How to Get Rich on Easy Mode
By Ali Abdaal
Summary
## Key takeaways - **Easy Mode: Help Others Make Money**: The easiest way to get rich is to help other people make money, rather than focusing on personal gain through traditional means like selling handmade goods. This 'easy mode' approach contrasts with the 'hard mode' of struggling for every dollar. [00:35] - **B2B Dominates: Sell to Businesses, Not Consumers**: Selling to businesses (B2B) is significantly easier than selling to consumers (B2C) because businesses operate on logic and spreadsheets and have more disposable income. Consumers, on the other hand, often buy with emotion and face tighter budgets. [14:26] - **Value-Based Pricing Over Hourly Rates**: Charging based on the value you provide, rather than by the hour, is crucial for getting rich. This method avoids capping your income by your time and incentivizes efficiency and effectiveness. [15:44] - **Skills Close to Revenue Yield Higher Pay**: Skills directly tied to revenue generation, such as sales and copywriting that drives conversions, are more lucrative than those further removed from direct income. The easier it is to link your work to profit, the more you can earn. [17:02], [18:04] - **Jobs are About Value Creation, Not Tasks**: Your job isn't about completing tasks like sending emails or attending meetings; it's about how you help your employer make more money. Identifying and quantifying this value is key to career advancement and wealth. [04:11], [18:30] - **Focus on Revenue Retention and Upselling**: In a job, roles like customer support are valuable not just for answering queries, but for preventing customer churn (revenue retention) and identifying opportunities to upsell, directly impacting the company's bottom line. [04:30], [04:52]
Topics Covered
- Easy Mode: Help Others Make Money
- Businesses Capture Value, Don't Generate It
- Tie Your Job Directly to Revenue
- Sell to Businesses, Not Consumers
- Charge for Value, Not Time
Full Transcript
If you look at the game of capitalism, the game of trying to get rich, there are essentially two ways to play it. There's hard mode and there is easy mode. Hard mode is what society romanticizes, like you know, the struggling artist or the passionate
mode. Hard mode is what society romanticizes, like you know, the struggling artist or the passionate entrepreneur selling handmade candles at the local farmers market or the guy lovingly crafting tote bags and hoping someone on Etsy is going to buy them. We
love these stories. They're authentic and they're also a terrible, terrible strategy for actually getting rich. Trying to get rich on hard mode is like trying to convince a stranger to take their hard-earned post tax salary and spend it on something that they probably don't need. You are fighting against
their rent and their student loans and their crippling financial anxiety. And
so every dollar they give you is a dollar that they are literally taking away from their future. Now getting rich on easy mode is different and almost no one talks about it because it sounds way less romantic. You get rich on easy mode when you follow one simple rule. Help other people make money. That is it.
Help other people make money. That is the entire thesis of this video. So,
here is how this video is going to work. In part one, I'm going to try and convince you that this is actually true, that the way to get rich on easy mode is to help other people make money. And then in part two, assuming you buy the thesis, I'm going to share the four principles that you can apply to actually get rich on easy mode. And those will apply whether you have a job
or a side hustle or you are thinking of starting a business. So, the uncomfortable truth behind how the economy works is that the economy is functionally a giant pyramid scheme. The
value gets generated at the bottom of the pyramid and it's captured at the top. So money tends to flow upwards through society. Now if you for example
top. So money tends to flow upwards through society. Now if you for example think of starting a business, the place where you're probably going to start is by selling to consumers, i.e. people at the bottom of the pyramid. But this is actually where the money is tightest. This is where people are drowning in
debt and people are living paycheck to paycheck. And so trying to build any kind of business or even any kind of career serving consumers, people at the bottom of the pyramid is unlikely to get you rich on easy mode. Like if you take Amazon as an example, you and me will think of Amazon as that place, online
shopping place where we go to get our groceries and toothbrushes and books and stuff. But actually for most of its existence, Amazon barely broke even on
stuff. But actually for most of its existence, Amazon barely broke even on selling very cheap things to normal people like you and me to consumers. The
way Amazon makes most of its profits is through a thing called Amazon Web Services where they basically sell like web and cloud infrastructure to other businesses like Netflix and Disney Plus i.e. it creates the infrastructure for them to make money. And there is an enormous list of businesses that are
essentially powered by Amazon Web Services, which is where Amazon makes makes a majority of its profit from. Similarly, if you look at the Fortune 100, like the top 100 companies in the US, like 70% of them, you can basically summarize what they do as we help businesses make more money. If you take the example of something like Google or something like Meta, which is, you know,
the company behind Instagram and Facebook, again, you and I think of Google as a search engine or like Gmail, and we think of Facebook and Instagram as social media platforms, but the way they make money is through advertising.
And the reason they make money through advertising is because Google and Meta help other businesses make money. We pay $20,000 a month to Meta to run Instagram ads to sell my courses. The only reason we do that is because those ads generate customers, which makes us more than the $20,000 we spend each month. I have
friends who give Meta and Google upwards of a million dollars a month in order to run ads on those platforms. And there are way bigger companies that are spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars every year on Google and Facebook advertising because it helps make them more money. Let's take banks
for example. You've got like JP Morgan, you've got Goldman Sachs. The way these
for example. You've got like JP Morgan, you've got Goldman Sachs. The way these banks make money is not because you and me are putting our $1,000 or $10,000 into the bank into like a savings account or whatever. The way they make money is by facilitating transactions for other businesses that help those
other businesses make money. And so the point of all these examples and the point of this video is to basically just explain that if you want to get rich on easy mode, you build something or you do something that helps other people make money. If you're trying to get rich doing anything else, anything other than
money. If you're trying to get rich doing anything else, anything other than helping someone make money or maybe even save money, anything other than that, you are playing getting rich on hard mode. There is nothing wrong with that, but I just want you to be aware of that. Okay. So, this idea that like basically
easy mode equals help other people make money and hard mode equals basically everything else. This idea directly leads to a handful of principles that I
everything else. This idea directly leads to a handful of principles that I want to talk through in this video. Principle number one is that if you want to get rich on easy mode, you need to tie your work directly to revenue. Now,
let's say you have a job, i.e. you are working for someone else rather than working for yourself. Most people actually have no idea how their job makes money for the business. And most people will think of their jobs as like completing tasks or filling in forms or attending meetings or sending emails or looking busy depending on who you speak to and what corporation they work for.
But that is not what you are being paid for. The only reason your employer is paying you money is because somewhere in the chain of logic you are helping them make more money than they are costing. So if you want to get rich on easy mode and you have a job, the first step to do is to do a revenue audit. You want to
ask yourself, how does my job help my employer make more money? And crucially,
can I put a number on it? So, for example, if you're in customer support, you might initially think that your job is answering emails or like replying to support tickets, but it's actually not that. Your job and the reason why they hire you is because by virtue of you answering emails and support tickets, what you're doing is you are preventing customer churn. You are keeping
customers from canceling their subscriptions to whatever the thing is.
And this is something called revenue retention, which is a very measurable thing and which the CFO of your business really cares about. Similarly, the
people who are making the most money in customer success are the ones who are able to upsell the customers, i.e. to generate more revenue from existing customers. If you can do that and if you can demonstrate you can do that, you're
customers. If you can do that and if you can demonstrate you can do that, you're far more likely to get rich. Now, if you think about it in the context of jobs, like what are the highest paying jobs? Generally, if you have a job in sales, that tends to be a very highpaying job. In fact, the salespeople in a company are often paid more than the CEO is because the salespeople can directly tie
whatever they are doing to revenue. As a salesperson, you can say, "Hey, I brought in $200,000 of revenue this month. therefore, you know, I should get my $20,000 commission or whatever the thing might be. And because you can tie it to revenue, it's got a very clear return on investment for the business,
it's a lot easier for you to get that raise or get that promotion or get that commission because it's just really obvious how you are adding value. The
way that most people ask for raises is, you know, you know, thinking that like, oh, I worked really hard and therefore I should get a raise or like inflation is up 3% and therefore I should get a raise. And all of these things are working against the current of capitalism. If you can say, hey, I have so far generated X amount of value to
capitalism. If you can say, hey, I have so far generated X amount of value to the business and I'm going to continue generating X amount more. Therefore, I
should be able to capture a slice of that value, that is a much easier decision for an employer to make. Okay, so at this point, you might hopefully be thinking that you too would like to go allin on your dreams. And maybe one of those dreams is starting a business, which is where the sponsor of this video, Stan, comes in. Now, if you haven't heard of them, Stan is basically
the dream toolkit for creators and solarreneurs. It gives you a super easy to set up digital storefront where you can sell courses and digital products and memberships and coaching calls and pretty much anything else you could want to sell online. We absolutely love Stan and we have been recommending it
wholeheartedly to the students of our lifestyle business academy which is sort of like our online business school that helps people start lifestyle businesses.
And in that context, like especially if you're someone who doesn't have a lot of time on your hands, especially if you're someone you who doesn't know how to code and doesn't want to spend all of the time and the faf of building your own custom website to be able to sell stuff online, using a service like Stan, who we have found for our students, is like by far the simplest and quickest and
easiest way to get up and running selling stuff on the internet. And they
are currently actually running a very cool campaign called Dare to Dream, where they're giving one winner $100,000 to quit their job and start their business. So, if you're watching this before the 31st of January 2026, that
business. So, if you're watching this before the 31st of January 2026, that campaign is still open and you can totally enter to win. So, if you would like to join and take the first steps on your journey towards becoming an entrepreneur and maybe even reaching financial freedom, head over to daretodream.stan.store
or check out the link in the video description. So, big thank you to Stan for sponsoring the video and let's get back to it. If you think of the other fields that are like really highly paid, finance. Why is finance so highly paid?
It's because basically everyone working in finance is somewhat directly helping other people make money, which is why working in finance tends to get you rich. But even within finance, like there are certain roles that get paid
rich. But even within finance, like there are certain roles that get paid way more than others. So for example, if you're an algorithmic quantitative trader or something like that and you're literally writing the algorithms that are making the firm more money, you can make a lot of money because you're very very close to the revenue. If you're an investment banker and you're front of
office, i.e. you're like interfacing with clients and like developing a
office, i.e. you're like interfacing with clients and like developing a relationship with clients, those clients are really really rich people like ultra high net worth individuals or like pension funds or like banks or whatever.
And so they are literally giving your firm money as a result of the connection that you have with a client. Therefore, you as the investment banker there are incredibly valuable because you are managing that relationship with a client so that your firm can make more money. But if you are working in HR within the
context of a finance job, you're probably less likely to get rich because what you are doing is less directly tied to revenue. Of course, if you're asking for a raise, you're going to make a case for how it is directly tied to revenue.
But if you're working in HR, if you're working in admin, if you're working in customer support, those roles are just sort of generally less well paid compared to the roles that directly touch revenue. Why do people in tech make so much money? The reason people in tech make so much money is because tech companies make a ton of money. And the reason tech companies in general
make a ton of money is because in general they help other people make money. But there are tons and tons and tons and tons of tech companies that you
money. But there are tons and tons and tons and tons of tech companies that you have never heard of that are making millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars every single year by offering B2B businessto business services that help other businesses make more money. You as
an individual probably have never used Salesforce, but Salesforce is an absolutely enormous company that helps other businesses make money. As
consumers, we tend not to know what are all the companies out there that are offering B2B make money type services, but that actually makes up the majority of the economy in most like developed countries. The other example here is that, you know, why do law firm partners make so much money? Why do partners in management consulting firms make so much money? It's not because they're
particularly good lawyers or particularly good management consultants. They are not being paid insane amounts of money because they are good at the at the task of law or at the task of management consulting. They're being paid insane amounts of money because they are bringing in new clients into the business. I.e. they are helping
their firm make more money. Like if you want to make partner in a law firm, you generally have to come with a book of business. Like you know, you've been doing networking and playing golf with people over the decades. So now you have this enormous list of people who are also, you know, high up executives at different companies. And the idea is you're going to try and bring them as
different companies. And the idea is you're going to try and bring them as clients into your law firm. This is why law firms and consulting firms don't like it when a partner leaves because generally when a partner leaves, you know, they're not supposed to, but often they'll take their personal relationships with them, which can directly result in the firm losing
money, which is why they're willing to pay insane amounts of money, millions of dollars a year, including like profit share and equity and the whole shebang just to retain people who come with existing books of business. So even in that world where you're a lawyer or a bank or a management consultant, when you make partner or when you're on route to making partner, it is actually your
ability to help your business make more money that causes you to get rich, not your ability to do the work that you are trained for. It's literally your ability to be a salesperson and to bring money into the business. Oh, and quick thing.
If you're trying to figure out a way of tying whatever you're doing for your job or your career or your business to revenue, me and my team have actually trained a custom GPT based on this video that will help you do this completely for free. And there'll be a link down below in the video description if you
for free. And there'll be a link down below in the video description if you want to check it Now at this point you might be thinking but like what about the doctors? What about the teachers? What about the social workers? Their
the doctors? What about the teachers? What about the social workers? Their
work isn't directly tied to revenue. So what's up with that? And in that case you would be absolutely right. And that is why most doctors and teachers and social workers find it very difficult to get rich. I don't like this any more than you do. I think this is a bad system. But unfortunately it is the capitalist system that we live in that your value to the market is not
necessarily the same as your value to society. Teachers and social workers and doctors obviously add a lot of value to society but because they don't directly help someone else get rich they are unlikely to make a lot of money and in fact if you look at the doctors that do get rich it tends to be doctors in the
US which is a private healthcare system uh it tends to be the doctors who are the business owners so the ones who own the clinics or who own the hospitals rather than the ones who work in the hospitals i.e. they are helping the business make more money through insurance and billing and stuff or they have a very very specialized skill set that customers in the American
healthcare system are willing to pay a lot of money for. For example, if you're a really amazing neurosurgeon, the reason you get paid a lot of money is not because you add loads of value to society as a neurosurgeon. It's because
you add a lot of money to the hospital's topline and bottom line as a result of them being able to bill out your services as a neurosurgeon. Unfortunately, in this game of capitalism that we're in, the people getting rich are the ones helping other people get rich. The point I'm making in this video, I'm not saying that you
should play on easy mode or on hard mode. What I'm saying is that if you want to play on easy mode, you got to recognize that you got to tie whatever you're doing to revenue generation in some kind of way. So, I'm not saying you should stop being a teacher or stop being a social worker or stop being a doctor. But if you want to get rich on easy mode, you might be thinking, okay,
doctor. But if you want to get rich on easy mode, you might be thinking, okay, how can I shift from public school teacher to something like corporate training where, you know, could you use your skills of teaching on the side, on the weekends, as a side hustle, as a business to help corporations make more
money by training their staff in something that makes them money? For
example, I have a bunch of friends who run businesses in sales training. They
teach other people how to be better salespeople and therefore make money for the business. Those guys are making tons of money. And I want to share another
the business. Those guys are making tons of money. And I want to share another few examples just to drive this point home. So I was having a chat with one of my team members, Dan. Dan is the guy on my team who is in charge of my website.
And Dan wanted to start a side hustle where he's like help, you know, he's trying to make money on the side. And I'm like great. I'm all I'm all for my team starting side hustles. And Dan was struggling because he was like, do I sell website design or do I sell like SEO audits or do I sell like web development for WordPress themes or any of that kind of stuff? I was like, well
no, Dan, like why do I hire you? And he was like, "Well, you hire me because uh you know I manage your website." And I was like, "Okay, but like why do I want you to manage my website?" And he was like, "I don't know cuz you know you want your website to be good." And I was like, "No, Dan, the reason I hire you is
not because you're managing my website. It's because you're helping me make more money. So how do we tie what you do to how you help me make more money?" And
money. So how do we tie what you do to how you help me make more money?" And
eventually what we landed on with Dan was that like Dan, my website guy, helps me make more money because he optimizes the conversion rates on our sales pages so that customers are more likely to buy my courses and programs and stuff. And
so now that Dan knows this, he recognizes, oh wait a minute, his skill set is not in designing websites. It is, but his skill set is really in helping businesses make more money through conversion rate optimization on their websites. And as soon as Dan was able to articulate that and tie what he's doing
websites. And as soon as Dan was able to articulate that and tie what he's doing to the measurable increase in revenue for a business, he was able to land like a $15,000 side hustle client, which he had never been able to do before because he was always selling web design or web development or SEO audits. Just
packaging a thing around helping someone make money helps you play business on easy mode, but choosing to package it not around helping someone make money or save money is choosing to play business on hard mode. All right, so principle number two is to sell to people who actually have money. Now, this sounds stupidly obvious and
yet a lot of people ignore this, especially beginners to the world of business or to the world of trying to make money. So, if for example, you're selling something for $50 to someone earning $40,000 a year, you are fighting against their rent and their groceries and their kids school fees and their crippling sense of financial anxiety where every single purchase is an
emotional battle and every sale is a fight that you are fighting feeling as if you're fighting with a customer to convince them to, you know, part with their money. And that's playing on hard mode and it can be really exhausting.
their money. And that's playing on hard mode and it can be really exhausting.
But compare that now to selling a $50,000 service to a business that's making 5 million a year. They don't really care about 50 grand. They care
about the ROI. So if your service helps them make $200,000 because it's, I don't know, improving some aspect of their sales or marketing or fulfillment or like product process and you send them the invoice for $50,000, they'll probably just like wire you the money immediately and reply with money sent.
Thanks. And this is why in general, if you're trying to get rich, selling to businesses, i.e. B2B, business to business is dramatically easier than
businesses, i.e. B2B, business to business is dramatically easier than B2C, business to consumer because businesses buy with spreadsheets and logic and they have money to spend whereas consumers tend to buy with feelings. And again, this is one of those like really counterintuitive
feelings. And again, this is one of those like really counterintuitive things about business, which is that, you know, let's say you're trying to make $100,000. It's a lot easier to make 100 grand selling 10 things for 10 grand
make $100,000. It's a lot easier to make 100 grand selling 10 things for 10 grand compared to selling 10,000 things for $10, right? And this is what we tell our students in the Lifestyle Business Academy that if you want to get rich on easy mode, like if you want to pick an easy business to start, easier than the
alternatives, you generally want to sell something between $2,000 and $20,000 because that means you need relatively few customers to make a viable business out of it. And if at all possible, you want the outcome of whatever you are selling to be essentially, I help you make more money. So, for example, we've
got Adam who is one of our students who's like I think his offer is something like I help seven figure online course creators boost their sales by 30% through optimizing their sales function. That's basically I help rich people make more money and that is a lot easier to sell than I help corporate professionals
find their purpose or I help uh people overcome their anxiety or I help people overcome imposter syndrome or things like that. Wherever possible we want to sell to people with money and we want to tie whatever we are selling to helping them make more of it. This is business on easy mode compared to the alternative
which is just a lot harder to do. Principle number three is you want to set your pricing based on value rather than on time. And the idea here is that when you charge by the hour, you are literally capping your income by the number of hours you are physically able to work. And also, you are creating a
weird incentive structure where you are incentivized to be slower rather than quicker. And the only reason people tend to think this way is because probably
quicker. And the only reason people tend to think this way is because probably the first couple of jobs that you had when you were a kid, you were paid hourly for them. And probably in the job you have right now, you have an annual salary, but you can calculate kind of like your hourly rate because you got to be at work from, I don't know, 9 till 6 or whatever the thing might be. And so
if you're trying to get rich on easy mode, the the thing we again that we want to figure out is what is the value that our service or our product or our business is offering and how can I quantify this value? Because if what you do will help your client make an extra $100,000, then it would be a bit dumb
for you to charge only $500 for it. And there is a good rule of thumb here. If
you are thinking of starting a business, it's a rule of thumb. It's not a rule of law, but as a general rule of thumb, you want to charge about onetenth of the value that you help create. So, if whatever you are doing, your service or your product or whatever, will help someone make an extra $100,000, then you
would charge $10,000 cuz they would feel like they're getting a bargain because obviously paying 10 grand to be able to make 100 grand is an amazing deal for them. And then you will feel like you're getting rich and so everyone wins.
them. And then you will feel like you're getting rich and so everyone wins.
Principle number four is to build skills that sit close to the money. And the
idea here and the unfortunate truth is that not all skills are equally valuable in the marketplace. Some skills are nice to have skills and other skills are print money type skills. So for example, learning the skill of sales is a very high income skill because it sits very very very close to the revenue because
if you can bring in revenue for the business that you work for, then you are way more likely to make money or commission or be able to start a business off the back of that.
Similarly, a lot of things within marketing, if you can directly tie them to the amount of revenue that the business creates as a result of that skill, again, it's a lot easier for you to earn more in that career or charge more if you're a business in that particular domain. But then there are
skills that are also like a few steps removed from directly making money. So
for example, graphic design, graphic design and making stuff look pretty is a nice to have skill and unless you are tying it to I don't know creating advertisements and stuff that directly increase revenue or things like that, it's difficult for graphic designers to make a lot of money. Similarly, writing
as a skill, creative writing, analytical writing, content writing, these things tend to be less well- paid, but the best paid writers tend to be the copywriters, i.e. the people that are literally writing the sales pages that help
i.e. the people that are literally writing the sales pages that help convince customers to part with their cash. So, it's really more of a marketing function rather than a kind of writing function. And so, basically, whatever the skill is, whatever you do, the harder it is for your employer or your client to draw a line between what you do and how much money you make them,
the harder it'll be for you to make a lot of money in that particular space.
So, with all that said, here is the uncomfortable truth that I wish someone had told me years ago. You're probably already helping someone make more money.
That is literally what a job is. Your employer hired you because you helped their business generate more value than they pay you. That is the deal. That is
the entire arrangement for like everything other than roles that are funded by like the state for example doctors working in the UK's national health service where it's like a lot less of a clear correlation. And so this gap between what you create and what you capture that is the profit margin for
the business. And for most people that gap is higher than you would think. And
the business. And for most people that gap is higher than you would think. And
so there's a few different things you can do here. Number one, you can like increase the amount of value that you actually add to the business. And so
then be able to say to them like, "Hey man, you know, I'm I'm adding so much value to the business quantified by XYZ. Therefore, you know, I'd like a raise of like some percentage of that. And so, that's generally an easy sale for an employer. Alternatively, maybe you're already creating a lot of value for the
employer. Alternatively, maybe you're already creating a lot of value for the employer or the client or whatever, and you just need to make the connection between what you do and how they make money. You just need to make that connection more clear, like being just making things more visible, and making the visibility of what you do more directly tied to ROI, like return on
investment. And so, the key message of this video is that getting rich in all
investment. And so, the key message of this video is that getting rich in all these contexts is isn't really about working harder. The people I know who are doctors, who are social workers, who are teachers are working a lot harder than friends of mine who work in finance or like have businesses that help
companies make more money. But it's like in the capitalist world that we live in, like we said, market value is not the same as societal value. And so if you want to get rich on easy mode, you try and find a way to help other people make more money. And every other method is kind of trying to get rich on hard mode.
more money. And every other method is kind of trying to get rich on hard mode.
Now, yes, you could sort of get rich through having a job, but it is way easier to get rich by actually having your own business. And if you are wondering what sort of business you should start, what's the easiest, most profitable business for a beginner to start this year, I have a video over
here that kind of breaks down my thesis on what business I think you should start if you are, for example, a corporate professional and you're looking to start your first business. So, that will be right over there. Thank
you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.
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