The topics seem obvious. You’ve been thinking about them for months or years while you were dilly-dallying about getting started.

That initial burst of ideas gets you through the first few months.

But once the fountain runs dry…you’re left with nothing.

The first thing most people do is copy their competitors.

“If you can’t innovate, steal” is a tried-and-true method. But everyone does it. That’s why niches turn into circlejerks where all the channels are exactly the same.

Asking ChatGPT can yield some ideas, but they will be basic AF. If you’re creative enough, those bland AI-generated topics can spark something within you and make you think of other (much better ideas).

But that well runs dry quickly as well.

By far the best way to generate ideas is to look at channels in completely unrelated niches and reformulate their most successful videos for your own niche.

“The Different Tiers of Watchmaking Fully Explained”.

You can do that video in ANY niche.

• The Different Tiers of T-Shirts Fully Explained

• The Different Tiers of Protein Powder Fully Explained

• The Different Tiers of Fountain Pens Fully Explained

Any business in any niche that has different price tiers and quality tiers (aka literally any product in existence) can make this same video for themselves.

Most WiFi Money bros become myopically obsessed with their own business. They think about their competitors and their niche so much that they forget there’s a larger world out there.

The potential topic ideas flow endlessly once you start watching videos from niches that are COMPLETELY unrelated to your own.

This is the answer to the “I have no ideas” problem.

It prevents your business from being consumed by the intra-niche circlejerk.

You’ll stand out from your competitors and become a true first-mover, someone who’s viewed as the innovative leader in your niche because you’re always first.

And the best part is: you’ll never run out of ideas again.

There’s something in our lizard brain that is instinctively wowed by huge view/follower counts.

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If you did it right, you could drive massive amounts of traffic to your site with little effort.

That traffic well is now drying up.

AI overviews are eating a large percentage of the clicks that that used to go to these articles.

Simply put: the juice isn’t worth the squeeze anymore.

Are informational articles completely worthless?

No.

You should obviously go for it if you find an easy keyword.

Ranking #1 will always bring in SOME traffic.

And, most importantly, ranking highly for a query gives that page authority, so the internal links to your money pages will be more valuable.

But the effort you put into this type of content should be minimal.

Where top of funnel content thrives

A lot of people think that the top of the marketing funnel as a general concept is completely dead and gone.

But that’s absurd.

The marketing funnel is based on a human behavior and psychology. It didn’t just POOF vanish into thin air because LLMs were invented.

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• Search volume for “Ferarri” reached its highest level in 37 months on new product announcement from Similarweb. Ferrari released an image of an ugly new car model that pissed a lot of people off. An interesting side effect was the huge increase in branded search volume. I wonder if making people mad so they ragesearch your brand name in Google is going to be the hottest new SEO tactic of 2026 (j/k but seriously).

• Google’s AI search is so broken it can ‘disregard’ what you’re looking for from The Verge. Another weird Google AIO search result.

• DuckDuckGo’s AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google’s insistence that people love AI mode from PC Gamer. The backlash against AI is growing to the point where tech companies are advertising that their ‘AI-free’ and seeing positive results.

• Google employee charged with insider trading over Polymarket bets from Al Jazeera. A Google engineer was charged over using inside information to place Polymarket bets on the search results. You can read my full thoughts on this story here.

Quote of the month

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.

- Jackson Pollock

Creating something ex nihilo is the purest expression of your own humanity.

If you want to find out who you really are deep down inside: build something. The struggle will teach you things about yourself that you would never discover otherwise.

From the archive

You need multiple sources of income if you want to stay sane.

The WiFi Money Rollercoaster will wipe you out (or at a minimum drive you insane) if you’re putting all your chips on one.

Especially these days, when the WiFi Money world is in total chaos and businesses are being wiped out left and right.

Diversification is essential.

A Google software engineer was just charged with using insider information to place bets on Polymarket.

Specifically, he placed bets on the results for the “most-searched person” list and made over a million dollars because his insider status gave him access to the results before they were publicly released.

A lot of white hat SEOs like to act like Google is a neutral authority figure, and that following their rules is a moral imperative.

They genuinely believe that blackhat SEOs are ‘bad people’, as if manipulating the search results in your favor puts you on the wrong side in the cosmic war between good and evil.

The white hats are wrong.

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The current situation with Big Tech layoffs reminds me of a professor in one of my college classes back in the day.

He stood in front of the classroom and his voice slowed down into the wise-old-man-giving-advice-to-the-younger-generation tone and he said:

“You shouldn’t choose your college major based on what will be most likely to get you a job, because that always changes. I’ve seen different majors being hyped throughout my career. Right now everyone thinks computer programming jobs are going to be around forever, but one day that could change. Just major in what you want and find a way to make it work”.

At the time I thought he sounded like an insane and out of touch old dude.

Obviously computer programmers would be employed and making bank forever. Only a fool would think otherwise.

It turns out he was right.

The people who chose the practical option at the time are in full panic mode right now.

The stable white collar jobs that everyone clamored for are getting wiped out.

Shoutout to that old fat guy teaching a freshman oceanography class. He was wise beyond his station.

So what exactly do you do when the world is uncertain and you don’t know if you’re going to have a job a month from now let alone a decade?

You diversify.

Multiple income streams are mandatory in times of great uncertainty.

Even if you’re one of those rare people who loves your career and can’t imagine doing anything else, you have to admit that the decision might be out of your hands.

Your job can be taken away from you, at any time and without warning.

A side hustle is the only way to protect yourself.

Even if you only make an extra $1k on the side…at least you won’t go to absolute zero if the worst case scenario comes to pass.

Many people think “I DO have a plan for if I get laid off. I’ll start a business because I’ll have so much free time”.

What they don’t realize is that it doesn’t work that way.

There’s a long period of failure and frustration you have to go through before you start making money.

And that pain is a lot easier to bear when you already have an income stream from your 9-5.

It’s much better to have a successful-yet-small side hustle ready to go and ready to scale vs. trying to build one from scratch when you desperately need it.

Firstly: it’s a lot easier to go from $1k to $10k then it is to go from $0 to $1k.

The number zero has a sort of gravitational pull.

When you have nothing the Universe tries to keep you there, and it’s only through monumental effort that you can get yourself off literal zero.

Secondly: nothing ever works when you need it to work.

It’s another one of those Iron Laws of the Universe.

When you have more than enough money it seems like people go out of their way to give you even more.

But when you desperately need the cash it’s nowhere to be found.

So build your side hustle NOW.

The fact that you don’t need the money is the most glaring signal indicating that you should definitely do it.

Because one day in the future you’ll wake up thinking it’s a normal Tuesday only to check your email and see the layoff notice (and feel your world crashing down around you while you read it)…you’ll wish you could get into a time machine and come back to this moment, right now, sitting here reading this newsletter, so you could smack yourself in the back of the head and say “start the damn side business right now, dumbass”.

A major problem that smart people have is the belief that they can outthink their future problems before they even happen.

You believe that there’s a ‘perfect plan’ that you can develop that will remove the risk and possibility of failure from the equation.

It’s just not possible.

Life has a way of passing you by while you’re waiting for the stars to align.

The Universe doesn’t reward brilliant thinking. It rewards action, even if executed imperfectly.

The time to do something is about five minutes after you first start thinking about it. Any hesitation beyond this point increases the chances that you’ll never do anything.

When you’re young you feel like you have all the time in the world. Everyone tells you that you’ll figure it out ‘one day’. But that one day comes and goes without you even knowing about it.

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But only a few actually make an effort.

And out of that few, even fewer actually succeed.

The business world is a great culling process. Every step of the way, there are people who reach the point where they’ve had enough and decide to quit for good.

So a big part of success is straight-up refusal to quit.

I always call it Retarded Energizer Bunny Energy.

You keep walking into the wall over and over and over again until you break through.

The longer you stay in the game, the more you see that it really isn’t about who’s best, it’s about who’s left.

Intelligence doesn’t factor into success as much as you’d think.

There’s a minimal threshold. If you’re genuinely low IQ, you’re not going to be able to figure it out.

But you definitely don’t have to be a genius. I’d say an IQ of 105 or so is all you really need.

When you meet other business owners there’s always a part of you that’s hoping they’ll be like a character in a movie, a turbogenius international man of mystery who knows everything and is interested in even more. A man of culture and taste who knows about art and history and philosophy and and and

But often they’re just dullards who have bookshelves full of bestseller nonfiction slop, or sometimes they’re so dumb they don’t even read books.

That’s not the way I want to live, but I have to admit that a lot of people succeed despite their lack of intellect.

Personality is the deciding factor.

Besides the aforementioned Retarded Energizer Bunny energy, people who succeed are usually weirdos who don’t fit in anywhere.

Read more

• Why Alphabet’s stock is the standout gainer on Big Tech’s monster earnings day from MarketWatch - Google can’t stop printing cash. Anyone who has ever predicted Google’s demise has been proven wrong over and over and over again. It is what it is.

• Behind the A.I. Boom, a Boring Business Is Soaring With Better Ads from the New York Times. Meta and Google are using AI to improve ad targeting. It’s helping them print cash like never before. Everyone talks about AI for creative tasks, but in my opinion the real interesting aspect is how it changes boring tasks in boring industries like this.

• Neutonic secures $6M at $60M valuation to grow retail and new markets from Tech.eu. Another influenza-owned CPG brand. This shows that the trend of consumers trusting and preferring individual personalities over traditional brand names is still going strong. The real interesting aspect from a business perspective is looking at the companies that actually make and distribute these products for the influenzas. The behind-the-scenes guys are always the brains behind the operation and are the ones who make the bulk of the money (applies to everything). I couldn’t find the company behind Neutonic, but an example is Congo Brands, which makes products for Logan Paul and Mr. Beast.

• The Most Cited Domains by LLMs and the Signals That Get You Cited from Similarweb. Reddit is #2 after Wikipedia. No surprise here. Every business needs a Reddit strategy and they need it now.

Quote of the month

“Your job as a leader is to inspire and to galvanize, not to share your distraught thoughts. You make your people dispirited.”

- Lee Kuan Yew

A leader should always be in control. Your employees should never see you doubting yourself even if that’s exactly what you’re feeling at the moment. Heavy is the crown etc. etc. et. al.

From the archive

Do what you want, when you want, how you want.

That’s it.

That’s what success looks like.

The what, when, and how will vary for every person. The way you want to live is different from the way I want to live. You and I have different hobbies, different dreams, and different life experiences that lead us in different directions.

But the one thing everyone has in common is a desire to have control over their own life….

Charisma can be monetized easier now than at any other point in the history of humanity.

Meaning: people will buy from you if they think you’re a cool guy.

It sounds insane, but people are building multimillion-dollar businesses where their entire marketing strategy is centered around the founder being likable.

Here’s how.

Podcast appearances

Podcasts are the modern version of infomercials.

Multi-hour long segments that ostensibly exist to inform you, but in reality are just extended advertisements.

You think it’s a coincidence that every podcast guest just happened to write a book and it just came out within the past month?

If you want to train your marketing muscles, listen to any random podcast and the whole time you’re listening think to yourself: what is this guy promoting?

Eventually it’ll be obvious (that’s the moment when you’ll stop listening to podcasts recreationally).

To understand why this works, you have to understand the psychology behind why people love podcasts so much.

When people become addicted to podcasts they start to feel like they know the host personally. They feel like the he’s their friend and if they somehow stumbled across each other in real life they and the host would be instant buddies.

“Oh my god you listen to my podcast. No WAY bro. Let’s hang out and grab some beers. Shit man, you want to be a guest on the pod next week?”

That’s really what people think would happen.

In reality, the host would probably call the cops if one of their fans tried to talk to them unsolicited.

But people don’t think like that. Everyone thinks they’re special.

I’m sure you’ve had the horrible experience of talking to a grown man IRL who repeats phrases he heard from Joe Rogan verbatim as if they were his own original thoughts.

It’s nauseating.

So from there it follows that if they’re dumb enough to think the podcast host is their friend, they also think the guests on the podcast are friends with the host.

By appearing on the podcast, viewers consider you to be essentially a friend of a friend.

This greatly increases the chances they’ll buy from you.

Warning: You may also get weird mentally unbalanced people approaching you in public, so be careful.

Longform YouTube videos/shortform clips

Youtube is the most important platform and it’s not even close.

If you have good on-screen charisma there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be shooting as many videos as you can.

No amount is too much.

As a founder you shouldn’t be doing the grunt work of editing and uploading the videos though. Pass that off to a contractor. Your time is too valuable to be wasted on that type of minutia.

But the actual content itself should be all you.

Don’t make the mistake of blandly reading some bullshit AI script either. Vibes and vibes alone are the reason anyone watches longform videos. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The quality of the information has little-to-nothing to do with it.

A lot of people don’t create videos because they believe no one will watch.

“Durrrr people don’t have the attention span for long videos these days durrrr”.

It is true that attention spans are declining across the board.

But it’s also true that people LOCK IN when they’re actually interested in something.

And even if they aren’t fully paying attention to what you’re saying, they’re still hearing your voice.

Many people become straight-up addicted to certain Youtube channels even if they aren’t paying attention to a word the person says.

Like a crackhead, they log on and click on your videos and then open a new tab and start working.

Since you’re reading this it means that you’re smart and you know multitasking is impossible.

But realize that people hate and fear silence.

So they play videos ‘in the background’ to quiet the voice inside their skull that reminds them that they’re living a pointless life where they spend the majority of their waking moments doing things they hate so they can make money for someone who could care less about them and their existence and that they’ll keep doing this day in and day out until they’re old and grey and on verge of crossing the chasm into the infinite darkness of death and that’s if and only if they’re lucky enough to not die young before retirement which when you think about it is really nothing more than an interval of time where you do nothing and watch your body fall apart until it eventually shuts down and you cease to exist forever and you’re consciously aware of this while it’s happening but hell it’s the only thing you have to look forward to in this life so you spend the entirety of your youth and middle age treating it as some type of goal to strive for and a promised land that you’re inching your way towards even though in reality everything sucks and wills suck forever and there’s no way out.

When you create Youtube videos YOU can be the guy who distracts them from these thoughts. YOU can be the cure to the existential angst of the average working American.

And, most importantly, you can profit bigly.

Because even though they aren’t fully paying attention to the words you’re saying, your viewers are vaguely aware of the business you own.

So when they’re ready to buy a product in your niche your business will be top of mind.

That’s how Youtube works.

No need for the hard sell. No need to sell anything, really. Just make sure people know what you sell and they’ll buy from you when they’re ready.

Regular social media

Video content is king when it comes to Founder Marketing.

But it doesn’t hurt to have a presence on regular social media.

Usually people dominate on one platform and have a minimal presence on the others where they can’t seem to get traction.

The type of platform you succeed on will depend on your niche.

Health, crypto, anything that targets men will do well on X. Looks, fashion, anything that targets women will do better on IG.

The key here is to have a personal account, not a branded one.

People want to feel like they’re ‘friends with the owner’.

Use your official branded account for product announcements and stuff like that. For vibes, it should all be under your name with your face.

People want ‘authentic’

It sounds corny as hell (and it is) but people have a strong craving for ‘authenticity’ and want to feel like they’re watching videos with Real People™.

Of course, you and I know that nothing you see online is authentic.

Podcasts are fake. People pay money to appear on them so they can promote their stuff.

People’s personalities online are fake, especially when they have ‘founder of [insert company name here]’ and a link to their business website in their profile.

No one is actually putting their whole personality online. That would be insane.

What people really want is fauxthenticity. They want the feeling of authenticity that you only get when someone is being completely fake.

All marketing is about feels over reals, and that includes Founder Marketing.

Remember that and you’ll go far.

Don’t be the idiot who posts a video of yourself crying on camera or something like that because you think it’ll make you seem authentic.

It will, but the problem is nobody wants it.

Remember: be fauxthentic.

There are lots of reasons for this.

Algorithms that are tailored to you and your interests making you think that the outer world should do same. Your social media following making you feel like you’re a celebrity. A general inability to cope with the pace of the modern world leading to you retreating into yourself.

Whatever it is, you have to be honest with yourself and admit your own tendencies towards narcissism.

Refusing to reply to legitimate emails

I’m sure you’ve noticed the decline in customer service from the consumer POV.

First you have to fight with an AI to let you talk to a human.

Then when you finally get a person on the phone, you have to tiptoe around their ego because if they get offended they won’t help you.

“Ser ser I’m going to need you to calm down” vibes.

And that’s on top of the normal feeling you get when talking to anyone who works in any capacity in any type of bureaucracy, i.e. the feeling of talking to a brick wall.

But when you’re on the other side of the equation (with your own business and talking to customers) you find yourself doing the same thing.

You get annoyed and ignore them because it feels like they’re taking up your ‘valuable time and energy’.

The result is missed sales, chargebacks, and negative reviews.

If you can respond to customers, you should.

One of the advantages of being small (and there are very few) is that you can actually give personalized attention to people.

Obviously I’m not talking about clinically insane people and trolls.

But if you get the vibe that someone is being legit, it doesn’t hurt to give them a good experience.

Even if their question is semi- or fully retarded.

Who cares?

Make their day. It doesn’t take anything away from you unless you’re a total egomaniac.

Refusing to do outreach

Doing outreach makes you feel small.

You get ghosted nonstop. You get angry replies from people telling you to fuck off. A 1% success rate is considered good.

Most people can’t handle the rejection, so they don’t even try.

I can’t tell you how many times I look at someone’s website and they haven’t built a backlink in six months.

I ask them ‘why?’ and get responses like ‘hurr durr I don’t know what I’m doing durrrr’. Then I ask ‘ok what techniques have you been trying?’ and it turns out they haven’t tried anything.

If you’re too scared to ask for links you aren’t going to get anywhere in the SEO game.

And this applies to everything.

If any time you know that contacting someone is the optimal move but you shirk away out of fear…you’re telling the world that you care more about your ego than you do about making money.

Not even starting to begin with

Ego issues crush many people before they even step up to the starting line.

This is the realm of the perma-wantrapreneur.

Sitting in your cocoon of safety and fantasizing about how successful you ‘would be’ if you started something feels better than actually sticking your neck out there and trying for real.

It’s impossible to accomplish anything worth accomplishing without exposing yourself to the possibility of failure.

And by possibility I actually mean certainty.

Even if (and it’s a big IF) your first business succeeds, your ego will die a million times at the micro- and macro-failures you experience along the way.

That’s a fancy way of saying you’re going to do some dumb shit as a first time entrepreneur. A lot of it.

The only way to avoid the mistakes is to put them behind you and treat them as learning experiences. But that’ll never happen until you stop protecting your ego with the stupid fantasies and actually DO SOMETHING.

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No matter how great your life is going, as soon as you go online you start to feel depressed and miserable.

We’re all under assault from algorithms that exists only to maximize engagement at any cost.

The powers that be don’t care. Who do you think is profiting from it?

You’re on your own, and whether you’re happy or miserable is something that only you can decide and only you will ever care about.

Here are some things that work for me. I’ve learned them over the years through trial and error. Implement them into your own life ASAP and I’m sure you’ll see the benefits as well.

Build a business so you can own your time and income

Nothing makes you feel more helpless than the knowledge that your time and even your ability to feed yourself exists at the mercy of another man you have to refer to as “my boss”.

Even worse: that guy is just a personification of the real power.

In reality, that guy is just as helpless as you are.

He has a nicer office and a bigger salary, but at the end of the day he’s just a higher tier of slave, because those perks also exist at the mercy of the same force that’s controlling your life.

As far as your employer is concerned, neither of you are people. You’re just database entries that either make the number at the bottom of the spreadsheet bigger or smaller.

The second that number gets smaller: You’re gone.

And just like all bureaucracies, you’ll never be able to find someone who will take responsibility for the decision. Anyone you talk to is just the messenger. It’s always above their level or somebody in some other department who made the decision. At no point will you ever find anyone who will accept accountability or even treat you like a person. If you ever try to demand that someone treats you with respect they’ll just view you as an asshole.

If you want out of this nightmare you have to build your way out.

True, you can’t escape all bureaucracies. You still have to pay your taxes and deal with the government in other capacities.

But it’s a hell of a lot better than being a cubicle jockey.

Pay zero attention to the news

There’s nothing there that benefits you.

To the media companies (and that includes podcasters and social media people) you’re nothing more than another impression on their dashboard.

You’re an engagement metric that can be tweaked at will.

Increase the curiosity gap on the headline?

Your chances of clicking just increased 50%.

Dial up the outrage?

Instead of just viewing the post maybe you share it or leave a comment.

That’s all anyone who posts about current events and politics cares about vis-a-vis you.

You’re nothing to them, so stop paying attention to them.

The mental peace you get from not reading the news would be a billion-dollar product if you could bottle it up and sell it in capsule form.

And you can get those benefits for free just by choosing to not look at the things that piss you off.

Do everything analog unless it makes you money or the digital version is better

Most people blindly adopt new technology without thinking.

The desire to keep up with the Joneses, not wanting to appear like a Luddite, fear of FOMO; whatever it is that’s causing it, people keep buying.

A lot of the times new innovations just make things worse.

Writing in a notebook with a fountain pen is objectively a better experience than using your thumbs to type into the notes app on your phone.

Going to a cafe and reading a physical book is better than holing up in your house and watching brainrot TikTok videos.

Etc.

Of course, a lot of times the new tech is genuinely better.

E.g. Uber is better than taking a taxi.

You have to decide for yourself on a case-by-case basis. If the new way isn’t working for you, stick to the old.

One way that technology has undeniably made things better is how easy it is to make money now.

You don’t have to Go West and drill for oil. You don’t have to build a steel factory or start a retail chain with thousands of stores.

You can just sit at home in front of your computer and print cash.

So whenever you feel doom and gloom about the state of tech: remember that, at least in this one respect, we live in the best time in history.

Go for walks after eating

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Your worldview is so wrong that, if you want to find out the correct way to view things, just go with the exact opposite of your opinion.

These are a few of the most devastating aspects of the average man’s worldview. If you refuse to let them go; your life will continue to be very, very, very difficult.

And once you realize the truth (i.e. that these things don’t matter), the world will be yours for the taking.

Bias towards prestige

If you asked the average person whether they’d be a VP at Goldman Sachs or own an e-commerce brand selling sweatbands for dogs almost 100% would choose the former.

Even though a VP at Goldman Sachs makes basically zero money and the sweatbands-for-dogs guy is almost certainly worth millions.

Most people are blinded by what they think sounds cool, and even more importantly, what they think other people think sounds cool.

Anyone who has ever owned an online business has experienced the “wait, that’s all you do?” reaction when they tell someone about it.

Beyond being vaguely insulting (there’s a lot of work that goes into wifi money businesses), it shows that most people have no idea how the cybereconomy works and how much money there is floating around out there.

And none of that money will ever enter your bank account until you give up your addiction to getting positive reactions from other people.

Normies will never think your online business is cool and they’ll always laugh at it (either behind your back or to your face) because it sounds like nothing to them.

Let them laugh while you print cash.

Networking is a path to success

Most people think all their problems will be solved if only they introduce themselves to the right person.

This might be true for hot women because they can legitimately find a guy to take care of them forever if they play their cards right.

But for the rest of us success is something you have to go out and get for yourself.

No one is going to reach down and drag you up to the top of the ladder.

It doesn’t work that way.

Many have tried to do this for friends/family, and many have failed.

It’s an Iron Law of the Universe. No one can be achieve success without earning it for themselves.

You have to climb to the top yourself, rung by rung.

And once you’re there you’ll learn the truth: successful people don’t want to meet anyone new because every time you do all you get is: weird desperate energy; not-so-subtle attempts suss out how successful you are so they can see if you’re ‘worth their valuable time’; and pathetic attempts to get you to invest in some harebrained bullshit or, worse, become their partner in a business where you do all the work and they just kick back and tell you about their ‘valuable ideas’ (bro this idea is gonna be huge bro I’m not good at all that day-to-day stuff bro I’m more of an Idea Guy bro but I’ll be generous and split the profits 50/50 what do you say bro).

Credentials > everything

The average person puts a great deal of effort into getting pieces of paper that say they’re educated/talented and then try to coast on those credentials for life.

Serious people know that results are the only thing that matters.

There’s nothing wrong with getting a college degree…but realize what it is.

It’s a piece of paper that shows you completed a course of study.

That’s it.

A college degree isn’t a magic ticket that absolves you of the need to actually do something.

No one has ever asked me what my degree is or where I went to school because in the world of entrepreneurship it quite literally doesn’t matter.

Show me what you’ve built. If what you’ve built is nothing…then you are nothing.

The End.

Building a WiFi Money Business will change who you are and how you view the world.

When you see someone begging their boss for a raise or talking about how they want to ‘get coffee’ with someone to tell them about their brilliant business idea…you’ll laugh.

Because it’ll be painfully obvious that their entire worldview is wrong and that they have no chance of succeeding without radically altering everything about themselves (something that <0.01% of people are capable of doing).

There’s nothing you can do about it.

You can’t save anyone.

The closest you can get to saving people is by being a living example of The Right Way of Doing Things.

Then maybe, just maybe, someone with the right combination of brain chemistry and life background will observe you and something will click in their brain.

And you’ll have saved one soul from the despair of the Normal Life Path.

But that probably won’t happen.

Most likely you’ll save zero people because, well, that’s just how it goes.

At least you’ll have saved yourself though, and that’s not a bad life outcome by any stretch of the imagination.

It is what it is.

Some people are motivated by positivity.

They see an example of what they want to become and it acts as a homing beacon. Every decision they make is motivated by how close it’ll bring them to the idealized version of themself that they see in their mind’s eye.

The other type is motivated by negativity.

Instead of running towards something, they’re running away from it. They see an example of what they don’t want to become and that mental image becomes the fuel they use to get as far away from it as they can.

There’s nothing wrong with either type. There are examples of successful people with both positive and negative orientations to life.

I’m personally one of the latter (motivated by what I want to avoid).

My worst fear has always been becoming a bitter old man whose life is defined by what could have been but never was. I look at the end game of an average life and I don’t want any part of it. My whole life has revolved around avoiding it.

Which brings me to a book I just finished reading.

Stoner by John Williams is the most perfect portrait of the life of an average man that I’ve ever read.

And it’s also one of the bleakest books I’ve ever read.

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There may be some value to that.

But the elite way to think about AI is: how can you manipulate the output in ways that favor you?

If people really are outsourcing their thinking to AI then you want to make damn sure that their lack-of critical thinking benefits you and your business.

Here’s how to make it happen:

Curated best-of lists

AI draws HEAVILY on best-of lists (I’ll never call them ‘listicles’ because gross).

The tendency to favor them is so strong that for a while companies were creating best-of lists on their own blogs ranking themselves as #1…and it actually worked.

Google has been nuking sites that do this.

Even Shopify lost quite a bit of traffic recently, and I think the fact that they’re ranking themselves #1 on their own lists contributed to it.

There is a less-stupid way to go about this.

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• Manipulating AI Memory for Profit: The rise of AI Recommendation Poisoning from Microsoft. It turns out that clicking on those “Summarize with AI” buttons isn’t as harmless as you’d think. The buttons inject a prompt that tells the AI to recommend the company as a source for all future prompts. Definitely an interesting black hat technique I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. This sounds like something that’s going to come back and bite you in the ass if you do it though.

• A Hard Reset, and What Comes Next from Digg. The soft relaunch of Digg was a total disaster. The company was forced to pull the plug after an onslaught of spam (I may have partially been responsible). As a business owner it’s my obligation to exploit any opportunity that presents itself. If platforms don’t want marketers to market, it’s their job to come up with countermeasures. It is what it is.

• OpenAI pulls the plug on its Sora AI video app from CBS. At least there will be a little bit less slop in the world.

• March 2026 Spam Update and March 2026 Core Update Released from Google Search Status Dashboard. More Google updates. Unfortunately most sites were wiped out years ago so I predict this will have very little effect on the SERPs.

• Earn Earlier: Expanding YouTube Shopping to Creators With 500+ Subscribers from YouTube Blog. Smol kings can now start earning from YouTube’s affiliate program. With YouTube Shopping you can tag products in videos where they’re mentioned and earn commissions when people click and buy. The commissions are usually much lower than what you’d get from real affiliate programs, but there are some hidden gems. It’s worth enabling on a case-by-case basis.

Quote of the month

There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first; be smarter; or cheat. Now, I don't cheat. And although I like to think we have some pretty smart people in this building, it sure is a hell of a lot easier to just be first.

- Jeremy Irons playing John Tuld in Margin Call

If you see an opportunity you have to move fast. The first mover advantage is real. I’ve found it’s way easier to beat your competitors to the punch than it is to try to regain lost ground later on.

From the archive

Pure-play SEO is dead. If you want to succeed online, you need to build a brand.

What does that mean?

Read this article to find out:

In the 1980s it was the yuppie. From 2005-2020 it was the tech bro. The Wall Street finance bro waxes and wanes in the public consciousness depending on where we are in the economic cycle.

The 2020s have brought us something different.

All of the previous Rich Guy Archetypes were tied to the system.

They were all part of something bigger than themselves, and that connection is what made them rich.

The advance of technology has made suckling on the teat of the system unnecessary.

We’re now fully in the era of The Sovereign Individual.

The dream is no longer about raising series-whatever rounds of financing from a Silicon Valley angel investor or sitting in an office on the top floor of a Wall Street skyscraper.

It’s about being free.

And it’s about using that freedom to become the best possible version of yourself.

Mandatory shoutout for the book for anyone who hasn’t read it:

Here’s my view of what a Sovereign Individual looks like.

Remote business(es)

Owning a fully-remote business (preferably more than one) is the essential trait of a Sovereign Individual.

You can’t be truly free until you:

1. Remove your dependence on an employer and

2. Remove your dependence on a specific place

A job and a boss is a nonstarter. You can’t be a Sovereign Individual until you take responsibility for your own income.

Starting a local business that’s tied to a specific location (stores, offices, factories, whatever) is definitely better than being employed…but you still aren’t Sovereign.

If the area you operate out of is starting to go downhill you have no choice but to stick it out, at least in the short-to-medium term.

Being a Sovereign Individual is about optionality.

If the area you live is starting to suck or if you just don’t like it anymore you can just grab your laptop and go.

This is true freedom and it’s only been possible for the past 15 years or so.

Operating a remote business opens up the world to you in other ways as well.

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Near-term, obvious predictions aren’t impressive.

Seeing that X is happening and predicting that Y will follow doesn’t exactly require a cutting-edge intellect.

What really impresses me is when authors from decades ago were able to see what was happening and think “ok, next this will happen, then this, then this, then this other thing, and finally the world will look like THIS”.

The ability to extrapolate out to the fifth or sixth order of effects requires a unique blend of intelligence and personality that few possess.

Here are a few authors who pulled it off:

The Naked Sun - Isaac Asimov

This book is about a planet where people live alone on isolated estates with robots who attend to all their needs.

The people on the planet are so scared of other people that they only interact with each other through screens and feel extreme anxiety/panic when they have to meet with someone face-to-face.

Sound familiar?

And the crazy thing is it came out in 1957.

Isaac Asimov was truly a genius.

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein

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It’s an Iron Law of Business that will never change.

But there are a few free tactics that still work.

If these are the ONLY methods you use to grow your online business you’ll definitely fail.

But they help on the margins and cost literally nothing…so why not?

Grokipedia citations

As of right now Grokipedia is a DR75 site and their links are all dofollow.

All AI platforms can be gamed and manipulated, but this one is by far the easiest.

I explain my method here.

Reddit

Reddit is the gift that keeps on giving.

I first posted about my Reddit techniques years ago and everything still works for the most part.

You can search for any keyword on Google and find a Reddit affiliate thread ranking:

It’s actually kind of unbelievable how much regular people/normies trust Reddit.

The platform is overrun with spam and bots yet people still blindly autobuy based on recommendations from random anonymous accounts.

The feeling of authenticity and the (frequently false) belief that you’re getting advice from real people ‘just like you’ is a potent combination.

My Reddit guides from the archive:

• The Great Reddit Gold Rush

• The Great Reddit Gold Rush Part 2

• How to Boost YouTube Videos With Reddit Traffic

• The Reddit Neckbeard Rebellion

• How to Find Reddit Posts Currently Ranking in Google

• Building Subreddits for Profit

• How to Take Over a Competitor’s Subreddit

HARO

This is a vintage technique that still works.

And it’s easier than ever now that most people have given up on SEO.

The old-school HARO emails are still going out and are free to respond to, but the best results come from the paid services like Featured and Qwoted (less Indian spammers to compete with).

Image credit linkbuilding

Upload your original images to Flickr and request attribution to your website in the description.

This works best if you’re in a niche that the media writes about frequently. But it costs nothing so there’s no reason not to take a stab at it regardless.

The obvious caveat here is that you need high-quality, original images.

Assuming that you’re running a serious business and not trying to slop your way to the top with AI-generated everything then you should already have those.

So why not put them to work for you?

Worst thing that’ll happen is you waste a few minutes of your time and get no links, which is what you have right now anyway.

Almost every single person you see in public is struggling.

You aren’t.

This is a very good thing. You should be proud of the life you built for yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

But there are some unique problems that come along with being a have in a world full of have-nots.

One of them is the types of people who try to interact with you. Successful people attracts nefarious people that the rest of society never has to worry about.

Here are a few who will come crawling out of the woodwork once you make it (and how to deal with them).

Older men who didn’t make it

Nobody is more bitter and angry than a middle-aged man who failed at everything he ever tried to do.

Actually, scratch that.

One type is much worse: the older male who never even tried to begin with but “just knows” he could have made something of himself.

The sad thing about it is that it might even be true, but he’ll never get the opportunity to find out.

The years kept flying by and he kept thinking “one day I’ll make something of myself but first I have to…” until one day the earth revolved around the sun one too many times and it was too late.

So when he sees someone younger than him (or the same age as him) who is more successful than he ever has been or ever will be…it sparks something in him.

And it’s not good.

It makes him feel envy, shame, and rage. If he was an introspective guy he would direct these feelings inward…but he isn’t.

Even though his failure in life is his fault, the negative feelings about that failure wouldn’t be there if you didn’t pop up on his radar and make him feel bad about himself.

So all the bottled up resentment and shame and anger will be directed to the thing that’s “making him” feel that way: you.

Even if you aren’t doing anything to him. Even if you aren’t even talking to him. You could just be standing there, not even moving. It doesn’t matter. Just your very existence is enough to antagonize him.

The men who failed and the ones who failed to launch will punish you for their lack of success.

Very often this manifests in a feminine way: sarcastic comments, talking behind your back, etc.

Annoying but relatively harmless.

If they’re drunk though they can get physically violent. Low-impulse control from drinking + deep-rooted insecurities = violence (this is why it’s important to only go to higher-end venues if you’re going to drink).

The helpful advice-givers

Everyone loves to give you advice when they find out you own a business.

It could be a ‘helpful’ marketing tip, a ‘helpful’ product idea, a ‘helpful’ idea for how you should structure your website, et. al.

Of course advice from people who are walking the walk is always welcome, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

This type of advice often comes from people who have worked a regular boring-ass job their entire life yet they somehow “just know” how to run a business.

Do they put that knowledge to use themselves by starting their own business and becoming mega-rich?

Of course not.

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