63 · Just Over Broke

Three ways to make money: employee, employer-entrepreneur, investor. You need to start a business. It is far more effective to have started and failed six businesses than to have worked six different jobs. You only need a job for income so you don't die — a job stands for Just Over Broke. You need to be an entrepreneur and an investor to keep yourself afloat and out of the situation you've ended up in. You will only get richer financially when you shift your focus radically to how people's lifestyles can be richer, and focus fully on delivering the best possible product for them. You will get just enough to survive if surviving is how you think. Are you surviving or thriving?

Don't just get a part-time job because everyone else has one. A part-time job is a practice that reinforces trading time for money; take one only temporarily, for work experience that builds a skillset you actually need.

Some markets have low annual growth, consume all your time — and it's faster to learn a new, high-demand skill and start providing value, learning as you go. Maths tutoring is one example; a YouTube channel that teaches maths, affiliate marketing, a PDF digital product on how to study — there's a real audience. But there's also the other voice: learn neural networks, deep learning, ML, LLM leverage, then build a software-service business. Both are scalable. The anxiety comes from not having anything going on — and the fix is starting, not deliberating.

Tim Ferriss's four-hour work week is no exaggeration. The world does not reward those who toil, suffer and go through mental anguish. The world is cold. Money flows to market problems solved and market demands met. Another gap I keep thinking about is the middle-man model: connect UK Russell Group students with students in Korea preparing for international A-levels or interviews. Charge £50 an hour, pay £30 to the Oxbridge student, and the arbitrage is mine.

Like — something is wrong. Something is fundamentally erroneous in my systems. I'm working twenty hours a day, doing maths and physics, trying to learn to code, living in chronic fear, anxiety and stress, far from happy — and my life is not changing for the good. Why is it that Richard Branson — dyslexic, no Cambridge, no Oxford — and a quarter of billionaires with no elite education made it anyway? Because the leverage was in the system they built, not the credential.

To stay at the forefront of tech first and foremost, and then, if you're doing this properly, to have a proper understanding of almost everything — I'm not talking a small £10k a month online business; I'm talking zero to a billion in less than 24 months, which does happen. But to do that, do you really need to work eighteen hours a day? I don't know what the process should look like — and that's an honest answer.

Always remind yourself: it's leverage and a few correct decisions that matter, and the seeking of those takes time — not the other way around. They optimised for leverage, not hours. Jamie Beaton built Crimson Education by documenting his journey, not by grinding in secret; his academic work and his business lived on the same timeline. With the next decade lined up in front of you, it's insanity to lock yourself away doing only mundane things.