I used to think being broke was just a money problem.
It's not.
It's a permission problem.
I'm writing this from a hotel room at 8:17 a.m., coffee getting cold on the desk, suitcase half open, city I'm in barely even matters because that's kind of the point now. My phone has a couple Stripe notifications on it. A few thousand here, a few hundred there. Weird numbers. $847. $3,214. $191. Normal day.
And every time I look at that, I think about how insane my life used to feel when I was making basically nothing.
Not just because I had less money.
Because I had less dignity.
When I was working a warehouse job for $10 an hour, everything in life felt like somebody standing between me and what I wanted.
Want an apartment? Fill out this application, pay $53, upload your pay stubs, pray some leasing office lady decides you're respectable enough to live near a freeway.
Want to travel? Ask for time off like a child asking to use the bathroom.
Want to buy something nice? Better run the math three times first and then still feel guilty after.
Want to switch jobs? Cool, now enter the most demoralizing game on earth where you submit 137 applications into a black hole, half the listings are fake, and some HR person named Madison rejects you at 11:42 p.m. from a role that was probably never real to begin with.
That's why I keep saying applying for jobs in this era is a humiliation ritual.
People think that line is dramatic. I don't think it's dramatic enough.
There are grown adults with good intentions spending their best years begging broken systems for a chance to survive. That's crazy.
And the part nobody says out loud is the financial side is only half of it. The emotional tax is brutal. When you're broke, you're around low-energy situations all the time. Low-energy conversations. Low-energy options. People talking about how life sucks, how everything is rigged, how their boss is an idiot, how rent is too high, how they need Friday to come faster.
I remember being in those environments and feeling my brain rot in real time.
Not because I thought I was better than anybody.
I just knew I was not supposed to stay there.
That's the strongest lesson I've learned over the last few years: your first goal is not luxury. It's escape.
People online love to jump straight to watches, Lambos, penthouses, first class, all that. Cool. Whatever. But if you've ever really been broke, the first version of rich you want is way less glamorous.
It looks like this:
You wake up and don't ask permission.
You book the flight without checking a manager's schedule.
You apply for the apartment and don't care if they like your income documents because you can wire the deposit today.
You go get lunch at 2:13 p.m. on a Wednesday and there's no guilt attached to it.
You don't have to perform stability for other people anymore.
That's rich to me.
I think a lot of young people get bad advice because they're told to play defense way too early.
"Save every dollar."
"Be realistic."
"Take the safe path."
"Build slowly."
I get the logic. I really do.
But if you're in your 20s and you're entrepreneurial, hyper-ambitious, and willing to work like a maniac, obsessing over saving $400 a month can actually keep you trapped in the exact life you're supposed to be escaping.
Because the real move early on is not squeezing your life down to survival mode forever.
It's building the skills, beliefs, and mental models that make income inevitable.
That's the actual game.
Not "how do I protect my tiny pile of money?"
More like:
How do I become the kind of person who can create $12,486 in a month on command?
How do I learn persuasion?
How do I learn sales?
How do I learn attention?
How do I get around people whose default setting isn't defeat?
How do I put myself in rooms, markets, and opportunities where one good idea can change my year?
Because once you solve that, your whole life changes shape.
I've done over $8 million in lifetime revenue now, and the weirdest part is not the money. The weirdest part is how normal freedom starts to feel after you've had it for a while.
You forget how soul-crushing the old way was.
You forget that most people still live in this constant low-grade humiliation where every major decision needs approval from an employer, a landlord, a bank, or a recruiter.
And then you'll randomly remember it.
You'll be in an Airbnb kitchen at 11:06 p.m. making eggs in some city you weren't even planning to be in a week ago, and it'll hit you that this is what you were actually chasing the whole time.
Not status.
Not applause.
Not looking rich online.
Just the ability to live like a full human being.
Broke isn't just inconvenient. It's degrading. And once you've seen that clearly, you stop romanticizing stability and start building your way out.
That's why I go so hard on this idea.
Broke isn't just inconvenient.
It's degrading.
And once you've seen that clearly, you stop romanticizing stability and start building your way out.
I didn't want a career.
I wanted my life back.