Here Is ChatGPT’s No BS Take On The Science Of Making Money
When people talk about making money, they don’t give that knowledge for free. It’s usually a bait; either they want to hand you an affiliate link, sell you a product, or they want to pass on a referral code. So they can sell you BS because there’s something in for them.
Chatbots have no interest in any of these; they’re loyal knowledge holes, programmed to be as cautious as possible with answers. There’s no doubt that chatbots are capable of BS, but their BS to sense ratio is so much lower than that of the average Mark on the internet.
Knowing this, and still wanting to get a no bs feedback, I fired up ChatGPT with the prompt: “What’s your no bs take on the science of making money.”
The response:
“The science of making money, in a straightforward and no-nonsense view, involves a combination of principles and practices. Here are some key points to consider:…”
And the key points included:
- Value creation
- Hard Work and persistence
- Risk management
- Continuous learning
- Entrepreneurship
- Multi income stream
- Budgeting and saving
- Investing
- Network and relationship
- Ethical consideration
- Long-term perspective
End.
Before anything else, here’s the way I formulated my takeaway from the chatbot’s response:
In reality the science of making money is still a mess. We can talk about actions to take, and the habits and personality traits of the rich but we don’t have a formula that when computed for a person can guarantee their becoming wealthy.
This makes wealth so much like winning a lottery. But to stand a chance, you’d have to get your ass off the couch and go buy yourself a ticket first. So most of the success secrets out there are like tickets –they don’t guarantee you’ll become rich, but you won’t become rich without a ticket
You can also buy as many tickets as you want, and different tickets have different values. BS opinions on ways to make money are like low-value tickets, while non-BS, brutally-honest takes are high-value tickets. Both don’t return the same benefit.
Accumulate a range of high-value tickets and you’re setting yourself up for massive success. The key points in that list are high-value tickets, the more of them you accumulate, the better.
With that said, let’s now dive in:
Value creation
Nothing is free, even in Freetown.
To get money, you must have another token to give in return. Money doesn’t grow on apricot trees; it’s a scarce resource, so for people to give it out they expect something of equal value in return.
Value comes in the form of solving people’s problems, fulfilling a desire, or meeting their needs. Truth, they’d pay to have these things taken care of. So whether it is selling a product or providing a service, providing value is essential for making money and we can’t overstate it.
Hard work and persistence
We want to party in Vegas and go on endless vacations in Bali; to have a soft life, and there is nothing wrong with it. The problem is the way we tend to carry this soft attitude over on how to make money –we want the results, but don’t want to do the works.
Hard work is about how much effort and dedication you put in your work, and persistence is the mental effort to stay true even when things get rough. There is no route is life that is smooth, that of financial success is no exception.
If it’s easy, everybody will work it, but not everybody is willing to consistently put in that much hard word. Your ability to do so is what will set you apart from the competition.
Risk management
To make money you have to take risks. This ranges from being courageous enough to disagree with people, taking a different stances, to thinking outside the box, exploring ideas others are not willing to explore, and investing.
If you must take risks to become successful, then you must learn how to manage them. One principle I’ve learned in this regard is to not stake what will stop you from playing should things go south.
The longer you stay working hard in life, the more chances you create for you to become successful. Any risk that will make it impossible for you to keep grinding isn’t worth taking, no matter the potential gain.
If there’s an option to put in 100% of my portfolio and stand a chance to either earn 1000% in return or lose everything, or put in 20% and stand a chance to get 100% in return or lose just the 20% invested; going for the latter is always better than going for the former.
You might get lucky when you put in 100%, but a little more playing like that and you’d soon go burst.
The same risk management technique can be applied to lifestyle: avoid anything that can hinder your ability to show up everyday to keep putting in the work.
Continuous learning
Knowledge gets replaced, and the things we know go obsolete. The tools and strategies that worked yesterday won’t always work. They worked because the market was a certain way at the time, but things change, and new tools are required to keep winning when change happen.
Due to this evolving nature of knowledge and tools, continuous learning is the only way you can stay up to date on valuable knowledge about market trends, investment opportunities, industry developments, and tools that deliver desired results.
Entrepreneurship
Starting a business is among the surest routes to financial success, and you can give it a go. But the stakes are high, and so are the requirements. This is why not everybody likes the idea of entrepreneurship, and not many who go into it succeeds.
Things usually get hot for entrepreneurs, and when they do, it takes innovation, adaptability, and a willingness to take on risks to pull through. That makes these trait important for entrepreneurial success.
Multi income stream
Having money flowing in from multiple means will always be better than having a single income source.
The idea is that life is uncertain, so something can happen that will make a single income source suddenly insufficient for meeting your needs, or cause the source to fail. Your business can suffer loss, causing your profit to decline, and with it your ability to meet certain needs of yours. In another case scenario, you can lose a job and have your income cut off completely.
Hence the need to have multiple income streams.
Asides from these, having money flow in from many sources means you can save more, invest more, and accelerate your chances of big success.
Budgeting and saving
Making money is one thing, managing your personal finance is another. The two are not mutually exclusive in the equation of success, they are complementary. How good you’re at managing your finances will tell if you’ll make it at all; if you will lose it all as quickly as you make it, or you will remain successful in the long run.
Budgeting and saving are good money habits. You need budgets to keep track of your expenses; you can always review later to know if you have been spending appropriately or not, and make adjustments accordingly. Your savings is a hedge against the proverbial rainy days.
Investing
You need to put the money you make to work. This is what investing is about. Whether in stocks, bonds, real estate or other assets, investment is an important part of success and you need to invest wisely if you want to grow your money over time.
You need to understand investment principles to make informed choices on where to invest, how much to invest, and for how long.
Network and relationship
Success sometimes isn’t about what you know but about who you know. So you need to build strong professional relationships as this can open up opportunities to you to make money.
Ethical consideration
How you made money is as important as the money made. Making money through nefarious and unethical means can benefit you short term, but in the long run it can land you into legal troubles and can damage your reputation.
Making money through unethical means can hinder your ability to keep playing, and should be avoided if you want to stay successful long term.
Long-term perspective
When you start out on the quest to become successful, it’s helpful to understand that wealth building often takes time. Having this perspective will keep you from taking impulsive decisions, having unrealistic expectations, and taking risks that will blow you up.
