Which road is the quickest way to Rome for a fresh economy graduate?

[pixelvendor]

Hey guys, 23 year old fresh economics & real estate agent graduate from northern europe here.

I finished my bachelor at the university this summer and I'm currently at a crossroads in life regarding the type of job I want to get and what type of business I want to start out of the options I have. The point of this post is to hopefully hear what some of you fastlaners would have done if you were to "start over" and woke up in my shoes, all inputs are appreciated though!

A little backstory: I worked as a D2D salesman selling internet, TV & broadband for 2 months during the summer. It was very taxing, I had 0 free time, worked late nights, slept in a room with 3 other dudes away from home. But the selling and the actual work was pretty fun - the lifestyle just wasn't sustainable. Before this I've renovated a single family rental property for my parents but not much work experience other than that.
Moving on, I don't really care what job I get as I'm easily entertained and can get hooked to anything I put my mind to. The more important thing for me is that I choose a job that either helps or at the very least doesn't take away too much from my long term goals. Since I'm currently broke with around $4k to my name not getting a job isn't really an option.


The goal:
Getting a functioning business that meets as many fastlane commandments as possible as soon as possible.

Subgoals
- choosing a beneficial job.
- choosing the fastest lane business.

Regarding jobs, these are my options:

Work in economics

• Positives
  - Has the benefit of teaching me accounting and bookkeeping which will be valuable in any business I start.
  - Has the benefit of being quite mundane and boring which will most likely leave more energy and time on the table to put into my business.
  - Can move back to my moms house to not pay rent. (Can also be a negative)

Negatives​

- No way of affecting income generated.​

- Boring as shit.​

Work in sales

• Positives
  - I will learn the valuable skills of selling which can be applied to many areas of life, including connecting with people and improving business profitability.
  - Has the potential for magnitude if I sell for example solar panels or some expensive B2B software.
  - Possible to increase salary by becoming better.
  
  
• Negatives
  - It's most likely very time and energy consuming which may leave little resources to put into my business.
  - Can't move back home to avoid rent.

Work as real estate agent

• Positives
  - Has magnitude since I will focus on pricy real estate.
  - Can affect income.
  - Will learn need oriented sales.
  - Better understanding of real estate market.
  
  
• Negatives
  - Most definitely time and energy consuming as F*ck - especially in the beginning.
  - Low pay to begin with which might lead to little money buildup.
  - The money upside most likely doesn't outweigh the time investment required to reach those highs.

According to WADM I should choose sales but then again, this is all based on my limited knowledge of the three industries (I've never worked in economics just making educated guesses)



Business roads

CSGO trading firm - buying and selling virtual csgo skins for a fairly low but safe profit.

• Control
  I will be able to control how much I make to a reasonable extent as it will be directly correlated to how many deals I find/how much time I spend sourcing.
• Entry
  Fairly low barrier of entry as anyone with money and a bit of knowledge of the skin market can jump in.
• Need
  People always need to sell/buy new skins so the need is there.
• Time
  It's fairly time consuming to hunt skins manually and it's very hard to automate this unless I manage to find a kid I can pay $3 for every deal he sources for me (which isn't impossible).
• Scale
  Very hard to scale without getting creative and building a website but there's already well developed websites out there so that path is fairly crowded.
  

Selling on Amazon FBA - reselling products for a profit on Amazon without having to actually ship the products myself with online/retail arbitrage.

• Control
  Mid control since Amazon can shut me off when they feel like but it's quite rare that they do it permanently so I'd say mid.
• Entry
  Mid entry since anyone could sell there but most people would never want to deal with the hassle of it and instead just say it's not worth it and quit.
• Need
  There's a good need since you can sell whatever is in need by being a reseller.
• Time
  Time consuming to begin but with automation and scaling you can spend less and less of your own time.
• Scale
  Good scale as you can sell 1 product or 10 000 products per month, the only thing that matters is whether your system is strong enough to sustain more.

Starting a web developing business.

• Control
  High control since it will be my own website where I control everything.
• Entry
  Fairly high entry since learning web development is a real skill that most people don't bother with.
• Need
  The need is good, a lot of businesses that are sitting on shitty websites not knowing how to break into the online world.
• Time
  Very time consuming with a steep learning curve for me who knows nothing about web development. Will however be easier to automate with time I suppose as you get consistent clients?
• Scale
  Very good scalability since I can serve people from anywhere in the world without being limited to physical resources. It does seem to perhaps cap at my ability to produce websites that people want though but I'm sure there's a way of automating this by outsourcing. Could also just raise my prices until its worth my time again.

I think I will be starting out with a skin trading business along with my job in sales while I build some capital and get used to the book keeping of running a business. Once I've got some spare capital to spend in the firm I will probably invest in learning more about Amazon FBA since I feel much more comfortable with that business model - I'm not entirely sure if this is the right long term mindset to have though as creating a web developing business might potentially be more lucrative with much higher profit margins long term. I suppose it's the steep learning curve that's scaring me off, as well as the cost of getting started (saw one course for $700 here on the forum). And to be honest, I think both Amazon FBA and web development are both good business models that scale well so in the end the most important thing may not be which one I choose but that I choose.

Writing this post has helped me get closer to making a decision and I was seriously considering not posting anymore but I thought even if I get 1 new insight from posting this it could dramatically change the trajectory of my life, which I think is a good return on my investment. So please let me know what I'm missing.

I'll make sure to update here in a year again and hopefully be able to provide some value back to the community <3

Thanks for reading!

 

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[Jobless]

You seem to have a logical and structured approach to decision-making. Maybe technical products/services and B2B would work best for you in sales. Solar panels? I’d not but hopefully you know more than I do on that. As you say, with 4K, that you do something is more important than finding the absolute best choice.

 

[pixelvendor]

You seem to have a logical and structured approach to decision-making. Maybe technical products/services and B2B would work best for you in sales. Solar panels? I’d not but hopefully you know more than I do on that. As you say, with 4K, that you do something is more important than finding the absolute best choice.

Thanks for the input, you're right I probably shouldn't worry too much about finding the "best" choice since I'll never know if it was the best anyway.