Success leaves crumbs. Why aren't you following the trail?

You’re scrolling through your feed, searching for that next piece of knowledge, video after video, essay after essay, trying to figure out how to setup that dream business to achieve freedom. Only to realise that you’re still stuck. Sound familiar? I'd like to share something that helped me break the cycle of inaction, A framework that has allowed me to act with clarity and intensity. Here's the special sauce.

The thing that differentiates those who build wealth from those who don’t, boils down to this: People who build wealth are producers, not just consumers. They create something valuable, something that solves a problem, Something that alleviates pain. But that begs the question, what is value and how do you create it?

What is value:

Here is the best explanation that I've come across. Value is created when pain is removed, pain is removed when problems are solved. Sounds simple right? Solve peoples problems. Once I comprehended what value is, I was still left with the question of how do I solve people's problems? This lead me to my second discovery.

How do you solve peoples problems:

Knowledge is intrinsically valuable. However, not all knowledge is of the same value. Remember this.

To help illustrate the method I'm presenting with regards to how one can solve other peoples problems, I'd like to use the metaphor of baking a cake.

(You may be wondering how baking a cake has got anything to do with solving peoples problems, but I put a lot of effort into this little cake metaphor and I reckon its pretty good if I do say so myself)

One way to create value is to take raw ingredients and transform them into something useful, often through a process that involves time and skill. To bake a cake, you need eggs, flour and sugar etc. The process of turning these raw ingredients into a cake takes time and skill, the outcome of this time and skill investment is that you are left with a product that people are willing to pay more for than the raw ingredients due to the fact that they realise that they either don't have the time or skill to achieve the desired result, a yummy cake.

Now, lets bring knowledge back into the equation. Knowledge is the raw ingredient, the higher quality the knowledge, the more valuable it is. Just like a higher quality egg is more valuable than a lower quality egg. High-quality knowledge is like a fresh, premium egg. The process of understanding it is like whisking it into a batter. Sharing it in an elegant manner is like baking the cake to perfection. You've taken raw ingredients and transformed them into something useful through the process of skill and time. This is why courses sell so well for example. They're packaging knowledge in an easy to understand manner so that you don't have to go through the effort of acquiring the raw ingredients. You can just enjoy the cake. Just like baking a cake, almost everyone has the ability to acquire the raw ingredients that are required, but how many people can be bothered to spend the time to bake it.

I told you it was a good metaphor 😀

How can you apply this framework:

1. Consume content actively, not passively.

• Be conscious of your informational diet, low quality input = low quality output.

• When consuming content, do so with the mind of a researcher, engage with the content and try to analyse what makes it good or bad.

• Have a place to store all of your learnings that you are able to reference at a later date.

2. Start writing.

• Now that you've built up a small catalogue of beneficial insights, identity the ones that affected you the most.

• Pick one idea at a time and write about why its beneficial and how it affected you. Try and image that you're explaining the concept to a friend.

• The key is to try and make your reader care. Is what you're writing about going to affect someone in a positive way? if not, why would they bother reading?

3. Share and develop

• Get comfortable with sharing your ideas publicly

• If the content you are writing about is genuinely helpful, you should feel happy about sharing it.

• Pay attention to the feedback you receive so that you can develop your skills and improve on the value you provide.

This is a long game, stop trying to find shortcuts. Keep iterating and improving.

To help get you started if you're feeling stuck, if you found this essay beneficial you could literally write about the concepts that I have talked about here and what you've learnt. It's that simple.

The beauty of this method of value creation is that it compliments the consumer mindset that is already so deeply ingrained in our habits. With a few tweaks you're able to leverage your consumer habits and become a producer too.

A word of caution:

Don't try and take advantage of people through your content. When you dive down this rabbit hole you learn a lot about human psychology and tools of persuasion. One could easily become a snake oil salesman and sell useless courses to vulnerable people. Strive to bring benefit to the lives of others. Our rizq is written and Allah is a witness over our actions. May Allah allow for the content that we produce to be a means of attaining his pleasure and not his anger.

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السلام عليكم