Quick preface: For some reason this feels more vulnerable than other posts… I think it’s because I don’t have a clear vision for how this will change, whereas in Man, What A Struggle I had some certainty about when and how things would change.
This one’s for my future self. I can’t wait to reread this…
The past couple days I’ve noticed more anxious and negative thoughts popping up.
Feelings of losing hope, of losing confidence. Things have been going well lately, so this felt like a stark change.
What the heck is going on?
I was watching this video by Alex Hormozi about if and why you should drop out of college and my brain started connecting the dots on a bunch of recent content.
He talks about how he had a long chat with his 18 year old neighbor helping him with the decision of achieving his goals and making money.
Something he talked about was “skill stacking,” something he’s mentioned many times before, an idea where you learn a skill that is valuable to the marketplace (say, video editing) and stack another valuable skill (say, marketing), which makes you become even more valuable, i.e. being able to make more money (read as: “exchange more value”).
Stacking aside, it revolves around a very simple concept.
Learn a high value skill. -> Get paid for that skill.
It was in that moment that various ideas consolidated from watching/listening to videos from Hamza Ahmed (self-improvement YouTuber), in addition to this podcast from Iman Gadzhi (22 year old entrepreneur) and Sebastian Ghiorghiu (23 year old entrepreneur), two people I don’t normally listen to.
It was then that I thought…
Man, I’m not intentionally learning any valuable skills… I should be spending my time reading about some specific skill, watching videos about just that skill. I’m not gonna make money until I learn an actually valuable skill, which essentially means anything I do that’s not learning about that skill isn’t moving me closer to that goal…
Cue feelings of self-doubt, crumbling confidence, loss of hope.
Learn a high value skill… -> Get paid for that skill…
Making money and building a business on my own has been a back-of-mind goal for a while, and doing so while on the road has been particularly relevant. It’s a major bet I made while making this decision to quit my job.
I KNOW there’s a higher upside life out there for me, I just need to work for it and find it. I just need to create it. This means actually working towards it though.
I had this idea starting out that I’d “vacation” for a bit before getting more intentional about making money/building a business.
How long I’d vacation for was up in the air though.
I have since been really following flow and only doing things I want to be doing, spending my time how I want to spend it.
This feels like a rubber-banding back from my time working the past 2 years. I spent a lot of time not how I wanted to, making me value how I spent my time more and more.
To an extent this realization feels good.
It feels good to be enjoying how I spend my time, to be making progress towards my personal goals, to not be spending my time on things I don’t want to do. But, the more I go down this hole, the more I question if I’ll ever build something valuable if it doesn’t align with how I feel.
The reason I haven’t been intentional about learning a high value skill is because I haven’t felt like learning about storytelling, copywriting, marketing, about developing a specific skill that I can use to provide value to the marketplace.
The majority of my time I’ve spent building up my website and journaling, lots of journaling. I like journaling, thinking, relating ideas, but I’ve begun to worry about getting TOO in my head and not taking enough action.
I think I have this idea that I can just work on my website, keep journaling, and then poof, a couple months later I’m making $1000/mo. Yeah just gimme like 6mo, 12mo and I’ll be able to build a business, for sure.
There has to be some shift, there needs to be a turning point.
I feel very confident in my ability to achieve the goal, it feels like a certainty, but the more I think about it, the more hazy things become.
It’s crystal clear when I DON’T think about it.
Ask me what steps 2, 3, and 4 are and I have no idea.
Like I said at the beginning, there’s no end in sight for me right now, there’s no major change coming that I can fall back on.
So what’s next?
Here’s a bunch of rambled thoughts…
Maybe I just need to learn to do things I don’t necessarily want to do, but that move me towards my goals.
This is something I’ve realized I want to get better at anyway, but will this immediately solve the problem? Probably not.
Maybe I just need to try a whole bunch of business ideas and fail at a whole bunch of things. Back in 2020, I set a goal for 30 days to start a print-on-demand business. I did it. It was an absolute flop, but I’m proud of myself for sticking it out and taking action.
What I took away from the experience though, was that I need to find something I genuinely believe in to be able to sell it. I felt this friction inside of me trying to sell something just to make money. Without going through that though, I wouldn’t have had a key learning like that.
The only way I’ll figure out what I want to do is by trying a whole bunch of things I realize I don’t want to do.
But maybe I just need to stick it out following things that I enjoy. I just don’t feel super confident in ideas like dropshipping, building a personal brand, even being a professional photographer.
Why pursue something I don’t see the vision in?
So, maybe an opportunity is around the corner that I’ll realize after just a little longer.
Maybe I just need to keep learning and developing my mindset. I just need to become the type of person that reaches the goals that I want to achieve. Which means, more books, more podcasts, more notes.
But I keep coming back to:
Learn a high value skill. -> Get paid for that skill.
If it ain’t taking action learning a high value skill, it ain’t gonna pay the bills.
So fuck.
Unfortunately there’s no conclusion here, there’s no happy ending just yet, so instead, I’ll close on:
I feel very fortunate and privileged to not need to make money this instant. I’ve had the opportunity to learn what speaks to me the most and I’ve already learned a lot about myself in these 2ish months. That said, sometimes I wonder how things would be different with an external fire under my butt, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starving_artist).
I have time, but I don’t have forever.