Hey what’s up.
Today I want to talk to you about a trend I’m noticing about making money.
In short, it pays to be on the frontier.
What does that mean?
Let’s imagine the year is 1969.
You’re someone who likes education.
Back then, a solid career choice may have been higher education.
Get your degree, work your way up, get a tenured position. Print and enjoy life.
Why?
I’d argue largely because was the frontier.
Millions of Americans would choose to go to college in the coming years and you’d be riding a macro wave that would make it significantly easier to earn money, gain career prospects, and achieve stability for your life.
But in 2023?
Is that still the case?
I would argue no. In fact, I would argue the academy is a terrible career choice in 2023.
Why?
On-campus political developments aside, it’s not longer the frontier.
You see articles like this:
The higher education pie has probably hit a peak or at least I suspect it will within our lifetimes.
People are tired of paying ridicules tuition fees to get a job they don’t like so that they can pay off their absurd debts.
Not saying college is always a bad option, especially if your parents can support you and you chose a financially sound option (thanks Mom and Dad).
But where is the educational frontier today?
I would argue online.
It’s coaching and mentorship programs that guarantee skill based ROI.
If you enter this field in 2023, you’ll be riding a massive macro wave. This means you’ll find it easier to gain employment, create businesses, and make money.
Where is the Frontier?
For example, I was recently talking to my friend Fernando from London.
He’s founded a ghostwriting agency with our mutual friend Tim.
Not exactly online education, but still a frontier wave:
Personal branding on Twitter and LinkedIn.
They’re absolutely ripping.
Out of respect for them, I wont share specific numbers, but let’s just say, they’re struggling to find talent to hire while some of their friends from elite UK universities are struggling to get 9-5s in traditional industries.
It goes back to the idea of what boat you’re in is more important than how hard you row.
And where you position yourself in the marketplace will help you swim with or against the spirit of the times.
How to identify frontier markets:
School will not help.
It is built for a different frame. The current frame. In fact, some of your connections on the traditional route may even suspect the frontier is a scam, or a bubble.
In some cases that may be true. NFTs turned out to be pretty wonky, and although I was pretty convinced Bitcoin would replace the USD as the world’s reserve currency, we’ve yet to see that come true.
An easy question is:
Is this thing relatively new?
Will people want more or less of this 10 years from now?
The second question is harder to answer than the first, but let’s use the make money online space as an example.
As the traditional Western career path proves to be less and less lucrative and hundreds of millions of Indians and Nigerians come online, will more or less people turn to skill based education to create location independent income?
My guess is probably.
And so, while the news is speaking of a recession, the company I work at (in the make money online space) is seeing record months, insane profit margins, and my friends in the greater creator economy are crushing it.
Does this mean you’re guaranteed to get rich in the creator economy?
Obviously not. There is some truth that scalable games tend to act like power laws.
20% will earn 80% of the profits.
and the top .01% earns infinitely more than the top 1%.
But if you’re not sure what direction to take your career or skill acquisition, ask yourself:
Will this still be useful in 5 years?
Will this position me to ride macro, frontier waves?
Or will I be fighting for a smaller piece of a shrinking pie?
You’ll probably be a lot better positioned than listening to the mainstream advice of, get a good degree, get a good job, pay off debts.
P.S. This conversation was inspired by my conversations in Porto this weekend and from a portion of this YouTube video I saw a few years ago, recommend you check it out: