“The eager-beaver employee expends extra effort to make a mark but soon learns that it doesn’t scale.” — Seth Godin
My palms were sweaty. I hoped my coworkers wouldn’t see my sweaty armpits.
I stared at the door down the hall, for the 40th time that morning. My boss’ door.
The door of the person who was about to give me a raise!
…I hoped.
I’d been preparing for weeks. No, months — I knew I had to have undeniable evidence months in advance for why I deserved a raise. I’d been carefully, meticulously grooming all my metrics and numbers for this fateful day.
The top of the hour came. Outwardly cool but inwardly swallowing my heart that was attempting to leap into my throat, I knocked on my boss’ door.
20 minutes later, I came out.
Defeated.
She hadn’t given me a raise. I wasn’t asking for much — I had asked for a 5% raise, realistically expecting 3%. But I wasn’t given anything, not even a measly 1%.
Maybe next fiscal quarter, she’d said. Your annual raise is coming up, let’s wait for that.
I was angry. I’d spent months preparing for this. I knew I deserved it.
Dammit.
That was about five years ago. Since then, I’ve created a six-figure online business where I work 100 percent from home for myself. The other day, I made $3,000 in one afternoon.
I’ve learned a lot about money. But one of the most surprising lessons was this:
It’s easier to 10x your income than it is to double it.
How to Start Earning 10x More Money in the Next 30 Days
If you want a 1% raise at your job, you might be able to get it.
But if you want a 100%, or even a 1000% raise, you’re going to have to retool your entire mindset altogether.
I’ve seen my money increase by literally 1000%, and it wasn’t at my old corporate job. It was with my personal business where I helped real people with real problems, which is one of the best ways there is to make money.
See, I’d been writing for 7 years. The first 4.5 years, I only made $40 total.
But in year 5, everything changed. After some key mindset shifts, my entire business (and life) changed. My readers and opportunities spiked; I made $4,500 dollars in one month. Better yet, it was consistent, from month to month. I was seeing 10x, 100x, even 1000x increases across the board.
It’s possible to make this kind of money. But if you want to make 10x more by next month…
You need to start charging 10x more for your services.
And if you’re charging 10x more for your services, you better be able to back that up. Which forces an important ultimatum on yourself — get better, or go broke.
And that changes everything.
It can change your life. It can change your family’s life. I’m not being cute about that — I’m dead serious. It changed my family’s life.
See, making a few extra hundred bucks probably won’t change that much in your life.
…But making a few extra thousand dollars? That’s real money. For many of us, that’s total life-changing money.
Again, this is almost certainly not going to happen at your day job. Even if you work for months, there’s no guarantee you’ll even get a 1% increase in pay. No, you need to charge money for your personal services, and learn how to sell your knowledge and expertise.
Trying to get a small raise, even a bigger raise, is a loser’s game in the traditional model. Your boss probably won’t give it to you, nor will your boss’ boss. If they do, it’ll be for 5% at most, and you better keep your mouth shut and fall in line for a long time before even thinking about asking for more money.
In his book Choose Yourself, James Altucher joked that deep down, your boss hates you and wants to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of you while paying you the least amount.
It’s cynical, and not every boss hates their employees. But the truth is, the traditional business model simply doesn’t allow you to make huge increases in wealth. You can try for years, and the best you can hope for is maybe getting a huge promotion (rare) with a huge pay raise (not guaranteed).
Instead, choose yourself. Charge 10x more for your services, then find customers willing to buy.
It’s not easy. Many people fail every day.
But I wake up every day with the electric thrill that today, maybe I might earn $5,000. It’s totally possible. It’s happened before.
There is absolutely no chance than a regular employee can make that money in a traditional income model. You need to go beyond that model, and choose yourself.
The Old-School Model of Patient Waiting Doesn’t Work Anymore — You Can Go As Fast As You Want.
In his book The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin described the different speeches he’d give high school graduates across the 20th century.
If he were giving the commencement speech in 1920:
“Congratulations, men! You have made it through school, and now it’s time to go to work. Stick with it; keep your head down and your nose to the grindstone. You will make more money than your parents ever did eking out a living growing corn.”
If it were 15–20 years later, his speech would be different:
“Boys and girls, the future is here, and it’s called college…go to college and broaden your mind, learn to manage, to organize, to become a middle manager.”
Godin keeps giving slightly different commencement speeches, because each era allows more and more possibility for society.
In today’s era, everything is possible. If you have WiFi and a decent laptop, you can do whatever you want, and make money in countless ways. You don’t need permission from gatekeepers, fancy certifications, or even a college degree. If you can help people get from point A to point B, they’ll pay you.
The old-school model your parents lived in doesn’t work anymore. It’s constraints are outdated and broken; they don’t apply more.
You don’t have to wait to be chosen — choose yourself, then go as fast as you want. Effort doesn’t scale in day jobs; you can work 10x harder and you’ll get the same as the guy who barely worked at all.
But if you work 10x harder for yourself, you can get 10x the income. Maybe even 100x.
Years ago, I told some older family members from my parents’ generation that I was thinking of quitting my job to be a life coach. Their response? Doubt and discouragement. Are you sure? That’s pretty risky. Why don’t you stay at your job with benefits?
Probably the same advice they heard for decades.
A little while later, I cobbled together a little sales page offering $100/hour coaching calls.
In three months, I had nearly 40 clients.
In his book The Pocket Guide to Action, Kyle Eschenroeder stated simply: “With the lowered cost of trying things, it means the value of listening to doubters is at an historic low. They don’t know what’s possible.”
In Conclusion
The old-school restraints don’t work anymore. These fences broke long ago. You don’t have to follow the old rules, rules that dominated your parents’ generation. Things like:
- You can’t make more than $60,000/year until you’re 50
- You can’t retire early.
- You can’t start a company unless you have millions of dollars in funding.
- You can’t work from home as your own boss.
Anything is possible. With enough hard work, you can literally make thousands of dollars before breakfast.
Stop playing by the old rules. It’s easier to 10x your income than it is to double it. Choose yourself, and go as fast as you want.
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