Being "Unemployable" Is The Fastest Way To Build Wealth
Turn your passions into a profitable business
I was a shitty employee.
I’d go on long breaks. Submit my work last minute. If someone asks me to do something for them, I'll act like I don't know what I'm doing and ask them so many questions to the point where they'll do it themselves.
Because once I realized that I everyone around me was miserable and mindless and didn't want to think for themselves, I knew that having a job won't allow me to live the kind of life I want.
My colleagues would do tasks in an inefficient way, make things harder for no reason, and when I showed them a way of doing something easier and faster, they didn't want to do it.
Their reason?
"This is how we always did things".
So then I spent all my time figuring out how to cheat the system so I could skip out on work.
And oh boy, did I find a method.
I would take a stack of papers and put them on my desk, the first paper would have all kind of sketches about work, buzzwords, and whenever I got up from my desk, I'd take a couple of papers and walk around the floor really fast and always look pissed.
Because once I learned how to cheat the system, it didn't make sense to work so hard.
My promotions are fixed. My salary won’t go up by much. And when they do want to give me a higher pay, they’ll add more responsibility to my plate and make me work more to make someone else rich.
So it was smarter for me to “be lazy” at work and spend all my time in the office going through a course I bought and reading a book that was slowly programming my mind to perceive new opportunities.
After just a couple of months of doing this and building a new perspective from which I can view the world and started to notice how the world of doing business is changing…
Before we dive in…
Fonder tickets for the Creator Economy Convention are live now.
Speakers like Dan Koe, Kieran Drew, Taylin Simmonds, and Hussain Ibarra are gonna be there.
So if you want to network, future-proof yourself, and learn the skills to turn your passion into profit…
40 tickets are available.
The Business Model for Creating Your Own Monopoly
The internet enables 8 billion monopolies. — Naval Ravikant
I always wanted to have my own business.
At 16, I taught myself data science, hoping I could freelance and work as a consultant for major tech companies.
But after learning data science and knowing how hard it was, I quit.
At 19, I wanted to start a social media marketing agency.
I took a course that was ~100 hours long and had everything covered. From finding clients, to drafting legal contracts, to funnels, to hiring and managing employees. But I hated doing outreach and hated the idea of having to manage 10 different employees.
I love my freedom too much to build myself a golden prison.
At 20, I tried to learn SEO but then gave up because it seemed like a lot of tedious work.
At 21, I discovered a new business model. One that didn't require you to do cold outreach, sales calls, or manage a team of employees. That model was the one-person business model.
It was a wake-up call for me. It's the perfect model. You turn yourself into a brand. You don't need to be an expert or have major accomplishments. All you needed was an idea you believe in and the drive to make it real. The only way for this business to fail is if you stop trying to improve your life.
Humans are meant to be creative.
Every human invention, agriculture, plow, steam engine, internet, and AI all have the same fundamental goal: To move humanity out of manual labor and do more creative tasks.
When you're in creative flow, time moves differently, work feels effortless, ideas start to connect, and the lines between your personal, professional, and romantic life all become a blur. When you create, you experience and perceive information differently. Your nervous system and midbrain are activated. New neural pathways are created, signaling your brain that you're on the right track and to do more of it. When you're in creative flow, that's when you're happiest, most driven, and ambitious.
Through consciousness, attention, and focus, you have the ability to think, create, build, and make.
Isn't this mind-blowing?
You can form a mental image in your head, a vision, and with the right skills, tools, and AI, you can bring your vision into reality. You get to bring immaterial and abstract ideas into the world either in the physical world or the digital world (internet).
Anyone who understands that consciousness is the same for all humans understands that solving local problems (your problems) is the same as solving global problems (problems other people have). Because problems are systematic, not personal. That means everyone has the same fundamental problems (just with a different front), so anyone can identify a problem in their lives, solve it, and by extension, you now have a product or service that you can offer to people in exchange for money, status, food, or whatever you want.
The problem?
People are holding themselves back from creating the life they want because of limiting beliefs, social programming, and a lack of self-belief.
We've been conditioned by society to always rely on other people. To never take matters into our own hands. We were graded based on our performance and obedience in school. We followed our parents because "your parents are always right," so we adopted their beliefs, mindset, and worldview without any questions.
The solution?
Agency, self-independence, self-reliance, personal accountability, self-education, self-interest, self-awareness, a set of values, beliefs, goals, and priorities that you can work towards, learn lessons from, and pass your experiences to others (and help humanity advance as a species).
That's what my entire brand, The Profitable Micro Business, is all about.
Your brand (which is how people perceive you) is the vision you're trying to bring into reality. The vision encompasses a lifestyle, identity, and practices that your reader can adopt. It is the big goal and reason why people follow you. Your brand is your worldview of reality. What vision are you leading people towards?
Your content (the way people are exposed to your ideas and brand) is created from the problems, benefits, limiting beliefs, lessons, insights, interests, skills you're learning, and stories that you experienced in your life while you're trying to bring your vision into life. Your goal is to educate, entertain and inspire people to start pursuing and achieving the vision. People follow leaders.
Your offer (getting paid for improving your life in exchange for giving value) is your unique experiences packaged in a repeatable system that solves people's problems and gives them the tools needed to bring the vision into reality. Your offer can be in the form of a service, consulting, or a digital product where your readers can do it themselves.
You are the business, the ideal customer, and the product at the same time.
When you turn yourself into a business, no one can compete with you. Because no one has the same exact experiences, upbringing, perspective, skills, ideas, and beliefs as you do.
Your goal as a creator is to expose yourself to ideas, beliefs and learn from every domain of life so that you don't become one-dimensional in life.
By sharing your experiences and system with your followers, you help them accelerate their learning which solves their problems and by extension, you're helping the human race advance as a specie.
I like to believe that social media was created for this goal — advancing human civilization. It connected us together, decentralized education and gave everyone the chance to go on social, build an audience, create amazing products, market them, and make a profit.
How To Start A Micro Business
Today, you can start a one-person company that will be more than $1 billion. — Sam Altman
Everyone is an entrepreneur.
If you solved a problem in your life before, you are more than qualified to start a business.
Most people are sitting on a goldmine of experiences, information, and skills but they don't fail to recognize the value in their years they have been alive thus far.
With AI, no-code tools, and social media, anyone can now start posting valuable content online, attract people to their brand, and turn a small percentage of them into paying customers.
So here's what you need to do to start a profitable micro business.
The next part is very actionable. Get a pen and a notebook and do the exercises. It'll be worth it.
Turn your life into a brand
Like I said before, your goal is to lead people towards a vision.
Think big picture here.
Where are you leading people towards? What is the set of values, beliefs, and ideas do people need to adopt to achieve their vision?
More importantly, what are your beliefs, worldviews, values, and goals you want to achieve in your life?
This will give you (and your readers) a goal to always chase after. And to achieve any goal, you need a set of practices to do every day.
If a guy is trying to put on muscle, he won't do it by sitting in his room all day and eating junk food. He'll need to go to the gym, lift weights, eat proper nutrition, and, with time, progressively increase the challenge. The same thing applies to your brand. No one achieves their goal by accident. There is a set of practices that you need to do every day to bring your vision into reality.
Now, the next part you need to answer is:
Why are you doing it? Why are you trying to bring your vision into life?
This will help you understand the benefits (and by contrast, the problems people have) of achieving your goal.
Now you have a goal, a set of practices for people to apply in their lives, and why they should do it. All that is left to do is talk about any idea that helps you and your reader to reach your goal.
This is your entire brand mapped out in a single piece of paper.
If my ultimate goal is to be calm and at peace with myself because I know being in survival mode just leads to burnout, anxiety, chronic health problems, and how it impacts every aspect of my life, from my personal, professional, and romantic life. Then I need a practice that I can do daily to become calm and at self-peace, this can be done through meditation, journaling, yoga, etc.
That is your entire brand.
Looks simple, right?
Because it is. The problem is most people are too caught up with the technicality of business that they miss the fundamentals.
You have a vision: Getting out of survival mode and healing yourself.
You have a mechanism and a practice that people can adopt: Journaling
You have your audience: People who struggle are burnt out, anxious, depressed, have chronic health problems, and anyone who is stuck in survival mode
The benefit: You feel calm, happy, at peace with yourself, you no longer feel the need to always please others, you take care of yourself, and it takes less than 5 minutes to do. etc.
You don't need to have your entire brand figured out right now. I still do this brand exercise every 2-3 months for myself. Because the longer I write, my ideas change, my beliefs change, and my worldviews change, and so by extension, my brand changes.
Your vision will become clearer as you keep writing about it and walking down that path.
Build Your Most Profitable Asset
"Nobody checks their emails anymore."
That's what everybody who doesn't understand how powerful emails are says.
I have a small email list of 2,300 readers and in the past 6 months, it made me $24,000+.
I didn't do sales calls. I didn't.
So no, email isn't dead. If anything, email is even more in demand because of AI-generated content. Your readers are craving the human element. Newsletters are a lot more personal and intimate. You get to talk about your stories, ideas you enjoy, and share a lesson that helps other people. You aren't fighting against an algorithm.
Because of the For You Page, your social media following doesn't matter as much anymore. You are constantly shown new creators that you never followed or even interacted with.
Build your email list, go deep with your ideas. Writing long-form newsletters will expose you to the blind spots you had. You'll notice the gaps that are in your vision. You'll notice how a lot of your beliefs weren't actually yours to begin with and that you'll need to let go of self-limiting beliefs.
Newsletters will challenge you to expand on your idea, add depth to it, and create a persuasive argument of why people should believe in your vision.
Newsletters are the key to building trust, authority, and getting customers for your brand without having to spend hundreds of hours doing cold outreach or sales calls.
But to build your newsletter, you need to funnel people to it.
The #1 skill you need to learn to make it all work
The problem most people make is they don't know how to grow their newsletters.
They write weekly and sometimes daily newsletters but they only have 13 readers and then wonder why no one is buying from them.
You don't have an offer problem. You have a traffic problem.
The problem with newsletters is they don't have a built-in growth mechanism. So if you don't know how to grow your newsletter, you'll be a starving artist. You won't monetize your passions, you won't get paid doing what you love, and you'll have a lot of spin but no results (no sales, no growth, no audience).
So if you want to build a profitable one-person business, you need to know the most powerful and fundamental skill: capturing attention.
And to capture attention, you need to go where attention flows, social media. More than 5.56 billion people are on social media, to think that you're "above" social media is stupid.
How did you discover your favorite creator? Through social media.
How did you discover your favorite podcast? Through social media.
How did you discover your favorite writer? Probably seeing someone recommend a book on social media.
Social media is where people can discover your brand.
The problem is most people just want to write about their "deep thoughts" without understanding what makes people want to read their content. They are so blindsided by the fairytale they're living that they don't understand that nobody wants to see, read, or share their content. Then they start to get mad at the world and say, "people don't see the value in me", "to get attention, you need to do silly dances on TikTok", then they quit.
If you want to gain an audience, you need to learn how to play the attention game and play it well.
You need to know how to capture their attention, make it worth their while, and also feel compelled to share your content with their family, friends, or audiences. That is what social media is all about. It's getting people to share your content. And unlike what most people think, you don't need to be controversial to gain attention. You can gain attention and be helpful.
How to capture attention:
Find an idea, any idea
See how your idea relates to your vision
See how your idea helps someone improve their life
Talk about
You can make it fancier if you want, but the fundamentals are the same.
This is why I'm a huge fan of taking notes. I almost always take notes whenever I'm reading a book, a newsletter, or even tweets. Ideas are everywhere, you just need to be aware to identify them and capture them.
If you don't have a note-taking system, you can give mine a try.
Once you have your idea, use basic copywriting frameworks to make your ideas stick.
At this stage, you're still a beginner. You don't need to try to be original. It doesn't matter how "authentic" you think it is to just word-vomit your idea and post about it. It won't do well. The desire of beginners to be so different and original is the reason why they're struggling to find any meaningful success with their writing.
Use PAS, AIDA, and PASTOR. These are the most beginner-friendly frameworks to use (I still use these frameworks for my writing).
As you write on social media, some posts will perform better than others. Those outliers, the ones that do exceptionally well for you, save them in a folder, try to figure out what made them work, what was the idea? The structure? The problem?
Then do more of that. Experiment more. Once you find something that works, keep doing it.
Every day, under your best-performing post, put a call-to-action to your newsletter. People won't join unless you tell them to.
That's all for today.
Thank you for reading and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
-Hussain
P.S.
What problems are you currently struggling with?
Social media growth?
Email list growth?
Writing newsletters?
Signing clients?
Or something else entirely?
Leave a comment and I’ll get back to you with suggestions.
Nice one, listened to this on my morning walk.
Made some good points. I like how you simplified the brand concept. Will run through that exercise.
And this one too 😅 actually your posts are real treasures 🌻