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Well, how do you get more love? By going out and asking for lots of love? By begging for it? Pleading for it? That may work, temporarily, on a very insecure person, for a low grade of needy, desperate love.

But the way to get really high-quality, pure-grade love in your life is to give high-quality, pure-grade love. By high-grade, I mean clean—free of neediness or the expectation of return, not with the intention of getting some back. If you do it with that intention, it deteriorates into neediness and desperation. Give widely and generously, to all those around you (particularly focusing on your own tribe), and somehow it comes back to you. It’s just the way it works. I don’t know why, but it works. It’s the same for all things of value. To get value, give value.

So, what are the kinds of value you can give? We’ve already talked about time and elbow grease. This is what most twentysomethings give, for low pay and low appreciation, in their bureaucratized corporate jobs in which they’re just following orders, supplying labor for someone else’s brilliant plan. That’s a dead end.

Then, there’s giving connections. Once you’ve got a great network in place, that’s a highly time-leveraged form of giving. Meaning, once you’ve built up a great network, it doesn’t take much time—just a phone call or an e-mail—to connect two people within your network, or to connect someone you just met with someone you already know. These connections can be life-changing for people. And, assuming the connections are always well thought-out, and they provide value for both people being introduced, it’s pretty much an infinite, inexhaustible form of giving.

And finally, there’s giving great advice. Granted, it may take you years or decades to build up the appropriate knowledge base, but once it’s there, giving advice from it can take just minutes, and it can be incredibly powerful and life-changing. If someone is having trouble with their business, or their relationship, or their health, and you give them a juicy suggestion that sets them on the right course and changes their life for years to come, you’ve just provided massive value in the space of a brief suggestion.

You’ve probably marveled at doctors or lawyers who earn $500 or $1,000 an hour dispensing their advice. It seems almost incomprehensible—someone earning over one hundred times more than a BA pouring coffee earns for the same marginal hour of effort? It also seems like a prima facie argument for more and better graduate education, if you want to get ahead in life.

Well, how would you like to earn $6,000 per hour for your advice, with no college degree?

I shit you not.

Welcome to a mini-lesson in the power of learning how to give really good advice.

■ HOW TO EARN $6,000 PER HOUR WITH NO COLLEGE DEGREE

A few years ago I was doing some marketing consulting for a client on a retainer of $5,000 per month. On an hour-for-hour basis, it was probably working out to about $250 per hour. Not a bad gig. I was earning more per hour than many lawyers, and certainly more than most PhD psychologists in private therapy practice—all with skills I had learned purely through self-study. I felt satisfied with the value I was providing the client, as they were earning multiples of my retainer each month in higher revenue and profit.

At a certain point, though, it became clear that the company would benefit from a little heavier marketing firepower than I was able to provide; it was a large company, and they had the cash flow to invest in even more advanced marketing ideas than I knew how to give them.

So I suggested they bring in Eben—one of the world’s foremost experts in Internet marketing—for some consulting. The CEO looked at some of Eben’s videos online, and he was intrigued. He gave me the green light to talk to Eben and inquire about his consulting services.

It turns out, Eben doesn’t often do consulting. He’s so busy working on his Internet business, which brings in $30 million a year in