Pro tip: Every time you're wondering if quitting your 9-5 was worth it, go to a Marriott, order a burnt Pike Place from the Starbucks in the lobby, and watch the corporate guys choke down parfaits in constricting collars at 7:17 AM. Panacea.

They're telling me I can get paid for this.

The answer to this is very simple. Just: • Quit your job • Find a work-stay program that pays room and board • Work part time for the program • Build your thing in your downtime I did this at a coffee farm in Hawaii and it worked like a charm. Led farm tours for 28 hours a week, got my two biggest expenses taken care of, got to live in Hawaii, got to build with low stress.

Funniest part is this is actually good advice. All-time highs historically lead to all-time highs. (Yes, time horizons. I know.)

Yo @LinkedInHelp — I've been running into constant issues recently, including posts being suppressed, issues leaving comments, and now users telling me my account does not display when they try to access it. Can you please assist asap?

Content creator “thought leader” sellouts are 100x funnier than music or art sellouts. At least in art or music, there is a layer of abstraction between your output and your Self. But for their “thought leader” guys, their product IS their thinking. At a certain point, you get big enough that it makes more sense to post drivel that only appeals to people who fill their bookshelves with rocks. It’s more broadly appealing. Probably makes you money. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. I get that. But imagine reviewing this tweet from your ghostwriter and going, “Yeah, that’s hard-hitting. That makes good points. I want my face attached to it. Post away!” Secure the bag, surrender your pride.

I built an AI coaching tool for financial advisors’ LinkedIn posts. $0-> $4,700 MRR with 117 users in 8 weeks. It’s built on a year’s worth of real coaching I gave my advisor clients. I… do not beat around the bush when I edit posts. The No. 1 piece of user feedback: “This thing hurts my feelings. It’s brutal. Please don’t change it.” Mean AI is a legit business model.

Over the last 4 years, I've had a dozen friends ask me how to start their own thing. None of them have taken action. I don't like to write a lot of "rah-rah-quit-your-job" stuff because I'm always nervous that my survivorship bias makes me blind to what actually qualifies as good advice. But after talking to two more brilliant friends last week — people who could mop the floor with their bosses — and walking away from those conversations knowing they won't do a damn thing about it — I think my mindset is permanently changed on this. If you have a marketable skill and nothing truly keeping you in place — it is not difficult to build a better, more lucrative, more fulfilling career than your 9-5. Because 99.9% of the world just talks. The saddest part is that most people who think they are capable of entrepreneurship are wrong. It's classic Dunning-Kruger. The less likely you are to succeed, the more confident you are. And on the flip side, the people who actually *could* pull this off are the ones who talk themselves out of it. They assume everyone is at their level — of intelligence, of work ethic, of competence — so they stay put. In 2022, I torched a six-year finance career and voluntarily razed my income to $0. I can sit here and tell you: Your competition is lazy, you are being hamstrung by bureaucracy in your current role, and no one in an office job actually works hard. You give like 80% effort for 65% of the day. When you work on your own thing, you give 100% of what you have available for 100% of the day. You can accomplish more in a single day of self-employment than you could in a week of W2 employment. The actual execution is easy. It requires a lot of hours, but it's easy. The hardest part is simply picking what you're going to do, and sitting down for 7 days in a row to make progress on it. Anyone can sit down and spin up a half-baked Google Doc when they're excited about an idea on Day 1. But what about Day 2 when you realize your idea has been done already? What about Day 3 when you realize you know nothing about LLC filing? What about Day 4 when you realize you don't know how to generate traffic? These problems can all be solved through a little bit of effort. But they're there on purpose — the universe's sawhorses. Pick one leg up, put it over. Then the next leg. Easy. But no one does it. This is why you can give people step-by-step blueprints, and they still come back to you a year later saying: "Your life is so cool. I wish I could do what you do. I just can't keep doing this job." And at a certain point, you just start to smile and nod, because you know advice is powerless against the quicksand of inaction. So I'm no longer worried about survivorship bias. If you put in effort, you'll succeed. But you won't.

Can someone equally up-to-date on the potential apocalypse that is Claude Mythos and personal finance tell me if I should be stockpiling cash or blindly buying SPY or buying a house? Thanks.

Used to pretend to be Daniel Horton in the driveway back home.

People who post ChatGPT slop on LinkedIn: Don't you feel ashamed for outsourcing your thinking to AI? Like, don't you actually feel stupid? Doesn't it make you feel cognitively bankrupt to let literal Artificial Intelligence replace your brain? And then post it? Next to your face? As a way to promote your business? I get that AI makes writing easier, but so many of you are clearly just going to ChatGPT and saying: "Write a LinkedIn post about XYZ topic. And then publishing whatever zero-calorie amalgamation of milquetoast oatmeal The Machine ™️ spits out. Aren't you embarrassed by publishing that stuff? Don't you have pride in your ability to think? What mental gymnastics are you doing to justify it? At the very minimum, at least speak a stream of consciousness into an LLM and tell it to stick to your verbatim thoughts when creating a post from it. I am using AI more than 99.999% of the world in my day-to-day. Never am I letting it write from scratch or replace original thought. If you are doing so, remember that you are complicit in the degeneration of intelligent society. I know people are gonna say, "It's not that serious, bro." But honestly, it is.

The most important factor in your ability to successfully work for yourself is self-awareness. You need to know if you're actually talented, you need to know if you're actually a hard worker, you need to know if you actually love it — or if you just don't want to be doing the other thing you're currently doing. If you lie to yourself about any of these things, you're done.

Two writing tips: 1. Write "poorly" on purpose. My job in 2022: "I know how to write properly. I will help you." My job in 2026: "I know how AI writes. It's too proper. I will make it worse." I sort of hate all of you who just copy and paste stuff from ChatGPT. It's embarrassing. You're an adult. At least pretend like your brain works. 2. Nuance kills reach. "I hate all of you" >>>> "I sort of hate all of you"

Yo @AnthropicAI — I'm a paying Max subscriber, M1 Mac, Ventura 13.0, latest Desktop app... Can't get the Cowork tab to appear. Tried logging out and logging back in to no avail. Something I'm doing wrong? Can anyone help? @alexalbert__

Is there any business practice that turns you off to a company more than @beehiiv subscribing you to random newsletters you didn't sign up for?

It took me 3 years to make more money writing online than I made in 6 years of finance. I still know nothing, but here are 7 reasons I think I've had some success: 1. I have never missed a deadline or asked for an extension. I've written 5,000+ LinkedIn posts and delivered 250+ other projects in the last three years. Some of this has been due to luck as I haven't had anything catastrophic happen in my life over that time, but life has not always been easy. Far from it. I've still dragged myself over to my laptop, yanked it open, and sent everything in on time. If I ever hire a writer and they miss a deadline without a hospital or funeral note, they're done. Not acceptable. 2. I don't set boundaries with clients. I will text you back until I go to bed at 8 PM. I will pick up your calls on Sundays. Many of you will call me an idiot because of this. I do not care. It has been a competitive advantage. 3. I have sacrificed life for work. Earlier this year, I went to Austin City Limits Music Festival and missed Day 1 because I stayed back to work while all my friends went. This is not an isolated incident. I'm comfortable with the trade-off and I'm always aware of where the scales are tipping, but this is part of the bargain you make with self-employment. The more you say "no" to things, the more you can say "yes" to your business. 4. I don't overthink. This is true for posting content, rolling out new offers, taking risks. One morning, I decided to sit down and record a LinkedIn Masterclass. Five people joined it. Then, I offered to edit their posts on a monthly basis after the Masterclass concluded. Post editing has now become one of my main offers. 5. I care about my clients' businesses more than my own. I know this is literally saying "I care too much" to "What is your biggest weakness?" but it's the truth. I have lost count of how many times a client has told me, "The last time I hired a marketing agency, the communication fell off after I paid them." I ghostwrite for 6 clients. Their posts get researched, edited, and rewritten. Most posts get slapped together at the last minute. Who do you think grows faster? If you care about your clients' businesses more than your own, your clients' businesses will succeed. If your clients' businesses succeed, your business will succeed. 6. I built a writing habit. When I started in 2022, I made a promise to myself that I'd write 100 blogs in 100 weeks. I did it without missing a week. The blogs got very little traction and barely a whisper of monetization, but I did them anyway. In the end, multiple people hired me from them. 7. I don't raise prices on existing clients. What you pay me the first time is what you pay me the next time. I'd rather build a multi-year relationship than try to squeeze you for an extra 10%

Just watched my LinkedIn Wrapped and I imagine this is what being stricken with typhoid feels like.