Howdy all,
I first read the books in 2020. It was a revelation. Here are some of my failures so that you can learn from my mistakes. In addition, I will talk about where I am now. Let’s see what the forum has to offer.
Failure #1:
Failure #2:
I ran out of money at this point and had to go back and get a slowlane job stocking shelves at the local Lowe’s. Mental illness cut me down and I faced a brutal two years. I gained weight, I moved back with my parents, and I earned about 1800 - 2k a month in jobs that I hated. However, I found better work at a rehab and built up a savings nest that would cover up to two years of living expenses and insulate me against any surprise medical or car bills. Others may mock me for living at home, but they are likely in 30k worth of credit card debit, in over their head on a car loan, in student loan debt (which cannot be discharged in a bankruptcy [get F*cked]) and have a mortgage that requires 30 YEARS of debt payments. I earn far, far less than many of my peers yet have much more in assets than many of them. Do you know how much calmer I am with this much savings?
Where I’m at now:
I had an idea to build Netflix for written fiction. I axed this concept (violates the commandment of Need. People want rather than need entertainment. In addition, entertainment is highly elastic even if you do earn the contract.)
I’m currently taking classes at my local community college for accounting. Accounting is a hard skill that every single business needs if they want to remain solvent. A semester at my AICPA certified community college costs me 1300 dollars. The total bill, including a test prep for the CPA exam, is about 8.5k over 2.5 years. Why take classes at a college? Isn’t your goal to escape the slowlane and get into the fast lane? Hard skills lead to emergent opportunities.
I noticed a therapist complaining about all the hats they needed to wear in order to successfully run a private practice. One of these hats were basic bookkeeping skills that they taught at my community college. I did not plan on this emergent opportunity, but after another class I’ll have the foundational skills in accounting to successfully develop a product for these therapists. I can build a productocracy for bookeeping for private practice therapists. You don’t know what you don’t know, and accounting is a technical, necessary task that sucks up valuable time that could be spent on other aspects of the business.
Even if this bombs, I could open up my own CPA practice with the credential. This gives me negotiating power if I do choose to partner with an organization. I’m not against working a job as jobs helped me become a better employee and provided the seed funding for my fastlane exit. Why bet my financial future on a random person giving me a massive loan when I could build the funds for myself brick by brick? If you can’t find a way to scrape out savings from your paycheck, how will you be able to balance the books of your business?
Private practice CPAs can rake in the cash if the business is executed properly. In addition, I can be PAID to read the financial statements of an organization. This gives me the opportunity to find profitable businesses and potentially earn equity in them. In addition, the curriculum at community college is 90% focused on skills you need for GETTING A JOB. There’s no bullshit classes that exist simply because a professor received tenure there 20 years ago and hasn’t updated their curriculum. Everything I learn is quite useful towards operating a business.
Hope this finds you well,
Jaywalker
I first read the books in 2020. It was a revelation. Here are some of my failures so that you can learn from my mistakes. In addition, I will talk about where I am now. Let’s see what the forum has to offer.
Failure #1:
- Started a family business with my father. We sold an upgrade to existing standardized tests so that they were more responsive towards student knowledge. We were fully funded by an outside investor and had built a relationship with the commissioner of education in Texas. Sounds like a slam dunk, right? Wrong. The business failed for two reasons.
- Insufficient funds to build a productocracy level platform. It costs quite a bit of money to fully develop a standardized testing platform. Standardized tests require software, a physical text, and teacher buy in. You may have a good product locally for teachers that know how to use the open source platform where we stored our items, but you cannot scale this on the open source platform. In addition, our early investor ended up stifling any further investment as it would dilute his shares. However, I think that the business would have failed even with additional investment.
- Complex sales process. If the commissioner rubber stamps the test, you have a multi million dollar business. If he fails to rubber stamp the test, you have no business. I suggested that we should have a dedicated salesperson to build a relationship with this person, but this was vetoed for reasons that are unknown to me. We didn’t make the contract and had no plan B to sell the product. And from the perspective of an individual district, why would you pay money for a half finished product? Teachers may like the prototype, but the prototype will not generate a productocracy.
- What I’d do differently: Spend all the money and time developing a productocracy for the product in the classroom. Find a way to develop the product without major investment in the beginning. Perhaps this would look like pen and paper tests with word docs. The coding elements of the business sucked up resources before we really had cooked up an amazing solution. Rather than betting the business on getting a state contract, we would bootstrap the business until we got a school contract. We would reinvest the money from the school contract into building a better product which may earn us another school contract. Build this sales process from a school - district - state organically.
- Side note: I would not recommend building a business with family or friends. It is hard to be objective and ruthlessly driven when you work with people you’ve known your entire life.
Failure #2:
- Website upgrades for small to medium sized businesses. I learned I could build a website with Wordpress and Elementor. I clicked on businesses with websites that were older than I was on Google maps. Maybe there’s some money.
- This failed for one main reason: I spent more time on micro features of my own website and buying useless goods like QR code business cards rather than building out an effective sales process. MJ DeMarco talks about this in Unscripted at some point.
- Also, if you can learn how to build a functional website in a weekend, so can someone else. There’s zero barrier to entry and thus you can find hordes of “web devs” that will build out your website for next to no money.
I ran out of money at this point and had to go back and get a slowlane job stocking shelves at the local Lowe’s. Mental illness cut me down and I faced a brutal two years. I gained weight, I moved back with my parents, and I earned about 1800 - 2k a month in jobs that I hated. However, I found better work at a rehab and built up a savings nest that would cover up to two years of living expenses and insulate me against any surprise medical or car bills. Others may mock me for living at home, but they are likely in 30k worth of credit card debit, in over their head on a car loan, in student loan debt (which cannot be discharged in a bankruptcy [get F*cked]) and have a mortgage that requires 30 YEARS of debt payments. I earn far, far less than many of my peers yet have much more in assets than many of them. Do you know how much calmer I am with this much savings?
Where I’m at now:
I had an idea to build Netflix for written fiction. I axed this concept (violates the commandment of Need. People want rather than need entertainment. In addition, entertainment is highly elastic even if you do earn the contract.)
I’m currently taking classes at my local community college for accounting. Accounting is a hard skill that every single business needs if they want to remain solvent. A semester at my AICPA certified community college costs me 1300 dollars. The total bill, including a test prep for the CPA exam, is about 8.5k over 2.5 years. Why take classes at a college? Isn’t your goal to escape the slowlane and get into the fast lane? Hard skills lead to emergent opportunities.
I noticed a therapist complaining about all the hats they needed to wear in order to successfully run a private practice. One of these hats were basic bookkeeping skills that they taught at my community college. I did not plan on this emergent opportunity, but after another class I’ll have the foundational skills in accounting to successfully develop a product for these therapists. I can build a productocracy for bookeeping for private practice therapists. You don’t know what you don’t know, and accounting is a technical, necessary task that sucks up valuable time that could be spent on other aspects of the business.
Even if this bombs, I could open up my own CPA practice with the credential. This gives me negotiating power if I do choose to partner with an organization. I’m not against working a job as jobs helped me become a better employee and provided the seed funding for my fastlane exit. Why bet my financial future on a random person giving me a massive loan when I could build the funds for myself brick by brick? If you can’t find a way to scrape out savings from your paycheck, how will you be able to balance the books of your business?
Private practice CPAs can rake in the cash if the business is executed properly. In addition, I can be PAID to read the financial statements of an organization. This gives me the opportunity to find profitable businesses and potentially earn equity in them. In addition, the curriculum at community college is 90% focused on skills you need for GETTING A JOB. There’s no bullshit classes that exist simply because a professor received tenure there 20 years ago and hasn’t updated their curriculum. Everything I learn is quite useful towards operating a business.
Hope this finds you well,
Jaywalker
Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member:
Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)
Membership Required: Upgrade to Expose Nearly 1,000,000 Posts
Ready to Unleash the Millionaire Entrepreneur in You?
Become a member of the Fastlane Forum, the private community founded by best-selling author and multi-millionaire entrepreneur MJ DeMarco. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has poured his heart and soul into the Fastlane Forum, helping entrepreneurs reclaim their time, win their financial freedom, and live their best life.
With more than 39,000 posts packed with insights, strategies, and advice, you’re not just a member—you’re stepping into MJ’s inner-circle, a place where you’ll never be left alone.
Become a member and gain immediate access to...
- Active Community: Ever join a community only to find it DEAD? Not at Fastlane! As you can see from our home page, life-changing content is posted dozens of times daily.
- Exclusive Insights: Direct access to MJ DeMarco’s daily contributions and wisdom.
- Powerful Networking Opportunities: Connect with a diverse group of successful entrepreneurs who can offer mentorship, collaboration, and opportunities.
- Proven Strategies: Learn from the best in the business, with actionable advice and strategies that can accelerate your success.
"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with the most..."
Who are you surrounding yourself with? Surround yourself with millionaire success. Join Fastlane today!
Join Today
