We are in the middle of a second renaissance, but only a select few people can actually see what's going on, and even less people than that are taking advantage of it.
Can you see it? The creator economy is growing at an exponential rate.
People don't trust traditional jobs or schooling to secure their future.
People are turning to creators to educate them on the skills necessary to thrive in a fast-changing digital environment.
AI, automation, and software have made business more accessible to people who want to do what they enjoy for a living.
People are working less, earning more, and leveraging technology to remove themselves from the old society.
People are craving human connection online from people with personalities, not glorified search engines who talk about one specialized interest.
These are all connected to the fact that technology has changed the way we work, the opportunities we have for work, and what justifies valuable work.
If you want to do what you enjoy for a living, you are living in the right time period because you can just see it all around you.
The internet has decentralized wealth generation to the individuals who value self-education, personal responsibility, and making something of yourself by doing good work.
Now, a few things have led to this.
The rise of the generalist, or the rise of the value creator, or just the creator in general, because that's what generalists are nowadays, are creators who have multiple interests, who display themselves in public, and who attract attention in order to get eyes on their work so that they can actually make a living doing what they enjoy.
The first problem is that specialists compete with other specialists, and it's now more than ever.
If you don't know what that means, think of if you're playing a video game and you are very good at one type of play style or one type of character, like in League of Legends, there's the concept of the one-trick pony where you just choose the same character or champion over and over again because you're really good at them, but that sets you up for disadvantages, because one,
there can only be one person that's the best in the world at that thing.
Two, if someone counters you, then it's very difficult to win against that team.
Third thing, if someone picks that character, then you can't play them.
So you're at a disadvantage and you probably get pissed and you quit the game.
The same thing is true for something in fitness like bodybuilding, where if you are only a bodybuilder, you don't run, you don't do other forms of cardio, you don't go on hikes, but as a bodybuilder, if you get injured, then you either get bored and just have a terrible low point in your life, or you have to start completely from scratch on something else, like running
or CrossFit or cycling or hiking or yoga or whatever it is that you choose, because you weren't well-rounded in fitness to begin with.
The lesson is just that being a specialist sets you up for so many disadvantages, especially in an age where your work can be replaced simply because you perform a repetitive string of tasks every single day, you're not a creative, you're not pulling from multiple sources to solve a problem that you choose to solve.
When your work consists of the same thing over and over again, not only are you a prime candidate for replacement, but life loses its zest because there is no challenge or novel goal that brings meaning to life.
Your time shrivels up because all you can focus on is working all day, being tired all night, paying the bills, hoping your family doesn't leave you and the rest.
On the other hand, generalists are diverse and interesting.
Most people think that in order to become successful, you have to be really good at one thing, but that's just not the case.
And social media has distorted our perception of value, where you don't need a shredded six pack and just like a 10 out of 10 body in order to generate attention or make a living from what you do for work or your interests in general.
Most people find it fairly impressive if you just have a tiny bit of muscle mass, more than the average person, and being able to do a few pull ups and just having a life outside of fitness that is often much more impressive than the person who is one dimensional in the fact that he has six pack abs.
Now, if you pair that with a writing hobby and psychology knowledge and you put that on the internet for other people to see, then you can attract people to your own niche.
At that point, you're creating a niche by combining the interests that you have into something that is unique and irreplaceable that other people can find interest in.
In the second renaissance, you don't have to be exceptional at one thing.
You have to be average or a little bit above average in multiple things.
The second point I want to get into is that the internet favors the generalist because when I first started a business, the first thing I was told was to niche down.
I feel like this is the same for everyone.
You're just told to niche down whenever you first start studying business.
And it's not just to niche down a bit.
It's to niche down so far until you have so few people that you can target that you just don't really have any leverage.
What people fail to understand is that this business advice is outdated, at least now in the age of social media, where all of the attention is on social media.
Yes, that also means that you can niche down super far and get in front of that specific person with paid ads or some kind of targeted marketing strategy.
But if you're writing content and you're trying to build a multi-interest brand, then you're going to have to go a bit broad.
You're going to have to attract a lot more people.
And the way you do that is through content.
As marketing shifts more and more to organic content on social media, this just isn't the case.
Finding a niche, going super far down into that niche, that's just not the case for a marketing strategy on social media.
For your product, sure, for later products in your funnel where you can niche down your own audience rather than an audience that you're trying to target, sure, but it makes sense to build your base audience and then niche down within it by getting them onto a newsletter or into low ticket products or into lead magnets or things like that.
And then niching down on how you get them to specific products within that, I would rather have a diverse 100,000 follower audience than a niche 10,000 follower audience because I understand how to educate people.
Another thing is that if I have a 100,000 follower audience talking about the things that I enjoy, I probably still have that niche 10,000 follower audience within that 100,000 follower audience.
I just have more leverage because I have more people that can spread my work now.
So I have the same power as the super niche down person, but I'm not super niche down.
So I get to talk about whatever I want and build multiple products and over time compound that into something that is 10 times more than the super niche down person.
I will teach you how to do this in a bit.
The next point is that labor work is more replaceable than ever.
Society has set you up to fail.
We are in the middle of a spiritual war of beliefs.
Older generations haven't allowed their identity to be challenged with the changing landscape.
Their mind still lives in a time when it was smart to go to school, get a job, and work until you die with the possibility of good retirement.
It's not their fault because that's just human nature.
It takes time for belief systems to evolve on a collective scale because we have belief systems as individuals, but there are also collective belief systems that evolve over time as the individual ones evolve.
So as generations go by and the boomer generation goes over and then another one takes over, the collective belief system or I guess the overarching belief system of everyone inside of that culture or society starts to take over and evolve because it's not hard to see that belief systems are changing on an individual level from generation to generation and just
how we act within the world.
And what we see as an opportunity for our work, career, and life that's going to change on a global level very soon.
The problem is that people with the older belief systems will claw and fight to keep you the same.
And as much as they say they do it out of love for you, the reality is that their identity is threatened when you do better than them.
The path of the second Renaissance man requires mental strength and fortitude.
You must have conviction in your beliefs that you have more potential than getting a job that a robot can replace within five to 10 years.
I don't need to tell you that most jobs and schooling are outdated because you can just go to any news or reporting site and find that out for yourself.
So now we need to talk about why generalists thrive in the creator economy.
Only slaves are expected to perform one task for their entire life.
That's what our current education and employment system reflects.
Wage slavery is a very real thing.
On the other hand, a free man is defined as someone who acts on their interests and does many things throughout their life.
If you don't create a goal, you will be assigned one and society is great at handing out goals to those who can't think for themselves.
A generalist as opposed to a specialist is someone who learns all relevant knowledge and skill out of interest for achieving a goal in their life.
A specialist on the other hand learns a singular skill or interest to achieve a goal.
So they're one dimensional and at it disadvantage from the start when they're trying to achieve a goal in their life.
So if it's a better career and they only learn one skill, that's going to be a lot harder of a path.
You're going to be really good at one thing, but you're not going to be adaptable.
You're going to be one dimensional.
But a generalist, they're going to be able to attack and solve problems along the way to the goal for multiple different angles because they're just gaining so much experience along the way, even though they aren't diving extremely deep into certain things.
The generalist prioritizes big picture understanding rather than the technical details of one thing.
And that once you realize how important big picture understanding is, you can start to note patterns across multiple domains like from psychology to marketing to business to that's actually quite a lot.
When you understand the big picture of those things, you understand quite a bit of life from a very big picture level.
And that helps you navigate life so much easier because you understand the principles of psychology, marketing, business, sales, all of these things.
So when you go into each of them, whether it be a conversation with another person or a business deal, you have much greater surface area for understanding and spotting and identifying opportunities within those domains that a specialist in one of those areas just doesn't have.
Now, being a generalist came naturally for me as I'm sure it did for many of you that are watching this.
I failed at dropshipping, e-commerce, SEO, digital art and more.
But in the pursuit of my business goals, I stacked an irreplaceable set of skills.
One or two skills didn't bring me much in terms of results, but five, six, seven skills allowed me to spot and act on profitable opportunities because I had more tools to solve more problems.
Dropshipping taught me branding so I could stand out from bigger brands with low shipping times.
Ecommerce taught me advertising and product design so I could be more attention grabbing.
Digital art taught me graphic design and the nuances of building an audience on social media.
Now notice how I didn't study endless tutorials to learn those skills.
I set a goal of working for myself, started a project and practiced those skills while educating myself along the way.
This is extremely important because I'm not getting stuck in the technical details of the skill themselves.
I'm studying the big picture and understanding their necessity for achieving a specific goal like financial freedom in my life.
And then I learned these skills by actually going and doing the things.
I only learn the technical details that I need to learn.
So I saved so much more time learning rather than spending three to six months trying to learn the technical details of each skill.
I'm just giving a brief overview about how it's going to help me learn the principles and then learn the technical details by actually building the fucking thing because that's what most people skip.
They get trapped in tutorial hell and have nothing to show for their efforts after like one, two, three years of actually doing something.
All of those failures are the reason that I can do what I do today.
And there are two reasons why this story actually matters.
The first is that failure stacking makes you irreplaceable.
Most people know what skill stacking is.
It's like diversifying your portfolio.
Rather than investing all of your money in one stock, like a specialist would, into a skill, you invest in various stocks so that even if one does really bad, all of the others can still do well and you're in the positive.
Investing everything in one stock means that you can see a lot of success, but it also means that you can just end up in catastrophic failure.
If you diversify your bets with a range of interests or skills to try to achieve one goal of being in the positive, you're much more likely to get there because it's diverse.
But at the same time, you're not going to have such an incredible failure that you end up drowning.
Another thing is that if you were going to be in the NBA or the NFL or have a platinum album, you would know it by now because being the best at one specific thing is close to statistically impossible.
And I'm talking about one specific thing like music or football or web design or anything.
There can only be one that is statistically the best in the world at that one thing.
Now, being top 10% and even 25% in a few areas that you find interesting, that's much easier and a lot more doable.
And being top 10 to 25% isn't asking much considering just what the average life of the average person looks like and what they do on a daily basis.
Being average, being top 25% in health, that's probably like going on one walk a day.
Being top 25% in financial freedom, that's like putting aside $100 a day.
Being top 25% in financial freedom, I'm pulling things out of my butt here.
Like, I'm not, this isn't a statistic, but probably setting aside $100 a month puts you in the top 25% of financial freedom.
Like, people just don't do much with their lives.
Now, to make this more digestible, let's reframe skill stacking as failure stacking.
Acquiring a skill puts you in the mindset that you just need to study and learn all day.
Acquiring a failure assumes that you are actively working toward a goal and gaining actual experience.
So, identify a goal in your life, like quitting your job, finding a partner, or getting fit.
Start with what you know.
You can only know what to learn when you hit a roadblock, so hit one fast and pursue your curiosity.
So, let your experience guide you into new paths to experiment with.
All of these will overlap eventually.
Starting in fitness can introduce you to diet models to try, training programs to test, and lifestyle changes to implement.
Once you get to the top 25%, which isn't much in fitness, you can explore new routes.
Maybe you want to start a career in fitness.
So, you start writing on the internet and building an audience like I teach into our writer.
And again, once you get to the top 25% in that, which again isn't much, you can start adding to your results by branching out.
You can study philosophy to add depth to your writing, design to enhance your brand, or really anything as a creator.
And that's why generalists thrive.
And then once you have all of these interests under your belt, and people follow you for you, rather than the one specific skill like a specialist would have, that once you stop talking about it, people just don't follow you.
Once you actually build an audience in that way, or in any way, you can build a product to sell to those people based on any of those interests.
This is what I'm teaching in mental monetization, which is my newest course dropping on June 3rd.
And the reason you're getting into this work is because you don't want to work insanely long hours.
You want leverage, you want a product that sells while you sleep, you want to be able to focus on your craft, your interests, and have something that sustains that by sending the audience that you build to that.
So, if you're interested in that, just check out those products in the description.
The second point is that the most profitable niche is you.
The creator economy, not to be confused with the influencer economy, is characterized by individuals who pursue their interests and document their knowledge.
Nobody wants to follow a glorified search engine that talks about the same thing all the time.
That's not why you log on social media.
Like make it make sense.
Everyone's like, niche down, niche down, niche down, talk about niche topics.
Who do you follow on social media?
Like just have some self awareness.
Self awareness is the greatest business hack.
It's the greatest skill you can learn.
Because if you just pay attention to who you follow on social media and what they talk about, you're going to learn that half the shit you're told on how to actually build your own audience is complete bullshit, because that's not what you actively consume.
You're the most profitable niche.
Pay attention to what you do and replicate that in your actions.
Because the thing here is is that so many people are like, I'm afraid to branch out into new interests, because I feel like nobody will like it or nobody will follow me.
And it's just pay attention to what you like look at online.
Do you just follow one specific interest?
Do the people you follow talk about one specific thing?
I follow someone like Steve Cook, who's a fitness model, but he also golfs and he has a family and he makes con, he likes clothing, like apparel, style, fashion, whatever it's called.
He likes all of these things.
And then you're going to follow him and you're going to be like, oh, he only talks about fitness.
So, I need to only talk about fitness in order to be successful like him.
And then you get put in this box.
That's just not how it works.
People are interested in more than one thing and people can become interested in more than one thing.
If you're persuasive enough, if you understand how to actually build an audience in the first place, like by this point, it's not about just talking about a single skill or interest that's like not good.
It's you don't know how to build an audience at all and you need to study that.
So then the next question here is like, okay, I can build an audience with my interest and my skills, but what do I sell at that point?
And that's where things start to get tricky.
So let's now talk about how to earn a living as a generalist.
Do it all become a writer, designer, marketer, filmmaker, bodybuilder, runner, or whatever your curiosity desires.
The internet gave the individual the power to learn almost anything fast and get results from diverse interests.
You are living through the second renaissance.
The first step to earning a living as a generalist is to choose a career path that doesn't box you in to one specific skill or interest.
In other words, you need to become an entrepreneur, but that alone doesn't cut it.
You can easily get trapped into a singular niche where you can no longer find meaning in your work.
And as mentioned, you are in the second renaissance.
Social media is the new town square.
Creators are the new renaissance men.
Creators are the decentralized education system.
And creators are the new economy.
Stop thinking of a creator as some new internet job.
Think of it as a part of life.
And just a tangent here, you're a creator.
You create things every single day.
Like if you think of creator as content creator, you're doomed.
If you think of creator as just the essence of your being, you're going to win and thrive.
Because you're a creative being, you're a spiritual being, you're a creator, you are a piece of a creator, like think about it.
You already spend most of your day on your phone.
To act like social media isn't ingrained in humanity at this point is foolish.
Being a creator is just expressing your value in the digital world rather than being a slave to it on the sidelines.
You probably follow creators for education and entertainment on different things because they're different from what you've been told.
They're new to you. You feel like you're learning something.
Ideas shape society and it's happening right before your eyes.
Creators are earning an independent income by teaching what they know by pursuing their interests.
They solve problems in their life and sell the solution.
Some sell stylish blue light glasses to help with sleep.
Some sell business advice because college professors probably don't own a business unless they're teaching out of passion and sitting on wads of cash.
So creators are some of the few qualified to teach it.
Some sell productivity systems, psychology practices and meditations.
The thing here is, is that social media is just real life without barriers, like without the barrier of a physical location.
The creator economy cannot get saturated because it's just you displaying your avatar in the public town square.
And if you are yourself and you lean into your unique combination of interests and your personality, pair it with your personality, nobody can replicate that and you will find what to sell within that little community.
As I said, people are selling blue light glasses.
I just bought some off of the creator because they had that brand.
Most people are selling their knowledge because the commoditized product is like those are just becoming more and more natural.
We can order anything on Amazon.
So the only thing left to share is unique systems and processes that come from the life we experience and passing that down by documenting our mind on the internet.
That's what's happening here.
And if you don't see this, it's probably time to unfollow everyone that you follow right now and just start following people based around the interests that you have.
You need to start searching for new pockets of the internet that are creating the society you want to see in the world.
Your attention is going somewhere and you might as well fuel what you believe in because people are like, well, I don't want to unfollow everyone.
Like, do I even have to be on social media?
Do I even have to be on this?
Your attention is going somewhere.
It's probably going to your phone.
It's probably going to social media.
It's definitely for the most people is not going nowhere.
You're not a monk in the woods.
That means you have to balance the way of water and the way of fire.
You need to build, build, build, and you need to rest, rest, rest.
It's not all rest. I could go on and on.
I'll create another video about this sometime.
In short, your attention is on social media.
It's going to continue going more and more digital.
You might as well take advantage of it.
So your attention is going somewhere that you believe in because you want to fuel that thing.
So let's start there. How do we begin to earn a living?
Step one is to build a general audience.
I'm not a fan of building niche or specific audiences.
I am a fan of helping your audience reach a big goal with whatever skills, interests, and ideas help them get there.
Being a creator in this way is literally the definition of a generalist.
You have a goal. That's your brand goal that you're attracting people towards and people are following you because you're leading them towards that.
And then you teach the skills, interests, expertise, experiences, lessons along the way that allow you to achieve that goal.
If you don't understand branding at all, that's what branding is.
You have a brand mission or brand vision or brand goal, all the same thing.
What lifestyle are you leading people towards?
What skills, interests, expertise, stories, lessons, etc.
Do you need to pass down via content and products in order for them to get there?
So before anything else, why build an audience?
Because you need attention and people if you want to make an independent income.
You can no longer rely on your boss to generate attention with the marketing department that sells their product.
You have to do it all yourself.
Building an audience is the most accessible way for beginners to start with this.
You don't have tons of capital to invest in whatever business you want.
You're starting from zero.
You're starting with writing, aka to our writer, link in the description.
To make this simple, choose a big goal.
Is it financial freedom?
Is it a fit body? Is it self actualization?
The purpose of a value creator, someone focused on value and education rather than entertainment and looks is to help people improve their mind, body, business and relationships.
Two is list out your skills, interests and beliefs.
What do people need to know in order to reach that goal?
The combination of these is what makes you unique.
Three is frame everything you write through the lens of achieving that goal.
If you want to talk about basket weaving for some reason, do it, but talk about how it benefits your life as a fun hobby that helps with creativity and mental clarity.
So let's say the goal I'm helping people achieve is financial freedom.
I talk about creativity, psychology, writing and human potential to help people get there.
Someone else can choose something completely different like performance slash health, budgeting and spirituality.
Both have the same big goal that everyone wants, which is financial freedom, but with completely different ways of getting there.
The biggest problems with creators is that they either don't choose a goal that people want or have a goal to frame their content or they choose a goal that's so small that they attract a small audience.
So the bigger your goal, the bigger your audience potential is and the more diverse the skills and interests you talk about to get there can be.
Therefore, the more unique you can be.
So step two is to make noise and find signal.
Most creators struggle to start writing because they just don't know what to write about.
First, just start writing.
Nobody is watching when you have zero followers.
Two, if your friends follow you, good.
Maybe it's finally time for them to learn who you really are and potentially join you.
And if they don't like it, maybe they don't really care about you and you should find that out now instead of later.
Third, write about all of your interests.
Make a lot of noise and let your audience decide what they want to hear more of from you.
A few poorly performing posts aren't the end of the world, it's data.
And of course, posting good content is only one aspect of social growth.
It's honestly not that big of a part of it.
80% of your social growth comes from actually growing on social media, a growth strategy, understanding the skill of social media.
So if you want to learn that, go watch the video, How to Build an Audience on Social Media, even with zero followers or the only way to build an audience, one of those, there's two videos watching both.
The next question people ask is how do I write?
First, make a list of content ideas based on your interests.
Second, focus on the how and why.
Third, write out the post.
And fourth, filter it through your big goal.
So let's say I'm writing about psychology.
Some topics include, how do I manage my emotions, create a list of steps?
Why should I manage my emotions, think of compelling reasons from experience, then frame it through a big goal like financial freedom and you have a post.
How to manage your emotions, become aware of negative reactions, pause before you act on them, stay quiet or make a better decision.
When you repeat this process, you reprogram your mind to be less negative.
Life, money and relationships will flow with ease.
All it takes is a small mention of your big goal to make that post impactful and make it desirable to another person enough to follow you.
It's not that you're just being like, Hey, we're achieving this goal together.
Yeah, like this is my content.
It's like you just write good content that people want to read.
You don't need to be like, Oh, we're going to reach this goal, or you don't need to make the goal apparent.
People imply that because they're just interested in the content, just write the content.
So why are we focused on illustrating the why or the importance of the idea?
Because people whine a lot and experiment very little.
Because people tell me they're like, Dan, how do I talk about my interests if nobody is interested in them?
That's not their fault.
It's yours. They're not interested in your interest because you're not making them interested.
If you became interested in them, that means there's a series of thoughts and ideas that can make it important to someone else.
You weren't born with that interest.
You were programmed into it.
You were persuaded of its importance and adopted it to help you achieve your goals in life.
So you talk about the why of the idea.
That's what makes all content good is the why.
Now the third step to earning a living as a generalist is establish authority with a digital asset.
At this point, you're writing quite a few posts, you should review their performance every week to see which ideas did better than others.
And it should be obvious which ones they are.
You can either look for better writing or more engagement.
So if you read over a post of yours and you're like, I really liked how I wrote this idea, save that for later.
If it just got a lot of engagement, then just save that for later as well.
From those ideas, you want to make the most of those ideas.
Turn them into longer form content like a thread, carousel, newsletter, or video.
Rewrite that post from multiple angles to consistently get more engagement.
Bake that topic into your writing routine and make it a part of your brand.
If that topic continues to do well for you, establish a piece of your authority in that topic by creating a digital asset.
Create a free product. Pin a thread or carousel to your profile.
Write it down as a potential starting point for a digital product.
This is what we do in my newest product, mental monetization, to monetize your creative work.
It launches on June 3rd and that's also when the early bird price goes up.
So why do we do this? So you don't feel like you have to keep repeating yourself and box yourself into a niche.
A free product will contain almost everything that you know about the topic, right?
So when you actually create a free product that has all of the information based on a skill or interest, then you don't really need to talk about it as much anymore.
And you can start to incorporate more of your interest because you can just lead people to the free product now.
Same thing with a digital product.
Once you have something out there, like if I'm a fitness guy and I have a nutrition program out there, I don't really have to talk about nutrition that much anymore.
I can just bake it in here and there so that people become more interested in the product or the free guide so they can download it, learn everything from it, and then they have all of that information from me.
Now, step four is to build a portfolio of income sources.
As a generalist, we can look to a few people for inspiration.
The first is Zubi on Twitter.
Zubi is a rapper, a fitness buff, a political commentator, and he once broke the women's world record deadlift by identifying as a woman.
That's what had Joe Rogan pick him up and that's what got him kickstart.
With a rather general audience, he promotes his music, fitness e-book, and public speaking gigs.
He isn't boxed into one specific topic and that's what allows him to stand out.
And I'd like to think of myself as another example.
Even though I started out in web design, that didn't stop me from talking about self-improvement, spirituality, emotional management, productivity, all of these different things.
It didn't stop me from building more products like a physical planner and self-help e-book, the path to power that was complete shit, but allowed me to get better and eventually write and publish a full book.
As my audience grew, thanks to attracting people with big goals and people that just want more out of life, I was able to pivot out of web design into writing, marketing consulting, productivity, and branding.
So I did all of these different things throughout my life.
And I wouldn't even say that those things were my interests.
They were just the things that I did and I positioned them in a way that almost anyone with that big goal could benefit from.
With web design, I wasn't just teaching freelancing, even though freelancing is applicable to almost anyone that I attract to my audience if I can persuade them of it.
It's like, hey, you work a job, do you want to freelance?
Here it is. That's pretty enticing in and of itself.
You can frame and position almost anything that you talk about, any interests or skill towards a beginner level audience to help them understand the importance of it and how it can benefit their life.
So in brief, launch products based around the topics that do well for you and become a stable part of your brand.
Monetize with courses, cohorts, templates, systems, tutorials, or whatever else will help people achieve a smaller goal that helps them get a few steps closer to the big goal.
Every three to six months, launch at least one free product and one paid product until you have a brand and business you are satisfied with.
Once you have cash flow, then you can consider building a product that requires capital and a large audience of people to sell.
I personally wasn't raised in a wealthy family.
I was raised in a middle class family, which is better than most or a lot of people.
But I never had capital to invest in except for when my dad paid me and then I lost it all and I didn't see any success with that business anyway.
So that didn't even matter.
Everything that I've done to this day has been self-funded or just done with close to zero dollars or earning a few bucks at my part-time job and then a little bit from my full-time job and being able to invest in things that honestly aren't that expensive like technology and software to build my business like design software or email marketing software.
But I had to create my own substantial income source to invest in things like my software startup or publishing a book, but that's how you earn a living as a generalist in a world-going digital.
Thank you for watching and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
Check out the link in the description for free products, free courses, paid courses, other stuff, cortex, go down there.
Do it all. Bye.
