The Way Of The Internet Mercenary
How to create your own work, find aligned positions, and fuel your greater mission.
I have entered my internet mercenary era.
I’m doing a lot. I have two marketing positions (with Aubrey Marcus and Coherence), a paid astrology newsletter, astrology readings and clients, a conscious creator cohort, 1:1 creator coaching clients, and an upcoming retreat in Thailand.
Why am I doing so much?
One, it’s in my nature. I love creating. I love building. I have a million ideas. I can see something someone else is doing and rapidly implement it myself. I can see how my Digital Universe will piece together over the next few years, and each piece of this puzzle I am currently building fits into the bigger picture, which becomes clearer and clearer over time. It’s written all over my astrology, human design, and every other branch of psychological or spiritual mapping.
Two, it’s been out of necessity. I lacked wisdom and long-term thinking when I went backpacking with no plan last summer. I dropped all my income sources, paused all my businesses, and ended up spending just about every dollar I had. I spent thousands on spiritual coaching, psychic and astrology readings, and spontaneous trips to Austin and Hawaii. Then, in a state of rushing, I moved into an apartment near my new college with a price tag that was quite ambitious, telling myself it would “force me to make more money.” It has done that, but it’s also brought a lot of stress and anxiety with it. And it’s forced me to constantly build and launch various offers and sign a ton of clients.
In essence, I have a high capacity to do a lot. But I’ve also put myself in a situation where I’ve been forced to do a lot. I’ve been learning lessons around stability and responsibility, and the lessons have, at times, been quite challenging. These lessons led me to enter what I am dubbing my “internet mercenary era.” This letter will feature everything I’ve learned on freelancing, finding aligned work, and maintaining devotion to a larger mission and purpose while doing so.
This newsletter will be the final “creator economy-focused” letter that will be available for free on Substack. The free edition of this newsletter will shift to more philosophy, spirituality, and personal development-focused letters. There will still be creator economy and business insights infused into these articles, but the higher-level, strategic, nuanced business and creator economy content will be moving to the paid tier of this Substack. If you want to upgrade, and since you’re already a subscriber, you can sign up for the paid newsletter for 50% off for life by using this link.
Now, let’s dive deeper into the ethos of the internet mercenary, how to sign clients and create aligned positions as a freelancer, and how to eventually pivot and iterate so that you end up doing 100% what you want in the long run.
(I’ll be using “he” throughout this letter for simplicity's sake, but obviously, these principles apply to all genders)
What Is An Internet Mercenary?
An internet mercenary is someone who works various freelance positions, launches different offers, and makes money on demand in creative ways based on their wide-ranging skillset, network, and interests.
A mercenary is not tied to one business or organization. He is instead a “digital nomad” in the literal sense, hopping from project to project as the opportunity arises. He doesn’t wait for things to fall in his lap; he instead goes out and makes things happen. He spots opportunities, sends emails, makes calls, and drafts proposals without being asked to do so. He never has to worry about being out of work because his skill set and value allow him to create job opportunities at will that didn’t previously exist.
He flows seamlessly from one project to the next. One moment, he’s creating a landing page. The next, he’s writing a Twitter thread. And later in the evening, he’s cooking up his own creative projects, running on pure inspiration and passion.
The forward-thinking internet mercenary keeps the height of his potential highest and the range of who he could become widest because he doesn’t define himself by the role he works. He knows his core nature is a creator and a builder, and that the freelance work he’s doing now is a stepping stone to who he is ultimately meant to become. He lives the essence of Lao Tzu’s statement:
“He who defines himself can’t know who he really is.”
By not defining himself, he can work any role that fits his current needs and skill set.
One day of the week, he’s a marketer and web designer. The next, he’s a ghostwriter and video editor. Some days, he shapeshifts between every skill and identity. On other days, he does nothing at all but read, walk, explore, and ponder. He has a hard time answering the question, “What do you do for work?” because he can do so many different things. If a normal corporate employee watched him for a day, they wouldn’t be able to comprehend the range of what he does.
The internet mercenary creates his own work and his own schedule. He is autonomously productive. He works from planes, coffee shops, restaurants, and park benches. He can work at 6am or 11pm. He can work from Costa Rica, Thailand, India, New York City, or suburban America. He is antifragile, agile, and mobile to the utmost degree.
When he’s not working on his freelance projects, he’s cooking up his own creative projects, not out of force, but out of vision and passion. Since he knows freelancing is a stepping stone to his ultimate expression, he keeps his personal creative projects as the priority on his calendar because he knows they are the keys that will unlock his highest freedom, autonomy, and potential. It may take years, but it doesn’t matter, because this is his life’s work he is pursuing.
In the end, he reaches the highest degrees of sovereignty and wealth. He creates his own work. He lives and works where he wants, when he wants, on what he wants. His skills, experience, and interests combine into creative projects no one else could dream up. He is a “niche of one” in the truest sense because his work and life experience have molded him into a completely unique individual. He possesses such a comprehensive skill set, range of expertise, and robust network that allow him to earn a living by sharing his music (unique frequency), serving humanity, and becoming his highest self.
The last sentence above is the end game for the internet mercenary. It’s also the highest aim for anyone in the creator economy. In the digital economy, the highest aim for your career is to get paid to become your highest self, the version of you who naturally serves humanity through your artistic creations and expressions.
The mercenary stage is the initial stepping stone to getting paid to self-actualize. It’s how your value becomes evergreen and you become antifragile in the ever-changing landscape of the online world. It’s also the path to creating a career that contributes to the evolution of human consciousness.
Let’s talk about how to become an internet mercenary, find aligned work, create opportunities, and iterate to the point where you are completely self-sovereign.
The Principles Of The Internet Mercenary
1) The Mercenary Mindset
The Internet Mercenary adopts at least three identities:
1) The rogue warrior
2) The creative philosopher
3) The digital wizard
He is a warrior because he wakes up each day with a mission. He is “rogue” because he operates outside of normal rules, systems, or expectations. Normal work schedules, office jobs, or corporate politics don’t apply to him. It is not in his nature to conform to one skillset, one repetitive task, or even one job. He adds something to his arsenal each day. There is not a day the internet mercenary goes to sleep that he isn’t a more refined, polished, and well-rounded version of himself than when he woke up, across all dimensions of life (not just business).
He is a philosopher because he has principles that guide his life and the life he wants to create. His north star likely revolves around the themes of freedom, self-actualization, wealth creation, and service to humanity. These principles are what drive him to transcend the “normal path,” go rogue, and create his own way of living. He also creates regularly while working freelancing roles because he knows, in the long run, that the highest aim is to get paid to be himself and build projects of his choosing. Creating for him is not a burden; it is a privilege, a blessing, and a natural extension of his nature. It’s not work - it’s play.
And he is a wizard because he can and is willing to learn anything. He can design websites, write copy, create funnels, build email sequences, synthesize educational content, launch products, edit videos, and write viral social media content. His multidimensional skill set makes him invaluable to brands and companies, and through years of iteration and refinement, this skill set makes him “unemployable” in the sense that he’s too valuable. His specific knowledge and skill set get to the point where his mastery of the digital landscape becomes indistinguishable from wizardry.
These three identities, the warrior, the philosopher, and the wizard, combined with his authentic curiosities and personality, make him truly invaluable and irreplaceable. He will always be able to find work because he’s built himself into the type of person who creates value for any business or brand he comes in contact with. He’s simply too valuable to pass over.
2) The Liftoff Stage
The mercenary also adopts the mindset, which I first heard from Alex Hormozi, of “I will do what is required.”
He knows that some seasons of his life will feature 12-hour workdays, low sleep, and a lack of balance. But he knows that this is temporary, and a necessary initiation phase to reaching the levels of ease and freedom he knows he’s destined for. He has no problem with working hard for a stretch, even if he’s aiming for ease and flow in the long run.
“Hard work” is what separates the 5% of freelancers who find success from the 95% who don’t.
Many of the freelancer types who avoid work, and thus avoid success, do so unconsciously because they’ve been sold a pipe-dream by a big creator of working 2 hours a day or only working on things that feel like play. While there is truth to this, and it is wise to optimize your systems, leverage Parkinson’s Law, and find freelance work that is aligned with your natural interests, the framing of these big ideas often leads beginners to bypass the necessary liftoff stage, where you must put in time and effort, before you can reach exit velocity and things become easier.
Over 70% of a rocket’s fuel is used in the first few minutes of takeoff. Once the rocket has momentum, it’s easier to maintain it. In the same way, there will be an initial takeoff period for your coaching, freelancing, or creator career. You cannot bypass the work that comes with the launch period of your new career just because someone said, “Find work that feels like play to you."
Tell yourself you will do what is required in the beginning so you can live the life you want to in the end. It will take time. It will take study. It will take sweat, discipline, and commitment. But if the rewards are a lifestyle where you can live and work where you want, and eventually get paid to be yourself, then in my estimation, the initial work is not only worth it, but an exciting and meaningful chapter to live out in the grander story of your life, especially if you find the game you’re playing to be fun. Then, the long days will in fact feel like play.
I think back to my start in this game. I was living in San Francisco, going to school, and trying to become a ghostwriter on the side. I’d go to the same little Peet’s Coffee Shop in a mall for hours each morning and write Twitter threads. I’d go to class, hit the gym, and go right back to that same mall, post up at a restaurant, and drink a white monster while writing more in the evening.
It was obsession, drive, and passion. I had a reason why I wanted to work so hard. I wanted to do everything I could to get out of college and avoid a 9-5 job before I entered. And frankly, I enjoyed the writing (way more than some BS finance or Excel work). It became a new, fun game to master, and one that would magically make digital coins appear in my bank account.
Looking back, I did work extremely hard during this period. But the grind was actually fun. I didn’t eat until dinner 90% of the time because I wanted to channel as much focus into the writing and creator game as possible. I buzzed my head, cut off 90% of people, and entered monk mode. I still went out with friends, chilled around San Francisco, and smoked a few joints from time to time. But for the majority of this stretch, I was the most dialed and focused I’d been in my life, and it was because I had a clear mission and a clear why. This led to signing 3 full-time clients, making $7k/month, moving to Argentina, and beginning the adventure of my life and the path to discovering my life’s purpose and how I believe I’m supposed to impact the world.
In the initial phase of your creator or entreprenuer career, as you go through the freelancer and mercenary stage, you have to ask yourself the important questions:
What’s your why?
What’s your mission?
What are you striving for?
Where do you want to live?
What life and work do you want to avoid?
What type of work are you good at that you love doing?
What does an ideal workday and lifestyle look like to you?
You should be able to answer all of these questions. And if you have trouble working hard (especially in the initial launch period), your priority should become getting very clear on these questions, because at the root of all action (or inaction), is the why behind them.
3) The Mercenary Skillset
The importance of a skillset as an internet mercenary is simple:
The more skills you have, the more valuable you become.
When you combine a growing skillset with a growing network and an open mind, your “luck surface area” for potential opportunities expands exponentially with time and practice. And the more cross-disciplinary your skillset is, the better positioned you are for the future of work.
Diving into the nuances and tactics of each skill is beyond the scope of this letter. Be on the lookout for a “23 skills to navigate the AI & Consciousness Revolution” soon. For simplicity's sake, I will list out every practical skill you can add to your repertoire as a mercenary, as well as more metaphysical and esoteric skills that create a slight edge of separation between you and 99% of freelancers. Feel free to look into whichever one peaks your curiosity the most with a YouTube or ChatGPT search.
The 12 practical skills:
AI
Computers
Writing
Social Media
Marketing
Networking
Offer Creation
Sales
Product Creation
Client relationships/fulfillment
Design & aesthetics
Website building
Coding / No-code tools
The 12 conscious skills:
Intuition
Agency
Presence
Focus, time management, & discipline
Human psychology, human nature, & game theory
Accessing “Higher Guidance” (from your higher self or Spirit guides)
Frequency calibration and elevation
Conscious manifestation
Somatics
Subconscious reprogramming
Tarot / Oracle Readings
Astrology / Human Design / Gene Keys
Each skill you add (both practical and esoteric) makes you exponentially more valuable.
You stack skills not by watching a YouTube video about a skill, but by actively experimenting and applying new skills to your own projects. You will learn more by doing than watching.
This is the importance of building your own thing as a mercenary or freelancer. By building your own thing, you're forced to add skills to your repertoire as your project evolves. After enough iterations and time, it becomes inevitable that you will learn writing, speaking, marketing, sales, web design, AI tools, and every other practical skill mentioned as you build projects, come up against roadblocks, and find ways to transcend them. Then, because you’ve learned the skills through your own autonomous work, you can bring your skills to freelance opportunities, and use your own projects and brand as case studies that you know what you’re doing.
In my journey, I was able to get gigs for Aubrey, Coherence, Dan Koe, and various other creators and brands not only through outreach, pitches, connections, and novel ideas, but because my own brand and personal projects were tangible proof I could do the things I said I was going to do.
The mercenary who can write + design + build websites + execute marketing strategies + communicate + build a million-dollar network + understand positive-sum relationships is exponentially more valuable in the long run than the freelancer who pigeonholes himself into a single niche like writing educational email courses for agency owners.
By being a jack of all trades, you become the type of person who is agile and adaptable enough to pivot when needed, work various different roles, find work in tough job markets or economic climates, evolve with the AI, tech, and consciousness revolutions, and create their own work on demand in the ever-changing landscape of online business.
When you add metaphysical skills into your arsenal, you become more of a wizard than a freelancer. Businesses don’t necessarily need to know you’re working with esoteric knowledge to do your job, but if they are also conscious and open, it becomes another value-add to their perception of you. If you’re a marketing strategist or project manager who works with astrology to time launches and build micro-teams, you tap into knowledge most people have no idea exists, and add value to a company most people couldn’t comprehend.
The lesson is this:
Become multidimensional. Become cross-disciplinary. Become nicheless, malleable, and adaptable. Open yourself to unseen planes of spiritual reality and learn to work with them. Eventually, you’ll become so unique and so valuable that you’ll get paid for your unique judgment, which is the highest form of leverage and freedom.
“Each skill you add doubles your odds of success.” ~ Scott Adams
If you want to work with me in a 1:1 mentorship capacity to combine these practical and esoteric skills in your freelancing and creator journey, you can apply here.
4) The North Star
The mercenary is not a normal freelancer in the sense that he has a north star that expands far beyond his freelance work. His freelancing work and practical skillset are Trojan Horses for a bigger mission.
I feel this when working with my brothers Nick and Jack Sweeney at Coherence.
Their mission is to get 1 billion people meditating and breathing at the same time around the world through their app to create a quantum leap in the collective consciousness of humanity. Who knows, this exact idea may be what catapults us into the New Earth. My life’s mission is similar: to be a vessel to elevate human potential and awaken human consciousness through writing, speaking, music, and businesses building, so the overlap manifests as a freelance role that appears as “writing” and “marketing,” but the root of why is deeper than appears on the surface. The same goes for my role with Aubrey. His North Star is spreading Truth, Love, and the Word of God, and so me being a “marketing strategist” for him is actually me being a marketing strategist for God.
By having a clear north star, you create a filter for which freelance roles and work opportunities are aligned with your higher purpose, and actively live in your dharma while working and making money in the world.
By having clarity on your north star, you maintain an infinite fuel source to build your own projects even while working freelancing roles. Whether it’s writing books, creating retreats, or building generational wealth to reinvest into regenerative real estate or in-person consciousness hubs is the root of why he still builds his own thing and works on his own creative projects every single day, despite still freelancing. The freelancing funds the broader mission, and ideally, is a Trojan Horse for a larger mission itself.
Thriving As An Internet Mercenary (How To Sign Clients & Pivot To Do Your Own Thing)
1) Finding & Signing Clients
The biggest roadblock most freelancers come up against is not being able to sign clients.
Most freelancers can’t sign clients because:
They don’t have a strong network
They don’t have a strong personal brand themselves
They don’t have a refined skillset with social proof and results
It’s very hard to find work opportunities without a strong personal brand, network, and skillset. These are really the only three things you need to be a successful freelancer. If you aren’t seeing the results you want, look to these three things, reflect on which is the weakest, and take steps that present themselevs to you to strengthen that area.
If you want to build a stronger network, join communities, cohorts, or start a podcast.
If you want to build a stronger personal brand, make your own creations your number one priority.
If you want to build a more well-rounded and refined skillset, take a course or watch videos on the skills you want to learn, experiment and apply them to your own creative projects, and send free work to others in your network and get feedback.
This is the most actionable advice I can give in a generalized context (without knowing your individual situation by working together) on how to go about signing freelance clients. This is also the process I’ve used repeadetly over the past few years:
Create a list of 10 people or brands you’d like to work with
Look to your network to see if you have mutual connections, or if you can directly help people already in your network
Brain dump on all the ways you could help these people
Format a clean, simple, aesthetic proposal
Send it to them in a minimal way (DM, Loom, Email)
Offer to send free work to see if they like it
Ask to get on a call and explore if there may be a mutually beneficial deal to collaborate on
The more connections you have, the easier this will be. Most of my freelance opportunities have come through referrals and connections. Odds are, you’re only 1-2 connections away from the people you want to work with. If you build a strong reputation, a refined skillset, and genuine connections, you’re probably not far from manifesting the ideal opportunity, so long as you put in the work and take steps outside of your comfort zone to step into the next position and iteration of yourself.
2) Build Your Own Thing
The ultimate aim for every creator is to get paid to build their own thing.
Even when you’re working freelancing roles or a normal job, which are typically the stepping stones to doing your own thing, you have to make a commitment to putting yourself and your own creative projects first.
This means if you start your freelance work at 9 or 10am, you work on your own projects for at least 2 hours beforehand. If you don’t make this a devotional practice, you will never create the leverage and autonomy to transcend freelance work and do your own thing full time.
You will have to master your mind, energy, focus, and discipline. You will not be perfect, and neither am I. But if you maintain a devotion to your north star and highest timeline, you will persist through the waves of the online business game and continue to iterate and evolve until you’re fully getting paid to do your own thing.
Doing this requires holistic self-mastery. All business growth is a direct reflection of your personal and spiritual growth. There is no separation. Everything in this life is interconnected.
3) Esoteric Client Acquisition
Here’s where you’ll separate yourself from 99% of freelancers.
If you can work with metaphysical tools and practices such as astrology, tarot, meditation, and breathwork while navigating your freelancing journey, you have a non-linear edge over everywhere else doing the same fucking cold emails and direct response outreach templates.
Sorry for my language, but I’m tired of seeing people get sold the same system over and over again by the “big players,” think they have to put themselves in a narrow box, and then wonder why they can’t get results. The issue is they haven’t differentiated themselves from other players in the marketplace and individuated their own psychological developmemnt because they fundamentally do not know who they are.
If you have a deep understanding of your unique nature through introspection, astrology, and other psycho-spiritual maps, you will know which work positions are not only aligned with your true self, but also which ones fuel your life’s mission.
If you can work with tarot, oracle, and the subconscious mind, you can work with the unseen spiritual planes of reality to uncover ideas and opportunities hidden below the depths of your conscious mind.
If you know how to get clear in meditation, elevate your consciousness with breathwork, and even consult your higher self and spiritual guides, you can ask any question and get an answer.
Yes, this sounds abstract and esoteric, but such is the nature of spiritual reality.
I can tell you from experience that all of my current freelancing roles have come as a direct manifestation of working with tarot, dissecting my astrology chart, and consulting higher guidance. These tools have all led me to opportunities I couldn’t have consciously planned with my linear, rational mind.
The takeaway here, especially if these ideas are new to you, is that you will find your way to send the right message, identify the right opportunity, and work with the right client by asking the universe for the way forward.
As Jesus said in Matthew 7:7:
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
The Way Of The Internet Mercenary
The way of the internet mercenary is the path to your divine mission.
You do what you have to do now to complete your soul’s mission later.
You stack skills, specific knowledge, connections, and experience that make you a true niche of one.
You don’t tie yourself to one niche, job, or skill so that you can evolve exponentially into everything you’re meant to become.
You hustle when you need to. You end each day better than you were when you woke up. You stack skills, projects, and cash to take a quantum leap to build your own thing and become everything you’re meant to.
The freelancing work is not the endgame.
It is the entry point to the adventure of your life.
In the end, you become a sovereign creator and a being that gets paid to actualize your highest potential.
Godspeed, my friend, and good luck on your path 🛸
∞ Jack ∞