Wake up you gotta make money

In every person’s life there comes a day when he or she realize that they have to make money. This realization taints all our future planning and it works as a paint brush that colors all our decisions. And not only our own decisions but advices from all around us come with this fact in mind. Because we know for sure, just like death, the necessity to make money for ourselves is inevitable. And at some point, or another we have to start it. The amount of money we make will determine the quality of life we get to live to some extent, the status that we get from our peers to some extent. Thus, somehow it creeps into everything a person does. When we see the adults, we realize that there are not very many of them that will not like some more money in their life. So, we start racing with everyone else to get into a better school, to get a high paying job and after we get the job we are in a race to get promotions etc. Some of us ditch that race and become entrepreneurs. There they fight even more and work for longer hours if they want to make their business successful. In all this process, we lose life. We lose the childlike explorer mentality in us.

 

The one fact we can’t avoid is death. All of us are gonna die. We are doomed to fail as an organism. It makes little sense to me to play it safe. What is safety for a life form that has yet not found any ways to avoid death? But these philosophies are not practical. The practical reality is that we live quite a long life. And in this long life, money makes all the difference. It’s something worth striving for. Money doesn’t only make our own life better, but it also makes the life of our loved ones better. It makes the life of our children better. It gives them a good platform for the future. It is then very practical and rational to chase after money.

 

But the this we got stuck on from the last century is that, we still think there are a set fields of works, set types of works that we are supposed to do to be rich. This is not true anymore. The economy is changing. The world has become a very different place than it was 10 years ago. People can make money from so many different paths that it sounds almost too good to be true! It doesn’t matter what exactly is it that you do. What matters is, how many people can you serve and how well can you serve? If you manage to serve a lot of people well, then there’s really no barrier on what you can or cannot do. Some of the youtubers are a great example of this. Take Nick Nimmin for example. He is in the business of teaching youtuber, how to do YouTube! And in this process, he has amassed almost a half of a million subscribers. Then again, he works from his own studio, and is effectively his own boss. I think this is an amazing achievement. Just search for making a chair or make a table on YouTube, and you will see how some carpenters are attracting hundreds of thousands of subscribers to their channel.

 

In the new economy, attention is the new currency. If you can capture eyeballs, you can be rich. Facebook has built a fortune by capturing people’s attention. In this new era, all you have to do, is to create a following. Yes, you may have to work 3 to 4 years unpaid and possibly alone in your own room, to amass subscribers or followers etc., but after that, there are no shortage of ways to monetize those eyeballs. You can sell directly to them, like many of the biggest social media influencers are doing. They sell merch such as T-shirts and coffee mugs etc. You can sell other types of product that you produce, like Nathaniel Drew selling Photos of his travelling in his website or Nick Nimmin selling end screens to new youtubers. Heck, you can even sell other people’s products by getting affiliate links from Amazon, Clickbank etc. I guess you have seen YouTubers linking the camera or gaming gear that they use with amazon links in the descriptions. Those are affiliate links. If you are big enough you may start landing sponsors like Squarespace, audible or G-fuel. And then there is obviously ad revenue.

 

It is a great time to be alive for the dreamers who want to rebel against the cultural norms and live unique and different lives. Take Nathaniel Drew for example, a 21-year-old photographer, who travelled different places of the world and now sells his photos on his own website. He has amassed almost 300k subscribers on YouTube and is showing no signs of stopping soon! Then there is Matt D’avella. He is a filmmaker that is on a self-improvement journey. And people donate him on ‘Patreon’ to watch him in his journey. In short, it doesn’t matter if you a love making chairs or making movies, you could love making music or maybe you want to travel the world. Do whatever you want to do, live your dream life and you can find a way to monetize that lifestyle.

 

Do we realize how lucky we are to be born in this generation? Huge systems have been built to work as our platforms for communicating with the world. Potential customers are only one viral post or one good ad campaign away. These platforms took the smartest people of our planet and millions if not billions of dollars to build. Take YouTube for example, the artificial intelligence of YouTube works day and night to bring creators to the type of audience they might connect with. This as a software would be invaluable to anyone and we get it for free. You can now reach millions of other people who might be interested on what you are saying. What other generation could boast giving such power to each individual?

 

There is very little reason now to conform, to not pursue a dream, to not go after the lifestyle you want. I’d rather argue that conforming to the existing trends of carrier choice is the wrong way to go. First, there is too much competition. If everyone is trying to be a doctor or a lawyer, it just gets so much harder to become those. Then there’s the fact that, you learn better when you are interested in the topic. It is a well-documented phenomenon. If you look for it you will even find research paper citing 152 sources that claim that learning is easier when the subject has interest in it.

 

Life is cruel. It is very hard. To succeed in any field, you will have to learn a lot, work hard and basically outwork all your competition to make a name for yourself in the industry as a newcomer. And it’s very hard to learn complex ideas or tools in large quantity, when you are not interested in the topic. And it is also very hard to work longer hours and give your best output if you are not passionate about your work. But, when you are interest in the field of work, you learn better naturally, you work more, stay longer and get the best out of you naturally. I am still not saying that the journey won’t be hard. It will be, no matter what you do. But the hardships will be more bearable. Casey Neistat starts one of his videos with the quote: If you compromise and you fail it hurts, it hurts more than failing at what you love.

 

There is another very very practical reason for pursuing your passion. This reason is illustrated in great length in the book called “The Dip”  by Seth Godin. It is exponentially more rewarding to be the top of any field than to be just average. As Seth Godin says, Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers. When You Pursue a career that is saturated, it is very hard to be the top of the hierarchy. But when you pursue unique paths, the game changes to your advantage. There are many people who play the piano for a living on YouTube. But the top guys don’t do the same things. There is Vinheteiro who does skits using his crazy keyboard skills and has got almost 4 million subscribers, then there are the people who cover popular songs as soon as they come out. The latter group of people have it hard as they have to compete with each other for each pop song that comes out. But Vinheteiro does his own thing and thus avoids competition in the first place. My point is, you don’t have to be the best piano player, just do unique fun things that you love to do, that other people may want to see too.

 

Now consider my last argument in favor of following your passion- what if you put your 100%, what if you worked as hard as Elon Musk does, if not a 100 hours a week maybe 80 hours a week, or heck, if you have school or a job to attend, maybe even 30 hours a week into one field of work. What if you stop taking breaks in the weekend? And work with focus and everything you’ve got? For 3-5 years, don’t you think you’d be making enough money from that field, to justify your efforts? If that’s not a fair price in exchange of the type of life that you want? With that thought in mind, I’d like to stop. If you enjoyed this don’t forget to like and follow.

 

How to find passion (Real story)

Physics, music, finance, cricket, teaching what do all of them have in common? At different points of my life, I thought each of them to be my Passion. Well safe to say I was wrong about all of them, as right now all I want to do is to make films for YouTube.

But I’d never have arrived at this point, if I hadn’t tried each one of the things I mentioned at the start.

When I was just starting my teen years, I loved science, specially physics. I’d read physics books, do science fairs and dream about becoming a scientist someday… but then I one day I borrowed an Mp3 player from a cousin. I instantly fell in love with music listen to music 24/7. I started to pay attention to how different composers made their songs. Soon I learned to mix songs and then to make my own music. But I was fat and got ridiculed often. So, I decided to shed some weight and started going to the school playing field more often. There I fell in love with cricket. I got admitted into a cricket coaching school and dreamt of being a cricketer someday. That didn’t last either, I fell out of love form cricket. At this time in my life, I’ve had many amazing teachers at my school. Also, people often tell me that I can explain concepts well. So, I started to think I’d be a teacher someday. But the life I wanted wouldn’t allow me that, teachers don’t make much money, at least they didn’t in those days, SO I got interested in the stock market. And eventually in finance. I got took finance and banking as my major a year later. I studied hard and won a national level championship on finance with 3 other teammates. But, something in me wanted freedom of expression. I was tired of thinking about money and profits all the time. I wanted creativity in my life. And I fell in love with films and Arts. This started with watching YouTubers like nerdwriter1 and full fat videos… then it transitioned into loving what Casey Neistat, Peter McKinnon, matt D’avella and many others like them do.

 

But were all my experiences prior to this wasted. No! not at all! My experience in music lets me edit better videos. I still play the guitar and keyboard for time passing, my experiences in finance gives me confidence that no matter what I do, I will find a way to monetize my work, my experiences in the playing field taught me how to work hard, my love for science has shaped who I am till this day and my passion for teaching has let me define my voice. The films I make, I try to explain something I think will help others.

And most of all, If I didn’t pursue all of them, I wouldn’t even know what I truly want to do.

 

People say that they find it hard to find their passion. This baffles me. How can you not know your own likes and dislikes? I mean you know what your favorite color is, what your favorite food is, who your favorite people are. etc. etc… you also know which people you don’t like, what food you’ll never eat and what tv show bores you to death. We are very good at knowing what we like and what we hate. But let’s say you still don’t know what you want to do with most of your time, that you don’t know your passion… then maybe the next set of thoughts will be helpful to you.

 

Let’s think about scenario 1, 2 and 3. In scenario 1 you fail miserably at life. Nothing you tried ever worked. You lost everything. Your friends, money, health etc. This is the worst you can do.

No think of scenario two. This is the life where everything is normal. Nothing extraordinary happened to make you an instant millionaire. on the other hand, nothing so disastrous happened that it destroyed your life. In scenario two, everything is good enough. Enough is the keyword here. Things still bugs you; you must still sacrifice and compromise when you don’t want to, but at the end of the day, you are comfortable enough. Scenario two is where most people live.

 

You probably have an idea what scenario 3 is going to be like. It’s where your dreams come true. You’ve got the house you wanted, the place you wanted to live in, the type of life partner you wanted, the amount of freedom you wanted etc.

Now think of What needs to be done, for you to move from scenario 2 to scenario 3? What professions, what ways of making money is compatible with your dream life? Make a list of such works. And now select the ones that you wouldn’t mind to do. Select the ones that sounds enticing, exiting, that sounds fun, that you could do, and you would do!

There you go! Those are a very short list of your potential passions! All you have to do is just to pick one.

 

For example, if your dream life, your scenario 3, consists of you staying at different countries to learn their culture and language and spend your time like a vagabond, then a 9-5 job, where you must show up to a specific place (office) every day is not compatible. you have to find ways to monetize your work through the internet.

You can leverage platforms like Upwork, YouTube etc. or make your own website to sell products or build a following there. You still have the flexibility to do what you like to do, I have seen Carpenters make money from YouTube, doctors to have millions following them online, filmmakers, gamers and musicians are abundant. There is no limit to what you can and cannot do if you are providing a lot of value to a lot of people. You will be compensated for your efforts.

 

So, there you go. Finding your passion doesn’t have to take more than 5 minutes. If it is taking more than 5 minutes then maybe you didn’t get my message properly. Now stop watching this video, take 5 mutes to think about what your passion is.  Another thing, if you are young, like under 30, then don’t worry too much and just give one field of work your hundred percent. It’s probably the rule number two in Jordan Petersons next book, which I can’t wait to read! The rule urges readers to give one thing hundred percent and see what happens. I would say the same. Do that, and if after 3 months down the line you feel like you are not enjoying this, then choose something else to do. But never sit idle and just daydream. Daydreaming is good only if you work 4-5 times as much as you daydream. work is gold. Work is the only thing that is between you and where you want to be. That’s all I wanted to say here.

 

 

 

 

Reading One book a day (a joke)

Been fascinated by all the storytellers of YouTube. This is an attempt to practice some of the skills I’ve been trying to learn.

Do this and everybody will Love you

I was watching Charisma on command. It’s a YouTube channel that shares tips on human interactions. Ever so often, they will do a video on a celebrity or a TV character. These are called charisma breakdowns and are super fun to watch. They have done one on Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Emilia Clarke, Joe Rogan, PewDiePie and many other people.

So, the video I was watching was about Sophie Turner. She’s the person who plays Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones. I have seen Sophie come across as a very likable person despite not being too assertive of dominant. So, I was very excited to learn about what Charlie from Charisma on command had to say about this. And sure enough, Charlie acknowledged that Sophie doesn’t come across as the most comfortable person around people. She can easily be categorized as a shy and introverted person. Yet she can capture attention, make people listen to her, make jokes, rap in a national TV all the while she is having fun and people around her are enjoying her company too!

This is something many shy and introvert people, like me, will give a kidney to learn. Ok that was an exaggeration. We don’t care that much about mingling with people. That’s why we are called introverts in the first place. But, its certainly worth to take 10 minutes out of our day to read about it.

So, if you haven’t already clicked out of the blog post to see Charlie’s video, then thanks.. I guess? Here’s what I learned from there and what are the results I am seeing.

Ok first let me warn you the video was uploaded just a few days ago, so I’ve had only 2 or 3 days to test the ideas out. The results are not statistically significant but just anecdotal evidence.

Ok enough of me ranting on a tangent, here’s the lesson I’ve personally found most insightful from the video. People like underdogs. If you are a shy and introverted person, then this is the card that you may want to play. Nobody expects you to put an effort into social gatherings, nobody expects you to speak up at little discomforts but if you do, you become an underdog, who’s fighting for what he believes in. You are David from the Goliath story.

Just being shy and intimidated is not sexy. Its not inspiring or interesting. Sometimes its annoying, most of the time it’s just invisible. I mean shy and intimidated people are. But, the moment you try, you are the hero who is trying to fight against an adversity. You are the person who is rejecting what fate has given him and trying to claim what he deserves. Ok sorry for being too dramatic. I know the world doesn’t see my personal struggle with my shyness as the great fight of the century. But, it’s admirable. Not just my fight, but everyone’s fight. Whenever a person, who is intimidated, still makes an effort to say hello and smiles, instead of burying his face into a book or a smartphone, the world acknowledges that, and admires and loves him for that.

Ok, so my experience supports all this I said above. Actually, all of this is my experience, Charlie never goes into these details about the topic. He talks about many other things. Most of what you just read comes from my own experience.

So, there you go. Had to share this with you because I think its awesome. There’s one more post I am planning to write and it’s about active listening. So, stay tuned for that, I guess. See you in the next one 🙂

How I lost 24 pounds in 60 days (Keto Diet)

22nd March of 2018 was my 23rd birthday. I weighed 180 pounds and was slightly overweight in the BMI scale. I looked fat too. Despite all that, I didn’t care. Then I got rejected by someone very special. Heartbroken as I was, I decided to better myself. That included my physical condition. I became interested in Ketogenic Diet. The whole concept sounded fascinating to me. I didn’t like rice and bread anyways. So I was happy to ditch carbohydrate altogether and live off of protein and fat.

For those who don’t know what ketogenic diet is, it’s where you keep your daily carbohydrate intake to a minimum (less than 20g). This induces body to seek alternative fuel and thus burns the fats stored in your body. Hence, the weight loss…

I started to eat fish, chicken, eggs, butter, mayo for protein and fat. With them I often ate Kale and Cauliflowers. The breakfasts were really boring. The hardest part was to find proper food in my University cafeteria. I struggled but I carried on. I had to give up snacks and all kinds of sugary things. Instead of cola I drank mineral water.

The results were drastic. I found both physical and mental benefits. On the physical side, I lost 3-4 pounds every week. My body felt lighter and I was less lethargic. My sleep cycle was better and I woke up early in the morning with no sleepiness. I enjoyed this benefit the most. Usually it takes me a lot of time to truly wake up. But, when on ketosis, I seemed to wake up instantly.

On the mental side I felt fresh and focused. I don’t know how much of all this was placebo so don’t quote me on the benefits. But as far as I know, some benefits of the ketogenic diet are well documented, specially the weight loss part. If you are interested in this for weight loss, I’d say go ahead, but do your research first. If you have some health condition you definitely should seek expert advice. Another good alternative to ketogenic diet is intermittent fasting. It is well documented too. Still, seek expert advice before trying any diet.