Pursue learning before earning

A perfect Tuesday for me comes down to three things:

Working on something meaningful, doing something physically hard, and ending the day with the people I care about.

The reward for having deep domain knowledge over your craft from years of obsession has never been higher.

In today's world, there are zero excuses to not be the most knowledgeable about your field.

With AI and YouTube and podcasts and digitized archives, there has never been an easier time to learn from the greats.

You have access to shareholder letters from the world's greatest CEOs.
You can look up the NASA archives on how they went to space.
You can watch Ivy League lectures on YouTube for free.

You have the Library of Alexandria at your fingertips.

Why wouldn't you take advantage of that?

James Clear on wealth:

“If you already live a comfortable life, then choosing to make more money but live a worse daily life is a bad trade.

And yet, we talk ourselves into it all the time. We take promotions that pay more, but swallow our free time. We already have a successful business, but we break ourselves trying to make it even more successful.

Too much focus on wealth, not enough focus on lifestyle.”

Morgan Housel on the two types of people:

”There are two types of people: Those who want to know more and those who want to defend what they already know.”

When I was 16, I made a decision that didn't feel smart at the time. Instead of trying to make as much money as possible, I tried to develop as many skills as I could and trusted that the money would come.

I learned copywriting, and instead of immediately starting a freelance business, I used that skill to get in the door at beehiiv. At beehiiv, I learned how to grow a newsletter and operate inside a tech startup, but I realized I needed to understand marketing at a much higher level.

So I traded that skill set to work with Noah Kagan. Working with Noah, I learned marketing strategy and audience building, but then people started asking me to do copywriting for them, which meant I needed to learn how to create an offer, set up a landing page, and conduct a sales call.

The agency was going well, but I knew that writing for founders was only one slice of what I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand how to operate and scale a business as a whole, so I took a 50% pay cut to join Acquisition[.]com.

At every step, it felt like I was leaving money on the table. I could have stayed at beehiiv and pushed for a full-time role. I could have kept the agency and scaled it. But each time I traded a skill I already had for one I didn't, the next opportunity that opened up was bigger than anything the previous one could have offered.

The opportunity with Noah wouldn’t have existed without my work at beehiiv. My agency wouldn’t have gone as smoothly without the ideas I learned from Noah. Acquisition[.]com would have never called if I hadn't built my agency. While each trade felt like a step backwards in the moment, it was a set up to take ten steps forward.

When you’re early in your career, solely focusing on trying to make the most money with your current skills is like trying to max out your bench press two weeks after you started lifting. You're trying to max out too early. The taller the building, the deeper the foundation must be.

J. Paul Getty was once the richest man in the world. In his book How to Be Rich, he tells a story about a young man who buys an oil lease for $4,000 on a Monday and sells it to Getty on Tuesday for $8,000. The young man walks away bragging about doubling his money in 24 hours. Getty makes $800,000 on that lease over the next decade.

The smartest people know the real money is in the long term.

Now, I think it's a false dichotomy to say you should pursue learning instead of earning. Ideally, you do both (and if you need the money right away, that’s a different story).

But if I had to choose one over the other early in my career, I would choose learning 100% of the time… because skills compound faster than money and they can't be easily taken away from you.

Don't get so caught up chasing the fast money that you miss out on the big money.

Until next week,

Author of You Can Just Do Things

Ps. Nickname

Pps. Sneak peek of the table of contents for my 2nd book. Which chapter sounds the most interesting? Hit reply and let me know 👀

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• It powers my business.
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• It increases my luck surface area for opportunities to find me.

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