One person businesses need to do this

Your brain is still developing in your 20s.

Mine nearly exploded when I had my first $250k month at 28.

I had a physical product brand that took off when I wrote and ranked articles on Google.

I completely outsourced the product manufacturing and fulfillment to the point where I had products I designed but never physically saw or touched.

This is when I was able to say I was making money while I slept.

I was forever addicted to this feeling.

Perception is not reality

The problem with this is reality is often skewed. I just made things sound easy, when it took a lot of work.

I’m the kind of guy who likes to procrastinate and I only want to do work I believe will create a 10x output.

After being in the internet game for over 15 years now I’ve learned the dirty little secrets your favorite guru doesn’t want to tell you.

The game is won and lost in putting your finite hours into activities that create 10x, 100x, or a 1000x leverage.

Where is the greatest leverage?

In the information age the greatest source of leverage is this:

One to many.

Here was my leverage level up journey:

• Started in door to door sales, in 100% humidity selling ADT alarm systems. This sucked, but I learned how to handle rejection and how to sell.

• Moved to an inside sales role where I was able to make calls to leads from an air conditioned office. I could now target specific people and spend less time on foot going door to door.

• Created my first basic-ass Wordpress landing page and paid ads campaign for a car insurance affiliate offer, earning $6000/m.

• Learned copywriting and SEO to target high search volume keywords to a high converting advertorial selling my own 80% margin product.

• Combined paid, organic, influencers, copywriting and outreach with a team of offshore employees to my first million dollar a year business.

Leverage is the difference between what you put in and what you get out.

Each stage I increase my ability to reach more people by doing stuff that got better results. The stuff that created the most leverage was increasing my one to many capabilities.

Missing the target

I see too many of you getting lost in the pursuit of gaining likes, followers and vanity metrics. Chasing these metrics leads to mental masturbation and decisions that move you towards deleverage.

Making decisions based solely on getting likes or engagement creates people who often earn the least amount of money.

The engagement gained from this kind of content is usually fortune cookie, me too, inconsistent, unfocused and random. When the time comes to make an ask of your audience, they’ll go dark.

You’ve built a following of fake friends.

We just witnessed big tech during a “growth at all costs” era where money was basically free make a similar error: If you focus on the wrong metrics you will eventually fall on your face.

Passive income requires active output

Day jobs keep paying you even if your work is subpar.

Subpar work in your business doesn’t get you paid.

When I tell people I make money by writing words they can’t compute what that would even mean. If you’ve always relied on a paycheck for your income the idea of dollars coming into your bank account any other way sounds preposterous.

In fact it challenges their very reality.

They conjure up an image of a starving artist writing a novel for the tween “Twilight” market.

They don’t know about the creator economy where people are willing to pay for expertise, entertainment and insider knowledge.

You should feel a palpable difference when you start creating for your own business compared to when you’re working for a paycheck.

The system doesn’t want you to make exponential earnings

The platforms where you can publish content make things super easy for you to get started, give you the potential for organic reach and even give you a percentage of earnings in many cases!

Here’s your quick math: For every one million impressions you get on X/Twitter you’ll earn $5. But in order to be eligible you must:

1. Have an average of 5 million impression per month for three months in a row.

2. Pay the $8/month for X premium.

This is the case for most platforms and it’s fine with me since they’re in the business of making money +1 for capitalism.

You have to find a better way to monetize your words.

Start a paid newsletter and share your expertise. Make it so good people will want to pay for it.

Literally get paid for words.

You’re going to see a mass scale of AI content. Google is already suffering and trying to keep up with content farms muddying their results.

More than ever the ability to use creativity will propels a few select humans ahead in this new era.

What won’t get you there

Simply grinding out high volumes of writing isn’t the answer. Same goes for podcasts, video and other formats.

You will burn out, and lose the one advantage of creativity that you have. Treating things like a race to the finish line day in and day out translates into impatience. Don’t fool yourself thinking it’s your passion driving things forward.

A habit of writing is going to be essential to winning, but how you approach the habit matters.

Lazy writing

Here’s the radical shift in mindset I had that changed how I write:

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman.

Burkeman shares the work of Robert Boice who studied as a psychology professor on the habits of prolific writers. What he found is surprising:

Writers that set aside a shorter part of their day to writing were much more productive than those who were grinding away.

How could this be… What was their technique?

They set more reasonable amounts of time to write from 5 minutes up to 60 minutes. When the timer bell sounded they stopped their work despite potentially being in a flow.

I can say for myself this was hard to do, since it was hard enough to start, and the idea of stopping once I had developed a rhythm was unnerving.

I think what’s happening here is instead of treating it like a race with a finish line at the end you frame it as “there’s always more to write about.”

It’s about channeling your creativity that give an opportunity to create something incredible.

It’s like the study of children who liked creating art that started getting gold stars for their work. Once the stars stopped coming they felt less motivated to create the art they once loved to make without expectation of reward.

Set the clock, create, then stop and keep coming back.

Dan Koe is a successful writer who has put his thoughts into print that people pay for to the tune of $800k a year.

He spends two hours a day max on writing and double the hours in reflection and information gathering.

Create opportunities

Here’s the takeaway:

If you’re not writing and publishing you’re not creating any leverage. Putting ideas where people can find them will create an attraction force for opportunity.

Gain exposure, build a reputations, build a name for yourself. Move from:

Stage 1: Salary
Stage 2: Soloprenuer
Stage 3: Passive income

TL:DR

• Build a real product or service business by leveraging “one to many”.

• Focus on monetization strategies, not vanity metrics - build a true following.

• Monetize your expertise directly through paid newsletters, not just ad platforms.

• Adopt a time-boxed, reflective writing process to stay creative without burnout.

• Publish your ideas consistently to create leverage and passive income streams.

The internet game is not zero-sum. You can win at this with unlimited upside. This game is about the freedom to do what you want, when you want and with who you want.