🔴If you held a gun to my head and said "Brandon, beat the market in the next 10 years or you are dead"

I would say, no problem.
There is a 99% chance I will.
This is exactly how.

First off, "the market" is the SP500.

We will say I have a $1m account to start.

The first thing I would do to beat the market is to simply buy the market.
So I would buy $1m of $VOO (sp500 ETF)

Second, just buying the market via $VOO will actually underperform a tad because of the expense ratio... no prob

So here is the spot that matters to beat it.

In that 10 year period, I would be patient, sitting, & waiting for a market shock to come.

& it will come in a 10 year period for sure.

So when it does, & valuations are cheap & everyone is panicking, I will sell put contracts secured by the $VOO shares & generate about $100k in premium.

I would do 2 year duration sold put contracts with a strike just a tad below the current market price.

I will take the $100k in premium received & buy more shares of $VOO.

Then I will simply wait & do nothing.

99% chance the SP500 recovers in the next 2 years & the sold put expires worthless.
(if not, I will roll)

I pay zero interest this entire time.

So I had the $VOO shares matching the market, plus I added another 100k from the sold put.

So the 100k addition to the 1m account = an extra 10% in a 10 year period.

For simple numbers, that is 1% a year.

That right there is how you beat the market with 99% certainty.

Keep in mind, 95% of retail & institutional investors will not beat the SP500 after fees in the long run, so doing this instantly puts you in the 5% bucket of the few that do.

Think about this before you go to bed tonight.
It's not "hard" to beat the market, but most won't simply because they are not patient.