How to Build Wealth in the Age of AI

Most people will miss the biggest opportunity of their lifetime because they're looking for certainty instead of taking action.

There's never been a better time to be an inventor and a pioneer than right now because the world is on fire with, with new ideas and with AI and space opportunities. And we're in the middle of multiple golden ages right now. What are you going to do? When are you going to start doing it? Only Action matters.

Every generation gets a new tool that changes the rules, and AI happens to be yours. Whether you want to start a company or be a programmer, the ability for one person to use these tools and have great ideas and implement them with what would have taken, you know, decades of experience or teams of people is really quite remarkable.

The companies that will succeed in this transition period will be the ones that Most effectively use AI. So if you're doing something and making maximum use of AI and you're competing against someone who is not, you will win.

If you wait until everything feels safe, someone else will build the future that you could have created. So in the next 3 hours, you'll learn the principles the world's greatest entrepreneurs use to create wealth and how AI is opening even bigger opportunities for you today. If you've been before, put 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. 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 internet. He was just a scared guy who was running out of 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's ready or not. And most of them flopped completely. Then one hit. It was called Nomad List. It was a site 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 broke and 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 build. 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. 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 PM when nobody's there 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 you get paid to take out. And when you reach out, never leave with the word AI. Say, 'I'll handle your follow-up email 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, uh, 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 Claude-powered system that takes one of those jobs off their plate slate 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 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 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 it 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, dashboard that pulls contractors' numbers onto one screen, 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 going to be— it's going to be pretty rough. It's going to 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 is 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. Turn what you know into something that sells while you sleep. 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 PromptPal. Packs. These are collections of proven instructions that get Claude to do a specific job really well, like 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 any 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, quick. 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 they think has all the answers. And here's a framework that I teach our Movement Makers clients: make a Money 50 list. That's the 50 people who, if they knew you, like 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 want to 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 So stop waiting to be discovered. Discovery is not going to 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 going to start 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 stop at one, one service, one product, one app. That's a great start, but it's just the first brick in your, in your empire and you're 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. 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 AccroSure 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 systems 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, the kids that get into the, um, 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 going to 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 if we forgo a couple of years of steady income in our job, um, 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 going to 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 6-figure investment banking job. It was a job everybody wanted, but I also had a chance to own own 30% of a biotech startup for making only $300 a month. And I picked a 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 that 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 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 wanna 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. To. 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 Evan Carmichael. 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, best-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 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. It'll 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. Way. 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 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, 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 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 intent. 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 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, 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. Your intelligence is the reason you're not successful. Being smart might actually be holding you back. Every day I see brilliant people with sky-high 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 in herself or think 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 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 brain power 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, 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 what?

What?

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.

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, and it 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 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, work 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 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. Person trap. 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. 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, 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 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's 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. If I lost everything tomorrow and had to start a brand new business this year with no audience and no savings, I wouldn't panic because starting a business has never been simpler or cheaper than it is right now.

There's never been a better time to be an inventor and a pioneer than right now because the world is on fire with new ideas and with AI and space opportunities We're in the middle of multiple golden ages right now.

This is the best time ever in the history of technology, ever, period, to start a company.

99% of small businesses you can start with next to no capital. It's more about effort.

Americans filed a record 5.67 million business applications in 2025, the most in history, according to the US Census Bureau. So while everyone online keeps telling you the dream is dead and the economy The economy is rigged. More people are quietly betting on themselves than at any point ever. The US is marking Small Business Week, and new data finds more Americans are jumping on the small business bandwagon. Data is showing us that last year, a record number of people applied to be small business owners. This isn't just about business. It's about taking back control of your time, your income, your life. And I'm gonna walk you through the exact steps I'd follow in order to do it from scratch.

Where are you gonna spend your time, your energy, is one of the most important decisions you get to make in life. I am in control of everything that happens to me. Everything. Everything that will happen in my life, I will be the master of. One of the most important things you have in your life is time. It's one of your greatest assets, or it's your liability.

When I was 20 years old, I had a little software company and I was making $300 a month. I was so broke and so ashamed of it that I lied to my own friends and pretended I was living the hustle lifestyle when the truth is I couldn't even afford $20 for a night out and beer. One night I was sitting there crying, ready to quit, completely convinced that I just wasn't smart enough to pull this off. And then something hit me that changed the whole direction of my life and my company. Somebody had already figured this out. I don't have to be a genius. I don't have to have the skills or information yet, and I can model someone who has already done it.

Done it.

So I went and studied how Bill Gates built Microsoft. He had a software company, I had a software company. Everyone assumes Microsoft blew up because of some genius piece of code, but it didn't. It blew up because Gates made a deal with IBM, the number one computer maker in the entire world at the time, so that every single computer they shipped came with Microsoft software already loaded on it. But here's the part that almost nobody talks about: Microsoft was already a $7 million company before that famous IBM deal ever happened. And when I dug into how Gates got from zero to that first $7 million, the answer was the exact same word, partnerships. He did not work everyone, although he worked very hard. He partnered with people who already had what he needed. So I went back to work the very next morning, copied that one single idea, stopped trying to do everything alone, and closed my first deal for $13,500. Bill Gates kept me in business, and I never once met the man. Right now you're probably thinking, it's easy for me to say all this because I have a big audience today. But if you took every single follower away from me tomorrow, tomorrow, I promise you I would not start by trying to go viral on YouTube. Building an audience from scratch, it takes 3, 5, more years, and most people run out of motivation and money and quit long before it ever pays them anything. So forget about followers at the start. Forget about the perfect logo. Forget about waiting until you feel ready, because ready is not the truth. And so here's exactly what I would do instead, starting from absolute zero, step by step. Get to $96,000 with just for clients. So the first thing I do is ignore almost everything you think a business needs. I would not build a website. I've personally helped launch multimillion-dollar companies that didn't even have a website when they signed their first clients. So website is not the thing standing between you and your money. It's just a comfortable thing to hide behind, feeling like you have to get this thing done. Instead, I'd lock onto one piece of dead simple math and let it run my entire life. I need to get 4 people paying me $2,000 a month. That is the whole goal. Not 400 customers, not some giant viral launch, not a warehouse full of inventory. Just 4 people who get enough value for you that they will pay you $2,000 every single month. 4 clients at $2,000 a month is $96,000 a year, which means you have a almost 6-figure business built on just 4 relationships, and it gives you the survivable cash flow you need to build everything else on top of it. So the only question that matters on day 1 is simple. What can you do that's worth $2,000 a month to somebody else? And this year, that list is huge. You can set up AI systems and automations for companies that they're drowning in their busywork. You can run ads on their social media. You can consult in a skill that you already have. Pick the one thing that you're best at and can start delivering this week and price it at $2,000 a month or more so the math works fast and you're not grinding to make 100 tiny little sales. You do not need 1,000 customers. You You need 4 yeses. And when you stop thinking that you need to build some massive company and you realize you just need 4 people to say yes, the whole thing stops feeling impossible and starts feeling like something you could go and do this week. Mind the network you already have. Here's where almost everybody freezes. They think they have to go find total strangers and somehow convince them out of thin air to buy from you, right? Right? You don't. To land those first 4 clients, I would start by auditing the resources and the people already sitting in my phone, in my contacts right now. I don't want you throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall, answering fake questions in your own head about whether you're qualified or whether you're ready. I want you to go out to the people you already know. If your brother and your sister run chiropractic clinics or your friend owns a med spa, you go straight to them first. You don't reinvent the wheel. You offer to run their ads or handle the service for them. Even cheaper, free at the start, so you can learn the industry from the inside and walk away with your very first real testimonials and case studies to share. Those early wins are absolutely everything because proof is the thing that lets you walk into the next conversation and charge full price with total confidence. Being leads to doing here. The moment you decide that you are the person who solves this problem, you stop researching and you start reaching out to the people who already know you, already like you and already pick up the phone when you call them. So you're not starting from zero connections right now, even if it feels that way. Your network, not your wallet, is your real startup capital. And the good news is you already have one. You just never asked it for anything. Make your first offer impossible to turn down. So when you reach out to those first few people, the worst thing you can do is show up sounding desperate or trying to sell some big, vague, expensive package. Instead, I would lead with a clear result and almost no risk for them at all. So pick one specific painful problem that you already know how to fix and offer to fix just that one thing. Tell them you'll do it at a low starter rate or even tie your pay to the result that you get them. So the only way they lose is if you don't deliver. That one move, it melts their fear away because now they aren't gambling on you. They're just saying yes to an outcome that they already want anyway. So don't pitch them a long list of features and deliverables because features confuse people. And a confused person, they don't buy from you. So pitch them the after, paint a clear picture of exactly where their business will be once their problem is finally gone, and let them feel it for a second, right? Then the very second you get them a real result, you ask for two simple things. You ask for a short testimonial in their own words, and you ask them who else they know that has that exact same problem. That becomes a flywheel for you. That one happy client instantly becomes both your proof and your next referral source. And you use that momentum to raise your price a little bit and go land the next one. You're not trying to close 1,000 deals or be everywhere at once. You are just trying to make your very first client so ridiculously happy that getting your second, third, and fourth starts to feel almost easy. So get that first yes this week, overdeliver like your life depends on it. And from there, you let the proof do the selling for you. Build your Money 50. So once you get that first bit of cash flow coming in, you stop hunting one client at a time and you start scaling through relationships instead of ads. I would build what I call my Money 50 list. This is what we teach inside our Movement Makers program. Here's how it works. You pick 5 different categories of people and then you go 10 people deep in each category. So you end up with a written list of 50 names. These are people who, if they did know you, if they did like you, if they did trust you, could each be worth 6 figures or even 7 figures to your business every single year. And here's the key that most people miss.

This—

these usually are not your current customers. They're referral partners. They might be CPAs or lawyers or property managers, agency owners, the people who already have a deep, trusted relationship with the exact audience that you're trying to reach. One single CPA can send you 30 clients without you even spending a dollar on advertising because their clients already do whatever they recommend. So write those 50 names down on one page. You put it where you see it every day, and you treat that list like, like it's made of gold. Because getting in front of those 50 people is the entire game. You don't need a million customers. You need a handful of powerful relationships. The person with the best relationships wins every single time, and relationships are completely free to build if you're simply willing to give first before you ever ask for anything. Start a biz dev show. Now, how do you actually get in front of your Money 50 list when these are busy, important, successful people? Here's the mistake most people make. If you email them and ask to grab a coffee and pick their brain, they will ignore you every time because everybody on earth wants their time and attention. So you flip the whole thing around. You start a simple interview show, what I call a biz dev show, and you invite those exact 50 people to come on as your guests. Almost nobody ever asked them for an interview before, so they say yes because everybody loves being treated like the expert. And here's the beautiful part. You don't need a fancy studio. You don't need expensive gear. You don't need a big audience because going viral is not the point. And the view count doesn't matter at all here because they're telling their story and they don't get a lot of attention typically. The only metric you care about is the relationship. You spend a full hour, you make them look great, you tell their story, you're genuinely curious about their work. And somewhere in the middle of the conversation, you ask one strategic question connected to what you do. Just to quietly plant a seed in their mind. And then the moment you stop recording, you make your move. You tell them that you'd love to be their second opinion or their go-to person in case any of their clients have an issue that obviously you know how to deal with. In 1 hour, you just turn a complete stranger into a warm potential partner who wants to help you, and it costs you exactly $0. There is no faster way on this planet to earn someone's trust than to put them in the spotlight and champion them before you ever ask for a single thing back.

Back.

Trade your time for a piece of the upside. The next move is the one that truly changes everything, and it's the one that I'd be the most aggressive about this year if I'm trying to build my business. When you're first starting out, it's totally fine to charge a flat monthly fee, but the real wealth is never in trading just your hours for dollars. It's in owning a piece of what you help actually build. So the second I had proof of what I could actually get for results for I would stop just being, um, a hired hand. I would walk into an established business that's already making money and say, hey, give me a percentage of the company and I'll come in and be your growth person and your sales engine. If you really want to scale your upside, you take X percent of a business in exchange for driving their growth instead of just giving them a flat rate every month. I did this exact same thing with a bunch of agencies I started. I taught them everything I knew about YouTube. I took a 25% split bullet. They had the other 75%, and today they've built up and run 7-figure businesses. I didn't need money to make that deal. I needed a skill that got results and the guts to ask for a percentage instead of just a paycheck. Most people, they're too scared to ask, so they stay employees of their own business forever. If you can deliver real results for someone, then you have the responsibility, I think, to ask for some real upside. If you can, then you must. Let AI be the team you can't afford yet. The last thing I do, and honestly the biggest reason there has never been a better time in human history to start a business than right now, is to lean on AI like it's an entire team working for you for free. When I started out, I couldn't afford a designer, I couldn't afford a writer, an assistant, or developer. So I did a lot of it myself, badly, painfully, slowly, and it held me back for years. You don't have that excuse anymore. Do you need your offer written, your emails drafted, your brand design, your research done, a simple tool built for a client. AI can do a strong first draft of every single one of these things in minutes, and your only job is to add your judgment and your taste on top of it. That's exactly why setting up AI systems for other businesses is one of the best $2,000 a month offers you can possibly sell right now, because every business owner on earth knows they need this, and almost none of them have any idea how to actually do it. So don't use AI to replace replace your thinking, use it to delete your excuses, right? Every single time you catch yourself saying, "I can't afford to do that part," stop and ask whether AI can do that part for you. And, and this year, the honest answer is almost always going to be yes. The person who wins today is not the one with the biggest budget or the fanciest university degree. It's the one who's actually willing to roll up their sleeves and use the tools that are already there in your pocket. Your first move is the one that matters. So that's the entire plan. And I want you to notice that not one single step required money, a degree, or permission from anybody. It just required you deciding to start and being willing to model the people who have already done it instead of trying to be a genius all on your own. You don't have to figure it all out today. You just have to take that first step before you feel ready. You do not need money to start a business that makes $10,000 a month. One, I would say these days you do not You do not have to have money to make money, which is incredibly powerful. The biggest lie the system feeds you is that wealth requires capital. But today, your time and hustle are the only currency that actually matter. For those who are older, who have no more passion, they're burnt out, they're exhausted, it is the highest form of currency. Because it's not about what you know.

You don't need to know the secret formulas.

You don't need to have secret connections.

If you just get your behavior behavior right and you're thinking right, you can do well.

And if you keep waiting for a perfect moment or some rich investor to save you, you will stay trapped in the exact same financial struggle for the rest of your life. Let's look at John Paul DeJoria. He was completely broke and living in his car. He only had $700 to his name. He didn't let his empty bank account stop him from building his business.

So my car was my home where I'm gonna live. Got a blanket get a pillow in there. And then to eat, I figured out a way to eat off $2.50 a day. Paul Mitchell was $700. My partner threw in $350. My mom put in some money, not even knowing that's what she was doing. I put a little bit.

He partnered with a friend and they started selling hair care products door-to-door. They knocked on doors every single day because they had no money for marketing.

I filled my car full of our products and drove right up Ventura Boulevard Garden Studio City was full of salons and knocked like encyclopedias, okay, door to door to door selling my product, right? I had challenges. One, no distributor, no advertising money. So I went out and it took me a week to get 12 salons to buy my product.

And today, John Paul Mitchell Systems makes over a billion dollars a year. He proved that you only need hustle to get out out of poverty. Now, you're probably thinking that door-to-door sales is dead and you don't have a physical product to sell anyway. Don't let that be your excuse. Today, the internet is your neighborhood and your digital skills are your products. You have access to billions of people right here on your phone for free. So here are 10 specific businesses you can launch today with $0 to start making real money. Number 1, AI operations consultant. Small business owners are terrified of falling behind, but they have absolutely zero time to learn how artificial intelligence actually works. They see the news, but they do not know where to start. And this is where you step in. You can become an AI consultant using just your computer and free tools. Recent data shows that 64% of businesses expect AI to increase their productivity. You do not need a computer science degree to do this. You can use free platforms to write their marketing emails or automate their customer service replies. You test a few prompts, you track the hours it saves them, and you optimize their daily workflow. When you take the stress off an entrepreneur's shoulder and give them their time back using AI, you are providing massive value. So reach out to 10 local business owners today. Tell them you will automate their inbox for free to prove your worth. When you show them how much time you save them, they will happily pay you for a monthly retainer.

Trainer.

Number 2: custom AI assistant builder. Every company wants their own version of ChatGPT trained on their specific data, but they have no idea how to build it. You can build custom AI systems for businesses without writing a single line of code. Harvard Business Review explains that anyone can now build custom AI models using simple text instructions. You simply take a company's training manual upload them into a custom GPT builder, and give them a chatbot that can instantly answer any employee question. Don't let the lack of cash be an excuse. You can use your time to learn this free skill and then charge businesses thousands of dollars to implement it. It is a skill, and you can get better at any skill if you put in the reps. Go to 5 local plumbing or HVAC companies, ask them what their most common customer question is, build a free chatbot that answers that exact question, and send it to them. Number 3, high-ticket remote sales. If you want to make $10,000 a month quickly, you need to sell expensive things. You do not need to invent the expensive thing. You just need to sell it for someone else. High-ticket remote sales means that you take phone calls, Zoom calls for experts who are selling $5,000+ coaching programs or software. Entrepreneur Magazine notes that remote sales requires zero upfront cost and offers massive earning potential. You don't need to build a website or run ads. The business owner already does the marketing. They just need someone to close the deal. So you get on the phone or Zoom call, you ask the prospects about their problems and you offer the solution. You get paid a 10% commission on everything that you sell. If you close one $5,000 deal a day, you make $500 a day. You have to endure the learning curve. You'll be terrible at your first 10 sales calls. Expect to suck at the beginning. But your 11th call might completely change your financial reality. Number 4, short-form video strategist. Every business knows they need to be on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. The problem is that most business owners are stiff, boring, and have no idea how to hook a viewer. You can become a short-form video strategist. HubSpot data shows that short-form video can have a high return on investment. You do not just edit the videos. You tell the business owner exactly what to say. You write the hooks. You can use free AI tools to add captions and fast cuts. I hated my first 350 videos. I could not watch them back because I was so embarrassed, but I kept putting in the reps. You can use your phone to film a local real estate agent and give 3 tips for buying a house, edit it for free. When that video gets them a new client, they will hire you to do it every single week. Number 5, email list monetization. Most creators and businesses have a list of past customers sitting completely ignored in an email database. That is pure cash waiting to be collected. You can offer to manage and monetize their email list. Campaign Monitor reports that email marketing produces an average return of $36 for every $1 spent. So you go to a business and you say you will write one weekly email to their list for You tell them you only get paid a percentage of the new sales that come directly from your emails. This becomes a no-brainer for the business owner because there's zero risk for them. You use AI to help you write engaging stories and practical offers, and it costs you $0 to start. Number 6, B2B lead generation. Business-to-business companies survive on leads. If an agency sells a $10,000 service, they desperately need to talk to qualified buyers. You can build a business simply by finding those buyers and setting up the meeting. G2 reports that lead generation is the top priority for marketers, but over 60% struggle to find high-quality leads. You do not need to be an expert in their industry. You just need to be relentless on LinkedIn and email. You find the target audience, you send a highly personalized message, and you book the meeting on the agency's calendar. You charge a flat fee for every qualified meeting that shows up. Your purpose comes from your pain. If you know what it feels like to be broke, You're broke. Use that pain to motivate your hustle. Reach out to 50 marketing agencies today and offer to book their next 3 meetings for free. Number 7, no-code automation architect. Businesses lose thousands of hours every year doing boring, repetitive tasks. They copy data from emails into spreadsheets and then from spreadsheets into billing software. You can eliminate this manual work by becoming a no-code automation architect. Zapier highlights that no-code tools allow anyone to build complex software integrations without knowing how to program. You connect your different apps so they talk to each other automatically. You are giving people their time back. Wealthy people will gladly pay you to get their time back, and you can learn these platforms for free on YouTube. The best teachers in the world are on YouTube right now. So look at a local accounting firm, see what manual data entry they do, build an automation that does it instantly and show them how it works. Number 8: YouTube click-through rate specialist. If a YouTube video has a bad title and a boring thumbnail, nobody will click on it. It does not matter how good the video is. Creators are desperate for higher click-through rates. You can build a highly profitable business by designing thumbnails and writing titles. YouTube officially states that 90% of the best performing videos have custom thumbnails. You can use free software to design the graphics. You study the psychology of what makes people click. You find a YouTuber with 50,000+ subscribers who gets terrible views. You redesign their last 3 thumbnails for free and send them over. When their views double, they will hire you to do every video going forward. So stop worrying about looking successful and start doing the unglamorous work that actually pays. And bonus tip for anybody who's really trying to take YouTube split testing seriously: I built a software, it's called Brandlytics. I will link it up in the description below. That's the tool the big YouTubers are using to be able to identify the videos that are underperforming and run the split test to improve their performance. Number 9, paid community manager. The biggest trend online right now is private paid communities. Creators are launching groups where members pay $99 a month to learn, but these creators do not have the time to actually run the community. Influencer Marketing Hub reports that the creator economy is now worth over $100 billion, driven heavily by Direct community monetization. So you can step in as a community manager. You welcome new members, you host weekly video calls, you organize the content. You are the glue that holds the group together. Find a creator that you already follow and love, message them and offer to moderate their communities for free for 2 weeks. When you increase their member retention, they will happily pay you a percentage of the monthly recurring revenue. And number 10, starting a YouTube channel. You have a computer in your pocket with a camera that connects you to the entire world. Starting a YouTube channel costs you $0. You just press record and you start sharing your story, your skills, your journey. Forbes highlights that building a digital audience is one of the most powerful low-cost business models available today. The key is your titles and your thumbnails, and you have to hook the viewer instantly. So commit to posting one video week for an entire year. You might feel like you're too shy and nobody will care about what you have to say. I'm an introvert and I struggle deeply with putting myself out there too, but I realized that quality of thought right here is more important than quality of production. So your lighting might be bad and your audio might be a little echoey, but if your message helps one person change their life, it's worth it. So stop overthinking the perfect setup. Take out your phone, look into the lens. And teach someone how to solve a problem that you have already solved for yourself. Your audience is waiting for you to step up and lead. So hopefully now your excuses are officially gone. You have the tools, the strategies, and the power to completely rewrite your financial future right now. Do not let another day slip by wishing your life was different while you still are stuck standing still. Take the risk, do the work, and build the life you actually deserve. You don't need multiple streams of income to get rich.

3 wonderful businesses is more than you need in this life to do very well. And 3 of those will be better than 100 average businesses.

Splitting your focus across 5 different side hustles guarantees that you fail at all of them.

Diversification is a protection against ignorance.

The key resource you have to deal with is your time and how you spend time. I'm always trying to make sure that I'm only doing the things that are important.

Well, focusing is saying yes, no. Focusing is about saying no.

If you refuse to go all in on your one true genius, you'll stay stuck in the exact same painful place 10 months from now. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are two of the richest men in history. One night they were at a dinner party together. Someone asked them both to write write down the single most important factor for their massive success on a piece of paper. They did not look at what the other person was writing, but when they turned their papers over, they had both written the exact same word: focus.

So Bill and I, right after we met, had a group of about 20 write down on a sheet of paper one word that they thought accounted for their success. And Bill and I, who may only have met twice, didn't know what the other one was writing down. We both wrote down same word, which was focus.

They did not build their wealth by doing 10 things at once. They picked one thing and poured every ounce of their energy into it. Now, you're probably thinking that focusing on just one thing is way too risky. You want a backup plan, but your backup plan is actually a trap. When you give yourself a Plan B, you almost guarantee that Plan A will fail because you don't lack time or resources. You lack the courage to bet on yourself completely. When you finally commit, everything changes. So here are 10 money rules that will force you to focus and skyrocket your net worth. Charge higher prices to fewer people. You think you need thousands of customers paying a tiny amount to get rich. That's completely wrong. Most entrepreneurs are terrified of charging higher prices. You lower your hourly rates because you think it will attract a massive crowd. Instead, you attract people who don't value your time. It is much easier to find 10 customers who will pay you $1,000 than to find 1,000 customers who will pay you $10. If you want to build a half a million dollar business, you need clients who are worth $50,000 a year to you. You don't want to do all the grueling work for clients paying you pennies. You need to upgrade your offers immediately. Harvard Business Review shows that premium pricing actually increases perceived value. Customers respect your service more when they pay significantly more. So if you sell a software product, don't just charge $20 a month and hope they figure it out. Charge $2,000 a month and personally help the clients win massive victories. You get vastly better results. Your clients get vastly better results. You build a highly profitable business that doesn't run you into the ground. This specific pricing strategy leads directly into how you fund your daily operations. Fund your business with clients, not investors. People think that raising capital from venture capitalists is the ultimate goal. Raising capital is a trap. If you get an investor to give you $50,000 $50,000. They will take half your business. You might make $50,000 just by landing 2 high-ticket clients. When you raise money, you buy a boss. You lose your freedom and your control. The Wall Street Journal reported that 3 out of 4 venture-backed startups fail completely. Your clients should fund your growth. When you deliver massive value, they will pay you gladly. You use that exact money to build your website and hire your team. You keep all your equity. You stay the owner of your You don't have to report to a board of directors who only care about fast returns. You get to build the business on your own terms. Keeping your equity matters, but you also have to protect your daily time. Stop overdelivering on low-ticket offers. You are spending way too much time on deals that pay you almost nothing. Now, you might overdeliver and spend 40 hours on a 5-figure deal. You undercut yourself and charge $10,000 instead of $40,000. That burns you out and destroys your profit margins. You bend over backwards for people who demand everything and pay nothing. The Pareto principle proves that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. You need to stop doing the work that doesn't scale. Serve your premium clients deeply. Let the low-paying clients go. They complain the most and they pay the least. Free up your schedule so you can focus on high-level strategy. Your time is your most valuable asset. When you stop wasting hours hours on low-value tasks, you open up space for massive income leaps. And once you control your time, you must control your tracking. Track your money like you track your health. You can't improve what you don't measure accurately. Most people treat their finances like it's some mystery. You avoid looking at your bank account because you're afraid of what you will see. You have to stop hiding from your own numbers. If your physical goal is to drop your weight to 185 pounds Live completely pain-free. You track your sleep and your resting heart rate and your weight. You might wear your Oura Ring like I do to monitor your daily readiness score. You treat your physical health like a serious data project. You need to demand real numbers. You need to do the same thing with your total net worth. You look at your bank accounts daily. You track your daily spending. The American Psychological Association calls this the measurement effect. Simply tracking a specific behavior automatically changes that behavior for the better. When you track every single dollar, you instantly stop wasting your money on things that don't matter. You gain absolute clarity and total control over your future. Tracking gives you the hard data you need to build a real system that scales. Build a machine, not just a job. Now, most entrepreneurs just buy themselves a terrible job, right? If you stop working, your income stops entirely. That is not a business. That is a cage. You need to build a machine around your work. So So look at your daily systems. You have to ask yourself if your business can generate $20,000 a month if you don't show up to work. Harvard Business Review highlights that process-driven companies scale much faster and survive longer than founder-dependent companies. So document your daily steps. Hire people to do the tedious tasks that you hate doing. Step out of the daily grind so you can focus on the bigger vision. Your job is to replace yourself as as possible. Start a business development show to get referrals. Cold calling is completely dead. You need a better way to network with wealthy clients. One of the things we teach inside of our Movie Makers program is to start a simple video show. Interview the top 50 people in your specific industry, invite them on your show and tell your story. Nobody asks them for an interview. And when they say yes, that 30-minute conversation turns into a deep relationship. You don't have to be a professional broadcaster. You just have to be curious.

Serious.

LinkedIn data shows that 85% of all jobs and major deals are filled via networking. So don't ask for a sale, ask for the interview. Bring them massive value first. The referrals flow naturally because you build real trust over time. But building that trust requires you to listen more than you speak. Stop giving free advice until they ask. You want to help absolutely everyone. You see a problem and you immediately try to fix it. Giving advice before someone asks creates instant friction They don't want what they didn't ask for. You push them away when you try to solve a problem they haven't admitted that they have. You need to ask them probing questions instead. Keep asking questions until they finally ask you what you would do in their situation. Psychology Today notes that unsolicited advice is almost always perceived as harsh criticism. So wait patiently for the clear invitation. When they ask you for your help, they are fully ready to pay for your premium solution. You can only guide the people who are truly ready to be guided. This level of patience though requires you to narrow your focus completely. Focus on the first 5 clients, not the next 5,000. You're stressing about how to scale the millions of users. You don't even have your perfect 5 clients yet. Stop worrying about massive growth at the very beginning. If you have a high-level program like we have, Movement Makers, figure out how to make it incredibly fun and life-changing for just 5 people You have to nail the foundation before you build the skyscraper. Kevin Kelly wrote the famous essay, 1,000 True Fans. It proves you don't need millions of followers to build massive wealth. If you change 5 lives completely, those people will bring you the next 50 clients. Focus small so you can eventually grow huge. Treat your early clients like royalty. But this type focus requires the right internal motivation. Keep money in your top 5, but never number 1. One. If money is your only goal, you will quit when the journey gets hard. Money is a powerful tool. It is the fuel for your car. You absolutely need it, but it can't be your destination. Your main mission has to be bigger than your bank account. You have to have a cause that you would work on even if you were not getting paid. The National Institutes of Health published studies showing that intrinsic motivation sustains long-term effort much better than external rewards like cash. Put money as your number 2 or 3 on your priority list. Let your true purpose be number 1.

One.

You will actually make far more money this way because you won't burn out. And your deeper purpose usually ties directly back to the people you love. Put your family's future before your ego. You are making terrible financial decisions based on how you look to strangers on the internet. You need to stop caring about digital likes and start caring about your real legacy. Look closely at your family. Look closely at your husband or wife. They do not care about your daily view count. They care about secure life you are building for them. You need to focus on what actually moves the needle for your household first. Pew Research Center states that family support is the primary driver of long-term life satisfaction and financial stability. So swallow your pride, do the boring work, send the emails, build the true wealth that changes your family tree forever. Your next move. So you have the exact rules laid out in front of you right now. The only thing missing is your absolute commitment to take So stop waiting for the perfect moment and start building your real wealth today. Most of the richest people in the world started with nothing, which means that your empty bank account is not the main thing that's holding you back. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20.

People like me, I was born in a very poor family. I never got a great education. I failed all the examinations. For what reason? I don't know. But Later I realized I don't have money, I don't have technology, I don't have a lot of good backgrounds where I have a rich uncle or something, no. The only thing I compete with my people, the young people, is let's compete for 10 years later.

Look at the Forbes 400, the richest people in America, and you'll find that a record 70% of them built their fortune from scratch with no inheritance, no head start, just a person who decided to begin. It is mostly a list of self-made billionaires. 70% of the Forbes 400 made their fortune. So the fact you're starting from zero today decides only one thing, which is whether the person you become 10 years from now thanks you for starting or wishes that you hadn't. One of the things that I've learned in my business is that the mistakes are where all the learning is. And actually the mistakes and the imperfections imperfect stuff, that's where the gold is, everybody.

Look, when I'm 80 years old, I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I have. I don't want to be 80 years old in a quiet moment of reflection, thinking back over my life and cataloging a bunch of major regrets.

Let me tell you about a man who got rejected by everybody. His name is Jack Ma. He grew up poor in China and he failed his university entrance exam twice.

I failed. Key primary school test for 2 times, and I failed like 3 times for the middle school. For 3 years I tried to fill in the university.

When he finished school, he applied for 30 different jobs and got rejected by all 30 of them. KFC opened up in his town. 24 people applied and 23 of them got hired. He was the only one they turned down. The only one.

I failed so many times. People probably know that I've applied jobs for so many jobs, over 30 jobs, all rejected. None even got a chance. 24 of us interviewed for a KFC job, 23 accepted.

I was the only guy rejected. He finally landed work as an English teacher making about $12 a month. Then in 1995, he traveled to America and saw the internet for the very first time, and something clicked in him. He went home with an idea nobody believed in, and in 1999, he gathered 17 of his friends into a small apartment and they started a little company called Alibaba. People told him he was crazy, that nobody in China would ever shop online. He kept going anyway. He kept getting the door slammed in his face and he kept on knocking on new ones. And in 2014, Alibaba went public and raised about $25 billion. It was the biggest stock offering the world had ever seen at that point, and Jack Ma became one of the richest people people on the planet. From being rejected by KFC to one of the top 5 wealthiest people in the world, he didn't have the money, he didn't even know how to code, he didn't come from a big powerful family or some fancy school. By every measure the world uses to decide who was going to make it, Jack Ma was supposed to fail. He was supposed to stay an English teacher making $12 a month for the rest of his life, and everyone around him agreed. So the only thing that he had that you don't is that he refused to stop. Okay, so here's what you might be thinking: that's Jack Ma, that's, that's China, it's a billion-person market, right? Right place, right time. And you don't have any of that. You've got bills, a job you're tired of, you got no money saved, nobody in your corner, right? I've been broke, I've been stuck, I've been exactly where you are. When I was 19, I turned down a six-figure dream job to join a tiny startup for $300 a month. I worked out of my partner's dining room, I ate McDonald's french fries and bean salad because the cheapest food that I could find. I was so embarrassed that I lied to my friends and said I was just hustling when I was really just broke.

Broke.

And one night I called my partner and I quit, and I cried my eyes out. And the next morning I knocked on his door and just went back to work. I had no money, I had no clue. What I figured out though is that you don't need to be a genius to win. You just need to start, and then you need to refuse to stop. And you are sitting on more tools today than I ever had. So let me show you exactly how you can get rich when you're starting from nothing. Step number 1: Start with the skill you already have. I think your purpose comes from your pain. The thing that you struggled through the most, a problem that you've already solved for yourself, that's the seed of how you make money. So you don't need a brand new idea that nobody's ever heard of. You need a real problem that real people will pay to fix. And the best place to find that is in what you already know. So look at your own life and ask, what do people already come to me for? What did I have to figure out the hard way? What would I have paid someone to teach me a year ago? Go. That's your starting point. So when I was broke, I didn't have capital, I didn't have any connections. What I had was the ability to study what worked and apply it. So you have that skill right now today too that somebody out there will pay for. So maybe you're really good with words and writing, maybe you can edit video, or you can sell, or you can organize chaos, or you can teach something that you take for granted. That skill that you take for granted is the key. It feels easy to you, so you assume it's easy for everyone, and, and it isn't. The stuff that comes naturally to you is exactly the same stuff that someone else is struggling with right now and would would gladly pay to have it solved. So write down 3 things that people already trust you with. The friend who always asks you to look at their resume, the cousin who needs you to fix their phone, the coworker who copies how you handle clients. That is not just random things. That is the market. That's people telling you where your value already is. So stop waiting to feel qualified, right? I believe the being leads to the doing. The moment you decide that you are someone who helps people with this skill, the actions start to follow and the confidence shows up after the action. Not before. You build belief by starting, not by waiting until you feel ready, because ready is not actually real. You already have the skills that can pay you your first dollars, and your job is to stop hiding it and start moving towards it. Step number 2: Build your Money 50 list. So this is something we teach inside of our Mover Makers program. This is the fastest way I know to make real cash from zero. Here's what you do. You don't need a giant audience. You need You need 50 of the right people. So open up Google Maps or LinkedIn, find 50 people who could either become a high-value client or send you high-value clients. So people connected to real money in the niche that you picked. When you reach out and you don't sell them anything, you lead with a gift. You invite them onto your show, your podcast, your livestream, whatever you wanna call it, just to interview them and highlight their story. You spend an hour or two genuinely getting to know them and making them look great. And somewhere in that conversation, you ask one question that connects back to what you do so they naturally start asking about you as well. When the recording stops, the door is now open. Now you can offer to help them. I've watched people build 7-figure businesses with only 50 subscribers because it was never about the size of the audience. It was about the size of the relationships that you're building. 50 of the right people beats 50,000 of the wrong people every time. You could spend years trying to build a massive following and stay broke the whole time. I've seen I mean, it happened over and over again, refreshing your numbers and wondering why that money never comes in. Or you can skip that entire line by going straight to the people who are already doing and have the connections to what you want to build and giving to them before you ever ask. Step number 3, sell high ticket from day one. Okay, this is where most beginners get it backwards, and it's what keeps a lot of people poor. So you start by trying to sell a $40 ebook or a cheap little course, and then you realize that you need thousands and thousands of buyers just to make a living. Which means that you need to really build a giant expensive marketing machine that you can't afford. So what I wanna do is flip it. When you're starting with nothing, it's so much easier to find 5 people who will pay you $2,000 than it is to find 2,000 people who pay you $5. So look at that, 5 clients at $2,000 is $10,000 a month. To make that same $10,000 selling a $5 ebook, you need to convince and find 2,000 strangers every single month. Same money, completely different amount of work. So sell the high-value version first. Sell direct access to you. Solve a painful, expensive problem for a small number of people who can actually pay to have it solved. You don't need a fancy website, complicated funnel to do any of this. A simple payment link is more than enough to collect the first dollars. Charge what the result is worth to them, not what feels comfortable for you to ask for. And the cheap path feels safer, but it usually buries you in volume that you can't handle while you're still really small. The high-value path lets you make real money from a handful of the right-fit clients right now. And that money is what buys you the time to build everything else. Step number 4: Start before you're ready. Done beats perfect every single time. My first video back in 2009 took me 2 days to make. I wore a suit and tie. I was incredibly nervous and I had to bury the whole thing in B-roll because I couldn't even remember my own script. It was pretty rough, but I made the next one and then I made the next one and then thousands more after that. The quantity leads to the quality. You do not get good and then start. You start And the starting is what makes you good. So many people's dreams die in just the planning stage and the endless preparing, the researching, the waiting for the perfect moment that never actually comes. So don't wait for permission. Nobody's gonna come here and like tap you on the shoulder and say, it's finally your time. You give yourself permission. You put out the first imperfect thing, you learn from it, and then you put out the next one and it's a little bit better. The fear doesn't go away because you wait. It goes away because you act. Your first attempt is gonna be bad, and that's completely fine. That's the. Price of admission. Expect to suck at the beginning. Push through the awkward early reps with volume, because every single piece of volume makes you smarter, makes you sharper. And the person who starts ugly today beats the person who's still waiting to start pretty a year from now. The market doesn't reward the one who's most ready. It rewards the ones who showed up and kept showing up. Jack Ma's first company failed completely before Alibaba ever existed. He didn't wait until he had it all figured out. He started He started, it flopped. He learned, he started again. That's the pattern. You're allowed to be bad at the beginning. You're not allowed to never begin. Step number 5: Copy what already works. So when I was broke in that dining room, I had a realization that changed everything. I didn't need to be smarter than everyone. I just needed to study what already worked and copy or model that pattern. So I looked at Bill Gates and how he grew Microsoft from nothing from nothing to its first $7 million. And I saw it came from smart partnerships like the deal Microsoft made with IBM. I took that exact idea and applied it to my own tiny company. I went looking for partners who already had the audience that I wanted, my clients. And that one move landed me my first real deal worth $13,500 when I had basically nothing in the bank. I eventually built that company up. We sold it in my early 20s. And, uh, that's not to brag. I'm just telling you that the playbook already exists. Whatever you wanna build, someone has already done a version of it and they've left that you can follow. So find them, study exactly how they did it, and follow the path that they already cut through the jungle. You can shave years off your journey just by refusing to start from scratch. You don't get extra credit for figuring it out the hard way all by yourself. You don't need to reinvent the wheel when you can study the people who already built one, and then you can just start rolling. Step number 6: Protect your time. When you're starting out, your time is the only real money that you have. So we need to start guarding it like it matters because your future actually does. Run everything through 3 filters. I call them eliminate, automate, and delegate. So first, eliminate. Look at your day and just ruthlessly cut out anything that doesn't move you forward. I once stopped sending manual meeting notes to clients and found out that none of them even cared. I got hours back just like that. Second is automate. So anything routine that's left, hand it to software and tools and AI so it can run without you touching it. Passionate. And then third, delegate. Whatever's still left, get it off your plate so you can spend your hours on the one thing that brings in money, which is finding and serving clients. Uh, a guy I coach was down to his last dollar and 2 people had signed up for his program. I told him to stop hiding and go stream free live coaching where people could finally see his skills in action. He signed 55 clients in 2 weeks and built a company that was almost $2 million in 4 months. That's what happens when you stop drowning just busy work, and you pour your time into the thing that actually pays you. Your time is your seed money, so we want to plant it where it can grow, not just where it keeps you busy. Step number 7: Guard your belief and your circle. This is the one that decides whether you make it, because starting with nothing is as much a head game as it is a money game. Remember that every single person around Jack Ma told him he was crazy. If he had believed them, then there's no Alibaba. The world will hand you a hundred reasons to quit before you ever see your first real win. And a lot of those reasons will come from people who love you but have never done what you're trying to do. So you have to protect your belief. Feed your mind every day with people who have already walked the road through their books, their videos, their words. So the voice in your head telling you to keep going, uh, that voice becomes louder than the voices that around you are telling you to stop. And watch who you spend time with because slowly you become the average of are the 5 closest people to you. Like Jim Rohn says, find the ones who are building something, who light you up instead of draining you, who help move you towards things. When you start with nothing, your belief in yourself is the very first asset that you're actually building before the money, before the clients, before any of it. So you, you need to guard it. You need to protect it because everything else you're gonna build gets built on top of that. So here's what I want you to walk away with. Starting from nothing is not a curse. Uh, it's awesome. It's a, it's a blank slate. You've got no bad habits to unlearn, no reputation to protect. Nothing to lose and everything to build. Jack Ma had less than you have right now, and he changed the world. I had $300 a month and bean salad every day, and I built a life that I love. Every single thing I just gave you, starting with your skill, uh, building the Money 50 list, selling high value, starting before you're ready, modeling what is working, protecting your time, and guarding your belief— every one of those things is something that you can begin today with $0. The only thing standing between you and your first win is the decision to Start swinging. You have a skill, you have the intranet, you have AI, and you have this one moment to decide. You know when the best time to start was? Years ago. You know the second best time? Right now. How about right now? If you can do this, and you can, then you must. 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 AccraSure 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 systems 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, the kids that get into the, 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 going to 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 forgo 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 don't take that risk, I think you have a very high chance that you end up regretting that. Where are you going to 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 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 gonna 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 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 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 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. 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 best-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 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, uh, 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 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 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 the 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 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 views 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 a million dollars. 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 Mover 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, 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 built multi-million 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 Worry. 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, uh, your tired head on the pillow tonight, do one specific thing that moves you significantly closer to your dream. Make one beautiful piece 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 busy work. 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. Ready to discover the skills that could skyrocket your success this year? These aren't academic theories, they're practical, in-demand abilities that you can learn without a formal degree. Each skill taps into emerging market needs, offers entrepreneurial leverage, and has scalable impact. Let's dive in and imagine the possibilities each one opens up for your business and income. Skill number 1, AI integration and automation, turning intelligence into income. Okay, so what is it? Here we're gonna leverage AI and automation tools to streamline operations, create smarter products, or even launch AI-driven services. It's using machines to do the heavy thinking or doing for you from chatbots that handle customer inquiries to AI systems that optimize your marketing or inventory in real time. Here's why it matters this year. The AI revolution isn't coming. It's right here now, and it's rewriting the rules of business. By 2024, 70% of organizations reported using AI in some capacity, up from just 55% the year before. Companies are pouring investments in the AI at record levels, over $109 billion in the US in 2024, with nearly $34 billion globally into generative AI, and they desperately need people who can make it work. The catch? There's a huge talent gap. 94% of business leaders say they face AI-related skill shortages on their teams, with 1 in 3 reporting massive gaps in critical AI roles. What does that mean? Demand is way bigger than supply, and that means opportunities for you. Entrepreneurs who are AI savvy can step in and command premium prices for their solutions. This isn't just for tech companies either. From healthcare to finance, AI is being woven into daily operations. Even the FDA has approved hundreds of AI-enabled medical devices, and self-driving cars are logging thousands of rides right now. The world is racing to adopt AI, and those who can ride that wave stand to reap huge rewards. So how can entrepreneurs profit? Think of AI as a force multiplier for your business. An entrepreneur with AI skills can automate super boring processes, freeing up time to scale faster. You can make smarter products with better features. You can offer AI consulting and integration services to companies who are willing to pay for help. Uh, so for example, a small e-commerce founder might use AI to personalize their shopping experience for each customer automatically, leading to happier customers and higher sales. Or maybe you're launching a micro SaaS tool that uses AI, like a AI scheduling assistant or content generator. Even a one-person business can serve thousands of customers when AI is doing most of the work. The evidence is everywhere. Companies using AI report higher productivity and lower cost, and many have seen AI-driven projects boost their bottom line. One entrepreneur created an AI-powered copywriting service and landed hundreds of clients globally, essentially earning money 24/7 as the AI works for for them. The key is that AI is practical and learnable. With countless online courses and tools, you can start applying AI even if you're not a programmer. Many AI platforms are actually plug and play. So this year, knowing how to harness AI is like having a superpower. It's not just about efficiency, it's about unlocking new income streams. From automating your marketing to building the next ChatGPT-like app for a niche industry, AI integration is a skill that can pay off almost immediately. So embrace it and you ride the biggest tech wave of our era straight towards profit. Now, AI might be the brains, but data is the backbone. So next, let's look at the skills that turn raw numbers into gold. Skill number 2: Data analytics and business intelligence. Profiting from big data. Okay, so what is it? It's the skill of collecting, analyzing, and drawing smart insights from data to drive business decisions. So data analytics is like having x-ray vision for your business. It lets you see the patterns and trends that normal people's eyes would miss. So business intelligence, or BI, goes hand in hand, focusing on those who are using insights to make strategic calls. This skill isn't about math genius. It's about knowing which numbers matter and how to translate them into action. So why it matters right now in this year: we live in a world that has tons of data. Every click, every purchase, every interaction, it can track, but few people know how to turn that ocean of information into actual real value. And that's where you can come in. Companies have realized that gut instinct isn't enough. 81% of businesses now believe data should be at the heart of all decision-making, and they're willing to pay handsomely for those who can deliver results. Why? Because data-driven businesses simply perform better. They're more productive and more profitable on average than their less data-savvy peers. Companies that truly embrace analytics have seen efficiencies boost as high as 60 to 80% in corporations. It's not just about giant corporations. Even small startups benefit when they can quickly identify which product feature is a hit or which marketing channel brings the best ROI. And this is a very clear trend. The global big data analytics market is massive. It's over $270 billion in value and still growing. And there's a shortage of professionals who can wrangle data effectively. Executives are literally hungry for insights. A recent survey found 88% of business leaders rank data analytics as a top priority for upskilling in the organization. So this year, being fluent in data is like having a secret weapon in your market. You base decisions on facts, not guesses, which is a recipe for winning. So how can entrepreneurs use it? Data analytics can make you rich in two ways. First, by applying it to your own business, you can pinpoint your most profitable customers, you can find inefficiencies that— you can test pricing strategies with actual hard evidence. For example, Netflix famously used data analytics to save $1 billion a year by recommending exactly what viewers wanted. So imagine bringing that kind of insight into your business decisions. Secondly, you can sell this skill as a service to others. Many companies, especially smaller ones, they drown in data but have no idea what to do with it. You could come in as a freelance analyst or consultant, turn their data into a clear action plan, and charge premium fees for delivering growth or savings. So picture telling your client, I found a way to boost your sales 20% by analyzing your customer behavior and then actually doing it. There are real case studies of entrepreneurs doing just this. One startup founder used business intelligence tools to optimize her inventory and eliminated over $100,000 in annual waste, directly padding her profits. Another built a consulting agency that helps local businesses set up simple dashboards and KPIs, and within a year he was booking 5-figure contracts, right? Regularly. The bottom line is data analytics is practical and learnable. There's tons of online courses, YouTube videos, tools that are now drag and drop. Master it and you can either supercharge your own business or become the go-to data guru who turns others' confusion into cash. So in this year, data, it's a new oil, and knowing how to drill for it is an extremely high-income skill. Now, having great data is pointless if you can't attract customers. That's where our next skill in. It's time to cash in on the art of getting noticed. Skill number 3: digital marketing and growth hacking. Scaling visibility into wealth. So what is it? Digital marketing is a skill of getting customers for people's businesses online through channels like social media, through search engines, through email, through LLMs, and more. Growth hacking is a trendy way to say creative, fast-paced marketing experimentation, right? So finding clever, low-cost tactics tactics to drive growth or sales for your business or other people's. This skill is about making your business impossible to ignore on the internet and turning that attention into revenue. So covers everything from running targeted ads, optimizing a website to rank on Google or GPT, crafting viral content, analyzing campaign data to tweak for better results, uh, making YouTube videos to spread your message. Why it matters this year is you could have the best product or service in the world, but if nobody knows about it, you don't make a dime. This year, digital marketing remains one of the highest skills for entrepreneurs because online attention is the currency of our kingdom. Just look at the numbers. Global digital ad spending is projected to hit $843 billion. Yes, with a B. Companies large and small are pouring money into Facebook ads, Google searches, TikTok videos, wherever their audience lives online, and they need experts who know how to navigate this landscape. The job outlook also reflects that demand. Marketing roles are expected to grow by 10%, faster than the average for all careers. And in particular, there's surging demand for people skilled in areas like marketing analytics, content creation, and SEO/SEM, because every business wants to rank number one on Google and decode the algorithms of ChatGPT. The beauty of digital marketing is that it's practical and learnable. No MBA required, just practice, creativity, and keeping up with trends. We're also seeing new frontiers like AI-driven marketing. Over 50% of businesses are already using generative AI to improve their operations. All this means that entrepreneurial marketers who stay sharp can out-hustle their bigger competitors. So in this year, if you know how to get the right message to the right people at the right time online, you basically have a license to print money. So how can you use it as an entrepreneur? Digital marketing is often the make-or-break skill that determines if you scale or if you stay stock. And so if you master it and you can acquire customers on demand, you can enter new markets quickly. You can even build a personal brand that multiplies all of your opportunities. Take for example an online fitness coach who leverages social media marketing by mastering YouTube and Instagram. She grows her audience to hundreds of thousands and launches a fitness app that earns 7 figures online. Or think of a small local business owner who uses savvy Google search ads and SEO to dominate local search traffic, right? Their store goes from unknown to the go-to place in town. And these aren't hypotheticals. These things are happening right now all around us. As an entrepreneur, you can also sell digital marketing expertise. If you're great at, say, SEO or Facebook ads, you can freelance or start an agency. Businesses are eager to pay because they've seen the ROI. For every dollar spent on email marketing can yield $36 in return, as various studies have shown. So a skilled email marketer is worth their weight in gold. Another real-world use case: an entrepreneur growth hacked his startup by creating a referral program that went viral. So think Dropbox's free storage for referral strategy, acquiring millions of users without a massive ad budget. That's growth hacking in action. So digital marketing lets you scale up quickly. An ad campaign can reach millions of people overnight. A piece of content that catches fire can bring in floods of traffic. You're not limited by your local area, your storefront. And with analytics tools, you can measure every penny and double down on what works, like truly data-driven marketing. And the emotional side, it's pretty thrilling to see your business blow up because of a campaign that you created. The control is right here. It's in your hands. With consumer attention shifting every year, today it might be YouTube or LinkedIn newsletters. Tomorrow, who knows? Entrepreneurs who have the skill will ride each wave and outperform pace their competition. Digital marketing and growth hacking are high-income skills because they directly drive revenue, and mastering them means you can virtually write your own success story in this digital age. So now you've got the customer's attention. Now we need to convince them to open their wallets. The next skill is all about the art of persuasion, and it's one of the oldest and most profitable tricks in the book. Skill number 4: persuasive Effective Communication and Storytelling: Selling Anything to Anyone. So what is it? This is the skill of conveying ideas in a compelling way. So that's through sales pitches and marketing copy or even everyday networking conversations. It includes sales and negotiation, right? Convincing a customer or partner to say yes. Copywriting, which is writing words that sell from ads to landing pages. And storytelling, crafting a narrative that hooks people in emotionally emotionally. It's how to talk or write so people listen, trust you, and feel motivated to act, like clicking the buy now or signing a contract. Why it matters this year is no matter how advanced technology gets, the power of a good story and genuine connection never goes out of style. In fact, as automation rises, those human-centered skills become more valuable. This year's marketplace is hyperstimulated. Consumers see thousands of ads and posts a day, so the ability to cut through that noise with a that message is pure gold. 68% of consumers say that a brand story influences their buying decisions. People remember stories up to 22 times more than plain facts. That's huge for entrepreneurs trying to build a memorable brand or pitch to investors. And yes, we see evidence that storytelling and communication translate to better results. Marketing campaigns built around a narrative can boost conversion rates by 30% or more. On the sales side, companies are actively looking for leaders with strong social influence and communication skills. Even the World Economic Forum highlighted leadership and social influence as a top skill for the future. Why? Because a person who can rally a team, win over a client, uh, negotiate a profitable deal, they are invaluable. Also, let's talk money. Jobs like sales executives or copywriters are often high paying because they directly bring in revenue. A top performing tech sales rep, for example, can earn a 6-figure base salary plus another 6 figures in missions. Copywriters who crack the code of persuasion are similarly rewarded. Many freelance copywriters charge $100+ an hour, and businesses happily pay because one killer sales page or email sequence can generate hundreds of thousands in sales. Words are powerful, and this year, those who can wield that power expertly will find that it translates into serious income. So how can you use it as an entrepreneur? You're always selling, not just your products, but your vision, your brand, even selling yourself as a trustworthy partner, persuasive communication turns this into a superpower. Mastering storytelling means you can craft a brand narrative that makes customers feel something and remember you. So for example, instead of just saying, uh, our shoe is comfortable, you share the story of a customer who, thanks to your shoe, ran their first marathon pain-free to honor a loved one, right? Now you're not just selling shoe. You're selling inspiration. You're selling identity. That's the difference that makes people lifetime fans. On a more practical side, entrepreneurs skilled in communication, they'll just close more deals. So imagine you're negotiating with a supplier or an investor. If you can clearly articulate your value and persuade them effectively, you'll likely get better terms, maybe tens of thousands saved or gained in one conversation. If you sell services or high-ticket products, strong sales techniques like consultative selling or solutions-based selling is key. Today's customers expect you to understand their needs and tailor your offer. Being able to do that can literally double or triple your closing rate. So for example, you can monetize a skill by offering freelance copywriting or sales consulting. Great copywriters are in short supply, even with AI writing tools around, because someone has to give the AI the right emotional direction. Businesses will pay top dollar for emails and ads that actually convert convert. One excellent sales page can be worth millions to a company. So paying a writer $10,000 a craft, it is— it's a no-brainer for some companies. Skilled copywriters routinely earn over $150,000 a year once they built a reputation. And don't forget content creators and influencers. They are essentially storytellers too, turning authentic communication into followers and income from ads and sponsorships or product sales. Emotions drive decisions, and if you can tap into emotions with genuine communication, you can drive decisions in your favor. So this year, mastering persuasive communication and storytelling isn't just a nice-to-have. It's often the difference between the business that just fizzles out and one that actually becomes a phenomenon. We've covered brains, data, marketing, charm. Our final skill might not sound as glamorous, but it's a massive moneymaker in today's world. It's all about protecting the wealth that you're building, and it's an area where demand is exploding. Skill number 5: cybersecurity and data protection. Guarding the digital gold mine. Okay, so what is it? Cybersecurity is the skill of keeping data, software systems safe from hackers and breaches. It's being the, uh, digital bodyguard for businesses. This includes understanding how to prevent attacks— so think malware, phishing, ransomware— knowing how to plug vulnerabilities vulnerabilities in networks or websites and making sure that companies follow best practices so sensitive information like consumer data is not stolen or compromised. It's deeply technical for those who specialize, but at a high level, it's very learn-by-doing, problem-solving field, and you don't need a PhD to get good at it, just solid training and experience and a curious mind. Data protection goes hand in hand. So think dealing with proper handling and compliance, like the laws of the land. So for an entrepreneur, having cybersecurity skills means that you can both protect your own venture, but also potentially offer security solutions to other people as a business. So why does it matter this year? One word: risk. As businesses digitize every aspect of their operations, the risk of cyberattacks have skyrocketed, and so have the costs. The average cost of a single data breach hit an eye-watering $4.9 million globally. So for a small or mid-sized company, that kind of a hit can be fatal. That's why firms are desperate for cybersecurity expertise and why it's become a high-income skill, high-demand skill. We're in a situation where there aren't nearly enough cybersecurity pros to go around. The global cybersecurity workforce is millions short. One recent study showed about 4.8 million cybersecurity roles are unfulfilled worldwide. There are millions of openings and not enough people with the skills, a gap that widened 19% in just one year. So talent shortage is actually the number one obstacle companies face in securing their systems. This kind of supply-demand mismatch is exactly what drives up incomes for those who have the skill. So companies have even started to prioritize this in budgets because they simply cannot afford the alternative. Companies without adequate security staff end up paying on average $1.76 million more per breach due to slower response and damage control. But just beyond like corporate IT departments. Every entrepreneur with an online presence needs at least basic cybersecurity savviness. Cyber threats this year are more sophisticated. Yes, hackers are using AI too. So on top of that, customer trust and regulations require more solid data protection. You don't want to be that startup that leaked user data and lost credibility overnight. So from ransomware attacks shutting down hospitals to small businesses getting scammed from phishing, the threat is universal. This urgency is driving a huge market for cybersecurity products and consultants. Global spending on cybersecurity is rising every year, tens of billions of dollars annually, as businesses effectively say, please take our money and keep us safe. If you can step in with the skills to do so, you will be richly rewarded. So as some evidence, top freelance cybersecurity experts report rates of $200 to $300 an hour, and experienced security consultants can make over $500,000 a year by serving multiple clients. So it's no surprise that when the stakes are this high, why companies are willing to pay for peace of mind. So how can entrepreneurs use it? If you're building your own company, cybersecurity skills are like an insurance policy and a selling point. You can save a ton of money by implementing security measures yourself instead of hiring some expensive firms and avoid disaster that could derail your business. But also, being more security-minded from day one can be a competitive advantage. You can use that in your marketing. Customers and partners feel safer dealing with you. So for example, e-commerce entrepreneur who knows how to secure their payment systems and protect customer data not only avoids costly breaches, but can market their store as ultra secure, which gains more customer trust and extra sales in an era of privacy concerns. On the other side, cybersecurity is also an amazing service and a business opportunity. So given that huge talent gap, you could start a consultancy or or freelance as a virtual CISO, as Chief Information Security Officer, for multiple small companies that can't afford one in-house. They get your expertise part-time, you get a hefty paycheck. Some entrepreneurs are launching cybersecurity startups. So whether that's, um, developing a niche security software tool or you're offering specialized training, there's even demand for things like ethical hackers who companies pay to test their defenses. We've seen solo consultants charge retainers in the thousands per month per client just to be on call for security incidents. And with new data privacy laws popping up all the time, like Europe's GDPR and others, businesses are scrambling for guidance, which is another avenue for advisory services you could offer if you're well-versed in compliance. So the key point is this: threats are growing and talent is scarce. If you equip yourself with this skill, you become part of a highly sought-after elite group of people. Not only can you command higher frees because preventing a multimillion-dollar breach is essentially worth a high payout. But you also carry the confidence that you can protect the empire that you're building too. In a time where a single hack can wipe out years of effort, the entrepreneurs who understand cybersecurity will safeguard their wealth and even turn security into a profitable service for others. It's truly a high-impact, high-income skill for today's age. So each of these 5 skills— AI integration, data analytics, digital marketing, Persuasive Communication and Cybersecurity hits the sweet spot of being practical, learnable, and immediately valuable this year. They align with the biggest technology shifts and market needs that we are seeing right now. AI is everywhere, data is the king, online growth is non-negotiable, human connection still seals a deal, and security underpins it all. The best part is you don't need a fancy degree to get started with any of these. There are YouTube videos, boot camps, online courses, communities for each skill that you can start learning right now. Entrepreneurs who invest time in mastering even one or two of these will position themselves to generate wealth in the short term. We're talking within a year or two, not decades. And it's all backed by trends and numbers that I've already cited throughout this entire video. The market is hungry for these abilities. So ask yourself, which of these skills speaks to you right now. The entrepreneurs getting rich this year aren't necessarily the ones with the most funding or the fanciest ideas. Often they're the ones who have the right skills at the right time and execute relentlessly. Now you know 5 of those right skills. It's time to choose, learn, and leap. Here's to your success, because this year might be the year your hard work and high-income skills make you the next great success story. AI is a bubble, and that's good news for you as an entrepreneur. It sounds backwards, right? Everybody's either hyping AI as the second coming or dismissing it as a passing fad. But my take is the so-called AI bubble is the biggest opportunity you're about to miss if you're not paying attention, and I don't want that to happen for you. In fact, I'd rather you fail by riding this wave than play it safe and watch it pass by, because one of my core beliefs is I'd rather no one fail than not know at all. Right now you're caught between two extremes. On the one side, people are screaming that AI will change everything overnight, every app, every business, maybe even replace entrepreneurs entirely. On the other side, you've got folks whispering, "It's all a hype. It'll crash and burn. Save yourself." It's like standing in the middle of a gold rush. Some are either racing to stake their claim, others are too afraid of a bust to even dip their toe, and you, you're just trying to figure out what's true and what's noise. Here's the deal: if you freeze, if you do nothing, out of fear, you risk getting left behind when AI reshapes your industry. But if you chase the hype blindly without a strategy, you could waste time and money on something that collapses. Neither of these outcomes are ideal. You have worked too hard to let a wave like this either leave you in the dust or wipe you out. The consequence of getting this wrong isn't just missing a trend. It could mean missing the future of your business. So imagine looking back in 5 or 10 years and saying, I had the chance to jump on the AI revolution, but I was too scared or too stubborn to do it. Regret like that stings, and I know because I felt it, and I don't want you to feel it too. Lessons from the dot-com bubble. To understand why I'm excited about the AI bubble, let's take a quick trip to another bubble, the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. Now, back then, everyone was throwing money at anything that had a dot-com at the end. Pets.com, a company that sold pet supplies online, raised over $80 million and became a poster child of the dot-com hype. Within 9 months of its IPO, it went bust. Why? It had tons of hype but no solid business model, no real value for customers. Contrast that with Amazon. Amazon stock got hammered when the dot-com bubble burst. It lost over 90% of its value at one point. People called it Amazon.bomb. But Jeff Bezos wasn't chasing hype. He was building real value, a strong e-commerce foundation obsessed with customer experience. Amazon survived the crash and eventually thrived, becoming one of the biggest companies in the world. The bubble bursting wiped out the pretenders and cleared the field for the players with real substance. That's the key in every bubble, whether dot-com or AI. The ones who focus on real value and long-term vision come out on top after the hype settles. So the lesson for you: don't be Pets.com. Be Amazon. Use this AI wave to build something that lasts, not just to ride a short-term buzz. When I lost a $40 million opportunity, I want to share one of the biggest lessons I ever learned in my own entrepreneurial journey. A painful lesson about hesitating too long. When I was 22, running my first startup, I nearly lost everything because I was too cautious. I spent an entire summer perfecting our business plan, pages on pages, planning every detail on paper. Paper and not actually doing enough in reality. I was stuck in planning, afraid to launch anything until it was just right. Sound familiar? Well, guess what? While I was polishing paragraphs in the business plan, a giant company entered our industry looking to buy up small startups. It came down to us and one competitor, but when opportunity knocked, we weren't ready. I just had a binder full of plans, and that competitor who had launched and taken action got acquired for $40 million. $40 million. And my company, we missed that deal, and that really stung. I remember thinking, that could have been us. I could have sold my business for $40 million. It was a brutal wake-up call for me, but it taught me something that I need you to embrace. We've got to get out there and test your assumptions. Most of your plan is going to be wrong anyway. I learned that the hard way. From that day, I started calling myself a recovering perfectionist. I realized a half half-assed plan you actually execute is better than a perfect plan that you never act on. So when I talk about AI and the opportunities and the hype around it, I'm coming from that lesson. I don't want you to miss your $40 million opportunity or whatever that looks like for your business because you are waiting for perfect or paralyzed by uncertainty. I want you to take action while others are still writing their business plan for the future. Now maybe you're thinking, okay, that sounds great, Evan, but I'm not a tech person. I don't really get AI. What if I jump in and it all crashes? I can't afford a big make a mistake. And fair enough, I hear you. A lot of entrepreneurs feel this way right now. Maybe you feel completely out of your depth with new technology, or you're worried that you're going to waste your resources. Maybe you're even thinking, I'll just wait until the hype dies down and the path is clear. But think about this: you don't need to be a tech genius, and you don't need to bet the farm on AI to get started. Waiting for clarity sounds safe, but in a fast-moving wave like this, waiting is the riskiest move of all. Every big shift in business, whether it was internet, social media, now AI, AI looked confusing and risky at the start. But the entrepreneurs who said, I'll figure it out as I go, are the ones who came out ahead. And guess what? You can figure it out. You figured out everything else up to this point— how to run a business, how to solve problems, how to adapt when things got tough. You don't have to know everything about AI. You just have to be willing to learn something about it. I'm going to show you how to approach this in a practical way. So park those doubts at the door for now, and let's talk about how you can not only survive the so-called AI bubble, absolutely thrive because of it. You ready? Let's jump into the real strategies that will take you from feeling doubt to taking action and ultimately to transforming who you are as an entrepreneur in this new era. Step number 1: Shift from fear to curiosity. The first shift is all about mindset. Instead of fearing the AI bubble, get curious about it. Why? Because fear and curiosity can't coexist. When you're in fear, your brain shuts down possibilities. When you're curious, you start finding opportunities. Think about it. Our brains are wired to resist change. It's a survival instinct. New technologies can trigger that fight or flight response. This is unknown. It might be dangerous. Avoid, avoid, right? That's your lizard brain talking. But as an entrepreneur, you can't afford to let the lizard brain drive. So flip it. Ask questions instead of making assumptions. Instead of AI will replace everything, I'm doomed, or AI is just a scam, ask how could this actually help me? Where could this open a door in my business? When you trade your fear for curiosity, you turn paralysis into exploration. Curiosity is that childlike wonder that makes you lean in instead of back away. And here's a little science for you. There's a principle called Amara's Law that says we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. So yes, the hype right now is probably overblown. AI isn't going to magically fix every problem in your business this quarter, but long term, it's likely going to have more impact than we can even imagine today. Knowing this should fire you up to learn and observe, not panic. Curiosity lets you capitalize on the long run while everyone else is freaking out or getting cynical. So action item for you: approach AI like a student, not a critic. Spend an evening playing with a free AI tool just to see what it does. Watch what your competitors or industry leaders are doing with AI. AI, not to copy them, but to spark some ideas for you. Replace the thought, this is scary, with this is interesting. When you do that, you'll find your fear turning into excitement, and excitement is momentum. It's the momentum you need for the next steps. Step number 2: Focus on real value, not hype. In a bubble environment, it's easy to get caught up chasing all the shiny objects. Don't fall fall for it. The entrepreneurs who win are the ones who stick to fundamentals: serving customers, solving real problems, delivering genuine value. AI is a powerful tool, but it's just that, a tool. It's not a magical money machine or a substitute for understanding your customers. So ask yourself, where can AI actually create real value in my business or for my clients? Maybe it's automating a tedious task so you can serve customers faster. Maybe it's analyzing data to uncover a trend that helps your clients save money. Whatever it is, tie it to a real pain point or desire. If you use AI to do something meaningful, something people already care about, you're building on solid ground. But if you're doing it to sound trendy in a press release, you're building it on quicksand. Remember the story of Pets.com versus Amazon? Pets.com poured millions into flashy ads. Who remembers the sock puppet dog? They had hype, they had attention, but they didn't have a viable way to deliver value profitably. Amazon, on the other hand, kept refining how to deliver books, and then everything to customers better than anyone else. The same is true right now. 90% of AI startups that are just hype will flame out, but the ones who use AI to actually solve a real problem will endure. So be intentional. Don't add AI to your business just so you can say you have AI. Add it because it makes something faster, cheaper, or better for your customer. That's it. Do that and you won't be one of the hype casualties when things shake out. You'll be too busy serving your customers something they truly value. And trust me, bubble or bubble. That never goes out of style. Step number 3: Start small, but start now. Opportunities in a bubble is all about timing and action. You've got to take action before the bubble bursts, but you don't have to bet your whole business on it on day one. The key is to start small and iterate quickly. So think big picture, but act tiny steps. If you've been watching this AI trend from the sidelines, I want you to get on the field in a manageable Pick one little experiment. For example, can you use an AI tool to handle some customer service emails this week and see how it goes? Can you train an AI on your FAQs and have it help customers 24/7? Or maybe use an AI image generator to mock up marketing materials. Choose something low risk but potentially high reward and just try it. Not next year, not someday when I have time. Right now. Why is this so important? Because action is the antidote to anxiety. When you start doing, you stop doubting as much. You'll learn more from one day of trial and error than a year of thinking and planning. I learned this the hard way with that $40 million miss. I planned for months and got nothing. When I finally started taking action, even small ones, things began to move. Momentum built. You don't need a perfect plan. In fact, remember what I said earlier? A half-assed plan started now is better than a perfect plan never acted on. That lesson cost me $40 million, and I hope you got it. You can try it for free just now. So sketch a quick plan for your little AI experiment and go. Maybe it fails. Fine. You'll learn and tweak and try again. Maybe it works and you just unlocked a new level for your business. Either way, you win because you're moving forward while others are still standing still. Step number 4, adapt and keep learning. This is your identity shift. Taking action once isn't enough. You need to commit to continuous learning and adaptation. This is here the identity shift comes in. It's time to stop seeing yourself as not a tech person, or too late to the game, or just a traditional entrepreneur. Your new identity is: I am an adaptable, always learning entrepreneur. Embrace the idea that part of your job is to keep evolving. Think of companies that failed to adapt. Blockbuster thought they were just in the video rental business. They didn't evolve their identity to being in the entertainment delivery business, and Netflix ate their Kodak thought they were just a film company. They actually invented the digital camera, but they shelved it because it didn't fit their identity, and they got left behind. Don't be like that. Don't cling to what you've always been when the world is changing. Here's the beautiful thing. As an entrepreneur, you are not fixed. You can learn new skills, adopt new tools, and reinvent yourself at any time. In fact, the most successful entrepreneurs constantly reinvent themselves. They're not afraid to say, I don't know how this works yet. They get their hands dirty. They take courses, they ask questions, they watch videos. They stay humble and hungry. So ask yourself, what does the next level version of me look like in the age of AI? Maybe you become the entrepreneur who combines your deep industry knowledge with AI superpowers. Make that a potent combo. Maybe you become a leader in your circle teaching others what you've learned about tech. You solidify your knowledge by teaching. The point is you evolve your identity from someone wary of change to someone who thrives on change. And this isn't about learning a tech trick here or there. It's about changing how you see yourself. When you see yourself as an adaptable innovator, you'll find it easier to tackle whatever comes next, AI or otherwise. You won't say, "I can't do that." You say, "I haven't done that yet, but I can learn." And that mindset shift becomes everything. It moves you from being at the mercy of trends to being the one who leverages them. Encourages them. Step number 5: Don't do it alone, get support. Finally, remember this: you're not alone on this journey, nor should you try to be. One of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make, and I made this early on too, is trying to figure everything out solo. When I started my first business, I was too embarrassed to ask for help when I was struggling. I thought I had to put on a brave face and do it all myself, and that nearly broke me and company. I've said it before and I'll say it again, don't do it alone because you'll probably fail. You'll quit along the way because it's too devastatingly lonely. So as you venture into AI or any new domain, build your support system. Find a community of entrepreneurs learning about AI. Trust me, there are groups out there. There are online forums, there's local meetups, there's masterminds where people share what's working and what's not. Seek out a mentor or an advisor who has more experience in technology or AI AI. This could be as simple as asking a tech-savvy friend to coffee and picking their brain, or hiring a consultant for a short session to get you started in the right direction. Surrounding yourself with people on the same path turns this whole experience from scary into exciting. You get to share wins, swap failures, and bounce ideas around. And more importantly, when you hit a wall— and you will, it is part of learning— you'll have someone to help you climb that wall instead of giving up. Entrepreneurs are a tough breed, but we're not invincible solo warriors. Every great entrepreneur you know had mentors, peers, and a team. So don't isolate yourself. Make this a team effort. Celebrate your AI experiment wins with your friends. If you have business partners or a team, bring them into the learning process too. Let them contribute ideas. The more minds working on this, the faster you'll adapt and the more confidence you'll build. And confidence is key. When you know you've got backup, you approach challenges with a different level of energy. You'll take on bigger challenges because you know that it's not just you against the world. It's you and your allies, your fellow believers pushing forward together. That's how you make sure you don't just ride the AI wave, but you make your own wave too. From doubt to identity shift. So look at the journey that we've taken here. You started with doubt. You know, is this AI bubble going to burst in my face? Should I do anything? And now you have a roadmap to move into action and actually change who you are in the process. This was never just about AI. It's about you becoming the kind of entrepreneur who can handle any wave. Today is AI. Tomorrow it'll be something else, another technology, another shift in the market. The specifics will change, but the core principle won't. Bet on yourself to learn and adapt rather than sitting on the side of headlines. You are not the person who watches opportunities pass by anymore. You are the person who grabs them, shapes them, and uses them to serve your mission. You're building the skill of belief in yourself and your vision, even when the path forward is uncertain. And that is huge. Most people won't do that, but you are not most people. This is how you future-proof yourself. This is how you win consistently. You don't need a huge team or fancy office to make money.

In starting the company, I had nothing. I had no income source.

You can do it with one of 9 simple machines. Right now, the U.S. Census Bureau counts 30.4 million one-person businesses in America with zero employees, and together they pull in over $1.8 trillion a year. So while everyone is fighting for the same crowded online hustles, a small group of people are quietly buying simple machines nobody is talking about and turning turning them into a paycheck that never calls in sick. Let me tell you about a college kid named Zach Downey. So while he was studying at James Madison University, he got fed up that there was nowhere to grab a late-night snack, so he decided to fix it himself. His very first idea was a pizza vending machine, and honestly, it flopped. He ran into regulatory roadblocks and dead ends, and most people would have quit right there, but Zach, he didn't He just changed his machine. He noticed that people lose their minds over cotton candy at amusement parks and fairs and resorts, the kind of places packed with families already in a spending mood. So he bought automated cotton candy machines, the exact kind of, uh, robotic kiosk that lands number 1 on this list, and he parked them right where the crowds already were. Here is what makes it work. It costs him about 30 cents in sugar to make a to spin a cotton candy that sells for $5 to $10. And the little robot making it becomes a show that pulls people in all by itself. He didn't need a storefront or staff or a fancy business degree. He needed one machine and the right spot. Today, Zach is just 22 years old. He runs around 10 of these machines under his company, Distinctive Vending, and he's on track to pull in over half a million dollars in revenue. A college experiment that started as a complete flop turned into a half a million dollar a year business, all because he was willing to buy one simple machine and let it do the work for him. This is the entire promise of this video, and it's a lot less rare than you think. Now, here's what you might be thinking. You're thinking these sound like weird little gimmicks, or that you need a fortune and, uh, some kind of degree or engineering just to understand and run one of them. You don't. Most of these machines that I'm gonna show you cost cost less than a used car. Several are under $5,000, and they're built to run with almost no staff and almost no skill. The whole game here is owning an asset that keeps working whether you show up or not. And I want you to run your business, uh, as if you were to get hit by a bus tomorrow. The machine keeps making money without you even being there. Don't get hit by a bus, though. That's the difference between a real job and real wealth. So let me show you 9 machines that are quietly making regular people rich this year, counting down to my personal number 1 favorite. Business number 9: the Fleet Saver. First up is the biggest one, a mobile tire retreading unit. This is a self-contained little factory that lives inside a commercial van or a shipping container. It cleans up old commercial truck tire casings, lays on fresh layers of rubber, and heat cures a brand new tread right there on onsite. So instead of a trucking company hauling worn-out tires across the state to some central plant and losing days of expensive downtime, you drive the machine straight to them and fix it in their own yard. Now, yes, this one has the highest barrier on the list, starting around $25,000 to get started. So it's not the first thing you go and buy on day one, probably. But here's why it's worth knowing about anyway and why nobody's talking about it. It runs on high-ticket business-to-business contracts with trucking fleets and city transit agencies, the kind of clients who pay on time and stick around for years because you are saving them serious money and serious headaches. One machine, a handful of fleet contracts, and you built a recession-proof income that has absolutely nothing to do with chasing strangers on the internet, right? There are millions of commercial trucks on the road and barely anyone serving them this way. So the demand is enormous and the field is wide open. Being leads to doing here. So even if this machine isn't for you, you. Let it stretch what you believe a business is even allowed to look like. Business number 8: the Micro Packager. Next up is the Vertical Form Fill Seal Machine, what I call the Micro Packager. So for about $4,500, this machine takes a roll of film, forms it into a tube, fills it with a precise amount of liquid or powder, and heat seals it shut all on its own. It basically brings real industrial contract packaging into your garage. Now think about every small brand out there selling coffee samples, single-serve protein, soy sauce packets, or supplement powders. They cannot afford a giant factory with massive minimum orders, so they get stuck and stay small. You can become their answer. You charge them a simple fee per unit to package their product, and because brands need this done over and over again every single month, you build a predictable high-volume income stream that just keeps repeating like clockwork. One single supplement brand can keep your machine running for weeks. And once you have 5 of those brands, you have a real factory income from a corner of your garage. Nobody is dreaming about a sachet machine, and that is exactly why there is so much room inside of it. Remember this pattern because it shows up on every machine in this video. The boring ones nobody brags about having and almost no competition. And that is where the quiet money lives. Number 7, the Nut Butter Mill. This next one is part machine and part show. So commercial fresh nut butter grinder takes cheap peanuts or cashews and turns them into premium made-to-order nut butter right in front of the customer. The raw nuts don't cost that much, but the second people watch it and smell it being ground fresh, you can sell specialty flavors like honey cinnamon or spicy chili at a massive multiple of what those nuts cost you. The live grinding The marketing— you don't need to pay for ads. The machine itself is the ad, pulling a crowd everywhere you set it up. You can run it at farmers markets and weekend pop-ups for fast cash flow now, and then you take those exact same flavors and turn them into an online brand that you can ship nationwide later if you want to. The big jarred brands on the grocery shelves can't compete with fresh, and they can't compete with a story. And now you have both. This is how a simple $5 jar of fresh butter quietly grows into a real food company with a real following, all starting from one grinder on a folding table. So don't overthink the fancy version. Get the machine, set up one at a market this weekend, and let the people lining up tell you what to make more of. Number 6, the On Demand Branding Box. Number 6 is a compact flatbed printer that prints full-color logos directly onto craft paper bags, fabric totes, and shipping boxes. It runs between $4,000 and $6,000 Here's a painful problem that it quietly solves. Every local bakery, boutique, online shop desperately wants their own branded packaging, but the big print factories force them to order 10,000 units at a time, which a small shop simply cannot afford. So you step in with no minimum order at all. A blank bag costs around $0.05 and you sell it printed for $0.20 to $0.50 each. That tiny little gap multiplied across thousands of bags a month quietly turns into a $2,000 to $4,000 profit. And the best part is you're not really selling bags. You're selling small business owners the ability to finally look professional and proud when they hand their product to a customer. And people will pay for that feeling all day long. Better still, a bakery doesn't order packaging once. They order it again and again forever. So a handful of local shops become steady, repeatable income that you can count on. You become the quiet brand behind all the brands in your town. Number 5, the lot striper. Right in the middle of the list is one of the simplest machines here, a high-precision line striping machine for parking lots. It's a wheeled battery or gas-powered sprayer that lays down crisp, clean parking stalls, fire lanes, and the accessibility markings that businesses are legally required to keep fresh and visible. The equipment starts around $3,000, and a single striping job can pay $300 or more. So you knock out a few contracts a week, and now you're looking at $2,000 to $4,000 a month. Now look around your own city for a second. Every shopping center, church, school, gym, apartment complex has a parking lot that slowly fades and legally has to be repainted on a schedule. The work never dries up. The competition is pretty sleepy and aging out, and you can start this part-time on weekends while you keep your day job to protect your runway until the machine clearly pays for itself. Even better, lines fade on the schedule, so one parking lot you stripe this year becomes a repeat customer next year without you doing anything new. Land 10 of those and you've built a route of recurring income that practically reorders itself. Number 4: the Smart Swag Station. Now it gets a little fun. This is a small 3D printer setup that fabricates custom keychains and accessories accessories with a programmable NFC chip baked right inside, the same tap-to-share tech that's already in your smartphones. Someone taps the keychain on a phone and it instantly pulls up a social profile, a digital business card, or a tip link. The setup ranges from $500 on the low end all the way up to $10,000 as you scale it up. The raw plastic and the chip costs under 25 cents per unit, and you sell each one to realtors, content creators, service workers for $5 to $1,000. That spread is exactly why operators are quietly netting $1,000 to $6,000 a month from a machine sitting in a spare bedroom. You're selling people a tiny piece of the future, something they have never seen before, and most of your competition does not even know this product exists yet. So a realtor can hand one to every client and their home pops up with a tap. A creator sells it to their fans who can tap to follow. A restaurant pulls one up on every table that leads to a tip page or their menu. One machine, a different markets and you're the only person in town offering it. When you're early to something like this, you do not have to be the best, you just have to be there first. Number 3, the Ice Oasis. Number 3 is a 24/7 ice and water vending kiosk, and it might be the most boring genius idea on this entire list. The machine filters the water, makes the ice, bags it, and dispenses it completely on its own with no staff to manage and nothing that ever spoils. You can place it at a marina, campground, busy gas station, station, anywhere where people need ice and there is nobody around to sell it to them. A single bag costs around $0.20 to $0.40 to produce and sells for $2 to $3.50, which is an 84 to 90% profit margin on something people grab without thinking twice. A high-capacity unit runs $15,000 to $25,000 upfront, and then it quietly throws off $1,200 to $2,400 in profit every month while you're having dinner with your family at home. Stack 2 or 3 of these at different high high-traffic spots and you have replaced a full-time salary with something that doesn't need you to clock in. This is what owning a real asset actually feels like. The machine does the work, the location brings the customers, and you collect the money. Nobody posts about an ice machine online, which is exactly why the people who own them are quietly winning. Number 2: the Custom Case Printer. Almost at the top now. This is an automated phone case vending machine that you drop into a mall, an airport, college campus. The customer designs their very own case right on a touchscreen, and the machine prints it for them in minutes with no employee standing there at all. A machine like this runs around $6,500. A blank case plus the ink costs around $1.35, and that finished custom case sells for $15 to $20. A good high-traffic location pulls 30 to 50 sales a day. And I want you to actually do the math because it is staggering for box that runs itself. Think about it. So almost everyone walking past that machine has a phone. Almost anyone wants it to feel like it's theirs, and almost nobody is offering it to them right where they're standing. People will always pay a premium to make something truly theirs, to feel like they have something that nobody else has. And this machine sells them that exact feeling 24 hours a day while costing you almost nothing to deliver it. You find one busy spot You set it and it quietly works the crowds for you all day and all night. And number 1, the automated sugar artist. Now my number 1, the one almost nobody is talking about, is the robotic cotton candy kiosk. Behind a pane of glass, a little robot spins detailed geometric cotton candy designs in about 60 to 90 seconds, and people stop dead and film the entire thing because it's honestly pretty mesmerizing to watch. The entertainment The entertainment is what sells it. The show is the product. A unit runs between $5,000 to $12,000. Now here's the number that should make you sit up straight or stand up straight like me on the trampoline. It costs about 31 cents in sugar and a paper stick to make one, and it sells for $5 to $10. That's a profit margin of over 93%, and operators are netting $2,500 to $3,500 every month from a single machine that needs no staff and literally creates its own crowd everywhere it goes. And here's the hidden bonus. And as a bonus, every customer who films that little robot spinning their candy is posting free advertising for you to their followers too. So the machine markets itself while it sells. Drop it at a mall, a fair, theme park, busy boardwalk, and the line forms on its own. It is fun, it's automated, it's almost pure profit, and hardly anyone is doing it yet. That right there is the definition of a machine making people rich this year while the rest of the world is looking the other way. The real machine is a decision to start. So there they are, 9 machines quietly building real wealth while everyone else is fighting over the same loud, crowded ideas. Notice a pattern running through all of them. No one needs a big team, a degree, or a ton of permission. You just need to pick one, buy the asset, and let it go to work for you. There's a saying, the best time to start was years ago, then the second best time to start is when? Right now, today. So if you see the opportunity sitting there right in front of you, then you have the responsibility to go act on it. If you can, then you Your busy calendar might be a massive warning sign that you're failing as an entrepreneur.

I just flip through it and, you know, there's practically nothing in it. You've got to keep control of your time and you won't keep control of your time unless you can say no. I think it's the secret to all of my success. I have calendar anorexia. I want as little in my calendar as possible.

I'm meticulous about it. You got to be very careful if you're somebody who feels like you're busy all the time. All the time, to understand that busyness can become a habit and busyness can become your biggest excuse. Warren Buffett creates massive wealth because he uses 3 completely different daily habits to protect his focus and reject 99% of requests.

Focus has always been a strong part of my personality.

When he came to Columbia and spoke to the business school, the very last question that was posed to him was, what his secret was, and he had this— I'll never forget it— he had this giant pile of paper and he pulled it out. It was a complete hodgepodge and said that he reads 500 pages a week. And anyone can do it, and you know, it's like compound knowledge. If you start today, it would just build over time.

I just read and read and read. I probably read 5 to 6 hours a day. I like things quiet. I shut the door actually at the office because I don't want to hear anybody talking outside. I probably spend 5 or 6 hours a day reading and, and, and, or, or thinking while I read.

If you don't aggressively take control of your time right now, you'll become a prisoner to other people's priorities and never build the empire that you deserve.

I buy anything I want, basically, but I can't buy time. And so to have time is the most precious thing you can have. I better be careful with it. There's no way I will be able to buy more time.

You have to prioritize your time really really carefully. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Years ago, Bill Gates thought being productive meant packing his schedule. He booked his calendar down to the minute. Then he looked at Warren Buffett's personal pocket calendar and was shocked. I also remember Warren showing me his calendar, and I love this.

You know, I had every minute packed, and I thought that was the way you could do things.

And, you know, the fact that he, uh, is so careful about—

can I show this to the audience? Yeah, yeah.

Days that there's nothing going on.

But this is the week of, uh, April, of which there are only 3 entries for a week.

Warren explained that you control your time, and sitting down just to read and think is far more valuable than rushing to another meeting. He built a $130 billion fortune mostly by sitting in a quiet room, completely ignoring the busy culture everyone else falls for. Now, right now you might be saying, hey, well, that's easy for Warren Buffett to have a blank calendar. You think you got to hustle 15 hours a day to keep your head just above the water. You feel like if you stop grinding, you'll lose everything. But constantly grinding is exactly what keeps you stuck. Buffett didn't buy his freedom after he got rich. He acted like his time was priceless long before he made his first million. I'm going to show you the 3 the exact things he does every single day that you can start doing right now to take back your time. The 25/5 Focus Method. Okay, you want to be successful, you've got massive goals for your life, you have a huge list of projects that you are trying to complete. You're trying to build a business, you're trying to grow your YouTube channel, you're trying to get in shape, you're trying to invest your money. You think that working on 25 different things at once makes you a hard worker. You think juggling all these priorities proves that you're dedicated. Warren Buffett completely disagrees with you. He believes that chasing too many things is exactly why you're failing. He uses a strategy called the 25/5 rule. The story goes that Buffett was talking to his personal pilot. He told the pilot to write down his top 25 career goals. The pilot made his list. Then Buffett told him to circle his top 5 most most important goals. The pilot circled his top 5. He told Buffett that he would focus his main energy on the top 5. He said he would work on the other 20 goals when he had some spare time. Buffett looked at him and said, no. He said, those 20 goals are now your avoid at all costs list. If you don't completely ignore those 20 goals, they'll destroy your chances of success. They'll steal your time. They'll drain your energy. You'll never achieve the 5 things that actually matter. You're probably doing this right now. You're spreading your energy so thin that nothing gets your full attention. You have a massive vision for your life, but you're getting zero results because you refuse to focus. So you have to realize that good is the enemy of great. You might have 20 good ideas, but pursuing those good ideas is exactly what stops you from executing your 5 great ideas. So you have to cut away the distractions. You have to be willing to ignore things that you do care about just so you can win the things you about the most. Your brain, it's going to tell you that you're missing out. Your brain will give you really smart reasons why you need to keep all your options open, but all that happens is you stay stuck. You have to learn how to say no. If you don't ruthlessly cut your goals down, you'll always be average. You'll never reach your full potential. You'll watch other people pass you by because they had discipline to focus. So you have to stop treating your focus, uh, like it's inevitable, like it's a cheap commodity. It's the most valuable asset that you own. If you want to know exactly how to do this, you need to build avoid at all cost list. Building your avoid at all cost list. Okay, so how do you actually do this? You have to write down your list today. Write down every single project that you're working on. Write down every goal that you have for the next 5 years. Look at that list. It's probably huge. Now force yourself to pick just 5. This is going to hurt. You want to pick 10. You're going to try to negotiate with yourself. Don't do it. Warren Buffett says don't do do it, pick exactly 5. Take the rest of your list and put it in a drawer. You aren't allowed to look at it or touch it until you succeed at the top 5. You have to protect your attention like it's your most valuable asset. The wealthiest people in the world are extremely aggressive about what they ignore. If you want to make millions of dollars, you must ignore almost everything. You have to cancel projects. You have to say no to people. Every time you say yes to a distraction, you're delaying your ultimate Your 6th most important goal is your biggest enemy. You like it just enough to spend time on it, but it won't ever give you the massive success of the top 5. When I joined my first software company at 19 years old, I was struggling. I didn't know what to do. I had to focus entirely on modeling success. I studied how Bill Gates started Microsoft. I applied his exact strategy to my business. It landed me my first deal for $13,500. It only worked because I ignored everything else. I focused on one specific model and put all my energy into it. You have to do the same thing. Thing. Find your top priority, commit to it completely. People will invite you out, they'll pitch you new business ideas, they'll ask you to join their exciting new startup, right? You have to tell them no. It's going to feel uncomfortable. People might even get mad at you. Let them be mad. You can't let other people dictate where your time goes. If you don't take control of your schedule, somebody else will happily take it from you. You're built to serve a specific purpose. And you can't do that if you're constantly distracted. So you have to stay laser-focused on your top 5. But focus alone won't make you rich. You need to know exactly how to compound your value, which brings us directly to Warren Buffett's second daily habit. The 500-page knowledge habit. Once you have your focus, you need to execute. Warren Buffett spends up to 80% of his day reading. When a student asked him how to prepare for an investing career, Buffett held up a stack of paper. He said to read 500 pages like this every day. He said knowledge builds up like compound interest. Everyone can do it, but he guaranteed very few actually will. Now, you might think you don't have time to read 500 pages. That's not the point. The point is that you must aggressively consume knowledge about your specific focus. Most people consume garbage. You wake up, you immediately scroll through negative news. You look at social media and compare yourself to people who are faking their success. You load your brain with all sorts of distractions. You have to change your environment. If you want to be great, you have to put greatness into your mind every single day. So start your morning by listening to someone who inspires you. Put on a video of a successful entrepreneur. Listen to the greats. When you surround yourself with massive thinkers, your own problems start to look small. You begin to believe that you can overcome your current struggles. You borrow the belief from them. If you aren't learning every day, you're falling behind. Your competitors, they're studying, they're getting ready, they're getting better. You have to make learning a non-negotiable part of your daily routine, and ideally first thing in the morning. So I go for a walk every morning. I call it my believe walk. It's my dedicated time to clear my head and find my focus. And while I walk, I listen to videos and interviews of successful entrepreneurs. I want the greatest minds in history speaking into my ear. I want their belief to transfer into me. You can do the same. Find the authors, the speakers, the leaders who've already accomplished your goals. Consume their content relentlessly, right? Let their knowledge compound inside of your brain. It's the highest return on investment you will get. But consuming information is only half the battle. If you don't know how to translate that knowledge into real-world action, you're just wasting your time, which is exactly what we're going to fix right now. Turning knowledge into action. Reading and learning are completely useless if you don't take action. Watching this video is useless if you don't take action. You can read 100 books a year. If you don't change your behavior, you just wasted your time. You're just trying to feel productive without actually doing the work. So you need to implement what you learn, and when?

Immediately.

You have to start taking risks. Your fear of failure is the number one thing holding you back. You want everything to be perfect before you launch. I get it. You want the perfect website, the perfect camera, the perfect plan. Perfectionism is really just fear. It's a mask for fear. You have to expect to suck at the beginning. When I started my YouTube channel, I was terrible. You can go back and watch the videos. I hated my first 350 videos. I couldn't even watch them because I was so embarrassed by myself. And it took me 700 videos before I actually felt a little bit proud of my work. But I kept posting. I kept learning. I took the knowledge I had and I put it into action. And you can get there faster. You can do the same. Make the messy video, send the awkward email, launch the ugly product, just get it out there. The market will tell you what works. You will learn far more from 10 days of taking action than you will from 10 months of just reading books. Every time you test a new idea, you're gathering new data, you're figuring out what works and what doesn't work. So stop overthinking your next move. Stop waiting for waiting for the perfect moment. The perfect moment, it doesn't exist. You just have to start where you are with what you have. Action builds confidence. When you combine massive knowledge with massive action, you become incredibly dangerous to your competition. But to make sure that you're taking the right actions, you have to master the third habit of the ultra-rich. It's a habit that almost every entrepreneur completely ignores. Making time. The third habit is the most difficult for entrepreneurs to master. It's the habit of sitting in a quiet room and simply thinking. Warren Buffett doesn't just read, he schedules large blocks of time to just think. Bill Gates used to schedule every minute of his day. Then he saw Buffett's calendar and realized it was mostly blank. You think that being busy means you're being productive. You fill your calendar with meetings and calls and you pride yourself on working 15 hours a day, but you're running on a treadmill. A lot of times you're moving fast but going nowhere. If you don't schedule time to think, you'll never solve your biggest problems. You'll just keep reacting to fires. You have to pull yourself out of the daily grind. You need time to step back and look at the whole board, the bigger picture. I call it CEO time. You have to ask yourself the hard questions. Are you actually moving closer to your ultimate goal or not? Are you spending your time time on those top 5 priorities that we identified earlier, or are you slipping back into your old habits? You have to protect your thinking time. Treat it like the most important meeting of your week. Turn off your phone, close your laptop, sit with a blank piece of paper and a pen. Let your mind wander. The best ideas come when you give your brain the space to breathe. Most people are terrified of silence. You constantly need a podcast, a song, a video playing in the background. You're afraid to be alone. Alone with your own thoughts. But your thoughts are where the million-dollar ideas live. You have to practice being bored. You have to force yourself to sit and strategize. This isn't wasted time. It's the most profitable time of your entire week. But to make this actually work, you have to ruthlessly engineer your physical and mental space, which is what we're going to cover next. Designing your daily environment. Environment. To make thinking time work, you have to ruthlessly control your environment. Your environment right now, it's perfectly designed to keep you exactly where you are. If you want to change your life, you have to change what surrounds you. You have to limit access to negativity. You have to shut down the voices that tell you that your ideas are crazy. Sometimes the voices are your friends and family. Sometimes the loudest negative voice is in your own head. You have to fight back by engineering your surroundings. When you sit down to think, you can't be in a place full of distractions. You need a dedicated space. You need a place where your brain knows it's time to work. So you need to find your version of that. Maybe it's a quiet corner in your house. Maybe it's a park bench. Doesn't matter where it is. It only matters that you guard it fiercely. If you let other people interrupt your thinking time, you're telling them that their priorities are more important than your future. So stop doing that. You have to value your own mind enough enough to give it the silence it needs. So when I'm creating something new, that's when I feel the most free. You need to give yourself permission to explore your ideas without judgment. So don't worry if the idea sounds stupid at first.

Let it develop.

Write it down. Look at the different angles. You'll have these moments where you doubt yourself. You'll wonder if you're sitting there wasting your time. You'll want to go back to checking emails because it feels easier. You get that dopamine hit. Don't give in to that urge. Push through the discomfort of deep thinking. When you create an environment that supports deep focus, your productivity will absolutely skyrocket. You'll start seeing opportunities that were totally blind to you before. You'll finally have the clarity you need to push forward. But there's one final piece of the puzzle that ties all of this together. Building unstoppable momentum. Okay, you now know the 3 habits. You need to ruthlessly focus on your top 5 goals. You need to aggressively consume knowledge about those goals. You need to schedule quiet time to think and strategize. Knowing this is not enough. The only thing you're missing right now is momentum. You don't need a massive breakthrough. You don't need a viral moment. You just need to take one small step today and then another small step tomorrow. Momentum is created by doing the boring repetitive tasks every day, even when you don't feel like it. You're going to wake up tomorrow and you won't want to execute. You're going to feel tired. You might feel overwhelmed. That's the exact moment that defines your entire life. Are you going to give in to the comfort or are you going to push through and do the work? You have to believe that the work you're doing today will eventually pay off. The results will not show up immediately. You'll put in massive effort and see zero results for a long time. Time. That's the test. That's the filter that removes the weak. You have to keep pushing until the momentum takes over, and when it does, you'll become unstoppable. You'll look back at your life and realize that mastering these 3 daily habits changed absolutely everything. Lack of belief is the biggest problem in the world today. That's what I think. You have to believe in your own potential before anyone else will. You have to trust that if you put in the daily reps, the compound interest of your effort will eventually explode. So stop waiting for someone to come and rescue you. Stop waiting for permission from anybody else. Give yourself the green light right now. Protect your focus, expand your knowledge, and guard your thinking time. Everything you want is on the other side of that consistency. Your next step. Your dreams aren't impossible. They're just waiting for you to actually commit. Commit to them. You have everything you need right now to start making a massive impact. So trust your vision and take the very next step today. Most of what you learn in school is completely useless for making real money. School teach you about money?

And the answer is nothing. They know nothing about money, and they teach our kids.

The highest earners in the world ignore traditional career paths and focus on stacking a handful of high-impact skills. And if you keep following the old rules of climbing the corporate ladder, you will stay stuck struggling to pay your bills while watching other people live your dream life.

A salary is the drug they give you when they want you to forget about your dreams.

Let's look at Warren Buffett. He is one of the richest investors alive. But if you walk into his office, you will not see his university degrees on the wall. The only thing he hangs up is a certificate for a public speaking course that he took.

I actually have the diploma in the office and I don't have my diploma from college. I don't have my diploma from graduate school, but I've got my Dale Carnegie diploma there because it changed my life.

He realized that learning the skill of communication would instantly double his value. He ignored traditional rules and focused on a skill that actually prints money.

By far the best investment you can make is in yourself. If they just learn to communicate better, both in writing and in person, they increase their value at least 50%.

Now you might be thinking, okay, that's easy for Warren Buffett, but I'm just too busy trying to survive to learn something new. The actual truth is you do not need to quit your job or spend years back in a classroom. You just need to focus your limited time on the exact abilities that the market actually pays for. And so today I'm going to show you the 7 high-return skills you can start learning today that will completely transform your earning power. Master artificial intelligence and prompt engineering. So you might think that artificial intelligence artificial intelligence is going to steal your job, but the truth is a person who knows how to use artificial intelligence is going to take your job. It's projected that 75% of global businesses will use AI in their daily operations. If you ignore this trend, you'll be completely left behind. A massive report shows that artificial intelligence could add $4.4 trillion to the global economy, so you need to claim your piece of that pie. The most important high-return skill right now is prompt engineering. This just means knowing exactly how to talk to artificial intelligence to get the best results. You cannot just type in a lazy question and expect magic. You have to use a specific 4-part framework. First, define the role. So tell the program to act like an expert copywriter or a brilliant lawyer. Second, provide the data. Give it examples of what you want. Third, make the specific ask. Do not be vague. And fourth, request the exact format, like like a bulleted list or a table. When you master this communication skill, you can do 10 hours of work in just 1 hour. You instantly become 10 times more viable to any client or employer. Do not wait for the perfect moment to learn this. Action cures fear. Just open a free program today and start testing it. Build your momentum right now. But artificial intelligence is just a tool. To truly multiply your income, you need to know how to sell the value you just created, which leads perfectly into the second skill. Close high-ticket sales. Selling cheap products will keep you exhausted and broke. If you sell a $20 item, you need thousands of customers just to pay your rent. But if you master the skill of high-ticket sales, you only need a handful of clients to completely change your financial life. High-ticket offers are not about tricking people into paying more for the same service. They are about solving problems that are so painful, urgent, or expensive that premium pricing becomes totally obvious to buyer. So you have to change your entire mindset around selling. Most people feel slimy when they ask for money, but you are built to serve. If you have a product or a service that can genuinely fix someone's problem, you have a moral obligation to offer it to them. If you do not offer it to them, you are hurting them. You are being selfish. Selling is just serving at the highest possible level. You also need to understand that sales is a learned skill, not a genetic gift. Companies that spend money on sales training training are 57% more effective than companies that ignore it. You can learn the scripts, you can learn how to handle objections. Do not take the yes away from the customer before you even ask for the sale. So pick up the phone, make your premium offer, and let them decide. Selling 101 is incredibly powerful, but what if you want to reach millions of people at the exact same time? That is where the third skill comes in. Public speaking and video communication. You have to get on camera. It does not matter if you are shy or introverted. I was. Video communication is the single fastest way to build deep trust with a massive audience. When people can see your face, they can hear your voice, they connect with your story on a highly emotional level. You do not need a fancy studio or an expensive microphone. You just need your smartphone and the courage to share your truth. When I started making videos, videos, I was completely terrified. I was an introverted guy who just wanted to hide. It took me 350 videos before I was not completely embarrassed to watch my own content back, and it took me 700 public videos until I actually started to think I was getting good. I expected to suck at the beginning, and I did, but I just kept going. I focused entirely on the one person I could help instead of worrying about the millions of people who were not watching me yet. So if you want to stand out in your industry, start making videos about your foundation story. Tell people why you started your business. Tell them about your struggles. Tell them what to believe. Do not wait for validation from the internet. Just put in the reps and build your back catalog. The market always rewards the people who show up consistently and speak with passion. The art of skill stacking. So school's taught you that you need to pick one major and do one specific job for the rest life, right? That is terrible advice for making real money. Our economy does not reward specialists who only know one narrow thing. The highest earners in the world use a strategy called skill stacking. You do not need to be the absolute best in the world at one skill, you just need to be in the top 20% for 3 or 4 different skills and then combine them. So instead of just being a normal graphic designer, you become a designer who also understands understands user psychology and direct response copywriting. That specific combination makes you incredibly rare. Research from the World Economic Forum proves that cross-functional skills are the most heavily demanded abilities in the entire global job market. So look at your own life. Take your boring corporate experience, add a little bit of marketing knowledge, and mix in your weird weekend hobby. Suddenly you have a totally unique profile that nobody else can compete with. You stop being a commodity and you start being a category of one. When you are the only person who can do what you do, you get to dictate your own price. But what happens when you have these rare skills and people still refuse to pay you what you're worth? You have to master the next skill to force the market to respect your value. Data-driven negotiations. Most people walk into a salary review or a client pitch completely driven by their emotions. They complain about how hard they work. They talk about how long that they've been at their company. They say that they need more money because their rent went up. That strategy will keep you broke forever. Businesses do not care about your personal financial stress. They only care about the value that you bring to their bottom line. So if you want to double your income, you have to separate your self-worth from the negotiation process. You can use hard data and analysis of 500 different salary negotiations revealed that using emotional arguments only worked 8% of the time. But when people presented a business case backed by actual market data, the success jumped to 67%. You have to do your research, find out exactly what your specific skill stack is worth in the open market right now. Present those numbers confidently. Show the client exactly how much money your work is going to make them. When you frame your request as a smart business investment instead of a personal favor, the money will flow to you. Negotiation gets you paid the right amount, but to build massive wealth that lasts decades, you need to understand the underlying pulse of your entire industry. And that brings us to skill number 6: data analysis and market research. You cannot build a million-dollar business based just off of your gut feelings alone. You have to know your actual numbers. Numbers. Most people are terrified of looking at their analytics because they are afraid of seeing the ugly truth. They would rather live in denial. But if you do not know exactly where your leads are coming from or exactly where your customers are dropping off, you are just flying blind. Data science and analysis roles offer massive salaries because the ability to read data allows companies to maximize their purchasing power and predict future trends. You do not need a fancy degree to do this. You just need to log into your dashboard and face reality, right? When I'm trying to grow a YouTube channel, I do not just guess what people want to watch. I look at the exact click-through rates on every single thumbnail. I study the audience retention curves for the first 60 seconds of the video. You have to do the exact same thing for your business. Track your conversion rates, track your email open rates, double down immediately on the things that are working and ruthlessly cut out the things that are failing. Let the data show you a clearer path forward. Now you can have the best data, the best sales pitch, and the best technical skills, but you will still hit a massive income ceiling if you try to do everything yourself. This final skill is the ultimate wealth multiplier. Leadership and team building. You are the biggest bottleneck in your own life right now. You are trying to control every single tiny detail of your work because you are a perfectionist. You think nobody else can do the job as well as you can. That belief is keeping you stuck playing a very small game. The fastest way to scale your income to the moon is to stop asking how you can do a task and start asking who can do this task for you. When you transition into true leadership, your job is no longer doing the daily grind. Your job is to empower other people to do the work. Self-confidence and the ability to delegate delegate are the absolute foundations of success for any high-level executive or business owner. You must learn the framework of eliminate, automate, delegate. First, eliminate the useless tasks that you do every day that do not actually move the needle. Second, automate everything you can using software and AI. And finally, delegate the rest of the work to talented people who actually love the things that you hate doing. You have to let go of your ego, let your team make mistakes so they can learn and grow, build a culture where when people feel like the work they do actually matters. And when you focus on serving your team and lifting them up, they will build your empire with you. You now have the exact 7 skills you need to completely double your income this year. But all of these strategies are completely useless if you do not fix the one massive problem happening inside your head right now. Your true potential. The only thing truly holding you back from doubling your income is your own self-doubt. You have to decide today that your biggest goals are actually possible for you. Stop listening to the people who tell you to play it safe and stay small. Step into your greatness and do the work that you were put on this earth to do. And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. Believe. If you want to learn how to become mentally tough, financially free, and consistent every day, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue You need to believe, and I'll see you there. You don't need more time. You need a stronger mind.

The body is very important, but the mind is more important than the body. If you want to develop the muscles of your body, you take daily exercise of some sort.