When I started high school, all I really cared about was video games and cartoons.
I didn’t really have direction in life until college, when a friend introduced me to the world of podcasts and audiobooks.
Today, I'm grateful to have a creative, fulfilling career doing what I love, earning equal or better pay than a desk job.
Now that I'm on the path, I hope to share what has helped me so far with you.
Here are some things that have helped me build a 6-figure mindset:
being able to earn $10,000+ a month, while loving what I do.
1.) Environment
At first I was clueless how to find my dream lifestyle, and I never would have found direction if I hadn’t taken the first steps to surround myself with a better environment.
In high school, that was finding my first dance friends.
Not only were they amazing dancers I wanted to be more like, but they also cared about their studies more than I ever did.
They showed me a new side of life I never originally knew was possible, and I was influenced by them to seek a better life for myself.
If you feel trapped and unhappy with where you are in life, it’s because we’re not aware of the better paths available to us.
This means we have to be active in seeking new influences— people and groups we look up to, finding the content they consume, and consuming those things ourselves.
Dan Koe says: "Make your digital environment conducive to the path you want to walk."
It’s hard to grow a tree in the desert, so find an environment more suitable for your growth instead.
2.) Education
A lot of us are disenchanted by education after being in the school system for 12+ years, and wondering what good it did us.
The thing is, there are 2 kinds of education:
The type we learn in grade school. Not because we want to, but because we have to.
The type we are drawn to learning. Not because we have to, but because want to, even if it means going out of our way.
There is nothing more powerful than your intrinsic desire to learn something.
Do what you can to immerse yourself in the skills and practices that will elevate your mood, perspective, and income.
For me recently, this was getting a gym membership 🏋🏻, and consulting my friends who work out for advice. This practice has made me dramatically happier, and more confident.
Nothing beats practical education.
Being able to find ways to get experience in the field will beat a classroom lecture almost every time.
Find mentorship in-person and online, but they will never do the thing for you— that’s on YOU.
Make videos. Create and sell a product. Do the thing every day.
By the time you look back, you’ll hardly recognize yourself.
3.) Habits
Having amassed 12 million+ subscribers on YouTube, Casey Neistat is widely recognized as a pioneer for creators.
But when newcomers click on Casey’s videos, they wonder how he’s able to pull millions of views with videos of him just documenting his day.
They don't see, however, the decades of actions beneath his videos.
They don’t see the 42 year-old’s 1,100 previous videos he’s published on YouTube since 2010.
They don’t see the 10 years of prior filmmaking he’s honed obsessively since 2001.
“It’s the execution that matters, never the idea.” – Casey Neistat
I'm not saying to shoot for 12 million subs over an 800-day daily vlog spree, or something crazy like that. I'm saying here that the secret to success lies in daily actions.
If something seems too menacing to start or stop, it’s likely because we are looking at the task as a giant whole, and not a journey of steps. The first thing to do is recognize the power of habits.
For example, if your goal is to “become a full-time creator,” that may seem like a large chasm to cross at once. Instead, break it down fraction-by-fraction:
One year goal: Make a part-time living as a creator.
One month goal: Create content quota & build brand to enable monetization.
One week goal: Educate yourself on how successful creators started, and use them as a model.
Daily goal: Consume one video/chapter on the creator economy, and make one piece of content.
Nothing we’ve done has been one giant leap—it’s all been a long-term collection of actions, compounding into one dramatic result.
Actionable Advice
I don’t want to leave you with just ideas to mentally masturbate to, so I’ll leave you with some practical steps I also use to improve my Environment, Education, and Habits.
1.) Environment: Go to places, and reach out to people you admire.
A wise client of mine named Bernie once told me, “I spend at least an hour a day learning and searching for talent.”
That’s how he found me and hired me for a job, and now he is one of my favorite people to work with.
By taking initiative to find people we look up to, we both enrich our network and expand our horizons.
For now, aim for those within your current network. It’s also an art to tastefully reach out to higher-level individuals, more on that in future writings.
2.) Education: Consume only things that will aid your growth, and cut out any distracting content.
This one is also from Dan Koe: “Get used to the fact that 99% of things you see are distractions.”
If we want to create en environment for maximum growth, we have to prune out all weeds.
Unfollow, click “Not interested,” and delete whatever content isn’t helping you become who you strive to be.
If we don’t train our algorithms to feed us healthy information, it will feed us whatever junk it can to keep us on the app.
3.) Habits: Have a fresh piece of paper each day to write your daily actions.
Whether it’s a small journal or sticky note on your desk, this is a meta-habit that will support your future success.
Ever since I’ve kept a journal since 2017, one of the many ways it has helped me immensely is being a place I can constantly refer back to for my tasks.
In my “morning routine” section of each page, I jot down the daily tasks I want to start my day with. They all are quite simple, so that I can do them repeatedly each day.
I start simple, so I make them consistent. As time goes on, I expand the task (10 pushups becomes 20, then 30, then 50). It’s much easier than jumping straight into 50 pushups from nothing, where I’d more likely just stop altogether.
Grab the nearest blank piece of paper to you NOW, and write at least ONE simple thing you’d like to start doing daily from now on. You’ll thank me later.
Closing Thoughts
Just because I had no goals at first didn’t mean that I couldn’t become something greater, and the same goes for you.
We just need to be intentional in seeking greatness, and a better life for ourselves.
And the best way to start is step by step, page by page, person by person.
Feel free to reply and let me know what actions you’re taking today, I’d love to hear.
Thanks for reading friend,
Kai
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