An intro after 2 years of being here

[pfadlos]

Fellow Wantrepreneur here. I listened to The Millionaire Fast-lane back in 2022, since then "becoming an Entrepreneur" has always been on my mind. Right now I'm a HENRY (High-Earner, not rich yet). I do freelance work as a software engineer in a specific niche, basically ensuring that people can buy sliced meat and cheese in grocery stores.

I'm consistently making about 15-20k euros a month, before taxes though. After taxes 7-10k are left. I'm 26 years old, moved to Spain this year, away from my home country Germany. At the moment I'm living in a van that I build out myself throughout a year worth of weekends. Moved to Spain because Germany basically sucks weather wise. I prefer the climate around here much more. The move here does come with one very big hurdle: The language barrier. People here really only speak Spanish, English is not really common, so I have to invest *a lot* of time learning Spanish right now, because otherwise my life here is going to be quite miserable if I want to connect to locals and find a social circle outside of other expats.

I have a monthly spending of around 1000 euros, so I can basically save up a lot of money. Right now having 150k sitting around + the van that I could easily sell for 50k .

I'm so torn between continuing this time-trade or embarking on building a business that is not tied up to my time. Because every month when the invoices get paid I'm like: With my current spending one month of work provide me with 9 months of leeway where I can focus on building something untied to my time.

If I continue living my life like this, saving up 7-8k a month stupidly into ETFs, even after inflation, I'd be a millionaire in 8 years. Wheyyy. But this is just tied to so many factors that are not in my control, and that can change quite fast.

I do see a lot of problems in my niche that could be solved by software, but the demand is surely not really high, since only a few companies would have the need for these solutions, and they're not willing to pay enough to make it a million dollar business. But I'm not even sure if I want to continue with doing software, everyday after working for my clients I'm so done with sitting on my computer and coding. I just don't know what I want out of life at the moment.

My life feels miserable, even though it should not. I hope for myself I'll get out of this rut. Thanks for reading my first post here. I will work on getting out of this. I know that I'm still on the slowlane right now, and I think I am also quite good in the slow lane, but it does feel totally unsatisfying.

I will come back here at one point and see how this story has evolved.

 

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[Kevin88660]

Fellow Wantrepreneur here. I listened to The Millionaire Fast-lane back in 2022, since then "becoming an Entrepreneur" has always been on my mind. Right now I'm a HENRY (High-Earner, not rich yet). I do freelance work as a software engineer in a specific niche, basically ensuring that people can buy sliced meat and cheese in grocery stores.

I'm consistently making about 15-20k euros a month, before taxes though. After taxes 7-10k are left. I'm 26 years old, moved to Spain this year, away from my home country Germany. At the moment I'm living in a van that I build out myself throughout a year worth of weekends. Moved to Spain because Germany basically sucks weather wise. I prefer the climate around here much more. The move here does come with one very big hurdle: The language barrier. People here really only speak Spanish, English is not really common, so I have to invest *a lot* of time learning Spanish right now, because otherwise my life here is going to be quite miserable if I want to connect to locals and find a social circle outside of other expats.

I have a monthly spending of around 1000 euros, so I can basically save up a lot of money. Right now having 150k sitting around + the van that I could easily sell for 50k .

I'm so torn between continuing this time-trade or embarking on building a business that is not tied up to my time. Because every month when the invoices get paid I'm like: With my current spending one month of work provide me with 9 months of leeway where I can focus on building something untied to my time.

If I continue living my life like this, saving up 7-8k a month stupidly into ETFs, even after inflation, I'd be a millionaire in 8 years. Wheyyy. But this is just tied to so many factors that are not in my control, and that can change quite fast.

I do see a lot of problems in my niche that could be solved by software, but the demand is surely not really high, since only a few companies would have the need for these solutions, and they're not willing to pay enough to make it a million dollar business. But I'm not even sure if I want to continue with doing software, everyday after working for my clients I'm so done with sitting on my computer and coding. I just don't know what I want out of life at the moment.

My life feels miserable, even though it should not. I hope for myself I'll get out of this rut. Thanks for reading my first post here. I will work on getting out of this. I know that I'm still on the slowlane right now, and I think I am also quite good in the slow lane, but it does feel totally unsatisfying.

I will come back here at one point and see how this story has evolved.

If your current service is not location dependent you just need to move to somewhere with a lower tax rate.

With a marginal tax rate more than 50 percent it is daylight robbery.

If you keep most of the $15-20k you can hit low 7 figure net wealth in ten years.

With your credential as a successful freelancer you can sell courses online, which is pretty scalable.

 

[Andy Black]

Fellow Wantrepreneur here. I listened to The Millionaire Fast-lane back in 2022, since then "becoming an Entrepreneur" has always been on my mind. Right now I'm a HENRY (High-Earner, not rich yet). I do freelance work as a software engineer in a specific niche, basically ensuring that people can buy sliced meat and cheese in grocery stores.

I'm consistently making about 15-20k euros a month, before taxes though. After taxes 7-10k are left. I'm 26 years old, moved to Spain this year, away from my home country Germany. At the moment I'm living in a van that I build out myself throughout a year worth of weekends. Moved to Spain because Germany basically sucks weather wise. I prefer the climate around here much more. The move here does come with one very big hurdle: The language barrier. People here really only speak Spanish, English is not really common, so I have to invest *a lot* of time learning Spanish right now, because otherwise my life here is going to be quite miserable if I want to connect to locals and find a social circle outside of other expats.

I have a monthly spending of around 1000 euros, so I can basically save up a lot of money. Right now having 150k sitting around + the van that I could easily sell for 50k .

I'm so torn between continuing this time-trade or embarking on building a business that is not tied up to my time. Because every month when the invoices get paid I'm like: With my current spending one month of work provide me with 9 months of leeway where I can focus on building something untied to my time.

If I continue living my life like this, saving up 7-8k a month stupidly into ETFs, even after inflation, I'd be a millionaire in 8 years. Wheyyy. But this is just tied to so many factors that are not in my control, and that can change quite fast.

I do see a lot of problems in my niche that could be solved by software, but the demand is surely not really high, since only a few companies would have the need for these solutions, and they're not willing to pay enough to make it a million dollar business. But I'm not even sure if I want to continue with doing software, everyday after working for my clients I'm so done with sitting on my computer and coding. I just don't know what I want out of life at the moment.

My life feels miserable, even though it should not. I hope for myself I'll get out of this rut. Thanks for reading my first post here. I will work on getting out of this. I know that I'm still on the slowlane right now, and I think I am also quite good in the slow lane, but it does feel totally unsatisfying.

I will come back here at one point and see how this story has evolved.

Grow what you know? Use your current skills, network, and experience to create assets that bring revenue long after they're built?

 

[Panos Daras]

You are crushing it already. Keep going! If it works don't touch it. Just learn Spanish and follow @Andy Black advice above.

 

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[pfadlos]

Grow what you know? Use your current skills, network, and experience to create assets that bring revenue long after they're built?

Andy, thanks for your input! I watched two of your YT vids recently, kinda cool getting a reply from you.

It's a simple advice to be fair, I do think about creating such assets, but what mostly comes to my mind are software products, that I'm unsure about if someone would actually use them. I built a 4 over the past few years, all of them got zero traction, and I abandoned them.

Over the past couple of weeks I read more about evaluating and validating your business ideas, before you actually build something. So that is what I'm currently trying. Having a call scheduled for next week with a client of mine that I'm thinking about selling a particular piece of software, that is also relevant for a bigger market. I'll start a separate thread in the next few days. It is nice posting here and getting someone to read it, as it adds a piece of accountability, which I truly like to have + it does make me reflect on my own actions more.

 

[Jobless]

Andy, thanks for your input! I watched two of your YT vids recently, kinda cool getting a reply from you.

It's a simple advice to be fair, I do think about creating such assets, but what mostly comes to my mind are software products, that I'm unsure about if someone would actually use them. I built a 4 over the past few years, all of them got zero traction, and I abandoned them.

Over the past couple of weeks I read more about evaluating and validating your business ideas, before you actually build something. So that is what I'm currently trying. Having a call scheduled for next week with a client of mine that I'm thinking about selling a particular piece of software, that is also relevant for a bigger market. I'll start a separate thread in the next few days. It is nice posting here and getting someone to read it, as it adds a piece of accountability, which I truly like to have + it does make me reflect on my own actions more.

Don't develop any software unless you understand the problem it solves. The solution does not need to be elegant but you must be an expert at understanding the problem. Why does the need exist? What difficulties have others encountered, preventing them from a good solution? How many attempts have been made to solve this? What angles of solution have not been attempted? If solved, what are the ramifications?

I'd also suggest not selling or sharing the software solution. The task is to sell RECURRING TEMPORARY SOLUTIONS, not PERMANENT SOFTWARE TOOLS. Don't give away the only thing you've got! If you truly solve some type of unique problem through software, make that algorithm the core of a new company. Now you have proprietary software and some type of advantage over any competition. Don't reveal the full problem or solution, just deliver the the end value. Don't explain how you do it. This is best done if your software solves problems in the non-digital realm.

This is not possible if it's a simple SaaS that helps a business save 1% on costs. It has to have major impact and act as a business system in a way that many small improvements compound,--- or affect the most critical part of the business (the bottleneck commonly affecting and limiting your competition). Where find a niche industry where such a critical bottleneck can be solved? Don't look where other tech people are interested. Run in the opposite direction.

 

[Andy Black]

It's a simple advice to be fair, I do think about creating such assets, but what mostly comes to my mind are software products, that I'm unsure about if someone would actually use them. I built a 4 over the past few years, all of them got zero traction, and I abandoned them.

What about a simple online calculator or tool? Could you create something your market could use for free and take it from there?

Having a call scheduled for next week with a client of mine that I'm thinking about selling a particular piece of software, that is also relevant for a bigger market.

Cool. Talking to people is good, especially those already paying you.

I'll start a separate thread in the next few days.

Or you could just keep going with this thread?

 

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[pfadlos]

Don't develop any software unless you understand the problem it solves. The solution does not need to be elegant but you must be an expert at understanding the problem. Why does the need exist? What difficulties have others encountered, preventing them from a good solution? How many attempts have been made to solve this? What angles of solution have not been attempted? If solved, what are the ramifications?

I'd also suggest not selling or sharing the software solution. The task is to sell RECURRING TEMPORARY SOLUTIONS, not PERMANENT SOFTWARE TOOLS. Don't give away the only thing you've got! If you truly solve some type of unique problem through software, make that algorithm the core of a new company. Now you have proprietary software and some type of advantage over any competition. Don't reveal the full problem or solution, just deliver the the end value. Don't explain how you do it. This is best done if your software solves problems in the non-digital realm.

This is not possible if it's a simple SaaS that helps a business save 1% on costs. It has to have major impact and act as a business system in a way that many small improvements compound,--- or affect the most critical part of the business (the bottleneck commonly affecting and limiting your competition). Where find a niche industry where such a critical bottleneck can be solved? Don't look where other tech people are interested. Run in the opposite direction.

Yeah to be honest I failed at this a couple of times, either because I did not fully understood the problem, or because I got lost in building the most elegant thing one could try to build, and in the end it never ended up going anywhere.

Your part about not selling or sharing the software solution I didn't understand fully. If you have a SaaS, licensed software or whatever, you're selling it as a temporary solution as long as customers are paying, ain't you? What is a permanent software tool for you then? Building a piece and selling them the code itself?

I see that in my niche there do exist these sorts of problems, for example many manufactures build machines and include a "kind of" standardised API that developers can use to retrieve metrics and such from those machines, and many customers want evaluations, repostings and such for their production lines. Most of the time such production lines consist of many different machines from different vendors, all having a slightly different API. Retrieving valuable information about how to optimise production would lead to them saving / making several hundres of thousands of dollars each year, just for a single line.
And then it comes to the problem that even if they have the data, they don't know how to act on them / what they can actually get out of them.

So this is one of the problems I'm thinking of solving, but building something that provides value and is understandable does require a development effort of maybe 2-3 years.
But I don't see too many Twitter tech bro's in these hardware / manufacturing realm.

 

[pfadlos]

What about a simple online calculator or tool? Could you create something your market could use for free and take it from there?


Cool. Talking to people is good, especially those already paying you.


Or you could just keep going with this thread?

A free tool would kind of act like a "lead magnet" I assume? Related to my post above for example a savings calculator that could show a customer how much he could save if he optimises his production by only a fractional percentage in one or two parameters?

Yeah I guess that does make it easier, didn't think it would fit the "Intro" anymore, but yeah whatever. I'll go on here.

 

[Jobless]

Yeah to be honest I failed at this a couple of times, either because I did not fully understood the problem, or because I got lost in building the most elegant thing one could try to build, and in the end it never ended up going anywhere.

Your part about not selling or sharing the software solution I didn't understand fully. If you have a SaaS, licensed software or whatever, you're selling it as a temporary solution as long as customers are paying, ain't you? What is a permanent software tool for you then? Building a piece and selling them the code itself?

I see that in my niche there do exist these sorts of problems, for example many manufactures build machines and include a "kind of" standardised API that developers can use to retrieve metrics and such from those machines, and many customers want evaluations, repostings and such for their production lines. Most of the time such production lines consist of many different machines from different vendors, all having a slightly different API. Retrieving valuable information about how to optimise production would lead to them saving / making several hundres of thousands of dollars each year, just for a single line.
And then it comes to the problem that even if they have the data, they don't know how to act on them / what they can actually get out of them.

So this is one of the problems I'm thinking of solving, but building something that provides value and is understandable does require a development effort of maybe 2-3 years.
But I don't see too many Twitter tech bro's in these hardware / manufacturing realm.

Yes, what I meant about not selling a software solution is that you can also use such a solution in your own business, to help you deliver a non-code solution. Instead of selling SaaS or custom software that helps run machines in a factory, you create your own factory, where your software inventions gives you a competitive advantage others aren't even aware of. Or you sell the machines themselves, a piece of hardware in which your software is contained, etc. Think creatively and find a niche where you can combine different fields of knowledge.

 

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