Why DUMB People Are RICHER Than You

Look around you. People dumber that you are RICHER than You

From people at your work to young Influencer kids making way more than you can ever dream of.

And you’re stuck at your 9 to 5 job or the business prison that you created for yourself, barely making ends meet with very little left in your bank account at the end of the month.

What’s going on?

Throughout the past years, I desperately tried many many things to try & ‘make it’ in hopes of breaking free from my 9 to 5 & living the life that I want.

• Launched a podcast & invited Creators over to pry their secrets
• Tried selling digital products
• I ran a paid webinar
• And even joined a marketing coaching program

After all of this trial & error, I finally figured out what it is guys.

I know EXACTLY why dumber people are richer than me & you.

I’ll be sharing with you what it is and what you can do about it.

So if you don’t know me, I’m Helmi 36 YO. 

I started my career as an Oil & Gas engineer working in Singapore making decent money until I got laid off twice in the 2014 oil crisis.

Then, I decided to come back to Malaysia and fulfill my dreams of being an entrepreneur.

But I didn’t know a damn thing about sales, because my background was in engineering.

Dumber = More Money?

So learning how to sell, fast, would be my #1 priority. 

The logic is, that if you know how to sell, you can run any successful business.

The only easy entry for something like that was to be a real estate or insurance agent (hardcore sales job).

Since I hate insurance agents with a passion (watch this to see why), I signed up as a property agent instead.

Once in, there was this lady on our team.

She was a well-mannered housewife doing this for extra income.

Not to sound mean, but she didn’t seem like the sharpest pencil in the drawer.

She’s not clinically stupid or anything, but you can tell she’s not Booksmart.

Our team’s first task was to sell this new property launch. 

The manager gave us a set of sales tasks to perform, like cold calling, etc.

The property was at an expensive location and there was nothing special about it.

So if I were a potential buyer, with that budget, I’d buy something else.

In my mind, I already didn’t believe anyone would buy the property, and guess what?

That’s EXACTLY what happened, nobody bought the property, from me.

That housewife though, was pulling in sales left & right.

Because once we had a paid booking, we gotta submit the booking form to the admin office so they could process our commission & she kept going in and out.

During lunch, my friends and I gossiped about how the hell she pulled this off?

She seems to have achieved what is impossible for us.

Because she wasn’t that booksmart, she didn’t think too much like the rest of us.

Therefore, she just plowed through her sales tasks, which inevitably resulted in her success.

That was the first time I realized that you don’t have to be the smartest person to succeed in life or business.

In fact, the smarter you are, the worse you are as an entrepreneur because you tend to overthink & therefore stall.

Sometimes in life, someone will give you a proven framework for success. All you have to do is complete everything step-by-step.

If you overthink, you start questioning the tasks & end up not doing them and therefore don’t see the result & blame everyone except yourself.

Digital Dumb

After my real estate gig, I ran an Airbnb business targeting tourists coming into Kuala Lumpur. 

Business was good in 2014 but as competition crept in in 2018, I had to start doing extra marketing to keep my business afloat.

I started with a blog, writing SEO articles for tourists on what to do in Kuala Lumpur, and then putting the link to my Airbnb at the bottom of the article.

Despite this noble effort, the business kept dwindling, and right before the pandemic in 2020, my business inevitably closed down.

During the lockdown, I had nothing to do & I changed my blog into a personal finance blog, a topic I loved talking about.

The blog eventually expanded into a YouTube channel.

All well & good, but I still had bills & my mortgage to pay.

But it was a terrible time to start a new business & nobody was hiring.

Thanks to my background in blogging & running a YouTube channel, I managed to get a remote digital marketing job at a tech company.

I ran my YouTube channel on the side, in hopes that I grow it to the point where I could quit my job.

My life turned out OK during the pandemic because I said, “fuck it” & launched the blog & YouTube channel. 

In this story, I was the dumb person. Because of my desperate situation at the time to make ends meet, I had no time to ‘overthink’ and just do stuff until something worked out.

If I were my old self, I’d constantly overthink to the point of stalling.

I wouldn’t have all the digital assets (my blog & YouTube channel) as proof of my competence & I would never have gotten that digital marketing job that saved my ass during the pandemic.

1. The point of this mini-story is that In life, trying new things & failing is still better than being stagnant.
2. And sometimes, being in a desperate situation may help you to stop overthink and get things done.

A Curse Disguised as a Blessing

I soon got a promotion and another job offer from a company that wanted me to grow their YouTube channel & existing team with a significant pay bump.

I jumped on it without thinking much.

But turns out there was a huge mismatch between the job & my expectations.

Long story short, I quit after only 2 months.

So I’m back to square one and had to monetize whatever asset I had at the time.

At the time, I had around 7,000 subs on YouTube, and 10,000 on Twitter.

I managed to make some decent money from:

• YouTube Partner Program
• Affiliate income
• Brand sponsorships
• Paid webinars
• Digital courses

You can watch an entire video about my online income source here.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to replace my job. 

I knew I was doing something wrong.

But I couldn’t figure out what it was.

So overthinking stepped in once again. I was constantly asking myself:

• Maybe I’m in the wrong niche?
• Am I targeting the right audience?
• Should I change the language of my YouTube channel from English to the local language?
• Should I jump in on viral trends & risk not looking professional?

While I was dwelling on what I had to do, I stopped producing content. 

Because I had to ‘restrategize.’

But life goes on and days turn into weeks

Weeks turn into months, 

And months turn into years without posting any new videos.

My YouTube channel’s growth stalled.

In the meantime, my competitors in the personal finance niche were pumping out new videos consistently and their growth skyrocketed. 

2 guys in my niche shot up to 200k+ subs, within 2 years, were featured in the local news & now have successful media companies.

Another 2 channels were young chaps around 25 years old. 

They grew their channels to around 30k subs each and they both just quit their jobs to do YouTube full time.

How’d these guys do it? 

I leveraged my YouTube influence, launched a video podcast, and invited them to my video podcast. You can watch them reveal their secrets here.

Now these guys are not dumb by any means, but the point that I’m trying to make is:

1. Overthink and stalled my progress
2. Whereas all 4 of these guys kept PLOWING through content consistently, and that blew up their channel, to the point that they could quit their high-paying jobs in less than 2 years.

Summary

I learned a lot about money, new age money specifically. 

The digital economy rewards those who take action towards the goals being presented to them & are consistent.

This is why I now have another new YouTube channel helping other people build their personal brand on YouTube too, 

The teach how to use YouTube as a sales funnel to get you more clients for your service business.

I’m still in the early stages of my career & am not out of the woods yet, it took me a lot of convincing to share my story.

but hope this inspires you.

If you want to see what I’m doing now, watch this video here.