Focusing on the Right Thing Will Change Your Life

If you are currently investing, or chasing investments, you are wasting your time. I know this is pretty much the polar opposite every finance guy is recommending. I can even hear crypto influencers furiously type "BUY THE DIP" or "MY GOD I'S PUMPING!" on Twitter, but trust me when I say the following: focusing on the right thing WILL change your life.

(t won't be pumping for much longer anyway 😉)

If you are reading this, you are probably aiming for financial freedom, and there is a good chance that you are into high volatility stocks and/or cryptocurrencies. The reason you're not where you want to be yet is that your objectives are not in the right order. I'll take another guess and say that you are probably looking for the next coin that will 100x your portfolio, or aimlessly dollar-cost-averaging your biweekly paycheck on Bitcoin and Ethereum, hoping that they, one day, return to their all-time highs.

Buying assets is not the move right now, especially if you don't have a sufficiently good income. Your focus should be elsewhere. Specifically, you want to build skills and multiply your income a few folds over. This way, you'll have an even greater return when the time is right to buy assets. Your time is precious, and you should use it wisely.

Well, dear friends, let me show you how a simple shift in current objectives can change your life.It Costs You Money to Do the Wrong Thing

It Costs You Money to Do the Wrong Thing

There is this thing in finance called the "opportunity cost". Basically, the hidden fee of not doing something. For example, if you save your money instead of investing it, you're technically not losing any money, but you are losing on the potential gain that investment can yield. If the stock market averages a return of 10% per year, and you have $10,000 sitting in the bank doing nothing, not investing costs you $1000 per year.

In fact, it is even worse than you think! Because right now, your investments may be yielding you positive returns, but you may actually be missing out on even more money!

So people who are in the markets and are trying to make it through studying cryptocurrencies or investing in general are often blinded by the returns they make. And often time, this feeds the greed and prevents them from actually making it out of their current unfavorable situation.

"Investing will not make you less poor". I will repeat it as often as I need to. Until you understand this concept, you will have a very hard time becoming financially free early. There is a better way to do things: focusing on increasing your base income by building skills and/or a business.

DISCLAIMER: You should still practice the habit of putting money to the side regularly, or investing on very low-risk assets. This way you don't find
it difficult to pay yourself first when the time is right.

Bob the Builder

Building is all you should be obsessed with in the coming months. Understand one thing: at the stage you currently are, increasing your skills will yield a larger return than any investment you can make. The median American income is around $4,500 per month. With expenses, that does not leave a lot of capital to invest.

Let's be generous, and say you managed to save $2,000 per month. Let's take the famous 8% S&P 500 annual return and do some math. Even with our generous estimates, you would only make a $1,480.85 profit after a year. Let's even say you make 30% in a year (astonishing returns!), the actual monetary returns would only be $6,005.33. Now, that is pretty good, but you are leaving so much money on the table. Now, let's say you are taking the smarter alternative: learning new skills and increasing your income.

The results are not going to be immediate. Unlike investing, when you are sometimes directly exposed to profits, it is going to take time before you actually see any real benefits. You may spend a year or two building a set of skills or a business that will elevate your income. Let's look at a realistic example:

You spend two years and a few thousands dollars on educating yourself. Well, technically, if you're expecting returns from that, I wouldn't really call that spending, but investing. Two years later, now that you have skills that are worth more, you will be able to charge people more for your time or for your services. Your income has now risen to $9,000 per month! And that still has the potential to increase, through a proper business entity for example.

You now have a lot more capital to invest, so let's run the numbers! Let's assume that your lifestyle does not inflate with your income (and it shouldn't), you are now capable of investing $6,500 per month! Let's compare the two on a five-year investment period, at an 8% rate of return:

The above table shows the ending balance of the investment account after each year. The builder does not invest a single thing in the first two years. This is an unlikely scenario since I don't think any education will cost you anything near $2,000 per month, but let's leave it at that. This comparison doesn't account for the growth in income the builder will still see over the years. He is likely to continue to grow and potentially earn tens of thousands more, which would really print a huge difference in the returns.

The point of this article is simply to illustrate the power of focusing on the right thing at the right time. In my opinion, it simply does not make sense to start investing when you can still increase your income relatively easily. Of course, at some point, it is going to become more challenging to increase your income further by investing in yourself. Education can only get you so far. This is the reason I stopped the increase at 2 years. Growth from $9,000 to $30,000 per month would not revolve around education as much. Other factors are at play at that level.

What Should You Build?

Alright let's move to the serious part now. Unfortunately, this is where most people stop. They never tell you either what to do, or what they themselves are doing. I'll provide concrete strategies for readers to increase their income.

I can only speak from experience, so all the things listed below are things I either previously did, or things I am currently working on.

Building a Cash-Flow Business.

This is definitely one of my favorite options, but I people often mislabel it as the "best" or the "only" option out there. Yes, I do believe that it is the best in terms of exponential growth potential and income generation capabilities for the average investor, but it is also the hardest one to get start and maintain for the average person.

Listen, you will not get to six figures easily running a business, but it has the advantage of taking you way beyond that milestone. Take that into consideration if this is what you want to pursue.

Here are the simple steps:

1. Identify a key interest (industry).
2. Identify a problem within that industry.
3. Forge a solution.
4. Create a good offer.
5. Get leads.
6. Sell the leads on the solution.
7. Repeat step 5 and 6.

All those steps can be easily Googled if you need help. Lots of smart people dedicated their lifetimes to each individual points and wrote down what they know in books.

For example, I trade the financial markets. They key problem people have in the industry is that they give-up too early, and they spend way too much time looking for information instead of applying the knowledge they already know.

That's why I decided to create a coaching business centered around those two points. I give people all the information they need, and I follow them for the entirety of their trading journey (around 18 months). This way, they don't waste time on random twitter threads, and them being mentored every week reduces the chances of them giving up.

The same principles apply for all cash-flow businesses.

Learn In-Demand Skills

There are a lot of opportunities nowadays. Everyone is looking for talent in specific fields. The goal is to learn those in-demand skills and sell them, either as a contractor, or by getting a high-paying salaried job.

Here is a short list of skills you can learn online in two years and will
increase your current income:

• Data analysis.
• Machine Learning.
• Cybersecurity.
• Cloud Computing.
• Web Development.
• Blockchain Development.
• High-ticket sales.
• Digital Marketing.
• Many others... (again google is your friend)

Those are only a few. THE CHOICE IS YOURS! So pick anyone of these and pursue that path for a couple of years. Just do it. Don't procrastinate. It is that simple. All of those pay extremely well, and can easily add $5,000+ to your monthly income. What's amazing is that you can teach yourself all of those.

Simply Google: "Best [enter subject] course online, honest review". There are going to be a few competing against each other, so just spend an hour looking into each of them and choose the one that suits you the best.

You don't even need to wait the full two years to start selling your services.Let's take the machine learning example. Many implementations of AI only require fundamental comprehension of the subject. Not everyone needs a super complicated AI. Most will benefit from a simple algorithm. If you can achieve that level of competence within 3 to 4 months, you can start a "basic AI service". You can be hired by a company to design and maintain an AI solution for them. It's very straight forward if you want it enough. Just stop making excuses.

Learn how to Trade

Of course I am going to be biased here. Trading has been my favorite method for increasing my income. The return is in theory uncapped, and you don't need to do more to earn more. It is scalable with time!

However, note that it is by far the hardest on the list. There is a reason why trading has such a high abandon-rate. It is hard. However, if you stick to it, you can truly turn your life around. Which is what happened for me.

If you're interested in this subject (assuming you're not a trader already), I've written a detailed log on the best way to learn how to trade. You can read that here.

What I Am Currently Doing

I a man that puts his money where his word is. I am currently on a mission to raise my income in the anticipation of the next bull market. Here is a breakdown of all the things I am doing or working on:

1. Trading.
2. Building an in-crypto business (more on that in a later log).
3. Building a cash-flow business:

• Coaching Services for Traders.
• Private Community (working on it 🛠️)
• Market Analysis Service (working on it 🛠️)

1. Learning in-demand skills:

• Web Development.
• Blockchain Technology.
• Sales.

The skills I am learning are to fuel my own businesses. But I could very well
sell them as a service.

Notice that I have a lot of stuff going on. This may not be the best way to do things if you want to accumulate the most money quickly. I have nothing else to do all day, I love learning new things, and I am 20 years old, so I don't really have any real responsibilities yet. This might not be the case for everyone reading, so pick one of the things I mentioned in this article and start now.

It Is Your Financial Journey

Alright I've said enough. I hate redundant conclusion that simply reiterates over what was already said, so I'll end with the following:

It is YOUR financial journey. You should tailor your path to your own circumstances. There is no objective best choice. But the important thing is to make a choice. There isn't a situation where it is acceptable to do nothing.

end.

If you're serious about increasing your income potential, I can turn you into a profitable trader in only a few months! Click here to apply to my special coaching program!