Let’s talk money and how you can earn more of it. Here are the basic money making principles I wish I had been taught in school:
To earn more money, you need to acquire high demand skills that are scarce in the marketplace.
Alright, you’re thinking, that makes sense. Now the question becomes, how do you do this? Thankfully, there is a clear and simple framework you can follow, which I explain below.
How to Earn More Money
1. Stack Skills, on Skills, on Skills
Hands down, this is my favorite way to increase income and it is called “skill-stacking.” Skill stacking is the art of combining several “normal” skills to create a unique combination of abilities that are extraordinarily valuable.
Ask yourself, will a dog walker working for an app like Wag make more money?
Or, will a dog walker who learned website design skills from YouTube and took a Udemy Course on how to run Facebook Ads earn more?
The first person will be paid an hourly rate, while the second person can run paid ads at scale to attract a nearly limitless number of new clients and can hire other dog walkers when the demand for business exceeds what they can do individually.
The income earning potential of these two people would be wildly different—and what’s crazy is that the only difference is that one stacked skills while the other did not.
2. Use “After Work” Hours To Acquire New Skills
During the day, you’re getting paid to “do.” After hours is when you can allocate time to increase your skill-set to become rarer and in high demand.
Realistically, your boss isn’t going to want to pay you more for what they trained you to do. So, aim to acquire skills outside your job if you want your earning to rapidly increase.
Think of yourself like an athlete. During the game, you need to be focused on executing a single task: winning the game. Between games is when you make yourself more valuable to the team by working on technical skill improvement, hitting the gym, studying game tape of yourself, analyzing the competition, etc.
If you’re looking to earn more, then leverage your “outside work” hours to continually improve your skill-set. It’s what you do with you after work hours that will determine your future earning potential. Period.
Look, it wasn’t live games that made Tom Brady the greatest of all-time. It couldn’t have been, because every quarterback plays roughly the same number of games. It was his “after hours” commitment to skill-work, game tape, recovery protocols, and 1-on-1 work with a Sports Psychologist that made Tom Brady, Tom Brady.
You won’t rise to the top doing what everyone else does, so continuously use your after hours for skill-improvement if you want to become an elite performer.
Make it your goal to become the “Olympian” of your marketplace. Do this and you will unquestionably see you pay spike relative to your peers!
3. Use Courses (Like Udemy or Coursera) to Become Rarer and In High Demand
As mentioned above, the secret to a high income is to acquire skills that rare and in high demand. For example, would a dog walker be paid more? (Think about the number of people you know capable of dog walking…)
Or, would a person who can run YouTube Ads make make more money? (Think about the number of people you know who can run YouTube Ads…)
The answer is clear, but the irony is anyone could learn how to run YouTube Ads with a $29.99 course on Udemy (I checked the price).
Ask yourself, what’s a course you could sign up for and complete this weekend? Use Google or ChatGPT to find one, pay the fee, and take this powerful first step toward unleashing your earning potential. If you don’t know where to start, then Udemy and Coursera are awesome platforms that offer a tremendous number of low cost options for coursework.