I've been meaning to make a thread like this for some time now due to the messages I've been getting regarding my business posts.

I'm 19 and from a relatively poor family that has eventually become somewhat rich due to my father's role.

At the age of 17 I started my own business from absolute scratch and still maintain it till this day. After starting my first business, other options began to open up and I opened up multiple streams of income. In my absolute prime, I was making stupid amounts of money for my age and it was all passive. I had people working for me, I paid their rents, fees, trips. I bought my first car and paid for a year's insurance. That alone should tell you how I was doing.

I take the term "entrepreneur" seriously. I didn't just open an online store then call myself an entrepreneur the next day. It's my mindset that makes me who I am.

I'm going to share a few things I've learned in this lifestyle that might be helpful to some people here. Trust me, when you've dealt with the business world a couple of drunk girls in a nightclub don't mean shit.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned from this is that people WILL betray you for money. Money changes people. When I was earning quite a big amount of money and gained something of a reputation in the community, I became friends with a guy who was in a similar situation but was barely making any money.

I gave him tips, offered to help him and promote his work all because I genuinely saw him as a friend. One day he asks me to send him money for a certain thing. I delayed the process but did it with a joke. The moment I dropped the joke, I logged out only to come back and see a flurry of insults and accusations thrown my way. The guy I saw as a friend was calling me evil, using every word in the book, hell he even compared me to Hitler and said that I wasn't treating my workers right. I still have the messages and here is a quote:

"I don't even make one third of how much you make and you can't even give a few dollars for a friend."

It proceeds with dozens of insults and how I am a bad person etc. We cut our friendship there but he also revealed that he hated me from the start but only stayed because he wanted to see me destroyed.

The second lesson is that people only care about themselves. People will trample over you if give them the slightest opportunity and don't try to teach a pig to fly.

Last year I got a group of male and female developers together to come together to create something massive that would bring in a ton of money. One of the developers made slightly more money than me and would often challenge me in every situation because everybody saw me as the leader. I once had a conversation with him telling him exactly how he could make more money in a month. He shot back with:

"If it's so easy, why haven't you done it?"

I literally gave this guy a straight forward method to making 2k more than he already earns and instead of going ahead and doing it, he challenged me and refused.

People don't really care much about your style unless/if they can see that you have social proof and even then, it needs to be higher than theirs to be successful. This can be applied to dating situations too. When I was starting out at the age of 17, I had zero money and no way to hire a single worker. I remember messaging people promising them money if they would work with me. Obviously all refused, some didn't even answer. Skip a year later and I had people emailing me for work. One guy who worked in the computing industry took time out of his work (with his boss's permission) to make and create a demo that he could send to me so that I could approve it and maybe display it in one of my projects. I've also had articles and interviews done on me and my projects. All of this happened because of the social proof. Very few people have actually spoken to me directly but they know of my brand and will cave in. However if at all the person has a higher gathering than me, they wouldn't even pay a second notice.

This lesson is by far the most important one I've learned in all my time of doing this. The art of learning to deal with criticisms. This was genuinely the hardest thing for me to learn and I'm still learning it. To further explain, some of my businesses sell products and some make programs and video games. In the video game section and product section, you'll get people who openly insult and criticise you in every way. Now this isn't a case of ignoring them. They can easily corrupt those who do like your work which eventually causes you to lose funds. It's a whole different ball game when you're reading things over a screen, people calling you all sorts of shit and insulting something you spent hours on. I remember in my early days not being able to look at articles and reviews written on my products because you'd see the occasionally unjustified hate.

You can have 500 people in a room listening to you and all it takes is one loud voice to separate the crowd. I remember one point it got to a terrible level when people were openly insulting the work of one of my workers. She had spent weeks finishing it then read some comments in her free time only to see hate. She messaged me distraught and asked me if she could change it.

All I'll say about this is that if people hate what you are doing, you're very often doing something right.

Lessons:

  • People WILL betray you for money. No questions asked.
  • People only care about themselves.
  • People will trample over you if give them the slightest opportunity.
  • Don't try to teach a pig to fly. You can't do it and it annoys the pig.
  • People don't care much about your style unless/if they can see that you have social proof that is higher than theirs to be successful.
  • If people hate what you are doing, you're very often doing something right.
  • This is more a tip than a lesson and I learned this straight from the "How to win friends and influence people" book. If you want someone to do something, appeal to their needs and praise them. I had a guy once delay work for 3 weeks which exceeded my deadline. Instead of being angry, I thanked him and told him that his work had improved and he was doing much better. The dude was over the moon.

Also as a quick side note, the majority of my workers are all females. Probably only two males out of 30ish people. This is because women are easier to work with than males. As strange as it sounds, the women aren't ambitious at all. One of the guys is currently trying to start his own thing on the side so that he can eventually be his own boss. The women on the other hand are very happy to keep getting paid a certain amount from me every month. Hell, in the early days some would even try to flirt to get more. I won't comment much on this but I did find it interesting.

Cheers

EDIT------

A few of the groups I mentor have recommended that I create some sort of blog where everyone can come and read what I have to say. I decided to also share it here.

https://absentmasculinity.com/

It's a basic WordPress blog with no bullshit popups, course nonsense or motivational speeches. I give methods not motivation. You won't find tips on how to text girls so if that is your interest, the blog won't be for you.

I should also add that this blog is partly catered to the groups I mentor in which I teach them ways to be successful and stand out from the crowd. You may find my terminology there to be a little harsher than it is here on Reddit. You are also free to contact me over there if you have any direct inquires.