Do what you love, but study psychology, human behavior, and the internet so you don't become a starving artist.
I was lied to as a child, and I feel like you were too, because I remember sitting in my dad's apartment after my parents got a divorce, staring at an old laptop screen with Arizona State University's website open, with me sitting there wondering and deciding what I was going to do for the rest of my life in terms of what I was going to study, and where that would lead in my
future, and what job opportunities would be available to me.
At the age of 18, I was faced with a near impossible decision to make.
I was forced to know what I wanted out of life without having ever lived my own life.
I was forced to choose a starting point for the career that I was going to spend the next 40 plus years of my life in, and I was encouraged, if not forced, to choose something to study that would set me up for the future, or else I would pay the consequences, literally, with a pile of student loans that I could only be able to pay back if I chose a career path that allowed me
to make a lot of money. So you're set up to fail from the start, where you have to be motivated by money unless you have scholarships or other things to pay for your schooling.
But even then, I had nearly a full right scholarship, and just from living expenses and other things that weren't covered by that without working a part-time job or going further than that, I still racked up $20,000 of student loans.
For most people, they choose the career that will make them the most money, but that's a lie.
For others, they choose the career that people will respect them for, but that's a lie.
For the rest, they choose the career that they think they will enjoy the most, but again, that's a lie.
You were sold in illusion by parents and teachers who were sold in illusion.
Their degrees, or lack thereof, had little to no impact on their income, status, or enjoyment.
A degree may have opened opportunities, but ultimately, it was their personal choices that led to a higher income, status, or level of enjoyment.
There are plenty of rich dropouts and broke graduates.
What I'm saying here is that a degree means absolutely nothing if you have the personal responsibility, work ethic, and thirst for personal development and skill acquisition.
So in other words, the people that are tempted to go to college are the naive 18-year-olds who haven't even had a chance to do those things or prove anything to themselves.
So in this day and age, people are starting to wake up to the fact that the conventional path is not the smartest move for sensible people.
And as Alan Watts would say, sensible people get paid for doing what they enjoy doing.
Now, if you're watching this video, I'm assuming you are a creative at heart.
You have interests that you want to monetize or that you want to do for a living.
You have skills that you know have a higher value than what you're being paid for or what the average person in the career that you're going after is being paid for.
You're not dumb and you can see the opportunity that lies in front of you on the internet because you follow the people that are doing it every single day.
You follow the creators that decided to actually take a leap and take responsibility for their lives and pass down what they learn to do what they enjoy.
But the thing here is that you don't care about making billions.
You care about making more than enough money to do whatever you want.
You don't care about the hustle and grind of the typical entrepreneur.
You care about rest, free time, and meaningful work.
But you were lied to. You went to school, got a job, and realized a few things.
You don't know how to monetize your passions, interests, or skills outside of a job.
In other words, you don't understand that making money is a stack of skills like any other you've learned, but you banked on your employer to feed you with those skills.
You learn the skills that would make you the most money, but realize that you have a hard limit on your earning potential that your employer sets for you.
How much you earn depends on the vessel you choose for that skill, and a job usually isn't the best long-term vessel.
Third, you are trading time for money when technology will eventually make those tasks more efficient.
What you do for work will be less valuable in the future, and you'll either take a massive pay cut or get fired.
Technology lowers the cost of replicable tasks so we can focus on solving creative and human problems.
Another way to frame that is that the repetitive work that you're doing right now isn't going to be worth what you're being paid for right now.
That's just how evolution goes.
And if you are performing a repetitive string of tasks that eventually a robot can monetize, it's just a matter of time before they actually do, and then you're paid nothing.
It's not that you're going to be paid less for those tasks.
It's that you're going to be paid nothing because the robot can do it at a more affordable rate because they know that having employees in overhead in the back of their mind is a problem that they need to solve, and society has been solving the problem of labor work since the dawn of time.
So that's what I'm here to help you change in this video.
I'm here to hopefully give you a sense of control over your career and life.
I want to prove to you that it's possible to make $1 million as one person, as a creator, with simple logic and math because the first step to action or even seeing the opportunity is belief.
I also want to show you what to focus on so you don't get trapped in a new 9-to-5 called client work because a lot of people go into this wanting to be freelancers or agency owners just to realize that that's not what they wanted at all because now they just have a new boss.
They actually have 5, 10, 20, however many clients they have.
That's how many bosses they have.
I want to give you full control over how much you work, how much you make, and the fulfillment you derive from both.
Now the first thing that we need to talk about for this is first the definition of what a creative is, and second, leveraged work.
If the work doesn't require creativity, delegate it, automate it, or leave it.
That is a quote from Naval Ravikant who has began to shape my worldview yet again as I've dove back into his content and his insights revolving around leverage and just work in general.
A creative is not someone with a specific skill that a robot will out-price and out-compete.
A creative is not a designer, filmmaker, painter, writer, photographer, or any specific limiting identity.
A creative is someone who engages with the process of life reflected in their work.
A creative is someone who solves problems with whatever combination of skill, knowledge, experience, and inspiration necessary in the pursuit of a goal, usually in the form of a project.
If you work a job that you hate as something like a designer, then I would argue that you are not a true creative.
Even if your job title and identity say you are because you're a designer, so you would think, oh, I'm just creative because I'm a designer.
The thing here is, is that creativity or being a creator is about creating solutions to problems.
And if you can't identify the job that you hate as a problem that is solved with a creative solution, then you are not a creative.
You don't block out time.
You've grown too comfortable in the routine that you're in, and your mind is too comfortable, and it doesn't want to break out and at least dedicate one hour a day to high-leverage work that will solve the problem of a job that you hate.
So you can actually do the creative work that you want to do.
You aren't creative enough to realize that life is a series of problems that need solving in order for your mind to expand and for you to evolve.
A creative and a creator are those that take control of their future by solving all of the problems standing in the way of their vision for that future.
Now, I want to make this very clear as I do whenever I talk about jobs is that I am not against jobs by any means.
I see them for what they are, and they are a stepping stone.
A job is useful for acquiring skills and industry knowledge, but it can also harm one's psyche and breed complacency.
In a job, it's almost guaranteed that you get to the point where you stop solving new problems.
You get stuck solving the same problems over and over again.
And these are problems that you didn't choose to solve in the first place.
They were problems that were assigned to you because the goal that allowed the problem to exist was assigned to you by your employer or your client.
So you get bored and you start wasting your time, but by this point, you have so many responsibilities in life and such a crystallized identity that your survival depends on those repetitive, boring problems that you're stuck solving every single day in your job.
You have these bad habits that keep you low energy and narrow-minded and stressed.
So your ability to actually identify and solve those new problems, like blocking out work to actually do what you want in life, those don't even register to you unless someone makes you aware of them, which is why I'm actually talking about this right now.
Life is an endless string of problems.
Problems are the polar end of purpose.
One does not exist without the other.
When you stop solving new problems, your mind stops expanding.
With each problem you solve, you reach a new level of mind because you have to zoom out into the unknown, collect resources, and use the creative ability of your mind to reach the next stage.
This is actually a key lesson in my book, The Art of Focus.
That's what I would say is a principle in every single chapter of that book.
In other words, a job or just your comfort zone in general can be the early death of the best version of yourself.
And I wouldn't even say it's an early death.
It's a slow and painful decline into chaos if you understand what entropy is, especially psychic entropy.
So if you don't have a continuously evolving hierarchy of goals that you choose, self-generated goals that you can continue pursuing, eventually you get trapped in your comfort zone and you think you're just chilling there.
You think you're just, you're comfortable there and that you don't have to continue progressing or that you're stagnant.
You think you're just standing still when that's not true at all.
You're declining, you're decaying, and your mind starts to get flooded with feelings of feeling lost and overwhelmed and anxious and bored and all of these other things to the point where you're so stressed and your mind is so narrow that you can't zoom out to see the new path that you should take to bring fulfillment back to your life.
And I prefer it that you don't get to that point.
A creative is someone whose goal is leveraged work that is identifying the work that leads to the most results with the least effort.
And for most people, the results that you're looking for that this leveraged work leads to is more money, more time, and more fulfillment.
So here are the steps to reaching all of them.
So now we get to get into the good stuff of talking about the million-dollar creator.
If you don't want to do something, but you have to do it in order to do what you want, then you want to do it.
I always believe that passion was found in a specific skill.
I tried to find that passion in web design, digital art, programming, and a few others, but every time I was left feeling empty.
It wasn't until I decided to take control of my life, get clear on what I wanted for my future, and start pursuing that relentlessly that I figured out what a creator actually is.
Passion is found in the process of creating your vision.
You can enjoy a skill that you use along the way to help you create that vision, but if you become attached to or make an identity out of that skill, that's how you get trapped.
You aren't passionate about being a designer.
You're passionate about the problem's design allows you to solve until your life and work limit what problems you solve.
Passion is investing energy into a goal.
You can be passionate about the journey of mastering a skill, but once you've mastered it, that passion fades.
You must keep that passion alive by channeling energy into the skills, goals, and projects that will achieve your vision.
Your vision is an infinite bank for energy storage.
Your vision is the large goal in your life, and if passion is investing energy into a goal, you can invest as much energy as you want into your vision if you want to live a very passionate life.
Now, to loop back to the start of this section where I said if you don't want to do something, but you need to do it in order to get what you want, then you want to do it.
That's the same thing here.
This may all sound like butterflies and roses or whatever that saying is, where if you want to build a $1 million one person business, people have done it.
It's possible. You don't need to project your limiting beliefs on me about how people can't do it or how it's only special.
You have an internet, you have a keyboard, you have a brain.
If you have those three things, then hopefully you can improve them all or the skill associated with all in order to do this.
But you have to understand, and this is where most starving artists go wrong, is that you're going to have to learn skills that you think you don't want to learn.
You're going to have to do things you think you don't want to do.
But the only reason you don't want to do them is because you're not aligning it with your vision for the future.
And if you don't have a vision, then why are you doing this?
You've been assigned a goal of like, oh, I need to make money for survival.
So I'm going to start this potential business opportunity that says, oh, Dan says I can make a million dollars when one, I'm not saying that, it's completely up to you.
You do what you want. It's going to take a few years.
Many people are watching this video for the wrong reasons and I hate to break it to you unless you wake up.
It's not going to work. So the first step of the million dollar creator is to choose a vision, not a skill.
If you don't have a vision, you are lost.
You can't create outcomes.
So you are doomed to mechanical living and determined outcomes.
Every decision you make in any domain of your life must be filtered through your vision.
That is how you bring meaning to your actions and minimize distractions.
Write down exactly what you want out of life.
Don't miss a detail, but realize that this is an iterative process.
You won't get this right the first time around and you probably never will.
This is like a project that you build infinitely, that you iterate on infinitely.
You continue adding to it, refining it, subtracting, changing the features, etc, etc.
A vision is your life's project, personified.
I don't think personified was the right word to use there, but I think you get the point.
Step number two of the one million dollar creator is to stack the future proof skills.
Now I created a video on this called the future proof skill stack.
I would encourage that you watch that.
I really enjoyed filming that episode.
I love talking about this, but that one goes over it in more depth.
You're worried about what career skills to learn that will be relevant in 20 years because you are focused on the viability of the skill, not the vision.
So if you want to secure your future, then you absolutely need a foundational skill stack.
First is marketing and sales, because if you don't know how to attract and persuade, you will never get what you want, and your only option will be for an employer or the government to give it to you.
The second is writing and thinking, the ability to communicate the value in your unique mind, and it's also the foundation of getting in front of other people.
The third is entrepreneurship, which is the process of taking your future into your own hands, hunting for your survival, and building products that you want to see in the world that others care about.
Now, when you pair this foundational skill stack with the interests and skills that you have to learn, as you are creating your vision, you become unstoppable.
And I teach the basics of these skills in my free mini course, just on the one person business.
First link in the description if you want to go through that.
Now, step three of the $1 million creator is to solve problems with experimentation, because self experimentation is the only way to solve your problems for good.
Self experimentation is the only way to create a unique solution that others can benefit from.
In other words, it's the only way to create unique value that other people want to pay you for that nobody can replicate.
So your job is to research processes that others have found success with.
Thankfully, you can do this with a simple search.
Second is experiment with various techniques, so implement the processes you learn and attempt to get results.
Third is identify patterns and principles.
Note the similarities between each and double down on them.
Fourth is create your own process.
So tailor what you learn to your unique lifestyle and situation.
Fifth is contribute to true education by passing it down.
Give people education that can't be taught in schools with a fundamental grounding and critical thinking.
Now, that last part is rather important.
You may think, oh, Dan's just getting at being a creator here.
Well, obviously, that's what this video is about.
But you don't understand the full life cycle of knowledge and how it's created.
And passing it down to other people in the form of education or writing or content or media in general, that's how you get feedback and you refine it and you identify gaps in your knowledge so that you can learn more.
So if you aren't actively conversing, educating or teaching other people, your knowledge has gaps in it and you aren't as smart as you think you are.
And you aren't taking the full cycle and you are in essence being selfish by not using knowledge for what it is meant to be used for, which is to give to other people and to receive from other people so that you can survive as a species.
Step four to the $1 million creator is to become a value creator because today's vessel for beginning creatives is to become a creator, not an influencer, a creator, a value creator, to be exact.
And I have a video, I have two videos on this, both called the value creator.
A value creator is someone who becomes a fountainhead of value based on the interests you love by making them interesting to other people.
You are to become the source of your interest to attract an audience to them.
You do this through education, so you teach your interests in a way that helps people achieve a goal towards your vision.
Entertainment, so throwing a dash of personality to attract people like you, the people you can help the most because you are the niche as we talked about in the last video and in previous videos.
And then inspiration, so show people what you've built so they can see what's possible.
Social media is not just an app on your phone.
It's the town square of the new digital society.
Yes, many people scroll on social media to numb their mind and distract themselves from the responsibilities in their life, but a select few people, and I'm assuming you are using social media as a way to educate yourself, increase your value, identify new opportunities that are being created every single day because as we talked about at the very beginning of this,
schooling and the conventional routes in life don't lead to many good opportunities and those opportunities are very limited.
So, as technology advances and new jobs are created by the technology and the creators, social media is the only place to actually find those opportunities.
Value creators are those who dedicate themselves to their interests, take it on as their life's work to explore them and distill the information into education.
This is the style of one person business that I teach.
Creating social media content to become a one person media company to build distribution under your name because in business, distribution equals freedom.
In audience, equals distribution.
So hammer this into your head.
You will not make money that you control if you don't have people who give you money for the value you offer in the form of a product.
If you never realize this, you have no other option, but to work a job where your employer does this for you for the rest of your life.
Step number five to the $1 million creator is to monetize your mind, not your time because value creators are those who monetize their minds, not their time.
So they can remain one person without limiting their income.
One person's labor can't scale, but the creative ability of their minds can.
Second is they research their obsessions and distill their learning with writing, video and other internet content.
Third is they get paid for aggregated knowledge and experience in the form of digital products or physical products once you have the cash flow necessary to sustain that, but everyone should have a digital product that replaces their income and covers their living expenses.
And that's what I teach you how to do in my latest course that is coming out on June 3rd.
The price increases on that date, so you can pre-order it now.
It's called mental monetization and it's how you monetize your creative work with the highest form of leverage called a digital product because all you need is knowledge.
You don't need any time or extra fulfillment on those things.
You don't need a fulfillment center.
You don't need physical products.
You need to build cash flow before you go and invest in whatever business you dream of building.
With digital products in general, you build it once and sell it as many times as you want or as many times as your skill allows.
Now, step number six of the $1 million creator is turning it into $1 million.
So your levers as a value creator are one, writing, so attracting an audience of people by educating them on how your interests can help them achieve their goals.
The writing can be repurposed into posts, a newsletter, a YouTube script, and literally any other kind of content.
Start with writing. If you need help, do it to our writer.
The second is promotion.
You won't make money if you don't promote your product.
Promote your email list on social media.
Promote your products on your email list.
The third is iteration.
Pay attention to the writing and promotions that do better than others.
Improve them as you go to increase the effectiveness of them.
These are literally the only things that you have to do in order to reach $1 million as one person.
Now, of course, there are tactics and strategies that will help you do those things better.
And there are skills that you need to learn along the way.
But those are the main things that you need to do.
Why? Because, one, you have a product that sells.
Two, you have an audience that's growing.
If you can continue growing the audience and selling the product, how much you earn is really up to you.
It's just simple math. If you can make $1, you can make $1 million.
If you can gain one follower, you can gain $1 million.
The only trap here is forgetting that you are creative.
If your audience stops growing, that's a problem.
Solve it. If your product stops selling, that's a problem.
Solve it. If you don't know how to solve it, that's a skill issue.
Now, step number seven is the importance of rest in this situation.
Because you can't identify new problems with a narrow mind.
Work contracts the mind.
Rest expands the mind. And at rest, your brain kicks on what's called the default mode network.
We don't need to get into the actual technicalities of what this is.
But in a nutshell, your brain is as active, if not more active, when you are at rest than when you are at work.
And when you are at rest, what this does is it connects ideas and it spits them into your conscious mind.
So, when you've had a shower thought or ideas just keep coming to you over and over again and you're like, where are these ideas coming from?
That's the DMN. So, if you want to consistently have the good ideas that lead to the highest leverage work and finding and identifying the problems that lead to that, then you need to rest.
We're going to be talking about this more next week when I break down how you can get more work done in one hour than most people can and how nobody has 12 hours a day to start.
You have to start with one hour and you can drastically change your life in 365 hours.
So, schedule walks in between work blocks.
Go to the gym, block out reading time.
Go to dinner with your friends and just do anything that isn't work, especially thinking about work.
That's the hardest part.
Step number eight is to fuck being busy.
If the work doesn't move the needle towards your vision, stop doing it.
This is incredibly important.
All you want right now, I'm assuming, because you clicked on this video, is like, give me the steps to make a million.
I don't think you realize that I am because so far we've gone over maybe two, three points that are directly related to making money, but you don't understand what making money is and the skills mindset believes habits associated with that.
So this point of fuck being busy and not doing the work that doesn't move the needle is incredibly important because I would argue that 90% of your work right now isn't moving the needle or else you would be successful.
Therefore, stop almost everything that you're doing because busy work is yet another distraction that people love to fall for.
Yes, work can be a distraction, a very massive distraction.
Your psyche is wired to hunt.
So as Naval would say, work like a lion or in my words, use tactical stress.
I talked about this in my productivity framework, one of those that I use to build my startup or something.
Sit, let vision accumulate, wait until you see the prey, sprint, get the work done, eat, enjoy life and rest.
This goes against everything that we've been conditioned to believe.
It will take time to accept that this is how creatives work.
Being boxed in a tidy 9-to-5 schedule is a living hell for creatives and entrepreneurs at heart.
That is it for this video.
Thank you for watching.
For resources for creators or one person business owners or solopreneurs or just people looking to get started, check out the free products at the top of the description.
You can also check out the paid products in the middle and then check out the rest of my content at the bottom.
Thank you for watching.
I hope you enjoyed this one.
Let me know what you think of the wide-angle lens and I thought it was pretty cool.
It was time for a change.
Thanks for watching. Bye.
