I swear it wasn't 2 months since my last newsletter.

Whoops.

No fluff today.

Here's how to actually guarantee success in 2025:

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Walk through this thought exercise:

Would you rather have a 100% chance of making $10,000,000 over the next 10 years...

Or a 20% chance of making $1,000,000 in the next 10 weeks?

Seriously, answer the question truthfully.

If your answer is the second option, that's awesome. You're a risk taker, you're hungry, you value speed and action.

For the sake of this email, however, we're assuming the first option is the smarter, objectively better option. Because it is. I won't judge you for your choice, but I myself am interested in success, not gambling.

The only thing you truly have no control over is time. You can move, shave your head, lose 20 pounds, learn guitar, win the lottery. But you can't get any younger. And you can't get any older than you are now... and now... and now.

So in our equation for success, time is the constant. It cannot change, and a certain level of our success will be dependent on time.

What can you change?

Inputs.

I've spoken about this a few times before...

All you can REALLY choose is the inputs in your life. What do you DO? What do you say, write, speak, think?

What are the inputs you can do that get you to the point where you are at the mercy of time?

If, hypothetically, you did EVERYTHING right today, and the next day, and so on...

You went to bed KNOWING you did everything you could, and KNOWING you'll do it again tomorrow...

Then all that's left to do is enjoy the ride. Because you're at the mercy of time.

So, what are the right inputs?

Simple:

Get good at something.

If you are not happy with where you are in life, chances are you generally suck at most things.

And chances are if you are good at something, or a few things, they have 0 effect on your likelihood of being successful.

It is SUPER cliche advice to "learn a high income skill!" but it's cliche for a reason.

The education system one-shotted our (my) entire generation.

How?

It shunned the apprenticeship model.

Figure out what you want to do, go study underneath someone who is an expert at the thing you want to do, learn by failing and being critiqued, get good at the thing, go get paid to do that thing you are now good at because you learned EXACTLY how to do it from a person who's an EXPERT at that ONE thing.

I remember when I decided I was going to drop out of college. I was in a marketing class, and my marketing professor had no idea how to do anything related to marketing. They/them were some C-Suite at a company that provided 0 value to anyone, went to school, read a book on "How To Teach Marketing to Students" (literally all that teachers college is)...

And then sat in a room full of bright kids and baby-birded the information to us.

I genuinely have not come across a single arguemnt for how that is a more effective model for training young people to be successfful than apprentaciship.

I digress.

You get paid in direct proportion to the value you provide.

The $80k/year office worker provides $80k/year of value. It's nothing that brings any tangible value for the company - it's busy work. Circling back and tending to the digital filing cabinet.

If they broke their leg or got sick, their manager could find a replacement for them within minutes. Because they don't have a valuable skill. They are a worker.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

The world is propped up on unskilled people doing unimportant things.

If you become a skilled person, and work on important things (for the world that is, not important to you. That doesn't matter. "Doing what you're passionate about" is horrible career advice. You should do what you're NATURALLY GOOD at, because that WILL be more enjoyable than your "passions." But that's for another email)...

Then focus on ACTUALLY getting good at the skill, learning from people who ACTUALLY do it...

And you can go to bed each night confident you did all you could that day, and will do it again tomorrow...

Then you are at the mercy of time. You are waiting for time to catch up.

And that, my friend, is quite literally the most guaranteed shot you have at success.

If you remove YOURSELF as the bottleneck for your success, it's just a matter of right place, right time.

You create your own luck.

If you got REALLY good at building apps (from someone who built a really important app), moved to San Francisco, and talked to every single person you walked by on the street...

You'd get lucky. One of them would need your EXACT skill.

But you created that luck. You did the inputs. You learned an IMPORTANT skill and surrounded yourself with people who would pay you for it.

I know a lot of "successful" people on paper, that work really high paying jobs, that have no SKILL. They got good at their job, yes, but that job isn't important. It'd be like becoming really good at playing Tetris. It was assigned to you, with clearly defined inputs, and you did them long enough to get good. That is NOT success.

So, if you are not successful, or not as successful as you would like to be:

Reply to this email telling me the IMPORTANT skill that you are ACTUALLY really good at.

If you cannot think of one, the answer is clear.

If you lie about how good you are at it, the answer is clear.

If you think the skill is important but it's actually not, the answer is clear.

This is objectively the best shot you have at success.

And luckily, you're in the GOLDEN AGE (literally) of being directly compensated for your skill.

YES, I kept the "what skills should I learn?" part out on purpose. I can't tell you that. And if I tried, it wouldn't help anyways.

– RL