Someone recently asked online how many follow-ups is enough.

In other words, she was asking how many times she should follow up with a prospect before giving up. Many of the people who were responding said things like, “If they are going to buy, they will just take action fast”.

Well, that certainly works in some industries. But in reality, you need follow-ups. And the number of follow-ups you should do before you give up is more than you think.

The money is in the follow up.

The other side of this, however, is that most people don’t know how to follow up. They follow-up from a place of scarcity. And that is why they never win the client.

There is a lot to unpack here. But first, let’s talk about the number of follow-ups you need.

The Ideal Number of Follow-ups

If you are in B2B, the ideal number of follow-ups is 12. Don’t give up before your 12th follow up. In most cases, they will say yes before then.

If you are not in B2B, the ideal number of follow-ups is 5. However, I would push that to 10 if you are an underdog in the industry.

You have to understand that people just don’t see an ad and buy. Most people won’t buy the first time they come across your offer.

The only people who buy immediately are people who are problem aware and are looking for a fix. They have a problem and they want to pay someone to get rid of that problem as soon as possible.

It’s like when you are driving and suddenly you have a flat tire. You want that fixed as soon as possible. But that kind of business is rare.

Smart businesses do not wait until the prospect is in trouble. You anticipate the trouble and sell the peace of mind. And that’s why follow-up is important.

Let’s say a business suddenly realize that their SEO traffic dropped by 80% in one week. And 50% of their revenue comes from SEO. You know they will be scrambling for help. Who do you think they will reach out to first?

The first name that comes from Google search? Nope. The suggested names from ChatGPT or Claude? Nope. That won’t be their first point of call.

The first point of call would be the person they saw talk about that problem and how it was solved. It is the person who has gotten in touch with them before on that issue and educated them on the problem.

If they don’t know any, or nothing comes to mind, then they start asking AI or searching online. This is why you follow up. You cannot control when your prospects are ready to buy.

What you can control is your availability. When they are ready to buy, are you on their radar?

The Philosophy of Who Over What

My business coach mentioned something years ago and it stuck to me. It is the idea of “who”, not “what”.

Think of it like this...

Read more

I swore I would not be one of the people who write Substack articles about making money on Substack. But here we are.

I figured the demand is huge and it is a vertical that crosses into my expertise. So, let’s get some things clear.

This is not a post about helping you to grow on Substack. Instead, this is a post about business models. In all fairness, Substack is one of the best places online right now to monetize content, especially written content.

Ever since I tried the new Substack around 4 months ago, I have been impressed. My first taste of Substack was in 2019 when they first started. But I abandoned it then, only to come back in early 2026.

Like anyone else actively creating content on this platform, my goal is to make money and make it a stable side business. My goal is to get to $60k ARR. But I am nowhere close to that at the moment.

However, I have figured a few things out. And that is what I hope to share with anybody who takes this seriously.

This is an adult conversation about business models, not merely about growing on Substack. So, expect me to be very candid. If you want my help, I will show you how to get it.

And if you have questions or thoughts, just drop them in the comment section. Let’s look into the reasons you are not making money on Substack yet...

1. Substack Is Not for Creators

This is very hurting realization. But the earlier you embrace it the better. Substack is not another social media platform you can “grow” on.

In case you haven’t noticed, there is the “subscribe” button and there is the “follow” button. And people use them in various ways.

For example, I subscribe when I am interested in the specific article content of a particular person or account. But I follow if I am unfamiliar with the person or account but think they are interesting enough to be on my radar.

Follows often lead to subscription later. When I find people in Notes, I follow first. But when I read two or more articles that hooks me well, I definitely subscribe.

Not sure how others use it, but that is how I do. Other things can lead to me subscribing though. And I also have a stealth second account. Anyway.

I hear the gurus here say that posting on notes helps growth (like every other social media platform). And my answer is that yes it helps follower growth. But it doesn’t really help subscriber growth (except you are in a hot niche).

We will talk about niche soon. But the idea here is that the things that help you grow as a creator on a social media platform doesn’t really help you grow on Substack.

You may grow followers, but what really matters is subscribers. That grows way slower. And if you are like me, the definition of growth is paying subscribers.

The point is that if you are trying to grow through content, you are in the wrong business. It is not impossible, but it is damn slow.

I know you have seen people who are growing superfast who started a few months ago. And they tell you that they imported no list and just did everything organic. Well, here is something you don’t know...

Substack has a way of mapping out who you are from everything you have already done online. And that significantly influences how fast you grow, at least at the early stages.

I don’t know how the platform or algorithm does it, but someone who has built a significant following in the past somewhere online will grow faster than someone who hasn’t, assuming everything else stays equal.

Depending on the niche, that can be a huge advantage or a narrow advantage. I have built a huge following somewhere else before here. I built 160k followers on Medium over 6 years. Does it help? Most likely. But Medium is a closed space.

Those who build something like that on more open spaces like Instagram or X will find it much easier here, even if they don’t import any list. The platform somewhat recognizes you and puts you in front of the right eyes.

I imported a large section of my current subscribers. But they came from my private email list. Also, after about 2 months, I removed everyone I imported who hasn’t opened a single email from me. The number of subscribers I have added since rejoining Substack is still less than 100.

All my current paying subscribers are from my imported list, except one.

2. Unfavourable Niche

The first reason you are not making money from Substack is that you are playing it like a creator. You are playing it like TikTok, YouTube, or X. And that is not a strong path to becoming highly paid.

The second reason here is unfavourable niche. Some niches are better than others. I have expertise around a variety of subjects. So, I shuffled around a bit on Substack with this.

I saw people giving the best marketing insights, but their subscriber count was low. Marketing is a weak niche here. It is just what it is.

A good example of a strong niche is (stock market) finance. Another strong niche is news and current events, especially pertaining to US politics.

If you want to see whether your niche is favourable or not, go to the explore tab. Then, look at the sections listed above; finance, news, business, etc. Find the one that best describes your content and click on it.

Then, look at the notes that show up. Look at how much engagement there is. It is normal to see one or two outlier accounts pulling big numbers. But be objective enough to gauge the average. That tells you how favourable your niche is.

Compare your niche with other niches. That tells you the game you are playing.

If your niche is unfavourable, that doesn’t mean you should switch or give up. It just tells you that creating more quality content will not help you grow. If it helps, it won’t be meaningful. This means you need a different business model.

You either change your model, or you change your niche. And we will talk about successful models soon.

3. Community Cluster

This is another factor close to niche, but slightly different. You can be in a favourable niche, but the community doesn’t cluster around you.

Substack is not for creators. Substack is for experts. Substack is more about showcasing your expertise and getting paid for it. Your position has to make it obvious that you have an expertise.

Does the community cluster around you for information? Would the community cluster around someone like you?

This is a very serious question. If the community of the niche doesn’t see you as someone who has a precise expertise they can tap from, growth is going to be slow.

In fact, growth can be stalled indefinitely.

4. Location

Yes, your location matters to your growth.

If you go to your stat dashboard, you can see where your subscribers are mostly from. Your current location plays a factor in that.

Also, the platform will push your content to people who are from the same location as you, who read similar content. And we all know that Substack users are more abundant in certain countries than others.

This also greatly affects your organic growth. Now, this is not some kind of discrimination. It is the platform trying to deliver the best tailored experience to the reader. So, they want to recommend writers close by to readers.

If you are in a region or country where Substack users are not that much, it just tells you that you have to be proactive in your growth tactics if you are serious about growing.

All things being equal, if you are based in Morocco, your account will grow slower than someone who is in (for example) California, USA.

5. Value Trap

The final reason you are not making money on Substack is the value trap. And this is the most serious one yet.

Get this straight; selling from inside Substack is not ideal. If it is a product, I will highly discourage that. If it is a service, that is reasonable but many do it wrong.

Selling a digital product or physical product from Substack is not a good model. Except if that is the whole essence of the account. And in that case, I would ask why are you on Substack? 

You should be using MailerLite or Kit to sell products. Substack is mainly about information.

Selling services is okay. But how you position it is important.

The value trap is when people think that if they provide enough value, people will subscribe to them. And it doesn’t work that way.

Trust me, I have been there. Right there in your dashboard, go look at the number of people who finished reading your post. You will be humbled.

Go to dashboard, then stats, then posts, then tap “display”. From the dropdown, you’ll see the option “finished post”. I checked mine the other day and was humbled.

Of course, I don’t know how that is calculated. Maybe time spent on the post inside the app or something. But it will humble you about what you are calling value.

People do not subscribe for value. If there is anything you take away from this post, make this the number one. People don’t subscribe for value.

After all, value is subjective. This is even more important with content and information. Value on Substack is subjective.

You can make the best quality post, give the best value, and your account will still be stuck. What’s more frustrating is that you will see others who are not as quality as you rise fast and grow fast.

It’s not cheating. They are just using a different business model. And I will encourage you to consider switching your business model on Substack.

Solutions to Making Real Money on Substack

First, a disclaimer...

I write about business and finance. I am not a Substack growth expert. But I have spent the last 8 years making money online. And my pattern recognition skills are elite.

Right now, I am helping entrepreneurs and executives build an impactful newsletter. Notice who I am helping. I am not focused on everybody or anybody. I am focused on only entrepreneurs and executives (who have the expertise).

Also, Substack is not the only newsletter platform that exists. There are people that Substack is not a good fit for and I tell them clearly (upfront) what is best for them.

But most importantly, I share the business models that work with them. This is how the game is played. Do you want to play or you don’t?

If you are playing, then we have to follow the business model that works. There are 5 sustainable business models that work for Substack:

1. Creator monetization layer

This is when a Substack account is created to help monetize a creator who is already successful and viral on a social media platform. One of the first people I subscribed to on Substack is like this.

She has a very successful TikTok account that I follow. I love her content because it is very educative. Of course, TikTok pays but it is mostly pennies. Her monetization layer is Substack.

People who love her work on TikTok come to subscribe to her on Substack. She barely posts any notes. And she has thousands of paid subscribers.

That business model works. Be popular on a social media platform and have Substack as your monetization layer.

2. Paid ads

Paid ads is the growth hack. This is my go-to strategy for the entrepreneurs and executives I am helping.

If you are not prepared to do paid ads to grow, you are not serious about this Substack business. This is the model that anybody and everybody can tap into. It doesn’t matter your location or whatever. If you focus on using paid ads as a lever, you will grow and monetize fast.

For the people I am helping, this is the way. Yes, we incorporate every possible strategy too, but paid ads is at the center of it all. Here is the pricing chart I send to prospects (with the confidential information covered):

Notice that paid ads is on every single tier. That is the only growth mechanism we can control 100%.

3. Real life impact

Another model that works here is if your work on Substack is an extension of something you do in the real world. Meaning that Substack is just an online monetization component to something that happens in the real world.

An hypothetical example is if you organize skateboarding events for teens in your community and you document those events on Substack. It means when those events take place, you can share the Substack with parents and they can support.

Also, people who are fond of that community and love what you are doing will be naturally inclined to be paid subscribers. They won’t care about how many notes you post or whatever. Some may not even read your articles and happily pay every month because they are happy to be part of what you are doing for the community.

I heard of an account who paid someone (quite local to the area) to go to the Strait of Hormuz to see what is happening on ground around the time the blockade started. And they uncovered an interesting story.

4. Existing community

If you have an existing community maybe on Discord (or Reddit and so on), but you don’t have a clear way to monetize, Substack helps with that.

People who do this already have an email list, they import everything to Substack. And because of the prior relationship bonds, many of the imported list easily become paying subscribers.

I used this method to kickstart my account. Only one person from my paying subscribers was not from my imported list. And I have been publishing articles twice a week since April, in a finance niche (which is somewhat favourable, even though the community cluster around my account is weak).

5. Selling services

Now this is the part most people laud as the way to big money on Substack. That may be true, but that doesn’t mean the path doesn’t have its troubles.

From my experience, having a CTA in an article like this doesn’t perform so well. I haven’t tested it extensively, but so far I am not impressed.

And if you think about it, people came here to read and gain knowledge. Sending them somewhere else to buy something isn’t particularly aesthetic.

But don’t let that stop you from innocently placing your opt-in links in your article. I am doing that with this article too. But don’t place your hopes on it. That is a weak model.

A better sustainable model to sell services on Substack is chats and DMs. You have to set up a DM system for a sustainable sales process on Substack.

You would have to DM me if you want to find out more about that.

Conclusion

You are not making money from Substack because you are playing the platform like a creator, in an unfavourable niche, with a weak community cluster, from a weak location, and/or trying to grow by creating the best value.

Value stacking will not help you. In fact, it can work against you.

The way to win on Substack is to use Substack as a creator monetization layer, or do paid ads, or have a real life connection, or bring in an existing community from somewhere, or sell services in DMs and chat.

This article was never about growing on Substack. Instead, it is about making money on Substack. This is about the business model that works. This is about what is sustainable that you can proudly call a business.

I hope that helps.

P.S. If you are an entrepreneur or executive and you want to build with the right business model here (or anywhere else), get in touch here

I have always been fascinated about wealth and finance. But it took me a long time to realize how it truly works.

There are thousands of books, podcasts, and videos online that tell you how to get rich. I have read, listened, and watched hundreds of them. They tell you the same ideas; work hard, be focused, get started early, have a unique idea, don’t give up, have a good attitude, etc.

They tell you all the good stuff. Everyone tells their story of success in hindsight like a sage. They make themselves a hero. You believe it because it is believable.

Nobody tells you the dark side of money. You would have to go deep into history to find that side of the story. That’s because the people involved are dead and long gone. And now, investigative journalists can write an objective view of how their wealth came to be.

This is why I sometimes touch on politics. You cannot talk about wealth and getting rich without talking about power.

They are directly related.

Fastest Way to Get Rich 

A few years back, I was watching a super rich investor who has negotiated deals in millions and billions answer questions in a private Q&A session. It was on YouTube then, not sure if it is still there now.

Someone asked the man, “If you had to start from zero today and you have no money at all, what would you do?”

He said, “I would go get a contract with the US Pentagon”. The fastest way to become super rich to him is to get a US defence contract.

This opened my eyes a lot. It’s none of the usual mumbo jumbo of personal development and starting a business. He was very specific.

I did some research afterwards and realized that whoever is getting those Pentagon contracts are making bank. They are making a ton of money.

Yes, there are obvious players like Boeing, Lockheed Martin. But those are the big contractors. There is a space for smaller contractors and tons of small contractors are thriving on contracts like this.

In fact, someone once joked to me that half of the population of Washington DC lives on US Government contracts in some form. And this is not an American thing, I have confirmed the same trend for a lot of other countries.

The money is where the power sits.

You almost can’t get it wrong if your client is the US government. Meaning that the richer your client, the richer you are.

And the reason why many are broke is that they are selling to a poor market. It doesn’t matter how valuable your product or service is, if the people that want it can’t afford it, you will be broke.

That is a very bad place to be. That is why you find many gurus say something like, “Sell to the rich”. And that is correct. That is a fast way to get rich.

Before you make a product or service, first choose who you want to sell to. If the people you want to sell to don’t have the money, don’t bother.

They may have money. But are they in a position to set aside money for your solution (out of everything else they have to pay for)? Think about that.

I know someone quite close who became a millionaire recently. He got some good government contracts. And those contracts came by political connections.

This is the game.

Why the US is Bailing Out the Japanese Yen

You must have heard the news. The US Treasury sold Euros to buy the yen, so that the value of the yen can go up.

That happened, but the yen is still tumbling down though. First, let look into how the yen got into this position where it needs saving.

There are 2 historical events connected to this - the second world war and the Japanese market crash in 1990. Let me explain...

After WW2, Japan became a proxy economic state to the US. If you recall, Japan ended up on the losing side of the war and the US influence began.

Then in the 1970s, Japan surged with technology and manufacturing. Japanese cars started making waves. And the US market was open to them.

Being a small country and exporting to a large market like the US made the Japanese economy surge. The products from Japan was one of the critical factors that killed car manufacturing in USA (especially in Detroit, which was the car manufacturing capital of the USA at that time).

However, in the 1980s, Japan started to get drunk on its own medicine. That created a boom like no other. You need to go watch documentaries on that Japan boom market. It was crazy.

There was money everywhere. It was an era of cheap money for Japan fueled by a monetary policy that no one wants to take responsibility for till today. Rumor has it that the BOJ (Bank of Japan) was the mastermind. The BOJ is the central bank of Japan and they determine the interest rate of the financial system.

When the rugpull happened, it was a crushing blow. Suddenly the whole country is drowning in debt that is unthinkable. And the central bank saved no one. It led to what is now referred to as The Lost Decades.

The economic and emotional scare from that still haunts the Japanese economy till today. People had millions in debt and lost their jobs. Multiple businesses went bankrupt under the weight of debt. The debt they stuck themselves into during the era of cheap money.

True to the Japanese culture, the goal was to never recreate such a scenario again. This is why the BOJ is often very reluctant to raise interest rates.

Whenever the Japanese yen is weakening, instead of raising interest rates, the BOJ will carry out these special interventions. They would sell US dollar (or treasuries) in their reserves to buy yen. This is to boost demand for yen and hence make it stronger.

Everybody knows that the BOJ will do this, so it creates an incentive for something known as the carry trade. This is (mostly) Japanese people short selling the yen, because they know the BOJ will not raise rates.

They buy dollar with yen. The dollar goes higher, they sell back to yen. When the yen gets too weak, the BOJ will sell their dollar reserves. This has been going on for years now.

But overall, this carry trade makes the yen weaker over time. It made more sense for people to hold their positions in dollar and not yen. That puts pressure on the yen to be weaker.

Meanwhile, the BOJ which effectively controls the Japanese economy is a darling of the USA. Whenever the US Treasury is selling bonds to finance their budget, Japan is one of the strongest buyers of US Treasuries, showing US Treasuries as the legitimate reserve that countries should keep.

All central banks need some form reserve to back their currency. Traditionally, that used to be gold. But since WW2 and the Nixon Shock in 1971, gold has been a questionable reserve.

The US pushed Treasuries on other countries as a much better reserve, since the US dollar is the world reserve currency (and the Fed prints it), the US is not going to default on its debt.

China was once the biggest buyer of US Treasuries, but they have since implemented a turnaround policy and started favouring gold. Japan is the only major foreign buyer of US debt left.

If the Japanese economy should crumble under its own weight, it will send a message to all other countries that buying US Treasuries as a reserve can end in failure. That is a reputation that Washington DC is not prepared to accept.

This is why the US Treasury is bailing out the Japanese yen. The risk has not disappeared yet. If the US loses the narrative on Japan, then foreign demand for US debt disappears overnight.

This means bond yields will skyrocket in America. That means cost of borrowing money goes up. The Fed will be the only major buyer of Treasuries left. And with the amount of debt America has already, that could mean an economic implosion.

With the way the financial world is structured right now, if the Japanese economy suffers a blow, the USA is very certainly going to follow after a few months. And the era of the US dollar as global reserve will end. Some would argue it is already ending.

The point is that the US Treasury is bailing out Japan because foreign demand for US Treasuries is at stake. If Japan should show a bad example for a country basing its reserves on US Treasuries, the reputation fallout from there will create a bond market storm in America.

If there is a bond market storm in America, nothing will get financed anymore because money becomes too expensive. This means interest payments will be too high to justify any project. And the capitalism machine will simply stop working.

So, the US Treasury saving the Japanese yen is not out of friendship. They are trying to avoid a disaster of epic proportions.

By the way, I don’t think any disaster would happen. If push comes to shove, I think Washington DC will pressure the BOJ to raise rates.

Now, you understand the weird relationship between America and Japan. No other country has this type of weird economic relationship with America.

Conclusion

The fastest way to get rich is to do business where power sits. Look for people who have money and find something to sell them.

In fact, they often tell you. They tell you what they want to buy. Then, you go source it for them. That is the fastest path to riches.

The USA and Japan are not mere “friends”. A collapse in the Japanese yen will force a bond market crisis in the USA. This is why the US Treasury is bailing out Japan.

I don’t think it is a red-alert problem for now. The BOJ just has “rate hike PTSD”. I think they would hike if push comes to shove.

Smart people would find ways to make money around these messy situations.

Thoughts?

Leave a comment

If it happened to him, it can happen to you.

This is what I want you to remember here. You are not immune. It doesn’t matter how careful you are.

In this article, I am not talking about crimes in the sense of something that takes a person to jail. I am talking about crimes in the context of what created the loss that Situational Awareness suffered.

I am not going to obsess about what he should have done differently. Everybody would have called him a bold genius if those bets paid off and he wasn’t margin called.

He was already 400% up the year. There is a reason he is up by that much. And we want to talk about those business practices.

I don’t know Leopold in person, neither do I know any of the staff at Situational Awareness. I am not trying to defend their failure or success. If there is any hidden agenda here, it is for you to subscribe to this publication:

There are 5 crimes committed by Leopold that actually made that 67% jarring loss possible. And you might be making some of them already...

Crime #1 - The Reckless Use of Leverage

This is the most obvious of all the crimes. And since the dawn of the stock market and leverage investing, this has destroyed countless fortunes.

So many careers in investing has been wrecked in a few trades via the use of leverage. It is a weapon of mass destruction.

One of the worst things that can happen to a person is to win big on their first use of leverage. It is often a trap. And this leads to a wipe out much later.

Leopold was already using leverage recklessly and he was winning. Otherwise, he couldn’t be 400% up before July.

Using leverage is a matter of conviction. But, there is no such thing as a sure bet. George Soros used it to the extreme in 1992 and was hailed as a genius for it. But he would have suffered irrecoverable losses if the market didn’t go his way.

Leverage doesn’t just exists in stocks and investing. It exists in business too. I have seen too many businesses overplay their hands too early. They bet the entirety of their business on the success of one deal.

This is dangerous. I was in a startup where the founder was already counting revenue from an enterprise prospect who hasn’t said yes. Eventually, the enterprise client said no, but the entire startup had been built around getting a yes from that client.

That is reckless. The recklessness isn’t that you are optimistic. The recklessness is your assumption that things cannot go sideways.

Situational Awareness assumed that they won’t get that margin call. When they were, they had no answer. For that scale of leverage, they ought to have an answer.

Crime #2 - Assuming No Enemies

Once you become successful and start doing some big numbers, you start to have enemies. Never assume that everyone is truly happy for you.

There is someone somewhere who would be interested in your downfall. And if they have enough money and resources, they would engineer it.

Read more

Everyone I know wanted Trump to win a second term.

For context, I am not American. I do not live in North America. However, I have associates and business interests there.

This article is going to give you a wide angle perspective you have probably never seen before. This is the intersection of politics and finance.

I will try to avoid mentioning any names except the President himself, to avoid triggering readers. And everything you are about to read is my opinion and perspective.

In a world full of biased views, we need things like this. I don’t consider myself left or right politically. I think both sides are right on certain things and wrong on other things.

I think of my take as the common sense perspective. But someone else might have a different opinion of it.

If there is any hidden agenda in this article, it is to get you to subscribe and become a paying member of this publication...

Let’s Begin - Why is Trump Flopping?

The inspiration to write this post came when an objective friend of mine who I love to discuss politics with sent me a note. Lots of people get sensitive about political discussions, but he is one of those people who can have an argument without getting sentimental.

Most of the times, we come to the same conclusions. We both agreed that Trump was the better candidate to win the 2024 US elections during that time.

But a few days ago, he sent me a social media post of one of Trump’s flops and asked, “What’s now the difference between these ones and the ones they replaced?”

Everyone was not pleased with the Biden presidency. And to be candid, they were vastly incompetent on so many levels. This added to the fact that no one really knew who was running the country because Biden often seemed sick.

The VP Kamla Harris became the party candidate to run against Trump. But as I have shared in a previous post, Harris is not presidential material.

It’s hard to explain the presidential material thing, but you can see it on some people and not on other people. Obama is presidential material. Trump is. Biden isn’t. Clinton is. Bush is. Harris isn’t.

Everybody I know wanted Trump to win that election. Even people who leaned left were concerned about the direction Harris is taking. And Trump had that strong track record from his first term.

Everyone was expecting a repeat of that performance.

Trump’s First Term As Seen From Faraway Lands

Trump’s first term was mostly overshadowed by special inquiries into him. That lasted almost 3 years and vindication came when the term was almost over.

The press was mostly centered on the special inquiries. And many landmark achievements went without any much notice. There was no wars. There were a few verbal clashes, but nothing turned into a battle.

The economy grew strongly. Not just the US economy, but it spread to the global economy too. Trump talked about putting America first, but then iterated that he expects other national leaders to put their countries first too, which is fair.

He started seriously closing the trade gap with China. Renegotiated trade with a few countries. People called it protectionist then, but regular citizens benefited. Other countries followed this trend and dependence on other countries reduced, and it barely made a dent in globalization.

Global trade just got normalized. The moves on illegal immigration was smart too. Building of a wall on the southern border. Strong enough to reduce crossings, and respectful enough not to create geopolitical tensions.

They were soft wins that the USA hasn’t seen in a long time. Trump was the anti-establishment candidate. He dug significantly into his own pockets to finance that first time, so he had very little crew to satisfy. He wasn’t a politician and didn’t try to be one. His results spoke for him.

Then, 2020 came. The opposition was ready in a way that they hadn’t anticipated. And some ballot boxes at 3 am sealed the fate of the election.

I followed that election closely more than any election I have ever followed in my life. I was in a GMT timezone, so I saw the overtake happen in almost real time. I had predicted Trump would win. That result continues to puzzle me till date.

What’s more jarring about that is the people who engineered that loss gathered together and boasted publicly of how they fortified the election. And honestly, when they revealed the playbook, I was impressed.

It’s hard to overturn a result that has been announced. Trump was out and so was his crew. But his support never wavered.

Now, that he is back at the White House, why is he failing?

The Ukraine crisis hasn’t gotten any better. There was a regime change in Venezuela (which we all know has nothing to do with human rights). There is a new (unwinnable) war with Iran. Inflation keeps raging. Oil reserves are down. The US dollar is gradually losing its reserve status. The president can’t keep his word on anything.

What happened?

My Analysis of What Happened to Trump

I am not here to serve you some conspiracy. I am giving you the same answers I gave to my friend a few days ago. And again, this is my personal opinion and perspective.

Okay. Imagine this with me...

If you hired me before the Trump second term and told me to sabotage the man’s vision to make him the worst American President ever, the strategy I would have proposed to you is eerily similar to what has transpired thus far in the Trump second term (minus the violence).

I don’t have the heart for violence against anything and anyone. But pretty much everything else that has happened would have been proposed by me. Which is why it is hard for me to see these things as accidents or coincidences.

If you still can’t piece together what I am try to say, here is it in plain English:

End of story. That is the punchline right there. The true changemakers at heart were gradually substituted with establishment bureaucrats and people whose loyalty is to money and power.

How many people on Trump’s first term team are in office with him right now? And I don’t mean common staff. I mean, strategic personnel that shaped policies with him. Where are they now?

Between Trump leaving office in 2020 and the 2025 inauguration, almost all of them have been quietly sidelined or silenced in some way. It was slow. It was gradual. But I noticed.

And it is still going on even today. The goal for the establishment bureaucrats stopped being Trump. The goal was to replace the people around him and put in people loyal to power. Trump got isolated.

And because the people replacing are people loyal to power, Trump cannot tell the difference between people loyal to him and people loyal to power. They needed that 4 years of Biden to make deep penetration. And of course, it was also a hedge.

Yes, the second term happened and the hedge became the fort. In fact, sometimes, I think they know Harris would lose.

Everybody wanted Trump to win to recreate that first term momentum in a greater way. But the Establishment already made sure that they were never going to deal with that anymore.

Shortly after the inauguration in January 2025, I knew the cause was lost. I knew that Trump had derailed and it was going to be a shitshow. How did I know? I’ll tell you...

You remember that first public fight between Elon Musk and Trump? That was the sign that told me everything I needed to know.

Elon had backed Trump heavily at the campaigns. He donated financially and also even spoke at Trump rallies. Their combo sounded very promising seeing that they have been at odds with each other in the past.

But just a few weeks into the presidency, while appointments were still being made, Elon suddenly went berserk online. He said bad things about Trump and was openly regretting that he supported the President during the campaign. It was a very bad scene.

Today, if you ask what caused that spat, you will get varying answers. Some say it is because of electric vehicle subsidy, some say it is because of NASA appointments, and so on. No one really knows. And it could be a combination of those things.

I am not here to speculate on what the cause of that fight was. But one thing is clear from that fight, someone was trying to completely push Elon Musk out of the circle of influence of the president now that the election is over. They were done with Musk and made moves to sideline him. That was the point.

If you followed the trend of events, you would notice that nobody put his skin in the game on that election like Elon Musk. He bet a lot on it. And that was the thing that sold the idea that it was a great team that was coming together.

I don’t know anyone who put more skin in the game like Elon for that campaign. To see that they tried to sideline him so early was the red flag.

And later, it was almost like Trump begged to get Elon included in the circle again. So, who is the figure powerful enough to sideline Elon Musk at that stage? Given the nature of the exchange, it was not Trump.

Trump’s circle had changed. And the new people in charge are there to serve the establishment and no one else.

That Trump and Elon fight crippled the momentum from the Trump campaign. From then, it became “survive and mind your business”. The purpose of the fight was never to create enmity between Elon and Trump. The purpose was to destroy the momentum and any agenda that doesn’t align with the establishment.

Trump’s advisers have changed. And these new ones are not loyal to his vision. Instead, they are loyal to power. And the continued removal of the true Trump team has continued.

Trump’s Weakness

President Trump is not making decisions for America. In fact, I’ll say that he hasn’t made any decisions thus far in his second term.

Instead, he is getting played.

On one interview, he said that America shouldn’t have gone to war with Iran, but the bombings continued. That is not someone making decisions, that is someone responding to decisions.

Now, I don’t mean that his advisors force him to do what they say behind closed doors. No, it is not like that. There is a way you present a situation that psychologically manipulates the choice into someone else’s mind.

And I must say that the people playing Trump are very good. They know his weakness. They are capitalizing on it and it pays off every single time.

This is Trump’s weakness:

All you have to do is bait his ego. He will always fall for it. Every time you present a piece of information, add a sentence or two to bait the ego of the President.

I am sure those around him right now are telling him what a great President he has been since the inauguration. But the truth on the ground couldn’t be farther.

The presidency is a disaster on every front. And, it will likely continue that way until the end of the term.

His core supporters and people who believe in his original message have either been sidelined, deplatformed, dead, restricted because of a crime or allegation, taken up health conditions that makes them unable to function, etc. I don’t believe in coincidences.

Here is what Trump doesn’t know yet...

Everybody around him now is loyal to power. And that will be gone when he leaves office. His core people that would have maintained that power and influence for him are all out of commission (in some form).

I won’t be surprised to see that President Obama has more influence than Trump after he leaves office. It is a long-term plan and strategy. And honestly, I respect it.

Things could still change. Someone in the core Trump camp could wake up. But I doubt it. The plan has gone too far in implementation. Trump is now a politician.

Conclusion

The true Trump momentum was destroyed even before his second term administration begun. Everyone wanted him to win. Everyone celebrated when he won (except the other party, of course). But no one realized that the camp has already been infiltrated.

Gone were the believers. Now, the camp is filled with loyalist to power. Even the Trump influential supporters have faded to a large extent. Some just simply pivoted. They still like him, but they see what is happening right now and can’t stand with that.

The man who ensured no wars in his first term is now on the verge of starting World War 3. And to make matters worse, he is now trading the stock and crypto markets on everything he oversees.

We all know he is not manually making those trades, but isn’t there anybody there to tell him how this looks? The new loyalists don’t care. After all, this is his final term at President.

The approval ratings are sinking and I’m guessing it will sink more. It is such a sad ending to a hopeful beginning.

Let this be a lesson to anyone that politics is not a one-person game. Put together your crew. And never let anything separate you from your day one crew.

I rest my case.

Your thoughts?

Leave a comment

I started working in content officially in 2018.

I had been doing a few things on my own before then, but I got into an organization with a content structure that year.

Since then, I have never stopped. Everything I do today is still connected to content directly or indirectly. I have advised several businesses and individuals on content creation too.

When the AI wave (for content creation) started, I knew it wasn’t going to last. I knew it wasn’t going to end well. Almost everyone who rushed to fire their staffs or agency in this area have now rehired.

It was a shitshow.

I was inspired to write this article when an entrepreneur I respect asked for help regarding his content. It was underperforming on all platforms.

If you are in the same shoe, I am about to give you some game here. So, listen well.

Advice Content is Dead

In the era where everybody was selling courses and advice, pieces of content that gave it away for free performed very well.

But like every trend in advertising, it got saturated very quickly. And then it found its equilibrium on people with credibility. This meant if an 8-figure entrepreneur says some deep advice about money, that content performed well.

It performed well not because the advice is good or bad. It performed well because of the credibility of the author. This was the norm for the longest time.

But then it slowly became abused. People started figuring out that just because a rich guy says something about money doesn’t mean it is true.

Just because something is useful for someone doesn’t mean it would work in your own case. And this is where advice content started to wither.

I already saw this and advised my clients to lean in a different direction. But of course, the tide gets to the super rich entrepreneurs last.

The last straw for advice content got broken when AI slop entered the fray. The biggest adoption of it was by the top entrepreneurs and that affected their content credibility.

This also coincides with the k-shaped economy, especially in first world countries. The middle class is getting squeezed and people care a lot less about what some rich guy has to say.

Today, the only advice content that wins is contextual advice that is specific. Something like: “If you are going through the TSA at the Denver airport this week, do these 3 things in this exact order...”

Advice content is dead. There is too much of it. People don’t care anymore (unlike before). And AI slop has made it worse.

You don’t know what is coming from a person sincerely and what is coming from AI. And that creates a credibility problem.

When you have a credibility problem, it is easier for people to ignore everything you say than to nitpick which one is accurate and right for them.

So, what is working?

The 5 Kinds of Content That is Working Today

Just because your content is underperforming doesn’t mean every other person’s content is underperforming. There are people still thriving.

I have taken it upon myself to find out people who are still thriving and figure out what they are doing differently. And not just that. I would try their methods on my own and see if they work for me.

From the things I have seen and tested, these are the 5 kinds of content that works...

1. Research Content

This is a specific kind of content that would take the average person about an hour to find out on their own online. This is not something you write from your head.

Here, you will actually need to do some research before you can make the content. In some cases, the content pieces will require you to add your references.

Anyone who comes across this piece of content will instantly realize that a lot of research work has gone into it. This is often the kind of content people save for later.

If you do an hour of research on something people are pre-interested in, your content about that thing will definitely stand out. If you will not show your references, you must show in some way the level of research that has gone into it. This is so that anyone who stumbles on it can appreciate it.

Research content is rare. Most people don’t do it because it is too much work. And this is the exact thing that gives it value.

Interestingly, AI can be used for research content. The fact that there is a lot of (visible) research involved makes any AI involvement irrelevant.

If you are giving data on something that your target audience has been curious about, you will win with content.

2. News Content

This is fairly common. A lot of people have learned about newsjacking. But most people still use this wrong.

What most people do here is wait for some news in their industry. And then use it as a hook for the message they have (or what they really want to say).

They are using the news as an anchor to carry their own message or piece of advice. But as stated earlier, advice content is dead. And even if this works once or twice, it eventually starts underperforming.

So, I recommend using news content in a different way...

Read more

Several years ago, I was in a business meeting. We were supposed to be talking about online businesses, but the conversation drifted to investing.

This was around the time crypto was hot and pumping hard. A millionaire businessman who I respect so much in the meeting said he had invested in a crypto project.

Now, I was very knowledgeable about crypto. Arguably, the most knowledgeable about crypto in the group. The project where this businessman had invested is one of those questionable projects. I knew all the reasons they wouldn’t last.

I was about to object to that investment of his. Then, he revealed his rationale. And oh boy, it opened my eyes.

He is playing a very different game. This was the first time it became clear to me. And since then, I have held this lesson very closely.

I am sharing this with you so that you can understand how investors think. Not all of them think this way, but a vast majority of them do.

Let’s get into it.

Why a Seasoned Investor is Investing in a Questionable Project

This project that this investor put a lot of money into doesn’t really exist today anymore. So, my analysis was correct.

However, in the span of a few days, this investor has made 5-figures in profit from that singular move. I was looking at the future. He had a gameplay for the present.

I don’t think he believes in the project. I don’t think he did any due diligence. He just made a tiny little discovery and made the investment fast.

What was the discovery? Well, he discovered that the guy who manages Elon Musk’s investments is also an investor in that project.

So, he invested in the project in a substantial way. A volume that is enough to get attention.

Then, he sent an email to the guy who manages Elon’s investments to introduce himself that they are both investors in the project.

Of course, the guy managing Elon’s investments replied. And with that, they carved out a relationship. And over the course of the next few days, the guy managing Elon’s investments shared and discussed about the things they were looking into and investing in.

This investor acted on the information with his own discretion. And he made a ton of money in a few days. It more than compensated for the initial investment he made.

This is how Silicon Valley investors really make decisions. The people doing analysis are the big ones like Sequoia, a16z, etc. The smaller investors are looking for rooms packed with people they are trying to connect with.

If you want to make friends with someone, you make a substantial investment in a company where the person you want to meet is on the company’s board. That usually gets you noticed fast.

So, you think they are investing. But really, they are just climbing and navigating the social circle.

This is the game and if you don’t understand it, you will keep wandering why you are getting ignored.

Distribution Over Innovation

Do you think Zuckerberg could have done what he did with Facebook if he were based in Bangladesh?

Do you think Warren Buffett would be the legendary investor that he is if he was based in Bangkok?

I had the idea for interest-based algorithm (which led to the rise of TikTok) way back around 2010. I wrote it down in my book. But had no capacity to do anything about it. Even if I tried, it would have failed.

Why?

Read more

Most people are selling services online the wrong way.

This doesn’t mean they don’t have clients. But if you look critically at the clients they have and how they are doing marketing, there is a disconnect.

Most people venture into professional services based on their experience in corporate or someplace where they were an employee.

They often have the skills to deliver but they don’t have any marketing skills. Even people who work in marketing (and have only dealt in corporations with large departments) are at a disadvantage.

You cannot market your work as a professional service provider the same way you did marketing in a company with hundreds of employees. They are not the same game at all.

I am writing this as a guide and pathway to help you learn how to sell your services in a way that ensures a smooth client roster.

It is neither easy nor hard. But you have to pay attention to follow the system. This system works. The process doesn’t fail. It may take some time to kick into gear, but the moment it starts, it never stops.

Let’s get into it.

Why People Buy Services Online

When you are selling a product online, it is easy. You can create an Etsy shop or Shopify store and describe what you are selling.

You can run ads directly to your products. This is because people already know what they want to buy. People know what they need and what they want.

The outcome and satisfaction they get comes directly from the product. As the seller, you don’t have to be the manufacturer or brand.

If there is demand for the product and you sell it at a fair price, people will buy. All you have to do is showcase your online store or shop as the place to buy. It is pretty straightforward.

But when it comes to services, things are a little bit different. The satisfaction and outcome isn’t gotten by getting a physical thing. Rather, the satisfaction comes from the service experience.

After payment for services, people would have to wait and experience the quality of service before feeling satisfied. Hence, how you sell it is very different.

The biggest mistake I see from people trying to sell services is value stacking. For example, if you are selling a product, you can say “If you buy product A, you get product B for free as a bonus”.

And that is a legitimate value-add that makes the purchase more appealing. This is because product B is a physical product that you don’t mind having.

Many people take this mentality into selling professional services. And it is a big mistake. Nothing drives down the value of a professional service like value stacking. Don’t do it.

Why? The main reason is that people don’t buy services for the value. Let me repeat that again...

Value is not what makes them buy. You can stack multiple layers of value and still have zero sales. I have been there. People don’t buy services because they see the value.

So, stop trying to show people the value of your services. Stop trying to sell the value. It won’t work sustainably. If it works at first, it will run out of steam very quickly.

Value with services can always be debated. You can try your very best, but customer expectations can turn it sour.

Trust is what you should be selling. People don’t buy services because they see the value, people buy services because they trust the service provider.

Your marketing strategy and process must always be based around the question - How can I make people trust me better?

If people do not buy from you, it is not because they think you don’t have the value. Instead, it is because they don’t trust you to give them the satisfaction they want.

Every time I have bought services online, I have bought from someone I trust over someone who is showcasing some value stack.

Trust is the key. Now, let’s talk about how to sell trust.

Selling Trust Online

For every person who sells services online that I have met, their first clients were people who already knew them in some capacity.

I have never met someone who sells services online whose first set of clients were total strangers. I’m not saying it is impossible, but I have never seen one. And I have seen a lot.

In fact, if someone tells you their first clients were total strangers, I start thinking they are either lying or very naive.

Even in a place like Substack for example, my first 5 paying subscribers are people who know me and have interacted with my content for years.

If you don’t know your first set of clients, that doesn’t mean they don’t know you.

There are 5 sources of clients for services based on selling trust:

1. Your network - Mostly people you’ve worked with

2. Your consistent educative content

3. Referrals - Getting people who trust you to invite others

4. Testimonials

5. Joint venture

If you are just going to start selling services, this is where to start. Pick one of these 5 that plays to your strength and hammer in.

If possible, you can combine two or three. This is to get your first set of clients. You have to do this manually, so that you can know what works.

When you know what works and what actually moves the needle, you can build a process around it.

The Process for Selling Services

Selling services is relationship selling. People have to want the service, have the money, and trust you.

We have talked about trust, now let’s talk about getting people who want the service and have the budget. You don’t want people who need the service but don’t have the money. Those are time wasters.

No matter how much compassion you feel towards those people, you must not engage. The moment you start rendering services for free, they will expect you to keep doing it for free.

When such people get money, they will not spend it with you. Instead, they will pretend they don’t have, to keep getting the free stuff. I have been there and it is not pleasant at all.

Never ever render services for free. In fact, I am against free trial. You can do free trials if you are an established brand name like Microsoft, Google, etc. But if you are not, I don’t see much sense in that.

This is the true demand architecture for a professional services business:

1. Content platform: This is where your market or audience is. You make content consistently for them to the exclusion of all others

2. Lead magnet: Your content should direct them to something of value that will bring them into your world (or CRM)

3. CRM delivery: You deliver the promise of the lead magnet from inside your CRM, which opens the door to the nurture sequence

4. CRM nurture: You must have a forever nurture system

5. Client waitlist: From nurture, you qualify the leads in a form and put them on your waitlist for a spot to open up

6. Schedule a closing call: This is not a sales call. If you haven’t skipped any prior process, you won’t be selling. You will just be fine-tuning the details of working together

7. Set reasonable expectations: Clients satisfaction directly correlates to the expectations you set. This is why you must be very clear and reasonable when setting expectations on the call. You must set the expectation. Never let clients assume

8. Get paid, start work, and give progress reports: Depending on the kind of service, you must give a regular progress report. This directly correlates with client satisfaction. Remember, trust is the big deal here

Shortcuts And Warnings

There is something I have learned from nuclear physics. The bigger you want to go, the smaller you have to know. The bigger the explosion, the smaller the particles you have to understand to create it.

The same is true here. How much you can twist and bend these things depends on how well you understand the fundamentals. You have to really deeply know the small things to cause a big splash.

For myself currently, I do my content on Substack. I don’t have a lead magnet. And I go straight to a client waitlist form.

For context, here is my waitlist form. It is not fancy. The branding of the platform is right there, and you would see that the form has zero tolerance for time wasters. You can’t submit the form if you are not prepared to pay.

Why that structure? Right now for me, I am not trying to build a professional service business. I have done that in the past, and I am at a different stage in my career and going for something different.

However, I still have the consulting pathway so I can help people, especially past clients and people in my network. If I am building a business around this, I would have way more and follow the above process. But I am maintain my current straightforward structure for my past clients and network.

This means the more trust you have with your audience, the more you can skip steps and still get results. If this is your main business and you expect strangers to do business with you, follow the 8 steps stated earlier. No shortcuts.

It would take some time to find the right lead magnet and offer. There are only two ways to circumvent that. The first is to get expert help. The second is to iterate via tests and experiments.

Even if you get an expert, they will guide you based on the experiments and tests they have done and seen. When I tell my clients to do something one way, it is because I have seen hundreds of ways. Getting an expert is fast-tracking your learning curve.

Conclusion

If you want to sell professional services online for a steady flow of clients, you need to know that you are not selling value. Service value will always be subjective.

People will buy your services because they trust you. And they trust you because they’ve worked with you before, or they’ve consumed your content to the point where they know you well, or someone they know and trust recommends you.

So, stop thinking about what more value you have to offer. Start thinking how you can get people to trust you.

The process of selling begins with content, to lead magnet, to delivery, to nurture, to waitlist, to expectations call, to getting paid and starting the work.

Always remember, don’t work for free. It doesn’t matter if you are new and just starting. Don’t work for free. Don’t work for barter. Be professional.

Pay money when you buy services. And expect people to pay you when they buy your services.

I rest my case.

P.S. If you want my help on these things, join my waitlist here 

China is poking the AI bubble with another needle.

This is not the collapse yet. But the era of visible struggles has begun. I saw that tweet from OpenAI executive basically spiraling over how good Kimi 3 was.

In case you missed it, a Chinese company, Moonshot AI, released an open-source AI on par with the latest versions of Claude and ChatGPT. And this is already triggering a sell-off in the financial markets.

Why the sell-off? Well, you see all that money investors are throwing into AI in America, believing the revenue numbers will be epic, China just proved it is unnecessary.

According to my stock market crash timing prediction, the conditions are starting to come together faster than expected. But there is still a catch...

The AI Bubble Bust

One question I like to ask people who are super optimistic about AI investments is this - where is the revenue going to come from?

Of course, there will be revenue. In fact, the rumor is that Anthropic is almost profitable now. But the multiple billions that have gone into AI far outweigh the revenue potential.

In a lot of cases, they are masking investment capital as revenue. For example, Nvidia is loaning money to customers to buy their chips. What happens when that party ends?

What happens when the music stops?

Tons of retail investors have already gotten a margin call in South Korea in the last few days. An estimate puts it at 1% of adults in South Korea. That is a grim picture.

Why is that important to the AI trade? Well, South Korea Kospi is basically Samsung and SK Hynix. In other words, the rally is riding on chips. And AI is fueling the demand for chips.

South Korea had the second best stock return in the world for the first half of 2026. They were only second to Nigeria. South Korea returned 66% and Nigeria returned 67%.

The South Korean rally is already starting to unwind. And there are several things from several angles responsible. But they all point to AI momentum slowing.

China has been very strategic. They didn’t show their cards too quickly. They stayed out of the Iran mess, made no move on Taiwan, and continued to be diplomatic.

In a recent national event, President Xi stated the approach of the country to AI. They are going to take the open source approach.

Several years back, Deepseek shocked the market. And it revealed that the American model is bloated with excess cash. But American propaganda killed that narrative with talks about privacy and quality.

Yes, the American models were better. But China didn’t give up on their path. The new Kimi 3 AI is now on par with the latest American AI models. Some still argue that it is not as good as the latest Claude or GPT, but the margin is now very narrow.

Plus, it is open-source. No expensive investments. And users can keep their information private, instead of gifting it to Anthropic and OpenAI.

China’s approach as a country is to make AI as cheap as possible. They are thinking of it as public infrastructure. This is unlike the USA who wants to monetize heavily and sell at a premium.

You don’t need to be a wizard to know who is going to win. Cheap is always going to win the large scale consumers. In fact, half of Americans already use Chinese models over the American ones.

And remember that these AI companies are still struggling to break even financially. And investors are now seeing that Chinese AI models are being built and operated for a fraction of the US AI models.

An executive of OpenAI wrote a tweet storm essentially asking the US government to limit or block Chinese AI models, especially Kimi 3. That’s like asking the referee to disqualify a legitimate goal scored by an opposition.

If we call it capitalism and free market, shouldn’t we practice it through and through?

I would expect that the Chinese government will be the ones limiting AI. But it turns out they are the ones unleashing its potential and trying to make it as financially accessible as possible.

Has the US and China flipped roles?

Well, for now, investors have a solid reason to doubt their investment in AI. Hence, a sell-off. But there is another thing driving a sell-off...

The Fed Chair Statement

In my previous post on the stock market crash, I told you to watch out for a few things. One of the things just happened casually and no one paid attention.

Read more

I started writing online in 2018. I made money from writing, editing, and publishing. But I never took on private clients until 2021.

The year 2020 was amazing for me because I went viral multiple times and made a ton of money. That was my best year so far, by a significant margin.

In 2021, my goal was to level up. I knew I cannot count on virality to determine how much money I made going forward. I joined a business mastermind group and I was encouraged to launch an offer.

So, I launched an offer at $2500 and got my first client. Yeah, yeah. But there is so much more to the story.

First, The Opt-In

The success of any new business lies on 3 things; audience, offer, and capital. And I firmly believe that you must have (at least) 2 of that before you begin.

In 2020, I found my content niche. And this allowed me to curate an audience. But I had zero capital and no offer.

Capital was a bit tricky to get. So, I started with an offer. I had the business mastermind group as support to help me nail things correctly.

But audience wasn’t automatic either. I realized that the audience isn’t mine as long as I depend on the platform for distribution. So, the first thing I did was to create an opt-in offer.

An opt-in offer is a freebie you create for someone who has been following or engaging with your content on a social media platform. You know that anything can happen that can make you will lose connection with that audience forever.

So, you want to bring that stranger into your email list. When they opt into your email list, you have better control of your distribution. You can get your message or content directly to them.

I started doing this for all my content pieces. And it was the best thing ever. A few months after I started doing this, social media platforms began to change. They shifted from follower-based algorithm to interest-based algorithm.

This meant your follower count became mostly useless overnight. I had built a following of 100k people and believed my reach was guaranteed. Turns out it wasn’t.

Thank God I made the opt-in offer earlier. I tried offering different kinds of freebies and one worked better than everything else.

I am not recommending what worked for me to you. But I am sharing so that you can have context and think about what can work like that for you.

I did the free ebook thing and results from that was mediocre. However, I created a 5-day email course and that was super succesful.

I got about 600 people to sign up for the email course. The course was a practical guide on what my content was mostly about. And that for me was finance.

The 5-day email course helped because people knew it was an email course and didn’t hesitate to share their email. It also puts me in a good standing with them because what they wanted was going to come to them by email. And if they are interested, they put in their real emails. If not, they don’t.

So, I rarely had the “fake email address” problem. Also, because they are expecting emails for 5 days, I didn’t have the early unsubscribe problem and people grew accustomed to my emails quickly.

After the initial 5 days (which was an automation setup), I sent 3 emails every week.

The point here is that you need an opt-in offer to bring people into your world. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a freebie. But it must be something that your audience will find so appealing to the point where they hand you their email address.

The opt-in offer is how you turn interested people into potential clients.

Second, The Product or Service

You cannot have a successful offer if your product or service sucks. You have to care about retention before the high-ticket offer.

The major problem about high-ticket offers is that the moment you make them and people buy them, their experience is going to judge everything else you do.

If people have a horrible experience after buying your high-ticket offer, they will very likely become a hater for life. This is why you have to focus on the product or service first.

Make promises you can deliver on. And design for the best client experience.

So, design the experience first before you work on the offer. What can you do? What do they get? These are things you have to work on.

In 2021, my high-ticket product was coaching. It was working with individuals to produce the kind of success I have experienced in online content and use that to grow their business.

I knew I could make anyone go viral on any platform. I have mastered hooks, storytelling, and the art of copywriting. I just didn’t have client testimonials yet.

Confidence in my ability was all it took. And I can point to my own results as proof.

The High Ticket Offer

I didn’t do a landing page. I had no fancy website. I had no lengthy YouTube videos either.

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This is not a piece about politics. Although we will touch on geopolitics.

This is not piece about the Trump family and their business dealings. No, it is about something much more serious.

This is about the reality of doing business in this world and how the world of finance really is. It is not the way you think it is. And after you are through with this article, you will never see the world the same again.

I am about to redpill you about business on the highest level. Some call it corruption. Perhaps, it is borderline corruption. But it is the way the world operates.

I am not here to tell you to fight it or to join it. I am here to tell you to accept the world for what it is and plan accordingly.

Revisiting a Few Predictions And...

Over the past few weeks, I have made some geopolitical predictions. Many of which have come to pass.

I predicted the UK prime minister resignation, US-Iran status quo, Bitcoin price state, oil prices, SpaceX IPO success and initial sell off, and an impending stock crash.

The stocks crash hasn’t happened yet. And if you read the article, you will realize that the conditions for the crash has not come together fully yet.

The US-Iran situation continues to drag on as predicted. And the US has found a way to trick oil prices into going down while the situation on ground remains terrible, just as I predicted.

SK Hynix launched their IPO in the US recently, capitalizing on the AI momentum (that is now slowing). I’m guessing Anthropic is next. OpenAI is likely waiting until next year for their IPO (or maybe it won’t happen).

I made predictions about the ongoing FIFA world cup. I have mostly stated the teams I am watching out for. And I promised I would make my winner prediction at the quarterfinals stage.

Well, the quarterfinals have started (as of writing this), and my prediction of the winner is France. I think France would win. (Edit: France lost the semis lol)

Spain has surpassed my expectations. Portugal has been disappointing. Brazil has been disappointing even though I knew they wouldn’t win. England has met expectations, but not surpassed yet.

I am impressed with Norway and Switzerland. They both proved to be the dark horses of the campaign, better than Mexico, Columbia, and even Netherlands.

However, as things stand, I do not see any country that can defeat France. Just a prediction and my opinion. (Edit: This turned out wrong. Spain overshot my expectations and defeated France).

Why Nigeria Delivered the Best Return for Investors in H1 2026

In a surprise twist, the market that has delivered the most amount of money in 2026 for investors is Nigeria. The Nigerian stock market delivered more returns than South Korea from January to early July.

Many people are asking why. And there are so many narratives on this. But people miss the real deal.

My both parents are Nigerian and I grew up in the country. I have written a predictive piece about the politics of the country here. So, trust me when I tell you about Nigeria.

Some say the reason is because of oil prices. Nope. Some say the government is driving reforms that is making the economy grow. Nope.

There is one thing that marks the major driving force for the Nigerian stock market rising at such a pace. And as someone who knows a lot about the country internally, that worries me a bit.

The core reasons for the rise is political stability and rapid industrialization. Now, those are neither good things or bad things. They both have their pros and cons.

If you talk to the average Nigerian, life hasn’t gotten better. In fact, some would argue that it has gotten worse. However, on a macro scale, the rate at which it was getting worse has been greatly reduced.

First, there was the currency stabilization. Nigeria used to be called the giant of Africa and the country had resources to rival every other country on the continent.

The country has a huge population, also one of the fastest growing population in the world, access to the ocean for trade, abundant skilled (semi-skilled, and unskilled) labor, crude oil, natural gas, fertile soil, scenic views, and more.

In fact, it is said that Nigeria is one of the only 4 countries in the world who have enough resources to be completely self-sufficient. The other 3 countries are Russia, Brazil, and the United States.

In terms of potential, Nigeria should be in the top 5 largest economies in the world. But it is not.

The main reason is political instability. Nigeria is a country with over 300 different tribes. And each tribe speaks a different local language.

Most people only know the 3 main tribes; Hausa (in the north), Yourba (in the west), and Igbo (in the east). The fact is that there are hundreds of smaller ones. This makes Nigeria very difficult to govern.

As a foreign investor, if you read my previous piece about the country and the current government, you begin to see why investor confidence is suddenly growing.

It is funny how the Western world preaches democracy, but political stability seems to be the opposite of democracy. The current president has built a formidable coalition around himself.

The next 5 years of the country is somewhat predictable. And investors love predictability. But not just that.

Nigeria has crude oil and natural gas but had no functioning refineries. The existing refineries were government-owned and were non-functional.

Apparently, a large scale industrial project is very difficult in Nigeria. I have a colleague who has been working on a large scale industrial project like this and has been stuck for 6 years. Like I said, the country is very hard to govern.

Well, the richest man in Nigeria, Aliko Dangote, took on the challenge of building a refinery with his business. At first, it looked like an impossible task, even for the richest man in Africa.

To an outsider, they might think it couldn’t be that hard. But as someone who understands the internal workings of Nigeria, that is possibly the most difficult business undertaking anyone can do.

Most businessmen would play it safe and not try such a thing. This is because the political forces against it are very significant. But Dangote took on the project, and today he is successful.

The Dangote refinery in Lagos is definitive proof that a large scale industrial project is possible in Nigeria. This is the first time in years (or even decades) that a project of that scale has been successful.

The success and operation of it drew the attention of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, which is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. There was even an interview of Aliko Dangote by the CEO of the fund.

In other words, someone has now proved that rapid large-scale industrialization can happen in Nigeria. With the resources Nigeria has already, it is just a matter of time before the country catches up to its potential.

The rumors I am hearing on the ground tells me that there are about 3 large scale projects like the Dangote refinery that will soon hit the spotlight. The pioneer has paved the way, now everybody wants to have a piece of the cake.

Does it mean it will be easy? Nope. But it is now possible. There is a blueprint others can follow. Plus, there is political stability (for now).

I have heard people who want to set up a Nigerian business entities and are asking people like me to be the CEO or director (as a citizen). Such deals are starting to float around. I know someone who has gotten a director role similar to this.

Now, here are the things making me a bit nervous. Political stability is lowkey authoritarianism. While I am not a huge fan of democracy, I know how dangerous an authoritarian government can suddenly become.

Also, there is the bloated stock market spillover from the USA. Anyone looking at any global story without keeping an eye on the USA is joking around.

If something breaks in the USA, it will touch every part of the world. The concern here is that Nigeria may be getting set up to fall the hardest. We all know when push comes to shove, investors don’t have confidence in emerging markets for capital preservation.

Also, the stock market gains is not reflected in the real economy (yet). For example, fuel prices are still insanely high in the country, driving serious inflation across all sectors.

However, the currency stability is real solid progress. The currency has been very unstable in the past few years.

The “Trump Crime Family”

There is a reason this is in quotes. I am not here to talk about the Trump family and their questionable business dealings of recent.

If you want to learn about that, I will recommend you check out . She has some incredible investigative journalism about that.

I am here to talk about the term “Trump Crime Family” and why you will keep hearing terms like that more frequently now.

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If your conversion rate is less than 8%, your offer is broken.

Calm down. I know you read online that 2 - 3% is the standard conversion rate. And yes, if you are in e-commerce, that benchmark may be right for you.

However, if you are selling services or in SaaS, your conversion rate should be higher. My benchmark is 8%. If your rate is lower, it means one of three things:

1. You haven’t found the right audience (or you are selling to the wrong audience)

2. Your “next step” has a lot of friction

3. You are not marketing your offer enough

In other words, your offer is broken. I fix broken offers and yours can be fixed asap here.

If you don’t have an offer yet, I can help you build one. But I don’t recommend it.

I recommend building one yourself. Do it yourself first and fail. Then, you will understand your strengths and weaknesses better.

There are 5 steps to building a high converting offer starting completely from scratch...

Step 1: Brain Dump

This means you dump everything you know. Write it out. Try to empty your brain into a piece of paper or notepad.

You can do it on a phone or laptop too, however the process of writing with a pen and paper goes a long way. It helps you detox and rewire your brain.

As much as you think you know yourself, you are not the best judge of what you can do. You are not the one that will be buying from you. Other people will be.

So, you cannot expressly judge what people would want to pay for. In an ebook I published a few years ago, I explained that the best trigger is need.

When people come to you for help on something, that is the sign. You can test by asking someone who comes to ask you for help, “If I charge money to help you with this, would you pay?”

If they say yes, that is a business you should really consider.

A brain dump helps you identify things like this in your life that you may not have noticed. As an exercise here, write down 10 things people have come to you for help to solve (or fix).

Don’t just write them out in a list. Write them out with the story. What was the story behind it? Sometimes the business model is deep inside the story architecture.

Nothing is trivial here. Write down all you can think of. If you are over 35 years old, you should be able to write down 10 things.

If you have never done this before (or have never paid attention to this), it would be difficult initially. You may not be able to think beyond 3 things for the first day.

So, this is something that can span a few days. But after a while, you hit a fountain and you can’t write fast enough. Multiple things will just start coming to your mind.

If you reach 10 and there are other things still on your mind that you think are good enough to be written, do write them too. It doesn’t matter if it is more than 10.

But you must try to get to 10. Also, you must not erase something you have written because you remembered something better after writing it.

The brain dump is the first thing you do to create an offer.

Step 2: The Avatar Exercise

I learned this from my business coach several years ago and it has been a game-changer for me and my clients.

Most people just make a product or service and start selling. They don’t dig into who they are selling it to. This is why their offer flops.

Who exactly are you trying to reach?

What do they do for work? Where do they go on weekdays? Where do they live? Who do they look up to? What do they buy? What can they afford but don’t buy?

What do they believe? What do they hate? What do they watch? Who do they follow on social media? And so on.

I have an avatar form that I use for my clients. But you can do this yourself. Just describe the kind of person who would pay you for the services you have listed.

Pick your top 3 best services from Step 1. And then, write down a description of the kind of person that would pay for such a service. Or better still, someone that has paid for such and is happy about it.

Describe (at least) one avatar for each service. If you are inspired to do more than one, that is okay too.

Step 3: Audience Determination

The people you described in Step 2, where are they?

You always want to be where there is an abundance of the kind of people you serve. This is where many people make a mistake.

Most people look for an audience of people like them. And if you are operating by default and not with intention (like following these 5 steps), you will find yourself in an audience of people like you.

For example, you are a software developer but you want to reach founders. If you are not intentional, you will find yourself reaching an audience of software engineers. And that will dilute your value.

Audience determination is for the purpose of content and ads. You must know who you are trying to reach. And you focus on reaching them to the exclusion of everyone else.

Now, this doesn’t mean that if you are a software engineer and you want to reach founders, you should start talking about founders. No. Don’t give yourself imposter syndrome.

The way it works is this. You imagine you are a founder looking for a software engineer. What kind of content would get your attention?

If your ideal client is looking for someone to solve a problem they have, how will they recognize you through your content (in a way that will make them trust you)?

You could say, “I help ABC solve XYZ”. But anybody can make such a claim. A random stranger will not trust you because of that. How will they trust you?

First, you must understand that trust takes time for most people. But the way to do it is to describe the problem in such intricate detail that they can confirm your expertise themselves.

Think about it. Let’s say you are looking for someone to fix your car. And you came across someone who made a piece of content online about how your car brand was designed and what gets damaged easily.

You are immediately hooked. And you have confidence in the skills of such a person to fix your broken car. You will never trust someone who doesn’t know about cars to fix yours.

Know your audience and serve them the content they are looking for.

It may take some time to figure out what content dynamics would work. But you eventually will and it will lead you to the right offer.

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I am not a financial advisor and this is not qualified to be financial advice. However, I am here to show you one of the most insane hacks to wealth I have ever discovered in my life.

Do you know why we are in a k-shaped economy?

Do you know why some people are super rich, others are struggling financially, and there is virtually no middle class? Well, it is because of the economic system the world runs.

In this system, it is easy for the rich to get richer than for the poor to get rich. Someone born into a wealthy family can become a multimillionaire even if 80% of their financial decisions are horrible.

However, someone from an humble background can make 90% good decisions and remain at the same spot.

Billionaires never have zero money. They are either millions of dollars in wealth or millions of dollars in debt. To you, that might be two different things. But to a banker or wealth manager, they are not so different.

In fact, oftentimes the first step to wealth is getting into millions of dollars in debt. That is a decision the average person has been trained to avoid. We were taught to work for money. But the rich knows that money is printed.

In finance, debt is more important than income. You have been trained to chase income. But I’m trying to rewire your brain now. Debt is more important than income.

The core reason is that debt cannot be taxed.

So, the super rich borrows money to buy an asset. The asset revenue covers the debt service. And the extra debt funds their lifestyle.

In many cases, these rich people will have millions in the bank and still borrow money from the bank to fund their day-to-day lifestyle. Why? If they take out their millions, they get taxed. If they borrow the money, they don’t get taxed.

Now, you are probably there thinking, “What about the interest payment?”

If you can, try to sort the numbers in your head. How much percentage do you think taxes will take? Then, how much percentage will interest on a loan be?

Plus, which one has flexibility that they can negotiate with? The answer becomes very clear.

This is why people clamoring for billionaires to pay more in taxes are very much wasting their time. It will never work. Also, the purpose of taxes is not the money. It is the control and subjugation.

If money is printed, who is the government repaying debts to?

Money doesn’t make the world go round. Debt does. Every time a rich man goes to the bank to use his millions in asset to get cash (debt), that money is created by the bank.

The interest charged on the debt is the bank’s margins. Money created out of nothing. Not even the central bank is involved at this level. This is why inflation cannot be zero.

You have to learn to play this game if you want to be rich. Or at least, if you want to thrive financially, you need to have a play that works for this system.

This is not just about earning more. You have to be strategic.

Debt is neither good nor bad. Debt is a financial instrument. If you don’t know how to use it, taking it will be a disadvantage. If you know how to use it, taking it will make you a fortune.

Here I will go through 5 things people use debt for and see if it is a good decision or bad decision.

Debt is not good or bad. It becomes good or bad based on how you use it. These are smart ways (and foolish ways) to use it.

1. Using Debt to Run Ads to Your Business

Ideally, using debt to run ads to your offer or business should be a smart idea. However, it becomes a foolish thing when you didn’t do the needful before you started running ads.

I have seen people run into trouble with this. They put in their credit cards and run Facebook ads to their offer. And then the offer bombed.

The revenue doesn’t justify the amount spent and now they are in a bigger mess. They have no revenue and have to service debt on top of it.

I have also seen people change their lives and go from struggling to rich by running ads on a credit card to an offer. The offer sells and scales. They hit a 7-figure number and they effectively become rich.

The difference between these two groups is sometimes luck. But more realistically, it is strategy.

For example, it is stupid to start running Facebook ads without doing an avatar exercise first. Who is your target audience? How much do you know about them?

The more you know your target audience, the more effective your ads can be. I always tell people that you don’t run ads to sell an offer, instead you run ads to scale an offer.

The offer has to start selling before you start running ads. If nobody is buying it before you start ads, the chances of someone buying it because they saw an ad is 20% or less.

Sell your offer organically first. If you see zero traction, then that tells you something is wrong with the offer.

If your offer is not working (whether you run ads or not), reach out to me and I’ll help you fix.

This is something smart people do before funneling thousands of dollars into ads. You could also run a test with a few hundred or a few thousands.

The point here is that you have to know what works for real before you get into debt to run ads. Spend money on clarity. Spend money on an expert second opinion before you plunge yourself into debt.

Always remember, you don’t sell with ads. You scale with ads.

2. Using Debt to Buy a House or Property

In most countries, the major way to buy a real estate property is debt. They call it taking a mortgage. This is debt in action.

Is it a wise decision or a foolish decision? Well, that depends on the context of who is making it. Here is how to look at it…

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You made a great presentation. Everyone applauded your wonderful insights. But no one signed up to be a client.

You made a great content. It got 10k likes. The comment section is full of people praising you. But no one signed up on your website.

Worse, you know people who are less experienced than you and they make way more money than you. You keep trying your best but you don’t know what you are doing wrong.

I have been there many times.

Initially, I would blame myself for not working hard enough. I assumed it is because I wasn’t pushy enough. I felt I needed to promote myself more.

But each time I got more aggressive, it just made matters worse. People started interpreting that as being needy and it was repelling clients.

The golden rule of making money from clients is that you must not be needy. You must absolutely not be needy.

It is “in-come”, not “out-get”. The money has to come to you. If the money has to come to you, then you have to be bigger than it. This leads us to the first principle here.

Principle 1: You cannot command an amount that is bigger than you

If you are making 6-figures at a job, it would be easy for you to start making 6-figures when you start a business. You have already matched the vibration of that income level.

However, if you have never gone beyond 5-figures, hitting 6-figures is going to be a challenge. This has nothing to do with your skills, work experience, or what you offer. It is just reality.

Rich people like to do this a lot. They size you up in their minds and ask if you look like someone who should be making a certain amount of money.

If you have all the skills and credentials, but they feel like you have never made that amount of money before, most rich people would not give you the business. If you ask them why, they probably will give you a BS reason.

And sometimes, that reason or excuse is because they cannot articulate the exact reason they feel uncomfortable giving you the money. If you are going to get money, look like someone who already has it.

This doesn’t mean you have to tell lies or pretend you have an experience you don’t have. This has nothing to do with what you say, but has everything to do with how you are perceived.

If you want to get paid a million dollars, you better start looking like a million dollars. If not, the person who wants to pay you that sum will start getting cold feet.

This is why high-profile scams are successful. You don’t see the scam perpetrators looking like average people. No. They look like a professional. They look distinguished. They look polished. They speak impeccably.

This is because getting the money is 70% looking like you make that kind of money regularly. Your dressing, your demeanor, your availability, your choice of words, and everything that people can observe must testify to the financial level you want.

Now, there is no hard and fast rule here. This is not to say that you cannot earn big without wearing a suit and a tie. No. That is not the recommendation here. What I mean here is that everything must line up.

You can wear a suit and still look needy. You can wear a charming smile and still give the perception of lack. You can explain technical know-how and give off “needy vibes”.

I heard about an online entrepreneur a few years ago who always takes a sales call with a cigar in his mouth. That’s what I’m talking about.

The confidence. The audacity.

If you are constantly trying to explain yourself, you have already lost. I am not saying you need to have a cigar in your mouth every time you are in a meeting with a potential client. My question to you is this...

What is the equivalent of the cigar in the mouth for you?

What matches your own personality that gives off the same aura. That thing is what gets people to pay you big without hesitation.

Principle 2: Always be detached from the sale

You get rich by selling something. When you act like you are desperate to sell, you repel buyers.

Most people have been taught that if they need the money badly enough, they will do what it takes to get it. But that is just a pathway to the immoral, illegal, and unethical.

Desperation is bad for business. If you are desperate, NEVER show it.

You have probably heard people tell you that you need to be vulnerable. If you are a billionaire or multi-millionaire, that works for you. But if you are not, NEVER be vulnerable.

I have leaned into this vulnerability thing and it made matters worse for me. It just made me seem needy. I don’t recommend it to anyone.

You can be sure a sales meeting is going to go badly if you are trying to make the other side pity you. Hear this and hear this well:

Instead, they write checks for businesses they adore or look up to. They must not look down to you. They must look up to you. This is a law here, especially if you are raising funds.

They must look up to you, and you must have alternatives. They must not be the center of your attention. If they are the center of your attention, they will find it hard to pay you.

But if you have other attentions and they are competing for your attention, they will pay you big. Another way to do this is to turn people with money down.

This is especially people with nasty attitudes who have money. Never look at their money and tolerate their behavior. They would want to control you because they have money.

The first time they pull a stunt or throw a tantrum, turn them down with their money. If they have paid, give them a full refund. This could piss them off.

So, to avoid pissing anyone off, have a waitlist. Make people wait for their turn to do business with you. Don’t give instant audience to anyone.

Be detached.

Principle 3: Look down on their money

This is where many people falter. The moment they see money, they get excited. I have been guilty of this too many times.

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I already told my friends to re-balance their portfolios if overweight on stocks.

The downturn is coming and it won’t be pretty. If you run a business, having a diversified revenue stream is something you should be prioritizing right now.

Central banks are starting to warn that the AI bust is on the way. And billionaires have started to panic.

The kind of sell-off I am seeing is systematic. It is not just one company going down, it is big tech AI names going down and dragging the entire market with it slowly.

This means billionaires are making moves already. And they will leave everyday people and pension funds holding the bag.

I don’t think the crash has started. But everything is starting to play out as I explained previously.

The Fed has Taken a Position

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It dawned on me about 5 years ago.

I was in a mastermind group and I was the youngest. Everybody in the group makes money online in some way.

The group was made up of online coaches, content creators, and realtors. And the host showed us a path to 6-figure income that no one else had.

I know you have heard of creating freebies, low-ticket offers, and high ticket offers. But this is different.

This looks at 6-figure income from a different lens. And that lens is stable demand. Let me explain...

Why People with Little Advertising Make Big Money

I can tell when someone has broken the 6-figure mark in online income sustainably. There is some ease and aura that surrounds their marketing.

When I started making money online, I believed the hype that you can sell courses and 1-on-1 coaching to make 6-figures. And I got on with it and tried my best.

Many times I got close, but I really didn’t break that income barrier sustainably. No matter how you slice it, the income just keeps fluctuating.

Then, I started studying people who make 6-figures comfortably. What do they have that I didn’t? What are they doing that I am not?

I quickly discovered that these people are not smarter than me. And they didn’t work harder than I did. In fact, they are not doing many of the things wildly recommended to hit 6-figures.

However, I noticed a striking pattern in who they sell to. And this is what I want to share with you today.

I firmly believe that anyone can hit 6-figures in online income if these 3 things are well implemented.

The first 2 things are layers and building blocks for the third. The third thing is the main thing that separates 6-figure earners from everyone earning less.

Let’s get into it:

1. Brand Gen

You have probably heard of lead gen, which is short for lead generation. I doubt if you have heard of brand gen.

I coined the term myself so that it can be separately identified. Brand gen is simply what happens when lead gen and personal branding make a baby.

However, if you are doing lead gen and personal branding, that doesn’t mean you are doing brand gen. And this is where people miss the point.

Let’s say you are doing paid ads for lead gen. And then you are using Instagram for personal branding. That is not brand gen. Those are two separate efforts.

Brand gen is when they are merged into one. A good example is you run paid ads to a small group of target audience to consume your content.

You are not running the ads to get them to opt into anywhere or go into a landing page. You are running the ads for them to watch your content. That is the entire goal.

This is why you run it to a small and very targeted audience group. You want to load them up and feed them with your good stuff.

This is because you are priming them for something. To everyone it seems like you are wasting money but when you understand the other two things on this list, you will get the point of it.

Brand gen can take many different forms. But the idea is that you are making a precise set of people consume your content in-depth without pitching (or selling) anything.

For lead gen, you are trying to reach as many people as possible and get them to opt into a funnel. In brand gen, you are trying to get a very small group of people to consume your content too many times within a specific (short) timeframe.

I would not recommend you do brand gen if you do not have the next two things set up first. In fact, the third thing is what tells you who to target for brand gen.

Brand gen doesn’t sell. It lays the foundation for what comes next.

2. Demand Architecture

For online coaching especially, you cannot really create urgency. People are not stupid. They know it is fake urgency if you don’t have a firm reason behind it.

This is why many coaches have weak demand. It happens for consultants too. This is why you need to have a strong demand architecture.

Most coaches don’t earn 6-figures because they have no demand architecture. They are just available for everyone any time.

I used to be like this. I was available to everyone any time. In fact, I chased other people’s availability as a consultant. But I have since stopped that foolishness.

If you don’t have a demand architecture, your income will be unstable. Some like to call this a funnel, but I am calling it demand architecture for a reason.

Funnels, by design, filters unqualified people out. With demand architecture, you are not filtering anyone out. Instead, you are helping the chosen ones take the next step.

So, after doing brand gen for 7 days and you know that this particular group has consumed your content for 7 days straight, you send them an invitation.

This is where demand architecture shines. You have to invite them to something special. The popular idea is a webinar, but that is not really a good fit if you have done the third thing correctly.

What you invite them to depends on how you have designed the third thing here. However, when you make the invitation, put them on a waitlist.

In fact, some coaches start brand gen intensely AFTER they have people in their waitlist. So, they target people already in their waitlist for brand gen.

Your entire demand architecture relies on having a waitlist. If you are going to run out of clients, you will know from your waitlist before it hits your income.

And when you know early, you can make appropriate changes early. The stability of your income or revenue rests on having a waitlist and proper demand architecture.

And this brings me to the third and most important thing that separates people who make 6-figures online from anybody else. And I am willing to bet that you have not heard this one explained to you before...

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The majority of conventional financial literacy is weaponized misdirection.

I’ll give you a good example. People selling insurance calling themselves financial advisors. It makes my stomach rumble.

Unfortunately, people like myself who share financial insights without selling financial products (or anything that might serve as conflict of interest) are not qualified to call ourselves that. If we do, we may get sued.

The system wants you to be educated in a way that makes you dependent on it. The system doesn’t mind you having a million dollars. However, the system wants you to still depend on it even though you have that much money.

My goal here is to help you get rich. And while the specific amount varies from one person to another, getting rich means freedom.

It means you are no longer dependent on the system. But you are wise enough to play the system. Yes, we could have a better system and I pray we do soon. But for now, you have to learn to play the system and not be dependent on it.

I have put together an A to Z of finance in this article. And each one is explained in the most simplified way possible.

But before we get into it, let’s talk about the recent money moves and how macroeconomics has changed in the last few days.

Global Finance Current State and Predictions

When I predict a gloomy situation in global finance, I am not excited by it. I would rather be wrong and see the world thrive, than be right and see everyone suffer.

However, the world is the way it is by design. There are rarely flaws.

If you follow the special interests, you will discover the truth. For example, nobody is interested in ending poverty. At least, the people claiming to be fighting against poverty (to seemingly end it) are just keeping themselves busy.

The current global financial system needs poverty to function. Certain countries must remain poor for others to thrive. Slavery and colonialism never really ended. They just expanded and took on new names.

But the weapons to fight these things in today’s world is information. And just like they say on the airplane, you put on your oxygen mask before helping someone else put on theirs.

Get rich first before you say you want to do something about world poverty. Sell something to people who are willing and able to buy. I sell information via this newsletter and I highly encourage you to be a paid subscriber if you are not yet one.

Do you remember my prediction about the SpaceX IPO? Well, it happened as I predicted:

Another situation I predicted is the UK Prime Minister situation. I predicted on May 14 that he will be out in 6 to 8 weeks. Well, that has happened right on time.

These were my exact words:

Next is the US-Iran situation, my analysis has been spot on about this. I predicted this will not get resolved before November 2026. However, I also predicted that the US administration will do things that will create the illusion that it is over.

And that did happen. Even after the “treaty” got signed in France (which is nothing more than a memorandum of understanding), the real situation on ground has taken a step back since then.

I maintain my stance that there will no permanent resolution to this anytime soon. But we will keep getting these deal “duds”.

What about the Federal Reserve? I predicted that the rates will be unchanged, even though the data says to hike and the administration wants rate cuts.

Is it possible to get a rate cut this year from the Fed? I’d say highly unlikely. What about a rate hike? Very likely.

You may be thinking, “I am an online entrepreneur, what does the interest rate decision has to do with me?”

Well, it has everything to do with you. And it is better to understand these finance terms to reduce your chances of getting screwed financially.

The A-Z of Finance for True Financial Literacy

A for Asset

The dictionary or online search would tell you that an asset is something of economic value that is owned by an individual or entity. But that is the misdirection.

In the real sense, an asset is an income-producing item or thing that there is considerable demand for if it ever becomes for sale.

A true asset should be able to produce income, but if you choose not to monetize it, that’s fine. It should also be something that there is demand for if it becomes for sale. Don’t let the buzzword “economic value” deceive you.

If it cannot produce income and no one would want to buy it if it goes for sale, it is not an asset. Don’t be deceived.

B for Bonds

A bond is simply the promise to pay back debt (i.e. borrowed money). Companies, organizations, and countries issue bonds to raise money. In other words, they are taking on debt (at a specific interest rate).

If you buy a bond, you are loaning the organization (that issued that bond) your money. The bond is their promise to pay it back (with interest).

C for Currency

A currency is a legal tender of a defined country. The people of that country buy and sell with the country’s currency (within the geographical boundaries of the country).

Goods and services offered within the country are priced in the country’s currency. However, all currencies are connected to the US dollar (currency of the USA) to maintain a stable value.

This makes the US dollar the global reserve currency. And countries trade with each other using the USD. (However, that is changing already).

D for DeFi

DeFi stands for decentralized finance. This is the new wave of financial products and processes that are based on the blockchain technology.

The leading system here is Bitcoin. But there are others such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, etc. They are mostly called cryptocurrency (as in, cryptographic currency). But they are not really currencies (as they are not official legal tender).

They are digital commodities.

E for Equity

Equity means ownership value. This is one of the most important words in finance, because the meaning can get slightly tweaked based on context.

However, you do need to remember that equity stake means ownership stake. And in most cases, that doesn’t just means the right to a share of profit (or sales), it also means a share (or participation) in decision-making.

This is a right that can be enforced by law.

F for Fed

You’ve probably heard me mention it several times. And this is something you should know regardless of which country you live in.

Fed is short for Federal Reserve Bank of America. This is the central bank of the USA. The function of this organization is to determine monetary policy. They function in the interest of the USA, but their impact affects the world. There are 12 Federal Reserve Banks in the USA, with each one headed by a Fed Governor.

The Fed actions directly affect the value of the world reserve currency; the US dollar. The official documents will tell you that the mission of the Fed is to ensure price stability. But with how unstable prices have been in the last few years, we know that is not true.

The Fed exists to ensure the status quo continues. This is the mother of the system. Nothing crumbles without the Fed’s permission. The Fed’s actions or inaction can destroy anything in the current financial system.

The entire global finance and economic architecture sits on two pillars. The first is the people’s trust and the second is the Fed. I would say the mission of the Fed is to keep people trusting the existing financial system.

If the Fed collapses, the entire global finance system would collapse overnight. That is how powerful the Fed is. Read more about the Fed and central banking here.

G for Gen Z

Gen Z is an economic term used for people born between the years 1997 and 2012. There are certain peculiarities that they have in common.

There are terms for other groups of people based on their year of birth; baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), Gen X (between 1965 - 1980), Millennials (1981 - 1996), Gen alpha (2013 - 2024).

Each generation has their behavior and peculiarities based on the events that happened during their youth.

H for Hedge

To hedge means to reduce risk (of losses) by taking a (financial) position that covers your downside risk.

For every position you take in business and investing, there is a risk attached. And smart people hedge their risks. This means they first assess everything that could go wrong. Then, they take action to protect themselves financially in case what they discovered does go wrong.

This is why people buy insurance.

I for Interest Rate

The interest rate is the rate of the interest you pay (in percentages) on any loan you take (or debt you incur) under the current financial system.

The interest rate is determined by the central bank. For example, the interest rate on the US dollar (borrowed) is determined by the Fed. It is often a small range. Banks and other financial institution (like mortgage lenders) take it as the minimum rate to charge on loans.

The central banks also view interest rates as a tool to fight inflation and maintain price stability. However, that looks more like using a chainsaw to get a haircut.

J for Jackson Hole

Jackson Hole is a place in Wyoming, USA. It is an actual physical place that has a town around it. But it has a financial significance to the Fed in the USA.

Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium is an annual event hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas (one of the 12 Fed banks). This event is referred to as Jackson Hole, for short. And it is an event that brings together the “who is who” in finance in America for an economic meeting. People who rarely run into each other.

Some part of the event is public, but it’s mostly private. It is said that it often contains fierce economic arguments. However, the policies that will shape the USA and the US dollar over the next year are mostly determined at this event.

This means you can tell a lot about the economic policies for the next 1 year by what powerful stakeholders say when they are just coming out of Jackson Hole.

K for K-Shaped Economy

This is a situation where two parameters that are supposed to go together (or hand-in-hand) suddenly diverge into two extremes. One of them surges while the other declines greatly.

Here is a great example:

Notice that divergence. That’s what is called a k-shaped curve (or economy).

L for Liabilities

This means debts or financial obligations that has to be paid. It could also mean things of economic value that is depreciating year after year and there is no buyer for it.

It could also mean things that costs money to maintain or keep, but do not make any money (or the money it makes is insignificant to the costs).

While a bond is a kind of promissory note that a business entity can issue to raise money, a liability is a thing that exists. A liability is a thing of value that leaks money. It is the opposite of an asset on a balance sheet.

Something that is an asset to someone can be a liability to another. It is not so much about the thing, rather it is about the business and economics around that thing.

For example, a house can be a liability. That same house can also be structured to be an asset. Something that is a liability to a business entity can be sold off and it becomes an asset to the buyers.

One of the things that destroys businesses is not being able to tell the difference between asset and liabilities. Or holding on to liabilities for too long.

M for Mortgage

Mortgage is a type of loan specifically for real estate. A loan is what you get when you go to the bank to borrow money.

In most cases, the bank would ask for a collateral of some kind. Nowadays in most developed countries, people take this kind of loan to buy a house.

Another use of a mortgage is people using the real estate properties (or houses) they have to take a new loan after the value of their house (or property) goes up.

Basically, a mortgage is a loan that has to do with real estate. You either use it to buy a property (or house), or you use it to get money out of a property that you can put into something else.

N for Negative Cashflow

This one is about a business or company. Negative cashflow is when the money going out exceeds the money coming in.

This means you spend more money than you make. This means the business is operating at a loss. Most startups begin this way, using money raised from investors to grow the business until the revenue exceeds the costs.

However, for a fully matured company in a matured industry, negative cashflow is a bad sign. In such cases, the company management cut costs so that the spending is less than the revenue.

O for Options Contract

This is mostly a tool for stock traders. It is rarely used by long term investors, except to hedge a (bet) position they are unsure of.

The first thing you should know about an options contract is that it is a derivative. Meaning that it is derived from a stock and not the stock itself. It gives its owner the right (but not obligation) to buy or sell a stock on or before a specific date.

If a stock trader thinks a stock is going to drop in value over a certain period, the trader can purchase this right (which is an option) to buy that stock at a much lower price. The vice versa also works too.

The option to buy is called a “call” option. The option to sell is called a “put” option. The agreed price is called a strike price. And the payment made to buy an options contract is called a premium.

This is a sophisticated financial tool for trading. And its main use is for hedging if you are into stocks.

P for Ponzi Scheme

This is a very common fraud technique in the finance world. And while many Ponzi schemes have been busted, manipulative people keep finding new ways to carry it out. Human greed is very susceptible to Ponzi schemes.

A Ponzi scheme is an investment that pays out older investors with money from newer investors. They pitch an illusion of a business (operation) and collect money from investors. They pay out older investors with this money and call it profits. Meanwhile, there is no profit.

The scheme collapses when people catch on and there are no more new investors. The lesson here is to investigate before you invest in anything.

Q for Quantitative Easing

This is arguably the most important word (or phrase) in finance since 2008. And it is one of those things that affect you whether you understand it or not.

Quantitative Easing (or QE) is a central bank policy where new money is created and injected into the economy. How? Let’s take 2008 as an example.

The banks have a lot of mortgage debt that threatens their stability and existence. They have these “money-losing” debts on their balance sheet. People without income have taken loans and cannot repay the loans (or meet the payment obligations). And the banks cannot sell the debts because everyone has realized that they are worthless.

The debt is staggering and the loss is enough to trigger a bank run. So, the central bank (in this case, the Fed) tries to restore credibility in the banks by buying the debts from the banks.

The Fed doesn’t have any money. However, it is central bank. This means it can create money. It can print money from thin air. It can write a check to the banks and it will be honored. The Fed bought the bad debts of the banks with money that did not exist before. And because the Fed wrote that check, the banking system has to honor it.

In other words, the Fed doesn’t need money, because it has the highest financial authority. If the Fed writes you a check for any amount of money, the banking system has to honor it, not because the Fed has the money but because the Fed has the authority to do such a thing.

The consequence of this is inflation. That’s because the money supply has been artificially inflated without the creation of corresponding value.

Quantitative tightening (QT) is the opposite of QE, but it rarely happens because the markets freezes at any attempt of the Fed to sell these bad financial products back into the system and suck up money from circulation.

QE doesn’t only apply to bad financial products in a case like 2008. It happens more often than not. The Fed is the largest buyer of US debt. So, they constantly write checks to buy up US government bonds.

This is how the US government gets financed.

R for Royalties

This is my favorite type of income. It is often the least taxed income. This is income earned from sale (or license) of intellectual property.

Some good examples include books, music, patented technology, and so on. I have made money from this and highly recommend it. I like it because you make the effort once and the money just keeps coming.

More about wealth-building income types here.

S for Stocks

Stocks in the financial market is a piece of a company that is owned by an individual or business entity. This usually applies to a public company, but it also applies to private companies (to divide ownership among founders and employees).

The dangerous trap here is that many people buy derivatives and believe they are buying a stock. And all is fine when the market is going up. But when the market declines, it is usually ugly.

One sure way to know you are buying a stock and not a derivative is to see whether you get paid dividends (if the public company pays dividends). If you don’t get paid dividends, it is very likely you are holding a derivative, not a stock.

T for Taxes

Taxes are sums of money (usually in percentage of income) imposed on individuals and business entities by governments. The popular idea is that the taxes are used to finance the development of the country or nation.

However, that is slightly deceptive. Taxes do not fund governments. Taxpayers are not the source of capital for the government. If you have read the earlier sections on bonds, Fed, and QE, you have an idea already.

In the US, taxes are used to pay back the bondholders. The government gets their financing from issuing bonds. The Fed (i.e. central bank) mostly buys the bonds and provide capital for spending.

So, when politicians talk about raising taxes, it is not to provide the government with capital. The government has already gotten the capital and spent it. The taxes is about getting people to pay back the money the government has borrowed and spent.

A increase in tax revenues just encourages the government to borrow more.

U for UHNWI

UHNWI means Ultra High Net Worth Individuals. This is a fancy term for super rich. These are people with the private yacht, private jet, Richard Mille, etc., lifestyle.

The standard definition puts them at people with at least $30 million dollars in liquid assets. Not illiquid assets like houses. But liquid assets like stocks, cash, etc.

If you have not interacted with people on this level, you won’t believe the life they live. The rules are completely different for them. It is not financial freedom, it is financial dominance as they please.

While money is no object for most of them, that doesn’t mean they are good clients to have. Some are incredible annoying and terrible people (who view others as inferior). And some are incredibly kind humans and a joy to do business with. Money just amplifies character.

V for Volatility

Volatility is the rate of chaos. The opposite of volatility is stability. When someone says a stock is volatile, it means that the price of that stock is experiencing wild swings. It surges up and drops drastically, often in an unpredictable manner.

Everyone wants stability in the financial markets, but we rarely get it. On the stock market, the volatility index is called the “VIX”. If it is low, it means the markets is fairly stable. If it is high, it means the markets is unstable and uncertain.

High volatility is an advantage for stock traders and market speculators. The more unstable and volatile the economy is, the higher the odds (of profit) when betting on any particular event.

Long term investors are rarely bothered by volatility.

W for W-2

This is a term used in the USA for the tax form of a full time employee. Every full time employee in the US must fill a W-2 form with the IRS (Internal Revenue Service).

There are other forms such as W-4, W-9, W-8BEN, etc. These are forms you need to complete for the IRS who collects taxes on behalf of the US government. You have to choose if you are self-employed, employed outside the US, etc.

For most people, the specific term W-2 is used to understand the designation of a job. If it is a W-2 job, it means it is a full-time job with benefits.

X for Xenocurrency

This is a currency (legal tender) held by individuals or investors in another country. For example, you are in the USA and you are holding Euros.

There are several reasons for this. It could be to hedge against inflation in the local economy. It could be to pay foreign workers or suppliers. And so on.

Saying you have xenocurrency is a way to expose this holding without revealing which particular country’s currency you are holding on to.

Y for Yield

The yield of an investment is how much that investment earns for you, disregarding the capital gains. Let’s take an example…

With a stock, let’s say you buy a stock for $10k and then it grows to $13k during the course of the year. Meanwhile, the stock pays you a total dividend of $2k for the year. The yield is $2k. Yield is mostly expressed in percentage, so the yield in this example would be $2k divided by $10k multiplied by 100. This gives us 20%.

The yield in this example is 20%.

Capital gains are a big deal with stocks, so people rarely talk about yield in reference to stocks. However, yield is a big deal with bonds. Bond yields, which is influenced by interest rates, is a big deal in finance.

Z for ZBA

ZBA means Zero Balance Account. This is a corporate checking account that maintains a balance of $0. This is an auto account that businesses and investors use a lot.

For every ZBA, there is a master account. And the job here is to protect the integrity of the master account. So, you open a ZBA and use that to carry out transactions.

If money is paid into the ZBA, the money automatically flows into the master account before the end of the business day. If money is due from the ZBA to pay for something, money flows from the master account in just the exact amount needed.

At the end of every business day, the balance of the ZBA is zero. This system helps to secure banking information for people who have large sums of money in their banks. Businesses and corporations also sometimes use this.

Conclusion

This took me several days of research and writing. There is currently nothing like it on the internet and I hope you would appreciate the painstaking effort that went into it.

This is to help you gain a fundamental understanding of several things in the financial world. The more financial literate you are, the more opportunities you are exposed to. How rich you become depends on the opportunities you can see and recognize.

Share this with someone who would find it valuable.

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I hate cold calling.

If it comes down to it, I can do cold emails. But I’d rather not. I prefer the warm approach where clients find you. And that is what I want to teach you here.

Why Businesses Struggle

I am a marketing guy. And almost in every case when I start to interact with a new business, the problem they want me to help solve is getting new clients.

In the past, I would jump at it and start doing what they expect me to do. But over time, I have learned a sneaky little secret.

If they have a problem of getting new clients, it means they don’t know how to get new clients. They don’t know how to get new clients, they hire me, and then tell me what I have to do to bring in new clients.

Can you see the irony?

In the end, you end up being busy doing all kinds of things and it still wouldn’t produce new clients. And marketing is often the first to get punished for that.

The only reason I would listen to a business about how to get new clients is if they are doing something and it works. Then, they just need someone to scale up or assist the effort.

If that is not the case, and they really have a challenge, I would certainly not accept whatever tasks they are trying to assign to me. I would do my own audit. This is the flaw with hiring too.

Nowadays, I like to ask business owners, “Do you have a playbook for the outcome you want or you want me to build a playbook for you?”

Even if they have a playbook, but the playbook isn’t working, I will have to call it out in their face. You can’t tell me what to do to get a result, if you are having a challenge getting that result.

Some say, “Oh, we just need someone to write a blog”.

Some others say, “Oh, we just need someone for SEO”.

If you get a ton of traffic, but no conversion, who owns that failure? It’s mostly the marketing person. This is why I conduct audits myself and don’t blindly trust what an entrepreneur or online business owner says.

There is only one reason businesses struggle: Not enough buyers. This is when the business does not have enough clients or customers.

Sales solves every problem eventually. No company has ever gone out of business because of too much sales. Businesses go bankrupt because of not enough sales.

And sales come from customers or clients. This is why I don’t think of business as trying to sell a product. I think of business as trying to serve a people.

This distinction is very important.

Businesses struggle because they don’t know who they serve. There is so much to unpack here.

The Most Important Business Relationship

The most important relationship a business has is the one with its clients. Here, I am going to use the word clients over customers.

Customers often signify buyers. And buyer is just a surface-level way of defining someone who buys something once.

If you want to have a formidable business that no economic downturn can destroy, you need repeat buyers. Or you can call them consistent buyers. Or you can call them habitual buyers.

These consistent buyers are no longer mere customers, they have graduated to clients. Your business is wedged into their lifestyle. Now, whether your business stays there or not depends on you.

Most businesses optimizes for customers. They optimize for one-time sale. And that is why they struggle. The moment they can’t get new customers, their sales is threatened.

Very few businesses know how to turn a one-time customer to a client. 95% of businesses I know do not understand this at all.

I don’t care what you sell. You can have a stable client base of repeat customers. This is the stuff strong businesses are made of.

Let me share two crude examples of how businesses do this wrong.

Two Bad Examples of Businesses

There is a bakery a few meters away from where I live. The bakery opened recently and I love bakeries.

I love well-made pastries. However, the brand of that bakery is a little below par for me. I have eaten their bread and I honestly prefer other brands.

There is a nearby store that sells a better brand of bread and I preferred that. This bakery has other pastries, but I am just not inclined to try.

One day, the store had no bread, so I had to walk into the bakery to buy one. And the experience was just like walking into store to buy bread. They made no effort whatsoever to incentivize me to come again.

My marketing mind was exploding at that point. But I decided to mind my own business.

What could they have done? The easy answer was introduce some kind of loyalty point system.

But if they don’t want to go that route, there is still an angle they are not thinking about. What is the big selling point of a bakery over a store?

The point of a bakery is the fact that you can get fresh hot bread. No one knows how long the bread at the store has been on the shelf. But everyone assumes they can get fresh hot bread at the bakery.

If I go to the bakery and I cannot get fresh hot bread, I am instantly disappointed. And this actually happened.

The bakery could have a sign outside that says, “fresh hot bread at 11 am and 3 pm weekdays”. And I would set an alarm for that on my phone.

That simple gesture costs almost nothing, and it would have given them a devoted customer base. I will happily build my food schedule around that timing.

With that, the business knows they have a client and not merely a one-time customer.

Another example...

A few years ago, I relocated into an area within the city that is several kilometres away. It was like going from one extreme end to another extreme end.

My internet service provider stopped working at the new location because the network coverage was so poor in the new area. So, I purchased a new internet service provider that was more common.

And then, I ditched my old service provider.

Seeing that their loyal customer (me) stopped subscribing, the internet service provider started enticing me with offers to subscribe again.

They sent me all kinds of generous offers. In fact, they called my phone a few times in the first few months. But they made a fatal error.

They never asked me why I stopped subscribing.

They just kept sending me all kinds of offers hoping to lure me into their services again. But all of that made zero sense to me because they have a very poor network coverage in my area.

They saw me as a customer. They didn’t see me as a client.

They cared about what they have to sell. They didn’t care about the convenience I wanted to have.

The point of these two stories is to show you why businesses struggle.

The Remedy

I have something called the avatar exercise that I use for all the businesses I work with. The idea is to define who you serve.

Forget about your product. Let’s identify who you are making them for.

It sounds like a trivial thing at first, but the moment you get into it, your mind opens up like a flower. This is when you start to look at your business from the lens of your client.

When you see your client clearly, then you are able to see what they see when they look at you.

If you want to do this avatar exercise with me, send me a DM and I will share the details.

But if you understand the broad idea, you can do it yourself...

Read more

I discovered a significant flaw in my articles here on Substack.

One of my readers said, “I love what you write, but I barely understand it”. So, I am going to tone things down and commit to being helpful. I would still be writing on finance, but my focus will now be more on business, especially online business. This is the area people ask me for help the most.

We Are in the 2020s

This is vastly different from the 1980’s, 90s, or 2000s. If you apply a principle of wealth from those periods into the 2020s, you might bankrupt yourself.

For example, we had banks in the 90s. We have banks in the 2020s. However, banking has changed significantly.

And not just that, money has changed. For example, if you take $20 to a grocery store in 1980, what you would buy then cannot be compared with what the same amount would buy today.

In fact, you wouldn’t be able to afford all the things $20 would have bought you then if you have $200 now. This is what we call inflation.

Inflation is generally a bad thing if you work for money. But if you are investing, the pros outweigh the cons. Also, it is engineered.

You see, money is not stable. And there is an organization that controls it. This organization is called the central bank. Every country has one.

Don’t let the name fool you, they are not a bank. In the USA, they have a more interesting name, Federal Reserve Bank of America.

And it is not federal or government controlled. It has no reserves. It is not a bank. I don’t think you can call it American either, because it exists above the state.

So, why does it have a name like that? Well, it is to maintain a certain illusion. That illusion is not necessarily bad, but if you can’t see through it, you will never understand financial freedom.

The European Union has the European Central Bank (ECB). Japan has Bank of Japan (BOJ). China has the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). And I can go on and on.

The point is that these institutions regulate money. And when they make a decision about money, what they say will prevail no matter what you do.

It doesn’t matter how hard you work. If the Fed goes in one direction and you want to go in another, you will fail. This is why investors have this saying in America, “Don’t fight the Fed”.

Today, if you are working (for money) in a job and you expect to get rich, you are taking the opposite direction to the central bank.

The central banks have a 2% inflation target every year. But in the last 6 years, inflation has been well over that target and they have refused to take drastic steps to bring it back down.

What this does to you as an individual is that your money will be able to buy less and less things as time goes on. In fact, if you get a raise, there is a very high chance that your expenses will outgrow your raise at a faster pace.

Sometimes, these things happen slowly that you don’t feel them. But over time, you will just realize that you are struggling financially. And it’s not like you are spending extravagantly.

At the end of the month, your money is gone. But you cannot point to one significant thing you did with the money. You were just busy surviving.

The answer corporate America gave to this is the credit card. And that only made matters worse.

Well, here I want to show you 7 ways to build wealth that won’t get crushed by inflation.

And yes, I know you don’t have a rich uncle that can send you a huge sum for starting capital. This is about ways of thinking around money, especially around income, that can unlock financial freedom.

The first 2 are very common and they work very well, but you need to have a strategy and stick to it.

The 3rd one is my personal favorite. The 4th one has been a lifesaver for my finances more ways than I can count.

The 5th one is the most misunderstood. Understanding the 6th one makes the difference between earning $250k once and having $250M net worth.

The 7th one is the most underrated. And it is the most accessible. Anyone can implement the 7th one. But most people just let pride get in the way.

Let’s get into it...

1. Stocks

I am not a fan of the stock market myself. But whether you like it or not, it will keep going up.

And it is not because stocks are wonderful. Instead, it is because the value of currency is depreciating. And it will keep depreciating.

Yes, there will be downturns, crashes, and so on. But if you are in it for the long term, you are almost guaranteed to build wealth.

Just buy the index on a recurring basis or better still, re-invest your dividends. Over 20, 30, 40 or more years, it grows to become substantial.

The strategy here is to buy and forget it. Don’t touch it. Don’t buy and sell. Buy and wait. Buy and get busy with something else. If you are watching and monitoring, you will succumb to fear and greed.

That is so simple, but not everyone has access to it. I discovered this around 2010 but I had no access to the US market.

Beware of platforms that sell you derivatives instead of stocks. Most people don’t know the difference. This is why it is better just to buy an index fund like the S&P 500 index fund from Vanguard. Stick to the simple.

2. Real Estate

This one looks easy like a no-brainer from afar. But it is also quite tricky when you get close.

Remember the premise for all of this. The central banks have been running currency devaluation at an accelerated pace since 2020. And they are not showing any signs of stopping.

This means if you want to build wealth, you have to put in money (or work) into things are not subject to the same pace of devaluation. Or it could be things that are actually appreciating.

Real estate is another one. But you have to know the game. You can’t just buy land and hold on to it. Even when it is property, that can depreciate too.

That is a bit out of the range of most millennials who were not born into wealthy families. But it deserves a mention.

If you can buy a house as an investment property (and rent it out to cover the taxes and expenses), you are playing a good game.

3. Licensing

Now, we are getting to the exciting parts.

Most people think only inventors and big companies can have licenses and get paid for it.

Well, that is not true. I’ll share my story as an example…

Read more

You may not be charging $10k for your service. That’s fine.

But the idea is that if you have a potential client offering way less than you normally charge, this is the playbook on how to handle them.

First, this is based on the assumption that you are running a service and NOT a physical product. Physical products often have little flexibility with pricing.

The other assumption is that you have already told the client your price (which is $10k in this example). And the client has clearly stated their budget is $5k for the service.

The most important thing here is to realize that this is not a price war.

Your mentality should not be to win the money. Your mentality should be to win the best clients.

What does that mean? Let me explain…

Winning the Best Clients

Service business is not a game of making money. Instead, it is a game of having the best clients.

The best clients are:

• Huge fans of your work

• They are super loyal

• They have no problems paying your rate, as long as they can afford it

• They trust your judgement and listen to your advice

• They keep bringing you good business

So, you never evaluate a client by how much money they want to pay. You evaluate them based on how good a client they are or how good a client they look like they will be.

If the client is not a “best client” (or doesn’t look like it), turn down the $5k. Those are not the people you negotiate your rates with. Send them to competitors.

If the client looks like a “best client” and someone you want to have a long-term business relationship with, then you should negotiate.

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