How I made $1000 per hour

A morning in Switzerland

I walked through security at Zurich Airport without a hitch.

Twenty minutes later, I stepped onto a plane headed for Philadelphia with more than $9000 in my pocket.

I received that $9000 for 9 hours of work.

The whole 6–part process went down like this:

1. I spent one hour researching a topic.
2. I spent the next 2 hours writing.
3. I spent 5 hours revising.
4. I submitted the finished paper and waited.
5. Two months later, I was notified that I had been chosen to receive the 1st place prize at the 40th St. Gallen Symposium in St. Gallen, Switzerland.
6. In May, I spent an hour on stage presenting and answering questions and received a total of $9355.63 for my efforts.

That comes out to $1039.51 per hour.

How long is 9 hours?

It’s going to be awhile before I get paid at that rate again, and it will probably be awhile before you get paid like that too.

Why? Because what I put together in those 9 hours took years to develop.

I wrote a compelling essay because I used a great real world example.

I knew about that example because I met a compelling entrepreneur.

I met a compelling entrepreneur because I took a challenging class.

I knew about that class because I attended a good MBA program.

I was only allowed into a good MBA program because I worked my tail off in undergrad.

I worked my tail off in undergrad because I discovered things that were important to me.

I found things that were important to me because I tried 100 other things that were boring before that.

I tried a bunch of boring things because I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

Stop.

Did you catch that? I was paid $1000 per hour because I didn’t know what I wanted to do…

and I did something about it.

Was I just lucky?

You better believe it. I have amazing luck. I’m lucky to simply have the opportunity to focus on all of the things I just mentioned instead of more serious issues like starvation, crime, and war.

But if you’re reading this site, it’s unlikely that you worry about those things either, so for us luck isn’t something that just gets dished out at random.

You can’t control when someone decides to give you a break, but you can create more chances for it to happen. There are plenty of cliches – fortune favors the bold, luck is where preparation meets opportunity, and so on – but the truth is that those who take action give themselves more opportunities to be lucky.

I was lucky, but I also worked hard to create opportunities for things to fall my way. It didn’t take me 9 hours. It took me years.

So how do you make $1000 an hour? Nobody just makes $1000 an hour all of a sudden.

Get moving. Get out there and actually try to earn more. Try something you might hate. Start freelancing. Use some extra cash to build your first product. Do something.

Take enough chances and maybe you’ll earn $1000 per hour. Start now.

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