How I'm Working on Building a Life That Works for Me

Welcome to the Inner Edge, where I explore insights on wealth, fulfillment, growth, and mastery.

They say to trade your time for money in your youth.
Then you use your money to make more money.
Then you trade your money to get back your time.

That sounds kind of strange.

Why would you want to lose your youth making money so you can buy back all your time when you're older?

I decided instead that I want to:

• Trade only a part of my time to make money.

• Enjoy the pursuit of making money.

• Maximize the rest of my time for the other things that matter.

So today, I want to do something a bit different.
I'm not going to hit you with a bunch of lessons.

Instead, I'll dissect the exact systems I built to do all 3 points above and tell you what I learned through those systems.

So yeah—a couple of lessons.

Let’s dive in.

1) Trading Time for Money

This one was inevitable. I come from a middle-class family. We are decently well-off, but we had our fair share of money struggles.

This happened a lot when I was younger and less so now.

When I was younger, I was always under pressure for not having as much money.

It was a subject my family rarely discussed, but I knew things were tight some days.

I tried not to let it affect me too much, but I always knew I had to figure out ways to make money myself.

This led to me starting a bunch of ventures since I was younger.

But there was one thing I wasn’t able to understand then: working harder doesn’t mean more money

I remember one day, my brother and I went around 3 neighborhoods door to door selling bracelets.

It took us about 7 hours and we made like $100 or something.

We thought we were destined to retire at 12.

Turns out, we were just two kids who convinced ourselves that $14/hour = Forbes 30 under 30.

Still, $100 felt like hitting the jackpot.

But looking back, the dollar amount I made per hour was like $14.

Not bad, but there was no way I was getting rich through that.

As time went on, I started thinking about leverage. How could I make the most money possible while working the least I could?

And I through the years, I realized it was all about building systems.

For Trendify, I have a simple rule. If I’m going to have to do something more than 3 times, I build a system around it.

It’s just not worth my time to do it again after that.

Here’s a system I could have used when I was younger:

If I had employed a kid to sell my bracelets and paid him $8 an hour, I’d be making $6 an hour.

I wouldn’t be making $14 an hour. But I’d have leverage on my time.

I could sit at home and utilize my time better aka trying to 360 no-scope on Rust while making like $40 a day.

And the guy selling the bracelets would make money too. Dub for him.

That’s leverage.

So over the years, I started thinking more and more about leverage.

How could I build something where I trade the least amount of my time to make the most amount of money.

And it didn’t happen overnight (it’s still something I’m working on).

But slowly, I was able to do more of it.

It started by building systems in our business.

And I’m going to break down a few for you:

• Accounting systems: Every time someone pays us or gets paid, we have a process to track the expense and verify it. No more checking invoices myself.

• Fulfillment systems: Our account management system is one of them. We recently brought on a wonderful account manager to handle all client communication. This freed up my time to work on business growth.

• Marketing systems: We use Asana to ensure everything is being tracked. We also have a full system with our creators, virtual assistant, and editors. They all work together to make our marketing stunts happen. Now I can focus my efforts on giving value to prospects.

And the list goes on and on.

The point is that you can free up your time to do more of the high-leverage work by building systems. And people or tools will do everything else for you.

So here’s what I learned:

1. Figure out a business model where I could have minimal input and maximum output.

2. Build systems in every department of the business.

3. Spend my free time moving the business forward—not being lazy (aka not playing MW2).

2) Enjoy the Pursuit of Making Money

This one was huge.

And it ties a lot to building a business.

There are so many ways to think about this. I’ll give you a couple of scenarios:

• You build a business you hate so you can live a life you love (outside of the business).

• You build a business you love and spend your time only on that business.

• You build a business you hate and live a life you hate (not sure why anyone would do this).

• You build a business you love and live a life you love (optimal for me).

For me, the goal was to enjoy building a business AND building a life I loved.

I wanted to build a business that helped me live a life I loved. And one of the criteria was to love the business itself.

Because I see business as part of my life.

But that’s not easy, is it?

Actually, I think it is. It just takes time.

I leaned into excitement/passion + value.

What could I do that was fun for me and also benefited others?

I know what you’re thinking: it’s easy for you to say because you do marketing and everyone needs marketing.

But that’s not the case.

I didn’t love marketing at first. In fact, I didn’t know a thing about it.

But I did feel pretty excited about content. I’ve always loved being on camera. I also love speaking. Watching big YouTubers inspired me when I was younger.

So that’s what I leaned into: content.

I started making videos in middle school.

I still remember a Kyrie Irving spin move video I made in my bathroom (thank god it’s not up anymore).

I made content on and off throughout middle school, high school, and college.

It was so much fun.

But nothing worked because I didn’t take the time to improve. And I realized I didn’t like scripting, editing, or the other tasks that came with content.

What I really enjoyed about content was teaching.

Then TikTok came along—a platform where you didn’t need to script or edit much. You could make a video in 5 minutes and potentially go viral.

That got me hooked.

After a few weeks of posting, one of my videos hit 10M+ views.

Momentum and validation kept me going.

But eventually, I just wasn’t able to make much money from it (and I started losing interest).

So once again, I leaned into excitement. I had a passion for teaching, so I started helping founders with their own content.

And luckily, I found that there was a massive gap in the market for business owners in need of short-form content.

That was what led me to building Trendify.

If I were to try and break it down:

1. I wouldn’t have been able to solve that need for business owners if I hadn’t built a large following and understood content.

2. I wouldn’t have built a large following and understood content if I hadn’t posted content.

3. I wouldn’t have posted content if I hadn’t leaned into excitement.

If I were starting something from scratch today, I’d still lean into excitement.

I’d do what’s fun for me and then soon ask:

• Who is getting value from this?

I think if you lean into excitement enough, you land on some cool opportunities.

3) Maximizing Time for Other Things

As I built my business, I fell in love with it.

It felt great—until it didn’t.

I spent every waking minute replying to emails, refreshing my phone like it owed me money, and chasing contractors like a lost puppy.

Spoiler alert: none of it actually helped the business.

It just filled my time.

Then the philosophical side of me kicked in.

If I had 10 days to live, would I spend them glued to my phone? Or would I actually do something meaningful?

The answer was obvious: do something meaningful.

So, I stopped wasting time on low-leverage work and handed tasks off to my team.

Then I asked myself: What’s one thing that would mean the world to me? The answer was clear—getting to truly understand my parents as people. Learning their story, their thoughts, their lives.

It was something I’d always wanted to do but kept pushing off. "One day," I’d tell myself.

But this time, I had the time. And I wasn’t going to waste it.

So I leaned into excitement (and my love for systems) and came up with a plan:

System + Excitement = Starting a Podcast with My Parents

Every week, we sit down, pick a topic, and have the best time.

It’s improved our connection so much and each conversation feels like 1–2 years of growth in our relationship.

And this doesn’t have to be only about family or business or content.

It’s whatever you want to really spend your time on.

Another example here is working out.

I used to spend hours figuring out what to eat, when to eat, and how to plan my day around it. It was exhausting.

Now, I’ve simplified everything into a system:

• Stock the right foods so I don’t have to think about what to eat.

• Follow a gym routine that’s consistent and effective.

• Hydrate on regular intervals to stay energized and focused.

This system runs seamlessly and has saved me 1–2 hours every day.

On top of that, it’s helped me transform—going from 135 pounds bodyweight to nearly 210 pounds. Oh and while lifting weights I once thought were impossible.

But that’s for another newsletter.

Systems Make Life Easier

Systems are dope.

They free up my time and let me focus on what really matters.

But it doesn’t mean avoiding the work. There’s always hard work to do. And it did take me a lot of hard work before I could even understand how to build some systems.

And there’s still a lot of hard work to do - because I’m still on the journey.

Anyways, if you’ve got systems that work for you—or want to learn more about some of mine—let me know. I’d love to swap ideas and keep improving together.

Thanks for reading 🙂 

And if there’s anything I could do better, lmk!

Until next time.