Making money is not a thing you do—it’s a skill you learn. - Naval
I have long thought that life was unfair. For some reason, it was incredibly hard to make money. No matter how much I tried. Yet I knew people that effortlessly spent money that I could only dream about making.
It hurt.
Long before I came across the popular saying that “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer”, I had begun to believe that there was something the rich was not saying. Something they kept hidden from the rest of us that enabled them to consistently make AND compound wealth. I jealously thought it was as a result of family connections or the average one in a million lucky duck that was in the right place at the right time. But as my life is my testimony, I now know that to be untrue.
A wise man once said that If the wealth of today’s billionaires and millionaires are taken from them and distributed equally to everyone on earth, in less than 10 years the balance would have shifted again - the stupendously rich and the devastating poor. This is because the current rich have developed the skills required to make money which the poor do not concern themselves about. And it is those same skills that will tilt back the balance in the favor of the rich. And if we choose to believe that the Universe always finds a way to create a balance, the imbalance between the rich and the poor is the perfect balance of life.
Making money is not about hard work
What then do these rich do that keeps the wealthy? What are the skills they have that allow them to continuously and consistently sustain this wealth you crave?
Value
There is really only one skill that every single wealthy person has. Every other skill ultimately culminates in that one massive product. The ability to create value.
The most fundamental principle that binds human society is that of exchange. The trade-off of one thing for another. The exchange that the rich make every single day of their life is value for money. They provide constant value in exchange for YOUR money.
Build things that people want
As a young man, I have worked as a cyber cafe attendant, worked as a waiter and usher at weddings, and even as a school teacher for a while. And I realized that these people I worked for provided something of value to each and every one of their customers in exchange for their money. The cafe attendant resold internet service to customers and provided a place for them to sit and use the internet, and he got paid for it. The ushering agencies I worked with were paid for providing able-bodied youths to serve food at occasions. The school I worked in as a teacher was being paid school fees of which I receive a small fraction as salary.
There is a pattern that emerges from this. These people have built VALUABLE systems that pay them. Each and every one of the people I worked for can literally stay at home and still make money. They built systems that do not need their physical presence for it to work.
The true skill of making money is the ability to provide value - Retweet this
It is important to understand that you cannot provide value to anyone if you do not have any skill. And today, the skills that provide value that most people want are what are referred to as “High-Income Skills”.
Once I realized this, I quit my job as an Internet cafe attendant and began to troll the internet. I was good at writing, telling stories, and ran a local blog that was gaining some attention at the time. I also had a twitter account with a sizable following. I had the tools. I had the skills. I still didn’t know where to start.
I spent hours on the internet daily, not trolling for entertainment, but actively looking for jobs in my skillset. It is actually surprising how many opportunities you can find if you are consciously looking for them online. The unique thing about MY skills was that it required me to use my MIND to work and not my TIME. I did not have to leave my room at all if I started making money with these skills, and that was the main thing that appealed to me in this new lifestyle I embarked on.
Copy what works, and then improve on it.
I stalked internet marketers, found out how they tweeted, what they tweeted about, and tried to replicate it. It was then I realized that some people that have money are not exactly wise. Which is why they cannot maintain it for very long. I followed this path until I landed a gig that paid me more in 24 hours than I have ever made in my life combined.
The feeling was ecstatic. The thing about entrepreneurship and freelance is the rush of adrenaline that comes with it. It is extremely addictive. I had made my first payment and it was like my eyes were open. I did not have to work outside my room. All I did was provide value to the client and I got rewarded. It felt like a trick. It could NOT be this easy. My bank account said differently as I began to receive more payments for the value I provided for several people. What was this value? I had 7k followers and they paid me $10 per 1000 follower for posting a tweet about them on my twitter handle.
It should be noted that my twitter handle was niche-specific. So my followers would definitely be interested in the sponsored tweet I made. But still, it was an eye-opener for me. The next thing I did was to improve on the value I offered and scale-up.
I realized that the marketer I had stalked to this particular niche was not making good use of his abilities and aI decided I would pick up the extra money that he left on the table. That was when I created a youtube channel, a blog, and a website to add to the services I was offering. So now, I would not only get paid for twitter, I would get paid for the blog, youtube, and website content. Today I make thousands of dollars DAILY from incredibly scaled-up versions of what I used to do.
It was amazing how my life changed within a week just by implementing these changes. If you want to become a person that produces value, these are the questions you need to answer:
What High-Income skills am I willing to learn?
How will these skills provide value to people?
How can I scale up these skills?
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