(Also Part One of an Untitled Book I’m Writing)
Yesterday I promised an article about “making unlimited money” which, looking back, is a bit ambitious. However, rather than complain, I’m going to deliver. As I’ve mentioned a few times before during this run of daily posts, my approach to business has changed a lot in the years since I started the blog.
Namely, the focus has shifted from writing freelance words for other people, to making business systems for other people with words, to making business systems for my words for myself. And I realise now that this is just the start.
#1: Applied Financial Knowledge
The set of algorithmic lines we call “money” and “the economy” seem like magic rather than science, and in all honesty, I believe that those egregores have run away from humanity in an, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” kind of way.
Like astrologer high-priests of old though, we can make some sense of the mystic rhythms that are going on and make decisions based on likely patterns.
For the purposes of the topic at hand, there are a few things to consider:
- “Money” is supposed to be a token that represents value in the sense that you do work and get paid for it. It’s energy in the form of coins, notes and digitally represented numbers
- Naturally, the asymmetrical win is to shift the ratio or, better yet, decouple entirely the energy you spend with the energy you get from it.
- As with a lot of things at this stage of the timeline, it’s important to remember that all of this is a deck of cards based on perception more than reality
So, we’ll explain that last point later, but for the first two points, there are a few implications to bear in mind:
- Wealth is separate from Money can buy you wealth, but it isn’t wealth. More on this elsewhere
- The real “trick” of the modern economy is that capital can work harder than you can. As in, you, a biological being, have so much time, energy and effort at your disposal, whereas a number in a magical digital ledger just rolls around gathering moss and more money forever, requiring no energy.
These basic concepts, combined with financial best practice, and some magic material we’ll discuss in the next section, are not only stuff to mull over endlessly, but give you a working plan moving forward.
#2: Income Generating Assets (And Associated Black Magic)
It seems trite in 2024 to tell people to create digital assets that create passive income streams. Like, “Jamie, it’s not 2014 we all know how to write ebooks and put them on Gumroad.”
Now, despite it being 2024, that is a good idea anyway. You read the above section of this post, and you realise that it’s a good way to shift the effort-energy ratio in your favour. But that’s your primary school version, and the post-graduate degree beckons you on.
A couple of years back, I found a publishing mentor. In throwaway comments, I put together far more advanced pieces. Here’s an example:
- You create a book and get passive income as it makes sales (basic)
- You also, unwittingly, create an asset value for that item that gives it tangible value in the present but also potential future value in the present as well
- The more forms of the asset you create, the more of both values these forms hold; the IP for a book is the IP that can be a later adaptation
- The value of the IP is a real, tangible thing that can be used like any other financial asset
All of this is Black Magic. Please refer to the theory section above. Ultimately though, you write ebooks but because they can also be something else and then you can mortgage against them, your “passive income stream, bro” actually becomes something far more significant.
And the more correctly-directed energy you feed the egregores that are your IP, the more magical money numbers you conjure out of thin air.
#3: Exponential Growth Curve
In the theory section above, I wrote that Capital, or money, can work harder than you can. At the beginning, and for most people, forever, this is a painful pill to swallow once you understand the implications.
Capital accrues, and if you don’t have much of it, then you are on the losing side of the rich get rich, poor get poorer equation.
So the beginning of this journey is the toughest, and as part of our idea about energy expenditure; you have to expend more energy than you get back. You have to be smart about what you put in, smarter about what you do with what you get out.
However… past a certain point, if you play the game correctly, you get the opportunity to take the money you make from one money-making asset and then use it to acquire further money-making assets. This creates an exponential curve and you’re finally on the right side of the same equation I mentioned above.
To continue our hypothetical from above; you write a book that contains IP that you license off to licensees and with the asset value you get from that, you can secure debt and/or purchase assets which generate revenue or expand your operations into new media, and with the profits from that you invest in stocks, savings accounts, bonds, and other assets which add more money to the pot.
And before you know it, unlimited money glitch occurs.
Final Preliminary Thoughts
This topic is obviously quite expansive. Good job that this is something we’re going to expand on. The basic principles are all here though, and either here, or in The Vault, or even elsewhere, we’ll be going into detail in how to do all of this, and where it all fits for you, various readers, with your various goals and skills and living situations.
This is all part of the knot-untying I’ve been going though. I couldn’t reconcile the Black Hat Life Hacks stuff with the online business stuff with the writer stuff with the weird-experiments-LARPs-as-a-pirate-sorcerer guy.
Ultimately though, the above is the financial part of the manifesto.
I’ll see you in the next one. We have a lot of work to do.