You can just make more money

getting paid for physical labor vs emotional labor

There are 2 types of people who will read this letter.

The first are those who read the title – "you can just make more money" – and didn't have a chance to think for themselves. Some alarm went off in their brain, dug deep into their conditioning, and spat out a laundry list of reasons why that isn't the case. No matter which way they try to view it, the word "money" throws them into a fit of rage.

They start going on and on about the elites and how they should be taxed more and feed everyone in the world. Or they take the noble poverty route, telling you the best way to live is quietly while silently getting crushed by the very money they swore themselves against, as it is the lifeblood of society. Or they start moralizing. God that's annoying. They speak through some authoritative ideology as if that's a one-size-fits-all answer to every culture, situation, or person.

All the while, they haven't made any more money than what the market assigned to them as their worth. They're bound to the system they hate and willingly stay in it. They don't have experience, so they spew out ideas in an attempt to absolve themselves from gaining said experience.

Then, there's the second type of person.

When you hear the words "you can just make more money," you're perfectly fine, because you know you're listening to an opinion, and you have to test that opinion before you let it permeate your mind any further.

Personally, I love that statement. It quickly reveals that you have at least some control over your financial situation.

You don't have to budget your way to creating wealth.

You don't have to grind away until your 401k gives you just enough money to never work again (which would make you even more miserable, work is a counterbalance to rest).

And you especially don't have to pinch pennies your entire life, investing your allowance in stocks or a mortgage, effectively reinforcing a scarcity mindset that bleeds into all other areas of your life.

You can, in fact, just make more money.

While I can't give an exact action plan that fits every person reading this to perfection, I can give the single principle that leads to creating wealth outside of the "safe and secure" path many people are on.

Sorry, your "money problems" don't exist

The first step to making more money is to fix your toxic relationship with it.

You need awareness of how you think about money and why you think about it that way. Otherwise, no amount of opportunities to make more will even register in your head. A person with the sole goal of getting a degree and retiring will not see the business opportunities lying all around them. Identity influences money consciousness, a lot.

I used to view making money as some mystical process. The concept of a business made zero sense. The only way I knew to make more was to get a better degree and work hard to get a job that I didn't really care to do. I was told to save my money, create a budget, invest a little bit every month… you know, the exact opposite of what wealthy people actually do, but you don't know any better when you're a kid, and your parents don't know any better because their parents didn't. It also doesn't help that everyone with money is portrayed as evil in the media. There is absolutely something there when it comes to how we were conditioned.

And that's just it.

Money problems don't exist. Psychological problems do.

The minute I become too frugal is the moment it starts to control me and becomes difficult to make. When I spend almost carelessly, it seems to find its way back.

Most people's inability to make, keep, or smartly use money comes down to their beliefs, because your beliefs determine the opportunities you can notice and act on.

The average person’s beliefs around money include:

• Money is hard to make.

• Money is not a domain of mastery like health, relationships, or your skill set.

• Money is evil in and of itself, not the person deploying the money.

• Starting a business is for sleazy salesmen who work 12 hours a day.

• Every business is trying to scam you and anyone making their own way is a grifter.

• Personal growth and financial growth are isolated, not connected.

• A lot of money can't be made in your field or line of work.

Beliefs aren't reality. And if you form beliefs without proper questioning and experimentation, the chances of them being false are very close to 100%. If you have not made a lot of money, it's both safe and wise to assume that any reaction you have related to money is wrong. Any justification to avoid confronting that is an idea that someone planted in your head, because you're missing the most important source of data: direct experience.

Wealth is a byproduct of extended uncertainty

Most people were raised to think that money stems from hard work.

But the more you question that, the more you realize that the labor theory of value starts to fall apart.

A construction worker, as an example, works extremely hard. Long hours of physical labor, often in unfavorable weather. They can make decent money, but there is a hard cap on how much they can make, because time and labor as resources are finite, especially as one person working for someone else who determines their monetary worth. If that worker were to start their own company, they would substantially increase their earning potential, but the path to reaching that potential is uncertain.

Now, take a solopreneur. Someone who is self-employed. The level of uncertainty is fairly high, but you're in control of how most of your resources are directed. You can sell a freelance service and make a decent amount of money, up to $1 million a year like Designjoy (a one-man design agency), but you only have so much time in the day. You could also sell information, but that has a cap of $5 to $10 million. These are both forms of starting your own business on easy mode.

Don't get me wrong, that's more than life-changing money, and a one-person business is probably the best option for those starting out, but wealth creation demands a bit more.

When you look at a tech CEO, they could take a month off and their company would still grow. Their money isn't determined by how hard they work, although working hard definitely helps.

Last, think about those who get rich from investments: stocks, crypto, real estate, acquisitions, etc. Deploying a large portion of your capital with the gambling chance that you either win big, don't win at all, or lose everything is the driving force behind asymmetric gains.

When we peel back the layers and observe what's happening here, a pattern emerges:

Your potential is determined by how much uncertainty you're willing to embrace, multiplied by how long you can withstand that uncertainty without going insane (or ruining your life).

In other words, risk. Your ability to take risk, manage risk, and maintain a clear head through years of unpredictable highs and lows. The safe and secure path you were marketed at birth is the exact reason it is so hard for you to fathom this reality.

Quitting your job to start a business is obviously risky. That's why most people don't. Investing an uncomfortable amount of your net worth into some weird digital gold is the stupidest thing you could do, yet look at those who bought Bitcoin at $1 a few years ago. Even further, persisting through huge wins or losses while continuing to take larger risks over the course of a decade would ruin most people.

But you're here to learn how to do it, and there are a few ways to make the uncertainty more tolerable.

How to just make more money

During college, I had the brutal realization that I would never create wealth working for someone else.

That's step one. You need to start a business. Sure, you can grind your way to a high-paying job until you have enough to invest in stocks or start your business, but still, you need enough capital to make anything substantial in return. You need cash flow. You need at least one income stream that gives you disposable income to start taking larger risks. If you don't want to do this, you're still not understanding that wealth comes from risk. This is aside from the point that AI disruption will cause a large shift from employment to entrepreneurship. It's one of the last bastions.

After that realization, I started trying every business model imaginable. Dropshipping, marketing agencies, freelancing, you name it.

And that's just it… Most people don't have the luxury of facing that level of uncertainty for 2-4 years until they develop the skill necessary to make money on demand.

1) Strategic poverty

You need to hedge against uncertainty so you can stick with the process without ruining your life.

You temporarily constrain one area of your life to increase the potential of another.

For me, that involved living with 7 other guys (at one point it was 8) in a 5 bedroom house to decrease our monthly rent to $300-$400 a month. All I needed was gas, enough money to meal prep (about $50 a week), a gym membership, and the occasional money to go out with friends.

I literally had nothing to lose. I was able to get by with a minimum wage part-time job and spend the rest of my time trying to make anything work.

For you, this could look entirely different. Many of you aren't single 20-year-olds who can live just fine with an empty apartment filled with a mattress on the floor and a lawn chair as a couch.

You can start with small risks and work your way up. Low-risk business models and an hour a day of work.

You can keep your day job longer than what feels comfortable. You prove that you can build one income stream and use your excess income to buy time back.

Last, you can slowly undo your lifestyle inflation. Like Parkinson's Law, I can guarantee that your lifestyle has expanded to fill the income allotted for it.

Yes, it's going to be painful, because by following the script of what success is supposed to look like, you are left with the inability to take the risks that lead to what success actually is.

2) Buttons that make more money

This isn't meant to be a letter on the ins and outs of making money.

It's to convince you that you can, in fact, make more.

For most people, that comes from doing a few things.

First, you need to choose a business model.

Doesn't matter which one. Info products, coaching, freelancing, agency work, ecommerce, software. They all work. Most people, again, just can't deal with uncertainty and quit before they learn enough to make it work. It would be wise to choose one that you can start without a team or capital, so that tends to limit you to the first 4 of those options.

I obviously can't teach you how to build that business here. I trust that you can learn how to do it with AI, YouTube, courses, etc, without falling into tutorial hell.

But the magic doesn't come from the business model. Those change with technologies and markets.

From there, you have 2 levers. 2 skills to learn.

The first is capturing attention, the second is converting attention.

For me, that's with writing online and a digital product or service.

You capture attention by learning persuasion, social media, and storytelling. You learn these by doing. You start a personal brand. You start doing cold outreach. You start with one channel, experiment with tactics you learn, and correct your mistakes until it is a sustainable source of people discovering who you are and the business you run.

You convert attention by learning sales, marketing, and offer creation. You have attention, but you need to guide it to the point of seeing the value of the product or service you offer.

Once you spend at least a year of trial and error in those domains, you should start to feel as if you have specific buttons you can press to make more money.

3) Increasing your emotional one-rep max

Physical strength is built with the progressive overload of weight.

Emotional strength is built with the progressive overload of responsibility.

The problem is that you're already under so much load. You may have the house, the car, the job, and all of these 45 pound plates stacked onto the barbell you're carrying around with you all the time. You're constantly trying to lift this one rep max that you haven't built up to.

When you have more to lose, your brain's threat detection system gets hypersensitive. You're not just afraid of starting a business and failing. You're afraid of most of your life coming down with it.

This is the hardest part.

You are the only one who can decide how to downsize your life in a way that frees up room to allow for more risk-taking.

I would encourage you to think about that this week.

Go on a walk. Brain dump all of your thoughts in a notebook. Do everything in your power to gain clarity.

I hope this letter helped in some way.

Thanks for reading.

– Dan

If you want to continue reading, read the last letter here: