One common theme you may have noticed at Bold and Determined:
Make money on your own terms, your own way – don’t rely on anyone else, don’t rely on any external factors.
There’s no better way I know of for anyone to start making money on their own than by creating a brand around yourself…
YOU, INC.
You, Inc.: Running a business based on your personality
There are obviously a lot of ways to make money, but the one that is the most prevalent (and hidden) today is by making money online operating a You, Inc.
Why hidden?
Because people are making money right in front of your face and you have no idea.
Every time you watch someone on YouTube they are making money.
Some of them are making tons of money.
And they’re doing it on their own terms.
That’s because, for smart and driven people, YouTube is a business not a hobby.
YouTube content viewers think it’s all fun and games.
YouTube content creators think of their videos as a business.
That’s why the stupid viewers aren’t making money, and that’s why the intelligent video creators are.
And that’s why many of you don’t even know you’re watching a business.
Some of you think you’re watching some sucker making videos…
Without realizing you’re the sucker, paying for the people you watch to make videos (and not even knowing it).
Every time you watch a video on YouTube the creator of the video gets paid.
I’ve seen many people make fun of YouTube video creators for being poor…
Without realizing that every time you watch their videos you’re giving the YouTube content creators money (and so are several thousand other people).
Talk about ironic, proclaiming someone isn’t making money – while giving them money.
What’s that internet saying?
I believe it’s…
LOL.
Right in front of your face and you still don’t know.
If money was a snake it would bite you in your face before you ever saw it.
Then after it bit you you’d have no idea what happened.
(What was that lol)
So here’s what we’re going to do…
Professor Victor is going to educate you.
I’m going to give you 16 tips on how to stop being a stupid content consumer..
And start being a smart content creator.
(Content is anything that entertains people: blogs, words, books, art, podcasts, videos, television, movies, music, social media accounts etc.)
Rules in Professor Victor’s classroom:
turn off your phone
close all the screens on your laptop
glue your eyeballs to these words
pay attention as though your livelihood depended on it
do not ask me any questions before you read every word a dozen times
Required reading: How to Make Money By Being Yourself
Class is in session…
16 Ways to Make Money By Being Yourself
#1 – Prepare to invest in yourself (time & money)
This is #1 for a reason.
You must be fully prepared to give your all and I do mean all.
This business model is all or nothing and there is no in-between.
Prepare to invest money in You, Inc. and even more than money you need to be prepared to invest the most important asset you have – your time.
Monetary cost to invest: about $4 per month to start.
⚡️You need web hosting for your website and that’s all you need to start. Use BADNET right now to start your site.⚡️
Cost of time to invest: all of it.
It takes all of your time.
Even if you’re physically doing another job your mind should always be on You, Inc.
Thinking is working.
You, Inc should always be on your mind.
That’s your #1 priority, all You, Inc., all the time, always and forever.
#2 – Get rid of everything that isn’t helping you succeed (give all to get all)
Have nothing so all you have is business.
“The less I have, the more I gain” -James Hetfield
Yes, I fully recommend having nothing else.
When you have nothing you can do one of two things:
you can sit and cry at night wishing you’d die or
you can work for something.
My business is me and I am my business and there is no separation and that’s the way you run You, Inc.
I’m set for eternity because I lived the “nothing but B&D” mentality.
“All I want to do, ever, is play chess… Chess and me, it’s hard to take them apart. It’s like my alter ego” -Bobby Fischer
If I don’t have B&D then I don’t have anything at all.
And that was by design.
You, Inc. is YOU, goddammit, you have to live it 24/7.
Get rid of everything else because it’s going to help you gain everything.
Get rid of anything that is holding get you down.
You need to throw it all out (stuff and people).
I lived like a monk for five years and now I’m set for eternity because I did.
For years I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have a smart-phone for many years. I didn’t buy expensive clothes for many years.
Today I ride an expensive bicycle in $400 jeans because back then I would have my old jeans sewn up so I didn’t have to buy new ones.
I let myself live well now, but it took years of living spartan to get from A to B.
Now? Living well is fantastic.
Put in the time so you can do it.
The longer you put it off, the more times you quit, it’s just that much longer until you can live well.
Live well from your job? Don’t make me laugh.
People with jobs never have free time ever and when they do they “catch up on Netflix” or do laundry.
Those people are the walking dead (they just happen to be fatter than zombies).
Give all to get all.
When you’ve got nothing, all you’ve got is that hunger.
“To reach the pinnacle, everything else must not exist” -Conor McGregor
From this point on, everything in your life is all business.
You are a content creator.
Always be on because everything is content.
Start paying attention to everything and everyone.
Watch people, learn from them and turn their examples into content.
“But Victor lol I don’t want to sacrifice my night life lol”
None of this is sacrifice. It’s just the price you pay to bleed success.
Sacrifice means you get nothing in return. It’s not a goddamn sacrifice if you get rewarded!
You guys that work a job are sacrificing.
You waste your life, you spend most of your waking hours under fluorescent lights, and you make a little ass pimple of a paycheck.
Ask a normal Joe working a normal job if he wants to go to the beach on a normal Tuesday morning…
“No, I can’t. I have to work, then I have to catch up on netflix. Maybe in 30 years when I retire.”
Ask me if I want to go to the beach on a normal Tuesday morning and I’ll probably say..
“I was already there this morning working out”.
#3 – Choose a name for your You, Inc. business
A good name is very important.
Your personal name is a good name for your business but not necessarily the best name for a brand.
If you have a cool, unique name then you can use your name as the name and face of the business.
If you don’t have a cool name then you’ll need to create one.
Victor Pride is a cool name. Bob Johnson isn’t a cool name.
⚡️You should always own your own name, even if you don’t use it (because someone else will)⚡️
Bold & Determined is a cool name, it is relatable, easy to remember and can be shortened into BAD which is rad.
DeterminedlyBold is a terrible name (Yes, a real copycat name I have seen).
A good option would be to have a name that other people can identify with (and remember).
You have to own your business name as a domain (yourname.com).
Forget .net and .org and .me – you need the .com!
Domains are bought and sold like real estate and web hosting is your “rent”.
The greatest domain names are already taken.
Great names will cost you, but your unique name might be available.
30DaysOfDiscipline.com cost me $500. BADNET.com cost me $10,000.
BoldAndDetermined.com only cost me $10.
You need a website and you need a domain name, it isn’t optional.
When picking your domain name, remember: no dashes and no numbers (impossible to remember: this-is-a-terrible-domain.com).
Make your name easy to read, easy to say and easy to remember.
⚡️Get a free domain name with BADNET when you buy hosting⚡️
You need a website with a dot-com domain name and it is not optional.
If you can’t afford $4 a month for web hosting (rent) then You, Inc. isn’t for you.
Instead you could try holding a sign on the side of the highway that says “Homeless and Hungry, Please Help“.
Winners have $4 to invest in You, Inc.
After you pick your business name you need to secure all of social media account names (even though you will not use social media until you have followers – more on that later).
#4 – Choose a media platform to deliver your art (blog, podcast or video)
Choose a media platform – blog, podcast, or video.
All of those platforms require a website!
All of those platforms make money so choose where you excel.
I’m the best writer who ever lived so I write, because that’s the best way to get my message out.
If you excel at speaking you should start a podcast.
If you excel at speaking and you look good (handsome, or otherwise unique looking) you should do videos.
Do the work!
I make it sound easy, and it is, but you still have to do the work.
I don’t even like writing (or talking) but I have something to say so I do the work required to:
A) get my ideas into the world and
B) succeed.
All I do is put the ideas in my head into your head, whatever way I can.
⚡️Read Spartan Entrepreneur: Blog Artist for a total blueprint to run a blog like a business⚡️
#5 – Be broad, not niche
Since YOU are a complete person your You, Inc. will be complete.
Niche websites are shit for making money.
Pat Flynn has you fooled. You guys run around making niche websites because Pat says so, but he makes money from his broad website, not from his niche websites.
You will have a main theme, but you will not be limited by only your one theme.
B&D’s theme is freedom and we work around that central theme.
Your topics will simply revolve around your theme but will not be limited to one niche.
People want whole – they don’t want partial!
To be whole you need to have a theme not a niche.
Three topics that make money forever: health, wealth and relationships.
These are your evergreen topics but you can and should branch out into anything that interests you.
Why not niche?
I have hundreds of niche websites.
They’re called articles and Google doesn’t give a shit if it’s a niche website or if it’s a niche article!
Good content will rank well with google!
Don’t make the mistake of starting a niche website when you can start a broad website and release hundreds or even thousands of niche pieces of content – and have it all revolving around one common theme: you.
#6 – Pick a central theme that you will revolve your content around
Your theme is already in your head.
It’s YOU.
It should be very, very easy to create content right from the start.
Your content should pour out of you.
If it’s hard for you to create content then this plan is not for you.
If you have nothing to say then don’t start a business trying to say something.
But if you have something to say, start your You, Inc. and revolve any “side businesses” around it.
Your You, Inc. website/domain is your planet.
Everything else is a moon revolving around your planet.
Connect everything to your home base!
#7 – Create content for yourself first, people second, robots third
What kind of content would you like to see online?
That’s the content you create.
You create for yourself first, you create content for your audience second, and in a distant third you create content for robots (SEO: Search Engine Optimization).
Your content strategy is HEO, not SEO.
H.E.O. – Human Eye Optimization.
Write for people! Talk to people!
Don’t be a nerd and write for machines because you will never develop a connection with an audience (and therefore you will never have an audience).
⚡️Start your You, Inc. website at BADNET right now⚡️
#8 – Create valuable content
You have to create valuable content.
Seems obvious that you have to create content to reap the rewards of being a content creator, right?
I’ve had a bunch of morons ask me how to get an audience – when they haven’t created any content!
They say “I haven’t created anything at all, nothing, and I want to know how did you build an audience? That’s my stumbling block“.
No, you’re stumbling block is backwards: create valuable content and the audience will find you.
Create nothing and obviously no one will find you.
No one has an audience before they create content you dummy!
Create great content and your audience will find you, it’s destiny.
The people who need you will type something good into Google that will lead to you.
They’ll be sitting and crying at night, wishing they’d die, thinking they have no answer…
Until they find you and their lives change.
If you aren’t creating content that changes lives then you don’t deserve to be paid and you won’t be paid.
B&D gets emails every single day thanking me for changing their lives.
⚡️These messages are posted to Instagram using the #BadGuyFanMail hashtag⚡️
If you don’t have an audience after 6 months it’s because your content isn’t good enough.
(It’s very likely that you spend too much time on social media and not enough time creating content that changes lives.)
Should you seek an audience?
Yeah right.
Create gold and the audience will find you.
Bold and Determined is gold and that’s why people come here, not because I begged them to come here and read.
If they need it, they’ll find it because it’s destiny.
Create better content, create the best content and the audience will come directly to you.
You have to be the best at what you do.
If you aren’t the best at You, Inc. (which has no competition) then you need to try something else.
If you aren’t the best at what you then how do you think you’re going to make money? By osmosis through me? Don’t make me laugh!
Be the best to be treated like the best!
How do you be the best?
#9 – Be extraordinary (make yourself great!)
I wasn’t born a magnet for success, I just turned myself into one.
Like Donald Trump once said, (I think)…
“Make yourself great again!“
You need to be prepared to make yourself better.
In fact you have to make yourself great (in some way) to make money from You, Inc.
Some of you think the content creators on YouTube are losers, which is terribly funny.
The best YouTube content creators make enough money to drive around in Lamborghinis and most of their “haters” are stuck in traffic at 5pm headed home from another day at the office, ready to order a pizza and “catch up on netflix”.
What’s that saying again?
LOL.
You have to be great before you can show other people how to be great.
You can’t be a normal Jerkoff Joe and make money from You, Inc.
A normal guy doesn’t want to pay a normal guy when a normal guy can just look in the mirror.
People want to watch experts and authorities.
Be extraordinary, leave ordinary to your fans.
You can’t be a total loser and then expect to be a winner just by posting videos or articles online.
It takes work to make a loser into a winner.
You have to spend time doing that work before you can show anyone else how to do it.
Now that you have made yourself great, you need to create better content.
How do you create better content?
Bleed.
Bleed on the page or the screen.
Bleed for everyone.
Like Ric Flair once said: “Red is green, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Kill yourself to create great content.
Get that blood money and don’t ask me any more questions.
⚡️Read Spartan Entrepreneur: Blog Artist to learn how to bleed content⚡️
#10 – Publish a lot your first year (Your first year publishing plan)
When you start creating content you want to create it and release it fast.
This is your first year publishing strategy: write – publish – repeat.
After you have a real audience your publishing plan is: write – edit – refine – publish – promote – repeat.
Promote?
Yes, promote (after you have an audience to promote to).
After you bleed you want your fans to find it and enjoy it, so you promote it to them via email and social media.
(Note: Email marketing is much more powerful than social media marketing. Much more!)
“But Victor! lol you said social media is a waste of time? I’m confused lol”
Figure it out.
You can’t promote anything until you have an audience.
The only way you get an audience is by creating great content.
I get these morons saying they’ll promote me on their website if I do an interview with them.
When I look at their site it’s brand new and they have no followers and barely any content!
Get this into your head: You’re nothing at all for the first year and nobody, especially not me, is going to give you an audience.
You will earn an audience from your blood, sweat and tears.
Unless you happen to be very special you are nothing for the first year!
#11 – Forget about social media until you have 500+ followers
I see total beginners on twitter all the time, “promoting” themselves.
More like wasting time instead of working.
People who have no content, less than a month of content, or are otherwise lacking are playing around on social media all day, pretending to “promote” themselves.
Social media is a hustlers business not a goddamn hobby!
Only total losers are on social media promoting themselves instead of creating content…
But I see it all the time!
I see only two types of people on social media:
Total winners (content creators)
Total losers (content consumers)
Winner are the ones who are on social media for business (with the profits to prove it).
Total losers are on social media not making any money and wasting their time.
“But Victor, I thought social media was a powerful tool lol”
Social media is a powerful tool…
FOR PEOPLE WHO ALREADY HAVE AN AUDIENCE!
Social media is only powerful if people care about you.
If no one gives a shit about you then social media is a total waste of time.
Do not waste your time on social media until you have 500 organic followers.
Don’t ask for followers, don’t do anything for followers.
Just open your social media accounts, and when 500 people have followed you organically then you have a real audience.
And only then can you use twitter as a producer instead of a consumer.
How to run run Twitter like a business (and it isn’t a business until you have followers):
Never tweet fire <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/72x72/1f525.png" alt="