mikecarlooch
Apprentice & Student Of The Game
FASTLANE INSIDER
LEGACY MEMBER
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Think slow, act fast.
Most people do it in reverse. There is this hype from YT gurus (and some forum members too) that odds don't matter. You just need to wish it hard enough, sacrifice family, friends, trade body parts - all if it. If you want it bad enough, you'll make 7-8 figures in your early 20s... and why? Well... just because.
Even after reading all of @MJ DeMarco books most people still do not think before they do. They act and then hope it all works out for their "Lambo" dream. That's a huge problem. Our brains are capable of running great "simulations" without spending any money. Worse yet, most fail to run real life simulations too!
Is it any wonder most people fail? Ironic. Those who scream the loudest "I am the next American Idol" are the blooper material. Same with business.
But some succeed! I applaud them.
In fact, some readers may accuse me of conflicting advice:
Doesn't A conflict with B? Which one is it? Should I try for a massive success in my early 20s or settle for education, job, freelance and build experience?
- A: Do small things. Figure our what works, do more of that.
- B: Dream, plan and go for HUGE things! Do not settle for mediocrity, it will kill your future.
I am not sure what is harder, to create a successful business or to write on how to create a successful business. Seriously. @MJ DeMarco - maybe you can shed some light. And worse yet, I am not even that great a businessman. I your average guy that doesn't quit. It's really that simple.
A & B do not conflict. Do both over and over again.
What does that look like in real life?
I've never been able to put the following into words - but here's my shot at it -
a common trait I've noticed in myself, and some other young entrepreneurs that I know of, is that our confusion is what makes us just jump into things without thinking, just to be on ANY path that is not leading toward mediocrity.
And when we get immersed in a particular project or sector, leaving that sector to do something else feels very difficult in the moment because we feel that we are making a huge mistake by leaving or switching directions, and also don't know WHEN to change roads.
It goes back to the scarcity mindset - clinging to what I've got - because I don't know what else I would do.
What opportunities are the women in the red dress (a distraction) and what opportunities are screaming "YES! you should do this, screw what you're doing now!" is something I'm trying to get better at and understand - because not moving and not going fast doesn't feel good, leading to an unresourceful state of mind.
Real Estate
Long ago I wrote out plans in my notepad to create a mega company. But what industry? How quickly? How?
Answer 1: cosmetics. King crab on the east side of Canada was and is a huge business. Legs are sold to restaurants but there's too much waste of the body shell. Shell dried can be crushed into powder. Powder is used in makeup! Huge, massive business opportunity. And I was in my early 20s... full of piss and vinegar. Confident little F*ck.
So I called all friends and found a buyer for the said dry shells, in China. Volume would be almost unlimited.
Next challenge. Called up a few businesses and learned that they pay to dispose of the "waste". They'll gladly give it ALL to me if I just arrange someone to pick it up.
Listen, I just won a lotto. I am about to become a mega millionaire. Free shit that's worth a fortune if I just dry it and ship to China! How much more luck does one need?
That's why I am so rich today and wiring to you all my advice from a private jet plane!
Nope. That's not how the story ends, but it is a good story. I totally f*cked up the execution part. I was such a little "brilliant" confident F*ck that I didn't think "process is king", I thought my idea was worth a F*cking billion dollars. Oh looking back, was I ever wrong. I F*cked it up. I made zero.
Answer 2: shoes. Bruised but not beaten, I leaned further into my "entrepreneur" self. Still in my 20s I come up with the next billion dollar idea. I'll beat Nike in shoes. A classmate from Asia happens to be from a family that owns a factory making sneakers. We were going to be partners. I am great at sales + numbers. Weird but mighty combo. I called retailers, lined up the Bay (they were huge back then, now struggling like most). We had manufacturer on standby.
That's why I am so rich today and wiring to you all my advice from a private jet plane!
Nope. Boy's parents decided their son was going to "grow up" and do it himself. They bankrolled him under a condition of no partners. He was beyond useless and I wasn't going to work FOR him. It all fell apart.
Answer 3:... I won't bore you with the many others. I aimed so high.
The bottom line is this. I feel I was born to be an entrepreneur. I imagine success like standing in a line up. As long as you don't quit... Eventually your turn comes!
Imagine if throughout all that, I didn't do anything else? I'd have nothing. Instead, I kept reflecting. Kept writing plans and thinking back. Eventually when I found (wish it was sooner) MJ's Unscripted book, it was perfectly laid out. It explained my shit experiences AND my successful ventures.
I continued getting my education, then jobs (yikes, but yes!), side-hustles! then promotions, learning, more side hustles... then first successful business, then the big one.
The key is that I got better. A lot better. Hear me on this: If I had to do it with what I am capable of today, I'd scale the cosmetics company into a giant venture! I wasn't good enough back then. And that's ok.
Thanks Andy, this is exactly right. This is what happened to me. I started getting pretty damn good at some things. I realized the real answer for me was Real Estate. I've ran teams, made the right calls, made money on my own properties and it's just been a blast for me. It hasn't been just good, it's been consistently great.
Why is that? Because everything I did before became my "lever". My "Jobs" taught me all aspects of having a larger business that I now use, including relationships (example: bankers knew me before I went on my own). My "side hustles" kept the fire of entrepreneurship alive (and made me extra money).
And here I am, just getting started! How can I turn this into a multibillion dollar company?
But this thread isn't about me. It's about how to succeed for young forum members like @mikecarlooch
Mike - the Video Guy!
Let's dive into specifics! Hopefully others can help too (calling @Kak, @Vigilante on top of already engaged contributors).
Simple short video edits. People pay thousands a month for them - however, I have a feeling of uncertainty about it and I'm not sure it's the road I'm supposed to be on.Mike, how do you make money? What is working? What is NOT working?
It's hard to say whether all of the IP and info products I've created in the past few months will NOT work - because they're new and not enough people have seen them.
However, it appears that sometimes I get addicted to creating which probably isn't a bad thing in a sense but I do know based on the way I've gotten where I've gotten now if I had been making offers to people every day for the past 6 months I'd probably have more clients than I know what to do with.
Why don't I? I guess the answer I have is - it feels limiting to go me to go and message 50 people a day on LinkedIn since every person that doesn't answer a message, that message doesn't live in perpetuity, it just goes off into the wind. And it makes me wonder if I am spending my time in the wrong place.
And I know how that sounds --- like a big excuse.
Thinking about it now - with labor, code, and media the business I'm in can in fact be scaled with the right systems.Applying CENTS, what are you most worried about?
I guess my concern is that I don't have it on paper - I know you said think slow and act fast, so my question would be .. Even before it's needed - to map out how that can work, even if that map doesn't necessarily become the exact way of doing things (because things are unpredictable)?
Thanks for bringing this up. I've been on LinkedIn, facebook, and twitter for only 2 weeks now - and the truth is I haven't put in enough upfront effort to get my stuff in front of people to create any snowball effects of attention (connecting, starting conversations, etc).You clearly have the finger on the pulse of how social media works. But your execution (from what I've seen on LinkedIn) isn't great. You failed to get many likes on most of your posts. How do you reconcile that with your plans for expansion? Are you listening to what the market is telling you? What is it telling you?
My question again like above would be how long do you do something before determining it doesn't work? Creating content is a certainty for me because it lives on forever, that's the main reason I'm posting so much on all platforms currently.
And what is your main business? Video editing or teaching how to go "viral"?
It's video editing at the core of it. I don't agree with virality and believe in a slow, steady, and quality process on social rather.
Answering this question is tough for me because at the core I understand that you've basically laid it out all for me already above, and I don't know what else to ask for.How can we help you get there?
There is a quote I like that maybe can answer this - "Eliminating friction upfront before revealing the ultimate form of simplicity"
The simpler something can seem, even if it's not simple, seems to be easier to grasp.
What parts of this (or other threads) are most useful?
Your concept of leverage along with a few other things are the most useful nuggets of wisdom I've taken away. And in your planning thread you mentioned "borrowing, stealing, and inventing" systems.
Those two things opened up that creativity is the only limitation when it comes to scaling and finding ways to automate things, and there is no silver bullet (beforehand I thought there was).
My process over the past 2 months changed drastically. Notice that I wasn't on the forum that much - this was because I truly was in a full-on producer mode until I stopped myself and realized that the things I was producing weren't growing my revenue and just keeping me busy. I am grateful for what I've created. But now in terms of business, generating revenue is my highest value, and whenever I think about generating revenue more, for some reason it throws me off and confuses me. I think about needing to get on calls with a bunch of people who don't want to be on calls with me etc.And more importantly, what changes have you made to your process?
And I know that the above mindset needs some real work.
Usually I always try and keep what I say in an empowering state, but since I really am trying to get help here to get myself on a path to true success, I'm sharing how I truly feel.
Also, here's the answers to the questions you send me last night in dm:
How are you spending your time?
The first hour or so of my work day is when I distribute all of my content, and then I don't touch social media for the rest of the day. I see this as something that can be leveraged, so that's why I see it as important to do.
The next part is about finding untouched audiences to target with engagement ads on facebook marketplace (trying to find a goldmine of an audience) and adding more ads into that campaign
Then I will do outreach, but not nearly enough. I don't feel like doing 10-20 of them is enough at all and it feels like reaching out to those 10-20 people takes way too much time.
Sometimes I will get thrown off a bit at this point in te day after that because I start questioning if what I've been doing all day is beneficial. The way that I combat this feeling, or "cover it up" I guess, is by creating something new. That could be an information product, a new long form article, a video, a webinar, etc.
Fulfillment is done end of day.
How rewarding are your efforts?
Simply put, they need to be more rewarding. I know I need to change it up if I want to reap more rewards.
How well did you capitalize on the opportunities that were right in front of you?
Can you expand on this a bit?
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