Going Fastlane Like My Life Depends On It.. (continued)

[mikecarlooch]

I'm not going to lie, it's one of those times right now where I feel a little helpless, depressed, unsure of what direction to move in.

For the next month we don't really have a way to push our product out unless we come up with some way (we spent $5k to get what we need built, and it's going to take a month).

The truth is, we may lose clients and need to start over.

We thought ads would cut it, but unfortunately it won't.

I know it's part of the process, but wow. This has been a massive series of highs and lows. Getting calls from clients asking what's going on and needing to tell them the situation is not fun.

Anyone else feel this way? Just things you start doing more of when you're not aiming in the direction you want to..

for me it's too much reading. In order to cope with the fact that I have no idea what to do I turn to books to waste time, or the gym, or this forum (lol)

Or spending time strategizing shiny ideas of doing something else that seems more attractive.

This thread is about being honest on my journey, and right now it's not so good!!

 

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[pascal]

I'm not going to lie, it's one of those times right now where I feel a little helpless, depressed, unsure of what direction to move in.

For the next month we don't really have a way to push our product out unless we come up with some way (we spent $5k to get what we need built, and it's going to take a month).

The truth is, we may lose clients and need to start over.

We thought ads would cut it, but unfortunately it won't.

I know it's part of the process, but wow. This has been a massive series of highs and lows. Getting calls from clients asking what's going on and needing to tell them the situation is not fun.

Anyone else feel this way? Just things you start doing more of when you're not aiming in the direction you want to..

for me it's too much reading. In order to cope with the fact that I have no idea what to do I turn to books to waste time, or the gym, or this forum (lol)

Or spending time strategizing shiny ideas of doing something else that seems more attractive.

This thread is about being honest on my journey, and right now it's not so good!!

My advice I should tell, is to you use 3As commandment from the book of mj(ACT,ACCESS, ADJUST), and also I'm really happy you found the mistake you've made , so let's your direction now be the way of finding the solution or answers to that mistake. so Stay strong my brother one love

 

[mikecarlooch]

It's happening.. a realization that the business I'm in currently can make a good living short term, but not a fortune.

We face two challenges -

1. If we obtain too many clients, we have a higher chance of breaching legality and facing consequences
2. In 1-2 years there will likely be even stronger regulations on what we're doing

So you know what..?

I feel like the reason I've chosen a business that is on the border of legality is because I'm looking for some kind of "quick" way to do it.

No. We're starting something new.

My business partner and I had a long conversation. We can keep doing what we're doing, but it's just going to make a living in the short term. Our company has some valuable assets and a great offer.

What does this new project entail?

Let's put it this way. It's not some internet marketing thing or something where some corporate oligarch can shut us down.

It requires us to obtain government licenses, capital, and software.

Step 1 & 2 is figuring out the cost of the software and how we can obtain the legal contracts

Step 3 is - after we show that we're able to get those licenses, we pitch investors because when we have these licenses we know we have something that has very difficult entry barriers.

We will need to obtain legal advice from attorneys.

Aka, this is a REAL business, and we got the insight from my partner who is a 20 year real estate veteran and spotted the need for what this company will do.

Going fastlane like my life depends on it.. Yes.. We may have a potential failure on our hands, but we're going for big with this next company. If we can obtain - the required legalities, good development, a lot of users, and a lot of capital, the goal is 9-10 figures long term.

As a matter of fact, this type of business is way more aligned with my personal 10 year long term goals.

And I'm going to do it completely legally, providing real value that creates true wealth in the world.

Let's see where life takes us.

 

[Gio.N33]

For those unfamiliar, I have a thread in the INSIDERS section of the fastlane forum detailing my journey of execution and basically giving my all to the pursuit of entrepreneurship. Why a new thread? Because I'm too cheap to pay for INSIDERS and I want to continue documenting publicly.

If you read the thread, it's basically a sh*t show - I think I tried 5 or 6 different business ideas in the life of that thread that failed and probably 8 since I joined this forum, and probably 20 in the past 5 years. Everything from dropshipping to ebay to cryptocurrency to amazon to Minecraft servers to famous tiktoker to basketball cards to video editing agency to MLMs to liquidation business to social media guru to god knows what else LOL. Yes, tekkel syndrome indeed, for those of you who read TMF .

To pick up from where I left off, I (very recently) after years of trying things out, dedicated myself to an industry, and I will not leave it. I unexpectedly fell into the world of programming, and unexpectedly fell into the world of real estate where I need to generate massive amounts of leads, do calls, make offers, the whole shabang, which was a pretty foreign (and terrifying) thing to me 3 months ago.

So.. I quickly realized that I was curious enough about these two things to become obsessed and that I'm good at them, and I could just combine them.. And there's my industry.

As someone who's conditioned myself to seek out entrepreneurial opportunities, I went in looking for needs. What does this company I'm working for need? What can I create? What do I need to learn? What skillsets do I need to learn and who do I need to partner with..?

So.. I did. I spotted a need - very quickly..

But I didn't mention it to ANYONE until two months in.

Why?

Because I KNEW that my first client.. Was the company I'm working for.

And as a new guy in the company, I wasn't just about to pitch some idea to them.. No.

I had to first gain their trust by overdelivering in what I was there to do.

I realized that the amount of leads they were getting was minuscule - a few people sitting in a room waiting for a lead to come through on a facebook ad, I noticed some days there would only be 2 leads that came through or even NONE, and it felt like a massive waste of f*cking time..

I had enough of it - so I said - hey - here's what I'm gonna do - I'm gonna generate my own leads.

So they looked at me like.. "Ok...." a little shocked but really - not believing me.

I figured that if I could deliver on my promise to get them leads, they would trust me on my other things and maybe even take me up on my idea. and be a client.

Within 5 days I had generated them more leads than.. seemingly.. They've ever gotten by utilizing some creative strategies that I had a feeling were going to work, because I've used them before in other industries. All of a sudden we had no one to call, to having hundreds of people to call. And I can't go here without referencing @Johnny boy .

So I delivered on my promise to generate leads and got a solid amount of contracts signed within my first month in the company.

At this point I felt great about myself because I actually felt valuable - like all these years of inaction and doing stupid bullshit that wasn't going to work was finally getting somewhere.

So I continued overdelivering and about 2 weeks ago I decided to ask the big question - "My programmer friend and I are looking to create something for people like you - so I gotta ask - what do you wish existed for your business that you don't currently have?"

To my surprise - remember how I said I had an idea? He mentioned the SAME EXACT idea I had in my head.

Let's back up though - I also said I was scared to ask that question because I had no idea how to build it.

How did I solve that problem? 2 ways. I have dedicated my whole life to becoming an expert in what I want to become an expert in, and I intentionally made friends with a programmer who was also entrepreneurial-minded in college.

You know what I realized? College is one of those places where a bunch of super-talented people have nothing to do all day.

So - I partnered with him. We got a software product built for one thing that was pretty cool..

After building that project - which was kind of just a thing we did for fun but didn't really have the kind of utility we wanted..

I sent a text to the company I work for and said - "Hey - we can build you this thing - do you want it?"

Not only did they tell me they wanted it - but they told me HOW and even provided things to help me out to make it as good as possible.

So.. I took that information - drew up exactly what we wanted - sent it over to my programming friend - and now we have a functional product built that is not currently public.. It's only available for the specific company that we MADE IT FOR.

The way I'm going about it is this - I figured if we can take Paul Graham's saying "do things that don't scale" and once again overdeliver for just ONE company and make it a total godsend for the company - another will want it, then another, and then 1000.

Now - I don't want to get too optimistic - I have no f*cking idea what's going to happen. The story is to be continued...

The biggest thing I've learned the past 2 months?

When you find your thing, invest deeply. The reason I now see that I've felt anxious about the future and scatterbrained and not knowing what to do with my life was because I wasn't investing deeply in anything education-wise or execution-wise.

Even though we're just a little startup, I've never felt more meaning and purpose and passion in my life than I do right now - and failures may happen - but I do know that one of the most important things in business according to many people is that if failures are not scaling, you're doing something wrong.

To be continued.....

This is gold. Thanks for sharing!

 

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[mikecarlooch]

We have a general idea of what we need to make this new company work. It’s really just tinkering right now, but we have a general idea.

The licenses we need to make this work will cost roughly $100k.

Building the initial software will also be a cost.

Our strategy is to build an MVP for the software, then pitch our idea to an investor who will help us fund the path toward getting the needed licenses.

From there we will have an unfair advantage in what we’re doing and can show investors that we have 1. A software and 2. A legal ability to do what we want to do.

The software is the easy part. The hard part is marketing & legal abilities (and getting enough money to make this happen)

From there we need to get people to use it. We’ll need many different skill sets to make this happen.

Just an idea right now? Yes. But we’ve already found a developer who is going to help us build our minimum viable product.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

We have a general idea of what we need to make this new company work. It’s really just tinkering right now, but we have a general idea.

The licenses we need to make this work will cost roughly $100k.

Building the initial software will also be a cost.

Our strategy is to build an MVP for the software, then pitch our idea to an investor who will help us fund the path toward getting the needed licenses.

From there we will have an unfair advantage in what we’re doing and can show investors that we have 1. A software and 2. A legal ability to do what we want to do.

The software is the easy part. The hard part is marketing & legal abilities (and getting enough money to make this happen)

From there we need to get people to use it. We’ll need many different skill sets to make this happen.

Just an idea right now? Yes. But we’ve already found a developer who is going to help us build our minimum viable product.

It’s a long shot brother, I’m going to be honest with you, but I admire you for taking it on and hope you succeed!

Personally I always prefer opportunities where you don’t ask for cash from someone else (ie without investors). If someone gives you money, they own you. To a certain extent, it’s not your business anymore. You lose your freedom.

 

[mikecarlooch]

It’s a long shot brother, I’m going to be honest with you, but I admire you for taking it on and hope you succeed!

Personally I always prefer opportunities where you don’t ask for cash from someone else (ie without investors). If someone gives you money, they own you. To a certain extent, it’s not your business anymore. You lose your freedom.

I either succeed or learn..

As long as it's looked at from that angle, I can't lose.

I've always wanted to give a go at a hypergrowth startup.

If it is truly a horrible and impossible thing, atleast I got it out of my system.

I read in "The Unfair Advantage" something along the lines of this - "kill yourself building a hypergrowth startup or build a $3m / year business with good profits & live happily ever after"

Honestly just can't see myself living life without trying to give a super good shot at a company like this atleast once, lol.

And I'm assuming business is the same way as weightlifting in some sense - 225 lbs feels much lighter after the previous weight you did was 405 lbs. In this case the hypergrowth attempt allows for a smaller success to feel like lighter work.

Plus more insights and skills will be uncovered in the journey that can be used in future.

 

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[Joel.U]

This is an increadible thread, highly inspiring and very honest. I really admire your determination and progress and hard decisions you've made Mike. I will definitely be subscribing to this thread and follow your journey