Does money equal happiness? Can money buy happiness? Yes, but only up to a certain point. We need to eat and we have basic needs that need to be met. We need a roof over our heads.

Money can buy those things. Money can produce happiness. It can help you make a better life for your family, which will bring about happiness, but does money equal happiness? Does more money always equal more happiness all of the time?

Certainly not.

Here’s what money does: money amplifies who you are now.

If you’re not generous now, you’re not going to be generous when you have money. If you’re not happy now, you’re not going to be happy when you have money.

Who are you now? That’s the only thing you can control.

What is hustle? What is enjoying life?

I think a lot of people have this aspiration for working really hard: "I'm going to hustle for 30 years doing something I don't enjoy and then I'm going to enjoy life. I'm going to work really hard, hopefully make millions of dollars and then It'll just relax and do nothing."

The problem is we're not designed to do nothing, we're designed to be productive, be creative, make things, and do things. The problem with thinking you'll do something you don't like for 30 years of your life and hopefully make money so you can do nothing is that will not fulfill you.

Yes, there will be a honeymoon phase. Yes, initially, things are fun. Going to the beach is fun. Laying in a hammock is fun. Traveling is fun. Playing video games is fun. But that won't fulfill you. It'll satiate you for a while, but unless you’re productive, you’re not going to be happy. You have to find the thing that fulfills you.

If you haven't heard of golden handcuffs, it's where you're in a job that pays well and has good benefits, but for one reason or another, you don't want to be there.

Maybe you hate the job. Maybe you don't hate the job, but you don't really like it. It isn't really the kind of work you like to do or maybe the people you're around aren't great, they drain your energy, or stress you out. But again, it pays well.

It pays so well that you feel bad leaving it, or maybe you think you would look foolish leaving it.

Maybe you have things you enjoy on the side and your aspirations are to come home from work to work on it but when you get home, you're just drained of all the energy you would need to even be able to pursue these side projects or passions you have.

It may feel risky going out and doing your own thing or lowering your lifestyle to be able to build your side business and have that energy, but it's always a risk. No matter what job you have, you can't be sure.

There's no such thing as job security.

So, you want to grow your audience, right? You’re looking at people with bigger audiences, you’re wondering how they got there, and what they know that you don’t. Maybe you’ve even tried to replicate what they do out of hopes that it will grow your audience.

But the problem with copying people who are further along than you is you’re not leveraging your unique advantage. That advantage is being small.

I know that doesn’t really sound like an advantage because that’s exactly what you don’t want, right? You’re trying to grow, you want to get bigger, but being small is your unique advantage because you can afford to do the unscalable things.

So you've got a blog and you're wondering how to monetize it.

Let me stop you right there.

You don't monetize a blog. You don't monetize a blog for the same reason you don't monetize a billboard.

Why don't you see people asking how to monetize a billboard? Because it's an absurd question. Why do you have a billboard? You have a billboard to advertise. What do you advertise? You advertise your product or service.

What is the product or service I should sell? That's a much better question.

You don't have a monetization problem, you have a business problem.

I have to burst a really big bubble you might have: a blog is not a business. A business is a business. A blog is a marketing tool.

There's generally two different kinds of stress that we're talking about when we use the word "stress". Stress can be a big issue that arises or it can be something more subtle that's always present.

An example of a big issue would be if your website server suddenly went down, or a client project is due.

Baseline stress can be much less obvious, but is still detrimental. It's like having a rock in your shoe. It's always with you and you get used to it, but it never gets better.

A lot of times, you don't even know where the stress and anxiety are coming from. Many of us live with a base level of stress. The first step is acknowledging stress that's already there.

I want to share 6 practical ways to reduce stress. These are specific, actionable things you can do to help discover, acknowledge, and reduce stress in your life.

Yesterday, I talked about The Magic of 7 and how it takes hearing new information seven times in order to retain it.

This means for someone in your audience to internalize your message, they need to be exposed to it seven times. Not only that, but when a person hears a message for the seventh time and it clicks, they will attribute the value of that message to the last person they heard it from.

You could let your competitors help out with making some of those impressions and hope that people come back to you for that magical seventh time, but that's a lot more risky. Instead, you should be contributing as many impressions toward The Magic of 7 as possible.

How do you do this? You repeat yourself.

Of course, you don't want to just repeat the same exact thing over and over or that gets monotonous real quick. You need a way to mix things up and keep it interesting while delivering the same core message each time.

The best way to the this is by repurposing your content.

It takes hearing new information seven times in order to retain it. For you to really hear something and internalize it, you have to be exposed to it seven times.

So everyone is at a different stage of hearing a message. For some, it's the first time. For others, it's the third time. Some people may be on the verge of hearing something for that magical seventh time. That's what I call the Magic of 7.

These seven impressions have to come from somewhere. People are exposed to messages in many different places. You may be the first to share an idea with someone or you may be the fifth. If so, the idea isn't going to sink in when you deliver it. You're just planting the seed.

But here's where it gets interesting: it doesn't matter if you were the one to make the first six impressions, you just have the be the person that delivers it the seventh time.

Here's the problem: You're low on cash, you've got no clients in the queue and you need to get some more jobs.

Maybe an existing client canceled on you who had been on the schedule for awhile. Either way, you're looking for ways to generate income. Your goal is to find some clients, get more jobs in the pipeline, and hopefully make some money with a relatively quick turnaround.

One relatively quick way to make money if you have expertise is to offer consulting.

Here's what I see most people do at this point:

• They announce that they're available for consulting or freelance jobs.

• They tweet it and they ask their friends to share.

Now, let me tell you why this is bad...

You can get a lot on the internet for free. I truly believe you can attain 80% mastery in any field with information freely available online.

Why pay for anything then? Time. Free content is plentiful, but it's fluffy. You have to wade through a lot to get to the gold nuggets. Paid material like courses cut straight to the point.

You have time and you have money. In the beginning, you have more time than money. This means you can spend the time wading through the free content to find the gold without paying. This is smart to do.

If you have more time than money, go deep on your specialty. Do your research, find and exhaust the best free material out there and learn from it.

Here's the top three highest value materials out there that are easily accessible:

1. Podcasts

2. Videos

3. Books

Most of these are freely available. There are podcasts on every topic that can teach you more than you'll learn in college. There are tons of free educational videos on YouTube and also ebooks, or books freely available at your library.

Eventually though, if you're growing, your time is worth more than your money. Eventually you have more money than time. There comes a point where you're wasting money by wading through free content. If you don't learn to recognize this point and start buying time with your money, you're actually losing money.