Could you make a video covering your principles for success, daily processes, and common pitfalls to avoid for people in business? You mentioned focusing on revenue-generating activities, effectiveness, first‑principles thinking, and neuroscience; I’d like to hear your take on these and learn about overall optimization.
That's a great video topic, and I was actually considering doing something similar soon. The core 80/20 lesson I can share is: don’t live according to an environment that was designed for you—design your own environment instead. We’re born into a default setting, like being dropped into an ongoing football game (capitalism) without knowing the rules, and our initial training comes from whatever ‘coach’ happens to be around, often not the best. Don’t assume the lifestyle you’ve been given is optimal, or that the usual advice—go to school, attend office hours, ask questions, study with a specific method—is automatically true. Evaluate everything from first principles and only adopt what makes sense to you. Maker School is a good example: when I started it, people said I couldn’t do it alone, yet we now have dozens of coaches and staff managing replies. I questioned whether I really needed all that and decided to design my own environment first before taking others’ advice at face value. Small lifestyle tweaks—like leaving your vitamins out on the counter instead of hiding them in a cupboard—have led to major results for me. For instance, I wake up, see the vitamins, and remember to take them. I also keep a post‑it on my computer reminding me to send a certain number of Upwork applications each day, mentally queuing the actions needed to reach my goals. These tiny bits of planning run contrary to much of what society tells us to do, but as long as you build your environment from the ground up, you can often achieve the outcomes you want.
Yes, it definitely gets overwhelming; I have overwhelming days like anyone else. Even the big business titans I admire have extraordinarily overwhelming days, though they hide it well. The feeling of overwhelm exists on a gradient between no stimulation and overstimulation, with an optimal middle spot where you're optimally stimulated—this is the ancient Greek concept of ESS (optimal performance zone). On a stress‑meter graph, the sweet spot is where stress brings out your best performance; high performers operate there, while being over‑stressed (distress) is too much and harmful. I often feel overwhelmed and admit my project‑management systems aren’t the best, but I’m working on them. The key idea is to treat your limited daily time as a constraint and use it for good—find ways to do the same or more work in the same or less time rather than seeking more time. I appreciate the question and note that many one‑person businesses make more money than I do, so I look to adopt their systems. Simple systems that keep things on track are a big lever; publishing content every day is one of them, letting me answer questions and create content simultaneously—killing two birds with one stone. When a student asks a question, I record a video to answer it and also produce content, always looking for opportunities to combine tasks. This approach yields more creative output, a stronger content strategy, and higher volume—a tactical way to work.
I wake up between 5 and 6 a.m., letting nature wake me instead of an alarm to avoid adrenaline spikes. First I check my higher‑ticket community (Make Money with Make) and respond to any recent activity—either writing text posts with Aqua dictation or recording custom Loom videos that solve members’ problems. I repeat the same process for the Maker School community, which usually has more roast requests because it’s larger and full of beginners. After that I take a call—either a community call, a coaching session, or a sales call—usually between 8 and 9 a.m.; if it’s at 8 I sometimes get cut off, but at 9 I can finish my prep work beforehand. Once the call ends I’m warmed up and I record the daily updates video. After the video, if I have content for the main channel I film it, then the rest of the day is agency work: reviewing new LeftClick clients, drafting proposal templates, recording Loom videos for prospects, discussing strategy with my business partner Noah, and working with a developer on our website revamp. I finish the day with lower‑value tasks. I order my workflow this way because I start with the activities that generate the most revenue and move down to those that earn less, ensuring I always hit the high‑impact items first.
That's a great question. I just ask people what their goals are; they'll say they want to lose weight, do this, do that. Then I ask why they haven't done it yet. People usually say they've been lazy, haven't mustered up the time or energy, or blame other things like the weather. That's when I switch into my willpower talk: I used to work with rats in experiments where we put them in cages with different setups—one side gave a shock, the other gave sugary water. The rats naturally chose the sugary water side. This is choice architecture: you can change behavior by making undesired actions hard and desired actions easy. We're all animals; we share DNA with rats. If you design your life so that the things you want to do—like exercise, going to the gym, cardiovascular activities, playing in the park—are easy, you'll naturally do them more often. If you make good things hard, you'll do them less often. It doesn't take much willpower when you've designed life to make the desired actions easy. For example, if a friend shows up at 6 a.m. asking to hit the gym, you have social shame saying no, the gym is easier because they're downstairs and might pick you up, and it's more fun working out together. All these make working out easier, so you're more likely to do it. If you have a big community cheering you on when you send cold emails or make sales calls, and you post daily accountability so you don't want to let people down, then growing your business becomes easier and stagnating becomes harder. A simple example: I put my vitamins on the counter instead of hiding them in the cabinet. Every time I go into the living room, I see them and think, 'Have I taken them yet?' If not, I take them. This simple change improved my vitamin intake by about 5x—a 500% improvement—with no extra energy.
The limiting belief section in my career plan addresses whether I have any beliefs holding me back. I’ve had two such sections; the most recent one was written when I was earning $100,000 a month, where I mapped out how to reach $167,000 a month, then surpassed it to hit $400,000 a month. I concluded I don’t have any limiting beliefs for my current goals, though if my goal were a billion‑dollar business I’d likely have many. If I did have limiting beliefs, the most effective way to eliminate them is to repeatedly do the thing you’reafraid of—acting contrary to the belief changes your habits, which reshapes your beliefs and identity. It’s almost like reverse‑engineering the belief: instead of deep meditation or soul‑surgery, simply muster the courage to do the feared action once; doing it once makes repetition far more likely, and then you keep doing it. Action over knowledge, action over thinking—this is the straight‑line path to dissolving limiting beliefs. I personally had a big limiting belief about hitting $167,000 a month; I doubted I could reach that figure. My yearly goal was $2 million, which averages to $167,000 monthly—a target that felt realistic yet challenging within the realm of possibility, making it effective for growth. I then examined bottlenecks and beliefs, realized I could achieve the figure if I set my mind to it, and saw no fundamental reason why not. Later I recognized I’d already solved those earlier limiting beliefs, perhaps in an earlier blog post. Beyond mindset, I’ve been thinking about increasing the value of my videos—not just production value, but the actual business value they deliver. I’m considering lowering production effort a bit while raising the substantive value, inspired by an accountability partner who spends 20 hours per video and publishes once a week. I’m experimenting with higher‑value, intensive content on the main channel while keeping the daily updates as a lower‑effort, value‑rich format. I’m also planning to redesign the website to better showcase the team, edify collaborators like Noah, and highlight agency work. Future ideas include hosting live dinners in Calgary to build local community, and continuing to share stats and growth updates.
limiting beliefsaction over knowledgevideo valueagency