- KJ Rainey
- Posts
- How To Make Money
I started my first business when I was 12 years old.
At the time, I only cared about one thing...
Minecraft.
If I wasn't in school or playing soccer, I was on Minecraft.
My friends and I would spend countless hours building cool stuff in the game.
But there was one problem with Minecraft.
You had to play it on a computer.
The only computer I had was this beat up “family” laptop my dad bought us years before.
Minecraft would takes 20 minutes to load and once I was in the game, the lag made it almost unplayable.
I needed a new laptop.
I looked around online and found the perfect one for $300.
Sounded like a deal.
I grabbed my duct tape wallet and my Toy Story piggy bank…
Time to take inventory.
$3.50 in quarters…
$1.30 in dimes…
and a rare $2 bill my Grandad gave me for my birthday.
Not gonna cut it.
I needed to make money.
So I started brainstorming…
What am I good at?
Uhhh… Halo 3… Pokemon… Minecraft…
That’s it!
I’ll make money for a new laptop by playing Minecraft!
What sounded simple in my 12 year old head, ended up taking months of work.
I spent weeks learning how to program a Minecraft server.
I spent weeks actually building the server.
Finally, after months of trial and error, it was ready to go.
I rounded up my friends and we spammed the link to our server in the comments on YouTube videos.
After months of grinding, I woke up one Saturday and couldn’t believe what I saw…
(9/25 Players Online)
There were 9 random people playing my server!
I was shocked.
But even though I had a server, I still wasn't making any money.
So I spent the next weekend building out “premium ranks” in the server that players could buy.
Around a week later, something magical happened…
“You have received $20 from _____.”
I couldn’t believe it.
As a 12 year old with a crusty laptop, I managed to pull $20 out of thin air.
Unfortunately, I only sold 2 ranks for $20 each and the server costed $20 to run.
So….
I only made $20.
Not enough for the laptop, but enough to completely change my life.
Because I had discovered one of the most important lessons I had ever learned:
Anyone can make money.
Even a 12 year old with a Minecraft addiction.
No matter what you’ve been told, YOU can make money.
And in this letter I want to share with you the basic principles of making money so that you can get started.
I wish someone had taught me these a long time ago.
How To Make Money
Money is confusing.
Even as a young kid, I had a lot of questions about money.
Why does no one seem to have enough?
Where does it come from?
How do I get it?
I was so confused.
Everyone acted like they didn’t care about money, yet they would complain when they didn’t have enough.
I didn’t want to be like those people.
I wanted to make tons of money.
I didn’t want to spend my life working a 9-5.
I wanted to be free to do whatever I wanted to.
But there was a problem…
Those questions that I had as a kid weren’t answered in middle school.
They weren’t answered in high school.
They weren’t even answered in college.
I graduated with a 4 year degree in business, and I still had no clue how to make money.
That is because the education system is good at one thing:
Creating Employees
Had I known this in high school, I would have never went to college.
But my goal isn’t to convince you that school is evil. It’s not.
There is nothing wrong with college or being an employee.
But if you are like me, the school system won’t teach you what you want to know.
So I have spent the last 2 years learning how to actually make money.
And in 2022, I had my first business to cross a thousand dollars in one month.
A few months later, and I was making double what I was from my previous job.
But I am no guru by any means, I just started on this journey.
But I do want to show you the lessons I wish someone had taught me a long time ago.
So let's dive in...
To make money you need 2 things:
Something to sell — (Offer)
Someone to sell to — (Traffic)
Offer + Traffic = $$$
If you don’t remember anything else from this letter, remember that equation.
Let’s dive into each component so you will have clarity on how to begin your business…
1) The Offer
To make money you need something to sell.
But KJ, what about people with 9-5 jobs? They make money without selling anything!
Not true my friend.
They are selling their time.
Employees trade their time in exchange for money.
And the best way to get your time back, is to sell something other than time.
But how do we know what to sell?
To decide what to sell, analyze your skills and interests.
What are you good at?
What skills do you have?
What do you enjoy doing that other people don't enjoy?
1) Make a list of every skill you have.
2) Make a list of your interests
3) Using those lists, brainstorm products and services you can provide.
For example:
My brother has OCD, he loves cars, and he’s good at photography.
Using those skills and interests, he started a car detailing business.
His desire for cleanliness gives him satisfaction in his work.
His love for photography allows him to take quality pictures of the finished cars.
He then posts those photos to Instagram which brings in more customers.
Although he is still trading his time for money — he sets his own schedule, he does what he loves, and he has more freedom.
In the future, he could hire employees to do the cleaning for him, so that he could get even more time back.
So brainstorm what product or service you can provide by combining your skills and interests.
Once you have decided on what product or service to provide, you need to create a killer offer.
The goal of an offer is to increase the perceived value of your product/service.
The more valuable your offer seems to a customer, the more value (money) they are willing to trade for it.
To create killer offers read these 3 books:
$100M Offers by Alex Hormozi
Dotcom Secrets by Russel Brunson
Influence by Robert Cialdini
(If you can't make yourself read 3 books, entrepreneurship isn't for you.)
These books will teach you far more than I ever could in one newsletter.
They will teach you everything you need to create an incredible offer.
Once you have an offer, we need to get eyeballs on it.
2) Traffic
Now that you have something to sell, you need someone to sell it to.
You need eyeballs on your offer.
There are many ways to drive traffic to your offer...
Online ads. Organic content. Flyers. Cold emailing. Etc…
But the best traffic source depends on what you are selling.
If you are dropshipping products from China, you wouldn't use flyers.
But if you run a local detailing business, flyers work great.
To gain clarity on which traffic source to use, answer these questions:
Who is my dream customer?
What do they look like?
What are they passionate about?
What are their dreams?
Where are my dream customers?
Where do they hang out?
What websites are they on?
What content do they watch?
Use these questions to brainstorm as many ways as possible that you can drive traffic to your offer.
For example, some of the traffic sources my brother uses are:
Flyers
Leaving business cards on cars
Posting organic content on social media
Attending car shows to talk to customers 1 on 1
But don’t forget… success takes more effort than we expect.
Instead of posting 50 flyers, post 500.
Instead of making 1 piece of content a week, make 10.
If you do more, you won't get less. - Alex Hormozi
A great offer with plenty of eyeballs on it is almost guaranteed to make money.
But remember... making money is a skill.
If you wanted to learn how to ride a bike would you go to school for 4 years?
Heck no.
You would hop on a bike.
Making money is no different.
The only way to learn is by failing.
Failure teaches what school can’t.
If you learn from each failure, success is guaranteed over a long enough time scale.
So to recap:
Offer + Trafic = $$$
Create an attractive offer by combining your skills & interests.
Send traffic to that offer using best methods for your target customer.
Learn by failing.
Thanks for reading :)
📈Level Up: https://kj-levels-up.beehiiv.com/subscribe
🗓️Daily Value: https://twitter.com/kjplayslife
✅How To Automate Success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNdqjb4ENlM