How To Make 6 Figures — No Bullshit.
Another clickbait article? You should know by now that I don’t roll like that.
Making six figures is about having money to travel, creating a side hustle, looking after your body, investing in yourself and investing in assets.
Before we dive into the detail, understand that money will not make you happy. It will allow you to do cool shit, but only you can make yourself happy. Don’t let the headline of this article make you think otherwise.
I’ve seen plenty of videos and articles that promise the ‘6 Figure Lifestyle,’ but most don’t deliver. Using my own experience, I want to show you how I did it.
Here’s how to make 6 figures:
Do the work nobody else is prepared to do.
Make cold calls to new clients. Door knock. Attend the management meeting and have them rip you a new asshole when you mess up.
“The work that gets you to 6 figures is often the work nobody else wants to do”
Just doing the bare minimum or what’s in your job description won’t get you there! You have to be more proactive than that.
The best way to be proactive?
Solve business problems that have nothing to do with you.
Uncover the business problem that nobody is aware of.
Most people are not prepared to think this way, but if you do, you’ll make it to 6 figures and probably 7 figures pretty quickly.
Work smart, not hard.
You’ve heard it before. It’s cliché.
You don’t need to work 12-hour days to make six figures.
What I did was do blocks of deep work. 2 hours here. 1 hour there. During hours of deep work, there was no instant messaging, no email and most of all — no freaking phone!!!
Your phone is making you dumb and turning you into an attention junkie. You will not make six figures by being a slave to your damn phone. Put it away. Do the deep work. That’s how you work smart, not hard and get the big pay cheque.
Be seen as the leader.
Leaders typically make the big dollars. Even if you’re not a leader right now, you can be seen as one.
The way you show you’re a leader is as follows:
• Demonstrate that you want to build others up
• Do the work that sucks (sales calls)
• Show that you’d love to be replaced by someone you’ve coached to be a leader (leaders breed leaders)
• Hand in your resignation letter on the first day to be filed away (leaders back themselves)
I always pitch myself as a leader. Even when I didn’t have the leader job title I used the work I did on social media as my example of leadership.
“I lead X number of followers on LinkedIn in the areas of personal development and entrepreneurship” I’d say.
Understand what your value is.
Mine is social media and personal development. What’s yours?
If you can’t articulate what your value is, you’re screwed.
Even if you can say what your value is, you will have to be able to demonstrate it. Here’s how I did that with social media:
- Had the most shared blog post on LinkedIn of 2017
- Reached 10 million views on a Quora article
- Had 3 viral articles on Entrepreneur.com
- Reached 84,000 Facebook shares on a blog post I wrote
- Had a Medium article I wrote make it to the Top 15 most read posts of 2018
- Was asked personally by Arianna Huffington to join her blog because of a viral article I wrote
Note: there’s a subtle difference between communicating your value and sounding like you know everything and you’re the greatest thing since Dorrito’s were invented. The difference, to me, is to remove your ego. It’s all in how you communicate it and the tone of voice you use.
Fuse your hobbies into your work.
I put blogging, entrepreneurship and personal development into everything I did.
Mixing hobbies with work is how you get to 6 figures. You’re more likely to chase the proverbial carrot stick if it’s associated with something you like doing.
Even when I just had a regular sales job, I put social media front and center. I gave social media presentations to clients, staff and anyone else who’d listen.
Even though my job had nothing to do with social media, I made it part of the role. I refused to take any other advice. Hobbies led to more passion.
Passion gave me energy and made people remember me. Win!
Go nuts on health.
Exercise, meditate and learn to stay calm. Making six figures can be stressful and you need a way to unwind.
Refine the two tools that are going to get you to six figures: your mind and your body. Mess with these and you’ll be unlikely to compete against everyone else that has the same dream as you.
Create content.
This is the newer part of making 6 figures that no one gets. From my own experience, having a solid online following has helped me make six figures. Why? It’s social proof.
People want to deal with people who are recognized as knowing stuff which can be validated by what they do online. Sharing value through content is how you start new conversations.
Those conversations lead to:
1. Job opportunities
2. Consulting opportunities
3. Meeting new people
4. Clients for your side hustle
5. Validation of the ideas you have to make 6 figures
6. Most of all, conversations help you to refine who you are and how you pitch yourself
All of this leads to making 6 figures.
The good gigs aren’t found online.
Sorry to say. The next online job startup is not going to solve all your 6 figure problems. The way you find high paying work is through hustle and your network.
“I skipped the queue on many career opportunities by getting intros from people smarter than me. These intro’s created leverage which made it hard for recruiting and hiring managers to say no to a conversation”
The thing people don’t understand is an introduction doesn’t mean much. Once you have the intro, you actually have to close the deal yourself.
You have to be able to turn a conversation into curiosity.
Curiosity leads to an interview or a chance to pitch your consulting services. Rarely does any decision-maker buy on the first conversation.
Closing the deal requires the following:
• Shut your mouth and listen
• Ask quality questions that you have in mind beforehand
• Know what you stand for and your one unique skill beforehand
• Be respectful of their time
• Find a common interest (lately, mine has been traveling to Europe)
Interview like it’s going out of fashion.
Talk to everyone. Meet lots of companies. Speak with 39 recruiters. That’s what I did. The truth is I worked at one company for a long time and had lost touch with how the market works.
Companies who don’t know you are most likely not going to pay you six figures.
In my case, unknown companies reference checked me, put me through four rounds of interviews and made me do case studies.
When I was given the first case study, I cracked the shits like a little baby and told them I’m not doing it. “Don’t you know who I am?” was what my big fat ego and brain told me. I was deluded.
Through years of personal development, I saw my own bullshit for what it was and put in the work.
I spent one week straight preparing for the case study. I knew two-tenths of stuff all about the topic. It was painful, emotional and grueling.
I rolled up to the pitch being as prepared as I could be. I delivered the case study and to my surprise, I knocked it out of the park. There’s no substitute for hard work. Quit being a sook.
Interview. Interview. Interview. That’s how you learn the skills you’ll need to make six figures. No job website will tell you that!
Be stupidly honest and transparent.
Lots of people are full of the brown stuff. Learn to become insanely honest with people. It’s rare and will make you stand out.
Highlight your weaknesses.
Talk about your fears.
Demonstrate career mistakes and what you’ve learned.
Quit trying to be that perfectly polished diamond because nobody is believing you. When you’re seen as real, that becomes infectious. We all want to do business with real people. Why? Being real is our natural human state.
Pitch yourself right.
To make six figures, you will have to pitch yourself (LOTS). Many people pitch themselves like this:
“I’m a speaker, coach, consultant, entrepreneur, leader and professor — didn’t you know I do everything?”
This will fuck up any chance of making 6 figures. It’s too complicated and what you’ve just said is “I do everything” which means you probably do nothing.
Get simpler.
I’m an entrepreneur that knows a fuck load about social media and personal development. That’s my rough pitch and even that line is probably too much.
Ask yourself this question:
“If I was going to be known for one thing what would it be?”
That’s the thing you god damn pitch until you’re blue in the face. Everything else is noise and it’s confusing. Another great question is this:
“What do you want to be paid a boatload of cashola to do?”
The rules of this game are simple: you can only pick one thing. Again, that’s your pitch right there. One line!
Final tip.
Don’t get lost on the numbers. I said 6 figures in this article as a measuring stick more than anything. Don’t get hung up on the digits of your internet banking screen. Aim for this instead:
- Solving interesting problems
- Putting your unique self into everything you do
- Playing the long game
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