You'll Never Make (Real) Money Until You Start Doing the Right Thing

And do it enough times to get paid

Photo by Chandri Anggara via Pexels

Making more money is a fantasy for many people.

It sounds too good to be true. What if the answer to more money wasn’t so complicated? I used to think earning real money was impossible.

Then I found the right thing to do and money poured in faster than I could spend it. Without bragging, some months I made so much money I became wasteful. I’d just buy a new computer I didn’t need for no reason.

Here’s how to go from money being hard, to making real money doing the right thing.

A virtuous life isn’t enough

Yesterday I met a nice woman.

She works for the government. She’s smart. She’s patient. Yet two floods devastated her last two homes and left her with nothing. She’s battling her way through because mother nature was cruel.

Being a good person has little to do with making real money.

You can pray, go to church, be a good little boy/girl, follow the rules, be kind to everyone … and still be broke.

People dumber than you are making ten times more money than you. This is a harsh reality I remind myself of daily.

The financial principle most people learn too late in life

A guy I used to work with named Peter always struggled financially.

He earned $50K more than me but still couldn’t pay his bills. He complained about his money problems during every lunch break. We all sat and listened like sheep.

He felt our employer owed him more money because he’d been there for 15 years and had 25+ years experience in finance. He worked longer hours than everyone else and arguably put in more effort than anyone else.

The money principle he forgot is the world doesn’t owe you anything.

1. You get paid what you deserve.

2. You get paid what people think your value is.

3. You get paid what you’re willing to accept.

If you’re not making enough money, the only person to blame is yourself. When you take responsibility for it, you take back your power and create a way to fix it.

No employer is under any obligation to give you more money. And no prospective customer has an obligation to buy from you. Just because you have something for sale it doesn’t mean sh*t.

We’re all selling something, yet most people never make sales or get yeses.

This applies to online business too. Many people try and never get traction. They blame platforms like Youtube, Shopify, or Amazon for their failures.

They refuse to change what they’re doing. They refuse to learn the platform. And they won’t change platforms if they find out they’ve chosen the wrong one and wasted time (sunk cost fallacy).

We’re responsible adults and it’s our job to go where the money is online. If you never find it that’s on you. It’s not the internet’s fault.

To make more money you must keep this in mind…

Doing the wrong thing will never make you money

I spent 10+ years working in banking.

I thought it was the right thing. I hard-sold myself it was a good opportunity when I knew deep down that I hated it. I settled for banking instead of doing writing.

As hard as I tried to do the wrong thing, I never made any real money.

Promotions were hard to get. It became harder and harder to work longer hours to try and get ahead. I didn’t even have the motivation to do the basics, like track my revenue or attend networking events.

When I gave up the wrong thing (banking), and did the right thing (writing), my entire life changed forever. It got 10x easier to make money. I didn’t have to force myself. I was already thinking about writing 24/7 and doing the research.

I couldn’t stop talking about writing to my friends and family. My wife literally told me to shut up about writing at a dinner with friends.

Takeaway: stop working hard on stuff you don’t care much about.

Do one thing and nail it

The other side of this debate is trying to do too many things.

Instead of doing one thing right and earning real money, the average person tries to do too many things. Most of us know what the right thing is for us to be doing, but we convince ourselves it’s impossible to make money from it.

We fast-forward from step 1 and jump to step 1001.

We want to know everything about how the money is made from our one thing in the next 60 minutes. What we accidentally want is a dopamine hit followed by a sugar high and then a sugar crash.

But doing the thing you know you should do is the most important. Once you start doing that it’s then about making it a habit and putting in enough effort.

I spoke to one writer who complained about not getting enough readers on their posts. But they’d only been writing for 30 days and spent 5 minutes on each post. If you put in the bare minimum, you can’t expect to make real money.

The right thing X a lack of effort = Broke

The right thing X bad mindset = Broke

The right thing X 7 days = Broke

See the pattern?

Do it enough times to get paid

What’s crazy to me is many people do the right thing to earn real money.

They just don’t do it enough times to get paid. They expect payment on day one. Or they get frustrated when their Substack doesn’t make $90,000 after one post. The problem is their expectations are too high.

When I’ve met people like this, I find their high expectations are a virus that run through many parts of their life.

• Their dating standards are too high.

• Their standards for what their boss should do for them are too high.

• Their standards for how quickly they can afford a dream home are too high.

If you’re impatient and naive, you’ll never make any money. In a way, it pays to study people who’ve succeeded at what you want to do.

When you see their struggle, how much time they put in, and how patient they were it makes it easier to set realistic expectations.

The best in world do the right thing an unreasonable amount of times until it creates so much value that it’s virtually impossible *not* to get paid good money.

Making real money is hard. But doing this one thing is harder…

You might say this is all too hard.

It sounds too much like fortune cookie advice. Or you’re overworked or feel lost. We can assign a million excuses for why you haven’t made a million dollars yet.

Here’s what a mentor taught me:

It’s hard to make real money. It’s 10x harder to be perpetually broke. 

That resonated with me because I spent so many years barely getting by. When I got paid from my banking job there was hardly any money left over.

I had to save for a year to go on a holiday. When I went on a date with a woman, I had to hope she didn’t order too many drinks, or I may not have had enough money to cover the bill.

I always had to think about money. I always had to ask for discounts or spend hours trying to get the best deal. I had to buy the inferior Sony TV because the Samsung one was a few hundred dollars more. I had to avoid getting another car service and risk the engine light going on to save $327 on a mechanic.

This is no way to live. It’s too damn stressful.

But if you don’t start doing the right thing, you’ll never unlock the income you could be earning.

Final Thought

People aren’t stupid.

We know when you’re settling for second best. We know when you’re not feeling it. We know when you’e phoning it in or don’t care about your work as much as something else. And when we sense it, we try to avoid you but we won’t tell you.

That avoidance means fewer opportunities, fewer sales, lower income, fewer promotions, fewer bonuses at work, and fewer opportunities to be a leader.

Settling for second best is worse in every way. Start doing the right thing you know you should be doing, and watch it change your financial future.

Tell me which of these points above you loved the most and why in the comments.

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P.S. If you're still looking for your "right thing" to double down on...

Consider doubling down on X (formerly Twitter). 

I show you exactly why and exactly how to do that here