I'd like to throw out another career related post, but this time down the entrepreneurship avenue while I have a few drinks.
One thing I think most people struggle with when it comes to actually going down the entrepreneur route is realizing how easy it actually is. In fact, at times some of the services offered are so simple and easy to do from your perspective you think, "why the fuck would anyone actually pay me a lot of money to do something they can figure out on Google in a few days?!"
Conditioning
We are all conditioned to be extremely risk adverse when it comes to making making money. We have an education system that is essentially the byproduct of the industrial age, which intended to teach people how to be productive members of the factory line. Because of that, we focus a lot on getting a normal job at entry level, learning the skills, doing the time, moving up, and just repeating the process as we become a better and better drone for the business.
We often choose to go down this route because it's easy. All the steps are clearly laid out, we are taught what we need to know, and assured that if we just follow the game plan, we can be assured that we'll be able to make X amount of dollars. And it works; it works wonderfully. Corporations have spent a very long time learning how to navigate and perfect this process of creating a healthy, safe, reliable, workforce.
Any thought of deviating from this pattern understandably elicits a sense of unknown and fear. That if you don't take this very clearly laid out path, and fail, you risk being seriously harmed. That running a business is more reserved for the really smart types that see a rare gap in the market, and are able to pounce on it and brilliantly execute a way to capitalize on this gap... or you have to find a product or service in which you can do better. You'll need to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants and bring to the market something that makes their lives easier which didn't exist before you...
In reality, that's not even close to being true. And you can see this from immigrants. Many immigrants that come to this country weren't conditioned the way we were. In fact, in many developing states, being an employee is something just for the young, while much of people's earnings come from self employment. So when they come to America, entrepreneuership is just natural for them. I always like to use my grandparents as an example of people who made it in their home country, lost everything, came to America with an education of middle schoolers, and managed to become very wealthy in just a few years. It always makes people wonder, "How can an immigrant just come to the USA with absolutely nothing, and end up running a successful business in such a short amount of time?"
Value is determined by the customer, not by you
This is a big one. Often, it's easy to look at something that costs, say, 100 bucks to purchase, then turn around and sell it for 2000 bucks and think, "Oh my, I'm ripping people off!" But that's far from the truth.
Let me use an example of a buddy I had in Germany. He ran a very successful web development company that focused on local businesses. He'd go into local shops who had a decent client base, yet absolutely no online presence. He'd then offer to create them a website from end to end (using Wordpress) and host it, for 150 euros a month. Now, to anyone with even a little bit of internet experience would realize that that's a huge fucking ripoff. The wordpress theme is a one time cost of 50 bucks, then you just have to add some custom copy, create a Yelp listing, a Facebook page, and then host it for 5 bucks a month after that. The whole project would only take a few hours to complete, so why the fuck would someone pay 1800 euros a year for something that can be done in an hour?
Easy. Value. Before my buddy went in there, these people had no website. And to them, having an online presence would net them more money a month compared with their 150 dollar investment, even though there are other companies out there who could do it for 1/10th that. Shit, GoDaddy has full service features for 150 a year which will do it. To themselves, they are idiots when it comes to technology, and my buddy was the first person to walk in and help solve their problem. The point is, that these people needed help, and you helped them, and your help is giving them an ROI
He now has a whole firm with 10 employees doing this around the clock.
A big realization moment I had was from a few years ago when I jumped on a project for a guy who needed consulting for his business. He was not very tech savy but an incredible sales person. And he was making an absolute killing selling things I considered absolute shit. I mean it. Like some of the services he offered were garbage, but he was making just ridiculous amounts of cash, because he was solving really simple problems for people who didn't know there were other options.
Some of his businesses:
Using QR codes to save large conferences a ton of money. Believe it or not, but the industry standard for tracking and checking in conference attendees is actually a really expensive business. The rental for each one of those scanners is about a thousand dollars. The software and infrastructure to use the data also costs an arm and a leg. A medium sized conference could expect to pay 10s of thousands of dollars just for something as basic as checking people in for their conference meetings and seminars. So he just figured he could hire some kid to write some software to do exactly that, and then tell the conference atendees to use their smart phones to check people in. He was able to undercut the competition by 75% and still made a massive killing on an unbelievably simple technology. He still does it to this day.
Another one of his was for government training classes. Many people working in government are required to take recurring classes to get certifications for dumb shit. So he approached different government agencies and offered them a training program, where he'd split the revenue from the optional online study guide 50/50 . And all he did was ask for a copy of the test, then create a multiple question study guide. Then sold it for 100 dollars to all people attending those classes.
Sounds retarded, right? But believe it or not, that's a huge value to the GO. Having a study guide available which increases student's ability to pass the tests, while generating revenue, is a great program.
He was making 10k a month off this program alone and rarely ever paid attention to it.
You don't have to be Facebook to be successful
I hear it all the time when people talk about starting a business. 95% of the time it's about some great big idea which will change everything. Seriously, I think about 70% of everyone I've ever met seem to only have these huge disruptive ideas that go nowhere because they are too big for their skillset and motivation. Yet, for some reason, people always overlook the relatively simple successful ideas. Too many people focus on things like disrupting our entire infrastructure, rather than focusing on how to help grandma figure out how to blog about her knitting hobby. The real money is at those lower levels, because there are so many people out there with so many problems, who are being completely ignored. You'd be surprised how quick people will be to pay someone to solve a problem that you consider common sense.
We should add a new "Career" or "Money" icon to the red pill categories. It's is a huge gap in TRP and it would promote more content in this supremely important area.
We need more posts like this instead of the "Look what this post-wall woman did/said" or "Chad fucks bitches."
That's a great idea it could be really useful.
YES THIS.
While it is undeniable that TRP revolves around sexual strategy, it would definitely not hurt to have people with red pill mindsets obtaining power/wealth.
I wanted to post this suggestion to "trp meta", but couldnt figure out how "meta" is assigned: So for next time, is this done by mods?
This.
Everyone is asking/telling others how to raise your SMV. In my opinion, one of the biggest factors is wealth. Without sufficient wealth, you cannot live in abundance. I would love to see this category.
You're adding real value to trp. Cheers mate
While this is an inspirational post, one should note the selection bias in the anecdotes posted by the OP. Whole post was a feel-good trip with no caveats, should have triggered your scepticism engine. This would be a better article if for instance, the OP had posted some insights on why his friend succeeded relative to the thousands of competitors in his region.
For inspiration, I'd rather read replies like these by entrepreneurs who've hustled, failed, learned and bounced back: http://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-be-a-failed-serial-entrepreneur-What-companies-did-you-start-and-how-did-they-fail
This sounds more wishful than likely, but even if true, is not a strategy that scales for long.
As someone who pays significantly more than 150$ per month for such services, OPs friend likely underplayed the amount of maintenance/support hours in his contract, and actual hours involved to do all those tasks including interacting with the customer.
OP makes it sound as though you can somehow put a 'value' price on anything that the market won't dispute. This is simply not true.
Now, this is the one anecdote where the guy OP is talking about seems really intelligent and business savvy. OP does us a disservice by trivialising all the nitty gritty 'just hired some kid... just undercut by 75%' deceptively. The skills required to find product-market fit repeatedly are almost never acquired at first shot, and there's so many touch points where one can fuck up easily. This guy took years of skill building and hustling to get there.
This is an interesting niche idea, but no one's getting rich from selling this. Yes, its been tried numerous times before.
I totally agree with the OP that there are small niche opportunities that aren't being catered to. An important follow up question is, do you want to get rich or to be a small business operator? If one's goal is to get wealthy, there are better strategies (and with more barriers to entry, since you usually need some domain expertise or an acquired advantage) to look for ideas and problems to solve.
It does not have the scale that much. Using the $150 per month example, if buddy gets 20 clients he has an income of $3000 per a month.
You have to look at risk versus potential gain, of you would do the hosting yourself, you can get a pretty powerful VPS for $25 per a month. So except for his time, he has only invested $25. The potential for gain is much higher.
You miss OP's point he is just using the WordPress as an example. It can be applied to other areas. So lets say OP comes up with aa different hair brainedscheme every month and attempts to put it into action. And he fails 95% of the time ☺ After 2 years he will have figured out something that works. More importantly of he looks back and figures out why he failed he will be learning a lot.
This is a legit point, but you miss one important aspect. The reality is most of the time successful people do not know why they succeeded per say. A lot of it depends on luck. As in maybe OP when he was starting put happened to run into a business that needed a website. Once you have the first website you can then use this to get further contracts.
Oglivy is the best example of this, he founded what would later become the largest advert agency in the world. He lucked out because his first major contract was Rolls Royce. As he himself says, the contract itself did not pay that much, but just having Rolls Royce as a client got him more contracts.
Regardless Oglivy would have succeeded because he kept on trying new stuff till something clicked. This is related to TRP, the guy who supposedly approached 6000 chicks in a year and never got laid was probably doing exactly the same thing every time.
I guarantee you that if you messaged 6000 chicks in a year, with different variants of "wanna fuck" and saw which ones got slightly more positive responses, and then you improved on your initial opener everytime. You will get laid.
Again it is a numbers game, and of your luck is bad being able to bounce back from 5999 cases of rejection ☺
So yes it is a feel good post, but at its core it has a valid message. I wish I had known this shit years ago.
Well.. it has to scale more than you think it does...
bc that would provide 15*20 = $3000 in REVENUE, not income.
Income is after all expenses are subtracted. Even then, there is employee income (what you pay yourself & employees) and business income (i.e. retained earnings-- what you keep after each pay period to keep the business running).
So... Income? After taxes? Probably more like $3000 * .7 = $2100. Minus business expenses, lets say $200 per week... leaves about $1,300. per month.
To go and find 20 accounts per month, roughly one per business day, AND build the sites. Meh... That's $1300 for what is likely a full time job (for one person at least)... Scale it and it could be worth something, but not much.
Outsource the labor, now you're talkin...
Your math is bang and you are right but ☺
If you work for someone else, you are increasing their experience and value. While if you work for yourself, you are increasing your own experience and value. The second is hard to calculate. Taleeb shows that a taxi driver is more antifragile then an engineer because the taxi driver is a hustler. He knows how to sell.
Before you can outsource you first have to learn is the business viable and also you have to know how to do the job yourself. So this would be the next step.
Also you neglected to mention possible upsales. So you charge $150 per a month for basic site. But if he pays $300 per a month you handle his Facebook advertising or something.
Most importantly you can not put a price on the knowledge you have learned. So even of the business goes bust, the amount that you shelled out is small. But the amount you will learn is huge. You can't put a price on that.
I think critism is important. Now days businesses are more tech savvy so the WordPress example probably will not work in my opinion. But the point is can the same ideas be used else where ?
Brilliant comment to respond to. Didn't know about Oglivy and Rolls Royce; that was a fun example.
That is a valid point, but this is TRP where we don't see sexual strategy as a fatalistic numbers game. We're obsessed with improving the odds. SMV, Lifting, Finance, Skills etc. OP makes no mention of the business equivalents of these.
Trying new stuff till something clicks, is not an optimal strategy. We learn from each other, we learn from FRs, from books, from divorce-rape stories. We have the luxury of skipping the failures that others have made.
True. Though, as I mentioned at the end, the question that springs up: Do you want to operate a small business or do you want to get rich? That's also a trick question.
A small website business making 3,000$ a month will likely get killed by the competition. While it sounds like such a small number should be easy and possible, the difficulty level to maintain such a business goes up every single day.
I'm glad you're inspired. But if we had to invoke a TRP metaphor, the OPs post is like reading the story of a bluepill guy with low SMV who showed up early at a club when it was relatively empty and scored a high SMV girl because, well, numbers game. We read the FR, we ignore the selection bias and the fact that this low SMV guy doesn't have a chance the rest of the year. Sure, its great to read that despite his SMV, he scored something, anything. But that's never been inspirational around here. We're here to be inspired by strategies, transformations, details, truths, growth.
The business equivalent of high SMV Alphas do exist. They're not content selling to 20 clients. They're playing the venture capital game, networking, using growth hacks, partnering up. They're growing and scaling fast. And they're not throwing random saturated ideas at a wall.
Clarification ☺ Common sense applies. The are countless times when you don't know what to do, because every situation is slightly different. So it is better to do something then nothing. Doing nothing means guaranteed failure, doing something means you have a chance at success.
True. So the key is you have to be in a niche where you are too small for the big boys to worry about. Using OP's example you have to look at it from his clients perspective. Let's say OP's niche was restaurants. $150 per a month for a restro is a small amount, and lets say OP managed to improve his business.
The restro owner then is approached by OP's competitor who says he will do the same work for $75 the owner is going to stay with something safe as opposed to switching.
Also OP should not be standing still. So maybe try an upsell, offer to setup a Facebook page lets say. Again the business owner would rather shell out an extra $75 per a month as opposed to wasting his time trying to figure it out.
There are two strategies, a valid strategy is the shotgun approach. So from a marketing perspective this would be email spam ☺
Go Google the world best insurance sales man. The guy was a Jew, he started out in pre WW2 USA where racism against Jews was huge. To make matters worse the guy had a lisp/accent was short and ugly. He wasn't a good looking Jew like Houdini.
If you read the guy's account, he strategy was exactly what I described. He got his ass out there and started to try and sell insurance. He happened to luck out because he ran into some steel workers and tried to sell them insurance. At the time no one was catering to this niche. He then had it sewn up. Oh and when he told his boss he was selling to steel workers his bossed laughted at him.
So basically it was getting his ass out there and looking for opportunity.
I am speaking from practical experience. A lot of the time it is a matter of getting your ass out there and looking for opportunity.
Listening to critism is important. Often your worst enemies can be the most helpful ☺ They will often say shit which is down right nasty and it hurts because it is the truth. So when you get the critism, try and find an economical solution to it.
So the small Jewish insurance salesman was alpha because he got his ass put there, and repeatedly got his ass kicked, each time learned from it and tried something new.
And as OP pointed out value is relative ☺ For the little Jew, success creates success. So his SMV was initially low became high because of success.
The technical aspects of this post stood out to me as being completely underplayed.
This post could be summarized by saying:
This is the core of The Millionaire Fastlane book if anyone wants to hear the idea explored more.
People get different things from trp. The I'm so helpless womyn r bad how could she what should I do guise trope gets old... eventually.
I will address each of your concerns as follows:
No triggers were triggered today. You do realise that you must exercise your natural selection bias to make any decision? Now that that's out the way, the bullshit meter would have started running if I didn't have a friend similar to OP's who everyone shat on, until he started designing websites, "managing" corporate media and hosting parties. He gets different treatment now, because he actually has value.
I'd rather not. Know what a failure can teach you to do? Fail. I'd rather go balls deep in Richard Branson like a virgin. Pardon the wordplay.
Which is why successful businessmen often have multiple successful companies. Which one of the following can the experience/income stream from this first venture be applied to:
You should have PM'd OP for a recommendation hours ago. You do like saving money right?
Contrary to this, every single day trp explained to you in depth that people don't understand true value. The
manunlucky beta who marries this will not question her value. She chose him right? That's all that matters nowright?Finally you see the light and realise there might be something to learn from OP. However, you won't get the blueprint and floorplan to a groundbreaking business from OP or his friend publicly because 1. angry feminist will try to fuck him over for no reason 2. you'd go about it differently and get different results.
You really think small business operators can't be rich/scale up their operations/open new ventures? There are better strategies rather than starting small, but not everybody is Bill Fucking Gates out here. Perhaps you should make analytical posts of successful entrepreneurs who actually know what they talk about.
I like your point about value, and what we're learning often is that those without options (betas) overvalue the ones with options (any women). Buyers have a lot more control over the market.
Of course there's premium and luxury pricing in a business marketplace; just that the OP made it sound like there's little-to-no effort required to get there. BluePill, low SMV, scrawny and command tingles from 9s, just because he showed up early? Unlikely. The 9s know their relative position in the market; they can skip with ease.
Ah, should have phrased that better. I meant skepticism about the OPs intentions. It was all 'If this retard can do it, anyone can!'.
Sure, why not. What I've found is, most successful founders are terrible at articulating the reasons why they were successful. With failure stories, they tend of ramble on with more details, so you get a good set of data points to be cautious about at the very least.
Critical point, most successful businessmen who moved onto another successful business did so by selling their previous companies and not through money they saved while working on their first business. And when I said 'won't scale for long', I meant that particular strategy of counting on being the first to show up at a businesses door wouldn't last for long, as it's statistically unlikely and a ridiculous strategy.
There are better ways to start small and better ways to scale. A point I tried to make in another comment, this is the era of entrepreneurship, where Shark Tank is one of the most popular shows on TV. There's tons of inspiration out there and tons of resources on how to start and scale better.
I love the posts that are about money on TRP, but this post was devoid of useful strategy for anyone who's read an article or two about businesses. I'm glad its inspiring many here though. Just hope they know there's better advise out there on starting a business, finding ideas and customers.
Great delivery on the response. You're right, the post was a bit bare on details. A full length post from you would be welcome.
It really is as easy as the OP is making it sound in some cases. I have a friend who does IT consulting for a few people in the Philly region. His clients are literally almost all old people who pay him crazy amounts of money to download a new operating system, or run a virus scan. The hardest thing he has done so far was build a simple website, and 3 hours of work netted him 500 dollars. For something any of us could easily figure out.
Yeah. Want to increase your fees. You have to put pressure on a guy doing more work than you for less money. Or manipulate somebody with more years on you. Bruise a few egos. Those actions take a lot of contemplation and come with risks. Success comes from loss.
Well if all the shit in OP is true and it's all so easy, then I hope OP is a fucking millionaire.
This is the exact kind of bullshit people sell $20 books on midnight infomercials about. It's a joke.
I just closed a deal this morning for a real estate agent who I'm going to do a retargeting campaign for. I'm not going to become a millionare off the deal, but she's going to profit me 200 bucks a month for the next year.
It seems a lot of people are looking for get-rich-quick schemes. If they can't quit their job after a month, they think it's not worth it. But most millionaires have multiple levels of income, so you need to start somewhere. If you have a 40-hour job, then banking an additional 1-2k a month is great for spending time on the Internet and networking.
It's that whole conditioning thing I talked about.
I don't think most people realize that if they invested the same amount of time on their own ventures, that they did at their job, they'd make WAYYYY more more money. The problem is that most people quit their job, go on their own, and then dick around all day
How much WAYYYY more more money do you make if I may ask? I'm just curious because you sound like a fucking shyster more than anything to me.
LOL, this is kinda true. I have a buddy who once he started making "easy money" he became lazier and just works part time and said he's in "early retirement" at age 33. (he was an online ex-poker pro)
You're right about how we've been conditioned against risk.
However, from a risk perspective in 2015, running a business is the worst way to make money (and keep it) for a young person in their 20s/30s. That is, if they've got skills that can get them paid elsewhere, like a job or consulting.
As an example, an engineer on TRP is much more likely to end up being a millionaire in their 30s if they save, invest wisely, stay single, than if they start their own business. The odds aren't even close.
Also, to note, most people running million dollar businesses don't take home nearly as much money as you'd think they do. Most founders pay themselves extremely low (and this trend is guaranteed to permeate), and investors expect you to not take much money off the table. Mark Cuban brings this up often on shark tank.
There's often a poor correlation between business valuation and founder net worth. Many of the successful founders I know of, that have built 8 figure businesses over a 10 year period, their cumulative net worth ends up fluctuating around the 1-million figure. And these are the ones that made it, the 0.01%.
Point is, if you've got a job paying you >100K, it's worth thinking about the odds. If you're getting paid <40K at your regular job, start a business ASAP, acquire skills and hustle hard.
I have a 9 to 5 day job and hustle another 20k from passive income. I have a shitty liberal arts degree and have been out of college 2 years.
1.8k a month is great for passive income. Care to share with us what you did to get to that level of passive income?
this is the top 20%, the rest of those posts contains 30x more bullshit. I learn more and more than when someone discovers a way to get himself some decent revenue, he guards it better than virginity of his teenage daughter and does everything to hide it.
Of course, why would you want hordes of people competing with you for simple services that are fairly easy to look after?
You'd be surprised. You can lay out a thirsty market in front of 100 people and while most will realize there is money to be made there, most are still conditioned not to take that risk and maybe 1 tops will actually start barely exploring doing it. Only .03% of people are entrepreneurs, even though 70% claim to want to be.
Your post was informative, but 0.03%? Stepping into infomercial territory there.
There are nearly 30 million small businesses in the US. Over 10% of the population is involved in some sort of business venture.
The desire and confidence to be an entrepreneur has never been as high as it is now: http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2013/05/27/u-s-entrepreneurship-hits-record-high/ Look at the insane popularity of the Shark Tank franchise as an indicator.
The whole economy of capitalistic entrepreneurship depends on churn, i.e. 99% of the businesses that fail end up feeding each other and the rest.
We're in the era of a new rat race. VC's and billion dollar unicorn companies (that acquire smaller ones) are the new employers (see google acquiring smaller companies started by their ex-employees).
Most businesses fail fast these days when they learn they cant afford their customer acquisition costs.
Point is, there are good reasons why many don't share their 'thirsty markets'.
It's a reality that there are ways to save people lots of money that only actually cost a few hours and a few bucks to implement. There is massive technological illiteracy in older people, and they have the money. It's just there on the table waiting for you to find a way you can solve one of their problems using technology that is ubiquitous to youngsters, but foreign to them.
OP is putting it out there for free, so he's got no real incentive to exaggerate his claims.
I know. It's like "If you're so rich, why the fuck don't you have a kindle? Who the fuck has their bookshelf in the God damn garage anyway? Mechanics. That's literally it."
You ever stop to realise some people actually buy those books? And the authors actually get paid? In real money?
I know. I have read things like this countless times.
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That attitude, right there, is why you call yourself "basement_dweller" and shitpost all day on reddit.
The system is pretty much set up to generate good workers for corporations and thus, as OP said, most people don't even consider going into business as an option - unless they have a solid cushion in the form of very supportive parents, a large trust fund, or maybe they just rely on their huge brass balls.
Many people accidentally discover how profitable it can be to go into business for themselves. For example, there's a Mexican food chain in California which started when a guy (a Mexican immigrant) was cooking food at a park and a bunch of soccer players smelled his food and ran over to try to buy some. I think the guy has over 30 restaurants now.
Another example is back when I was selling some spare electronic equipment on eBay. I was selling a particular brand of MP3 player, and one bidder bought all of them. Once he received them, he was extremely happy and said that however many I had, he'd buy them all from me at my (very profitable) price. Apparently he was shipping them halfway around the world and selling at a huge markup in his home country where they were very popular. That turned out to be a nice side business for me until I ran out of suppliers.
One of my favorite stories is about Bigfoot, the first monster truck. The guy who invented Bigfoot was just some dude who liked taking his Ford truck offroad. The first time he brought Bigfoot to a show to do a car crush, the organizers were really worried that it would be seen as "too destructive" but they decided to go ahead with it. When Bigfoot crushed those cars for the first time, the audience went crazy, and now we have the whole monster truck entertainment industry.
Much of doing business is having the balls to charge enough to make huge profits. Back when I was doing some consulting, I heard a rule that went something like this: first you tell the customer your hourly rate, and then you slap him hard across the face. If he's madder about the slap than your rate, then you're not charging enough.
I remember hiring one contractor - I suggested a rate to him that I felt was a total lowball offer, and he said, "Woah, that's a bit much for someone like me." I instantly lost respect for him.
So what it comes down to is brass balls. Have the balls to go the entrepreneurial path, have the balls to lowball your suppliers, and have the balls to demand a profit.
I really enjoyed this comment; this post is bringing out some real wisdom from the community.
I am having to overcome the barrier of the barter: buy low and sell high.
I was raised on a system of being fair and appeasing. But charging as much as you can get away with is NOT ripping someone off, it is simply charging what you are worth. If they pay, then that's value you had all along. Otherwise they were the ones deceiving you. Likewise, buying low is the same deal. If you bought any higher they would be the ones ripping you off.
It's all about qualifying value, and the man who doesn't know what he/things are worth gets eaten. Being a nice guy really means being a ball-less faget who is easily dominated and doesn't have the spine to stand up for his own interests.
Why so many of us were conditioned out of this is baffling; I guess it reflects a docile society tamed by BigGov and BigCorp; their interests not ours. Time to change that.
EDIT: I guess the main exception to this is genuine deception and lies; i.e. promising the world and delivering shit, but that is not really business, it's crime and you will soon build yourself a reputation as such. Honest but challenging barter seems to be the most masculine strategy.
Well-said - barter and negotiation are key.
If you can't negotiate for your own best interests, how are you going to rise up and negotiate for the best interests of your family, your organization, your corporate division, or your city/state/country?
Do you have any suggested reads around developing the required skillset, other than practicing eating dust and losing big?
"Getting to Yes" is the classic, and "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" (Habit 4 and 5) is also a good starting point, but I'd say that practice is more important and it is easy to start practicing by haggling when purchasing or selling.
The bigger your purchase (or the larger the item you're selling), the more room there is for negotiation in general. Next time you buy or sell something big, or even medium-priced, do your research and then try to negotiate a better price. I've negotiated discounts on small cameras, appliances, and even video games. Sometimes it is as simple as having the balls to ask for a better price. Of course it goes without saying that you should haggle for big-ticket items like cars and real estate.
Negotiating is especially important in real estate where there are many parties trying to get their slice of the transaction. I've literally saved tens of thousands of dollars by negotiating price and asking for discounts, and it only took me a few hours of time to negotiate. It's a tremendous return for my time spent (how often do you make $10k/hr?), and yet most people don't have the guts to ask for a discount.
Much of negotiation revolves around information, and this is where negotiation resembles chess. The party with the most information will usually come out ahead. An example with Warren Buffett:
When the two negotiating parties lack information, it starts to resemble a poker game, e.g. your company is on the verge of bankruptcy but you act like you've got tons of clients. An example from warfare (which can be considered a negotiation via violence):
Really liked the last story. Can you suggest some good reads similar to that ?
How do you ask? The most obvious would be "Can I get a discount?", but that's too easy to turn down with a "No.". On the other hand, saying something like "I've seen it available cheaper somewhere else." can be countered with "Then buy it there."
Any examples would be much appreciated!
Edit: or for real estate. The only way to have "leverage" over the seller is to be able to walk away, but if you're picky and it's the only house/apartment you found, you'd have to fake it with a completely poker face.
Yes, that is how I have come to define masculinity and leadership, I like your thinking.
This is a side track, but related. There is one business sector that is really overdue for the Uber treatment: motherfucking realtors.
I always, always, attempt a for-sale-by-owner for a few months when I know I'm about to move. It doesn't always work, and the reason is that MLS is a straight up barrier designed to require third party transaction in a sale.
Before cheap database solutions existed, MLS made sense. There was no easy way for people to search for houses otherwise, and realtors served a function.
Now, this isn't the case. People search online for their houses and give suggestions to the realtor, who then does a little paperwork and requires 3% of gross for his "services."
Zillow, Redfin, and others have all the capability in the world to Uber this racket, but for whatever reason have gotten into bed with realtors.
To actually bring this racket to a halt would require some significant financing, as the technological solution would only be a fraction of the total cost. You'd have to advertise like crazy to get enough visibility, as the utility of such an enterprise scales geometrically with the number of people who use it. If it doesn't get big, it will never compete. And that, right there, is the only reason realtors still have jobs.
Right now, realtors are my target. Simply because realtors are fucking stupid. They all work in a high margin business, but seriously are just a bunch of idiots. I know it's fucked up to say, but that's the reality. They don't know the first thing about marketing beyond "word of mouth." Meanwhile, the realtors who are leveraging the digital landscape are making a silent killing. There are TONS of people from out of state looking to relocate and don't have a referral for a realtor, so they just go to google and look for someone they want to do business with.
Every realtor I work with, has a silly high ROI. The real problem for me, is that they are too stupid to sell. They don't like change, and insist on doing things the way their grandparent's did it. However, while it's tough to sell them on trying something new, the ones that I do get do amazing, which just proves my service. I go from being a sales person they avoid calls from, to their bread and butter they eagerly pick up their phone for.
Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
I agree 100%. Redfin tried a while back but they couldn't get traction.
And actually, everyone in the FIRE industry is due for an ass-kicking by some Python scripts. Escrow, title search, insurance, mortgage companies - I've met some good people in the FIRE industry but most of them are worthless and completely automate-able.
If someone can disrupt the National Association of Realtors or the mortgage companies, they'll make billions. And I'll be laughing while the Realtors go the way of the buggy whip, kerosene lamp, and now, the taxi drivers.
(Strangely, I've had some luck with FSBO via Craigslist of all places. Go figure.)
Even though I do a lot of business with realtors, I fucking hate them. They are such an unnecessary cost 95% of the time. Pretty much all they do for 6% of your property is have access to MLS and fill out paperwork.
So much bullshit. I can't wait until it gets properly disrupted.
It's been tried off an on for a lot of years. Many years ago they tried to do some online discount-brokerage things in the LA market and most of the listed houses had mysterious fires or other damage. I tried to self-list in Craigslist several years ago and they've got that completely wired shut, and there's no customer service.
Realtors are like car dealers - a heavily lobbied and useless industry protecting their ass and profits with payments to Congress (they're the second largest lobbying group in the US).
I've posted that rant in some of the financial subs and have landed some of the most delusional, innumerate arguments for keeping Realtors around you can imagine. No sympathy.
I really think the only thing you can do for Realtors is agree+amplify their idiocy. This is why it seems that the best way to make money off of them is to form the "general store" and farm them with services.
Every time you see a new "realty brand" with multiple realtors working under it---that's someone farming realtors and making coin off services. I've seen some offices that lease office space under the "brand" to hundreds or realtors. Its convenient to them and makes a lot of easy money once the systems are built and in-place. What I haven't seen (or noticed) is the expansion of this idea into a financial services "mall"--- life insurance, banking, etc. This is probably because there are existing competitive lobbys for these systems. (There I go, being an insufferable idea guy again.)
Trying to reform the system isn't going to work, too many people have an investment in the broken system to change it. Greed and pride are universal though, so you can almost certainly game that for your advantage.
My MLS offers entry-only services for $500. You pay a guy with MLS access a fee, provide the photos and description, and the guy posts it on the MLS. He does nothing else including not taking any calls or emails on the property.
This might be something worth looking into for you.
But as an aside, let me say that before I actually became a Realtor I was of the exact same opinion. Realtors -- good Realtors -- are worth their weight in gold. I used to think they were a rip-off (and to be fair, some of them are.) The amount of knowledge you need and sales skills to be successful takes a long time.
Real estate and real estate transactions get increasingly more complicated ever day. Selling your house, which is often your biggest asset, is not something you should be trying on your own. After 5 years in real estate sales, I've learned a ton and the amount of work involved is selling a property is straight up ludicrous.
You can sell a house yourself, but the stats say you'll sell it for less money and take way longer. And also open yourself up to litigation or other headaches because.... ready for it..... YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING. Selling a house, land, condo, commercial building, etc is not like selling a pack of gum.
No offense to your work or industry, but the only reason you have a job is the government making shit more complicated than it needs to be.
I'm in a different business that is similar, but a lot of the reason my boss gets to mark things up is because of all the extra crazy laws and shit that will wreck the person that has never gone through the processes.
I'm as annoyed by realtors as the next guy.. but you make an astute point. There are many scenarios where a good realtor can be invaluable. But they are few and far between, and an individual would be much better off if they simply found a good attorney.
Where I live realtors take 5-8%.
The marker is flooded with them though.
know that name of the restaurant?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Taco
The dude is a genius - he invented the modern taco truck.
...and now I'm hungry for Mexican food.
This is something you get in every industry. You get people that will ALWAYS complain that it's too much.
Strangely also these are the ones with the most troublesome jobs.
Guys that don't complain about price are always happy and their jobs go the smoothest.
Luckily I learned to spot these people early, Pro-tip: Price x pi those guys.
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When you get a job you REALLY don't want to do, I found that instead of not quoting, I instead multiply my normal price by pi. This is usually enough to make the job worth it if I do get it.
It's just arbitrary, but for some reason I found that I started to negotiate with myself if I used anything else. It's a boundary I set for myself.
You can use anything you want, but making sure you price yourself out of the market without looking ridiculous is pretty tricky.
The reason I do this: I've found that people generally don't come back in the future if you refuse a job and not quote them. Sometimes even these assholes land pretty sweet jobs and not having quoted them in the past can make you loose out.
Also this is not for stuff I can't do... Don't ever quote for stuff you can't do.
On second thought I probably shouldn't have added x pi as protip I was just typing and not considering other industries where it might not work at all...
What a delightful scenario to imagine.
Saved. This is gold, thanks brother.
Easily one of the most useful posts here in a long time.
Many people just share their experiences, without mentioning real examples and it makes the world of a difference when you have some to help brainstorm.
Same. I'm going to reread this when I'm sober.
I read a quote somewhere that went along the lines of 'as soon as you think of a new idea, 500 people before you already thought of it". This is very true. You can test it yourself(Google your idea). Even if 100 people thought of it before you,it is still a lot. Dont just rely on getting an idea for your success. It is like waiting for someone to open the door for you to a maze. It is barely the first step. The idea of fb was already out there (friendster, MySpace), but Zuckerberg took this idea, made it 10x,better, targeted a niche (unis and schools) thus expanding adjacently and quietly.
An idea is a dime a dozen. It really is. Ideas mean nothing without the capacity to execute.
You could have had the idea for Occulus Rift before those other guys did... But the difference is, they went to make it reality, while you just sat around thinking, "Hmmm I got a good idea. Does someone want to pay me for it?!" -- I have a dark place in my heart for those people.
To be honest, as an entrepreneur, the only thing harder than finding profitable areas/ideas is getting capital. Holy fucking shit is getting capital hard. Even if you have wealthy friends/family, you really have to come from a special community of wealthy friends/family that have a mindset of funding entrepreneurship to get anything out of them. And all the fucking angels, VC's, IB's, etc... are only funding HUGE ventures, or startups aiming to be the next FB. No money for mid-range cash cow ideas that promise less than 100 billion valuations in 10 years...
I could actually be a millionair in 5 years max if I had investors willing to put $100,000-$1,000,000 into ventures.
I don't. So instead I have to grind and slowly build my own stuff to earn the capital to get into better stuff. I guess I can't complain, but it seems like usually the main difference between people that DO the things is just being one of the 500 with the idea, and then also coming from the right community that funds them. Every time I have ever read a book from a successful entrepreneur this is how it begins for them. I just read another example about a kid from Beverly Hills that started a massive online gambling app that has gained massive, rapid traction...but he was given $500,000 by one of his neighbors, even though he makes zero revenue yet, and actually gives money away.
Everyone has ideas. Almost no one has a neighbor that gives them $500,000 on a whim when they come over for dinner.
And even in business school they always tell you "go ask your friends and family". Well...what if that doesn't work?
Is there some secret for the rest of us to access capital?
Yeah man, I know exactly where you are at. Trust me, it annoys me whenever I hear about people getting startup capital from their "savings" (trust fund) or "investors" (parents).
But it is what it is. If you need 100k to really get something solid going, then your goal should be saving 100k through whatever means possible, which may mean starting off a bit smaller.
That is the idea, yeah.
Sucks. But oh well, nothing else to do about it.
I'm constantly surprised at how stingy with money even relatively well off people are. I wish more people grew up at least valuing entrepreneurship when they saw others doing it. They'll invest a couple million in the stock market for the thrill or something, but won't invest $100,000 in someone with an actual revenue generating business idea.
Somewhere out there there are communities or families at least that do invest in the young entrepreneurs though, and they tend to always do decently.
I guess I've just been retarded in not becoming a web developer. Clearly that's where all the money is at. I'm pretty much starting now. I guess web dev and data science are the main things now.
Maybe I'll look into the cell phone repair thing to grind out money, too.
The other issue is, you need to be able to get websites build fast anyway as an entrepreneur. I was hoping I could just work with someone, but I guess I need to learn it myself. I have like three low-capital businesses to get off the ground that just need a web dev and a graphic designer. I seriously cannot draw at all...so idk how I am going to learn graphic design, but I guess I am forced into it. I have the knowledge to just become fairly well off with my low-capital ideas. Been in the hospital a lot lately though...hopefully now that I am at least out I will be able to figure this web dev shit out fast.
And here I've been thinking I should take some actuarial exams, or the CFA to see if I could just freelance some actuarial work for quick cash haha
I gotta figure out social media consulting, too... I guess a lot of it is knowing how to take good photos though, and having an expensive camera.
Dude, Wordpress. It will take you a weekend to set up your first WP site, then after you've learned everything you need to learn through google during your first learning pass, it will take 3 hours tops after that to set up a site.
I don't mind designing myself, but often it's just easier to go to fivver and paying someone 20 bucks to do some work for you while they build their portfolio. Again, you don't need to be perfect, you just need to have a platform. Once you have a basic platform setup, then everything after that is simply marketing.
You can cut your time down significantly for what you have to learn if you just learn project management, then you can outsource the coding to a developer overseas depending on where you are for peanuts. I'd learn basics then learn databases more and get a solid understanding of web tech so you know what's possible.
You don't need to be able to draw for graphic design.
I read about entrepreneurship and my advice is in the meantime while you're saving money, experiment with your idea.. come up with lots of ideas and test it to see if it's even demand, do your project on a small scale so you know there's an interest for when you're ready.
There's many things people can do now, even if you don't got money please go to networking events & build connections with the people you'll need to communicate across your business plan to.
Once you have the money, everything else is already in place and you're certain if the idea will pay off or not.
It's frustrating to watch shark tank and see people coming on with a company that already has a year worth of sales and then for a $75,000 loan the sharks want 30-45% of the company. I would never give up that much of my company for that shit. And then I've never seen someone come on that got an offer which did not already have some proven sales secured for their company. It's almost demoralizing.
Yeah... I don't even understand that shit. I constantly think to myself "why are you even looking for money?? Wtf??"
They never go enough into their backstories. Like you say, all these companies have incredible sales numbers basically by the time they are on there, and it seems like...insane. Like how did these housewives stake making cookie dough batter that now has 100,000 sales a year from nothing? Come on...there is more to that back story...
I guess they call it Shark Tank for a reason though. Idk why anyone accepts the offers, seems like the fame from being on the show is enough to make them super successful anyway.
They want the network. You aren't just getting their money, you're getting them on as a partner. They know the in's-and-outs of shit you can't even imagine. So the idea is that if you take them on as a partner, they'll do their best to grow the company to the point where your 75k a year in profits is peanuts in comparison to what you're making with them on board.
I work with an "idea guy." Idea guys... are insufferable. It's very easy to become one yourself. Hey, I've got an idea! There, now you're insufferable as well. These same idea guys then troll out for believers to implement them. It can go well, but if nothing keeps the idea guys from going off the rails on yet another bright idea. But this isn't related to your question---which I already know you know the answer to.
Bootstrap it yourself. Start with a small idea that doesn't take much capital and run it. Take some of the profit and accumulate for the next larger idea. Sell the smaller business if you can't automate it and let it run itself. Multiply smaller experiments to increase capital farming. Quantify your results. Ideas that aren't working are killed. Haters will naturally ridicule you--being a serial entrepreneur is a kind of stereotype. Keep your eyes on the numbers.
In other words, you're already doing it. In the world of start-ups, the lottery ticket only comes after ten years of slogging at imperfect ideas in irrational markets---starting small for small gains will be the most reliable multiplier of your capital. In day trading it is said that you shouldn't ever risk too much of your capital on any single trade lest you wipe yourself out--they say, never use more than 2% of your capital per trade. If you have ten bad trades (or businesses) you only lose out of 20% of your capital. Keep your eyes on the numbers.
Others say embrace the suck. I say also to you, embrace the grind. Keep your eyes on the numbers.
And for anyone else: If you decide to use credit cards to capitalize anything, you deserve to be married---the net result is the same: ruin when it goes horribly wrong. It likely will. Keep your eyes on the numbers.
Raising capital is difficult of course, depending on how you look at it. Imagine yourself in an alternate universe where you had all the capital you needed. Now write down exactly what you would do. You cant let stuff that you cant control get in your way. Lets take Richard Branson for example. When he was young he saved some money from selling newspapers. Then when he wanted to start his airline company he never had any money to hire a plane. He never let this get in his way. Instead, he decided to put out an advert for a flight going from city x to y. He collected all the money from the people, then hired the plane just before the scheduled date with that money. You have to take what is hindering your progress, and think about what you would do if it wasnt there.
I watched an interview recently with an entrepreneur called Com Mirza. His first 10 startups failed. He borrowed all the money from friends and family and lost it all, 10 times. Then on his 11th he started another company, which went ok for a while, until they were losing money and the government/authorities told him they would close the business in 24hours if couldnt get 1 million pounds. He spent those 24 hours going to every investor in London (50-60) and pitched to all of them for at least 15 minutes, some for 3 hours. He got rejected over 50 times. He only had a few hours left and pitched for 3 hours to this guy who decided to wait 3 hours before telling him he wasnt interested. Then after he left there, he decided to go to the guy next door, who also happened to hate that guy. He pitched to him , and the guy wired him 1 million. Guess how much he is worth now? 500 million+.
There are lots more stories like these where people get investors in the most impossible situations. It is all in the mind. Read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and I guarantee you will never complain about not being able to do something. The book is just that powerful.
peace.
Yeah... if you have fucking friends and family willing to let you lose all their money 10 tens over, then you can easily be a successful entrepreneur. That's the number 1 factor I've noticed. I read every major entrepreneur's bio/autobio that is released, and that is the only commonality I have seen in all of them. They are all unique people that do things differently except they ALL, without fail, had friends and family that threw money at them until they were successful. Cool secret to success eh?
I read "Think and Grow Rich" several times when I was a kid. It has not helped me much.
Maybe I just haven't tanked enough companies yet I guess. But I still believe it's INFINITELY easier with friends and family that just fund you endlessly. I've never had that, and still managed to get a couple small things off the ground only to have them fail (I'm on like number 5 currently).
I would be worth 500 million too if I had the same family and friends as Com Mirza, or any other successful entrepreneur.
Shit pisses me the fuck off.
You do realise he lost all the money he borrowed from his family/friends and had to pay them all back and was in debt for a very long time? He opened 1 successful business and all the profits had to go to pay the family back and he lost that business eventually.
If you're really going to come from the mindset of "if i had x then i would be y" then youre full of shit. I cant find another way to put it. Anyone can say that because it is easy! Not everyone is willing to fail 10 times , be in debt and pay it back and eventually getting rejected 50+ times before getting the investment
You wouldnt be worth 500 million if you had his family. Like I said before, he lost all the money he was given and paid it all back and was broke again. Then he started fresh. So none of that money contributed to his 10th/successful business. It was only when he decided to go to london, borrow 50,000 from his brother, which blew also that he got himself in the position again, but he borrowed more from someone else when he kept losing money until he had 24 hours to get the 1 million. So the only money that actually helped was the money from the investor. And even then, he wasnt doing too good, but he kept going. He was 'surviving' for a while, until he managed to get a hang of it. At that point he had a few businesses failing and a few succeeding. The successful ones would pay for the ones not doing well, so it wasnt great either.
Let me put it this way to you "if you have the right mindset, then you will make 500 million".
I dont think ive given enough detail in the above answer. It might take me a few articles and research to get my point across to you, but whatever.
The only alternative is hard work, so get to it!
Hard work does not pay very well. It's also not an alternative. No one has ever accomplished anything merely through hard work.
My father is a great example. He's spent 30 years working 16 hours a day and spent everything he has in order to fund a "communications company" dedicated to selling the ideas in the 12,000 pages of writing he has written. He has made exactly $0. But hardly anyone has worked harder than him at anything over the past 30 years.
A slave works hard. Work smart not hard.
There is a saying in the army "Work smart, not hard" This was implied in my statement and something your father should have followed. When you both work smart and hard then you will attain value. There are other immoral ways of attaining value but this is not what I'm talking about.
What are the other options? Survival: this has been a recurring theme proposed by others here. I don't agree with it but I understand the sentiment.
Defeat for me is death, but in death there is freedom.
If you can be a 'millionaire' if someone gave you 100k-1million because your business and selling skills are just so good.. then you should go into sales for a year or two and make that money yourself. A 1% car salesperson can make $200k a year or more. I was putting over $100k cash into savings after taxes and bills when I sold cars (I was top 0.1%)
If you think you can run a business, go convince a few chinese people to pay top dollar for a BMW first.. you'll learn some good skills, and make the money you need while at it.
Yeah, but I have no official sales background, no resume, etc... I've only ever ran my own businesses, since the age of 11.
Seems like no one would trust me to sell their BMW's without a proven track record of official sales positions?
What the heck did you move on to after car sales that made you more money than that though? Private Equity?
I've heard you could also potentially make a lot of money by working at a bank, and going into the private division. Basically you just spend all your time selling rich people on stuff. Have you ever heard of that? I was talking to someone that had a similar story of making tons of money doing it, but you have to just be great at talking to rich people basically. I only ask because in car sales I assume to be great at it you'd need to be a car afficianado + you need to be on your feet all day right, and I sadly have a very bad back, and somewhat poor health overall, and am not sure I can handle standing and running around constantly for 8-12 hours a day =/
Watch the movie 'Suckers' on youtube about car sales. Its pretty damn accurate in how it could feel and be. If you later want to watch a good sales movie as well about the grind and emotions that can go with it, Glenngary Glenn Ross is gold, especially the salesmanager part.
I'm guessing your still under 21? Either way, if you've really ran your own businesses since 11, and interacted with people, then you can walk into a highline car dealership, show them some proof, show them some charisma and remind them of your desire, and you will get a job. Every dealership has someone working there that sucks and pissing them off, so they are looking for someone to replace them, and they just have to be better than that person they hate. You will get hired if you want. Stick to highline if you really have a trackrecord of being something unique.
Yes it is hard work. I wish it was only 12 hour days sometimes. You can sit a lot if you want as it will give you time to work the phones and email people. You should go for the 'internet' sales position at that point or try to quickly get into it.
And yes I left it to run my own business also because I figured with those kinds of hours, and that kind of people skills I could do even better. I don't really want to go into it online for fear of doxing as its unique enough.
Your questions to me are very amateur, which theres nothing wrong for someone thats young and inexperienced.. but thinking all you need to be a millionaire is 100k sounds like a 19 yr olds pipe dream to me. You dont even think you could sell BMWs but you can sell millions of dollars of items or services in order to make yourself and investors millions?
you need to invest other peoples money.... dont invest your own, make rich people invest into you
How do you learn how to do that though?
you need to be able to sell your prodcut and yourself really well. if you are able to do that there is no reason why other people wont invest into you and your product.
I feel you man a example I know is a 17 year old who supposedly "made" an app called Summly that Yahoo! bought for $30 million and he claimed making money was easy. Turned out he didn't even code the app let alone make the technology behind it. A company called SRI International did all the real work, and SRI also created Siri which is used for Iphones.
He has very rich parents so all he had to do to get investors was just go through his parents contact list. Plus since his mom was a Patent Barrister they were able to claim rights to the technology.
He is also a pyschotic and pathological liar, it turns out when he was 15 he was constantly harassing Gizmodo trying to make them review his app. They also claimed his app had millions of users before Yahoo! bought it yet no one has ever heard of it.
This really pissed me off because I was the same age as him and I thought something was wrong with me since I couldn't do anything near what he was doing but it made me mad finding out I was beating myself up over a kid that has rich parents with connections and did none of the work himself, he was nothing more but a poser but anyone that tried to call him out gets called jealous even though he was technically the poser since he act like he did all the work by himself and had no connections or economic advantage.
The idea that you need money to make money isn't always true. It is often sold to you so you get into full-time employment, have a family and kids and stop 'rocking the boat' with your 'wacky ideas'.
Ideas that require a lot of capital are often more risk then they are worth and you're better off starting up businesses that you can start with little to no money (at least until you are in a position to fund them without going into serious debt). Banks across my country are constantly advertising loans etc. because they 'support' small business. This is a trap as they pretty much want you to to fail so that can seize as much of your assets as possible when you run yourself into ridiculous debt. Just like with anything else business debt will turn you into a slave very quickly if you aren't careful.
I think with the online market becoming overly saturated there's a lot of room to go back to the basics of face to face interaction which is missing. If you are selling, approaching businesses in person with your product/service will get you a much further way then cold calling and online advertising because it is so much harder to do successfully that you'll simply stand out. It has worked for me and it's great to know that most people are scared to do the same as it puts you ahead of the pack.
I know many "idea" people. Their businesses never get off the ground and they speak incessantly about others success.
Execution is essential
Execution is what makes money not ideas ☺ And don't partner with useless people, actually don't partner at all ☺
Another thing to think about, you're working on an idea and you see its been done but it failed for that team. Don't assume it will fail for you until you do research. There's a guy who was working on a game, saw a "clone" of it get released and fail miserably and he decided to go on the forums to see why people hated it.. he made changes to the graphics and fixed all the cons people mentioned, and ended up having success, all that code becomes reusable so he could spit games out in a 10th of that time so the money endlessly flows.
These kind of posts "often" deleted. I don't know why. Archive : https://archive.is/u9zoK
I hope it isn't. This post is not so much "redpill' as it is just good fucking advice. I wish the American high school system would teach entrepreneurship instead of regurgitated history and science "facts" taught to our fathers and grandfathers".
This is as red pill as it gets. Fuck the mainstream societal thinking. Be a man of worth and put one foot in front of the other and do something that takes a risk.
redpill is just pragmatism for men. That's all
Don't lose the forest looking at the trees.
These posts often contain advertisements for certain websites or products. I too would delete them if I was a mod. Not this one though, as it contains no advertisement.
This is particularly potent in rural communities. Find out what people have to go to the city to get done, then circulate around your region offering that service.
My cousin does vinyl and aluminium siding. The communities around him used to have to hire a company from the city, and it would cost a premium. Now he has a local monopoly, a dozen employees, and while I don't know how much he makes, looking at his house, boat, cabin, atvs, snowmobiles, cars, motorcycles, vacations, and the rock on his wife's left hand... I'd say it's around a quarter million a year, minimum. And growing. He's franchising his brand to other business owners in other rural communities and expanding to roofing.
He's 23.
Yeah, that's a great example!
I have a client on a similar boat. He does embroidery for things like shirts and hats in a small town in bum-fuck-middle-America. His overhead is stupid low. If I remember correctly, the machine cost him a good 2k, but is fully automated and all his work is just in some embroidery program and Word. However, he's also the only guy in town, so he can charge whatever he wants. In most cases, he's even more expensive than the nearby big city, but people prefer to pay a premium to do business with him since he's nearby and accessible.
What area of the country? You can't buy all that making $250,000 a year... that's almost nothing. That's like barely middle class if you live in California for example. I'm assuming he does not live there... but I don't think anywhere in the country that you would want to live allows you to own multiple houses on $250,000 a year at 23 unless he started it when he was 13, and saved almost every penny?
I'd assume Midwest. Hell, my company is in a Top 50 for IT, and our headquarters is located in Springfield, MO.
This is what 100k buys you which one could afford on a 35-40k a year income alone easily. So theoretically, it's not unreasonable to believe it to be the case.
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Yeah, unfortunately I live in Atlanta instead lol
Yeah, that's a million dollar home in California haha
Though to be fair, no offense, I'm much happier living in California.
I guess I didn't realize just how low housing was elsewhere.
It must be crazy to be making something like $20,000/month in such a place. In California it's just sort of crazy, but not "I can buy a house every year" crazy.
I think you added one too many 0's there lol
Yeah, give me mountains over flat fields personally.
Where did I add too many 0's? And why do you think I added too many?
isnt that the house from breaking bad?
Pretty similar, he is in rural Manitoba. One of the Prairie Provinces in Canada
As someone who has relatives all over western Canada that makes a lot more sense.
Most of my relatives are self made.millinaires simply from the oil sands.
luckily they planned well for the future, because oil ain't so hot now
I'm in a small town. That amount of money would make me a god here. Not everyone is trying to live in expensive areas. Hell even big name actors live outside of California. They know the score. Lower cost of living, big fish small pond and can hope on a plane when they crave city life. Smarten up.
Who are you telling to smarten up exactly?
I would never want to live in shittsville. I enjoy living in urban centers. I don't really care about the cost. The reason they cost more to live in is, newsflash, more people want to live in them.
Mortgage on the home, collateral being his business. Might have got the parents to co sign, not sure about that.
He started at 17 summer job for high school. His dad got him started with seed money. So it's been six years now.
He is in rural Manitoba (basically north of North Dakota). A house would cost about $150k.
The money exploded when he started franchising two years ago.
Jeez...I would think the first think you would do is move out of rural Manitoba...
Kind of the classic story. Never seen a success story that didn't include the detail "his dad gave him the seed money".
Pretty disheartening.
feel free to replace with "he made a business plan and the bank gave him the seed money"
I've never seen that happen before. Never heard of it happening. Never read a book by a successful entrepreneur where it happened.
The only place I've heard of happening it is literally in fairytales.
I don't believe banks actually make those kinds of loans. Their business lending division dedicated to entrepreneurship is offloaded into their VC divisions, which do not fund things like that, but seek out the next FB potentials.
You've watched too many movies...bank's don't give broke people money because they made a business plan. Banks actually NEVER lend to start-ups unless they have a rich personal guarantor backing up the loan (I.E. a rich guy that doesn't really need the business to succeed to pay back the money).
Angel investors, friends, family and plowing your life savings into a business is how a new venture gets off the ground 99% of the time and why most entrepreneurs are from wealthy/connected backgrounds with a safety net.
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Great stuff. Thanks for sharing.
A major for entreprenuer ship in college!? Seems pretty counter productive to me all college is good for as an aspiring entreprenuer is making connections.
Great post. High margin products and services.
A lot of entrepreneurship is simply having the nerve to overcharge people and see if you can get away with it. Fact is, if you know even SLIGHTLY more than the customer about whatever product or service it is that you're selling than sky's the limit, go ahead and shoot for the moon when it comes to pricing, who knows, you just might close the deal. Example--
Had a friend who had a company several years back, friend wanted a new website for said company, pretty basic affair, like 6 pages or so, the usual "Intro" / "About Us" / "Case Studies" / "Our Team" / "Contact Us" etc. Also wanted all new text on the new site, so I told him I'd write the text (had to get to know the industry, interview everyone at the company etc), and I recommended a web designer friend who could do the actual site design and layout. All in I think the guy's budget was like several grand, I took $2K (if memory serves) to write the copy, and the web designer was getting like $5K (a bit pricey but she did excellent, clean design and we both agreed her aesthetic was a perfect fit for the project).
So fast forward a few weeks, and we're at the web designer's place (this absolutely killer loft in midtown Manhattan, by the way, which I recognized as having been used in a number of movie shoots... Turns out she was in the process of getting divorced so maybe the loft was a "divorce present", who knows)... So the guy who runs the company, me, and the web designer are all sitting around this table, checking out the new site, making sure everything's working, and at one point I click on a link and say "Hey, we really need this link to open up in a new window. As it is now it takes us away from the main page..." The web designer woman furrows her brow, nods slowly, and then (as if really thinking carefully about all this) says "Hmm... Yes, I see, hmm... Well, I think we can do that for you, but it's gonna involve a MAJOR redesign--let me think... Yeah, we're gonna have to add $785 to the budget for that." (I forget the exact number, but I remember it was in the $700s.) I shit you not, this woman is sitting there, looking us straight in the face, and quoting $700+ to tweak a single line of code...
Now of course, she didn't know that my friend and I were both fairly technically inclined, so to give her the benefit of the doubt (before totally calling her out on her BS) I said "No, I think you misunderstand, we just want these links to open up in new windows. That’s it. THAT'S ALL." Her: "Yep, got it, we can do that. $785" Me (sighing): "Yeah, OK, hold on, give me ten seconds..." And then, right there in front of both of them, I pulled the source code, typed target=_blank in front of the link (my HTML is a little rusty but it was something like that, literally like 10 keystrokes), reuploaded the code, and we were done, problem solved, whole tweak took less than 10 seconds. My friend just looked at me like "Are you fucking KIDDING ME??" Suffice to say, we rapidly ended that meeting, paid out the designer, and never dealt with her again.
But here's the thing: if I hadn't happened to have known basic HTML, then her request of "Pay me $785, so I can overhaul the entire site for you and give you what you want" might have seemed TOTALLY REASONABLE. Never mind that what we were actually requesting was a simple code tweak that took a few keystrokes... We might not have known that, and she might have profited (greatly) off our ignorance. And you know what’s really funny (and kind of terrifying), as we left her building and my friend and I were talking about what just happened, we both were like: holy shit, do you know what this means?? Anytime you deal with ANYONE who knows slightly more than you do about whatever you're trying buy, whether it be a web designer doing your site or an auto mechanic fixing your car or a plumber doing your toilet or whatever, if you don't know what's going on, they can charge you ANYTHING they want and there's absolutely nothing you can say or do about it. Scary indeed…
So yeah, if you’re the customer, do your research and get to know the basics, so you won’t be taken advantage of. And if you’re the entrepreneur, bone up on your acting skills (and your nerve) and try tossing out a hugely outlandish number. Who knows, you might just get away with it…
I really relate to your post. I'm a programmer. All my friends, family and coworkers think I'm some kind of genius and bring all their computer problems to me. They have no idea how often I just find the solution on the first page of google results. I spent half of my life thinking everyone else was super competent and that I was practically a fraud before I realized most people are bluffing their way through life. Even someone who is a legitimate expert in some area can be laughably ignorant in some other area that doesn't hold their interest.
Good post. I will provide one counter point. If your business is geared toward customer loyalty and retention then be fair. Simply having customers trust that you aren't going to exploit their ignorance is a huge value you can provide.
This was like unplugging my mind on a different level. Any advice for a university student? Working part time in a consultant firm for 22$ per hour.. And in sales to the same sallary
Yeah, absolutely, you are probably right down my ally. My background is startups, politics, marketing, and sales... Which all sort of overlap.
My best advice would be to just learn the sales game. learn how to explain to people something which is going to help their business, but aren't really tech savvy enough to understand it on their own -- speak their language and break it down in a way they can understand. That's why you're in sales. It's your job to break it all down for them in a way they can understand, and get them excited about it while you do it. Another big thing that's ridiculously important, especially as a consultant, is you are expected to be the absolute expert on everything you do. Even if you don't think you're the expert, you have to convey it, because that's why they, the client, is paying you -- believe it or not, but even a general understanding is valuable to someone who has absolutely no understanding. Sometimes you'll get simple stupid tasks like setting up an SEM campaign and think, "I don't know shit about this, but I can probably figure it out in a few days online". So before you even have a full grasp on it, just sell it as you do, learn it, then come back with your proposal.
Hey OP you talk alot about your "buddy"'s success and all that, what about you? You never said how much success you were able to pull from your own mentality. You should be the #1 person to be profiting here since you so clearly understand everything... How many millions do you have?
I don't talk too much about what I do because that's my niche and I'd like to keep it that way.
How many millions do I have? Not one. But at this rate, I will soon.
Uhhhhh huuuuuh I'm sure you will
Thanks! Actually one hour ago I accepted a simple job to set set up a website for a construction firm. Had just read your post so I thought, sure what the hell. I think I will just use WordPress.. Do any of you know, what's acceptable for a simple website in terms of payment?
Depends on your model. If you split it up across the year, you can get more money from them rather than collecting all up front. For example, for hosting and design, you can easily charge 2k upfront for the year, or just 220 per month.
Usually companies are obsessed with cashflow so they'll opt for the more expensive monthly plan because it takes less out of their marketing budget now.
Great idea. WordPress shows the traffic etc, one could try to sell monthly analysis of the succes of the webpage.
That sentence
Is also true when you have an idea to do something and the first thing you think is "but would anyone I know buy it?". WHO CARES? You're not trying to sell to people you know, you're trying to sell to people they WANT it.
Example: "Why would I make a cloud storage the moment I can just use a USB stick to move whatever files I want to carry around? This idea is stupid" - People before the Dropbox era.
Just check the comments of the people in the pre-dropbox era in Hackernews to understand what I'm saying.
That's absolutely brilliant reading. Often a great idea is something people could live without, but why would they?! In our highly specialized society people don't want the hassle of figuring crap out just to get what they need.
This is a solid post and really got me thinking about the conditioning that has been applied to me. My first problem in this regard was that, most people just aren't as smart as those of us on here. Raised in blank-slate land, I assumed if I saw something, everyone else had. WRONG. It is likely not even on their radar. It took me a long time to re-learn that my insights, talents and good ideas were just that, and something to be proud of and exploit.
I also remember my father putting me off self-employment, entrepreneurship and creative pursuits generally. I still love him, but he really fucked my career thinking up. I was quite oblivious as a youth; basically every career dream I had he shot down. He is a classic government security>risk kind of guy. I remember really young I got in big trouble for selling stuff and making a profit on friends and siblings.
WTF Dad!? Now I look back and see a young man who was naturally enterprising, ruthless, confrontational, inventive and so on, slowly melded into the docile beta I once was. This goes for all redpill; my 4 year old self was a total alpha compared to my 14 year old self. School system has got us by the balls. Although I am a changed man, I still feel the ripples from the anti-entrepreneurial conditioning, so I still have some work to do. My grandparents on both sides had at least some entrepreneurship to them, and now I intend to follow.
Thanks again for the article, which will no doubt be instrumental in undoing my conditioning further.
I honestly wouldn't blame your father for steering you away from owning a business. He came from a time when a man could support a family of 4 on his single income. In comparison, we're worse off now that 2 working parents still struggle to pay the bills. Employees have been marginalized and the employers reap the profits instead of passing on to his workers.
True enough. Like I said I love the old bastard. Any anger I am directing at pussified society generally.
Have to endorse this guy. I practice intellectual property law, which means I get to consult with prospective clients all the time who have a really simple idea they want to protect. It's easy to dismiss an idea as stupid, but that will get trained out of you very quickly. The guy who invented the scrunchy hose from the as-seen-on-TV made a fortune. So did the slinky, the pet rock, and those little plastic half-domes that bounce off the table.
The proper takeaway is not that your stupid idea is secretly genius, it's that smart business management helps you turn lead into gold. I'm biased toward intellectual property matters because so many people screw that up before coming into my office, but in a way, that's a good example. Hiring an attorney to clean up your mess costs easily ten times or more what it would cost to prevent the mess in the first place - so I'll advise my own clients on how to prevent a mess, but I'm always happy to help a prospective client with the mop and bucket.
Look, if I could give you a specific set of instructions for making a million bucks, I'd have done it myself along with a thousand other people before me. People are very good at pouncing on a new demand; it's spotting the demand, or creating one where there was no demand previously, that's so difficult. If you want to make a ton of money, or if you want to build up sources of passive income, you have to be open to finding and exploiting demand. Then you have to ruthlessly and consistently work to meet the demand.
"Ruthlessly" is probably the wrong word. People see that word and think it's advice to recklessly burning your bridges. Don't be dense, you know what I mean - but here, an example from my job. Guy was working on an invention for two years, told his wife all about it. That's fine, right? Talking to your spouse isn't legally disclosing the invention! Unless, of course, she blogs about it in detail. Guy needed to be willing to keep a secret from his blabbermouth wife, or at least read her blog and stop her before she gives away the novel idea for e-affirmation from the other mommybloggers. Be smart about your IP, fellas, and don't just sit there watching a hole in the market go unfilled.
Point being, be on the lookout for unknown and unexpected demand. There really might be a guy who badly needs a web page and will pay out the nose for it. Maybe you don't make enough as a bouncer, but you can make ten times as much running a training course for bouncers (and a separate class for yuppies who want to feel tough). Or you study your ass off and go professional like I did.
Guy I knew bought and sold Ford Transit vans. Every one of his classified ads ended with 'Ready to work'.
He'd get 10% to 15% more for the van because of those 3 words. In fairness, all his vans really were ready to work.
Very late to the party here but what do you wish ever client that comes into your office had done before coming in? What can a client do early on to make your job (and their protection) better?
Edit: If you do any content marketing these would be great posts to attract web traffic to your firm.
Depends on what it's for.
For trademarks, just show up and have me do a real TM search before you invest your life savings in the name. Rebrands are expensive. It's easier to pick a good name than to change or fight for a bad one. I make a lot more money fixing a bad TM, obviously, but I actually try not to waste client money.
For patents, just keep it a secret. Please don't publicly disclose all the details on your blog. Don't try to sell it. If you must do these things, come to me beforehand. You have one year after your first offer to sell or public disclosure to file. Also, please don't publish your idea in a scientific journal until it's filed, period.
Actually haven't had any real problems with copyright clients.
A lot of my clients are young guys and small business owners. A fair share are blue-collar guys. In my experience, the young guys tend to forget to bring copies of relevant documents. Small business owners tend to think they're smarter than they are, so they cherry-pick details to tell me instead of giving complete answers. Blue-collar guys tend to be the easiest to work with, actually, but they also tend to chafe at the slow grind of litigation. Avoid doing those things and you're a step ahead of the game.
I've been pounding the table for more posts like this here.
Someone recommended a book called "Linchpin by Seth Godin"
It discusses your 'conditioning' section.
And how the world needs 'artist' right now.
"Become the person that - dreams up new ideas and makes them come true, someone who finds new ways to interact, a new pathway to deliver emotions, new ways to connect"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LioyEHOjyjo
Here is the link to the audiobook,
I have read and taken notes on this book. And I'll happily share them.
Great post and it really speaks to me, as i am an entrepreneur who makes money online. This post speaks my language.
What do you do?
I sell on eBay and amazon. I buy wholesale and sell for a good profit margin. So if you order from amazon, that box may have been sent out by yours truly.
Sounds awesome. I actually am constantly keeping my ear to the ground when it comes to eBay/Amazon. There is potential for huge rewards if you can find the right gap. Old friend of mine many years ago made an absolute killing on eBay by accident. He found some niche where people were paying 50-60 bucks for some random stupid car part, which only cost 2 bucks from China. He just resold those fucking things.
Never told me what it was, understandably.
Solid post. In fact, if you speak with a majority of immigrants you'll find that sales is actually fairly natural and is beaten out of you in the education system. Then, when you take it on as a career, it's senselessly beaten back into you.
Source: Immigrant who went through the education system, but parents are still OGs, who hustled until they opened their own business.
My personal favorite case example of "immigrants knowing how to hustle and show up American's" is from a coworker I had on my team half a decade ago. Her parent's would go to the free section on Craigslist and grab up whatever they thought was valuable, and then just simply repost it in the "For Sale" section.
They made a middle class wage just reselling shit others were given away for free. I have so much respect for them.
That straight hustlin'. I've done that myself. Odd jobs. Landscaping. Metal scraping. We live.
One thing I've learned is that very few people seem to have a mindset for marketing (the true meaning of 'marketing', I don't mean 'advertising') and this probably creates a perception that entrepreneurship is hard, because everybody's aware of the high failure rate. It seems to me that it's as natural an inclination as being sporty or outgoing is. Some people have a mindset for marketing, some don't.
So if you ask 100 people for a business idea, I would wager that most of them will spit out an idea without even thinking, something which they'd really enjoy - or even worse, which they personally wouldn't enjoy but they think it'd make money - when really, they have no basis for thinking that it's a marketable product or service.
And contrary to what you might read, not every idea can be successful if you just work hard enough. I'd imagine that immigrants, to use your example, are intimately aware of what their communities need. Whereas the more cloistered western person, pressed to come up with an idea, thinks more along the lines of "..i'd create a business that 3d prints custom clothes pegs, because it's a real pain point for me when I run out of clothes pegs and I also think it'd be cool to have custom ones. I'd make it a monthly subscription service because it'll make more money, and my exit strategy will be an acquisition by Google" or whatever.
Anybody reading this who hasn't studied traditional marketing (how to do market research, how to survey, how to assess needs and demands etc) I'd recommend it.
Can confirm. I started a simple software business in HS. While I only stayed in business a few years (made about 15k on the side), Im able to leverage my whiz kid story to this day in job interviews. It both netted me my first position at the company I'm in now as well as a recent promotion from my new job after only having been on the job a year.
it was a really simple software program and I hired someone to make it for me because I couldn't code.
HA! Love it dude! Good for you!
On a slightly related subject, when I worked for Rocket Internet, one of the head developers for one of the businesses didn't do shit. While he was a programmer on paper, he was really a project manager in practice. He'd just outsource all of his tasks to India, while he played Diablo III
I do that now! I write code but I don't really know much so I ask questions on forums for the individual subroutines and then compile my 80 questions that some dude answered for me with custom code into a software suite.
All I do is copy and paste, change the variables to ones I need and make the GUI look pretty
Keep it up! They are paying you to do a job, and you are doing it. It doesn't matter how you manage to do it, so long as you do it.
This is why I always laugh when other programmers get into pissing contests about who can solve a ridiculous programming riddle or optimize some convoluted algorithm best. I know guys with no college degree who couldn't even comprehend those interview problems (let alone solve them) and they're billing $200+ per hour to automate basic clerical shit for small businesses. Take data from here, move it there, maybe do some small transformations in the middle. Repeat x inifinity.
And yet all these kids are going to $150k colleges just for the chance to jump into the meat grinder at places like Amazon, Google, etc.
Okay, so now we have businesses related to:
a) government tests b) conferences
Obviously the guy that needed consulting had to have some exposure to the above industries to see the problems he could capitalize on.
So how do you get some micro-exposure to any industry you're interested in to get business ideas? eg. having a millionaire mentor would open many doors, and you could just work a low-level position to see what you can capitalize on etc.
but what about people starting with no connections?
Nope. You'd think that, but it really wasn't the case. I worked with him on the ground floor with this project, and it was literally built out via cold calling. I live in Las Vegas so we get a ton of conferences coming in. So we'd just call up any number we could find for each conference. Then we'd try to get a hold of the event manager which took nothing more than, "Can you direct me to the event manager?"
Believe it or not, but these people were more than open to listening to what we had to offer. They are always looking for ways to reduce costs so they can reallocate those funds better.
We had absolutely no connections other than Google which showed us who was coming into town a few months from now.
I think you'll be surprised how easy it is to talk to the person in charge, and how open they are to getting pitched. Because they, more than anyone, want their problems solved so they look like a better event/marketing coordinator.
EDIT: shit somebody already asked this before my post. sorry :(
No I meant how he learned that these devices for conferences cost a shitton, leading to the realization "shit, I can save these people some money if I make Product X".
For example, he'd have to volunteer at a conference and maybe accidentally take a glimpse at the budget realizing that the check-in machines cost a lot (or have an event manager friend that mentioned something like "shit the machine costs are giving me headaches" during a night at a pub) to get the idea for his business.
I was asking about tips on how one could work for a short time (0.5-2 weeks) in as many industries possible to get as many business ideas.
Unless you cold-called event managers and asked them "What's your biggest problem in your business?" (some people do this with like a 1% response rate) and I misunderstood.
I have no idea how he figured it out. And I think that very question sort of is overshadowing the point.
I dunno, maybe he was just hanging out with someone one day, and they mentioned how much he paid to use a simple technology, and my friend thought, "Holy shit, that's silly. I can do that better."
I dunno. The fact of the matter is that he figured it out somehow and decided to act on it.
I'll be honest, I don't really know how to answer your last question. I feel like business ideas are unbelievably abundant. Every single day of my life I have problems in which I would pay to be resolved, so those are business ideas. I also see other's every day, who have problems which they would like someone to help them with.
You may be thinking too big, and missing things right in front of you. For instance, just right now I thought of a product that I know would sell. As I typed this, I wanted to change the song I was listening to. And even though I have a large gaming mousepad, my mouse still ran off the edge. Now that I think about it, I would like an even larger gaming mousepad that took up the entire space of my desk. I'd pay good money for that, and I'm sure many other people would as well.
Opportunity Cost also plays a role. If I can make $100 an hour doing task "A" or lose $50 an hour paying you to do task "B" it is more cost effective for me to pay you while I continue doing what I'm skilled at rather than me losing money at my real speciality by attempting a task I'm not proficient at.
OwO What is this?
Know-how is the key here. Some years ago when i was a student, i used to sell fair invitations, collected from vendors free of charge. All it it took was a polite request. The fair goers seldom knew they could get them for free but when presented with the opportunity of buying them at half the ticket price at the door, they jumped in. You had to be a bit of a sales person as well though.
It helped me get by. But then again, this was related to my area of interest and that's how i got the idea. It would've never occurred to me if I had no interest in the subject in question. I couldn't have known.
edit: a word.
I recommend you guys to read 4 hours workweek and 100(dollar) startup and lean startup.
This post is so good I can't even properly put it into words. I'm exploring deep and hard to figure out how to escape from this system of grinding away just to get by. People spend their whole lives without even trying to challenge it. Sometimes it never even crosses their minds.
You shared something with a massive amount of value for completely free, and it found it's way to me at the perfect time. While I don't have much to offer you that is of value in return, I can at least promise you that I'll take your gift and use it. Thank you.
I wanna work for myself as well.
Amazing post. but anyone knows an action plan of implementing it? What can a recent college grad do, to try to get into forming a profitable business?
Thank you for that wonderful read!
Awesome, thanks, Great advice for aspiring entrepreneurs
I'm gonna open a goddamn banana stand. There's always money in the banana stand.
Sorry Pop pop. We burned down the banana stand.
Great post! The only thing I would add is that some of the best business ideas are also very unsexy and boring. Some of the richest clients I have do blue collar work but own the business. One guy drills holes under streets for utility companies as a subcontractor and this 35 year old has about 5 million invested with me.
Another unsexy way to get rich is buy an established business. Usually business brokers have a lot of established businesses for sale at 2-3x annual earnings. Many times you can get a loan that is backed by the SBA or have the seller carry financing for the right price.
Couldn't agree more. Most people who read posts like the OP's will try to come up with concepts they think are cool. Likely something to do with software. That would be the riskiest way to gamble on a business idea.
Entrepreneurship is trendy now. If an idea jumps out to you immediately, its likely on the minds of thousands of other entrepreneurs too.
Most of the business owners in my local EO group run businesses that are not sexy, local, that aren't worth bragging about.
Above all, your idea, product, business isn't as important as the market (ideally with some competition, with paying customers who've already validated the model) you choose to be in.
For how much you talked about FINRA you sure are posting some questionable info here.
at least I dont refer to myself as a Chartered cfa. thats like saying chartered chartered financial analyst
I encourage you to show me exactly where I did that. What I did was call myself a CFA CHARTERHOLDER. I did this for two reasons: one because it is the correct and taught terminology and two because that's what I am. I'm not some fucking loser working for Morgan Stanley like you claim to be. Nice try at catching me slipping up. Unfortunately all you've done is show exactly how little you know about the world you claim to work in. Go fuck yourself.
We have a few Chartered Chartereds here at my office. We keep them in the basement next to the quants and actuaries. Most of them have such winning personalities that we only bring them out on special occasions like the Gimp on Pulp Fiction.
You mean in that fantasy world that you lie on the internet about working in? Again, please point out where i said i was a "chartered cfa". If you actually worked in this industry you would know that my CFA charterholder status is much more respected than you (lying about) passing the series 7 and 63.
Awesome post,OP. I needed to read this.
This is a quality post. +1
These are the kinds of posts I come to TRP for. Upvoted and saved.
This reminds me of "The Millionaire Fast Lane".
Execution over ideas. Someone made a million bucks off of a pet rock because he did it. The idea is absolute shit. Whereas there have been plenty of great ideas that have terrible execution and go absolutely nowhere. One that comes to mind is, my alma mater had a local business where everyone would report where road blocks, cops etc were on Fri/Sat night, so you would know not to go out. Al the info was reported in and out by Twitter. Terribly mismanaged and somehow went under and the owner stole $ from investors.
I read an article in the Harvard Business Review that basically said "Find the bottleneck in a business and sell a solution" which is exactly what you're describing.
One of their examples was that people hated dealing with video rental stores so two things happened: Streaming video for people who download, and Redbox for those who don't.
Mostly about finding value in what people can really use, not what a heap of soft-handed marketing experts think might "have value for the demographic".
Once I met a stranger who told me the exact the same thing. It does not matter how easy the idea seems as long as people are willing to pay you to do it for them.
so the guy got a govt contract. typical, leeching off the govt. I'd like for him to be smart enough to pull that shit in the private sector where there's competition.
Were you replying to me? I never mentioned government contracts any where.
But even if so, it sounds like sour grapes with you. So what if he got a govt contract? Those things aren't easy to get, and the government does need to by things from the private sector all the time. Point of the matter, at the end of the day, he's making money doing something.
Do you have any advice on how to go about finding these magical opportunities?
It sounds like kind of dumb luck after you have the right attitude.
How many of us attend conferences regularly to know about how the check in systems work? Or are involved with government enough to know about obscure government certification programs to take advantage of? I would guess almost none of us.
So other than dumb luck...how do you go about finding or coming up with stuff like this to do?
There are an abundant amount of opportunities out there. Luck has very little to do with it...
The first thing that you need to do is have a perspective change, and realize that many of the successful businesses you want to help, are actually ran by stupid people who are more than willing to listen to people who can help their business.
Just to shoot shit, I'll list some ideas that I know can work:
I did this a few months ago before losing track of it: Google "real estate agent YOUR TOWN" and see who shows up on the first page of Google. Then check out their site. Does their site have a lead funnel? As in, is their site just showing off property, rather than trying to direct visitors to give up what they are looking for and their contact information? If you find a realtor website in your town that's #1 on google and doesn't have a lead funnel system in place, then they are a quality lead. If their site doesn't have a pop-up asking for them to answer some questions and leave an email, they are losing out on a ton of leads. So solve that for them.
Successful local HVAC companies spend a TON on advertising. I have a client spending 20k a month in his town. So look up your local HVACs who are on the top of google and succesful (don't bother with unsucessful companies, becasuse it's a waste of time. They are unsuccesful for a reason) and offer to update their website to be mobile optimized.
Go to a company which constantly has events where they talk about the industry and then pitch their product. Then convince them that they can save time by doing webinars, as well as increase the amount of people viewing their event (because in 2015 you're more likely to get someone to watch your event online than in person. Seriously, webinars always get more participation than in person seminars).
Repair cell phones. It's such a high demand industry, filled with idiots. The learning curve is super low. All you need to do is watch YouTube videos to figure out how to do the fix, and you get to charge 50-70% over for the service.
That's just some stuff off the top of my head which I have personally been involved with which became successful.
Why not just become a Real Estate agent if there's that much money and it's all just simple SEO and adding a little pop-up that asks for name and email? This also presumes you are already a web developer right?
Two of these ideas are just "work as a web developer". I'm sure there are a million web devs out there doing this shit already aren't there?... Being a web dev isn't like that easy is it?
Running and facilitating webinars also sounds like it requires a pretty specific/unique skill set, including being able to single-handedly develop a website, stream live video, and professionally record audio/video, etc... ?
I guess the lesson here is that basically you need to become a web developer right?
I've been learning this often lately. I just started a udacity course. Seems like you have to be a web dev to do anything in today's world.
But also, none of these ideas are anywhere near the ideas you originally talked about where your 23 year old friend makes like $20,000 a month doing nothing anymore.
I could kill it in real estate, but that requires working all the time. The whole point of what I strive for at least, is finding economic freedom which means working as few hours as possible.
And no, I don't develop at all. http://www.aweber.com/
It's a 20 dollar product that gives you all the code and tutorials you need to create a capture, funnel, and marketing campaign.
All I am doing is taking a 20 dollar product, tinkering with it, and actualizing it's value when used in real estate, and charging accordingly.
Webinars are easy. All you have to do is replay a video that the owner of the business recorded, and then their assistant answers questions. All you do personally is send out the emails and moderate.
No, you don't have to become a web developer. Even though I understand a few languages, I never even tough it. I think the most I tough when it comes to dev is CSS when I work on Wordpress, and most of that is learned from Google.
My whole point is that these objectives are achieved primarily through sales; all you need to do is solve someone's problem, and charge them whatever they are willing for you to do so. Then just outsource all the actual work.
You only need to work like 1 year in real estate though right? I estimate that you make around 100-500 million a year as the top agent in the right market, like California. If you can get sales through a website, and kill it, a you say, it seems worth doing for 1 year to get that first half a billion doesn't it? I mean, all you really have to do is show up to houses and take people on tours right? It's not that bad of work is it?
Otherwise, I'm pretty much with you. But I don't have the skills to kill it in real estate really I guess, so it's not an option for me. I don't know how to make a real estate website #1 on Google, and build a sales funnel from scratch.
What $20 product are you talking about actualizing though? Also...what do you actually charge for doing that? I mean, it's got to be worth millions of dollars right? Do you charge $1,000,000? I would think you might have to take commissions from sales that come through the funnel as they might not believe it right since they don't even know enough to know they need a sales funnel on their website?
How do you do things like implement sales funnels on all kinds of websites, or get HVAC companies to #1 on Google if you don't use any web dev skills? Surely there must be some skill set involved in doing this?
Why would the company pay you to do the moderating? Why wouldn't they just fuck you over and have the assistant do your job?
"My whole point is that these objectives are achieved primarily through sales; all you need to do is solve someone's problem, and charge them whatever they are willing for you to do so. Then just outsource all the actual work."
I guess that is kind of different approach. Good approach, but how do you figure out their problems? I've been thinking of trying to just sell myself as a some vague type of consultant, and approaching businesses and just asking if I can do trial period analysis of their business for like a month. I sign an NDA for all information I gain. They show me how their business runs. And if I identify any problems, I'll present solutions to them for cash, but the evaluations are free.
You think something like that could work out if you sell it right? Or is it too stupid/fluffy for the business world?
Dude, you're looking too large...
For instance, with that link I shared, I pay 20 a month to register a client. I then request that their webmaster add a few lines of code, all provided by the company I'm paying 20 bucks to, which throws up a soft survey after 10 seconds on the site in an attempt to capture their email. Then after that, I run email campaigns towards those people trying to convert them into consultations. I charge 400 for that 20 dollar product.
Obviously it's not as easy as just sitting on your ass. But I am pretty confident that if I handed you a 400 monthly account that needed to do what I do, that you'd probably figure out how to do it within 2 weeks tops, with 90% of it being done within a few hours. It's incredibly simple.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's a sales funnel. I capture their email adress after they qualify themselves, then I send them emails trying to getting them emotionally engaged enough to give my client a call.
That's the big hurdle to get over. I've been doing marketing for a long time and one thing that has stuck out in frustration is when I'd talk to someone who has a medium succsesful bussiness and I'd think, "How the fuck is this person even remotely successful? They are fucking idiots!" I literally deal with these people every day. And it still blows my mind that the dumbest entrepreneurs can still be very successful.
You'd be surprised at what you consider common sense internet knowledge, is fucking 100 an hour type knowledge to the old school business owner who doesn't understand the inernet.
My approach is just that. I find people who I know I can help. Who clearly aren't leveraging their position in the local market as well as they can. I reach out to them and just be frank with them. I tell them what I think I can deliver to their business if they let me help them. I then offer to give my services for free for 2 months. If it doesn't deliver an ROI then they pay nothing, if it does end up paying off, then they owe me money for the last 2 months and then I sign them up for a 6 month agreement.
These medium and small businesses are more than happy to take on risk free advertising, so the sale is super easy. You can definitely do it. You're on the same track I'm on.
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Mindset my friend. You need to develop the right mind set to see these opportunities. Unless you live in your bedroom you whole life you're experiencing everyday life and with that opportunities are flowing past you.
An easy couple of exercises which you can do is when you look at something you want to buy but it's too expensive. Don't think "that's too expensive I wish a had xyz amount to spend" that lets your brain off easy. Instead think "how can I afford that?" "How can I generate money for that?" That gets you use to looking at ways to make money.
Second exercise you can do is everyday for the next 30 days right down 10 ways you can make money. These can be legal or illegal doesn't matter. The idea is by the end of 30 days you've got 300 ways to make money. Will you follow any of these avenues? Probably not, but it's got you into the mindset and thinking of ways to make money.
Yeah, I know, that's what every fucking self-help guru and Reddit poster claiming to be a billionaire say "change your mindset". I've heard it and read it enough times that if I just had a dollar for every time I have seen/heard someone say that, I would already be rich.
What no one ever says is: how do you change your mindset? How do you develop the mental tool set to see money making opportunities when you are standing in line getting coffee?
idk, maybe I just fucking suck at this, and will never be good at it.
An easy couple of exercises which you can do is when you look at something you want to buy but it's too expensive. Don't think "that's too expensive I wish a had xyz amount to spend" that lets your brain off easy. Instead think "how can I afford that?" "How can I generate money for that?" That gets you use to looking at ways to make money."
I already naturally do that. I am actually probably in a shit position in life because I've never used credit in my life. Any time I want something I just figure out how to make the money, and when I have the cash, I go buy it. I guess I have no credit history because of this though. But it's never helped me identify any huge money making ideas that I can just immediately execute on.
"Second exercise you can do is everyday for the next 30 days right down 10 ways you can make money. These can be legal or illegal doesn't matter. The idea is by the end of 30 days you've got 300 ways to make money. Will you follow any of these avenues? Probably not, but it's got you into the mindset and thinking of ways to make money."
I can think of like vague ways to make money, or ways other people are making money. But this doesn't seem to lead anywhere.
Any time someone tells me about a way they actually made a ton of money I'm like, "well how would you ever think that up in a vacuum?"
The last millionaire I met is a great example of what I mean. He's a 50 year old alcoholic now with no reason not to just drink himself silly, and flip super luxury property once in a while. So I asked him how he made his $75 million... and he eventually revealed it to me:
He was a major fuckup alcoholic in his youth, high school drop out, etc... but one of his friends happened to get a job at Finance 500, and gave him a job as a trader. From there he realized that if you kind of cheated and didn't report all of your trades until you sold all of the bonds that the company underwrote, you could skirt the margin/capital limitations the SEC had in place. Then he realized that big banks loved to had FDIC-insured bonds which only small retail banks could issue. So he just called up tons of little banks, and convinced them they needed bonds, they used his inside access to buy up all of the issue on the market from a broker account, and then trade all of the FDIC bonds to people at big banks since he controlled the entire supply. He skimmed huge amounts of money until the company finally came under SEC pressure and they told him he could either retire and they would cover it up, or they would throw him under the bus and he could go to prison. So he retired.
No matter how hard I sit thinking about ways to make money, or how often I go to the local coffee shop...I would never have thought of that as a way to make money, but it's clearly one of the best ways to make money on the entire planet.
How do you even get a good sense of what the hell kind of products exist in the world, and what people are willing to pay millions a day for?
It just boggles my mind.
You seem to be looking for a huge life changing idea to pop into your head that will revolutionize the market and will turn you into a millionaire over night. Does this happen to some people? Yeah and some people win the lottery just a case of the right person at the right time.
Majority of wealthy people provide businesses or services which generated a small income at first. Once you have a good foundation laid its about scaling it up.
At the end of the day some people have the mind set but for most who dream of being billionaires they don't.
Every "idea" doesn't have to be special. Standing in line getting coffee. Think about why you're there, why others are there. Why have the picked this coffee place. How would you improve. How could you make the service for customers better. Etc. I'm not saying your now gonna walk out and make a coffee brand to rival fucking Starbucks. But now your thinking in the right way. Instead of mindlessly standing there getting your coffee.
Probably. But it doesn't mean you can't make some money in the side to help.
Even if it's 10 fucking dollars. That's money you've made from your own initiative.
Best piece of advice for you? Invest your money, spend what's left.
Not a millionaire... but $20,000/month, sure. That's what all the people in the OP found right? I don't need to make $1,000,000 overnight. But Just be able to see these apparently super simple ideas that anyone can do once they see them that generate $20,000 a month for them by the time they are 23 while they do no work at that point. That would be fine with me. More than enough really.
Yeah, I naturally think the thoughts you are thinking about when I am in line at coffee shops. I've thought a ton about what I would do with a coffee house, and/or a restaurant. I have immense plans about what I would do. I spent the past three years heavily immersed in the restaurant industry being an amateur food critic...which is a great hobby of mine, and huge passion, and I was hoping I could make money in it since I think I fundamentally understand how to make money with restaurants. But it turns out the restaurant industry is 100% a vanity industry, completely funded by massive restaurant groups where people with $100 million + through their money just to fund places they think are cool basically. So... I guess I chose the one industry where there is zero money, and no place for little guys. hah.
But one day I will start my own places.
Btw...I've never worked for anyone but myself. So every dollar I've ever made has been by "my own initiative" I guess.
I just never seem to strike any of these fucking apparently super simple ideas that generate massive income for doing almost nothing that posts like this always talk about. And I am sure they are real. But it's pretty god damned frustrating hearing about this shit.
I'd rather invest my money in myself than index funds that might make me wealthy when I'm 70... I have too many medical problems for that plan.
You make it abundantly clear this is the case
Hence looking for concrete advice on how to improve.
It's possible there is none, and it's all just innate talent though.
You could check out some of the free book chapters of Gorilla Mindset (Soundcloud) from a guy writing a rather TRP blog. I think it follows the step-by-step formula model you're looking for.
I haven't bought the book myself but the insight from those free chapters gave me some food for thought.
How do you change your mindset from a beta to alpha? You read, study and practice until it becomes second nature.
There is a defined set of steps and materials to make that change though. You know what you are practicing and aiming for.
Awesome post! I've been after starting a business for some time now. I've settled on investing in rentals, but still having a hard time finding a good property.
I'll start beating the bushes again and take this post to heart.
I will offer one addition to this that may seem like common sense:
"Nothing's free in Waterworld!" You need to be able to flip-flop to the mindset where everything relating to your business boils down to billable time, parts, labor, service etc. or expenses for write-offs.
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I created foolproof forms for the schools in my district. Since all people are incredibly stupid with computers there was a need for that. I actually only had to do one form and the rest was copy&paste. Very good weekend job I could do in my underwear.
Thanks, that was a good course correction, at my startup (www.greenlabsoftware.com) I've been focusing on creating some big crazy solution to all the worlds problems. I need to focus my efforts on something simple that solves peoples problems.
Find a more solid niche. Right now, you're too broad.
One of my businesses on the side is doing similar to what you're doing. However, I focus my services and product line directly towards real estate agents. Find a niche for yourself.
I've hardly commented on TRP stuff in a while and this is one of the best posts I've seen here in a while.
Great post!
I would like to note, though, that there is a difference between asking a lot of money and generating even more money for the client and abusing a client's ignorance and making them pay up the wahoo for something they don't need.
Thanks for this. The examples really help put it in perspective how many opportunities are out there!
Great post. While I agreed with you vehemently beforehand, anecdotes are always inspirational and validate theory.
I'll agree that people from developing countries weren't raised the same way we were. I have many Saudi Arabian friends and they may be employees right now, but they are all about entrepreneurialism. You know that saying "you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with"? Get around some middle eastern guys. I have one who just put in a word for me with his father (whose a big time businessman) to work on an oil rig, pretty cool. Get around Saudis you might be surprised with the opportunities you are presented with.
Middle-Eastern'ers are easily the hardest customers to ever work with, because they are straight up hardcore hustlers. Bitch to work with, but I got a load of respect for them.
Incredible post. I cannot think of another post that reached this standard in a long time.
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Don't quit your boring fucking job until you no longer need it.
What are you doing this weekend? Use some of that spare time to create a website, brand, and think about the product. Next weekend, start selling it and validate that service/product. Once you have something you know you can work with, you wont even be having this problem. You'll quit as soon as you have everything in place and realize, "Going to work is just getting in the way of scaling my business". You'll quit because it's more profitable not to work there.
Love this, would you recommend any books on this type of value adding?
Jeesh... That's a broad question where I don't even know where to begin.
But in the vein of this post, "fastlane millionaire" is a good start. The audiobook is about 4 hours.
Thanks I will give it a look. Quick question, what WP themes do you use for your sites?
I just browse Themeforest and find something I think will fit the business I'm helping out.
this is gold content right here .
we need more posts like yours OP .
Fantastic post with great examples. I'm particularly impressed by your friend who developed conference check-in tech and the government training course.
How do you identify these 'hidden' opportunities? Did he work in the government and conference business prior? From what I've seen, there are many under-the-radar entrepreneurs who make big money in B2B businesses like you mentioned by identifying problems that specific companies or industries face that the world at large would not know about. In that context, I think it's OK to get a job initially with the express purpose of learning about the company and industry to start your own business down the road. You just have to keep your eyes open and ask questions.
Of course with the 'web presence' business you mentioned, none of that is necessary. Hell, if you go to the entrepreneurridealong subreddit you can see examples of people who have started local maid businesses and are making 6 figures within the first year and they'll help you start your own (LOCAL is the key!).
No, he's just a complete bad ass. I don't think he's ever had a job that didn't involve hustling. Just straight up serial entrepreneur.
Before this venture he did marketing for car dealerships, where he'd go to a dealership and offer pay for a marketing campaign for them in return for 50% of all net profits. He made a killing across the country doing this city by city. His house is massive.
He found the current idea simply because he worked a conference once, and talked to organizer who explained how much they are paying, and how limited the whole technology is. So he just figured, "Fuck, I can do that with QR codes and it's practically free on my end. I'll do it for half what you're paying for now, and provide way better data."
Yeah I love that sub. I think the whole maid business is being saturated though. However, I think the idea of "Local" is really becoming more apparent. Our economy is changing and I honestly think our future as a nation revolves around the local business model. The whole idea of multinational corporations is going to persist, but the money isn't going to be there. If you really want money, it's going to be local.
Very interesting. Why do you think this?
Well I still think large companies are going to exist, however, the good money is just going to go to the heads of them. But overall, most jobs being created today by large corporations are low skill / low wage jobs -- and I don't think this trend is going to slow down, especially with automation.
If you really want a proper upper middle class wage today and in the near future you're going to have to be a business owner. I think it's going to be a hard shift for a lot of people, since we aren't cultured nor accustom to being business owners (I think in the US it's something like .03% of people are entrepreneurs, which is shockingly low for what we consider our values).
I mean, I see it all the time. The age doesn't really matter, so many people will get a job making 15 bucks an hour and just be happy that they have that job. My little sister, for one, just got a job she LOVES (honestly, it's a super cool company), and when she told me how much she was getting paid I just didn't understand it. She doesn't live in a cheap area, and housing is no joke. Then I asked her how long it'll take to climb the latter and start getting paid enough to live comfortably, and she said she'll probably be able to get a promotion in a few years which comes with a few dollars raise. Which to me, is just mind blowing that it's so normalized to make so little with so little opportunity as an average worker.
Heck even I've looked into it, and everything is entry level (low skill) and when you look into the company there really isn't much room to grow, and those positions to grow into generally are very limited and still not stellar in terms of pay. I know very few people who make good money who aren't business owners.
I think all of this is a symptom of a new model we are going to have to get used to, rather than just a poor economy. I honestly think this is the new standard, and it's only going to get worse. We are going to have to shift our mentality from being a member within the economy, contributing to efficeintly distributing value, to management of resources. Those working directly for others are always going to get shafted as they are all going to be low skill jobs, and those making money are going to be the ones managing these resources with technology.
This is all solid advice, thanks so much for writing it up. That last paragraph is especially insightful
It seems like you can profit on lazy and stupid people, sad but true
No. That's absolutely wrong, and you shouldn't think that way. People like to live their lives how they feel comfortable, and to many people learning how to use something like Wordpress is nothing more than distracting them from their personal mission of growing their business.
They aren't "lazy", they are smart. They realize the value in working with others to help them achieve their goals while themselves focus on what they are really good at.
I think there's a well-developed phase of TRP that leads to entrepreneurship. And just this morning I started working on another approach to women that I think is one they will find fulfilling, and one that puts a high amount of pressure on the man to continue to create value: seeing her as a secretary. I've been thinking about this in the back of my mind ever since I read the Power Broker, and heard about the loyalty and admiration Robert Moses's secretaries had for him. Or how Nelson Rockefeller died from a heart attack he had while banging his secretary.
If you're a great entrepreneur who is always adding value and always putting people to work, your secretary will see you as the alpha and she will become forever loyal and enamoured with you.
The reason why I am posting this here is because I like the idea of setting up businesses then getting other people to operate them for me. Another reason why I like the idea of multiple businesses is because when you're developing a business, there are inevitably plenty of times when you run into bottlenecks and you can't keep advancing the project until someone else does something or you get some kind of approval or some sub-project is completed, etc. And in those moments, you stop adding value. So it's nice to have more projects that you can turn to so you're not idling for very long. And the more work you have, the more people you can put to work.
That last sentence is relevant because I used to think of entrepreneurship as a race to retirement. In other words, how to get the most money the fastest so I could retire early and "do what I want." And yes, I want to have the freedom to do what I want. But it turns out what I want to do is create value. And not by myself, but by creatively combining as many resources and people as possible. So I now think of the measure of success for an entrepreneur as how many people he can put to and keep at work.
Pointers I got out of this:
This is epic.We need more posts like this
I have an idea and would like some advice,
I'm pretty good with computer repairs but im no pro. My family and friends always come to me for computer repairs.
So my parents own a very successful restaurant and most of the customers are from my background and are refugees. They have very little knowledge about computers. I was thinking of opening a repair shop right beside my parents restaurant since its for sale. And gain customers through my parents shop.
Or just use that place for another business idea? Btw they are middle eastern.
I'm just spit balling, but this is how I see it:
Middle Easterners are fucking cheap as hell. You'll be working on slim margins with just about every job you do.
Store fronts are expensive. You'll have a bunch of overhead which will just eat into your profits.
I'd recommend doing "In house" repairs. That way you can promote your business within the store and community, and just go directly to them (Make sure to look like a professional, even if that means bringing in a bunch of shit you wont use. They like to feel like they are getting a full service).
These days, computer repairs, dog grooming, vets, all of it, are going mobile. It's a way to cut down overhead while making it easier on the customer.
Then if you get good at that, you can expand into commercial repairs which pay way more and are more regular if they like you.
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I love it, holy shit, I love it.
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I'll be honest, I don't get you second line. But in regards to your first line:
You're absolutely right. People are going to do whatever it takes to maintain their market position. I see it with the weed industry where the CA folks started up growing ganj in their garages, made a ton of money, and are now at the top of their game. But at the same time, as weed becomes more capitalized, these same people are pushing for more regulations which increase startup costs, which push out those very people who were like them growing weed in their basement, out from the market.
Luckily, we live in a very dynamic world that's always changing. Opportunity is always out there. While one thing may get dominated by one group of people, making it hard for new comers to come in, a whole new industry is opening up seeking new people to come join the game.
The business I'm starting 2 months from now is just like this
Legalization in my state will allow for 10 major corps to produce weed for purchase. No one else is even allowed into the legal market.
Corps are killing the small business owner before they are even legally allowed to exist. Guess I need to find something else I am good at to make some cash flow. This 9-5 for someone else is slowly killing me.
I'm in NV and I made a serious effort to open a dispensary when they recently started giving out licenses. All the CA and CO fucks managed to make the law rigid as to keep out competition. It required, 1m liquid capital sitting in the bank, plus about 500k in startup costs.
They did it on purpose to push out as much competition as possible. Fuckers.
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I'm going to shoot you a PM.
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Dude, I love jerky!
I have a family memeber who sells that stuff all throughout southern CA, just by selling it door to door with businesses. I've seen it done, and you can definitely do it.
However, you're "right now" problem, is it's amatuer hour all over you. Why would I buy something from you in which I have no idea of what the product is like? You have a fucking basic HTML landing page which has no information at all on your dank jerky.
Go to themeforest.net and find a good theme which would fit your business. Spend this weekend making the site look nice.
Once you have that under control, then you can start going out there and selling that dank jerky.
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You actually own beefjerky.com? That's crazy.
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Nice. I'm not much of a domainer but that domain alone has to be easily worth 5 figures.
Also, I just noticed your username, lol.
I've had, to what I think, is a fantastic business idea for awhile no. I live in a college town and there is absolutely no one providing this service that would seem like a no brainer. I was always afraid of starting it up due to low funds because college and a shit ton of laws/taxes I'm completely ignorant of.
Is there a resource I can look into for a step by step guide to entrepreneurship that would let me know of tax laws and certain licences I'd need? Business isn't my major but the motivation is definitely there and I don't think it's way over my head. Any help would be great.
You don't have a business until it's working. Don't wipe your ass before you shit. Forget taxes, laws, permits. Unless your business is ripping up streets or needs a store front like a restaurant or some such thing, you won't need any of those things until you are working.
Execute, execute, execute. Then worry about everything else.
If i could summarise what OP is saying: "there are alot of fools with money that can be scammed"
What? I do not advocate scamming or ripping people off. If that's what you got out of it, you must have misread. I'm advocating that people crate value somewhere and add that value to other's business'
One important thing to remember is that businesses aren't cleaning burning efficient engines of commerce. Everyday you see someone making a comment about how a business wouldn't do something because it's inefficient or wasteful, not considering the human factor of not caring or knowing better.
With this, then throw in the "I know better than them" factor and a lot of doors open up.