This Roadmap makes everything clearer…

This is Nathan Barry.

You see the big ‘ol bright smile 😁 on Nathan’s face??

It’s probably because last year his company ConvertKit did $33.5M in annual revenue.

Here’s his 2022 stats:

Nathan has journeyed from a modest web & software designer, to an author & course creator, and is currently as the CEO and founder of a multi-million dollar startup.

This tells me one thing — Nathan knows a thing or two about shifting and pivoting to grow himself, his business and his wealth.

Today’s 💡Sunday Swipe gleams from a lesson I learned directly from Nathan.

He calls it:

The Ladders of Wealth Creation

I found “The Ladders” to be extremely valuable for me on my journey as a shift from a regular ol’ Content Creator to a Billion Dollar digital mogul…

And I believe you’ll find it extremely valuable too — and I’m going to show it to you in this Swipe.

But before we dive in, I have to provide a little more context…

You see — I believe I can create content & products, package them & distribute them in an automated way, so that these creations serve my customers and generate money for me around the clock — 24/7/365 with little (if any) additional effort on my end.

Real passive money.

Even more so, I believe with every fiber in my body that YOU can (and will) do the same thing.

We can all make passive money — even while we sleep.

So why are we all yet to bring in $30M+ a year like Nathan?

Nathan once said,

“making money is a skill—like playing the drums or piano—that you can get better at over time.”

So maybe your lack of massive success isn’t your fault — I believe it’s because most of us don’t know that a roadmap exists for content creators to grow from an hourly worker to a Billion Dollar mogul.

We haven’t learned the skills to making money (real money).

It’s sort of kept hush-hush among those who know about it, almost like a secret.

I always felt that there was a formula or skill of some sort to the rapid growth and prosperity I was seeing other content creators experience — yet none of them would fess up to how they “really” made a come-up. . . .

Until our friend Nathan spilled the beans to me.

So NOW, let’s tackle this well kept secret head on — here’s “The Ladders of Wealth Creation”:

  • Ladder 1: Trade Time for Money
  • Ladder 2: Run Your Own Service Business
  • Ladder 3: Offer Productized Services
  • Ladder 4: Selling Products

Here’s Nathan’s illustration of the ladders:

Don’t be fooled by its simplicity.

With this, you can quickly map the skills and talents necessary to move to next level (rung or ladder).

Here’s how it works:

Each rung is a required skill and is more difficult as you move up.

The taller the ladder, the more money made.

Each new ladder reached is like starting an entirely new venture — so expect the biggest trials, greatest amounts of investments, money challenges and greatest distractions at the start of a new ladder.

That’s it.

Let’s dive a little deeper into each ladder.

Afterwards I’ll give 4 key takeaways on how to apply this to your journey immediately.

⚡Ladder 1: Time for Money

This is the most common way to earn income — trading time for money.

Skills Required:

  • Showing up consistently (and on time)
  • Being reliable
  • Learning new skills on the job

That’s pretty much it.

Additional skills on the “Time for Money” ladder allows you to upgrade from hourly pay to salary.

And this is where most hit a ceiling — they can only earn as much as their manager approves them to make.

No way we’re going to make BILLIONS like this — so let’s move to the next ladder.

⚡Ladder 2: Your own service business

The next logical step is to start running your own business — you’re still trading time for money, but for your own clients, not for your job.

Skills Required:

  • Setting up a company
  • Marketing & Finding clients
  • Creating proposals
  • Pricing services
  • Hiring employees
  • Establishing an online presence
  • Accounting, finance, business operations, etc.

The service business is cool, but how can we make money with our services in a streamlined way?

You could complete WAAYYY more projects and make more money if you weren’t spending so much time talking to customers — right?

  • Meeting customers
  • finding out what they need
  • creating custom proposals for them
  • negotiations (aka price haggling)
  • contract drafts, cold feet and sticker shock
  • more meetings / calls, and
  • finally contracts signed — this is the normal process on the this ladder.

It’s time to move to the next ladder.

⚡Ladder 3: Productized Services

Scaling up is the goal here!

Remove bottleneck’s in sales.

Make shifts from hourly pricing to set prices.

Shift from complete custom services to service bundles — including value stacking to maximize your bundles value and make the price a no-brainer.

Skills Required:

  • Writing sales copy that can make a sale without talking to the customer
  • Designing a sales page (or hiring experts to do it for you)
  • Processing online payments
  • Standardizing systems to deliver repeatable quality with each service

This ladder introduces recurring services, which means recurring revenue.

But don’t confuse that with Passive Income.

It’s not.

For Passive Income, you want to approach the last ladder.

⚡Ladder 4: Selling Products

This is where real passive income is made (the type of money we REALLY want most).

Put effort upfront to create products for our audiences and make money off of those products even while we sleep.

This ladder is where millions (and billions) are made.

Skills Required:

  • Customer support at scale
  • Gathering customers at scale (lead generation)
  • Supply chain (if it’s a physical product)
  • Paid Ad Funnels
  • Automated Marketing & Promotions

5 Key Takeaways:

💡1: You can’t skip a rung or ladder

If you try to skip ahead (like I have), you’ll inevitably hit a dead end.

Things just won’t seem to work.

You’ll get frustrated, angry, your pockets will hurt.

No matter how hard you work — or how hard you try.

You can’t skip a step.

Trust me, I’ve blindly stumbled around all four ladders over the past 20 years.

If I’d known about this blueprint, I could have hit these rungs and would be high up on the 4th ladder in half the time.

💡2: Don’t knock down your previous ladder (aka don’t quit your day job)

Early on in the process, you SHOULD trade time for money, because it’s the only way you know how.

“Start minding your own business. Keep your daytime job, but start buying real assets, not liabilities.” 

— Robert Kiyosaki

The key idea is to know in the back of your mind that you want to work to get away from trading time for money.

As you progress from rung-to-rung, ladder-to-ladder, don’t cut off your previous income source because of the “new” money you’re making on the current ladder.

As the old saying goes, “Don’t quit your day job.”

I’ve made THIS mistake several times at varying degrees, and each and every time I did — it hurt — BADDLY!

💡3: When is it worth it to trade time for money?

  • When you’re just getting st arted: Don’t go the starving artist route. Slow and steady wins the race.
  • When you’re learning a new skill: You’ll likely have to do free work for customers to gain experience
  • As a step to get to higher rung or next ladder: It requires time &/or money to move up
  • Relationship Building and Finding Mentors: You will have to provide value of some sort for free as you network and find new teachers to learn from

💡4: Prepare for “The Drought”

As you move to another ladder, you’ll inevitably enter a drought season — your income will likely take a dip.

Moving to a new ladder is like starting a new venture — it’ll require a lot of your time, money and energy to start climbing.

True Story: ​
It took me 2 years and cost me all my stock investments to survive my transition from Ladder 3: Productized Services to Ladder 4: Selling Products.

Had I knew what I know now, I could have prepared for the unforeseen drop in revenue (and I wouldn’t have quit my “day job”).

Wrapping Up

That’s all for this 💡Sunday Swipe!

This has been a POWERFUL lesson for me.

I hope it is the same for you.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know.

Until next time.

Peace and Love,
​Jesse “The Ladder Climber” Young El

PS:

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

🔥Twitter Tips: Get actionable tips daily
⚡Actionable Articles & Guides: Learn strategies to innovate, cultivate & convert your best ideas into income streams.
💡Deep-Dive YouTube Guides: I’m making documentaries on content creation, disruptive tech & growth — Subscribe so you won’t miss a video!