Zachary Burt
New Contributor
Hi,
My name is Zachary. I'm 23 and I live in San Francisco. I recently finished reading TMF and posted a review to my blog ( finished reading The Millionaire Fastlane — ZacharyBurt.com )
I am a self taught web programmer and have been programming since i was about 10. I am not a GREAT coder, probably 60th percentile - better than all the dummies, but not educated in computer science, and worlds below the upper echelon of talent.
At age 18 i took an internship with a software company and learned that it was actually not too difficult to make money with computers! I learned a little about adwords, support, and sales.
At age 19 it was 2007 and there was a bubble in technology. i was working on a stupid startup with my friends and much to my parents dismay i temporarily dropped out of school. the stupid startup failed, but in the mean time i created a facebook application and sold it for $20k, then i went back to school.
throughout school i made rich money doing consulting, but obviously it was ULL (see i'm using the acronyms already!) and did not have another project quite as successful as my facebook app.
so after graduating i took a job at the NHL in NYC. it was so well paying! but i realized that even though i was saving nearly ALL my money i would never get rich at that rate - needless to say, MJ's words rang true. so i quit a couple months later to focus on my tech projects and try to make it big.
since then i have built a few things but some have been more popular than others. here's what is live now:
- compassionpit.com is probably my most successful app currently, it receives about 2k visitors a day but more when there are traffic spikes. people LOVE the site and it seems to be making them happier. i am not monetizing it yet however. i feel like putting on something like adsense would be a stupid premature monetization and slow down growth. i created it in aug 2010.
- zacharyburt.com my blog receives a fair amount of traffic and makes some money via affiliate links, definitely never going to hit the fastlane with it though. instead, it just seems to be a way to force myself to keep learning/educating myself and to share some of the value with the world.
i also started a company called awesomenessreminders.com. it got covered by TIME.com and others. it lasted from about august 2010 until march 2010. i cannot tell you how many stupid stupid mistakes i made in its operation. ultimately things got too stressful and i decided to cancel all of my customer's subscriptions and stop taking new customers on. some of my stupid mistakes:
--taking a "vacation" as soon as it became successful
--not treating it like a job. not putting in the many hours NOW to be able to "trade 1 for 10" later
--not doing background checks on employees
--not double checking that they really did their work. not immediately firing employees who lied
--hiring a terrible programmer and keeping him on even after noticing he was problematic
i also never found a customer acquisition channel that worked. i spent ~$3k on adwords with basically zero conversions. word of mouth and PR was my only way to get customers. i should have invested $$ in superior superior support, but i was too stressed, became avoidant and let the problems pile up.
i think there is value in the niche, and i have a customer list of fans, so i may yet re-start it. TBD.
i also have ideas for a few more projects, and have typed up wireframes and am probably going to hire programmers to work on them. i know MJ says FOCUS and no polygamy, though, so i suppose that's why i'm coming here for advice. you never know what is going to be a fastlane high momentum business, right? maybe i just need to stumble upon the right product/market fit.
lastly, i have an app called CustomerFind.com. it's a twitter search app. it used to do auto-follow but twitter banned that. you know the section in TMF , "examine your thought process" and there you will find businesses? well why not just do it on twitter search? check it out,
"I wish there was" OR "Do I have to" OR "I hate" OR "I don't like" OR "this frustrates me" OR "i'm tired of" OR "this sucks" - Twitter Search
maybe if you guys like as a treat i can add this as a feature to customerfind. obviously it would be refined to help sift the chaff from the wheat.
okay, thanks for reading. i'm glad to be here and hope you welcome me! the other forums i sometimes visit are Hacker News and StevePavlina.com, but people at SP tend to be less skilled at critical thinking, and people at HN tend to be very smart technically but not very pragmatic entrepreneurially. or they're just annoying and don't "get it".
zack
My name is Zachary. I'm 23 and I live in San Francisco. I recently finished reading TMF and posted a review to my blog ( finished reading The Millionaire Fastlane — ZacharyBurt.com )
I am a self taught web programmer and have been programming since i was about 10. I am not a GREAT coder, probably 60th percentile - better than all the dummies, but not educated in computer science, and worlds below the upper echelon of talent.
At age 18 i took an internship with a software company and learned that it was actually not too difficult to make money with computers! I learned a little about adwords, support, and sales.
At age 19 it was 2007 and there was a bubble in technology. i was working on a stupid startup with my friends and much to my parents dismay i temporarily dropped out of school. the stupid startup failed, but in the mean time i created a facebook application and sold it for $20k, then i went back to school.
throughout school i made rich money doing consulting, but obviously it was ULL (see i'm using the acronyms already!) and did not have another project quite as successful as my facebook app.
so after graduating i took a job at the NHL in NYC. it was so well paying! but i realized that even though i was saving nearly ALL my money i would never get rich at that rate - needless to say, MJ's words rang true. so i quit a couple months later to focus on my tech projects and try to make it big.
since then i have built a few things but some have been more popular than others. here's what is live now:
- compassionpit.com is probably my most successful app currently, it receives about 2k visitors a day but more when there are traffic spikes. people LOVE the site and it seems to be making them happier. i am not monetizing it yet however. i feel like putting on something like adsense would be a stupid premature monetization and slow down growth. i created it in aug 2010.
- zacharyburt.com my blog receives a fair amount of traffic and makes some money via affiliate links, definitely never going to hit the fastlane with it though. instead, it just seems to be a way to force myself to keep learning/educating myself and to share some of the value with the world.
i also started a company called awesomenessreminders.com. it got covered by TIME.com and others. it lasted from about august 2010 until march 2010. i cannot tell you how many stupid stupid mistakes i made in its operation. ultimately things got too stressful and i decided to cancel all of my customer's subscriptions and stop taking new customers on. some of my stupid mistakes:
--taking a "vacation" as soon as it became successful
--not treating it like a job. not putting in the many hours NOW to be able to "trade 1 for 10" later
--not doing background checks on employees
--not double checking that they really did their work. not immediately firing employees who lied
--hiring a terrible programmer and keeping him on even after noticing he was problematic
i also never found a customer acquisition channel that worked. i spent ~$3k on adwords with basically zero conversions. word of mouth and PR was my only way to get customers. i should have invested $$ in superior superior support, but i was too stressed, became avoidant and let the problems pile up.
i think there is value in the niche, and i have a customer list of fans, so i may yet re-start it. TBD.
i also have ideas for a few more projects, and have typed up wireframes and am probably going to hire programmers to work on them. i know MJ says FOCUS and no polygamy, though, so i suppose that's why i'm coming here for advice. you never know what is going to be a fastlane high momentum business, right? maybe i just need to stumble upon the right product/market fit.
lastly, i have an app called CustomerFind.com. it's a twitter search app. it used to do auto-follow but twitter banned that. you know the section in TMF , "examine your thought process" and there you will find businesses? well why not just do it on twitter search? check it out,
"I wish there was" OR "Do I have to" OR "I hate" OR "I don't like" OR "this frustrates me" OR "i'm tired of" OR "this sucks" - Twitter Search
maybe if you guys like as a treat i can add this as a feature to customerfind. obviously it would be refined to help sift the chaff from the wheat.
okay, thanks for reading. i'm glad to be here and hope you welcome me! the other forums i sometimes visit are Hacker News and StevePavlina.com, but people at SP tend to be less skilled at critical thinking, and people at HN tend to be very smart technically but not very pragmatic entrepreneurially. or they're just annoying and don't "get it".
zack
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