Hi Reader,

Growing up poor, it often felt like we were one step away from having no income or losing our home.

11-year-old me was scared. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I was determined to become financially independent and to break the grip that poverty held over my family and me.

I constantly searched for ways to earn money. I started pet sitting and then turned to selling woodworking projects door-to-door and at craft fairs. While these gigs gave me some spending money, none of my odd jobs were a meaningful financial success. I certainly wasn’t one of those kids who mastered money and started investing at a young age.

So how did I go from working at Wendy’s as a teen to running a multi-million dollar company before I turned 30?

Well, that story’s a bit outside the scope of one newsletter issue, but I noticed a few things:

1. Income seemed to be closely correlated with career.
2. There wasn’t necessarily a correlation between how much someone earned and how much money it looked like they had.
3. There were people who seemed to make a great living by opting out of the traditional career path and becoming freelancers or business owners.

As I navigated life outside my childhood home, I spent years observing who had money and who did not. I wanted to know how top earners operated so I could adopt their best practices—and avoid the moves that kept folks like my parents in perpetual survival mode.

The breakthrough came years after working at Wendy’s, when I watched a video from Jason Fried, founder of the project management software Basecamp. In the video Jason shared his idea that making money is a skill you can get better at over time, just like playing the drums or piano.

This immediately resonated with me. I wouldn’t expect to be able to sit down at a piano for the first time and play a concerto. I’d need to develop the skills to play such a complicated piece. Of course, I would. But we rarely think of making money in the same way—that knowing how to earn money is a skill we need to learn, practice, and improve on.

When I think of the career path that resonated with me the most—creating, and running my own business—learning how to build money-making skills is a huge piece of that path that rarely gets attention.

Jason’s point also helped complete the picture of my observations around money. Yes, there is a close correlation between our income and the career we choose. But working a conventional job will always have its earning limits. If an entrepreneur gets really good at monetizing their work, their earning power is limitless.

Jason’s message was my big wake-up call. If I wanted to build a life for my family without the money stress I experienced as a kid, I was going to have to develop my money-making skills. I also didn’t want to lose sight of the other half of my dream: to spend my time doing meaningful work.

I’m not special, and I’m not particularly lucky. I don’t run a successful company because I went to a fancy school. I don’t live in a bustling city that’s given me access to the “right” people. ConvertKit never even had a single investor. I started with a blog, and as I honed my money-making skills, I figured out how to earn more and more from my creative work.

I share more of the lessons I wish I’d learned at a younger age in my Secret Money Newsletter, but I also write about them publicly in places like my blog with my Ladders of wealth creation post, which is a step-by-step roadmap to building wealth.

The takeaway here is that making money is a skill.

You wouldn’t consider it luck if a musician worked to improve his skills until he played well enough to join a philharmonic, or a woodworker honed her craft to become a master. And neither is earning a living as a creator a matter of luck. It’s also not a rare achievement that only geniuses and people with special privileges can unlock. It just requires a discrete set of skills and work ethic that anyone can develop.

The next time you’re frustrated that your first product launch didn’t go well, or you had to shut down your first company, remember: making money is a skill. Stick with it, and keep going. You will get better at it over time.

PODCAST

The Best Way to Grow Your Email List

It's always so much fun joining Pat Flynn on the Smart Passive Income Podcast.

In this episode, we talked about growing your email list faster, the Creator Network, earning money collaborating with creators you love, and lots more.

​Listen to episode »​

TWITTER THREAD

Starship is about to change the world

The cost of sending payload to space has dropped by a factor of 50 since the 80s.

In this Twitter thread, Tomas Pueyo explains how he believes Starship will eventually reduce this cost one order of magnitude more.

He goes on to explain how a Moon base is now within reach, and explores the implications this has for pushing the boundaries of humankind.

​View Twitter thread »​

Enjoy your week!

—Nathan