10 years ago, I was a corporate employee working 10 hours a day—racing from boardroom to airplane to conference without a single moment to sit still and decompress. I thought I’d made it. I thought I had it all... until I didn’t.

The abrupt end arrived when I realized I was about to take a machete to work. Yep, you read that right. I was angry at everyone around me. Every day felt like an uphill battle, trying to turn an old ship around when no one else was willing to budge or even consider a change in their way of thinking. I was working grueling hours and completely neglecting my mental health. The burnout was real.

My sincere hope is that you never reach that point in your corporate life.

I was fortunate enough to be able to take a year off to recuperate. To see if it was possible to create another way to maintain our lifestyle and keep food on the table. In order to aggressively cut our costs, we rented our San Francisco home to a lovely Swedish family, we pulled the kids from private school to enroll them in public school, and moved into the holiday home we had purchased a year prior.

During this time, we started our first small business and found success after three product launch attempts—only to have the rug ripped out from under us by the first round of tariff increases in 2018, nearly a decade ago. This was not sustainable. There had to be a better way to replace our salaries.

We found the solution out of sheer necessity. We needed to cut expenses; we had already mitigated the San Francisco mortgage and eliminated the ridiculous private school fees, but two massive line items remained: our hefty health insurance premium and the $2,000 monthly broker fee we paid for management of our stock portfolio.

First, we decided to take the time to learn how to manage our own portfolio. The learning curve was steep, but we had the time and were in strict cash-preservation mode, so we weren't about to do anything silly.

We started with an E*TRADE account, originally opened for RSUs granted by my old corporate job. However, we quickly had to learn the ropes of trading levels and figure out which platforms actually served our objectives. Eventually, we migrated to TD Ameritrade (now Charles Schwab) and IBKR to better handle our growing needs.

We kicked off our trading journey by selling cash-secured puts. It worked beautifully in a bull market; in our very first month, we pulled $13,542 out of the market.

Holy shit, I realized, we’re finally making our money work for us.

To be clear, I wouldn't recommend starting with this strategy if you're a beginner. Today, we use cash-secured puts primarily to buy high-quality stocks at a discount.

Since we already owned stock, we also started selling covered calls against our positions. That was the real game-changer. The basic concept is easy; the real skill—the part that brings consistency in all market conditions—is knowing exactly when to sell and at what strike price.

We’ve spent the last decade refining this skill alongside building a dividend portfolio (which we also sell calls against). We call this method the Wealth Triangle strategy, because its three key components work in perfect tandem: dividend income, covered calls, and capital appreciation. One investment, three opportunities to generate wealth.

Looking back, we wish we’d had someone we could trust to show us how the top 1% actually make their money work for them. We didn't. We had to figure it out through trial, error, and direct experience. But because we did, we’ve replaced our full-time salaries and earned the freedom to live anywhere we want. We now live in a country with great health care options and that’s how the 2nd line item was replaced.

You too can use this strategy to fully replace your income and create the life you’ve always dreamed of. This is why I built this program. If you’re even remotely curious, watch our 20-minute webinar. By the end, you’ll know if this path is right for you. If it is, it's life-changing. Just look at my Facebook feed: we’ve lived in five countries across three continents over the last 15 years. Creating the life you actually want to live is entirely possible.