Learn These 5 Skills To Quit Your Corporate Job And Monetize Your Passions (While Making 3x More)
What you should focus on for the next 6-18 months
Humanity used to evolve..
Now its going backwards
Over the decades we as humans have become very good at systemizing
We learned how to hunt and gather, so we created the farming industry
This turned the production of food into a system that functions by itself for most people → When’s the last time you picked the apple you’re eating right now?
We learned how to save money, so we created banks to manage our money
This resulted in a system that handles almost all out finances, including all other financial services that exist as a result
We learned to socialize, so we created social media
An ever living system of interconnected messages that allows communications to people all over the world
We learned how to travel, so we created the travel industry
Airplanes, jets, trains, cars etc.
Their production and existence has created a system that will always get us where we need to go (often without doing it ourself)
And the basis for it all? Task completion
By repeatedly doing specific actions and activities over and over, we learned how to create (and run), all of these systems
In case you haven’t realized it by now, you’re part of this system
To keep the machine running, you need cogs
A tiny part of a bigger system that keeps everything afloat
In the past, the tribe used to delegate tasks to ensure survival..
Now they delegate tasks to ensure “prosperity”
The only people actually prospering, are the top 1%
What used to be delegation of tasks, turned into 9-5s and the 40 hr work week
The result is the 99% being miserable and unhappy in their careers (literally everyone I talk to hates their 9-5), and they have almost no income to live a better life
The system wasn’t designed to help you, it was designed to appear helpful..
While keeping the cogs turning
From here you have 2 choices:
Bow down to your overlords while accepting mediocrity
Build your own system (and control the outcome of your life)
But how you even build your own system? By doing exactly what your overlords are doing → Exploit the progress of other systems, and use them to get ahead
In this case I’m referring to the internet
Software, no code tools, social media
Every single thing you need to build your own system, is already at your fingertips
And to be clear, when I say system, I mean a 1 person business
I know what you’re thinking, “Ian, how is a business going to solve my problems?”
You mean besides the fact that I interact with people daily making anywhere from $5000-$100,000/mo, as a 1 person business?
You mean besides the fact that the creator economy (the system of 1 man businesses), is estimated to be worth over $300,000,000 by 2050?
Not to mention I’ve made a small fortune online when it comes to me and my clients combined → Enough money to stop working for an entire year (and I had to burn my agency down to start over)
No inventory, no employees, no overlords, no sh#tty work hours
Just you, an internet connection, and a lot of perseverance
That’s literally all you need
Follow what you’re reading here for 6-18 months, and I GUARENTEE it will change your life
Which brings us to the title of this article
What are the 5 skills you are going to need to pull this off?
Let’s break down everything you will need
First things first
Learn The Eternal Markets (This counts as a skill)
Health, Wealth, Relationships, and Happiness
These markets are evergreen, because people will always have problems related to them
Health? Everyone wants a healthy body, and would pay money to get there
Think about it. Have you ever paid for a gym membership? Have you ever paid for a home gym? Have you ever bought a good paid of running shoes?
Have you ever paid for a Dietitian consultation to lose weight or fix your unhealthy eating habits?
Have you ever went to a therapist?
Notice how no matter what happens, people will keep having problems related to health → This is why its an eternal market
Now if you want to build a 1 person business, you just need to solve your own health problems, then you can start charging other people to help them do the same
Fitness coaches are making from $1000-$20,000/mo online right now (These are real numbers, and I’ve even made them smaller so you can relate more)
Let’s talk about Wealth. What makes the world go round? Money
What do you need to survive? Money
What do you need to pay for groceries? Money
What do you need to pay rent on time? Money
What did you spend on the degree that’s currently losing its value? Money
Money can DRASTICALLY increase the quality of every human beings life, and that’s why it will always be in demand → Its an eternal market
If you can solve your own Wealth problems, you can solve them for other people
Alternatively, if you can solve other people wealth problems for free, then you can turn those into case studies and charge for it later
And what about relationships?
Every conversation you have, every close family member, your romantic partner, your best friend, your wife or husband, your ex wife or husband, your child, your mother or father, your co workers, dating etc.
Every single person you talk to, is about managing a relationship
Its the reason relationship coaches are pulling in thousands upon thousands of dollars per month, by helping people deal with their issues
Do you have any idea how much money dating coaches make?
What is one of the biggest frustrations of the modern age? Finding a loving partner
That’s a burning problem you can solve, if you’ve solved it yourself to a certain extent
Relationships (especially romantic ones), and intimacy (especially of a sexual nature), produce the chemical called Oxytocin and in males Vasopressin
These chemicals are a fundamental requirement to living a fulfilling life, which is exactly why they will always be in demand
Your body will always require chemicals to function optimally
If you get really good at solving the problems that affect the control of the chemicals in the bloodstream, you become a commodity, an irreplaceable source of a monetizable product
You don’t have to be an expert or master at something to sell a service or product related to it, you just need to be actively developing methods of solving the problem, and actively testing those methods
Use what has worked for you, and turn it into a service or product
And lastly, Happiness
Dopamine, joy, positive emotions, hope, feel good hormones, doesn’t matter what you want to call it, anything that makes people happy, can be monetized
Think about it. Do you have a favorite book? What about a videogame? What about a series? What about an anime? What about a movie? What about chocolate? (you’re not eating it for nutrition)
The reason you consume these pieces of media or substances, is because of how it makes you feel → It produces the feel good chemicals like Dopamine, Serotonin, and Norepinephrine
Produce too much, and you encounter psychological problems, have the perfect amount, and you function optimally, getting a little bit more, and you’re on a high
Drugs, alcohol, the head rush from smoking, intercourse, adrenaline, intimacy
What do they all produce? Happiness
Why do you think chocolate companies make so much money?
But how do you reproduce this as a 1 person business?
There are many ways.
You ever pay for a library subscription?
Create a library of stuff related to the thing you normally talk about, and sell a subscription to it, using the audience you’ve built thus far (you’ve seen it, its a paid newsletter tier)
You could even build an ecommerce brand if you wanted to, but we’re focusing on the 1 person business thing here, so let’s stick to those examples
What about a paid community where you help a specific demographic solve a problem you’ve solved for yourself? Takes a lot of upkeep, but the revenue potential is huge
Or you could take on a small group of 5 people every month, and help them solve a problem you’ve solved yourself (you can make anywhere from $600-$6000+/mo from this
Every single one of these are based on real life case studies, so yes, its 100% possible
What matters is the perceived importance of the thing you’re selling
You’d make more money selling dating advice to lonely young men, than you’d make coaching gamers (unless you spend a lot of time on marketing)
Remember, if nobody wants to buy your product or service, just find someone who will
Don’t think, “O, its not selling so this will never work”
99% of the time, there’s someone with a lot of disposable income, who values what you sell at a higher price than the people you normally target
Either offer your solution when they’re really frustrated, or find someone who’s either richer, or who perceives the solution to the problem as worth more
In simple terms: If nobody wants to buy, find richer clients or customers (Often they are not richer, just ready to pay more money)
People take out a loan to pay for a college degree, if they are really frustrated, they will buy.
Society has been indoctrinated to believe they HAVE to have a degree
When all you need is a wifi connection, basic English skills, and to teach yourself every skill discussed in this article
Point is, because society has been indoctrinated, not having a degree is seen as a “sign of a bad future”, which is exactly what impacts happiness
If you’re paying attention, the reason degrees sell like hot cakes, is because they are in the Wealth, Relationships, and Happiness market
Your goal with these markets is to:
Find a problem in these markets you’ve solved yourself
Turn the solution you came up with into a service AND product
Sell these solutions to your audience
And you won’t have to worry about selling something you’re passionate about, because as long as you sell something related to something you showed a personal interest in, you should have no trouble being passionate about at least one of them
But what do you at the start when you have no audience? I explain that further down
Let’s start with the most important skill you will need to fire your boss in the long term (there is no such thing as a get rich quick hack)
Writing
Your ability to persuade, build courses, write newsletters, write social media posts, write books, write podcast scripts, write YouTube video scripts, communicate etc.
They all depend on 1 skill, and that’s writing
The most valuable thing writing can give you, is attention
If no one knows you exist, no one is going to buy your products, or pay for your services
But writing gives you the ability to harness attention
If you can build a presence online through writing, you can monetize literally every problem you’ve solved in your life thus far
Writing teaches you how to simplify complex topics into small easily consumable bits of knowledge
It teaches you how to write stories that make people emotional and get them to buy your stuff
It teaches you how to build a social media brand that makes people flock to you, your expertise, your products, and your services
PewdiePie, Markiplier, Logan Paul, Mr Beast, JK Molina, Wiz of Ecom, Dakota Robertson, Grammar Hippy
Combined the people I just mentioned have generated BILLIONS
And they pulled it off with a social media brand
Some of those guys I’m willing to bet you never even heard of right?
That’s the best part. Nobody needs to know who you are besides a percentage of the audience you’ve amassed
Once you learn how to write, you learn how to get into people’s minds
They learn to trust you, they learn to believe in you, they start seeing you as an authority, they consume your writing day in and day out..
And then one day, they buy, or they become a client
Let me put it in perspective for you
I charge $750 for a 3 month program (currently several clients), and because I started rebuilding my business from the ground up, I charge pennies compared to my peers
Building a social media brand is the modern day equivalent of building an empire
And the most valuable thing a social media brand gives you in the long term, is leverage → Leverage is the ability to control massive amounts of traffic
Traffic is eyes
The more people see something, the larger the group of people showing an interest in said thing
The more followers you have, the more people see your products and services when you promote them
“But Ian, aren’t you just pulling statistics out of your a##?
I’ve been doing this for 3 years straight, there’s is nothing inaccurate about the data
These are real possibilities if you write consistently for 6 months straight
These are instructions:
Go on X (or twitter)
Go to canva and search “twitter banner”
Make a good one, then add it to your profile
Go to your bio and explain what you talk about, how much experience you have in the thing you talk about, and how you help your followers
Make 15 meaningful comments per day, under your favorite creator’s posts (that do stuff similar to what you do)
Stick to it for 6 months
Pay for X blue subscription ($3/mo)
Chat with people in the DMs about similar interests daily
You’re guaranteed to gain hundreds to thousands of followers if you keep doing this for 6 months straight
Not only that, your writing ability will drastically increase, you will meet people making your parents monthly salary in a day, and you will learn from the greatest minds that exist in 1 person business
I’m releasing a writing course at a later date, but if you want to know how to build courses (even if you suck at writing), then grab my course the “Digital Domination Framework” below
Learn how to build your digital product with a roadmap in 30 days, without paying for expensive software, including how to make sales with zero followers
Includes 27 Course Modules including video tutorials, resources, my course creation template, my digital product sales CRM, and 2+ years of expertise
But what now? Let’s say you can write well, how do you actually make money?
As JK Molina says, “like are nice, but likes aint cash”
Who’s JK Molina? A guy who sold his company for 1.4 million dollars at age 23
You’re thinking too small
Right now there are foreigners willing to pay you thousands of dollars, if you can solve their burning problems
But your followers mean nothing if you’re not making any money from them
I explain how to monetize with the next skill you need to learn
Marketing
This 1 skill can change the outcome of your life forever (in as fast as 24 hours if you work hard enough)
Marketing is the difference between having something cool to show people, and having people to show something cool to
Without it, nobody will know your solutions exist
And if nobody knows you have a solution, you won’t be selling anything
This is exactly why I hammer on building an audience to sell at scale
But at the start you won’t have much of an audience to sell to (you will be learning writing while you learn marketing)
So what now? With nobody to sell to, what do you do?
You’re still marketing, but you’re outbound marketing not inbound marketing
Its still marketing, its just finding people who’s problems you can solve
Instead of expecting people to come to you (they won’t cause nobody knows you exist), you need to go to them
By building high quality relationships (using the social media system society has built for you), you expand the amount of opportunities at your disposal
Dedicate time daily to building relationships, nurturing those relationships, managing those relationships, and removing those who do not benefit your progress
There’s nothing wrong with having friends as just friends, but if you’re working online you need to prioritize people who will change the outcome of your future
The best way to do this (while making good friends), is by finding likeminded people who share similar interests, goals, and ideals
Do this correctly, and you can make friends with massive accounts like Dan Koe, Iamaaronwill, or Alex Mathers
I’ve become great friends with people who made my parents yearly salary in a month
Deep down, everyone is just a human being who values connection
The goal is to find people who are the intersect of your ideals, and people who are good friends
Find people who fit both of those criteria, and you build a network of people who will bring you clients, help you make product sales, help you grow followers, and support everything you do
If you want my networking framework you can read my article on it here:
But building a network like that takes time, so before you do that you need to manually find people who fit your ICP (your Ideal Customer Profile)
What’s great about this strategy, is that you ARE your ICP
You’ve solved your own problems, now you’re offering the solution to that very problem
That means you already have all the market research you need at your disposal
Do the following:
Find someone who has your ICP in their audience
Make a list of them using my Notion template here, or a Google doc
Reach out to 5 of them a day, and slowly convert them into clients
This process obviously requires experience and experimentation to work properly
With everyone and their mother giving out scripts to solve this problem, the market is becoming more and more aware of these silly methods
The more people use a script, the higher the market sophistication gets
Market sophistication, if you weren’t aware, is how skeptical and used to being sold to a market is
This is exactly why I developed a FRAMEWORK (not a DM script)
It teaches you how to exploit human psychology to make the sale the majority of the time → This takes daily work, but can make you thousands in 30 days, if you know what you’re doing
Grab it below (if you want)
Get access to the 7 step DM sales & networking framework I used to generate over $10,000 online, and build a 263,000 follower network on X (formerly twitter)
Easy to implement, and results can be seen in within 24hrs (if you work hard enough)
Self-Education
As a 1 person business owner, your most valuable skill is not a specific skill, but the ability to solve problems
Need a website? Learn how to build it yourself
Need a sales page? Learn how to write it yourself
Need clients? Learn how to get them yourself
Need an audience? Learn how to build it yourself
I’ve solved all of these problems, I’m stacking more, and I’ve solved even more than I just mentioned
It makes you irreplaceable
Its what allows me to consult 5, 6, and recently 7 figure digital business owners
I have a vast amount of knowledge and experience over different fields
Not only does that allow me to upsell all kinds of services or products, it also means I don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on outsourcing my business functions to people who are not as invested in my business as I am
But with today’s brain rot tiktok BS overtaking everyone’s day to day schedule, its really easy to get distracted
Self education (not depending on schools, colleges, or universities), is one of the most valuable skills you can learn
Its understanding the nature of things, its encountering problems and learning how to solve them, its what you need to build a thriving business
Every thing you use to solve your problems right now, at its core, is just a business model for someone else
Social media → Business model
Onlyfans → Business model (let’s ignore the exploiting unethical aspect of it for now)
Grocery store → Business model
Adobe → Business model
The sooner you realize this the sooner you can use THE RIGHT ones, to teach yourself how to replace them
You don’t need a degree, you need a library subscription and YouTube
These 2 things, are the most powerful self education weapons in your arsenal
And what will it cost you? Basically nothing
But its pointless if you know these things, when you aren’t consistent
You need to dedicate 30-60 minutes per day, just consuming information that will help you achieve your goals (this is compulsory for progress)
If you aren’t learning, you aren’t gaining new information
If you aren’t gaining new information, you have nothing to test out
If you’re not testing anything, you have no data
And if you have no data, you can’t teach or implement anything that will work
Whether its through study, or experience, doesn’t matter
Learn EVERY SINGLE DAY
If you’re a consultant and digital education business owner like me, then having a vast amount of knowledge and experience at your disposal, can make you irreplaceable
Recently I had a 7 figure digital business owner who reached out for help on a problem
He had clearly been observing me, and felt I might be able to solve his issue
Something like this would never have happened, had I not been teaching what I learn
And the only way I can teach, is by self-educating with articles, podcasts, YouTube, courses, and books (no you don’t need a business degree)
Identifying Opportunities
Your biggest issue in online services (newsletters too), is not knowing when to take advantage of something
The more you sell your ideas, products, and services online, the better you get at this
You won’t develop this skill without putting yourself out there
Network. Sell. Market. Create.
Do so every single day, and you will encounter opportunities (and miss many)
And you’ll hate yourself for missing those opportunities, but that’s part of the development process
To grow as a person you need to keep failing over and over
“In business, you need to crawl for a long time, before you can swim” - Ian Pierre
Get used to playing the long game
Opportunities can mean more followers, more subscribers, more sales, or more clients
Then I need to address the false ideas people have in their head:
This article isn’t hating on the 9-5, or saying “people in the rat race are dumb”
Without them our streets wouldn’t be functioning, our sewer systems wouldn’t work, there’d be no food in the grocery store, and I can go on and on
But your ultimate goal should be to replace your 9-5 with your own business
Its the best decision you can make starting right now
If you learn these skills, your life will drastically change for the better
You will meet amazing people, take advantage of amazing opportunities, see drastic increases in revenue, and change your entire perception of life (in a good way)
This was an incredibly long article, because the problems I addressed are fundamental to you living a happy and fulfilled life long term
I hope this helped
PS: I know I haven’t been posting consistently for the last 2 weeks (expect a weekly article from here on out)
Have a great day, Ian
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