I've Wasted My Life.

[400guy]

Hello all. I'm not really sure how to classify this post. It's probably more a combination of a rant and realization. I joined this forum over 10 years ago with excitement to start something, posted some questions to get the ball roll rolling and then just stopped. Since then I have had multiple 9am-5pm jobs but was finally able to land a good job. I consider myself successful in my field, make good money for children's school, sports activities, auto leases and the once a year vacation. No matter what though, I still always randomly though about the "what if's". What if I would have opended something, what if I would have started drop-shipping early, what if I would have put money up for my wife to start her event company. Throughout all the "what if's", I still just kept moving forward like a solider with what I thought was success. It wasn't until about a month that things changed within. One of my kids said they wish they had a pool and that little statement which was so pure and innocent, pissed me off. Although it might be considered a spoiled statement, it made me question - "Why can't I have a pool". I currently rent and don't have a yard but this started to make me think, why don't I still have a house or at least a bigger place. These thoughts which should drive and push me are actually doing the opposite and suppressing me. I'm basically beating myself up for wasting precious time. When my first son was born I had dreams and plans, it is now 15 years later and I am in the same exact position. My family and I are healthy and again, I pay for so many extra activities, trips and items that my children would be considered privileged but is that it ? I still have to answer why I clocked in at 9:10am instead of 9:00am. I still have to hear my landlord telling me the kids are making too much noise and I still have to tell my wife - can food shopping wait until next week ? When all is said and done and I am 65 years old, I will finally be able to access my 401k and spend the money freely. I am furious just typing this.

Ok, rant over. Now the positive.

FINALLY, I made a move and started a small cleaning business. This is the field I am in for my daily job and consider myself experienced. It's in the commercial field which is more profitable then residential and I am able to use some of the labor and suppliers I know. I have a logo, business cards, domain email, and have been running Instagram ads. I have had some contacts with Instagram but they never came through. Any work I have had is from neighborhood locals. I am making profit but it's nothing to quit my job over but still, it's profit. This little bit of success has my mind going. The last couple of days I have been all over the place. The two things I keep coming back to are drop-shipping and private label. My wife and I always use to joke about selling these specific items. There is a market for them but unfortunately there are multiple companies, BUT marketing is key. If we can market it correctly then who knows what can happen, right ? As far as drop shipping, I know that is hit or miss. You either do good or you don't. Same with private label, except that may be worse because if you don't do go then you are stuck with the product.

What I do know is I want to do more alongside of my 9-5 and also my cleaning service. I want to have multiple things going on. It would be great if I could quite my job but not to sound negative, I don't believe that will ever be an option. The health benefits I receive override everything, especially for my wife. At this point in my life, I would be happy making $1,000 monthly profit off of one of these avenues. I know this may not be the right mindset but after years of living paycheck to paycheck, having $1,000 extra to pay bills or re-invest into something bigger would be a huge accomplishment for me.

Now the negative.

I don't have extra money to play with so I'm not sure which avenue to go. I don't have access to loans or credit cards so the little I have to invest is extremely important to me and want to make sure I spend wisely. Even though drop-shipping is saturated, can I at least get lucky with a positive couple of months ? I am not asking for anyone to hand it to me on a platter but I'm hoping someone can at least help me go in a positive direction. At one point, I was going to use chatGPT to help me right an e-book just to get something out there but I think that was the desperate part of me. I'm all over the place which is exciting.

Besides my wife who is supportive, I don't have anyone around me that I can talk with. My small circle of friends are robots and live their life textbook, step by step and will never think outside the box. If I brought this up to them, they will try to talk me out of it.

I'm hoping this turns into a positive post. Let me know your thoughts.

 

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[Panos Daras]

If you had 6 months to live what would you do? Do that. It is not over until it's over.

 

[Stargazer]

I made a move and started a small cleaning business. This is the field I am in for my daily job and consider myself experienced. It's in the commercial field which is more profitable then residential and I am able to use some of the labor and suppliers I know.

Surely this is the direction to focus on and ditch the drop-shipping, ebook and private label ideas.

Do you know how the company you currently work for aquire clients? I would be surprised if it was via Instagram which is your method.

I would figure out 1) How to get better at putting yourself infront of the right decision makers and 2) What can you do that would be a better deal than how your company does things for customers.

As a side note I would be calling myself xyz Facilities Management if this is a term used in the US? It is in the UK and medium to large companies etc tend to look for this. It also allows you to add additional services once you have started to aquire and please customers. Many corporate cleaning companies get asked the querstion 'I don't suppose you do xyz do you?'

There is a facilities management company based in a village not far from me. It's worth £8 billion. They started with cleaning and now provide everything from ground maintanance to security to building upkeep etc. ie They manage all the facilities. Businesses don't want their HR and Accounting Depts dealing with lots of different companies. It's cheaper to pay more to one larger company who will manage everything with one itemised bill.

Dan

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Focus on a real business like the cleaning operation, dropshipping is more of an arbitrage game played by amateurs looking for "easy money" and "passive income".

Even if you succeed there, you'll be constantly bombarded by the "easy money" types who you will need to compete against.

 

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[Jon822]

The past is permanently gone. The only thing worse than wasting 10 years is to waste 10 years and a day. Make the next 10 years of your life something you won't regret.

 

[ZCP]

@400guy ok. so what are you going to do about it?

having talked to / counseled / helped a LOT of people in your spot, i've found that SO many of you think you need a 'way to make money' or 'so and so made money online, i'll make money online' or 'if i just do this' i'll get what i want. nope.

you need a compelling 'why'. something to drive you to no longer accept your current life. a foot to kick you into motion and to never take 'no' for an answer. to 'make' it happen.

if someone had a gun to your family's heads, you'd do it, right?
and if you were guaranteed to have $10M if you just made 5000 cold calls, you'd do it, right?

so find your why and go do it.

But @ZCP ! i don't know the exact guaranteed way. that is correct.

take what you have and make the most of it until something hits.
use your skills and network. grow them every day.
make 5000 calls and make 200 connections.

want to keep being the sheep?
or can you find an initial 'why' and become the wolf?

 

[Johnny boy]

My buddy cleans moss off roofs.

Spends $20 a day in fb ads

He messages them and quotes them anywhere from like $300 up to $1000+

He goes and cleans their roof.

You need a ladder, a brush, a leaf blower, and some moss killer.

He works for a few hours, gets his $500 by like noon, and heads home.

Fun way to be the boss, make 5-10k a month, and takes basically nothing to start up.

Dude does simple roofs only, and you wouldn’t need a harness.

No need to complicate it.

$500 avg.

You need to clean 200 roofs to get 100k

It’s about $100 an hour.

You get 16 hours a day for 365 days.

So out of your 5,840 hours this year, you can trade 1000 of them away, and spend 4,840 remaining hours doing whatever you like, with 100 g’s in your pocket.

 

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[Kevin88660]

The faster you want to "make money" the slower your wealth progression becomes.

Get rich guru spends 2/3 years making high-quality free content on YouTube before putting out their 3-4 digits courses.

Get rich quick guru sells you get rich quick schemes while they get rich slowly (relatively).

if you factor in their training in marketing and content the whole cycle takes 5-6 years minimum.

 

[Panos Daras]

My buddy cleans moss off roofs.

Spends $20 a day in fb ads

He messages them and quotes them anywhere from like $300 up to $1000+

He goes and cleans their roof.

You need a ladder, a brush, a leaf blower, and some moss killer.

He works for a few hours, gets his $500 by like noon, and heads home.

Fun way to be the boss, make 5-10k a month, and takes basically nothing to start up.

Dude does simple roofs only, and you wouldn’t need a harness.

No need to complicate it.

$500 avg.

You need to clean 200 roofs to get 100k

It’s about $100 an hour.

You get 16 hours a day for 365 days.

So out of your 5,840 hours this year, you can trade 1000 of them away, and spend 4,840 remaining hours doing whatever you like, with 100 g’s in your pocket.

That is generally very good advice.
Not for someone 65+ though.

 

[ZCP]

That is generally very good advice.
Not for someone 65+ though.

hire out the hard stuff. build it as a business. the 'old man' can do the sales / scheduling.

there is always a way

 

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[MarxMelencio]

@400guy,

About Your cleaning Business
I think a clear, efficient business development pipeline would be of really good value for you right now.
• And to build this pipeline, what I do first is to answer this question:

** How much is the cost of acquiring a customer?

When I start answering that question, I begin to better understand what's really needed to hit my targets.
• Lots of follow-up questions from that point (all designed to formulate ways for optimizing ROI based on the cost of acquiring a customer).
** These are like, who's my ideal customer; why are they my ideal customers; aren't 'em this crowd here (because there's a lot more of 'em I can reach with minimal cost); are they this small group here (since they can definitely pay more and earn higher net for me); what to offer 'em at the backend after their first order (to maximize customer lifetime value); and so on.

About Your Targets
But I also noticed that without clarity, I'm often unable to do gainful business dev results.
• Having clarity for me in this context is, understanding my priority targets, my lifestyle targets, and my creative targets.
** And to qualify what I mean by "understanding", this means prescribing weight values to each item under these three distinct categories.

But this seems mostly "sequential"[1], i.e. Priority > Lifestyle >> Creative.
1: A considerable percentage of priority targets need to be hit before being able to hit a few lifestyle targets, and the same for lifestyle targets when hitting creative targets.

Also, I notice that my priority targets haven't changed much since the time I started.
• These are, for me, things like a fully paid home, sustainable income, good insurance coverage, and so on.
** The goal here, from how I understand it, is to reduce if not entirely eliminate critical issues due to unforeseen events.

Meanwhile, my lifestyle targets mostly change, though still in predictable ranges.
• For me, this is stuff like travel, the latest tech, comfortable cars, a full time PA, an on-call driver, and so on.
** This here's goal, for me, is growing inspiration and continued motivation.

And I continue to realize that a couple or more of my creative targets stay the same, from the time that I started.
• For me, this is the ability to invest time, energy and money in sustainable projects meaningful for me.
** Since 2004, I've been at enhancing skills training methodologies founded on tested prototyping initiatives for different disability sectors 'til today.
** And more recently (started 8 years ago), I've been engineering wearable tech for the same communities.

And what comes after clarity is, what I call a foundation idea.
• Essentially, it starts out first as a collection of ways to hit many of my priority targets, some of my lifestyle targets, and a few of my creative targets.
** And I then prune that by calibrating between attainability, viability, feasibility, repeatability, scalability, and expandability.

So when what shakes out from that iterative, creative process is one foundational idea — I formulate thought experiments to validate the most critical concepts in the idea.
• And that's when I use the agile method for gathering data, designing tests, analyzing results, devising optimization tactics, and implementing 'em, all to hit changing targets.

Best of luck!

 

[Antifragile]

Hello all. I'm not really sure how to classify this post. It's probably more a combination of a rant and realization. I joined this forum over 10 years ago with excitement to start something, posted some questions to get the ball roll rolling and then just stopped. Since then I have had multiple 9am-5pm jobs but was finally able to land a good job. I consider myself successful in my field, make good money for children's school, sports activities, auto leases and the once a year vacation. No matter what though, I still always randomly though about the "what if's". What if I would have opended something, what if I would have started drop-shipping early, what if I would have put money up for my wife to start her event company. Throughout all the "what if's", I still just kept moving forward like a solider with what I thought was success. It wasn't until about a month that things changed within. One of my kids said they wish they had a pool and that little statement which was so pure and innocent, pissed me off. Although it might be considered a spoiled statement, it made me question - "Why can't I have a pool". I currently rent and don't have a yard but this started to make me think, why don't I still have a house or at least a bigger place. These thoughts which should drive and push me are actually doing the opposite and suppressing me. I'm basically beating myself up for wasting precious time. When my first son was born I had dreams and plans, it is now 15 years later and I am in the same exact position. My family and I are healthy and again, I pay for so many extra activities, trips and items that my children would be considered privileged but is that it ? I still have to answer why I clocked in at 9:10am instead of 9:00am. I still have to hear my landlord telling me the kids are making too much noise and I still have to tell my wife - can food shopping wait until next week ? When all is said and done and I am 65 years old, I will finally be able to access my 401k and spend the money freely. I am furious just typing this.

Sounds like an FTE event, maybe you are now ready for a change? Who knows.

Ok, rant over. Now the positive.

FINALLY, I made a move and started a small cleaning business. This is the field I am in for my daily job and consider myself experienced. It's in the commercial field which is more profitable then residential and I am able to use some of the labor and suppliers I know. I have a logo, business cards, domain email, and have been running Instagram ads. I have had some contacts with Instagram but they never came through. Any work I have had is from neighborhood locals. I am making profit but it's nothing to quit my job over but still, it's profit. This little bit of success has my mind going. The last couple of days I have been all over the place. The two things I keep coming back to are drop-shipping and private label. My wife and I always use to joke about selling these specific items. There is a market for them but unfortunately there are multiple companies, BUT marketing is key. If we can market it correctly then who knows what can happen, right ? As far as drop shipping, I know that is hit or miss. You either do good or you don't. Same with private label, except that may be worse because if you don't do go then you are stuck with the product.

OK, you are about to fail so bad that you'd wish you didn't even start. How do I know that?

I am from the future!

No, you said "drop shipping" and you think it is a potential business for you. If you are going to throw away money you don't have, may I suggest something with better odds? Max out your CC and hit up a local casino, put it all on roulette number ____, doesn't matter what number. You are F*cked anyway.

What I do know is I want to do more alongside of my 9-5 and also my cleaning service. I want to have multiple things going on. It would be great if I could quite my job but not to sound negative, I don't believe that will ever be an option. The health benefits I receive override everything, especially for my wife. At this point in my life, I would be happy making $1,000 monthly profit off of one of these avenues. I know this may not be the right mindset but after years of living paycheck to paycheck, having $1,000 extra to pay bills or re-invest into something bigger would be a huge accomplishment for me.

If I knew of one way to do many things poorly, it has to be the way you described it above, to have "multiple things going on".

Now the negative.

I don't have extra money to play with so I'm not sure which avenue to go. I don't have access to loans or credit cards so the little I have to invest is extremely important to me and want to make sure I spend wisely. Even though drop-shipping is saturated, can I at least get lucky with a positive couple of months ? I am not asking for anyone to hand it to me on a platter but I'm hoping someone can at least help me go in a positive direction. At one point, I was going to use chatGPT to help me right an e-book just to get something out there but I think that was the desperate part of me. I'm all over the place which is exciting.

Besides my wife who is supportive, I don't have anyone around me that I can talk with. My small circle of friends are robots and live their life textbook, step by step and will never think outside the box. If I brought this up to them, they will try to talk me out of it.

Step 1: you must find a new circle of friends. You are the product of your own environment and your post tells me that you are like a baby that's trying to crawl, can't even walk in entrepreneurship yet.

Step 2: re-read MJ's UNSCRIPTED book. And no, I don't mean listen to it on some Audible and pretend like "I got it", no. What you do is you READ to WRITE. I said it, yes, you must write out what you learn from each chapter. It's like a homework.

I promise you, the number of times you will think "yeah, I got this, I understand" and then start writing and go "what? Why can't I write it out? This is not as simple as I thought, I don't think I get it"... will absolutely be a huge number. Humans are like that, our brains make what is familiar as something that is "known" but it isn't.

Step3: come back here and let's brainstorm what you can actually do that has a GUARANTEED way to make 10x whatever you are making now. No need for luck, no need for gimmicks, no gurus - just pure value in, money out.

In the meantime, just for shits and giggle, read this: GOLD! - MINDSET - I believe in magic, and why you should too.

I'm hoping this turns into a positive post. Let me know your thoughts.

No need to hope. We are here to help you. Seems like you've got your FTE and ready.

The best time for you to start a business was when you first thought of it decades ago, the second best? ...

 

[Panos Daras]

hire out the hard stuff. build it as a business. the 'old man' can do the sales / scheduling.

there is always a way

Sorry, I am confused don't mind my post, I thought for some reason this guy was 65.

 

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[ZCP]

Sorry, I am confused don't mind my post, I thought for some reason this guy was 65.

i think he is. doesn't matter. instead of immediately going to 'why can't i', try to help people answer 'how can i'

 

[Panos Daras]

how can i'

OK. How can I not find myself in the hospital when I am broke in a country where healthcare is not free, and I am still living paycheck to paycheck? Does that count?

 

[ZCP]

@Panos Daras start a thread for that if that is an issue. this one is for @400guy .... let's help him find 'how can i'

 

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[Raoul Duke]

My buddy cleans moss off roofs.

Spends $20 a day in fb ads

He messages them and quotes them anywhere from like $300 up to $1000+

He goes and cleans their roof.

You need a ladder, a brush, a leaf blower, and some moss killer.

He works for a few hours, gets his $500 by like noon, and heads home.

Fun way to be the boss, make 5-10k a month, and takes basically nothing to start up.

Dude does simple roofs only, and you wouldn’t need a harness.

No need to complicate it.

$500 avg.

You need to clean 200 roofs to get 100k

It’s about $100 an hour.

You get 16 hours a day for 365 days.

So out of your 5,840 hours this year, you can trade 1000 of them away, and spend 4,840 remaining hours doing whatever you like, with 100 g’s in your pocket.

Can you suggest a online biznezz though?

 

[MarxMelencio]

@Raoul Duke,

Can you suggest a online biznezz though?

If you talk to say 2 to 5 people with a service similar to what @Johnny boy described (you can even start with just one), then you'd probably be able to think of something where you promote their services through a website, a mobile app, or both, with an affiliate system between you and those service providers, send bookings their way, and earn a piece of the action.

Scale is then the straightforward (read: not quick, not easy, not simple, just straightforward) process of signing up more providers and promoting their services through your digital properties.
Meanwhile, a growth and expansion plan may be something like growing your service provider categories (roof cleaning to plumbing and electrical, for example), and expanding to other geos (like from micro local areas to state-wide and national).

Best of luck!

 

[Paydette]

1: Get better more motivational friends
2: Scale your cleaning business. ditch insta ads and go with google ads....search not network ads.
3: I owned a cleaning business that I sold within 6 months (just wasn't my thing. Scaling home service business is very easy - the hardest part is finding talent that does the work well. Everything hinges on finding the right clients in the right areas. I focused on older people in 55+ communities without cleaning services included with their service fees... and just older areas of the city itself. Automate as much as possible. Website should be simple, clean but expensive looking. Booking over the web. crisp uniforms. Well trained staff or dependable contractors. I started with contractors. one team was a superstar team. Brought them in house as my trainers and built 5 more teams from scratch.

This business can be a huge money maker.

Pick one thing and master it/have it run independent from you then start something else.

That's what I did and it has resulted in 2 marketing agencies, a fractional CMO consulting business, a Growth Partnership practice, a business automation service (I'm about 90% to being able to walk away from the daily work) and, my newest thing - an ai project.

All in 5 years.

Read the 12 week year. It is amazing what you can get done when you plan properly.

Start. Master. Optimize. Hand over. Start a new project. That's how you grow $$$ through business formation.

Good luck.

 

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[heavy_industry]

No matter what though, I still always randomly though about the "what if's". What if I would have opended something, what if I would have started drop-shipping early, what if

I'm basically beating myself up for wasting precious time.

This is a game that you are not going to win, so you might as well stop playing it - immediately.

Just like a dead person, the past is gone and nothing will bring it back. Nothing.

You either understand this right away and start moving forward toward victory, or you will be left behind, trampled to the ground, and eaten alive by wild animals.

---

Crying over the spilled milk and regretting wasted time is nothing more than an action-fake and a distraction from the mission that you STILL HAVE today.

Are you actually sorry for your past mistakes?

Prove it by doing the F*ckING WORK TODAY.

Let's go.