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- [00:00]
A
Yo, yo. What is up, my friends? Welcome back to another episode of the Modern Mastery Podcast. I'm going to start not really speeding these things up, but have some form of structure to them, right. I don't want to do twice a week. Don't like it just seems suboptimal to not lump everything into one podcast that you can just listen to throughout the week or listen to all at once. So for this one, it may be long, it may be short, but how I'm going to do it is it's going to be life and then business. So I know a lot of you like the either philosophical route I take on things or just health updates or even energy updates, like spiritual updates. So that's how I'm going to treat it. Because then the. If you like both the life and the business, then you can stick around for the actionable business advice and get a little bit of learning in on your week. And I think it'll be a good balance. So if it is a good balance, let me know on Twitter or just, I don't know, let me know somewhere. But to start, there's been something on my mind a lot recently, and I really, really think that this connection needs to be made in your head. And I will start it with the polarizing statement that learning, excess learning and note taking and systemizing and consuming in general means absolutely nothing if you do not have a project. And I'll leave it at that, but I will also explain it right now. So the thing about this is, a lot of people, you know that learning is very good, right? So we learn, we read books. It's a, it's a part of our habit. And we bookmark things that we like to see. We save articles for later. We just stash books upon books in our Kindle library. And all of this information is going to waste because you have nothing to use it on. Like, there's no momentum being built if you do not have a real world project to work on. This is why in my system, I forgot what I even call it. Oh. I call it the 3, 2, 1 mastery process or something like that. And what that says is that you need, and this is for when you are starting to explore an interest that has the possibility of reaching mastery.
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B
Right?
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A
The way that I like to put things, the way that I think people should build their businesses around because it's, it's very authentic. It stems from curiosity. And curiosity implies that you are being your true self, that you aren't, you aren't being a slave, I guess, to Cultural conditioning rather than you are conditioning yourself to do great things. So with the, the 3:2,1 mastery framework, you need three things to learn from. Right? Right. So I recommend one book like a bestseller in whatever interest you are trying to pursue because that will give you broad like the intricacies that you need to learn about that topic. It will give you a good foundation and help you understand the fundamentals of that interest area, which is very, very, very important.
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B
Right.
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It helps you understand the levers and what's going to help you go on to teach that or understand that topic very well. And then the, the next thing is that you need a few or you need one long form resource. So you need a podcast or your favorite blog or something else that's long form, right. That allows you to focus on the topic and, and listen to it or read it and not get distracted by other things because you are focusing on something. It's not like TikTok where you're just like being exposed to 5 million different ideas in the span of an hour, which is just not good for your attention as a whole. But then I also recommend within this interest immersion, the, the three of the first three, two, one, whatever. It's hard to explain on a podcast, but the, then you need a short form resource. So following people on Twitter is usually a good idea for this kind of stuff because they're very action oriented and you're kind of surrounding your, you're putting yourself in an echo chamber that holds you accountable to pursuing that interest. Right. It's a constant reminder. It's. If you are on money Twitter, it's going to be very difficult to not make money just because you're being told to make money from every angle.
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B
Right.
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A
You're either forced to choose something or you're, you're not paying attention.
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B
Right?
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A
So that's the thing. One book, one long form resource and one short form resource, preferably from people that talk about the interests that you want to pursue and are doing the things that you want to pursue right now, all of this, that first interest immersion part, all of those resources that you're learning from are completely useless unless you have a project to tie them back to. So pattern recognition in psychology is a very important thing because when you are pursuing these novels, ideas from the places that you are learning from, right? As opposed to the self destructive or just like mindless social media entertainment, right. Which gives you that cheap dopamine, what people call cheap dopamine. But when you pursue your curiosity and start learning via what you are pulled to learn. That is also dopamine. That is good dopamine, that creates momentum and it is, feels very good. But you need something to build. So with pattern recognition, like pursuing those novel experiences gives you that dopamine. But then if you want more dopamine, you need the pattern recognition. So what pattern recognition is, I don't have the definition up, but it is when memory is connected with stimuli. I may have screwed that up, but I'll explain it more. So, so the stimuli here being what you are learning from those resources that I told you about. So a book, a podcast or short form content that's just getting stuck in your head if you don't have the memory to tie it back to. And the way I like to think of memory is a real world project. So it's actually solidified and out of your head and the memory is kind of stored in that project, right? You, you have something to tie these learnings back to, to make that connection. That connection creates more dopamine, meaning more momentum, meaning you actually are working on things. And that's exactly it. You need a real world project if you want to accelerate the learning process and actually build things out and start iterating and start that, start building. That's what building is. And building means, means that you are making progress in whatever area of your life. And by real world project, many people think, oh, a creative project business, which I highly recommend, right? Because then you have the potential of making money from the things that you are pursuing your interests and just learning how to monetize them. That's another interest that you can learn about and tie it back to with your project. But your body is also a project. Your mind is also a project. And by body it's like, okay, you're learning about working out and getting new foods. Are you tracking your foods? Are you tracking your workouts? Do you have something to write these learnings down and tie them back to so you can iterate and make them better over time? Or are you letting your notes from like let's say fitness and health just sit and collect dust in your notes app or even in your head? Like you're going to forget about them if you don't have somewhere to tie them back to and actually test and implement and apply the teachings, Right? And for business, if you're learning, if you're learning about marketing or making money online, but you aren't actively trying to do so in the way that they are telling you to, you don't get that pattern recognition. You're not building that momentum you're not building, riding on the wave of dopamine and allowing that to kick into. Kick the law of inspired action into play and actually make this work. That's. That's what it's all about. If you aren't actively working on something, if you are not both creator and consumer, it's just not going to work out, I'm sorry to say, but that stresses the importance of having a project to work on.
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Okay?
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And this is why I like personal brands so much. This is kind of like a life and business teaching in one, because they are interconnected. If you plan on doing something in this new space or in the space that is continuing to evolve, the creator economy, which I'm all about, because it just makes sense. This thing just makes sense, right? A personal brand. I tried to explain this in the other podcast on how to join the creator economy, and per what I believe, Naval said this, but it's like there are 7 billion people on this earth and one day I Hope there are 7 billion businesses. Because it just makes sense, right? If you do not pursue the things that you are told to pursue, right? Cultural conditioning and you do deprogram and you act from. Everyone's not going to do this. That's like this, just impossible. But the people that do, the large majority of people that act from their authentic, true self and their. They pursue their curiosities, everyone is going to pursue a different thing. Everyone has different interest because of the cultural conditioning. You were raised in a specific way that kind of will determine your destiny, your dharmic path, whatever you want to call it. If everyone did that, if everyone pursued their curiosity and did what they wanted to do, they would have a business that would pay their bills according to the lifestyle first approach. By lifestyle first approach, I usually mean like making enough money to fuel the lifestyle that you want to live with your creative work as the vessel to do so. So I hope that made a bit of sense and I hope it stresses the importance of projects in your life and having something to actively work on that you choose to do, that's another big thing. You have to choose to do it. This has to be of your own accord because someone else telling you to do something, you know how that all works out. People don't like having a boss. People don't like having work given to them. If they have a boss and they get to choose what they work on, that's a bit different. But if, if you are constantly being told what to do and you're just like, okay, I'll do this. I don't really want to, but I'll do it anyways because I'm told to. And maybe I'll make money in the future that break out of that mindset now and understand that there is a large opportunity here. And yes, so with that I feel like this will tie in very well. Where I wrote an article in Modern Mastery hq, the private community, the other day and I want to talk about this a bit because people, people don't, people that aren't in business don't see the opportunity of business and they don't know what actions to take to make money quickly. Now a lot of you know my story where I tried a bunch of different business models. I eventually looped back to web design and I freelance with web design for a bit, saw some good success. But then when I got onto Twitter, I started to transition into funnels because things started to click for me, right? And throughout this time I actively had projects. So when I was learning about marketing and other things I had, it was kind of like, oh, I, I, I learned this new marketing technique and it makes complete sense. This why, this is why I wasn't making as much money as I could have been, right? That's the pattern recognition, the aha moment that was like, oh, I've been doing this wrong the entire time. This is the little switch that I need to start charging $5,000 instead of $1,000, right? So when I got onto Twitter and started growing on Twitter or at least started posting on Twitter, that's when things really started to kick into gear because I switched from web design to funnels for creators, right? That's the thing. I understood the creator's business model much more and I was able to use my knowledge to make that better. And that's the thing, like I say funnels and I was building out little funnels for these creators that would help them land more clients. And the thing about that is, is people think it's like, oh, you learn a skill, you learn web design or you learn email marketing and people are just going to buy it from you. No, you need to create an offer with your specific unique skill stack that you get from pursuing your curiosities. And then you need to understand the benefits and all of this other stuff and the, the offer framework that I talk about and that is how you make the most money, right? So this is, this is the thing and I'm going over the article here so I don't lose my space. But the, the article is titled and this is in modern master HQ private community. $5 for podcast listeners if you go to the link in the description. But it's titled how I made $3000 per month with 300 followers on Twitter with Digital Products. Now this is the that $3,000 per month is not including the money that I made with freelance clients. I was making six figures on Twitter when I had 300 followers because I'm smart about it and I understand the stuff that I post in Modern Mastery hq. A lot of people spin their wheels and just think that creating content is going to make them money when it's not. It's. It's a completely separate game. The marketing and branding are separate in my opinion, especially personal branding because you're talking about your interest. You need to learn how to market things. Things. Again, marketing and sales are evergreen skills that you need to learn. And with this tying it back to what we talked about previously with having a project, I do think starting a social media account and talking about your interests is a very viable project project to tie ideas back to because then when you are consuming things, you have somewhere where you can talk about those things in your with through your own lens of experience, right? That's the main thing. So in this, my, my Twitter account started out with 110 or so followers. Those were just friends and family. I have a screenshot of it in here and then I have a screenshot of my Gumroad dashboard where I sell the digital products. You guys probably know what Gumroad is. I have it circled the month of January. January. When I was around 300 followers, I was paid 3355. Now the thing about this is I already had a plan for what I wanted to do, right. I was learning from people and I studied the people that I was learning from. So whether that be the web designers out there, the marketers out there, etc. Etc. And I understood what kind of product they sold and if something is already selling, it will continue selling under a different person's name. That's the beautiful thing about the creator economy or the personal brand is you are selling the things that are proven to sell under your personal brand, under your niche of one. Because no one can replicate the unique experiences and everything else that has led to the person that you are and the things that you talk about. People are buying you as opposed to the product at this point because they don't even know the product exists under another person's personal brand because they don't even like that person person. They're not going to Follow them.
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B
Right?
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A
And you can only understand this through actually building a personal brand and becoming a creator. So what happened with this product that I created? Some of you may know it. When I first started out, it was called Web Design Wealth. It was pretty much like how I grew my web design freelancing business. The basics of freelancing, this is now high ticket essentials. You get it for free when you join Modern Master hq. But the, the thing about this is I knew the idea for that product was already validated. This is my. The product was my own version of another person's or multiple people's freelance products. There are millions of freelance products out there, right? Millions of freelance web design products out there. Were they sold under my personal brand? No. And here's the other thing. A lot of people think like, oh, I should affiliate for this instead of just sell it right now that works if you are not. If you don't have experience with that one thing, like maybe use a software and you can affiliate for the software. But if, if I am a freelance web designer that has results personally, it does not make sense to affiliate for another person's freelance product. I'm going to create my own because I have my own unique viewpoint and other minor details that will go into my product. So what I did is I created the product in under a month, like when I started my Twitter account, right? So I created, here's how I created it. I created a rough outline of the chapters that I wanted in there and I paid attention to what other people were talking about, so I wasn't. And what other people either had in their product, products or other things. And keep in mind, I had a library of courses at this point, so I can refer to those courses to make sure that I'm not missing any chapters or things to touch on. But I am writing it through my experience. It's not like I'm copying exactly what they did. I'm writing it out in a way that will get other people results and talking about my personal experience and the things that I overcame through that freelancing. So I wrote the book, I had the outline. And once you outline something, it's pretty easy to write the book. So I wrote the ebook during my focus work blocks, which is usually in the morning. It ended up being a hundred pages, double spaced, not too long, but it got the job done. It taught people a lot. Then I brainstormed a title, subtitle and cover image. I went through the course landing pages that I had taken before to see how things were structured that's the other thing you think you have to learn about all these landing page structures and other things. If another product is already selling, then go to that product's landing page, look at how it's structured, reverse engineer why it does well, and then incorporate that into your landing page.
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Right?
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That's all this is. The online business is pretty much a game of, like, enlightened copy and pasting. That's all Twitter is. You see people rehashing the same things over and over again in their content, because people like that content, right? And the ones that don't, I guess, submit to that way. Like they want to keep it 100 original, which is stupid in my opinion. It's just an ego game. You're. You're playing, you're succumbing to your ego at that point in your pride where it's like, oh, no, I want to be original, and I don't want to give my audience what they want.
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Right.
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Doesn't make sense. And the whole originality thing, original means that you have experience in something. It means that you've taken an idea, experienced it through your projects, and have your own point of view on it, whether it's the same as others or it's different. You need the why behind what you're saying. Experience gives you the why behind what you're saying, and that gives you authority. So after I made my landing page and I was a web designer, so, I mean, I kind of. I was good at creating a landing page, but you can just use templates or a theme or something else. Or you can join Modern Master HQ and get my websites that work course where I teach you how to build landing pages and sales funnels. And then I uploaded everything to Gumroad. No pre launch. I just wanted to get it out. And I started promoting, which I also will probably talk about in a later podcast. But I understood how to capture attention. I understood marketing, I understood advertising, and I understood that that was separate from my brand. So when it came time to promote, I'm promoting to a specific person with a specific problem, and I'm offering them a solution that would solve it. The specific person is. Was actually, I pivoted down the road, but it was a web developer that wanted to use their skills to freelance with that skill. I didn't create the websites that workhorse until later. And that was like the natural progression because it's a. From a different angle. If I wanted more buyers for my freelancing course, then I had to teach people the skill that would allow them to freelance with that course.
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Right.
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Makes sense. So that's exactly what I did. And then I promoted on Twitter and that's how I made a lot of the money. I also had other developers promoting it because I was smart about it and talk to them and network with them in the DMs. But then after this to kind of automate sales, I built out, I was building a an email list throughout this as well with a free lead magnet. And I set up my welcome and sales sequence so the product would sell as people go through my email sequences.
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B
Right.
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It makes sense. And there's an email marketing roadmap in Modern Mastery hq. And then after that I pivoted, I created a bundle product and now it's evolved into what is the private community and what will be future product. Yeah, products. And again, this is why I stress the importance of projects. Because if you don't have a first iteration, if you don't have a first iteration of a project, you will never have a 10th iteration of the project. And that's all any of this is. My first self improvement ebook, the Path to Power created a first iteration of my self improvement products in general and my philosophy in general. That's where the Power Planner came from. That's where a lot of my content came from. That's where my new book the Art of Focus is built off of.
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B
Right.
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So first here's a lesson, a mindset lesson is to just put things out there, hit publish and get the first iteration out. Because then you have somewhere to improve from. Who gives a fuck? Like with the whole personal branding thing as well, people give you much more leeway because you're not selling things through paid ads or just randomly. People are going to be much more lenient with your product's quality, but then it's on you to actually improve it and listen to their feedback.
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Right?
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Because you don't have a team that can do these things for you and make it the best thing humanly possible. And that's another good thing about technological advancements, is that we're people are creating the tools that allow us to create products and services that do better. It's just natural progression of how things are going. So now let's talk about the secret that people tend to skip over. Okay, now this is getting traffic to that offer. I had 300 followers. How did I actually make money with this thing? Because that's what a lot of people think. One, I could DM people freelancing with my funnel service does not require a lot of followers. That Requires a lot of dms, which I was good at. And the thing about the digital product is, like, okay, I have 300 followers. If. If. How many? If 200 of those, which is not gonna happen because a hundred of them are my friends and 100 others aren't even gonna see. It's Twitter. If 200 people bought my course when it was $27, then I'd make 200 times 27. How much is that? 2700. So I didn't even make 3000 that month. But that's the thing. You have to think outside the box here. And all of your traffic does not have to be from your audience. It can be from other people's audiences. So what I did is I was working on the freelance business, so I had a decent. I had money to spend, if that makes sense. If you don't have money to spend, if you don't have a solid income, which I know a lot of younger people don't, to invest in their growth, then you have to resort, resort to organic methods and you have to build your audience and you have to put in the time but before you have that excess money to buy back your time. So what I did is I took $500 a month, which for most people, that is doable, right? I would say for most people, that is doable. I took $500 a month and I invested it into my growth. If I know a lot of people are like, oh, but isn't that cheating? No, it's not fucking cheating. That's what every single person does. Every single influencer on Instagram pays other influencers to its growth. Marketing. That's how you get traffic to your profile and to people and to offers. If you don't want to spend a bunch of time commenting under, under other people's posts and using organic methods to gain followers. So I invested $500 into my growth per month and I paid a big account that already had a web design product. That's the thing. They had a web design product. And I know a lot of people don't believe this, but buyers buy again, right? If you are a course buyer, if you like to buy courses, and let's say you bought a Facebook ads course, I guarantee if you've bought in a Facebook ads course, you've bought three, four, maybe even five courses related to that. Buyers buy again. Remember that. So while other people would think, oh, Dan, you're paying someone, you're paying for traffic from someone that already has a web design product. Isn't that competition? No, not at all buyers buy again. And creators that actually have experience with this understand this and that's their secret weapon is that if you, if I get interested traffic to my profile and to my offer, I am not only going to grow a lot quicker, but I'm going to sell more. So him helping me get traffic to my tweets that were web design and freelancing related made people interested, they clicked, they bought my product and boom, I was making 3,000amonth. Now there's a bit more to it, of course, but that's why I have like 200 plus articles in Modern Master HQ. I'm sorry if I keep promoting Modern Master HQ is just hard. I have everything in there. It's hard not to promote it, right? If you're serious about this, like it's kind of a no brainer. But what happened after that, it was simple, right? I create decent content around freelancing, web design and then just self improvement. Because that's what I like talking about. It's my interest. That's what a personal brand is, is talking about what I like to talk about. I give actionable advice according to the product that I was selling. So freelancing, I promote the product and then I get eyeballs on my profile and my offers so people are actually seeing it and I'm not tweeting these promotions out into the void. Then that's when you make sales, right? It's kind of how it is. How do you go and buy something? You look at the offer, you see if you're actually interested in it and then you buy it. It's this, that's how money works. So without going on and on about this, that is pretty much what I did after that. Once I was around like 100 followers, I started networking and getting affiliates for this. I actually tried reaching out to a big web developer account and paying them for promotions, but they didn't want to. Instead they wanted to affiliate. So that added an extra 1500 dollars in revenue per month to this. So when I had three hundred to a thousand followers on Twitter, I was making around $10,000 plus a month from my products and my freelance service. And then eventually this is like a long term game. My account and brand is completely different from when, from earlier. So after all of this, over time, because I had the projects that I could iterate on, I eventually iterated and pivoted my freelance service into a consulting service because I understood that creators like to get, they like to do things themselves. So me doing it for them via freelance service just didn't make sense. So instead I created a consulting offer, marketing consulting and funnel consulting and I started working with them and I made more money and freed up more time because of that. And then over time I eventually stopped doing that. I started doing the Mastery program with Joey and again, that freed up more time and made me more money. So this whole thing is just, it's compounding and in terms of the product, I created the product websites that work so it would get more people to buy the freelancing product. And both of those worked in unison. And then eventually I created the Twitter Followers and Dollars Simplified course which is also in Modern Mastery hq for free to help people build an audience and get more clients.
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B
Right?
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A
So now they're building their own traffic source on Twitter. They are learning a skill so they can build websites and funnels for themselves and, or for clients. And then they, I have the freelancing product where they can buy that as well and learn how to freelance in line clients from Twitter and do exactly what I did. That's what all of this is, right? When I hear people, God, the, the industry is like so up where I see people of. Of course, as Cold Email wizard said in the other podcast that it's only the people that don't have money that make the most noise and the people that are like, oh, this is. This sounds like a pyramid scheme. No, I'm not profiting off of the. The like I'm teaching people what I do or what I did, what I have experience in. And if you aren't doing that, I would argue that's just idiotic.
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B
Right?
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You have, that's the only way you can teach is from what you have experience in. The people that are saying like, oh, this is just unethical or whatever, they're naive, they don't have experience in it and they're so used to another way of making money under an employee who is selling something according to what they have interest in experience in. Like, I don't see what connection you're trying to make here. Mo. The main people that are saying this are the ones that are into like crypto or investing and think that that's the only smart way to make money. When I think completely otherwise, I don't think that at all. That's the difference of like cash flow and investments. And this is a cash flow business where you're selling things according to what you have experience in and you're passing down your lessons. That's. It's just what human life is as a whole. It cracks me up, man. But I don't know if you're open minded, if you're open minded and like actually see the potential of this and are okay with diving into the. Really the only way, this is quite literally the only way of building a cash flow business that doesn't involve working for someone else, then I would encourage you to take the lessons that come from this podcast and actually implement those. So again, just wrapping up the story of me on Twitter is I eventually packaged these things up into the modern money bundle so I could promote something again and the income was staying consistent. And now things have evolved into like, I'm writing a book. I got off a call with someone who's going to help me get the book published and they're talking about like TED Talks and million dollar brand deals and all this other stuff. And I'm like, holy shit, this is actually happening. And what do you know? It's, it's about all, it's from all the things that I talk about. Yeah, it's been a two, three year process to actually get here, but that's still not four years in college to make a decent living, possibly if you can get a job. So I don't know, man, the, the only thing you can do really is take advantage and build leverage in with the modern tools that are making it very not easy, but more accessible to the people that are consistent. Then that's how you're going to make an income, doing what you enjoy. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Modern Mastery Podcast. I hope it all made sense. You can send me questions, you can send me whatever. You can check out the new YouTube video that I posted. I'm posting those once a week. And the, the separation. So the podcast is going to be more unfiltered. Like I talk about things that don't, that don't rely on the algorithm.
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B
Right.
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Because when you are a social media person, if you don't play to the algorithm, you're just not gonna make it. I'm sorry, it's just how it is. You have to play the game of human nature. And if you don't play the game of human nature, then it's just going to be very, very frustrating. So this podcast is me not playing the game of human nature and just spitting out the things that I want to talk about in a way that I want to talk about them. And then YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, everything else is just like feel good content with some actionable advice. Advice baked in. So if you enjoyed this, I recommend joining Modern Master hq as always. Another thing you could do if you don't want to join mmhq or you're just a quiet guy like me. Like when I was when I'm on Twitter, I, I lurk. I I don't like or retweet anything when I listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos. I just watch. I just consume the content, right? So if you want to break that cycle and leave a rating, you can own Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You just go in the app, you look for the star rating thing on Spotify. It's like right there. And then you leave a rating that you feel like this episode deserved. So hopefully I made some connections for you. Hopefully you build out some projects and learn according to the projects rather than just endlessly learning. And that is all I have for this beautiful Wednesday. I hope you enjoy your week and make some money.
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B
Bye.
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A
Bye.