Hello everyone.
I want to keep this as short and to the point as possible.
I feel like I've been stuck in a rut my entire adult life.
Ever since my first job at 18, I have been trying to make extra money on the side. Between the ages of 18-25, I took a half-assed approach by trying to buy things cheap and sell them on Ebay. I barely made any money and had a very weak mindset. If it felt the tiniest bit difficult, I would give up and try something else.
When I turned 25, I had my first kid and things got serious. I made the decision that I need to take things seriously and get my life sorted.
The first problem I tried to solve was helping ex-prisoners find employment. I arranged a wage subsidy with the Work & Income section of the government as an incentive for businesses to hire ex-cons. I then took half-days off work to knock on businesses doors and talk to the business owners to see if they'd consider hiring ex-employers. I managed to get a good list of people who would, so I then went to corrections and a handful of charities & non-profit organisations to see how we could help match the employers I found to ex-prisoners. It was like hitting a F*cking brick wall. I pushed and reevaluated and pushed again, but without access to prisoners, it completely flopped and I found myself out of pocket.
That was failure 1.
Next I began to consume personal development material. I became a junkie on that stuff. Started to blow all my money on programs, books and courses thinking that they would solve my problems. Without owning a house or having any cash in the bank, I went into debt to buy one of those Robert Kiyosaki real estate mentorships for $20,000. I know what you're thinking - I'm an idiot. We'll you're right. I believed every single word they sold me. I thought that the 3-day mentorship would teach me some hidden secrets to get rich... Well it didn't. I realized without access to cash, it's very hard to buy a property. I tried to buddy up with friends and family to get a bunch of deals, but every time we got close to purchasing, somebody would back out. I came to the conclusion it wasn't going to happen.
I persisted with the personal development courses. Next I bought the Tai Lopez "social media marketing agency" course. What a scam that was. Bunch of out-dated information. Still, it put me on the path to try ecommerce.
From there, I started up a crappy Shopify store and got a few sales out of it. It was great practice for Facebook ads and showed me just how outdated Tai Lopez's course is.
I sold that store and started another store. This is when things started to pick up. I did a bit of Facebook advertising and started to break-even on the ads. I got into branding and really focused a lot of effort into solving (what I thought were) real problems. Then I started experimenting with influencer marketing and things started to take off! I began to make some money. Sure it was only a few hundred a month, but damn it felt good to actually make money instead of losing it!
It was at this time that I decided to quit my job and go out on my own. I planned to use my ecommerce results to help me get clients for social media marketing. Boy was I in for a shock. I networked 5 days a week for 4 months and didn't get a single client!!! So many close calls, but every single person backed out at the last minute every single time! Guess I wasn't applying Grant Cardone's sales training correctly :/
However, I partnered up with the owner of a marketing company who contracted me to do a whole lot of work for his clients. Was hopeful for a while as I started to work on his clients and started to get them some pretty good results... until I realized that the owner of the company was a slick-talking bullshit artist... I did about $16k worth of work for him and he paid me nothing! (I heard his company went into liquidation last month, so I guess there is some justice in the world)
I tried to partner up with another owner of another marketing agency to work on an influencer marketing project, but turns out he was another bullshit artist. I had put him in contact with a model I used for my ecommerce store and he began sending her dirty messages and trying to get her to cheat on her husband with her. I later found out most of his marketing agency and news articles about it were faked.
I had enough of trying to market other people's businesses so I went back to my old job and continued with my ecommerce on the side. I began to make some awesome progress with it, one day even hitting $2,000 in profit.
Sadly, influencers began raising their prices, their reach started declining and Facebook ad reach also started declining. Where I had previously broken even or profited, I now began losing money. I tried to invest in the product, but it's impossible for people to recommend your product by word of mouth (productocracy) when you can't even get people to buy from you in the first place. I went into debt trying to improve the product and doing a large influencer marketing campaign to promote it. While I got plenty of sales, it was still a loss and once again, I'm stuck paying off debt. To date I've lost over $20,000 in that ecommerce store. Lesson learned - don't rely on cheap reach to get sales. Rely on solving a real problem.
Now here I am!
At my job, earning $80,000/pa salary and to be honest it's the only thing that's ever actually made me money.
I'm 30 years old, 31 in a few days. My son is 4 and a half and my daughter is 3.
No matter what we do, we never seem to have enough money to meet our needs. We're always throwing money at business to see if something works and lately we've always been stung. Our money always seems to be paying off debt and being invested in failed business ideas. Our food bill is low. Our entertainment budget is $0. Our clothes are crap. We have one car. We live in a cheap 2-bedroom unit.
I'm really sick of living like this. I want to be a dad that my wife and kids can be proud of. A dad who can afford a house and some decent cars and a fricking holiday overseas, yet here I am constantly paying off debt and injecting money into a business that looks like it will never give back. I'm still running the ecommerce business, but it's really bleeding us out having to cover all the costs every month.
Today as I was reversing out the driveway, the front shock in my car snapped (thank goodness it wasn't on the highway) and I now have no car to get to work tomorrow and barely the money to fix it. And I guess this has triggered this rant.
I've had many "F*ck THIS" moments over the last 5 years, but my problem ISN'T LACK OF MOTIVATION. I'm desperately unhappy! My problem is not being able to find a single thing that will make me enough money to get my family out of this rut! I'm sick of trying and trying and putting all my time into things that yield no results.
I just need ONE SINGLE money money-making process. That's it. To find ONE process that makes money. And then scale it.
I'm not after pity. It won't help. You can criticize me, ream me out, call me stupid, that's fine. I've had enough hard lessons and done a lot of stupid things that I've learned from. But this is my rock bottom.
PLEASE could somebody give me some practical advice? What should I do? Thanks so much in advance
I want to keep this as short and to the point as possible.
I feel like I've been stuck in a rut my entire adult life.
Ever since my first job at 18, I have been trying to make extra money on the side. Between the ages of 18-25, I took a half-assed approach by trying to buy things cheap and sell them on Ebay. I barely made any money and had a very weak mindset. If it felt the tiniest bit difficult, I would give up and try something else.
When I turned 25, I had my first kid and things got serious. I made the decision that I need to take things seriously and get my life sorted.
The first problem I tried to solve was helping ex-prisoners find employment. I arranged a wage subsidy with the Work & Income section of the government as an incentive for businesses to hire ex-cons. I then took half-days off work to knock on businesses doors and talk to the business owners to see if they'd consider hiring ex-employers. I managed to get a good list of people who would, so I then went to corrections and a handful of charities & non-profit organisations to see how we could help match the employers I found to ex-prisoners. It was like hitting a F*cking brick wall. I pushed and reevaluated and pushed again, but without access to prisoners, it completely flopped and I found myself out of pocket.
That was failure 1.
Next I began to consume personal development material. I became a junkie on that stuff. Started to blow all my money on programs, books and courses thinking that they would solve my problems. Without owning a house or having any cash in the bank, I went into debt to buy one of those Robert Kiyosaki real estate mentorships for $20,000. I know what you're thinking - I'm an idiot. We'll you're right. I believed every single word they sold me. I thought that the 3-day mentorship would teach me some hidden secrets to get rich... Well it didn't. I realized without access to cash, it's very hard to buy a property. I tried to buddy up with friends and family to get a bunch of deals, but every time we got close to purchasing, somebody would back out. I came to the conclusion it wasn't going to happen.
I persisted with the personal development courses. Next I bought the Tai Lopez "social media marketing agency" course. What a scam that was. Bunch of out-dated information. Still, it put me on the path to try ecommerce.
From there, I started up a crappy Shopify store and got a few sales out of it. It was great practice for Facebook ads and showed me just how outdated Tai Lopez's course is.
I sold that store and started another store. This is when things started to pick up. I did a bit of Facebook advertising and started to break-even on the ads. I got into branding and really focused a lot of effort into solving (what I thought were) real problems. Then I started experimenting with influencer marketing and things started to take off! I began to make some money. Sure it was only a few hundred a month, but damn it felt good to actually make money instead of losing it!
It was at this time that I decided to quit my job and go out on my own. I planned to use my ecommerce results to help me get clients for social media marketing. Boy was I in for a shock. I networked 5 days a week for 4 months and didn't get a single client!!! So many close calls, but every single person backed out at the last minute every single time! Guess I wasn't applying Grant Cardone's sales training correctly :/
However, I partnered up with the owner of a marketing company who contracted me to do a whole lot of work for his clients. Was hopeful for a while as I started to work on his clients and started to get them some pretty good results... until I realized that the owner of the company was a slick-talking bullshit artist... I did about $16k worth of work for him and he paid me nothing! (I heard his company went into liquidation last month, so I guess there is some justice in the world)
I tried to partner up with another owner of another marketing agency to work on an influencer marketing project, but turns out he was another bullshit artist. I had put him in contact with a model I used for my ecommerce store and he began sending her dirty messages and trying to get her to cheat on her husband with her. I later found out most of his marketing agency and news articles about it were faked.
I had enough of trying to market other people's businesses so I went back to my old job and continued with my ecommerce on the side. I began to make some awesome progress with it, one day even hitting $2,000 in profit.
Sadly, influencers began raising their prices, their reach started declining and Facebook ad reach also started declining. Where I had previously broken even or profited, I now began losing money. I tried to invest in the product, but it's impossible for people to recommend your product by word of mouth (productocracy) when you can't even get people to buy from you in the first place. I went into debt trying to improve the product and doing a large influencer marketing campaign to promote it. While I got plenty of sales, it was still a loss and once again, I'm stuck paying off debt. To date I've lost over $20,000 in that ecommerce store. Lesson learned - don't rely on cheap reach to get sales. Rely on solving a real problem.
Now here I am!
At my job, earning $80,000/pa salary and to be honest it's the only thing that's ever actually made me money.
I'm 30 years old, 31 in a few days. My son is 4 and a half and my daughter is 3.
No matter what we do, we never seem to have enough money to meet our needs. We're always throwing money at business to see if something works and lately we've always been stung. Our money always seems to be paying off debt and being invested in failed business ideas. Our food bill is low. Our entertainment budget is $0. Our clothes are crap. We have one car. We live in a cheap 2-bedroom unit.
I'm really sick of living like this. I want to be a dad that my wife and kids can be proud of. A dad who can afford a house and some decent cars and a fricking holiday overseas, yet here I am constantly paying off debt and injecting money into a business that looks like it will never give back. I'm still running the ecommerce business, but it's really bleeding us out having to cover all the costs every month.
Today as I was reversing out the driveway, the front shock in my car snapped (thank goodness it wasn't on the highway) and I now have no car to get to work tomorrow and barely the money to fix it. And I guess this has triggered this rant.
I've had many "F*ck THIS" moments over the last 5 years, but my problem ISN'T LACK OF MOTIVATION. I'm desperately unhappy! My problem is not being able to find a single thing that will make me enough money to get my family out of this rut! I'm sick of trying and trying and putting all my time into things that yield no results.
I just need ONE SINGLE money money-making process. That's it. To find ONE process that makes money. And then scale it.
I'm not after pity. It won't help. You can criticize me, ream me out, call me stupid, that's fine. I've had enough hard lessons and done a lot of stupid things that I've learned from. But this is my rock bottom.
PLEASE could somebody give me some practical advice? What should I do? Thanks so much in advance
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