Build More Options

By Joseph Remington

A practical guide for Gen Xers exploring useful digital assets, recurring income, and a place to begin.

There’s a particular kind of frustration in knowing you need to do something about your future and having no clear idea what that something should be.

You can work more hours. You may already be doing that. You can cut another expense, adjust the retirement date, or hope the next few years are kinder to the plan than the last few felt.

Then you look online. Someone is selling a course about selling courses. Someone else says AI has changed everything. There are people making things you didn’t know could be businesses, and people promising that their thing is the answer to whatever keeps you awake.

You’re interested. You’d also like to know what you would actually be doing on a Tuesday evening after work.

That’s a reasonable place to begin.

I’m thinking about the years ahead too, and I want to develop income that doesn’t depend entirely on working more hours. I’m also interested in what we can create from the experience we’ve already earned. Those two interests belong together.

In the Cultivator’s Manifesto, I described giving our effort somewhere to accumulate. Here, I want to make that practical. We’ll look at what you could build, how it could earn, and how to begin without making your first project carry the weight of your entire future.

Suppose there’s a task you know well. You’ve learned where people get confused, which steps they skip, and what they need to check before they’re finished.

You could turn that knowledge into a short guide with a checklist. The person buying it gets help completing a task they already wanted to complete. You get a product you can explain, improve, and offer again.

The interesting part is what happens after you make it. You don’t have to recreate the guide for every customer. You can put it on a page, accept a payment, and deliver the file. Your work shifts toward helping the right people find it and learning how to make it more useful.

A digital asset is a resource you create and can share or deliver online, such as a guide, video, lesson, or template. It can help more than one person without being recreated each time. Its usefulness, and whether anyone will pay for it, depends on the problem it solves.

The format follows the problem. Before deciding to create a course, find out what someone is trying to do and where they need help. A good checklist may do more for them than six hours of video.

You don’t need a complete business idea to begin that investigation. Think about the questions people already ask you. Notice the tasks you can explain clearly. Look for a problem specific enough that you could recognize when someone had solved it.

The first is selling something of your own. You choose the problem, create the resource, and decide how to offer it. You also take responsibility for making the description accurate, delivering what you promised, and helping customers when something goes wrong.

The second is helping someone choose a product or service that another business provides. If you’re an eligible affiliate and someone buys through your link, you can earn a commission. The provider handles its product and billing. Your part is understanding who it helps and making a recommendation you can stand behind.

Some affiliate products pay once. Others pay recurring commissions while the customer keeps an eligible subscription. That can be worth exploring when the service has an ongoing use, such as helping someone publish a website or run part of their business.

A customer has a reason to keep paying when the product keeps helping them. The recurring payment needs recurring value behind it.

These paths can support each other. Someone who buys your resource might also need a tool to put it into practice. You can help them understand that tool, show where it fits, and disclose that you may earn a commission. The recommendation belongs there because it helps with the next task.

This is the combination I’m interested in building: useful offers we own, alongside relevant services we can recommend. It gives us more than one way to serve a customer and more than one possible source of income.

Two opportunities can require similar work to explain and produce very different earnings from a customer. The commission percentage alone won’t tell you enough. You need to know what the customer pays, what you actually receive, and what conditions apply.

A high commission on something people rarely use may be less valuable than it appears. A modest commission on a service that solves a continuing problem deserves a closer look. You also have your own costs to account for, including subscriptions, payment fees, and any money you spend reaching customers.

I want to understand the business underneath the promise. I want to know why a customer would buy and what would make them stay. I also want a clear understanding of the work that remains mine after the first sale.

That last question matters. A recurring commission can continue without making the same sale again, but customers can cancel and programs can change. Maintaining useful content, answering questions, and bringing in new customers still takes work.

I’m looking for models where that work can build on itself, and where the earnings make sense after the costs. Learning to examine those details is part of becoming someone who can make better decisions about the next opportunity too.

A useful download sitting on your computer has a very small audience.

It needs a way to reach someone who wants it. That could begin with a YouTube video answering a question, a Journal entry explaining a problem, or a conversation in a place where people are already discussing it.

From there, the person needs a clear next step. A page can explain the resource. An email invitation can give them a way to hear from you again. A checkout can take payment, and a delivery page can put the purchase in their hands.

You’ve followed versions of this path yourself. You found something useful, wanted to know more, and eventually decided whether to subscribe or buy.

Building your own version means making those steps work together. It also means staying interested in the person taking them. What did they come looking for? What do they still need to understand? What would make the next step worth their time?

That’s the work behind a funnel. Each part helps someone make a decision and move forward. The pages are useful because of the conversation they support.

There’s enough to learn here without making every blank page your personal responsibility on day one.

An existing product can give you something to recommend while you learn how to reach people. A prepared page can give you a starting point you can study and adapt. A good example can help you understand what a follow-up email needs to do before you try writing one yourself.

That’s what I’m looking for in the tools and training I choose: a simpler starting point that lets us spend more time making something useful and getting it in front of someone who needs it. We can begin learning from their response while developing the skills to improve what we offer.

Over time, I want you to understand what each piece does. If a page isn’t helping people take the next step, you should be able to examine why. If an email gets a thoughtful reply, you should be able to learn from it. The understanding you gain belongs with you on the next project.

AI can help with parts of that work. You can use it to organize notes, explore explanations, or turn an outline into something you can edit. Your judgment still has to be present. You know what you meant, what needs checking, and whether the finished resource is something you’re willing to put your name on.

You may be wondering why anyone would listen while you’re still figuring things out.

You can show someone how you use a tool without claiming it made you wealthy. You can demonstrate what your resource helps them do. You can explain what you tried, what happened, and what you changed.

That gives a person something they can evaluate. It also gives you a way to begin honestly, without waiting for a dramatic success story or treating another person’s results as your own.

I’m inviting you into work that’s developing. That means there will be decisions to revisit and things to improve. I’d rather you see enough of the process to make a thoughtful choice than mistake a polished page for the whole experience.

The environment matters too. I want to be around people who will answer a question, help examine a problem, and value useful contributions while someone is learning. Your first attempts deserve attention even before they produce income.

For your first project, choose one person with one problem you understand well enough to investigate. Write down what you could help them do. Then consider the smallest resource that would genuinely help them do it.

You might make a short guide, record an explanation, or demonstrate a service you use. Put it in front of people who have the problem and pay attention to what they ask. Their response will give you better information than another month of imagining the finished business.

Choose time you can consistently give the work and costs you can carry without needing an immediate sale. The point of this first experiment is to produce something useful and discover what deserves another round of effort.

If you want a place to write that out, the free Next Chapter Kit includes a Direction Workbook, an Opportunity Filter, and a First Experiment Planner. You can use it whether or not you decide to join anything.

Join the free Cultivator Chronicles for my weekly letters, with relevant Journal entries and examples to help you explore a project of your own. Begin with The Hidden Trade Field Guide and a practical exercise for making room to build.

Explore the Chronicles invitation →

Start with something you know. Let’s see what you could make possible with it.