Hello all, I've been lurking for a few months and I feel it's finally time for me to put my thoughts to metaphorical paper. I'm not a terribly poetic writer, so I hope my somewhat rambling style is still useful to some of you.
I'm a chemical engineer. I make decent pay, not quite 6 figures. Not bad for someone who's been in the work force for all of 11 months. I enjoy the concepts I learned in school, but unfortunately my job isn't challenging my intellect like school did, it only drills my motivation and energy into the ground 5 days a week. Every day it's a new crisis, every day the business is once again in danger of going under unless I figure out what to do and take care of it. I work with a group of people who have learned helplessness a dozen times a day.
My dad would say that I need only stay the course to find myself successful. He's an entrepreneur, but his business is a J.O.B...Only in the last couple years he's begun to relax a little and been able to travel a bit. He's been grinding for 20 years. So it's unsurprising that he always pushed me to go to college and get a place to go 5 days a week with some job security. But my goal is a different path.
Before buying TMF , I had started to realize that I wanted to live unscripted , to swim lateral to the riptides of mediocrity around me. I bought a duplex and am having my tenants pay the mortgage(Live for free!). Using slowlane methodologies, I had already started to calculate how long I would have to grind to break free of the system. The only difference is that I was thinking of minimum sustainable income. "If I can make at least 4% return for the rest of my life, I could retire at this savings.". "If the stock market does 10% for the next 4 years, I can retire then." et. cetera. The scenarios flew past endlessly, as I tried to figure out how miserable I'd have to be for the next 4-6 years, and how much I'd have to ration myself after that to stay out of the rat race for good.
I bought TMF November 15, 2016 and spent a few weeks reading it during every lunch break. It changed the way I think about money, but I'm a slow thinker. I spent the next 3 months coming up with ideas and slowly moving towards executing. It's only in the last couple of months that I've been putting some real work in.
Because work takes almost all of my energy and time but leaves me with plenty of money, I think an e-commerce business is ideal for my situation. I can work it on nights and weekends, milk the job until it becomes irrelevant, and then leave the 9-5x5 for a 9-9x6.
My progress so far:
1. I've been pretty consistently going to the gym, eating right, and sleeping decent hours. This helps a lot with managing my emotional energy.
2. I've been finding people in my area to do all the time-consuming work for me(plumbing, mowing, maintenance).
3. I've cut down on time with my girlfriend, as I realized she was literally taking the entirety of my weekends. I'm proud of this one because it gets me back a lot of time, but it hurts at the same time, and she's made it obvious she doesn't like it.
4. I've found a solid product with a relatively high barrier to entry.
5. I've created a corporation and an associated bank account
6. I've contacted a dozen or so supposed manufacturers.
7. I found 6 or so who could make OEM products.
In what I find to be a very amusing aside, one manufacturer insisted that they could make the product, but was very whiny about every little thing. e.g.:
Him: "HI MillenialKid5k1,
How many qty will be in total ?
Thanks and Best Regards"
Me: "Joe,
Because this is a new product for us, we are hoping to test the market with a small order. Once we have evaluated the marketability of this <item>, we are hoping to form a long-term business relationship with the company who will be manufacturing it. Do you manufacture your own <items>? Are they made using <technique>?"
Him: "Then you could try to sell our regular item , not designs some new one its not good choice .
Kind noted
Regards/Joe"
Needless to say, this conversation didn't last long, and he actually said his company wasn't taking on new customers (I smell bullcrap.)
8. I made custom CAD drawings of the product in question.
9. I've exchanged samples with a few manufacturers
10. One of the samples was made of a material other than what they said it was. Unfortunately, this was also the most responsive and easy to deal with company I've ever dealt with, and they quoted me a great price. I've gone into talks about buying raws of these materials if they'll let me recoup the costs on orders, and find a place to test it which can certify the materials to certain standards.
11. I've used 99designs to design myself a logo
Now as much as I know MJ advises against doing multiple things at once, I came up with an idea that I think is pretty huge. I've been reaching out to thoughtstopaper to try and lock it with a patent pending and eventually a patent. They'll do the patent search for me(well worth it), and we'll see if it's as original as my own search indicated it might be. It's definitely not my main focus right now, but if it ends up being feasible and operating as intended it's the bigger business opportunity by far(Think "Paint brush cover"). For now I'm more than content to focus on my ecommerce product.
Well, those are my jumbled thoughts, I'll post in here periodically with status updates. Thanks for reading!
I'm a chemical engineer. I make decent pay, not quite 6 figures. Not bad for someone who's been in the work force for all of 11 months. I enjoy the concepts I learned in school, but unfortunately my job isn't challenging my intellect like school did, it only drills my motivation and energy into the ground 5 days a week. Every day it's a new crisis, every day the business is once again in danger of going under unless I figure out what to do and take care of it. I work with a group of people who have learned helplessness a dozen times a day.
My dad would say that I need only stay the course to find myself successful. He's an entrepreneur, but his business is a J.O.B...Only in the last couple years he's begun to relax a little and been able to travel a bit. He's been grinding for 20 years. So it's unsurprising that he always pushed me to go to college and get a place to go 5 days a week with some job security. But my goal is a different path.
Before buying TMF , I had started to realize that I wanted to live unscripted , to swim lateral to the riptides of mediocrity around me. I bought a duplex and am having my tenants pay the mortgage(Live for free!). Using slowlane methodologies, I had already started to calculate how long I would have to grind to break free of the system. The only difference is that I was thinking of minimum sustainable income. "If I can make at least 4% return for the rest of my life, I could retire at this savings.". "If the stock market does 10% for the next 4 years, I can retire then." et. cetera. The scenarios flew past endlessly, as I tried to figure out how miserable I'd have to be for the next 4-6 years, and how much I'd have to ration myself after that to stay out of the rat race for good.
I bought TMF November 15, 2016 and spent a few weeks reading it during every lunch break. It changed the way I think about money, but I'm a slow thinker. I spent the next 3 months coming up with ideas and slowly moving towards executing. It's only in the last couple of months that I've been putting some real work in.
Because work takes almost all of my energy and time but leaves me with plenty of money, I think an e-commerce business is ideal for my situation. I can work it on nights and weekends, milk the job until it becomes irrelevant, and then leave the 9-5x5 for a 9-9x6.
My progress so far:
1. I've been pretty consistently going to the gym, eating right, and sleeping decent hours. This helps a lot with managing my emotional energy.
2. I've been finding people in my area to do all the time-consuming work for me(plumbing, mowing, maintenance).
3. I've cut down on time with my girlfriend, as I realized she was literally taking the entirety of my weekends. I'm proud of this one because it gets me back a lot of time, but it hurts at the same time, and she's made it obvious she doesn't like it.
4. I've found a solid product with a relatively high barrier to entry.
5. I've created a corporation and an associated bank account
6. I've contacted a dozen or so supposed manufacturers.
7. I found 6 or so who could make OEM products.
In what I find to be a very amusing aside, one manufacturer insisted that they could make the product, but was very whiny about every little thing. e.g.:
Him: "HI MillenialKid5k1,
How many qty will be in total ?
Thanks and Best Regards"
Me: "Joe,
Because this is a new product for us, we are hoping to test the market with a small order. Once we have evaluated the marketability of this <item>, we are hoping to form a long-term business relationship with the company who will be manufacturing it. Do you manufacture your own <items>? Are they made using <technique>?"
Him: "Then you could try to sell our regular item , not designs some new one its not good choice .
Kind noted
Regards/Joe"
Needless to say, this conversation didn't last long, and he actually said his company wasn't taking on new customers (I smell bullcrap.)
8. I made custom CAD drawings of the product in question.
9. I've exchanged samples with a few manufacturers
10. One of the samples was made of a material other than what they said it was. Unfortunately, this was also the most responsive and easy to deal with company I've ever dealt with, and they quoted me a great price. I've gone into talks about buying raws of these materials if they'll let me recoup the costs on orders, and find a place to test it which can certify the materials to certain standards.
11. I've used 99designs to design myself a logo
Now as much as I know MJ advises against doing multiple things at once, I came up with an idea that I think is pretty huge. I've been reaching out to thoughtstopaper to try and lock it with a patent pending and eventually a patent. They'll do the patent search for me(well worth it), and we'll see if it's as original as my own search indicated it might be. It's definitely not my main focus right now, but if it ends up being feasible and operating as intended it's the bigger business opportunity by far(Think "Paint brush cover"). For now I'm more than content to focus on my ecommerce product.
Well, those are my jumbled thoughts, I'll post in here periodically with status updates. Thanks for reading!
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