Then you're going to fail because you think, I only have to learn this specific tactic how to write emails and land clients in order to make money when that business model is going to go to the ground in the next five or ten years, you're not stacking the skills that allow you to make money in any situation because you understand the root of all being.

09:33So I'm dragging on. Let's summarize the principles of marketing, sales, writing and speaking. First, you need a desired outcome, and then you need a burning problem that stands in the way, a proven path to reach that outcome unique to your experience.

09:46The level of awareness of the person you are targeting. How aware are they of their problem? An angle to talk about that problem based on the human desires, a list of benefits and how solving the problem impacts their life. Proof from yourself or previous customers that you can solve that problem.

10:02A big idea that catches attention in the sea of internet noise and a risk reversal or guarantee that tips them over the edge. And so you may have seen those before, like if you study copywriting or marketing sales, whatever. I've also talked about them in the value creation video.

10:16It's called value Creation Colon and the single skill that built my one person business, because all of those things are like Legos. They're Legos for your writing and speaking so that you can do it in a persuasive way. So as I said, you're using these skills whenever you're selling anything.

10:31Selling is synonymous with exchanging value or selling what you have to offer and persuading someone that it is valuable, right? You're doing that in any situation. It's not just in exchange for money. When you're talking to a girl or a guy or a friend, you're selling your ideas and worldview so that they want to be with you.

10:48So remember how we discuss self-reliance because the rest is on you. You have to go and study those things and frame your mind in a way that allows you to get results. This is in a marketing and sales course. If you want that, get to our writer or digital economics.

11:01This video just is to make you aware of what you actually need to be studying. So next what you need to understand is that evergreen vessels So we talked about the evergreen skills, which is about communicating value in getting what you want.

11:12But most people fail to make money because they don't understand how business works. You need a good product which has a host of skills involved in making, and you need people to send you that product so that they purchase it and they purchase it because one, you led them to the product with writing, speaking, marketing and sales.

11:29And when they saw the product that's writing, speaking, marketing and sales and when they got into the product in order to spark positive behavior change and make it so, they actually use the product that's writing, speaking, marketing and sales.

The Evergreen Vessels

11:39So let's run through a scenario. I want to sell a planner. So I experiment on myself first. Why? Because you need experience and results. Most businesses fail because they're trying to sell to people that have a problem they've never experienced.

11:52So I buy 4 to 5 bestselling planners on Amazon. I buy productivity books and courses. I drown myself in podcasts, social media accounts and videos on productivity hacks. I structure my days, map out my work, and put what I've learned to work.

12:06By this point, I have an idea of how to improve the planner I want to sell or do something entirely new. Based on what I discovered with my research, I've also exposed myself to the entirety of what makes that business work. I've listened to high performing social media content that I can recreate to promote my planner and build a following without ads.

12:24I purchased the planner books and courses from people that make a living from them so I can reverse engineer their marketing and web pages. I've gotten results so that I have direct experience of the problem desired outcome and system to get there, which composes my marketing strategy.

12:38It's all right in front of you, but you aren't paying attention. If you want to make money outside of your job, you need distribution and a product. If you want to do it as one person without the restriction of a physical location, then you need a code.

12:51And content code is the back end of the internet content is the frontend of the Internet code is how you host content. Content is how you capture attention. You don't need to learn how to code because technology has advanced to the point we are at now.

13:03What used to take ten employees to build a membership site can now be done by one person who purchases a software. You can hit post on social media, have one big account, see that post, share and get hundreds of thousands of views without ever posting before.

13:17You can build a readership that allows you to do anything you want with your life, you aren't bound to one static niche. All in all, I'm saying that content is not optional anymore. It was a few years ago, but markets evolve. Here is a tweet from cold email wizard or Daniel Fazio says sales cycles are getting longer.

13:35Prospects are investigating you more. Whoever has the most and best content will win, and specifically long form content like YouTube videos and podcasts that allow you to actually prove the value you have to offer and show that you are experienced and can get results and are an expert and can actually make sense with what you're saying.

13:54Call the email wizard or Daniel Fazio. He's also on YouTube. Good content. He's a good dude. So content is how you distribute your product. Marketing and sales are how you create products that are actually valued by the market. Those are the main skills that you need to learn no matter what else you learn.

14:10You see what I'm saying? Content, which is writing and speaking. It's a vessel either visual or written to distribute the value you have to offer that is crafted by marketing and sales or psychological principles. So if content doesn't make sense to you, then check out to our writer or Seven Days to Genius Ideas, which is a free like note taking and journaling thing.

14:32But it has a lot of these principles in there. It may help you if you don't actually want to just buy a course right now.

The Modern Career Path

14:38So let's talk about the modern career path, because I like philosophizing about the future of work. But we see here at the top you have you or your topics interesting curiosities branches off into code and content. So on the code side, you have websites, membership, software, funnels, automation, A.I..

14:56These are like either no code or something that you can learn to program. And then on the content, there's writing and speaking, which involves social media, video, email design, branding, Those both branch into marketing and sales, which are psychology, mechanics, attention and awareness.

15:11And then that pulls you in an audience. And to the audience you sell the offer and that's where you make money. And that's just like one offer, right? There's more. You can create a funnel, you can create upsells down sells, offer sex, cross promoting, whatever it may be.

15:25We're just focused on like one offer make some money, then you already know what to do next. So I have faith in the creator economy. Even when people don't see it, I see it as nature's way of correcting what went wrong in the Industrial Revolution.

15:37Schooling is decentralized with content and courses students can pursue their curiosity and adapt to the times. Fast eight hour workdays in wage slavery come to an end for individuals that self-educated and acquire skills to work for other creators and eventually themselves.

15:52I mentioned wage slavery there. If you haven't already watched my video on how to escape wage slavery, I highly recommend it.

Code & Content

15:58So here's the career path for both the present and the future. First, code in content, code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.

16:11Navel popping of all. I'm supposed to be professional. Forget that I said popping evil. So most people will have to start with either code or content. So you either become the programmer or a content marketer. You can learn both with time, and this is one of the most potent skill stacks is both code and content.

16:28That's a full stack creator. The programmer can work for creators, startups and really any modern job they can freelance or be employed by all of the above. The content marketer can do the exact same. Everyone has a content marketing, sales or any form of media.

16:43Team. Businesses need content. Businesses also need programing depending on the business so that is where you're going to find jobs and just work and customers for your business in the future. And now is online, on the Internet, in the collective consciousness where we're documenting our mind and we're slowly becoming more and more virtual, We're transcending to the mental plane of existence through the Internet.

17:07You may not see it, but that's the next phase of evolution. We are automating our physical bodies to the point of being able to interact with much less restriction than we can in the physical world. Like even just imagine being able to read someone else's thoughts, Like there's going to be some laws imposed there, but I'm just excited to live to the point to see if like one, this will actually happen or what will happen when we solve the hard problem of consciousness and can literally hack the material world with the underlying fabric that allows that to be there.

17:41I wouldn't say material world, but relative world. So your personal brand is your online character or your online avatar. And if you choose that you don't want to learn to code, that's perfectly fine because all of the tools available to you, you can build a website, you can build a membership dashboard, you can use Zapier to hook literally everything together.

Marketing & Sales

18:00You're fine. So number two, marketing and sales. So you go the code or the content route, and then you have to learn both marketing and sales. That's second step. That's fundamental. Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

18:12So both pass code and content will converge into the need to learn marketing and sales. And it's better to learn them from the start simply because then you're framing everything else you learn. If you learn any new skill that will go away in 5 to 10 years because of how rapidly technology is evolving.

18:29But if you learn a modern skill like graphic design or email marketing, then you're doing so from the lens of marketing and sales. So that from the get go, the first iterations of whatever you create is just more valuable than the person who's going around and doing absolutely nothing, thinking about how the other person will perceive it.

18:47Most software companies and coders fail because they can build a product, but they can't sell it. The same goes for content creators. They can build an audience with good writing. But when it comes to creating a product that people actually want, they fall short.

18:59If you want to survive outside of a job that inevitably loses its shine and change you to a paycheck, marketing and sales are your weapons on the entrepreneurial hunt.

Build Distribution

19:08So step three is to build distribution, build distribution, then build whatever you want to quote from Jack Butcher. Distribution is the most important concept you can understand in the digital race to riches and distribution methods vary in leverage.

19:24Freelancers, agencies, local businesses and even startups often focus on low leverage, instantly gratifying distribution methods like hold email, paid ads and direct messages. Now, these are still viable methods to acquire customers, but you are often left with nothing.

19:38If you stop putting effort into them, you are better off building long term distribution while mixing the other methods to see profit quickly. So like building an audience like a 100,000 follower X or Twitter audience promoting to your network, like having a 100,000 follower internet friend to promote your network.

19:56So not your 100,000 followers, but theirs and renting others audiences like newsletter or YouTube sponsorships to get in front of millions of interested people, you must learn social media as the skill to tap into the global distribution network.

20:10And so as you write content and build an audience, so you have you're building that high leverage distribution. It takes time. So along the way, you can still set aside time to do the low leverage, but quicker results, ones like cold email, DMS, etc..

20:25So four perspective I get around 12 million impressions per month on X alone. With other platforms, it's probably quadruple that number. And from a Google search, I don't know how accurate this is, but a low CPM is around $3 for paid ads, which is per 1000 impressions every month on X or Twitter alone.

20:44I get what would cost me $36,000 a month worth of impressions. If you're content and ads are profitable, you should be able to make well over $100,000 from that each month. You see what I'm saying here is that you can either pay $36,000 a month on ads to get the same amount of impressions that I get after building an audience for 3 to 4 years.

21:04It's instant versus long term, but that doesn't invalidate either one. It's do both but aim for the long term. And to stress that point again, that's only from Twitter. Twitter is one of my smallest audiences now, so I probably get 100 to $150000 worth of ad spend.

21:25Just from the impressions that I get on all social media. And if I can't out make that $150,000 a month in ad spend, then I'm not getting an hour away. So even if I make $150,000 a month with my own content for free, that's bonus. But and since I'm not only nurturing the audience, but them being with me the entire time and understanding what I talk about and being more likely to purchase my products or services I should be able to out earn.

21:46Most are away. I should be able to make three, four, five, $600,000 a month as one person with the distribution that continues to grow and grow and grow.

Employable To Unemployable

21:57So step number four is just the shift from employable to unemployable, because there comes a point through experience and skill acquisition that you just can never become employed again. It's impossible. You have too much of a network to fall back on if you need an opportunity.

22:14Let's say my business dies today, I message five people. I guarantee I will least be able to cover what, say 10 to $20000 a month based on my skill set and how I can help them, at least for a short period of time. They can make room for me simply because I have that network.

22:28And at this point, your skills compound to the point where you know how to make money in any given environment or situation, no matter where the market's at. Right. If I know marketing and sales like truly not the basic Udemy course of all, you need an opt in page.

22:44You need to build an email list, you need a Facebook page with a good bio. I'm talking real marketing and sales, a deep understanding of them all studying them for 1 to 3 years with practice along the way and experience in trying to get results and failing multiple times.

22:59With that, I can spin up an offer, figure out a distribution channel and launch it within two weeks and make however much money I want depending on the methods that I choose. So the progression that I would follow is this is start learning the skills that all brands need marketing, sales, branding, content design, social media, etc.

23:18apply for jobs or work for a creator to get real world experience and earn some money. This can be freelance or employment. You're going to have to reach out to people and talk to people online. Oh no. Dedicate one hour minimum each day to building your own thing.

23:32Write content, iterate until you are growing and promote your offer. As your audience grows, start to transition into doing your own thing. Expand your product stack to target more people in your audience. This way, you're making it near impossible to not secure your future.

23:46And if you have subpar marketing skills, a good audience can still make up for that. You can't do that with ads because writing the ad itself is marketing and sales rate. You're going to have to have all of that in place with an audience. People just trust you and they like your thoughts and they're like, Oh, this guy has a product I'm going to buy.

Iterative Products

24:03Marketing and sales is like a little boost to that. So the fifth point here is just iterative products, because most creators fail because they treat monetization as a one and done type of deal, your products and services evolve as you do. They build off of each other.

24:17You can't create a better product if you never launch the first stagnation equals death. My web design service evolved into funnels. My funnel knowledge evolved into three digital products. Those digital products evolved into a community. My experience along the way created two more digital products.

24:33My ten plus lead magnet evolved into a planner, which is now being relaunched with my book in late September. All of the above are evolving into the software that I'm building. It never ends. That's what makes it meaningful. It should be obvious that if something isn't selling your product or service like a freelancer or just a course or something and it isn't selling, it's your problem.

24:52It's not the markets. If you kept learning and refining your skillset beyond that, you would see the opportunity to improve your products. All of this business stuff is just persistence and iteration for life and that is it for this video. I hope you enjoyed it too.

25:07Our writer. If you want to learn high impact digital writing, digital economics, if you want to productize yourself or turn yourself into the business, both of those are in the description. There's also a power planner seven days to genius ideas, which is like note taking idea generation, other cool stuff down there like subscribe.

25:23See in the next one piece.