How I'd Make Money with Claude AI in 2026 (If I Had to Start Over)

This is the first moment in history where one person and a laptop can outearn an entire company. We might have AI that is smarter than any human by the end of this year. This could be very significant productivity in the economy. AI is the biggest technical thing ever in my lifetime. I mean, it is so profound. You've got the smartest business partner ever built, ready to work all day for about $20 a month, and you haven't even opened it yet. People who actually use Claude are finishing complex college-level work around 12 times faster than the ones grinding through it all by themselves. And the people winning right now are starting with less than what you have today. The only thing that's in your way is the decision to begin. Let me tell you about a guy named Peter Levels. Back in 2014, he was in his late 20s, bouncing around the world with barely any money coming in, watching his savings shrink every single month.. He didn't have a degree. He didn't have a rich uncle. He didn't have a safety net. He was just a scared guy who was running outta cash. So he made a wild promise to himself. I love this. 12 startups in 12 months, one brand new product every month, whether he is ready or not. And most of them flopped completely. Then one hit, it was called Nomad List. It was a site, uh, for people who travel and work online. It grew to millions of visitors. Then he created Remote OK, and that became one of the biggest remote job boards on the planet. And then in February 2023, he built a little tool that was called Photo AI. And here you upload a few of your selfies and it creates professional photos of you using AI. Its first week it made about $5,000. 18 months later it was pulling in more than $130,000 every single month. And the best part is this: Peter had no employees, he had no office, he had no investors, he had no team. It was him, a laptop, and AI doing most of the heavy lifting. One person, more than 40 products, over $200,000 a month. He started before he felt ready. He was broken, scared, and the work turned him into the guy who could win. Okay, now you might be thinking, okay, Evan, that's great for him, but he's a coder. I'm not technical. I don't even know where to start. And honestly, I'm worried that AI is going to replace me in my job or my business before I even make a dollar from it. And I understand. This year, Claude is the coder. The skill that matters most is actually spotting the problem and just pointing Claude at it. You find someone that is hurting enough to pay to make that problem go away, and Claude helps you handle the bill. What leaves people behind is just waiting to feel ready, and ready is not real. So you don't need to wait for permission, you don't need to wait to feel ready. We just need to start one tiny step. The opportunity in front of you is bigger than any skill gap you think you have, and I'm going to show you exactly how to grab it. If you've been here before, drop a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time. Believe. Nobody wants AI, they want their problem gone. Okay, so here's the first thing that we're, we want to burn into our brain. People do not pay for AI. They pay to make a painful, expensive problem disappear. A business owner that's bleeding customers at 11:00 PM when nobody's there to answer the phone or emails just wants that to stop. A realtor who's stuck writing listings for 3 hours wants those 3 hours back. So your job is to find that kind of problem and then kill it with Claude. The best place to look is your own pain. I think your purpose comes from your pain. So the stuff that frustrated you in your old job, the headaches in your own life, those are the exact problems that other people will pay you to take away for them. So you already know where it hurts. So that's where you start. And let's talk about just giving yourself permission. It's okay to want the money. Your mission comes first, but if money is sitting at number 100 on your list, you'll always be doing part-time things nights and weekends forever. So keep money in your top 5 and then get specific. So we're not helping small businesses, pick dentists, pick plumbers, pick real estate agents in one city, find the single task they hate, the one that eats their week up, and then point Claude straight at it. So I teach my team a simple filter, eliminate Automate, delegate. The job a busy owner would kill to get off their plate is the one that you get paid to take out. And when you reach out, never lead with the word AI. Say, I'll handle your follow-up emails so you stop losing leads. Or say, I'll give you back 10 hours of your week. That's what a busy person, a busy entrepreneur, they pull out their credit card for. So get this right. And 5 people with the same problem and a credit card is enough to start a real business. If you can solve a real problem, then you must go offer it. Somebody out there is stuck tonight on the exact thing that you could fix tomorrow with Claude sitting right next to you. Sell a service before you build a startup. Now for the fastest way to put money in your pocket this week. Sell a service where Claude does the heavy lifting and you keep the money. The biggest, most boring goldmine right now is automating the busywork that drowns every small business. Think about what an owner does over and over again. Chasing down leads, answering the same customer questions,, writing their weekly reports and emails, newsletters, onboarding every new client by hand. It eats the hours they should be spending actually running the business. So you build a cloud-powered system that takes one of those jobs off their plate completely, then charge them to set it up plus a monthly fee to keep it running. And the demand is exploding. According to Fiverr's business trends data, searches from companies looking for freelancers who can build AI agents and automation jumped more than 18,000% in a single year. Businesses are hunting for someone to do exactly this, and most have no idea where to start. That someone can be you. And here's the beautiful part. You never touch the code. You sit with the owner for an hour, you find the one task that wastes their week the most, and you map out exactly how it gets done step by step. Understand their process. You hand that to Claude and it builds a system that runs it. You test it, you fix what doesn't quite work, and you hand them back hours of their life. To them, you're the person who gave them their time back, and that is worth real money. To you. Being leads to doing. The moment you start showing up as a person who solved this, you start becoming that person too. Okay, so how much can you make? A setup like this runs anywhere from a couple thousand dollars plus a monthly retainer to keep it humming, and one client can replace a whole paycheck. So pick one painful repetitive task that businesses in your niche all hate. Write one simple message and send it to 20 local businesses this week. Say, I'll answer your customers the second they reach out, day or night, so you never lose another sale. That's a message a busy owner actually pays for. The tools are free. Or they're close to it, $20 a month. The only thing between you and your first client is a message that you have not sent yet. Build the thing in a weekend, not a year. So once you got a little cash and you know what people need, then you start to really build. And this is where like this year gets unfair in your favor. Building software used to take a team of engineers 6 months to 6 years to create. Now you describe what you want in plain English and Claude writes the code with you. They call it vibe coding and it's how a lot of new software is getting built right now. Here's how you can do it without a computer science degree. So you open Claude, you describe the thing you want in plain English, plain words, like you're explaining it to, you know, a smart friend of yours. Claude writes the actual code and hands you back a working version that you can click through and try around in a couple minutes, long before you put any real time or money into this thing. And when you're ready for the real thing, the version that runs a business, you can point Claude code at your project and it builds, tests, and fixes the files for you. You test it, you tell it what's broken,, and it keeps patching and improving it. You keep going until it works. Then you connect simple services for signups and payments. So you don't need an engineering team. You don't need a 6-month to 6-year timeline, just you and Claude. And it does not have to be the next big app. Most of the money is in the small, boring tools, um, booking system for local gym, a dashboard that pulls, uh, contractors' numbers onto one screen, uh, a little automation that saves a busy office an hour a day. Unglamorous problems that people will gladly pay to make disappear. Okay, now this is really important because this is where a lot of people are tempted to quit because your first version is gonna be, it's gonna be pretty rough. It's gonna be pretty bad, right? Expect to suck at the beginning. It's supposed to. Ship it anyway. Remember Peter? He shipped PhotoAI rough and started charging in week 1, then made it better while people were already paying. A boring tool making a little money beats your perfect app that lives in your head forever and never gets out into the world. The person who ships something ugly this weekend ends up miles ahead of the genius still planning their next step next year. A paper airplane isn't supposed to break the sound barrier either, right? But doing the impossible That's exactly what you are here to do. So give yourself one weekend, pick the smallest version of your idea, the one thing it absolutely has to do, and build only that with Claude. Charge for it before it's pretty. You can always make it better once real people are paying you. Also, if you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways, and helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just click the link in description below to go grab it, and I'll see you there. Turn what you know into something that sells while you sleep. Okay. Okay, so not everybody wants to run a service or build an app, and that's fine because there's a third door, and it might be the simplest one. You package what you know into small digital products and sell them over and over. So don't worry about the 200-page book that takes 40 hours and barely sells. What we're here to do is make tight, useful tools people can buy and apply in 5 minutes. So big one right now is called Prompt Packs. These are collections of proven instructions that get Claude to do a specific job really well, like, uh, writing sales emails for a dentist or Planning a month of content for a coach. Makers sell these for around $17, and because it costs you nothing to make another copy, you keep 95% of every sale. You can go bigger too. A focus mini course that solves one specific problem sells for $47, and you can record it in an afternoon. Claude can even translate your product into other languages in minutes, so you can sell the same thing to people all over the world without learning a single new word. So you can put it up in a simple online store and you're open for business. And prompt packs are just a start. You can sell templates that do someone's boring setup for them, a planning system that runs their whole week, a swipe file of messages that actually get replies, a checklist that turns a 3-hour job into 20 minutes. Anything you had to figure out, you, the hard way, you can hand to someone else for a small price. And the magic is you build it once and then you sell it thousands of times. It keeps selling while you sleep on a Saturday, on vacation at 3 in the morning. You do the work one time and Claude helps you make it in an afternoon instead of a month. So think about what you already know that other people are struggling with right now. The things that your friends always ask you for your help with, the skill that you might take for granted, that knowledge is worth real money. And now you finally have the tools to package it and sell it while you are sleeping. You're not too late and you're not too small. You know what the best time to start was? Years ago. Okay. The second best time. Right now. Your first 10 customers are closer than you think. Now the next worry creeps in. Okay, this sounds good, but how do I get customers when nobody knows who I am? The answer is smaller than you think. You need 10 people. Remember Peter? He had no audience when he started. He built in public, shared what he was making out loud, and every win and every flop, and people followed along and bought from him because they trusted the journey. You can do the same thing for free starting today. Pick one place where your people are already hanging out— a Facebook group for local business owners, LinkedIn, a forum about your topic. Show up, be useful, answer questions, share what you learned building your thing, post a before and after of a problem that you solved. Once a day, find someone asking about the exact problem you solve and give them a genuinely useful answer without a pitch connected to it. Spend 2 weeks doing that and stop being a stranger to this community. You start becoming the person that think has all the answers. And here's a framework that I teach our Mover Makers clients. Make a Money 50 list. That's the 50 people who, if they knew you, liked you, trust you, could send you real business this year. Don't ask them for coffee or pick their brain. Bring them real value first. Feature them, share their story, solve one small problem for them for free. You can open a simple spreadsheet, write down 50 names, and every week pick a few and actually do it. By the time they need what you sell, you're the obvious person that they wanna call. You're building real relationships with 50 people who can change your whole year. So go direct, email 20 local businesses this week, message 10 people you already know who run companies. One yes out of 20 and you've made more than a week at a job that you can't stand. So stop waiting to be discovered. Discovery is not gonna come banging on your door. You are going to go where the people are and you help them first. You let the relationship turn that into a customer. Your first 10 customers are in the room you're already standing in. You just haven't started the conversation yet. So when are we gonna start it? It today. The work that you put out is what gives people a reason to find you. So put something out. Stack small wins into something nobody can ignore. Okay, so here's the last piece, and I think it's the one that separates the people who make a little money from the people who completely change their whole life and their whole family's life. Don't start by one, one service, one product, one app. That's a great start, but it's just the first brick in your, in your empire, in your building. The people winning with AI right now are doing a lot of small things that each make a little and it all adds up. Remember Peter? More than 40 products. Most made nothing. A few changed everything. He didn't know in advance which were gonna hit, so he kept shipping. He kept trying. That's your real advantage. AI makes the cost of trying almost nothing, so you can take more swings than anyone in history has ever been able to take. You turn the system that you used into a product. You turn what you learned into a course. Each one just feeds the next one. So you take the money and you make it better. You put it back in better tools, more time, the next idea. And the most important thing that you're building isn't just the money. It's who you become. The first time you make $100 from something that you created with your own hands and a little AI, I don't know, something changes in you forever. You stop seeing yourself as someone waiting for a break and start seeing yourself as someone who makes their own. And that belief is worth more than any paycheck, because once you have it, nobody can ever take it from you. The whole reason I do this is simple. I wanna solve the world's biggest problem. I think people do not believe in themselves enough. AI doesn't fix that. You do by starting, by shipping, by proving to yourself that you're capable of so much more than you ever gave yourself credit for. Your first dollar is waiting on you. Okay, so here's where you are right now. You've got the most powerful tool in history ready to work for you for almost nothing, and real proof that one person starting from scratch and scared can build a life that they're proud of. The only missing piece is you saying yes and starting today. So take the first small step, send the first message, build the first thing, and let the work turn you into the person you already have it in you to be. And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. Believe. Now let's learn why you don't need a job to make money. Security in a corporate job doesn't exist anymore. The safe job is about to be unsafe. So far this year, companies have cut more than 800,000 jobs. That's the highest number we have seen since the pandemic. A major West Michigan company plans to cut hundreds of jobs tonight. Grand Rapids-based Akash Sure is telling us that artificial intelligence is replacing actual employees. Over 80% of students feel they learn nothing about entrepreneurship in school, even though most want to start their own businesses. The only non-gamble in life is going on offense, and you've been taught that going on offense is the gamble because the school system was literally created to create factory workers. Our school system Schools teach us nothing about money. Nothing. It's pathetic. So at 25, I recommitted to my education, but this time I started studying not things that were in books, but people that had actually created wealth. Sticking to a traditional career path limits your impact, keeps you miserable, and stops you from sharing your unique genius with the world. My sense is that even for the kids that get into the elite colleges at this point, it's like you've passed some Mandarin examination in China, but you're just so exhausted you're never gonna do anything more with the rest of your life. You're burned out at 18. You take a calculated risk to start a company realizing you may forego a couple of years of steady income in another job and whatever else. That's a great risk to take, and if you don't take that risk, I think you have a very high chance that you end up regretting that. Where are you gonna spend your time, your energy, is one of the most important decisions you get to make in life. When I was 19, I had the hardest choice to make. I was in university and I had a job offer for a safe six-figure investment banking job. It was a job everybody wanted, but I also had a chance to own 30% of a biotech software making only $300 a month, and I picked the startup. I chose to struggle, eat beans for lunch, because the thought of sitting in a cubicle doing work I hated scared me more than being broke. I knew I had to take control of my own income. Think about Colonel Sanders. At 65 years old, he had a tiny $105 Social Security check. He didn't go looking for a greeter job at a local store. He took his chicken recipe, hit the road, and slept in his car. He faced 1,009 rejections before finally someone said yes to his franchise idea. He proved that you can create massive wealth at any age just by owning your own ideas instead of working for someone else. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. Couldn't pay their rent in San Francisco. They didn't rush out to get safe, normal jobs. Instead, they put 3 air mattresses on their floor and charged people to sleep there during a local design conference. That simple idea turned into Airbnb. They created a $100 million company because they look for a creative way to solve a problem instead of looking for a safe corporate salary. And right now you might be thinking that you need thousands of dollars in the bank to start making your own money. You think you need rich parents or some giant loan to succeed, and that's not true. Colonel Sanders was broke at 65. Airbnb started with 3 cheap air mattresses. You don't need money to make money. You just need a problem to solve and the courage to take the first step. I'm going to show you exactly how to start generating your own income from scratch right now. Solve your own biggest problem. To make money without a job, you've got to realize where value actually comes from.. You get paid for bringing value to other people. The absolute easiest way to bring value is to look directly at your own life. Your purpose comes from your pain. Whatever you struggle with the most is exactly what you want to help other people overcome. So think about your past. If you had a hard time getting fit and you figured out a system that works, that system is your new business. If you struggle with anxiety and found a way to manage it, that method, that's your business. You don't need a fancy business degree to make this happen.. You just need to be one step ahead of the person that you're trying to help. Over 62% of billionaires are totally self-made, meaning they've created their wealth by solving real problems, not by inheriting cash. People pay you to solve their problems because they desperately want to skip the pain that you have already went through. You're selling speed and convenience. If you can help someone skip 5 years of painful trial and error, they pay you for that shortcut. So don't think you need to invent the next big tech platform to be successful. Look at the local business in your town. They need help with their marketing, their accounting, their daily operations. They've got massive problems right now. You can step in and help fix those problems. When you focus entirely on serving others and solving their actual pain points, you stop acting like an employee begging for a simple paycheck, and you start acting like a true entrepreneur commanding a premium price. You stop handing out weak resumes and start handing out powerful solutions for problems. The simple shift in your mindset changes everything. You go from hoping that a boss picks you to knowing that the market desperately needs you. So you've got to stop looking for a company to hire you and start looking for a person to help. The money will always follow the value you provide. So if you fix a $100 problem, you make a little bit of money. If you fix a $1,000 problem, you make a lot more money. It's simple. Your job right now is to identify the most expensive problem you know how to solve and then go find the exact people who are crying out for that exact solution. But finding a problem is only the first step because your surroundings might be secretly destroying your chances of success. Change your environment to change your mind. Your current environment is perfectly designed to keep you exactly where you are right now. So if your friends all have traditional jobs, they'll constantly tell you to get a safe job. They aren't trying to hurt you. They just don't understand your big vision. Research shows that you're up to 61% more likely to adopt the exact habits and mindsets of the people closest to you. So if you want to make your own money, you must change your daily environment. You've got to completely shut out the negativity, limit your access to people who doubt you, and fill that empty space with extreme positivity and the specific messages you actually want to hear. So if you can't find supportive friends in your own town yet, go find them online. Read powerful books, listen to great podcasts, watch amazing YouTube videos from the exact people who are already doing what you want to do. I started my YouTube channel because I wanted to surround myself with some of the greatest minds in history. I wanted Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett in my ear every single morning. I wanted their intense ambition to rub off on me. You've got to be incredibly intentional with your daily morning routine. Don't wake up and immediately scroll through toxic social media or the depressing news. Start your day with content that makes you believe in yourself. When you consume greatness daily,, it starts to feel completely normal. Soon the idea of settling for a boring cubicle will feel totally insane to you. You'll begin to think bigger, act faster, expect so much more of yourself. You can literally rewire your entire brain for massive success just by changing what you look at and who you listen to every single day. So treat it like a garden, right? Your mind is a garden. If you plant negative seeds, you'll grow a massive negative life. If you plant seeds of belief, you'll grow a massive awesome empire. You've got to ruthlessly protect your focus. So stop giving your attention to things that make you feel small and start obsessing over the ideas that make you feel powerful. The moment you change your inputs, the outputs will transform forever. But once you fix your surroundings, you need a system to actually get you moving. Which brings us to the Simple 2% Trick. Use the 2% rule to build massive momentum. The biggest thing you're missing right now is just momentum. You're sitting on a truly great idea. But you haven't taken any real action. You're constantly overthinking it. You want everything to be 100% perfect before you finally launch. You want the perfect logo, the perfect website, the perfect business plan. Stop doing that. Perfectionism is just you being afraid. Studies reveal that perfectionism actually decreases your productivity and increases severe mental burnout. You don't need a perfect plan. You just need to execute the first 2%. If your goal is to write a book, a selling book, the first 2% is writing just one single page. If your goal is to start a massive YouTube channel, awesome. The first 2% is pulling out your phone and recording your first really messy video. Don't worry about step 100. Just focus completely on step number 1. Take the absolute smallest, easiest action right now. Once you take that first step, your brain, it gets a— it's a quick win. And that quick win builds confidence, and that confidence creates momentum. So when I wrote my book about momentum, I didn't plan it out for long months. I just started typing furiously. The physical action itself creates the energy you need to keep going. So waiting around for the perfect moment, what does it do? It guarantees that you'll wait forever. Action cures fear every single time. When you're moving forward, you simply don't have the time to sit there and doubt yourself. So don't let your greatest ideas die just silently here in your head. Put them out into the real world. Start messy. Start small, but you've absolutely got to start when? Today. It doesn't matter if your first attempt looks crazy, ridiculous. The only thing that matters is that you aren't just standing still anymore. You're finally in the game. Every massive company started as some tiny, flawed little experiment. You are no different. So push through the hesitation, click publish, make the call, and watch how quickly your life begins to change. Now that you're moving, though, you've got to prepare yourself for the hardest phase of all. And this is where almost everyone quits. Expect to be terrible at first. So now you've got to accept a really harsh reality. Your first attempt at anything new is going to be absolutely terrible. Your first product will have tons of flaws. Your first video will be incredibly embarrassing. Your first major sales call will feel completely awkward. And that is completely normal. Everyone starts out at the bottom. You just don't see the messy, hidden starts. Data shows that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to truly master any complex skill. You just can't skip the struggle. When I first started on YouTube, I was completely terrified. I was shy, quiet, introverted. I did not like being on camera. It took me 350 videos before I wasn't completely embarrassed to watch myself back and 700 public videos before I actually felt inspired by one piece of content that I made. And I made absolutely hundreds of terrible videos. You can go back and watch them, but I kept going anyway. Most people just quit because they tried 5 times and they expected to be world-class immediately. They let the ego stop you from making actual progress. So the fact that you're willing to try and be terrible becomes an actual secret advantage. So embrace the highly awkward phase. Look at your early failures as data, and that's gonna be part of your story as you climb. Every single time you fail, you learn exactly what not to do the next time. Will be an inspiration to others. If you can handle looking foolish for a little while, you'll eventually become completely Unstoppable. The only real failure in life's quitting before you get good. So you've got to give yourself permission to be a total beginner. Stop comparing your chapter 1 to somebody else's chapter 20, right? Your journey is your journey, and that is okay. So put in the boring reps, do the unglamorous work. The mastery that you want is waiting on the other side of 1,000 terrible attempts. And once you survive that awkward phase, you can speed up your results by borrowing the exact blueprints of people who've already won. Model the massive success of others. You don't need to figure out all of this on your own. That's one of the biggest mistakes that I made early on. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to make a massive fortune. The smartest entrepreneurs study the exact people who've already won and simply model their success. So if you want to build a $100,000 consulting business, find someone who already did exactly that. Study their public website, Look at their specific pricing, see exactly how they talk to their premium clients, then thoughtfully apply those same proven principles to your own unique style. According to the Small Business Administration, businesses that receive direct mentoring and strictly model proven strategies are 2 times more likely to survive their first 5 difficult years. When my first business was struggling, I felt completely lost. I had no real idea how to turn things around. Then I decided to intensely study a highly successful software company, Microsoft, because I had a software company. I looked at how they operated, looked at how they got their first clients, not how they make an extra million now. I didn't steal or copy them, but I learned directly from Bill Gates's powerful framework. That single focus decision saved my entire company. Success always leaves clues. There is a roadmap out there for you to do whatever you want and achieve whatever you want. You just have to be humble and curious enough to actively go and follow it. So read the biographies of great leaders. Watch the long-form interviews of the performers that you look up to and respect. Find the hidden patterns in their daily behaviors and then creatively adapt them to your situation. Why would you spend 10 years making deeply painful mistakes when you can learn from someone else's expensive experience in just 10 days or 10 hours? So be an aggressive student of greatness and your path to financial independence will be so much faster. You don't lack the ability. You just lack the right model. So find your ideal model, study them relentlessly, build your own blueprint for your special flavor. And then when you've got the right model, you need the right people. And there's a specific way to get the most powerful CEOs to take your call. Build real relationships instead of fake followers. So most people think that making money online means you definitely need millions of random followers, right? You think that you need to go incredibly viral to succeed and That's a massive and actually dangerous distraction. You don't need a million casual subscribers to make $1 million. You just need deep, highly meaningful relationships. Don't worry about the vanity metrics. They will constantly waste your time. Instead, focus on direct business development through high-value connections. One of my favorite strategies, what we teach inside our Movement Makers program, is a business development show. It's a dedicated interview show. Don't constantly cold call potential clients. Warmly invite them onto your show to share their story. People love talking about themselves. When you feature them prominently, they feel valued and you built a relationship. Statistics clearly show that 84% of B2B sales start exactly with a warm referral or strong existing relationship. When you interview someone, you spend real focused time with them. You build authentic trust with them. That genuine trust turns into lucrative partnerships, massive referrals, referrals, highly paying clients. It literally doesn't matter if your new channel only has 200 total subscribers. We're going after people who have high demand but low media demand. You're coming in as media right now, and you can get top industry leaders who've built multimillion-dollar networks. So don't worry about the random clicks and start aggressively chasing real conversations. Add massive value to the exact people that you desperately want to work with. Feature their deep expertise, ask them incredibly great questions, Do your research before you have them on. Give them a beautiful platform to share their story. When you actively become a super connector and a supporter, the big money naturally follows you everywhere you go. Your network is truly your actual net worth, so start building it deliberately and strategically today. Stop worrying about the algorithm and start obsessing over the actual human beings you want to serve. And building that network takes extreme focus, which means you've got to completely change how you manage your 24 hours. Make every single day truly count. Your limited time is your absolute most precious asset. If you want to permanently escape the endless job cycle and build your own incredible life, you've got to maximize your specific daily action. So you wake up every morning with a clear intention: make today truly count. Before you hit your head, your tired head on the pillow tonight, do one specific thing that moves you significantly closer to your dream. Make one beautiful piece of art. Send one highly important email. Record one incredibly helpful video. Create something today that you desperately want your future grandkids to see. Research strongly indicates that completing just one highly meaningful task a day significantly boosts your overall life satisfaction and guarantees long-term success. To make real time for that meaningful work, you've got to ruthlessly manage your busy schedule. You must eliminate, automate, or delegate absolutely everything else. If a specific task doesn't directly serve your core mission, stop doing it. If a basic computer program or AI can do it, awesome, automate it immediately. If someone else can do something significantly cheaper, hire them right away. Don't waste your unique genius on boring busywork. Focus only on the high-level tasks that actually move the big needle forward. When you finally take control of your daily time, you instantly take total control of your personal income. You stop hopelessly trading hours for a flat, boring salary and start aggressively trading massive value for huge financial returns. You already have absolutely everything it takes to build a beautiful life of total freedom. You just have to firmly decide that you're ready to step up and claim it. And this brings us to the absolute most important truth of all. And it's something that I hope that you remember every single morning when you wake up. Your belief is your ultimate superpower. You are entirely capable of building a massive life on your own terms. So trust your vision, take the messy action, and never let fear make your decisions for you. Now let's learn why you're smart but not successful. Your intelligence is the reason you're not successful. Being smart might actually be holding you back. Every day I see brilliant people people with sky-high IQs lose to others with half their talent. Why? Because intelligence alone doesn't automatically translate to results. If you keep letting your smarts run the show, you'll watch those average people, the ones who show up consistently and push through, leapfrog right over you. And the worst part? The world misses out on your genius. The woman who should have cured cancer might be stuck in a dead-end job because she didn't believe herself or take action. Think of the tortoise and the hare. The fast cocky hare, the smart one, took a nap thinking he had the race won. The slow but steady tortoise kept going and crossed the finish line first. In real life, too many smart people act like the hare, so confident in their brain power that they get complacent or overcomplicate everything while the less assuming tortoises quietly grind out the win. Being the hare might feel good at first, but it doesn't win races. I learned that the hard way. In my early 20s, I had a shot at a life-changing deal selling my first company for millions of dollars. I was trying to be the smart kid with a detailed plan, and I overplanned everything. I spent months crafting the perfect business plan instead of actually doing something. And guess what happened? A big company came looking to buy businesses like mine, but we weren't ready to move. It came down to my company and our biggest competitor, and we lost. And that competitor of ours got bought for $40 million while I was still polishing my plan. $40 million! That stung. I could have sold my business for $40 million, but I missed my shot because I was being too perfect. That failure woke me up. I realized my smart plan was really just fear in disguise. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of it not being perfect. Perfectionism is really just fear. We call it diligence, but really you're just scared. I decided to become a recovering perfectionist after that. Now when I get a great idea, I force myself to act on it immediately before my brain can come up with 20 reasons to wait. I learned that a half-assed plan that you actually execute is better than a perfect plan that stays in your head. Now at this point you might be thinking, Evan, are you saying I should stop being smart? Am I supposed to dumb it down to succeed? No, I'm not saying abandon your brain or act recklessly. I'm saying you have to change how you use your Intelligence. Right now, your smarts are running the show and running you into a wall. You probably pride yourself on being the smartest person in the room, but is that working out for you? If you're so smart, why aren't you where you want to be? The truth is, raw intelligence without execution gets you nowhere. You have to get out of your head and into action. Being smart is a gift, but if you don't pair that gift with courage, with discipline, with hustle, it will absolutely hold you back. Don't let your ego or fear of not looking smart smart keep you from growing. The only thing worse than being seen as not smart is being full of potential and never actually achieving anything. So yes, keep your intelligence, but put it to work for you, not against you. So let's talk about how to fix this. Let's turn your intelligence into an asset instead of a liability. Here we go. Why smart people struggle with success and how to turn it around. Number 1, you overthink everything. Smart people can get stuck in analysis paralysis. Your brain your brain sees 20 angles to every problem. You can imagine every possible outcome, and all that analysis leaves you spinning in circles. Sound familiar? You plan and you plan and you plan, and nothing actually happens. Meanwhile, someone with half your brainpower just picks a direction and goes. They get results while you're still in your head. Here's the deal. Thinking about doing something and actually doing it are completely different things. No matter how brilliant your idea is, You must act on it. Studies in cognitive psychology even show that excessive deliberation can lead to worse decisions because you start second-guessing yourself and overcomplicating simple choices. So what's the solution? Decide and go. Give yourself a deadline to make a decision and then execute. Trust your intuition and start moving. You can adjust course as you go. Remember, real progress happens in the real world. World, not in your head. Don't let overthinking murder your momentum. Number 2: You're chasing perfect and it's slowing you down. This was my curse. In school, you might have been the kid who got A's, who set super high standards. In life and business, those high standards can actually cripple you. You rewrite the opening chapter 7 times and never publish the book. You tinker with your product endlessly because it's not good enough yet to launch. Guess Perfect is the enemy of progress. Successful people execute and then iterate. Unsuccessful smart people keep polishing a draft that never sees the light of day. Here's how one entrepreneur put it: You can't refine what doesn't exist. You can't improve a product that never launched. Average performers often beat perfectionists because they're willing to put out good enough and then improve later. My own $40 million mistake was due to perfectionism. I waited and wanted the perfect plan, and I was too late. Learn from my mistake. Launch messy. Embrace mistakes. Done is better than perfect. And remember that urge to be perfect? It's really fear. Perfectionism is fear in a tuxedo. It looks respectable, even admirable, but it's killing your success. So punch fear in the face by putting out your work, flaws and all. Progress beats perfection every time. Number 3, you rely on talent instead of work. Hard work. This one stings, but I've seen it so often. Things come easy for you, right? School, jobs, picking up new skills. You're used to being the best with minimal effort. Meanwhile, others had to grind to get good. And the result is you never developed the discipline and habits that success actually requires. Maybe you breezed through school without studying, so you never learned how to truly study or struggle. You prided yourself on pulling off last-minute miracles or acing presentations with no prep. Worked until now. So when you finally hit something hard, something that doesn't come instantly, you stall or quit because you don't have the tools or grit to push through. Psychology research backs this up. People who think intelligence is fixed tend to avoid challenges that might prove them wrong, but those who believe abilities grow with effort are the ones who persist when things get tough. So natural talent might open the door, but discipline, resilience, and grind get you to the finish line. If you've coasted on talent It's time to be humble and get to work. Being smart is not an excuse to be lazy. Embrace the beginner's mindset. Push yourself to do the uncomfortable drills, the boring repetitions, the late night study sessions. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. Every single time. Number 4, you get bored and lose focus. So let's get real. Highly intelligent people get bored easily. Your brain craves novelty and big ideas. Once you figure something out, doing the actual work feels tedious. You love planning the project but hate the day-to-day grind of executing it. And I get it. But here's the reality. Most success is built in the boring middle. The book that you want to write, 5% is the exciting idea and 95% is sitting down day after day banging out words or editing. And that business you want to build, the concept is thrilling, but actually building it involves 1,000 tedious tasks, paperwork, And emails and routines. Not exactly fun or intellectually stimulating. The smartest people often struggle here. Isn't this work beneath me? No, this work makes you. Consistency is the secret weapon of the average. Those who succeed are willing to do the uninspiring stuff consistently without constantly questioning, is this worth my genius? If boredom is killing your momentum, fix it by reframing the boring stuff. Stuff as a challenge. Can you show up and execute even when it's not exciting? That's your new game. Also, systemize your life. Build routines and accountability that keep you moving forward even when you're not feeling it. The ability to do boring things consistently is incredibly valuable. Master it and you'll leave the dabbling geniuses in the dust. Number 5: You live in theory, not reality. Smart people often fall in love with theories and big picture ideas, you might design elegant strategies in your head, craft perfect models of how things should work. But then here's how things do work in real life, which is usually much messier. If you're too attached to the ideal scenario, you can become disconnected from actual reality. So for example, you might refuse to launch a product until you understand every aspect perfectly, or you insist on a plan going exactly as imagined. And when it doesn't, you freeze. Meanwhile, less brilliant people are adapting on the fly and they're getting results. So what's the fix? Embrace reality and adjust. Don't let your beautiful theory stop you from getting your hands dirty. Maybe your strategy should be tweaked. That's fine. Maybe your hypothesis was wrong. Learn and you pivot. Actionable data comes from the real world, not the daydreams. So don't wait for conditions to match your mental model. Get out there. Try stuff and adjust to the feedback. Remember, your ability to learn and adapt beats your ability to pontificate. Stay grounded and stay flexible. Number 6, you undervalue emotional intelligence and help from others. Success is not a solo brain game. It's a team sport. If you're brilliant but can't work with other people, you're going to hit a ceiling fast. Maybe you've told yourself others just slow me down, or no one can do it as well as I can. Right? Classic smart person. And trapped. The truth is, someone with average IQ but great people skills will outrun a genius who alienates others. Businesses, careers, life— they all run on relationships. If you struggle to communicate, to collaborate, or to ask for help, that's a major blind spot. And I used to try everything alone and not admit weakness. It nearly broke me. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone that I was struggling, and that loneliness almost made me quit. I learned that if you don't ask for help, you end up stuck and isolated and far more likely to fail. So don't let the pride or social awkwardness sabotage you. You don't have to be an extrovert or the life of a party. I'm not. Just develop the skills to connect and communicate. Listen more. Be curious about others. Find mentors and accept their advice. If you lack some of the soft skills, learn it. Being smart means you can grow here too. Remember, being right isn't enough. You have to bring others along if you want to do something big. And if you have a big dream, you'll definitely need others. So start valuing emotional intelligence as much as book intelligence. It's not soft. It's the glue that holds your success together. Okay, now let's bring this home. We've identified the traps: overanalysis, perfectionism, coasting on talent, lacking a follow-through, living in theory, and flying solo. These are natural tendencies of a powerful mind. But if you leave them unchecked, they become big barriers. The great news is you can overcome each one. Self-awareness is step one. If you've nodded along or winced at any of these points, you're already learning where to improve. Step two is to work with your tendencies instead of against them. Build systems and habits to counteract your weak spots. For example, if you know that you overthink, set strict deadlines or accountability partners to force action even when you're in your head. If you're a perfectionist, set Good enough goals. Deliberately release version 1.0 of a project when it's 80% there, just to prove to yourself the world doesn't end if it's not perfect. If you get bored, gamify the process or tie boring tasks to a deeper mission that actually fires you up. Practice doing things before you feel fully ready for them. This starts to train you to gather real-world feedback. And if going it alone is not working for you, find a coach. A community, a partner who can push you and keep you accountable. And most of all, shift your identity. Don't see yourself as the smart one. See yourself as the bold one, the action taker, the lifelong learner, the resilient fighter. Yes, you're smart, so use that brain to strategize ways to get out of your comfort zone instead of clever excuses to stay in it. My mom used to tell me, if you have the ability, you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must. And That hit me hard and stays with me. Your intelligence is a gift, not just for acing tests or impressing people, but for making an impact. If you're capable of more, you owe it to yourself and the world to do more. I know there's genius inside of you. Everybody has what I call Michael Jordan level talent or genius. That's something. Don't let it go to waste because of fear, laziness, or ego. Break the patterns. Do the uncomfortable work. The world needs what you have, and you deserve to fulfill the measure of your potential. To learn all of wealth building in one video, check it out right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there. You will never build real wealth by doing more things. I would definitely advise a small startup company to be as narrow and as focused as is possible to be. Every day you're going to be faced with 100 things