Abu Lahya argues the biggest online earners are middlemen who connect buyers and sellers for commission. He points to the IMA community, where over a thousand students earn six figures using this model, and cites Airbnb taking a dollar for every $1,500 spent globally as proof that owning the asset doesn't matter.
Chapters
Everybody I know that makes good money online is either a closer or a setter, which is your middleman in the business. And the pros page, you just close them and you do one thing in the business, connect people, take a cut. That's exactly what you do. IMA, over 1,000 students, myself included, all the coaches, hundreds of people that make six figures, middleman business, connect influencers, brands, take a cut. People who do like the whole backend, the marketing, et cetera, again, middleman, you're just doing a thing for the service, taking a cut. It's always the same thing. And now it's the same thing about the biggest businesses. Uber, they don't own the cars. All they own is a middleman platform. Amazon, Airbnb. You know what's crazy? I saw data, it's ridiculous. For every $1,500 that's spent on the planet, a dollar goes to Airbnb. That's the level of, of, of like domination they've got. You realize like every dollar out of $1,500 goes to Airbnb. How insane is that? And again, middleman business. So the benefit of middleman is you don't need crazy capital to start. You're able to find someone who already has something going for them and then just offer them a solution so it makes sense from both sides. You know what is even the biggest advantage? Is that you don't have— you know why most people fail in business and don't make money? Is because they try to make something work, and there's a risk of that not working because they're trying with no experience. So like, they never had a business before and they're trying to do something. So you have no experience on how to run a business, you're gonna somehow spawn an idea and then try and make it work and hope for the best. Like, what's your real chance of success here? It's pretty low. But if you're a middleman, you position yourself in a thing that's already working. You don't try and be arrogant and say, I know everything, I'm going to start everything and hope I can do everything. You don't have no experience, no capital to start, whatever it may be. You're like, no, I just want to make money. Let me see where people make money and position myself somewhere in the system and I can get some of that money as well. That's all it is.
