This High-Income Skill Made Me $1.1 Million Last Year
The skill is bizarre and it isn't writing or online business
The most profitable skill I have isn’t writing.
People think I’ve made the most money from my writing or my online business. Wrong. I rarely share behind the scenes but today I will.
Last year this bizarre skill made me over $1.1M in extra cash (I don’t say that to brag). It’s a skill people overlook.
The skill you’re probably missing (that can easily be gotten)
I found this skill by accident.
As a pimply teenager I wanted to be a music producer. Toward the end of high school I attended an open day for higher education.
One room in the building took my breath away.
It was the sound engineering school. The room was dark and full of orange lava lamps. It had bright green couches and iMacs on the walls. In the middle was a huge mixing desk and two massive cinema-sized screens. It was a visual orgasm.
I dreamt of sitting behind the desk and recording Madonna.
I went home that night and begged my parents to drop out of high school and join. They actually said yes. I applied to join, lodged the application, and did multiple interviews with the faculty.
Thousands of people applied. About 200 got in. I got rejected.
I was pissed. I tried everything. One of the teachers felt sorry for me. I begged her to let me in. I told her I would pay the school fees up front (everyone else took payment plans). She agreed to try and help. Turns out money talks, bullsh*t walks.
They agreed to add me but there were certain subjects I couldn’t take in the first year because I was “too much of an amateur,” apparently. They were right. I knew nothing about being a music producer.
Right from the start I was on the back foot. The teachers saw me as a second-class student. They laughed at me. They were pissed I found a way to get in. So they were hard on me.
That meant I had to fight like freaking hell.
I didn’t have a higher IQ or more music experience. I didn’t even know at that time where middle C was on the piano.
I only had one choice: do deep research.
Do 10x more research than everybody else. I’d stay up late reading music. I’d read all the tutorials of Ableton Live, Logic, Pro Tools, and every other piece of software we used. I’d go to other students homes at 3AM and try to learn the missing pieces they got through experience.
At the end of the 4th and final year, there were only 20 of the original 200 students who graduated. I was one of them. And I finished at the top of the class.
The skill you’re probably missing is the willingness to do deep research.
How I made $1.1M from this uncommon skill
Research isn’t a clickbait skill you see gurus talking about. It’s not cool. It’s nerdy.
Some even say it’s for losers. Instead, the millionaire lifestyle influencers crap on about personal brands and building a big business or an Amazon FBA side hustle.
Deep research has made me $1.1M+ in the last year. I used it to research a series of investments I could put money into. These investments did well because I took the time to understand them.
My research helped me find opportunities everyone else was ignoring.
I found public data on a few of them and realized there was a shift in financial markets people hadn’t picked up on (yet). One of those was the rise in global liquidity (let’s not get horny over finance terms though).
As I looked at the data the only conclusion I could come to was that I should invest most of my money in these few trends. So I did. And they did 3x better than I expected.
My biggest personal income stream is investing, not writing or online business.
The hidden lesson you’re probably missing
The skill of research leads to a bigger insight.
Most people stay stuck on the surface. They never go deep. They stay trapped in tutorial hell or ma$turbating about a niche, or what platform to use, or get bogged down by business ideas that sound like “It’s Uber but for boats.”
The real money is found when you go deep. When you do so much research people think you’re nuts. Most of the information you need that’ll give you an unfair advantage exists for free online, but you have to take the time to consume it.
Every week I consume a stupid amount of information. I stay on top of finance trends. I obsess over writing trends. What I don’t do is sit around and think I know everything and act complacent.
Spending the time to know a topic at a deep level is such a huge life hack.
The best way to become a sexy research nerd
Start a research habit.
Schedule it in your calendar (before and after work).
Research topics you find interesting. Research how these topics can make money.
Use forced downtime – like commutes or doctor’s waiting rooms – to find extra hours to do research.
Take notes from everything you research.
Rewrite the ideas in your own words.
Categorize the ideas by topic.
Make research fun.
Post what you learn from your research on social media so other people can be attracted to it.
This skill can also destroy your life
Wait, what?
The human experience operates on the knife-edge of balance. If all you do is deep research and you never act or experiment on the information you consume, no money ever comes from it.
I do deep research but I experiment along the way. I join masterminds. I get around like-minded people. I make actual investments. In finance, I pay attention to the critics, trolls, and haters … often they see things others don’t.
Research without action is just procrastination.
Do this right now
Do a stupid amount of research in your area of interest – ideally an obsession)
Each week make sure you act on at least one thing you learn from your new deep research habit. And if you want to become a good investor then start researching financial markets, stocks, crypto, and the global economy (not financial advice).
Broke people consume information disguised as entertainment. Wealthy people do deep research that leads to action and new income streams. Choose wisely.
What high-income skill has changed your life? Let me know in the comments section below.
P.S. As you know, obviously, my other go-to high income skill is writing online.
I'm passionate about this, so I taught a free masterclass yesterday called Write Online Daily in Just 15 Minutes Per Day (Or Less!)
A few highlight:
2 weird quirks of human psychology that might make or break your online writing. (9-ish minutes in)
Quickly capturing 1, 5, or 10 post ideas by making one tiny change to your daily life (12-ish minutes in)
How to overcome fear and purge the scary stories from your brain (28-ish minutes in)
And yes, the tools I use to collect my ideas (42-ish minutes in)
Great read, doing deep research and just putting in the work is pretty much basic advice to gain expertise for any subject, but nobody does it.
On the nail as always. I had a business partner a year or two back, they are meant to stimulate action out of accountability, yet I couldn't get his ass out of the rabbit hole. He was a persistent, addicted researcher, with the sole outcomeof ego for a 'man who knows', yet he didn't earn a penny out of it all so move on, turn rabbit holes into cauldrons of cash and as you say, get the balance right or its all just worthless!