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Hey rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Claire runs three online businesses for people building a side hustle while employed.
She started all three in her own 9-to-5, working them at night.
Her message is simple — a real business can start on the side, no resignation letter required.
And her readers? They live it too — big dreams, four spare hours a week.
⛳️ Problem:
Claire runs three online businesses, and not one of them is moving.
Every night she splits herself across a newsletter, a templates shop, and a podcast.
Four months in, she's wiped out, and all three projects still sit half-built. Brutal.
Her struggle:
She spreads herself across three projects, and none of them ever gets finished.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Absurd Hourly Rate
Naval Ravikant co-founded AngelList, a company valued at $4 billion in 2022.
He was also an early investor in Uber and Twitter, long before either was famous. Wild, right?
Here's the trick he says built that career: set an absurdly high hourly rate for yourself.
Not a rate anyone would actually pay you today — an absurd one, on purpose.
His own example is $5,000 an hour.
Not because he expects to earn that on every task, but because it's a filter.
Funny thing is — most people price their own time far too low.
So they say yes to anything — a cheap freelance gig, a favor, a low-value errand — because it feels productive.
Naval's fix is simple: pick your rate, then measure every task against it.
If a task isn't worth that rate, it's not a no forever. It's a no for now.
That frees your best hours for the one thing that's actually worth building.
🚗 So Claire tried it her way.
Back to Claire and her three half-built online businesses.
She was spreading herself across a newsletter, a templates shop, and a podcast, and finishing none of them.
So she decided to run her own week through Naval's absurd rate.
Spoiler: doing less did more.
First, she picked her number.
Before, every task felt equally urgent, so nothing had a clear priority.
Now, she picked $500 an hour — a number high enough to force a real choice.
Next, she audited her last two weeks.
Before, she never actually saw where her nights went.
Now, she tagged every hour: above the rate, at the rate, or below it.
Twelve hours of freelance editing at $40 an hour: below.
Six hours helping a friend for free: below.
Three hours on her own newsletter: above — her one real project.
One hour on the half-built podcast: below, since it wasn't her one bet.
Finally, she cut everything that fell below the line.
Before, she said yes to almost anything that came her way.
Now, she gave the recruiter a short no, and told her friend she couldn't take on side projects this season.
Every freed evening went into the one project that actually built on itself.
That newsletter shipped its first ten issues that same quarter. Done.
🧸 Pick an absurd rate. Then say no to everything that doesn't clear it.
The prompt below runs the Absurd Hourly Rate on everything on your plate.
You just tell it what's there.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — short sentences, plain words, zero hype.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
- If you can see my calendar, notes, or task list directly, pull my current commitments from there. Otherwise, use what I paste below.
Inputs:
Everything on my plate right now (every side project, freelance gig, favor, and "I really should" task — list them here if you can't see my task list):
{e.g.
- weekly newsletter on building a side hustle (issue 3)
- paid templates shop (one file half-built)
- a podcast in pre-production (2 unedited recordings)
- freelance landing-page gigs when a recruiter pings me
- helping a friend with their side project
}
For Audience: {e.g. employed people building a side business at night}
For Outcome: {e.g. a one-page filter I can pin above my desk so the next ping gets a clean no in 30 seconds}
Outputs:
PART 1 — The absurd hourly rate: pick a rate between $500 and $5,000 per hour that matches the future version of me. Write it as a one-line rule.
PART 2 — The audit: for each item on my plate, tag it above the rate, at the rate, or below. Be ruthless. The freelance gig is below. The favor is below. The one project that compounds is above.
PART 3 — The cuts: for each below-rate item, write a 1-2 sentence no I can copy-paste. Short. Friendly. No apology. No "let me get back to you in a month."
Then in two sentences, tell me the smallest possible move I can make this week on my one above-rate project — even if I have only 90 minutes of focused time before Sunday night.
That's it, my fellow mavericks!
Yours 'helping you build a smart AI sidekick so you can work less and enjoy life more' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️