Turning business into a game

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Anti-goals

People often hear the term and get it confused. Anti-goals are not goals that you don’t want to hit, they are the things that you’re not willing to sacrifice FOR your goals.

Goal : Building a billion dollar company

Anti-goal : Spending every Sunday off-grid with your kids

Usually when people set a goal, they think only about the goal itself and the steps required to reach it. They seldom think about what they are NOT willing to sacrifice to achieve that goal.

Why are anti-goals important though?

Anti-goals put constraints on you on your path to the goal. It is exactly what turns your life into a game and creates the perfect conditions for you to enter the flow state.

Anti-goals spark creativity because you are forced to think of innovative solutions to your problems corresponding to your specific situation.

One of my favourite anti-goals is that I don’t “work” after lunch.

Note : When I say “work” here, I’m more specifically referring to deep work requiring a ton of focus, I still take calls or answer emails on the fly if need be.

This anti-goal forces me to get creative. I can never be one of those “hustle and grind” guys because I value my fitness and social life just as much as I value being financially secure. It creates a very real deadline for my work and my daily routine is structured around the same.

If you don’t set constraints on yourself, you’ll never be FORCED to get creative and find novel solutions which save you time and money in the long run. You’ll also be tempted to sway too much in one direction of your life, to the detriment of your holistic development which will eventually hamper all aspects of your life.

Keep in mind, everything I talk about, from starting a business to spirituality is all part of the same whole. To move towards self-actualization, you need to holistically develop all aspects of your life. This is a natural way to introduce constraints into your life.

What may not be clear at first though, is that this generalist skillset development is not optional, it is mandatory in the age of AI.

AI is only getting smarter

Open AI’s announcement yesterday means AI is stronger than ever. It is coming after more jobs than ever. If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you know that I am extremely bullish on the future and believe that AI is going to usher in times of never-before-seen prosperity for humanity.

But what does this mean for the future of work?

Society has set you up to fail.

We are in the middle of a spiritual war of beliefs.

Older generations haven’t allowed their identity to be challenged with the changing landscape. Their mind still lives in a time when it was smart to go to school, get a job, and work until you die with the possibility of a good retirement.

It’s not their fault… that’s just human nature. It takes time for belief systems to evolve on a collective scale.

The problem is that people will claw and fight so that you don’t change. As much as they say they do it out of love for you, the reality is that their identity is threatened when you do better than them.

The path of the Second Renaissance Man requires mental strength and fortitude.

You must have conviction in your beliefs that you have more potential than getting a job that a robot can replace within 5-10 years.

I don’t need to tell you that most schooling and job options are outdated when you can go to any news or reporting site and see for yourself.

So how do you go about becoming what I call a “specialized generalist” in the age of AI?

1) Failure Stacking

Most people know what “skill stacking” is.

It’s like a diversified stock portfolio.

Rather than investing all of your money in one stock – like a specialist – that sets you up for catastrophe, you invest in various stocks to increase your chances at success.

Even if one stock drops, a few others may go up and you will still be at a profit.

If you were going to be in the NBA or have a platinum album, you would know by now.

Being the best at one specific thing is statistically near impossible.

Now, being top 25% in the few areas you find interesting… that’s pretty easy.

To make this more digestible, let’s reframe “skill stacking” as “failure stacking.”

Acquiring a skill puts you in the mindset that you just need to study and learn all day.

Acquiring a failure assumes that you are actively working toward a goal and gaining actual experience.

• Identify a goal in your life – like quitting your job, finding a partner, or getting fit.

• Start with what you know – you can only know what to learn when you hit a roadblock, so hit one fast.

• Pursue your curiosity – let your experience guide you into new paths to experiment with.

All of these will overlap eventually.

Starting in fitness can introduce you to diet models to try, training programs to test, and lifestyle changes to implement.

Once you get to the top 25%, which isn’t much in fitness, you can explore new routes.

Maybe you want to start a career in fitness, so you start writing on the internet and building an audience.

Again, once you get to the top 25%, which again isn’t much, you can start adding to your results by branching out.

You can study philosophy to add depth to your writing, design to enhance your brand, or really anything as a creator – and that’s why generalists thrive.

2) The Most Profitable Niche Is You

The creator economy – not to be confused with the influencer economy – is characterized by individuals who pursue their interests and document their knowledge.

Nobody wants to follow a glorified search engine that talks about the same thing all the time.

Many creators tell me they are afraid to branch out into new interests because they have trouble understanding how that will work.

All you have to do is look at everyone you follow. Are they talking about one thing? Are they actually?

Or are they giving their opinions, beliefs, knowledge, and snippets of their life experience packaged up into impactful content?

“But Sujal, what do I sell then?”

That’s where things get tricky.

How To Earn A Living As A Generalist

The first step to earning a living as a generalist is choosing a career path that doesn’t box you into one specific skill or interest.

In other words, you need to become an entrepreneur.

But that alone doesn’t cut it.

You can easily get trapped in a specific niche with work you no longer find meaningful.

As mentioned, you are in the second renaissance.

Social media is the new town square.

Creators are the new Renaissance men.

Creators are the decentralized education system.

Creators are the new economy.

Stop thinking of a “creator” as some new internet job. Think of it as a part of life. You already spend most of your day on your phone. To act like social media isn’t engrained in humanity at this point is foolish. Being a “creator” is just expressing your value in the digital world rather than being a slave to it on the sidelines.

You probably follow creators for education and entertainment because they present beliefs and opportunities different from what you’ve been told.

Ideas shape society, and it’s happening right before your eyes.

Creators are earning an independent income by teaching what they know by pursuing their interests.

They solve problems in their life and sell the solution.

Some sell stylish blue light glasses to help with sleep. Some sell business advice because college professors probably don’t own a business (unless they are teaching out of passion and sitting on wads of cash), so creators are some of the few qualified to teach it. Some sell productivity systems, psychology practices, and meditations.

If you don’t see this, it’s probably time to unfollow everyone and start searching for new pockets of the internet that create the society you want to see in the world. Your attention is going somewhere, might as well fuel what you believe in (and what you want to become).

Let’s start there. How do you begin earning a living?

Build A General Audience

I’m not a fan of building “niche” or specific audiences.

I am a fan of helping your audience reach a big goal with whatever skills, interests, and ideas help them get there.

When people tell you to build a niche audience in a specific topic, they usually don’t realize that’s not what they are doing.

They say that, and then they go on to give random mindset tips, discuss their beliefs, post about their lives, and discuss their other interests.

Before anything else, why build an audience?

Because you need attention and people if you want to make an independent income.

You can no longer rely on your boss to generate attention with a marketing department that sells their product. You have to do it all yourself.

Building an audience is the most accessible way for beginners to do this. All you need is an internet connection, a few ideas, and the ability to type on your keyboard.

To make this simple:

• Choose a big goal – Is it financial freedom? Is it a fit body? Is it self-actualization? The purpose of a value creator – someone focused on value and education rather than entertainment and looks – is to help people improve their mind, body, business, and relationships.

• List out skills, interests, and beliefs – What do people need to know in order to reach that goal? The combination of these is what makes you unique.

• Frame everything you write through the lens of achieving that goal – If you want to talk about basket weaving for some reason, do it, but talk about how it benefits your life as a fun hobby that helps with creativity and mental clarity.

Let’s say the goal I’m helping people achieve is financial freedom.

I talk about creativity, psychology, writing, and human potential to help people get there.

Someone else can choose something completely different, like performance/health, budgeting, and spirituality.

Both have the same big goal that everyone wants – financial freedom – with completely different ways of getting there.

The problem most creators face is that they either don’t have a goal to frame their content, don’t choose a goal that people want, or choose a goal so small that they attract a small audience.

The bigger the goal, the bigger your potential audience and the more unique you can be.

Make Noise, Find Signal

Most creators struggle to start writing because they don’t know what to write about.

1. Just start writing. Nobody is watching when you have zero followers.

2. If your friends follow you, good. Maybe it’s finally time for them to learn who you really are and potentially join you. And if they don’t like it, maybe they don’t really care about you, and you should find that out now instead of later.

3. Write about all of your interests. Make a lot of noise and let your audience decide what they want to hear more of from you. A few poorly performing posts aren’t the end of the world; it’s data.

Of course, posting good content is only one aspect of social growth. We’ll discuss other tactics in future newsletters.

I want more!

I write these newsletters weekly to teach people everything I’m learning and to help them solve their income problems through the digital economy.

These newsletters take a long time to write though (it’s the synthetization of ideas, not the actual writing which takes time), so it doesn’t make much sense to publish these to a wider audience multiple times a week.

However, for those of you who are ready to be serious about this, ready to make an income on the internet in the next couple of months and want to immerse yourself in content just like this, there’s two things you can do.

I have launched a premium newsletter including game-like, tailor-made courses for your specific skill-level if you’re ready to dive in!

Not ready for that commitment yet or not sure if the creator economy is for you, but you still want more content like this?

Follow me on X where I’m posting more and more information and even snippets of my newsletters before they come out!