Hi everyone. This is a long post. There's a quick summary at the end if you want a short version.
I'm Dan.
Coming to you from a coffee shop in College Station, Texas. I just finished Chapter 10 of TMF and decided to take a break and register on the forum.
I've been lurking for a couple months. I honestly don't remember how I first came across the site. I've spent the last 6 months or so voraciously consuming all the content I could find on how to create wealth, so I could have found the initial mention or link anywhere.
I'm 27 years old, over-educated, under-experienced and so far still unsure of my own business strengths. I'm an attorney reprogramming my mind to provide real value to the world. I entered law school on a whim back when I thought school was a good idea. It took me about 4 weeks to realize I'd made a mistake. It's funny now how naive I was. I thought I was going to school to learn about facilitating the administration of justice. To help injured people be made whole. To save innocents form zealous overzealous prosecutors and ensure the endurance of freedom for everyone.
What I was learning instead, was how to win at all costs. How to represent your client as aggressively as possible, no matter how immoral the cause or the means, as long as you don't violate the official ethical rules..in a way that can be proven... I learned that the best connected reliably get the best version of "justice". I also learned about the enormous body of law that truly functions to do nothing but provide work for attorneys, redistributing wealth from productive people and businesses to the leeches of society with the lawyers taking their 30-40% cut of the leech's slice of the pie... lawyers themselves are far too often among the leech class.
Surrounded by lawyers and lawyer information, I also learned about the economics of the profession. The supply of new lawyers vastly exceeds demand every year - by more than 100% according to official metrics. The Internet is filled with blogs of unemployed lawyers trying to make money by abandoning their legal knowledge and instead just showing other unemployed lawyers ways they can use their law degrees to make money.
***
as an aside, I understand that law is a necessary profession for the world we live in. I am very good friends with many attorneys who I like as people, and who I have never seen acting unethically or immorally in their work. But there are more than enough good lawyers already. More than enough who enjoy the work, or at least enjoy their lives as they do the work. The profession doesn't need people who hate it.
***
Unfortunately, I wasn't taking enough responsibility for my own actions at the time to get out when I knew it was what I needed to do. Instead, I succumbed to pressure from my parents to finish what I had started, because "one semester of debt with nothing to show for it is a lot worse than 3 years worth of debt with a professional degree. Even if you don't want to be a lawyer, it's going to open doors for you that otherwise would be closed."
I was an idiot. Because I hated myself for my decision to stay in school, I spent the next three years in a horrible depression, put forth zero effort, and graduated near the bottom of my class. To put this into context, I should mention that I finished my undergraduate program in three years and sat on the stage at graduation as the top student in my department, and I subsequently entered law school with a 0 prep LSAT score in the top 2% of the nation - I took the GMAT the same week (scored top 3%), with the idea I was keeping options open. So instead of taking responsibility for my own life, and getting out when I saw the reality of what I was getting myself into, or working my a$$ off to make the most of a bad situation, I spent the next three years going deeply into debt to gain a credential that has closed more doors than it's opened. I finished with $100,000 in student loan debt, and, with my grades, I couldn't find paid employment as an attorney if I wanted to.
Fortunately, I do not have any intention of finding employment as an attorney.
I come from a family of OB/GYN physicians, who are very much slow-laners and very proud of the lifetimes they have spent/are spending working 80-100 hour week for nice looking salaries. I respect the hell out of them for what they do. The world does need doctors. But I've just never really bought into the idea of that kind of life for myself. I've never been ok with the thought of working until I was too old to enjoy my body and then retiring to sit in a lazyboy as my brain rotted into dementia...
I've come along way in my view of and relationship with money.
During college and law school, I worked in the service industry and retail, waiting tables first, then bartending at a night club and subsequently managing that same club. I've always been a hard worker and was promoted quickly in every job I've held. For some reason money was never really a priority for me. As long as I could pay my living expenses, and cover gas for a road trip now and then, I didn't go after much more.
I essentially held the belief my parents had instilled into me: that you have to work long hours for your entire capable lifespan to become wealthy. So I decided I just wouldn't worry about being wealthy. I decided I'd structure my life to make it enjoyable even though I would be poor. I read Steinbeck's Cannery Row when I was 19 and loved the romantic picture he painted of a group of homeless bums referred to as Mack and the Boys who Steinbeck described as:
forgive me if I misquoted. I read that book about 40 times between 2005 and 2011. I read that particular passage at least 100 times. I typed all that from memory.
The image is beautiful.. Steinbeck was an incredibly talented fiction writer. My thinking must have been along the lines of "If these fictional characters in this novel can live a life that can be described that nicely without ever having jobs, I can surely live a similar life with slightly greater means without sacrificing myself to 50 years of 40 hour work weeks."
After law school I decided I would work as a lawyer long enough to pay off my student loans, then go back to the simple life of comfortable poverty. Up to that point, I had been deluding myself into thinking poverty would be fine and comfortable, because in addition to my income from my part time bar job while in school, I was also relying on student loans and money made playing poker to cover about a third of my living expenses..and I was living quite frugally.
I took bar exams in a couple states, not including Louisiana (where I went to law school). My family lives in Louisiana, and I knew that if I was licensed to practice in state, I would have actual employment opportunities simply due to my family's connections in their small town and the surrounding areas. I have always felt indebted to my parents for paying for my upbringing. This was probably the underlying reason I complied when they insisted that I finish school. I felt that my taking on a law degree's worth of student loan debt on their demand somehow canceled the debt I owed to them. If I had accepted employment through an opportunity made available through nepotism, it would have renewed that feeling of indebtedness and kept me trapped there for life....I guess I've had a lot of psychological barriers to overcome.
After a year running my own practice in Texas, it became clear that it was going to take at least 6 years to pay off my loans. It also became clear that I was going to shoot myself in the face if I had to keep living that life for 5 more years.
I started exploring other methods of making money. I'm a decent poker player. I lived on it for several months at one point. The problem is, winning at poker means spending hours upon hours upon hours sitting at the table folding hands that aren't likely to win. It becomes like a part time job, except you're not providing value to anyone. The first few years you can consistently win playing poker you feel like a badass...eventually, though, you start to feel like a creep. You're just taking money from people who usually can't really afford to lose their money. It got to me.
But obviously I hadn't let go of the selfish "I just want money" attitude because when I decided to stop using poker for my income, I went straight into short term trading options and stocks. I started off doing relatively well, but I was spending way more time watching the computer screen than I had ever had to spend practicing law or sitting at a poker table. The switch didn't make sense, I decided to try another approach that didn't require as much constant supervision or time spent planning trades...and I promptly lost 75% of the value of my brokerage account.
I realized by then that I needed to get off the "get rich quick" thing and get serious about starting a business that provided something valuable. I had no idea how to do that. I read somewhere that selling is the most important skill anyone needs to make money. I didn't know how to sell anything. I mean, I could sell booze to people in a bar, but that's about as far as it went.
I've always been interested in reading and learning new things. At that point I was reading one nonfiction book about every two weeks. I stopped in the library one day to find some new books to read and there was a book sale going on. I ended up buying copies of Rich Dad, Poor Dad and How to Win Friends and Influence People for 50 cents each. Somehow the combination of the ideas in those two books made a connection in my mind. For the first time, I began to think of business as not just about specializing to sell goods and services - but about helping people.
So my focus shifted. What could I help anyone with in a way that could make me wealthy? How do I even know what people want or need? I guess I had found the right questions to ask, because not long after that I had found a whole new world of resources. People who spent their lives trying to solve other peoples problems and finding enormous wealth in the process. I found Mixergy.com and thefastlaneforum and the Foundation and EntrepreneurOnFire and James Altucher and countless other sources of information in books and online. So I've spent the last six months or so soaking it all in. I can honestly say I've learned more in the last six months than I did in 6 years of college and law school.
As a result, I'm in the process of implementing a host of new habits. Daily exercise, daily writing, smiling at strangers in the street, and re establishing relationships with old friends I've neglected to contact for the last few years.
I've also begun contacting businesses in particular niches, Foundation style, trying to make new connections and "find the pain" as Andrew Warner advocates.
I know I've read a lot of mixed opinions about the Foundation on the forum, and I think through the negative feedback, I've gotten a good idea of what it is and what it isn't. I've decided it would be a worthwhile investment for me. I've read all Gary Halbert's Letters and Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham's books, and I'm well aware of all the slick marketing tactics the Foundation uses, money back guarantee not excluded. But I don't believe good marketing automatically = shitty product.
My decisions to get out of law and find a better way to find wealth has not garnered the support of my family. So I'm on this website for the community support as well as the content. It's free here and that's awesome. The Foundation seems to step that whole community aspect up a notch with real time interaction and support. And having been in contact with a couple of the successful members, I don't doubt the impact it can have for someone who wants to succeed badly enough, whether that means building a Saas product or just gaining direct instruction on solving problems and marketing your solutions.
I definitely don't mean for this to be another thread about the Foundation. I just thought I'd throw that out there now, since I anticipate wanting to bounce ideas and questions off FLF members during the process.
Anyway, I know that's far more info than needed in an intro post.
***********
Here's the summary for anyone who skipped to the bottom:
-I'm a 27, from Louisiana, living in Texas
-I'm a licensed attorney, but my goal is to start a scalable business that has nothing to do with law and solves some real problem that people or businesses deeply need solved.
-I found the fast lane forum amidst a ton of other resources I've found in the last six months that I've been scouring the internet and libraries on information to learn how to start a business that fits the above definition.
***********
I look forward to contributing to the community.
Thanks MJ for your book and for this incredible resource!
I apologize for any typos. My ipad battery is about to die so I need to post this before I lose it all. No time to proofread.
I'm Dan.
Coming to you from a coffee shop in College Station, Texas. I just finished Chapter 10 of TMF and decided to take a break and register on the forum.
I've been lurking for a couple months. I honestly don't remember how I first came across the site. I've spent the last 6 months or so voraciously consuming all the content I could find on how to create wealth, so I could have found the initial mention or link anywhere.
I'm 27 years old, over-educated, under-experienced and so far still unsure of my own business strengths. I'm an attorney reprogramming my mind to provide real value to the world. I entered law school on a whim back when I thought school was a good idea. It took me about 4 weeks to realize I'd made a mistake. It's funny now how naive I was. I thought I was going to school to learn about facilitating the administration of justice. To help injured people be made whole. To save innocents form zealous overzealous prosecutors and ensure the endurance of freedom for everyone.
What I was learning instead, was how to win at all costs. How to represent your client as aggressively as possible, no matter how immoral the cause or the means, as long as you don't violate the official ethical rules..in a way that can be proven... I learned that the best connected reliably get the best version of "justice". I also learned about the enormous body of law that truly functions to do nothing but provide work for attorneys, redistributing wealth from productive people and businesses to the leeches of society with the lawyers taking their 30-40% cut of the leech's slice of the pie... lawyers themselves are far too often among the leech class.
Surrounded by lawyers and lawyer information, I also learned about the economics of the profession. The supply of new lawyers vastly exceeds demand every year - by more than 100% according to official metrics. The Internet is filled with blogs of unemployed lawyers trying to make money by abandoning their legal knowledge and instead just showing other unemployed lawyers ways they can use their law degrees to make money.
***
as an aside, I understand that law is a necessary profession for the world we live in. I am very good friends with many attorneys who I like as people, and who I have never seen acting unethically or immorally in their work. But there are more than enough good lawyers already. More than enough who enjoy the work, or at least enjoy their lives as they do the work. The profession doesn't need people who hate it.
***
Unfortunately, I wasn't taking enough responsibility for my own actions at the time to get out when I knew it was what I needed to do. Instead, I succumbed to pressure from my parents to finish what I had started, because "one semester of debt with nothing to show for it is a lot worse than 3 years worth of debt with a professional degree. Even if you don't want to be a lawyer, it's going to open doors for you that otherwise would be closed."
I was an idiot. Because I hated myself for my decision to stay in school, I spent the next three years in a horrible depression, put forth zero effort, and graduated near the bottom of my class. To put this into context, I should mention that I finished my undergraduate program in three years and sat on the stage at graduation as the top student in my department, and I subsequently entered law school with a 0 prep LSAT score in the top 2% of the nation - I took the GMAT the same week (scored top 3%), with the idea I was keeping options open. So instead of taking responsibility for my own life, and getting out when I saw the reality of what I was getting myself into, or working my a$$ off to make the most of a bad situation, I spent the next three years going deeply into debt to gain a credential that has closed more doors than it's opened. I finished with $100,000 in student loan debt, and, with my grades, I couldn't find paid employment as an attorney if I wanted to.
Fortunately, I do not have any intention of finding employment as an attorney.
I come from a family of OB/GYN physicians, who are very much slow-laners and very proud of the lifetimes they have spent/are spending working 80-100 hour week for nice looking salaries. I respect the hell out of them for what they do. The world does need doctors. But I've just never really bought into the idea of that kind of life for myself. I've never been ok with the thought of working until I was too old to enjoy my body and then retiring to sit in a lazyboy as my brain rotted into dementia...
I've come along way in my view of and relationship with money.
During college and law school, I worked in the service industry and retail, waiting tables first, then bartending at a night club and subsequently managing that same club. I've always been a hard worker and was promoted quickly in every job I've held. For some reason money was never really a priority for me. As long as I could pay my living expenses, and cover gas for a road trip now and then, I didn't go after much more.
I essentially held the belief my parents had instilled into me: that you have to work long hours for your entire capable lifespan to become wealthy. So I decided I just wouldn't worry about being wealthy. I decided I'd structure my life to make it enjoyable even though I would be poor. I read Steinbeck's Cannery Row when I was 19 and loved the romantic picture he painted of a group of homeless bums referred to as Mack and the Boys who Steinbeck described as:
forgive me if I misquoted. I read that book about 40 times between 2005 and 2011. I read that particular passage at least 100 times. I typed all that from memory.
The image is beautiful.. Steinbeck was an incredibly talented fiction writer. My thinking must have been along the lines of "If these fictional characters in this novel can live a life that can be described that nicely without ever having jobs, I can surely live a similar life with slightly greater means without sacrificing myself to 50 years of 40 hour work weeks."
After law school I decided I would work as a lawyer long enough to pay off my student loans, then go back to the simple life of comfortable poverty. Up to that point, I had been deluding myself into thinking poverty would be fine and comfortable, because in addition to my income from my part time bar job while in school, I was also relying on student loans and money made playing poker to cover about a third of my living expenses..and I was living quite frugally.
I took bar exams in a couple states, not including Louisiana (where I went to law school). My family lives in Louisiana, and I knew that if I was licensed to practice in state, I would have actual employment opportunities simply due to my family's connections in their small town and the surrounding areas. I have always felt indebted to my parents for paying for my upbringing. This was probably the underlying reason I complied when they insisted that I finish school. I felt that my taking on a law degree's worth of student loan debt on their demand somehow canceled the debt I owed to them. If I had accepted employment through an opportunity made available through nepotism, it would have renewed that feeling of indebtedness and kept me trapped there for life....I guess I've had a lot of psychological barriers to overcome.
After a year running my own practice in Texas, it became clear that it was going to take at least 6 years to pay off my loans. It also became clear that I was going to shoot myself in the face if I had to keep living that life for 5 more years.
I started exploring other methods of making money. I'm a decent poker player. I lived on it for several months at one point. The problem is, winning at poker means spending hours upon hours upon hours sitting at the table folding hands that aren't likely to win. It becomes like a part time job, except you're not providing value to anyone. The first few years you can consistently win playing poker you feel like a badass...eventually, though, you start to feel like a creep. You're just taking money from people who usually can't really afford to lose their money. It got to me.
But obviously I hadn't let go of the selfish "I just want money" attitude because when I decided to stop using poker for my income, I went straight into short term trading options and stocks. I started off doing relatively well, but I was spending way more time watching the computer screen than I had ever had to spend practicing law or sitting at a poker table. The switch didn't make sense, I decided to try another approach that didn't require as much constant supervision or time spent planning trades...and I promptly lost 75% of the value of my brokerage account.
I realized by then that I needed to get off the "get rich quick" thing and get serious about starting a business that provided something valuable. I had no idea how to do that. I read somewhere that selling is the most important skill anyone needs to make money. I didn't know how to sell anything. I mean, I could sell booze to people in a bar, but that's about as far as it went.
I've always been interested in reading and learning new things. At that point I was reading one nonfiction book about every two weeks. I stopped in the library one day to find some new books to read and there was a book sale going on. I ended up buying copies of Rich Dad, Poor Dad and How to Win Friends and Influence People for 50 cents each. Somehow the combination of the ideas in those two books made a connection in my mind. For the first time, I began to think of business as not just about specializing to sell goods and services - but about helping people.
So my focus shifted. What could I help anyone with in a way that could make me wealthy? How do I even know what people want or need? I guess I had found the right questions to ask, because not long after that I had found a whole new world of resources. People who spent their lives trying to solve other peoples problems and finding enormous wealth in the process. I found Mixergy.com and thefastlaneforum and the Foundation and EntrepreneurOnFire and James Altucher and countless other sources of information in books and online. So I've spent the last six months or so soaking it all in. I can honestly say I've learned more in the last six months than I did in 6 years of college and law school.
As a result, I'm in the process of implementing a host of new habits. Daily exercise, daily writing, smiling at strangers in the street, and re establishing relationships with old friends I've neglected to contact for the last few years.
I've also begun contacting businesses in particular niches, Foundation style, trying to make new connections and "find the pain" as Andrew Warner advocates.
I know I've read a lot of mixed opinions about the Foundation on the forum, and I think through the negative feedback, I've gotten a good idea of what it is and what it isn't. I've decided it would be a worthwhile investment for me. I've read all Gary Halbert's Letters and Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham's books, and I'm well aware of all the slick marketing tactics the Foundation uses, money back guarantee not excluded. But I don't believe good marketing automatically = shitty product.
My decisions to get out of law and find a better way to find wealth has not garnered the support of my family. So I'm on this website for the community support as well as the content. It's free here and that's awesome. The Foundation seems to step that whole community aspect up a notch with real time interaction and support. And having been in contact with a couple of the successful members, I don't doubt the impact it can have for someone who wants to succeed badly enough, whether that means building a Saas product or just gaining direct instruction on solving problems and marketing your solutions.
I definitely don't mean for this to be another thread about the Foundation. I just thought I'd throw that out there now, since I anticipate wanting to bounce ideas and questions off FLF members during the process.
Anyway, I know that's far more info than needed in an intro post.
***********
Here's the summary for anyone who skipped to the bottom:
-I'm a 27, from Louisiana, living in Texas
-I'm a licensed attorney, but my goal is to start a scalable business that has nothing to do with law and solves some real problem that people or businesses deeply need solved.
-I found the fast lane forum amidst a ton of other resources I've found in the last six months that I've been scouring the internet and libraries on information to learn how to start a business that fits the above definition.
***********
I look forward to contributing to the community.
Thanks MJ for your book and for this incredible resource!
I apologize for any typos. My ipad battery is about to die so I need to post this before I lose it all. No time to proofread.
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