How can I scale my income from $3k/month to $10k/month while working a job, given my Indian accent makes cold calls difficult, and should I start on Upwork for $10-15/hour?

#231 · from $3k/mo to $10k/mo (step-by-step + example)

How can I scale my income from $3k/month to $10k/month while working a job, given my Indian accent makes cold calls difficult, and should I start on Upwork for $10-15/hour?

You know one of the major issues here is you're at $3K a month and want to hit $10K a month, so the gap is $7K a month. But because you're at a middling income level, I'd imagine it's $3K a month, and you probably don't have anything else; you really want to hold onto that and save every dollar. If you wanted to grow from $3K to $10K a month, you'd have to spend a lot of your money and risk some of it. What I mean by this is you're not sure about starting from scratch on Upwork for $10–15 an hour. You know, if you did that, you'd probably spend somewhere between $200 and $400 a month just on connect costs, if you really wanted to take it seriously. That's like 12% of maybe 15% of all your money. That's the thing I personally think is probably stopping you from saying yes. But the reality is, you've got to spend money to make money. My recommendation would be to take everything you're doing here—whatever $3,000 USD minus your living expenses, whatever you have left over—and spend it on marketing, on sales and marketing. Upwork is a great example. We just had a guy in Maker School, Sai Satoru, who's absolutely one of the coolest guys in this group. He has a relatively similar situation as you do. From $849 a month teaching kids to $40,000 on Upwork in 12 months. A year and a half ago, he was teaching English to 9-year-olds in Chiang Rai for $849 a month. It was stable, predictable, and the wrong life. But he dove in on freelancing and AI automation, and now he's made $40,000 on Upwork in 12 months. Granted, it's in 12 months, so it's not the same thing, but keep in mind that the majority of that money is pushed into the future. I imagine the way Sai probably started was he started with a $500 month, then a $1,000 month, then a $1,500 month, then a $2,000 month. And also, this is just Upwork; there are a million different ways you can make money online with AI and automation. I'm not telling you you have to do this necessarily, but it is a very simple and straight-line path for somebody in your situation. So what you could do is the first couple months, go on Upwork, make a grand, two grand, three grand, and then take that money and graduate to more efficient marketing approaches as well—things like cold email and so on. So that's what I would do. And $10K per month might seem really scary, but think about it: that's just three positions like this at maybe half the time spent on each. You could absolutely do that. Thank you very much, MZ Maestro. Your brains are half algorithms at this point. Basically, yeah, that's how I feel.

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Okay. All right. One more. Uh this is a little outside a automation, but I'm curious. What do you what does your money spending habits look like? Somebody's earning almost $300,000 a month from school. What do you spend your money on? Where does the majority of it go? How do you manage it? Of course, it's life-changing money, but how's it significantly changed your life and lifestyle since first starting out? If it's too personal, don't worry about it.

No, no problem. I'm happy to I'm happy to answer. Yeah, it's a ton of money for sure—more money than 99 whatever percent of the world make. I did the math, and I think I'm probably one of the top few hundred earners in my country right now, which is stupid. So, yeah, it's kind of nutty. But I'll be honest: I've been acclimatized to a higher income lifestyle now for the better part of the last few years because it's not that I just made the school community and went from broke to really rich. That's not the come-up story. I ran an agency before this that also put me at like the top 1% income-wise. So, you'd have to go pretty far back to see Poor Nick. I have some photos. I'm sure I could show everybody here, but uh, yeah, like the if if we're talking the difference between poor Nick and then let's say the difference between Nick when he was making like $15,000 $20,000 a month, the major differences were quality of life purchases. I started being a lot more open to paying money for experiences and knowledge—so like buying programs and courses and that sort of stuff. And then also my health. A big big shift for me was when I booked this Muay Thai uh private coach who was like the owner of a Muay Thai gym and I would go into the Muay Thai gym and I just found like I wasn't getting the sort of like I really wanted to get really good at this and it was very important for me at the time uh you know to be able to defend myself and whatnot. So I paid like 600 bucks a month for this guy, and I remember just like when I told all of my friends at the time that I was doing my tie they're like wow like what are you doing group classes? I'm like no I'm doing private coaching. They're like teaching private coaching. How expensive was that? I was like it comes out like 600 600 700 bucks a month. They're like, 'You're spending $600 a month.' And I remember that for me was like, 'Oh yeah, I can just do that. That's incredible. I can actually spend money on like the top tier knowledge distillation from experts now.' And that was really cool. Aside from that, slightly nicer housing, of course. But I've never really been big on that. Um, I got a car, which is cool. Previous I was driving this old little manual stick shift Saturn Astra and it was like a fun car and stuff but um just a pain in the ass in the winters out here in Calgary just cuz you got to be a little tighter with the control if you don't want to like spin out on a hill and stuff. So now I have some you know four-door symmetrical all-wheel drive thing that just I don't even have to think about. And then uh yeah in recent months Ubers have been really helpful. Um what I've realized is you know all the time that I typically spend driving um I can just repurpose uh for Ubers and then I can just do work while I'm in the car. And when I say work, I just mean like respond to posts on school or something and just do little things that otherwise would have taken me time. Like when I'm at home or in the office, I can just do them while I'm Ubering or I can have a call with somebody or whatever. So, you know, on average it's like 30 minutes a day, right? So, I've actually been able to buy some of that back. And then better foods and stuff, too. Yeah. So, I'm not really big on the the material wealth and I don't really think I ever will be, but hopefully that answers your question there. Oh, uh, obviously the the peace of mind is really big. The peace of mind knowing that like I'm going to be okay no matter what happens. That's huge. I used to really really stress about that. Okay, brand stats. Let's just really quickly cover this. Uh if you guys don't know what this is, it's an unbroken chain of stats that I've been tracking for the better part of the last uh very long time where I track my main channel which is at 177,263 and I do my Instagram which I track using a tool called Blast Up. Gets my follower count in real time. I think it's 312,000. This appears to be lagging. Oh, it's not lagging. 314,326. And then what's my daily updates channel again? Anybody remember it? Let's see. 12,156

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What are your thoughts on what's happened since December 2024 and where do you think things will head for you going forward?

I'm glad you're saying this because I'm actually doing that right now. I'm literally writing this out because I've reached a point where I don't have enough time to meaningfully progress on the projects I want, simply because I made over $400,000 last month, showing that everything I've done has worked well. The last blog post I mentioned was in September 2024, when I made $100,000—more than I could have hoped for—and I was ecstatic. However, I evaluated whether I was truly satisfied and found I wasn't. Now, for June, I've made $400,000 in profit, which is a 400% increase compared to September 2024, representing a compounding monthly growth rate of 15% on a business that generates outsized income. I've spoken on stage next to titans like Hormosi and Sam Ovens, been invited to podcasts with Tai Lopez and Dan Martell, and my friend group now consists primarily of people earning several hundred thousand dollars per month. I've made near-guaranteed future income and can retire anytime I want. The youthful gamut I took—believing I could earn a full-time lifetime salary in a few months through entrepreneurship—has paid off. So the question for me is: what do I want? I've realized I don't care as much about money as most people do, now that I have so much of it. I've always not cared much about money. Therefore, I'm satisfied with the money and want to focus on things not directly money-related, like impact, the quality and strength of my relationships, and my health, which I've sacrificed to make money. I can't optimize for both money and health; impact is the big one. Thanks for asking that question. I appreciate it, and you'll see this soon. Okay, so I'm just going to do one more thing: I'm going to do my brand stats and then call it for the day. We're probably going to change the structure of these daily updates—I'll still do brand stats and Q&A, but I'm not sure about the live building yet. My daily updates channel is at about 9,000 subscribers, so we should hit 10,000 soon, and my Instagram is at 285,000. We have some sponsorships queued up, including one for Lindy that hit 1.775 million views. The YouTube growth has plummeted because I'm not posting, so I need to step back to buy a couple more hours a day to strategize and get back to content, since neglecting the top of funnel would starve the products I make. I'm going to cap this video at exactly 20 minutes and then work on my packaging.

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Sid from India works with a YouTuber on marketing, earning $1.5–2.5k after expenses. He asks how to increase his income further using AI, given his background as a video editor now managing a team.

If you’re earning $2,500 per year, you’re essentially being robbed in broad daylight; but if you’re making $2,000 per month ($24k per year), you’re on the lower end yet not necessarily being exploited. To think about your situation, imagine you’re paid $25,000 per year while generating $500,000 in value for the YouTuber—that’s about 5% of the value you create. Most people receive only 1–2% of the value they generate, while strong salespeople earn 15–20% through commissions. My advice for contractor‑partner roles like yours is to aim for 10–15% of the value you deliver, which translates to roughly a 10× return on investment for the client. If the client is smart, they’ll happily pay you $1 to make $10 for them. The mistake many people make is realizing they’re underpaid and then demanding more money outright—a losing approach that comes across as a loss‑based demand and triggers ego or risk‑aversion in business owners. Instead, frame the conversation around growth: remind the client of the results you’ve already delivered (e.g., over $3 million generated together), share your vision for scaling to $10 million, $20 million, or $30 million, and propose a concrete roadmap (start with X, then Y, then Z). Emphasize that you want to take on more responsibility because you believe you can execute better than others, and assure them you won’t take any of their time. Then, at the close, add that you want skin in the game—more upside when things go well, and a corresponding adjustment when they don’t. Present this structure directly to the client. Because you’re leading with growth and a clear path to multiply their business, the likelihood of them agreeing to partner on a new initiative is vastly higher than if you simply complained about pay. In short, if you’re only making a few thousand dollars a year, you are being underpaid; but if you’re earning tens of thousands per month, you’re in a reasonable position. My overall approach to every job or partnership discussion is to focus on mutual growth, not to threaten to walk away unless paid more—that’s blackmail and damages trust. Successful business owners refuse to negotiate with that kind of pressure. When you approach from a desire to grow the pie together, you’ll achieve far better outcomes.

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How should I structure my business to achieve a work‑life balance with freedom, and what’s the client breakdown between Left Click, Score Up, and other ventures to fit the life I want?

You're worrying about the wrong thing—you're trying to solve a problem you don't have. Instead of trying to carve out the perfect life right now, first get to the place you want financially, then worry about carving that life out. In my case, scaling Left Click took us far beyond the point you're talking about; we hit $72k in one month. While scaling I saw varying degrees of work‑life balance and eventually worked 12‑14 hour days making $70k a month. Once I was making more money than 99% of people, I was in a better position to ask whether that life is truly what I want or just a hyper‑glamorized media image. From there I considered how to shave down the money I make per unit time to get a more reasonable workload. You’re approaching things backwards; start with the financial goal, then design the life you want. Rather than trying to get everything right at once, solve one problem at a time—career first, then balance and relationships. It’s much easier to tackle them sequentially than to try to get it all right on the first try; the probability of success is low if you try to do it all at once.

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