Let me guess, you hate your 9-5 and want to escape. You're tired of being broke and don't want to work for someone else — I know exactly how you feel because I used to be in the same position.

I've always had an insane desire to get more out of life.

A thirst for knowledge, real-life adventure, and overcoming difficult challenges. It's part of the Architect persona if you've ever done the Myers-Briggs test.

As a kid, I used to spend countless hours playing video games. I still remember when my dad bought my first PlayStation with a few random games (he didn't know a thing about them).

One of them was called Final Fantasy VII.

It's a 3D role-playing game where you play as the main character, "Cloud," who goes on a 100+ hour adventure to defeat his villain.

It's incredible how a persuasive story like this mirrors real life.

You level up as you play, get stronger, mature as the protagonist, deal with an insufferable past, loss, and take on tough challenges throughout the journey.

Every one of us is playing the game of life. But the game has taken a horrible turn for the worse.

Want to take more than 5 weeks of vacation out of an entire year?

Too bad you're not allowed.

Want to work on something meaningful that you enjoy and impacts others?

Too bad you're not allowed.

Want to do what you want, when you want, and where you want?

NOT. ALLOWED.

The big problem is that we're not the main character of our own story. We're not even a measly sidekick. Society, schooling, and jobs ensure that we stay insignificant, no better than a slave stuck in the system.

A real-life NPC (Non-Player Character). The ones who exist in the background of the game to fill it up and enhance the narrative for the main character.

If you don't believe me, observe people around you. Look at those who are ahead of you. Older colleagues at your job. Teachers at school.

Do they look happy?

Are they living life just the way they want?

You know the answer, but let me spell it out for you to make it real: Most people live a miserable life with their dreams and desires crushed a long time ago.

I saw this firsthand in almost everyone around me, yet here I was, playing these fantastic games about adventure!

I realized these games were just an escape mechanism made by the creators to help people flee from the mundane. It might be seen as a noble cause, but it's also what keeps people trapped without being able to change.

So I shifted my attention from playing fictional games to playing the game of life.

And for this to become a reality for you too you have to solve one of the biggest problems of them all:

Earning an income in your control.

You want to make more money, we all do. But it's not the money that matters to people like us. It's HOW we earn it and WHAT it allows us to do with our time.

• To do more than just pay the bills

• To splurge on vacations without holding back

• To work on things you enjoy

• To spend all your time following your curiosity and obsessions

• To financially help and take care of your loved ones

• To be the hero of your family they can look up to

If you desire any of these, then let me be your guide. We all need a mentor to help us navigate this journey of life that seems stacked against us.

This is where your story begins.

You've Been Lied To About Making Money

When I first discovered online business, I dove in headfirst. I started with Kindle eBooks and made some good money, until it crashed and burned. I was lost, confused, and didn't understand why.

So what did I do? I jumped to another business model. And another. And another. Each attempt failed until I had my big "aha" moment: Maybe I didn't understand the basics of business at all!

I spent months studying the fundamentals, and that's when I realized we've all been sold a fantasy about making money online. I actually hate that phrase because it carries a negative sentiment, so let's roll with earning an income and helping people with their problems instead.

Just hop on YouTube and search "make money online." What do you see?

Flashy thumbnails screaming "Make $500 per day – EASY! FAST!" They're selling you a dream that isn't real.

The reality is more complex.

Without control and the basics, you'll waste years doing the wrong things and never get anywhere.

For example, I did affiliate marketing – selling other people's products – and made thousands with nice profit margins. It sounds great on paper, but when you sell other people's products (to avoid doing the work of creating one yourself), you give up control.

It's common for affiliate programs to:

• Slash your commissions overnight

• Disappear and shut down completely

• Never pay you at all

It's not just this specific business model that has flaws; all of them do, but the pros and cons are usually the same. You're playing in someone else's sandbox instead of building your own. So the problem becomes avoiding the inevitable work you didn't want to do in the first place.

And this is the work that needs to be done if you want to have any resemblance of autonomy over your own life.

Learning How To See Again

It's painful wasting years doing the wrong things and not getting anywhere.

What beginners usually lack is direction, action, and self-discovery, so let's start with that.

I've spent well over $20,000 on courses by this point to learn everything that I know, and by no means do I feel complete. That's the thing – this is a frame of mind to ensure that I'm always progressing, always learning and synthesizing. I can't wait to spend another $200,000 on learning even more! Just imagine where your frame of mind will be with all of the secrets of the world.

When you view everything from a student's mindset, you're open-minded and ready to evolve. If you have strong beliefs about your ideas, past experiences, and education, you become close-minded and get stuck where you are.

That's why I don't care about my Master's Degree. It's just a piece of paper that took me 5 years to get, but neither the market nor evolution cares about it.

What truly matters is something entirely different.

Every millionaire I've ever had the fortune to meet talks about mindset. Every high-ticket course I've gone through has an extensive mindset section in it. This is not by chance or because they put it there to fill it out with fluff.

It's the foundation for how you get direction and execution.

Would you agree that an iPhone with an internet connection holds the power of the world? No? Then consider this:

• You can communicate with anyone without traveling to them

• You can run a 7-figure empire in the palm of your hand

• You have all of the world's knowledge and wisdom at your fingertips

But give the same device to a chimpanzee and it will smash it against a rock, using it as a hammer for something else.

That is how your mind works right now.

This is not to be taken as an insult – I'm trying to open your eyes to how things are with simple metaphors so you can start focusing on what truly matters.

Everyone wants tactics, techniques, Facebook ads, SEO tricks, and business models. But we're all missing the point.

Marketing and sales become almost impossible if you don't have direction and action.

You can only get direction when you're open-minded, ready to learn skills, fix the junk in your head, and build systems to achieve your goals.

We'll explore becoming open-minded in another letter as the rabbit hole goes very deep on that one.

The Only 3 Skills Worth Learning

So being open-minded and learning skills is the first step.

But what is a skill and how do you learn one?

People mistake learning a skill for learning a tactic, so let's differentiate the two.

A guru telling you about a tactic is them telling you about something and why it's important. If you're lucky, they might also tell you how to do it.

But knowing and doing are two separate things.

A skill is something you do and practice every day, so you become good at it. This means dedicating time to practice every day.

It's the same as a Kung Fu master telling you about a secret hidden technique. Perhaps he even demonstrates it to you once. Now you think you have the skill.

You just missed the part of putting in 10 years of daily practice and discipline to make it yours.

If this sounds absurd, it's because it is, and it's what everyone is doing. You see this insanity everywhere on social media. Teenagers giving life advice without having any lived experience. Hustlers telling you how to get clients without having any PAYING clients themselves.

You only become skillFULL at something by doing it every day. Like the teacher in Karate Kid said, "Wax on, Wax off."

But the thought of committing to one thing might make you anxious.

What if you pick the wrong skill?

This is why we want to master the fundamentals of earning an income. Just as you can't change the Law of Nature or the Law of Physics, these skills I'm about to show you are the bedrock of earning an income.

How do I know this?

Because I've lived it. These principles allowed me to quit a 9-5 I absolutely despised walking into every morning. These are the skills that fuel my evolution (and income) right now.

Knowing this, feel confident that these are the only things you need to worry about and that are worth your precious time.

Once you learn "how to learn," then you can plug whatever skill that's trending in the marketplace and make it work for you.

1. The Ability To Learn (Income Synthesis)

When people think about learning, they get horrible flashbacks of studying at school.

Relax, that's not what I mean.

What people learn at school only produces slaves and NPCs who can't think critically for themselves because they are assigned tasks and goals they don't like (or even care about).

When you become in control of your own autonomy (doing what you want), you are the only one who sets the goals you would love to achieve, and that makes a huge difference. You suddenly become intrinsically driven and far more difficult to demotivate.

But we don't want to learn random things; we want to synthesize.

Synthesis can mean a lot of things, but what we're talking about is:

• You encounter a problem

• You seek specific knowledge to solve that problem

• You test the solution in real life

• Once the problem is solved, you sell it to everyone else with the same problem

In the context of income, you:

1. Find a real problem or desire in the marketplace

2. Learn how to solve it for the marketplace

3. Get the solution in front of the marketplace

This skill has many layers to it, but at a surface level, this is it.

This is the secret to business and earning an income online.

You can make as much income as you want once you start trusting in your own ability to learn and figure things out.

Learn how to solve a problem, package up the solution, and sell it to others.

This is exactly what I did that helped me to progress. I learned a skill, and as I was learning it, I was sharing solutions to my own problems, which got in front of people that wanted parts of my solution.

Synthesis also extends to every other facet of your life:

• If you want to discover the truth of the world - learn

• If you want to solve your own problems in life - learn

• If you want to master your mind that's holding you back from change - learn

The problem is that we haven't been taught how to learn (or what). By this point, you should start getting an idea of what that is.

But it's crazy to think about it, especially if you've spent a good chunk of your life like me stuck in the school and university system.

This is one of the reasons why we get information overwhelm.

You find yourself following 3-5 courses from different mentors, all giving conflicting advice, unsure how to proceed., let alone take focused action in one direction.

You haven't learned how to learn, and it's a problem for clear thinking, focus, and attention.

I'll cover this in-depth in Income Synthesis, let me know if you'd like my 1-1 help here.

If you want to become the hero of your own story, you must literally learn how to learn, because you've never been taught how to.

2. The Ability To Create (Marketing)

When Naval Ravikant (an investor, entrepreneur, and great thinker) talks about becoming a creator, people assume he's talking about TikTok influencers or content creators, but people are missing the big picture.

What he really means is the act of creating.

To make, invent, synthesize, write, code, record, share, market, sell.

Once you have the ability to learn, create, and sell, you won't need to depend on anyone to hand you a salary. People have unlimited problems, and by you creating solutions and helping the world, you now get the ability to earn unlimited income.

Being a creator allows you to develop your own self, solve problems, and let the world know about it (marketing).

If you're not making an income right now, that's because you're not solving any real problems people have.

The best way I found to start creating is by writing.

Writing is all I ever did and has had a massive benefit to my life. I wrote ebooks, blog posts, Skool posts, email outreaches, guest posts, AI prompts, and now newsletters, social media posts, and digital products.

I chose writing while working my 9-5 because of its accessibility. You don't need a fancy video setup, gear, or anything. You have access to a computer most of your day, you have a Gmail account, and the internet.

All you have to do is write.

Little did I know that writing was the fundamental step to everything in marketing and sales. The fancy courses you've bought were probably a combination of you reading the copy of a landing page and a video that was scripted.

Writing daily allows you to sharpen your skills of content creation, sharpen your messaging, sharpen the topics you speak about.

Writing also sets the foundation for clear thinking. You figure things out, take notes, and distill the essence you can share with the world. This is part of the reason I write these long-ass newsletters.

This is synthesizing.

When you combine the power of learning with writing, you are already miles ahead of everyone else still trying to get their dropshipping store to work (lol).

The mistakes people make become obvious in the light of this.

Are you solving a pain point? Are you helping people achieve their desire? Are you marketing your solution to them?

Sales become almost effortless when you learn how to market properly and build up this skill. Vice versa, if your writing and marketing sucks, then you'll struggle to sell anything.

3. The Ability To Sell (Sales)

There's just no way around it.

You know you've been avoiding this step, hiding behind the tactics. If you want to be in control of your income, and by extension your life, you have to learn how to sell to people.

Like making money online, selling carries a negative sentiment. It's a belief system that's been programmed into society with the picture of sleazy car salesmen.

But isn't the entire world operating on sales?

Do you honestly think Amazon would make money if they didn't sell a thing?

Do you think Uber would change an entire taxi industry without selling?

Selling is the entire backbone of our society.

When you strip everything away from the business models, shiny objects thrown at you, and view reality for what it is, you'll discover the same.

Marketing, Sales, Value Exchange — Nothing else matters.

The only ones NOT selling anything are the ones who are employed – i.e., you and 99% of the population. They're not supposed to sell anything; they're supposed to work for the employer, stay a good boy, and do the work assigned to them.

If you've ever had a fear of selling, then you have to overcome this fear before you can call yourself an entrepreneur.

Get money IN.

The thing is, selling doesn't even have to feel like selling, and that's what it felt like for me when I closed clients. They had a problem, I had the solutions, so we worked together, and in that process, I got paid. It's only later that I discovered that this is something called Consultative Selling.

And as we discussed earlier, when your marketing becomes strong, sales becomes easy.

How do you make your marketing stronger so sales become easier?

By becoming a leader in your space/niche. It sounds hard but it's all about nurturing, adding value, shifting beliefs, sharing your philosophy, unique ways of doing things, and creating a level of influence with the people who follow you.

If you do a good job with that then the sale is coming inevitably. So if you truly hate sales, then focus more of your attention on learning and good marketing to make the sales part easier.

But you still can't avoid it.

There also seems to be a common belief that you need followers to earn an income. So people frantically build their social media accounts and chase likes and followers. I've had a non-existent social media presence, yet I've earned a living just fine.

I was able to monetize what I was learning by creating the right type of content in the right places without needing any followers at all.

If we break this down to the fundamentals, there are 2 ways to monetize:

1. People come to you (inbound) - takes time

2. You go to people (outbound) - takes effort

Both have their pros and cons, and the best thing you can do is to combine the two. Learn a skill, create content sharing your solutions and solving problems, and use consultative selling with people both inbound and outbound to earn an income.

Learn → Create → Sell

Synthesize → Write → Consult

Solve problems → Market the solution → Get Paid

These are all the same thing.

How To Be In Control Of Your Income

You can make as much money as you want.

Yes, you read that right — as much as you want — IF you understand the key fundamentals of earning an income which we've discussed here today.

But where do you even begin without getting lost?

My best advice for beginners is to stop following too many mentors and random business models; this messes with your brain and gets you stuck forever.

Instead, understand the only high-income skills worth learning.

And start learning them.

Learn how to find problems worth solving.

Learn how to create a solution to a specific problem people have.

Learn how to sell your solution by talking to people and having conversations.

Do this, and you will be rewarded for a lifetime.

Hope this was helpful to you.

— Chris