Free Business Idea: Deep Networking

Make money fast in true Icelandic fashion

Money is a lot of things. Sometimes it’s no object. More often it is. It makes the world go round and it’s also the sinews of war, whatever that means. But most importantly, it can be exchanged for goods and services. In a bid to raise our readers’ average income, and therefore to command higher advertising kronur, we bring you another free business idea.

When I’m out and about on one of my health-improving walks, enjoying the spray of rain on my face, young folk come up to me, desperate for a crumb or two of wisdom. They always ask me the same question: Freyr, you handsome devil, I need to earn a lot of money very quickly. How do I do it?

Disappointments

The paths to great wealth are many. The majority are arduous and steep. Getting rich quick, while easy in theory, has an alarming tendency to extend past ‘quick’ and stretch out far into the future, involving tedious strategies of compound interest and tax efficiencies. Often by the time you’ve made the money you so rightly deserve, you have become old and haggard, slow in your movements, loose in the skin.

Even the most spectacular cases of rapid money-making, like software startups and drug empires, take years if not decades to fully develop and pay off. It’s enough to make a grown man cry. Yet there is one way that is properly quick. It’s a little something I call Deep Networking.

Early bird gets the worm

You have to start early. If you’re reading this, it may already be too late for you. But here’s the trick anyway. First, you’re pushed out of the womb. You suck down an initial breath and begin screaming, as is tradition. What a grand thing life is! Now — this part is important — you should be placed into the hands of your stunned father. Not just any father, your father should own a fishing quota and have an entire village in his thrall, somewhere in the north of Iceland.
“Your father should own a fishing quota and have an entire village in his thrall”

Then you will be handed over to your mother. A wealthy woman in her own right. Owner of an import-export concern. No one drinks out of a glass vessel without her having imported it. No heads-of-cabbage enter this godforsaken land without her say so. Good job! You’ve done it — you crazy bastard — you got rich quick!

Or did you? Well, if you messed this part up, then the option of marrying into wealth remains open. This is an ancient strategy; it even features in the second chapter of Njáls saga. It can still be employed to great effect, but if your deficient looks and charm prevent you from pursuing it, well, then things are getting a little desperate.

Joys of family

Dig up the family tree, locate the rich relative and cosy up. Before you know it you will find yourself commanding a department in their electronics store empire or running a fish processing factory, generating efficiencies from the comfort of your back office swivel chair. This is the less direct and, if we’re being honest, less potent route to riches. At this point we’re well out of Deep Networking territory and are instead engaged in lowly nepotism — Iceland’s favourite pastime.

You will still have to do some work, and ideally you’d even start a business. To continue your upward trajectory you will need more help. At some happy stage in your life you may have made lots of friends. A school-day chum may now be ideally situated in a political position, with influence over the awarding of contracts. Ask them to give you those lucrative contracts. With that one bold stroke of low cunning the money spigot will have opened. Repeat this process as often as possible.

Power of friendship

Some negative Nancies would call this crony capitalism. Here’s a fact that may have escaped their notice: crony simply means friend. Which doesn’t sound bad at all. Let’s follow the inescapable logic: in the words crony capitalism, replace crony with the much friendlier word friend. What do we get? Friend capitalism. And what could be more agreeable than making money with friends?

Tired of working for the man? Want to make two or even three figures from the comfort of your humble home? Learn how at Freyr’s newsletter: freyr.substack.com