I spend a great deal of time of time talking to people who want to make a lot of money.

It's a common goal: Last week, I released a quiz everyone should take to assess themselves across the five key pillars that contribute to a wealthy life.

Across 10,000+ completions, Financial Wealth was the most frequent area where people felt they were lacking and in need of guidance. P.S. You can take the quiz to assess your baseline here.

These people come from different generations and backgrounds, but share a desire to "make it" financially.

Unfortunately, I see a lot of bad advice out there when it comes to how to do that—most of it trying to sell you on the easy way to make money.

So, in a sea of bad, here's my attempt to provide some good:

My honest advice to someone who wants to make a lot of money.

Note: If some of this feels harsh, tough, or painful, it's because it is...

The only way to make a lot of money is to create a lot of value.

Here's a harsh truth: No one hands out money. No one is going to pay you just because they like you or think you're cool. That's not the way the world works.

Money earned is a direct byproduct of value created.

Create value, receive value. If money is the goal, value has to be the focus.

This isn't just some vague idea: The only way to get rich is to create an enormous amount of value for others, and capture a small portion of that along the way.

It's not talking about the thing, it's not brainstorming about the thing, it's not asking about the thing, it's not thinking about the thing.

The only way to create value is by doing the thing.

And if you don't know where to start, look around you. There are customers, colleagues, bosses, shareholders, employees. Every single one of them has a problem. What problems can you solve for the people around you?

Figure them out, solve them, scale that solution.

That's how you make money.

Time is your most valuable financial asset (but only up to a point).

When you're young, you have no skills, knowledge, networks, or money. Time is all you have to give.

You invest this asset into your professional endeavors. You work extremely hard, trading your time for the skills, knowledge, networks, and money you lack.

But when you get older, you need a mindset shift: Time is no longer the most valuable asset, energy is.

The perpetual busyness of modern work culture is mostly a result of a continuation of the "Time for X" trades long after their value has dried up.

To avoid that end, leverage the skills, knowledge, networks, and money to concentrate your finite energy into the small number of important moments and opportunities. This is where you unlock the gold.

An easy way of saying this: Work hard, then work smart.

There's no such thing as making it.

People seem to think that making it is an end state. That you get there and then get to coast.

Wrong. Every single day, you have to fight to earn your seat at the table.

This is a universal truth: If Apple stops making new iPhones, within a few years, they will no longer be a successful company.

The reality is that the fight gets more intense as you have more success: You have more to lose. More mouths to feed. More people counting on you. More expectations.

There's an old saying that I love:

Every morning in the savannah, the gazelle wakes up and knows it must outrun the lion or be killed. The lion wakes up and knows it must outrun the gazelle or starve. Whether you're the gazelle or the lion, when you wake up in the morning, you'd better start running.

You have to make it, every single day.

"Doing your own thing" isn't for everyone.

In the modern social media age, there's this weird stigma associated with being an employee. Everyone says you have to "bet on yourself" and "build your own thing" or you will never get rich.

That's bad advice (and completely false).

Starting your own business isn't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with working your way up at someone else's company. In fact, for most people, it's probably the best path to building Financial Wealth.

Also, the notion that "doing your own thing" means working 4 hours per week from a beach in Bali is also a lie. There may be some people who are able to pull this off, but for most of us, "doing your own thing" means working just as much (if not more). There is no easy mode when it comes to entrepreneurship.

Don't get shamed into a path that isn't yours.

You have to demonstrate excellence in everything you do.

Your income scales proportional to the amount of excellence that you are able to demonstrate. This is particularly true if you're going to work your way up at someone else's company.

It's simple: If you want to get promoted, earn the big raise, get that fancy title, and more, then demonstrate excellence in everything you do.

Everything matters. Every single thing. You don't get to pick and choose when to show up, because the world will ignore your best and judge you for your worst. Top performers show up with energy and enthusiasm for the little things just as much as they do for the big things.

If you're in the top-10% of performers, there's no ceiling for what you can do. But the self-awareness to identify where you currently stack up, and to hear and adapt to the honest feedback on it, is very rare.

If you're in the top-10%, you know it. If you're not, figure out why and fix it.

Salesmanship is more valuable than intelligence.

Sales is the most useful meta-skill for life.

No matter what path you choose to go down, you need to learn to sell:

• Sell yourself
• Sell your story
• Sell your product
• Sell your vision
• Sell your ideas

My richest friends aren't the ones with the highest IQs. They just know how to sell. They aren't afraid of being told no. They keep refining the message until they get to a yes.

You don't need passion, you need energy.

I've always taken issue with the advice to follow your passion.

You don't have to be passionate about your professional pursuits, you just need to find energy in them. You just need to feel a pull towards them. You just need to feel that spark of curiosity in them.

Passion can lie—but energy never does.

When you have energy for something, you're prone to giving your deep attention to learn more about it, to ask the right questions, to figure it out, to win.

If you want extraordinary output, you need to be willing to contribute extraordinary input.

I had a conversation with a young person recently who said he wanted to dramatically change his standing in life. He was working a 9-5 job that he disliked and wanted to start his own company to build something special.

He said he didn't have time to get started, but when I asked for an hour-by-hour breakdown of his day, it included ~2 hours of food and relaxation in front of the television before bed.

When I followed up with the obvious question on cutting back this daily ritual, he said that he "needed it" to unwind at the end of the day.

My honest question: Do you need the time in front of the television more than you need to change your life?

The reality is that life is filled with challenging, painful tradeoffs and sacrifices, but if you say you want extraordinary output, you need to be willing to contribute extraordinary input.

You need to be willing to endure a season of unbalance in order to achieve a life of balance on the other side.

Ok, a few rapid fire hot takes to close...

My grandfather once told me: "You’ll achieve much more by being consistently reliable than by being occasionally extraordinary." I will never forget that.

Build a reputation for figuring it out. You'll be given a lot of tasks you have no idea how to complete. There's nothing more valuable than someone who can just figure it out: Do some work, ask the key questions, get it done. If you can do that, people will literally fight over you.

Expectations are your greatest financial liability. If your expectations grow faster than your assets, you will never be rich. You'll constantly be chasing some new "more" that sits on the horizon, tantalizingly close, yet so very far. Manage your expectations as you do any other financial liability. Keep them in check.

When you're starting out, the ability to live well below your means is a huge advantage for achieving long-term financial independence. Before you have responsibilities and expectations, focus on growing the gap between your cash inflows and outflows—if it isn't a necessity or a clear investment in yourself, don't spend money on it.

Don't waste your time playing stupid games. Example: Stop worrying about your investments when your investable assets are equivalent to your annual income. The return on your $100k portfolio will never justify a significant time outlay if you're making $100k per year. Spend that time figuring out how to 2-3x your income. That is a much more impactful game.

Side hustles are usually just a thinly-veiled distraction. Having 5-10 income streams may sound nice, but it's quite rare that an income stream is truly passive. If it requires your mental energy (or creates headaches), it may just be a distraction pulling you away from the big picture that matters.

People want to do business with people they like. So, being likable and nice to be around is a durable competitive advantage. Remember that.

There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

On the first day of my Econ 101 class at Stanford, the lesson was simple:

"There's no such thing as a free lunch."

My interpretation of the broader meaning: Everything you want in life comes at a price.

If your goal is to make a lot of money, then you should be clear-eyed in understanding the price you will have to pay to achieve that end.

That is the goal of this piece: To share my honest perspective on what is required. If it's a price you're willing to pay, great, go for it. If not, I promise that you can build a great life without extraordinary financial riches.

The point is that this is your life. You get to choose what you want.

​Reject the default, live by design.