- Joined
- Sep 4, 2023
- Messages
- 48
Rep Bank
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Hi,
I'll try to keep it short. I've read TMF , and my inspiration to make money was ego-driven. In short, I rarely got laid in my country (Western Europe). Then, at 21, I had a trip to Thailand, and my worldview changed. Women were throwing themselves at me; the validation I got was incredible. I was hooked and wanted more... The only problem? I needed money or a remote job.
I didn't speak good English at the time. I started to look on the internet for ways to make money to move there, get laid, and get infinite validation from women. TLDR: I was absolutely lazy, without any relevant skills or money.
I had a bricklayer job that was paying me 800€/month, so I had a few thousand saved. I tried to invest in crypto and managed to get lucky. The few thousand became six figures. I felt on top of the world; I thought I had figured out how to make money and others were stupid. From there, I thought making money was easy. So it started the infinite loop of trying to find shortcuts, ways to make money easily: trading crypto, ICOs, day trading, investing, and blah blah blah... Of course, in less than a month, the market crashed, but I had experienced for the first time in my life a rapid explosion of wealth. From that moment, I knew it WAS possible in some way to make money.
I persisted with crypto trading and even managed to make some money. Then, a few years later, after building my portfolio again, the market crashed again, and I saw years of hard work being wiped away. I realized that I didn't have control and that it wasn't the right vehicle. In the meantime, I got hooked on the "make money" content and books, the classic Kiyosaki stuff that isn't applicable to my country anyway since we don't have free and easy credit as you guys in the US. Here, you have to pay upfront for whatever you want. 99% of the people I know don't even have credit cards but only debit cards, so no one here is using the "use debt to make money" strategy.
Anyway, I finally managed to get my hands on TMF . What a book, life-changing for sure! I knew what I had to do, so three years ago, I started with a side hustle where I could develop SOME skills as a starting point. I picked self-publishing because it made sense to me. For the first 6-8 months, I felt like I was just throwing money away and not getting anything back in return, until I managed to talk with more experienced people. I was lucky that another Italian guy was giving his knowledge for free. I listened, applied his teachings, and I started to see results. So I got hooked and worked night and day. Sometimes at 3 AM, I was still adjusting covers, uploading books, and doing things. I worked my a$$ off like I never had before.
Fast forward 8 months, and I was earning 4x the average salary. Fast forward 1 year, and I was earning 10x the average salary. I managed to save money, connect with wonderful people, develop copywriting and marketing knowledge, learn how to use tools, software, company formation, and tax optimization. Suddenly, I managed to get "successful." I left my soul-consuming job, and I've been doing this full-time for 2 years now. I've never been freer, happier, and more satisfied. I managed to travel the world more and stayed 8 months in Latin America, almost 8 months in Southeast Asia. It's been a wonderful experience! I knew from the beginning that Amazon was more of a side hustle than a serious business; the reason lies in the CENTS framework.
Control
Entry
Need
Scale
I think at some level, all of these things go against the CENTS framework, so I started to take the money I saved by living very, very, very, very frugally, and I mean VERY frugally.
Now I have this budget and this income that's coming month after month. I used the money to pay for a mentoring program with a guy who builds and sells SaaS and managed to make a Fastlane exit. I used my experience and confidence I matured with self-publishing to analyze demand, find problems, try to solve the problems, and I almost instantly found a SaaS idea.
The best way to learn is to just execute, so I didn't wait much. I tried to validate the idea by asking questions to my ideal target audience. I got the idea, and then I hired an agency of developers to build my MVP.
My philosophy now is... Raw action beats every other learning method. So, I will try my best and work my a$$ off to market this SaaS MVP. I will adjust from there and learn a lesson. I don't care if I lose all the money; the thing that interests me is the experience and the insights I'll get.
I have decided I will persist in this SaaS thing until I find success. The work ethic is there, the grit is there, the mentor is there. I will do my best. I saved enough money to try multiple SaaS ideas, and I see it as the best use of my money. I don't see any value in throwing that money into the S&P or crypto. I will spend every single extra dollar I earn to learn something through action... that could be cold email, copywriting, cold outreach in general, ads, etc.
The biggest realization I got is that when you make money, people will listen to you. They will pay attention to what you say, no matter HOW you made that money. You now have something valuable that people want.
That's why I reached out to a YouTube channel in my country with 100k subscribers who just started an "Online Business School," and I proposed myself, showing my results. We managed to collaborate. I now also run a class with 50 people. I coach them, I get 60%, the YouTube owner gets 40%. People are making money on Amazon, they're satisfied, and I'm learning new skills such as public speaking, communication, how to teach things, be clear, organizing things.
So now, I have this skill that is self-publishing. I made the right decisions; I got smart by knowing the risk of not having control and the unpredictability of Amazon. I managed to create 3 different accounts, skew my risks, and I feel way safer with 3 accounts than with one. Also, I took advantage of my hard-earned skills to offer value to other people. So now I have 3 accounts, 1 coaching side gig that is structured easily, one lesson every 2 weeks, so it's taking very little of my time. It's risk-free and it's low-hanging fruit. Only the coaching would already cover my costs of living, and lots of people subscribed to the yearly plan, a lot subscribed to the six-month plan, so at least for the next year, my expenses are covered. All that comes in from Amazon will go towards my SaaS, mentoring, outreach, software, etc.
So, I will take the money I make now to learn new things, apply, repeat the same thing I did with self-publishing. Then, if I succeed, I know that a lot of new doors will open.
I can't tell you how many opportunities have presented themselves just by networking with self-publishers, digital nomads, and other business-minded people. Lots of people have proposed collaborations, new business ventures, doing companies together, etc. So, once you manage to become successful even at just one thing, A LOT of opportunities will present themselves if you are proactive and you look for them.
So now, with this confidence, budget stacked up, multiple sources of income, a skill that will probably not vaporize in the next 1-2 years, I have a fair bit of confidence to tackle a new business venture in the SaaS world. The MVP should be finished in the next 3 weeks, and the prototype is already impressive. I can see the value it can give to other businesses and personal brands. The SaaS is basically a social listener with AI lead generation capabilities.
The pain points and idea came to my mind because, by doing the RAW action, I struggled with it firsthand. That's what most people here don't understand. You want to start something, even if it's not a CENTS business (spoiler alert: most probably the first business you can start WON'T be a CENTS business, and that's perfectly fine). From there, you will struggle, and that struggle is one of the potential problems you can solve, and from there, you can figure out MULTIPLE ways to monetize and solve the problem. That's what I'm trying to do with my SaaS thing. I will more likely than not find a lot of difficulties, problems, pain points, and that could be my future business or SaaS idea. As of now, by only doing raw action and working hard, I have a list of potentially 20+ SaaS ideas/business ideas. When I was overthinking things because I didn't take action, I couldn't come up with a single idea. So, pick up something, work, try, find problems WHILE you execute, and infinite business ideas will come!
So, in short, just don't be fing lazy, stay consistent, do the work ALWAYS, no matter how you feel, do the best you can, work hard, and get a nice mentor relevant to the things you're trying to do. I can't see how you can't win if you persist enough, I really don't.
I will update you guys on the progress of my SaaS here.
Thank you, @MJ DeMarco , for having changed my life!
The least i can do is to engage here more
I'll try to keep it short. I've read TMF , and my inspiration to make money was ego-driven. In short, I rarely got laid in my country (Western Europe). Then, at 21, I had a trip to Thailand, and my worldview changed. Women were throwing themselves at me; the validation I got was incredible. I was hooked and wanted more... The only problem? I needed money or a remote job.
I didn't speak good English at the time. I started to look on the internet for ways to make money to move there, get laid, and get infinite validation from women. TLDR: I was absolutely lazy, without any relevant skills or money.
I had a bricklayer job that was paying me 800€/month, so I had a few thousand saved. I tried to invest in crypto and managed to get lucky. The few thousand became six figures. I felt on top of the world; I thought I had figured out how to make money and others were stupid. From there, I thought making money was easy. So it started the infinite loop of trying to find shortcuts, ways to make money easily: trading crypto, ICOs, day trading, investing, and blah blah blah... Of course, in less than a month, the market crashed, but I had experienced for the first time in my life a rapid explosion of wealth. From that moment, I knew it WAS possible in some way to make money.
I persisted with crypto trading and even managed to make some money. Then, a few years later, after building my portfolio again, the market crashed again, and I saw years of hard work being wiped away. I realized that I didn't have control and that it wasn't the right vehicle. In the meantime, I got hooked on the "make money" content and books, the classic Kiyosaki stuff that isn't applicable to my country anyway since we don't have free and easy credit as you guys in the US. Here, you have to pay upfront for whatever you want. 99% of the people I know don't even have credit cards but only debit cards, so no one here is using the "use debt to make money" strategy.
Anyway, I finally managed to get my hands on TMF . What a book, life-changing for sure! I knew what I had to do, so three years ago, I started with a side hustle where I could develop SOME skills as a starting point. I picked self-publishing because it made sense to me. For the first 6-8 months, I felt like I was just throwing money away and not getting anything back in return, until I managed to talk with more experienced people. I was lucky that another Italian guy was giving his knowledge for free. I listened, applied his teachings, and I started to see results. So I got hooked and worked night and day. Sometimes at 3 AM, I was still adjusting covers, uploading books, and doing things. I worked my a$$ off like I never had before.
Fast forward 8 months, and I was earning 4x the average salary. Fast forward 1 year, and I was earning 10x the average salary. I managed to save money, connect with wonderful people, develop copywriting and marketing knowledge, learn how to use tools, software, company formation, and tax optimization. Suddenly, I managed to get "successful." I left my soul-consuming job, and I've been doing this full-time for 2 years now. I've never been freer, happier, and more satisfied. I managed to travel the world more and stayed 8 months in Latin America, almost 8 months in Southeast Asia. It's been a wonderful experience! I knew from the beginning that Amazon was more of a side hustle than a serious business; the reason lies in the CENTS framework.
Control
Entry
Need
Scale
I think at some level, all of these things go against the CENTS framework, so I started to take the money I saved by living very, very, very, very frugally, and I mean VERY frugally.
Now I have this budget and this income that's coming month after month. I used the money to pay for a mentoring program with a guy who builds and sells SaaS and managed to make a Fastlane exit. I used my experience and confidence I matured with self-publishing to analyze demand, find problems, try to solve the problems, and I almost instantly found a SaaS idea.
The best way to learn is to just execute, so I didn't wait much. I tried to validate the idea by asking questions to my ideal target audience. I got the idea, and then I hired an agency of developers to build my MVP.
My philosophy now is... Raw action beats every other learning method. So, I will try my best and work my a$$ off to market this SaaS MVP. I will adjust from there and learn a lesson. I don't care if I lose all the money; the thing that interests me is the experience and the insights I'll get.
I have decided I will persist in this SaaS thing until I find success. The work ethic is there, the grit is there, the mentor is there. I will do my best. I saved enough money to try multiple SaaS ideas, and I see it as the best use of my money. I don't see any value in throwing that money into the S&P or crypto. I will spend every single extra dollar I earn to learn something through action... that could be cold email, copywriting, cold outreach in general, ads, etc.
The biggest realization I got is that when you make money, people will listen to you. They will pay attention to what you say, no matter HOW you made that money. You now have something valuable that people want.
That's why I reached out to a YouTube channel in my country with 100k subscribers who just started an "Online Business School," and I proposed myself, showing my results. We managed to collaborate. I now also run a class with 50 people. I coach them, I get 60%, the YouTube owner gets 40%. People are making money on Amazon, they're satisfied, and I'm learning new skills such as public speaking, communication, how to teach things, be clear, organizing things.
So now, I have this skill that is self-publishing. I made the right decisions; I got smart by knowing the risk of not having control and the unpredictability of Amazon. I managed to create 3 different accounts, skew my risks, and I feel way safer with 3 accounts than with one. Also, I took advantage of my hard-earned skills to offer value to other people. So now I have 3 accounts, 1 coaching side gig that is structured easily, one lesson every 2 weeks, so it's taking very little of my time. It's risk-free and it's low-hanging fruit. Only the coaching would already cover my costs of living, and lots of people subscribed to the yearly plan, a lot subscribed to the six-month plan, so at least for the next year, my expenses are covered. All that comes in from Amazon will go towards my SaaS, mentoring, outreach, software, etc.
So, I will take the money I make now to learn new things, apply, repeat the same thing I did with self-publishing. Then, if I succeed, I know that a lot of new doors will open.
I can't tell you how many opportunities have presented themselves just by networking with self-publishers, digital nomads, and other business-minded people. Lots of people have proposed collaborations, new business ventures, doing companies together, etc. So, once you manage to become successful even at just one thing, A LOT of opportunities will present themselves if you are proactive and you look for them.
So now, with this confidence, budget stacked up, multiple sources of income, a skill that will probably not vaporize in the next 1-2 years, I have a fair bit of confidence to tackle a new business venture in the SaaS world. The MVP should be finished in the next 3 weeks, and the prototype is already impressive. I can see the value it can give to other businesses and personal brands. The SaaS is basically a social listener with AI lead generation capabilities.
The pain points and idea came to my mind because, by doing the RAW action, I struggled with it firsthand. That's what most people here don't understand. You want to start something, even if it's not a CENTS business (spoiler alert: most probably the first business you can start WON'T be a CENTS business, and that's perfectly fine). From there, you will struggle, and that struggle is one of the potential problems you can solve, and from there, you can figure out MULTIPLE ways to monetize and solve the problem. That's what I'm trying to do with my SaaS thing. I will more likely than not find a lot of difficulties, problems, pain points, and that could be my future business or SaaS idea. As of now, by only doing raw action and working hard, I have a list of potentially 20+ SaaS ideas/business ideas. When I was overthinking things because I didn't take action, I couldn't come up with a single idea. So, pick up something, work, try, find problems WHILE you execute, and infinite business ideas will come!
So, in short, just don't be fing lazy, stay consistent, do the work ALWAYS, no matter how you feel, do the best you can, work hard, and get a nice mentor relevant to the things you're trying to do. I can't see how you can't win if you persist enough, I really don't.
I will update you guys on the progress of my SaaS here.
Thank you, @MJ DeMarco , for having changed my life!
The least i can do is to engage here more
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