Hello Guys,
I am 18 years old and have been lurking these forums for a while now.
I finally decided to create an account in order to post and further socialize with all of the great minds here.
A little background on myself:
I have a very obsessive personality. At around the age of 16, my obsession for video games and RPG quickly subsided (something I never thought would happen) and was replaced with the obsession to become financially dependent and be able to give my parents a life they have never lived. I felt like they had given me everything that they had to give me and now it was my turn. So I began reading and reading and from then to here I've read countless amount of books and even reread some great ones. My ALL-TIME favorite being TMF, this being one of the reasons why I joined this forum.
At the age of 17 I decided to create my own women's clothing boutique with my sister as she had a whole bunch of contacts and connections to market the clothing.
I created a magnificent website and managed it for about 2-3 months. We spent maybe a total of $1,000 and in two months had made a whopping -$500. We hadn't even sold enough to cover the costs.
I would basically have to do everything as my sister would just wait for sales to come in. Thinking that a launched website would be enough to bring all of the sales in. A while after, I closed the website.
The main lessons that I learned from this small business attempt was that business with friends and family isn't something that I enjoy doing. Not only because none of them are on the same page as me, but because they're not willing to put in the work to get things to happen.
Another thing I learned it that entrepreneurship isn't simply launching something and crossing your fingers. You have to research, talk to people, get off the couch, pick up the phone, and most importantly, care about people.
A need has to be met. Someones pain has to be solved. YOU yourself have to be able to put yourself in the other persons position and ask yourself if you would pay money for something like what you're selling.
Smart entrepreneurship is taking calculated risks with all this research and proof that there is a need to be met with the product.
-----------------------
6 months back from today. My best friend mentioned to me that he had an aunt who had 20 years of experience in the IT field and was the CIO of a company whose revenue was well over 250m. The second he told me that, I told him to put me in contact with her.
His aunt and I got in contact and we spoke about her mentoring me whenever she had some free time. This had me extremely excited as well as scared because I had never spoken or been around anyone as important as this lady was in my eyes.
We started meeting at Starbucks and she would just unload hours of information and answer each and every one of my questions. To say the least, it was amazing.
It puzzled me how someone could be such a great person to waste their time teaching when they didn't have to, and when I had nothing to give back. To this day I am most thankful of this beautiful human being.
By the time she was mentoring me in these Starbucks meetings, she had quit her position as CIO and had joined a mobile startup as the cofounder. She asked me to help with the data formatting of the IOS application and before she had even finished you could have guessed that I agreed. I finally had a way to slowly begin repaying her for everything she was doing for me.
Fast forward a bit after that, she's ready to get back into a real job because she doesn't have to spend as much time in her startup and tells me that she's received an offer as the CIO of a company who was growing substantially fast and had grown their revenue from 800m to 1.1B from one year to the next. She offered me an internship at this place. Of course, I was in.
For the last six months we have been working together at this company. I have learned so much about everything, it is really amazing. How that small step in asking my best friend to put me in contact with this woman in my life has changed EVERYTHING.
I am so ultimately grateful for her and hope to one day be able to repay my parents and her for all of the wonderful opportunities that they have given me in this life.
The greatest part is how every once in a while we will just lock ourselves in her office and talk about the future. How working 9-5 forever isn't what we want but how some of the people up there in these companies ARE making some good money. Simply a fraction of what they're making the owners none the less.
(I just ordered a copy of TMF to give to her as a gift)
Are you guys still reading?
Fast forward to now----
I'm going to school full time at Florida International University pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science. Completing many college courses in high school has put me a substantial amount of classes ahead and I will be graduating in about two and a half years. Working about 30 hours a week in an IT department at the aforementioned company with this great woman as the CIO.
My main goal in joining this forum is to be able to help people. I don't know how yet. But I will. I'm saving 70% of all of the money that I ever make and have been for the last 6 months. I act like this money doesn't exist and am waiting for the right time to use it to help the lives of people.
This mind sound a little ridiculous but I genuinely feel like I could change the world. It makes me happy that even though I do not have many people in my life with my way of thinking and looking at things, this forum does.
We shall all swim in ice cream in due time.
If you read all of that, I thank you for your time.
I am 18 years old and have been lurking these forums for a while now.
I finally decided to create an account in order to post and further socialize with all of the great minds here.
A little background on myself:
I have a very obsessive personality. At around the age of 16, my obsession for video games and RPG quickly subsided (something I never thought would happen) and was replaced with the obsession to become financially dependent and be able to give my parents a life they have never lived. I felt like they had given me everything that they had to give me and now it was my turn. So I began reading and reading and from then to here I've read countless amount of books and even reread some great ones. My ALL-TIME favorite being TMF, this being one of the reasons why I joined this forum.
At the age of 17 I decided to create my own women's clothing boutique with my sister as she had a whole bunch of contacts and connections to market the clothing.
I created a magnificent website and managed it for about 2-3 months. We spent maybe a total of $1,000 and in two months had made a whopping -$500. We hadn't even sold enough to cover the costs.
I would basically have to do everything as my sister would just wait for sales to come in. Thinking that a launched website would be enough to bring all of the sales in. A while after, I closed the website.
The main lessons that I learned from this small business attempt was that business with friends and family isn't something that I enjoy doing. Not only because none of them are on the same page as me, but because they're not willing to put in the work to get things to happen.
Another thing I learned it that entrepreneurship isn't simply launching something and crossing your fingers. You have to research, talk to people, get off the couch, pick up the phone, and most importantly, care about people.
A need has to be met. Someones pain has to be solved. YOU yourself have to be able to put yourself in the other persons position and ask yourself if you would pay money for something like what you're selling.
Smart entrepreneurship is taking calculated risks with all this research and proof that there is a need to be met with the product.
-----------------------
6 months back from today. My best friend mentioned to me that he had an aunt who had 20 years of experience in the IT field and was the CIO of a company whose revenue was well over 250m. The second he told me that, I told him to put me in contact with her.
His aunt and I got in contact and we spoke about her mentoring me whenever she had some free time. This had me extremely excited as well as scared because I had never spoken or been around anyone as important as this lady was in my eyes.
We started meeting at Starbucks and she would just unload hours of information and answer each and every one of my questions. To say the least, it was amazing.
It puzzled me how someone could be such a great person to waste their time teaching when they didn't have to, and when I had nothing to give back. To this day I am most thankful of this beautiful human being.
By the time she was mentoring me in these Starbucks meetings, she had quit her position as CIO and had joined a mobile startup as the cofounder. She asked me to help with the data formatting of the IOS application and before she had even finished you could have guessed that I agreed. I finally had a way to slowly begin repaying her for everything she was doing for me.
Fast forward a bit after that, she's ready to get back into a real job because she doesn't have to spend as much time in her startup and tells me that she's received an offer as the CIO of a company who was growing substantially fast and had grown their revenue from 800m to 1.1B from one year to the next. She offered me an internship at this place. Of course, I was in.
For the last six months we have been working together at this company. I have learned so much about everything, it is really amazing. How that small step in asking my best friend to put me in contact with this woman in my life has changed EVERYTHING.
I am so ultimately grateful for her and hope to one day be able to repay my parents and her for all of the wonderful opportunities that they have given me in this life.
The greatest part is how every once in a while we will just lock ourselves in her office and talk about the future. How working 9-5 forever isn't what we want but how some of the people up there in these companies ARE making some good money. Simply a fraction of what they're making the owners none the less.
(I just ordered a copy of TMF to give to her as a gift)
Are you guys still reading?
Fast forward to now----
I'm going to school full time at Florida International University pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science. Completing many college courses in high school has put me a substantial amount of classes ahead and I will be graduating in about two and a half years. Working about 30 hours a week in an IT department at the aforementioned company with this great woman as the CIO.
My main goal in joining this forum is to be able to help people. I don't know how yet. But I will. I'm saving 70% of all of the money that I ever make and have been for the last 6 months. I act like this money doesn't exist and am waiting for the right time to use it to help the lives of people.
This mind sound a little ridiculous but I genuinely feel like I could change the world. It makes me happy that even though I do not have many people in my life with my way of thinking and looking at things, this forum does.
We shall all swim in ice cream in due time.
If you read all of that, I thank you for your time.
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