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Going for it. Ecommerce.

amp0193

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For sales tax, at your level of revenue, I wouldn't worry about it.

Yeah, I meant to say this too.

No rush in even filing in your own state at this point. Just whenever you get around to it.
 
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JByers210

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Yeah, I meant to say this too.

No rush in even filing in your own state at this point. Just whenever you get around to it.
I already have put my state taxes into Amazon but that's the only one I've done. You guys are awesome. Thanks for helping me out so much.
 

JByers210

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I've set up a separate bank account for the business and am in the process of figuring out my exact profits so far (@CareCPA has been a huge help).

So lately I've been going back and forth in my head about college. I keep wondering if:
  • I'm wasting my time since I'd rather live in a tent than go work for someone else for the rest of my life and go corporate
  • I could be working more to have more $$$ to fund my business
  • I could have more time to spend working on the business
  • I'm just doing this to make my parents happy
I've been staying up til 2 every night learning and going after this ecommerce business after I get off work. I love it. The problem is that the next morning I'm so tired and I haven't had the drive to go to my 8:30 A.M. classes so I'll either roll into class like a zombie or I'll catch an extra hour of sleep. The other week I walked into my psychology class (I hate it. I can't believe my parents are losing money and I'm losing my time for the stuff I'm being taught) and realized they were taking a test. Some people in the back started laughing and the professor just looked at me like I was a total idiot. I hate college so much.
BUT
I did some thinking last week. I read through some of the threads on the forum and absorbed what was being said. I don't want to put my big decisions on other people but it's nice to see what guys here had to say. One person said to at least build a business while in college so you have something going for you when you leave. I highly respect Mark Cuban (I'd say he's probably up there with @MJ DeMarco ;)) and decided to look up "Mark Cuban College Advice" just to see what would pop up.

Mark Cuban gives a 17-year-old who pitched him on 'Shark Tank' his top advice for getting ahead

I read that article and what he said to the young entrepreneur that said he would skip college to work on his business makes sense.

"Learning accounting, learning finance, learning marketing, the more you can pull together, the quicker you can make decisions, the more competitive you can be, the greater advantage,"

While I'm in college, however long it may be, I will learn as much as I can about business and really apply myself so I can apply it to my own. My dad is also paying for it (it's community college but still its a few thousand a year) so I'll also respect what he's doing for me and get to work. With that being said, when I reach 70K profit I will no longer be going to college. I don't know how or how long it will take but I'm going to keep working on my current business and going at it. Work and college are my daily FTE's.

Here are my goals for this week:
  1. Figure out exactly how much I've made in profit so far
  2. Finish with the back and forth customizations of my new product. If people bought my other one, I imagine this will sell at least twice as much.
  3. Finish the Facebook Ads Course I bough through Udemy
  4. Start a Google Ads Course on Udemy
I hope my progress and this thread really helps someone out down the road and inspires them the way I've been inspired here. Honestly, the help and responses I've gotten from you guys on here has encouraged me so much it's insane. If it weren't for MJ's books and this forum and all of you on here, I'd be so confused and have no sense of direction. As always, please share any advice or any thoughts you have!!
 
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Xeon

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I've set up a separate bank account for the business and am in the process of figuring out my exact profits so far (@CareCPA has been a huge help).

So lately I've been going back and forth in my head about college. I keep wondering if:
  • I'm wasting my time since I'd rather live in a tent than go work for someone else for the rest of my life and go corporate
  • I could be working more to have more $$$ to fund my business
  • I could have more time to spend working on the business
  • I'm just doing this to make my parents happy
I've been staying up til 2 every night learning and going after this ecommerce business after I get off work. I love it. The problem is that the next morning I'm so tired and I haven't had the drive to go to my 8:30 A.M. classes so I'll either roll into class like a zombie or I'll catch an extra hour of sleep. The other week I walked into my psychology class (I hate it. I can't believe my parents are losing money and I'm losing my time for the stuff I'm being taught) and realized they were taking a test. Some people in the back started laughing and the professor just looked at me like I was a total idiot. I hate college so much.
BUT
I did some thinking last week. I read through some of the threads on the forum and absorbed what was being said. I don't want to put my big decisions on other people but it's nice to see what guys here had to say. One person said to at least build a business while in college so you have something going for you when you leave. I highly respect Mark Cuban (I'd say he's probably up there with @MJ DeMarco ;)) and decided to look up "Mark Cuban College Advice" just to see what would pop up.

Mark Cuban gives a 17-year-old who pitched him on 'Shark Tank' his top advice for getting ahead

I read that article and what he said to the young entrepreneur that said he would skip college to work on his business makes sense.

"Learning accounting, learning finance, learning marketing, the more you can pull together, the quicker you can make decisions, the more competitive you can be, the greater advantage,"

While I'm in college, however long it may be, I will learn as much as I can about business and really apply myself so I can apply it to my own. My dad is also paying for it (it's community college but still its a few thousand a year) so I'll also respect what he's doing for me and get to work. With that being said, when I reach 70K profit I will no longer be going to college. I don't know how or how long it will take but I'm going to keep working on my current business and going at it. Work and college are my daily FTE's.

Just curious, how many more years of college do you still have left?

This is my personal opinion, but I feel that you should stick with college and hustle at the same time, unless you're raking in 5-figure consistently a month.

In the event that your business fails or sales start to go down after reaching a plateau (touch wood!), you still have college as a backup, and you can use THAT degree to find a white-collar day job which pays an OK wage, and you use that "OK" wage to start a side business in your after work hours. Without that degree, you'll probably be working as a table cleaner and the wages for a table cleaner is not enough to fund most hustles (especially if you're dealing with inventory!!!)

I'm not from the US so I'm not sure how difficult it is to find a job with a college degree there (I mean, MJ himself had issues getting a day job with his dual-degree), so....

Just my 2-cents. I know some folks want to go balls in, by quitting college and their stable day job, staking everything on an all-or-nothing, when they're not earning anywhere close to even a 4-digit figure monthly.

I've been following all your posts and you're doing very well for someone your age. When I was your age, all I could think of was porn and girls. Sigh.
 

JByers210

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Just curious, how many more years of college do you still have left?

This is my personal opinion, but I feel that you should stick with college and hustle at the same time, unless you're raking in 5-figure consistently a month.

In the event that your business fails or sales start to go down after reaching a plateau (touch wood!), you still have college as a backup, and you can use THAT degree to find a white-collar day job which pays an OK wage, and you use that "OK" wage to start a side business in your after work hours. Without that degree, you'll probably be working as a table cleaner and the wages for a table cleaner is not enough to fund most hustles (especially if you're dealing with inventory!!!)

I'm not from the US so I'm not sure how difficult it is to find a job with a college degree there (I mean, MJ himself had issues getting a day job with his dual-degree), so....

Just my 2-cents. I know some folks want to go balls in, by quitting college and their stable day job, staking everything on an all-or-nothing, when they're not earning anywhere close to even a 4-digit figure monthly.
Thanks for this. I'm in my first year and I don't know if I want to go for a four year degree so maybe another year after this one. Yes, I agree with you for the most part. The back-up part is where I don't agree 100%. I've been around a bunch of guys who have degrees lately, including at work, that can't get a job with them. One had a degree for IT and was stuck driving at the tire shop... a minimum wage job I got with no effort. He told me no one was hiring and the one place he had planned to go work for told him they'd let him know when there was an opening lol. He'd been waiting for a while. I see and hear all of these horror stories about college and debt that I seriously doubt the need for the degree if you're finally taking off with a business. I'm not in that place right now so I'm grinding in college. Thank you man for following!!! I love when you and other guys give advice and feedback.
...back to homework :playful:
 

Xeon

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Thanks for this. I'm in my first year and I don't know if I want to go for a four year degree so maybe another year after this one. Yes, I agree with you for the most part. The back-up part is where I don't agree 100%. I've been around a bunch of guys who have degrees lately, including at work, that can't get a job with them. One had a degree for IT and was stuck driving at the tire shop... a minimum wage job I got with no effort. He told me no one was hiring and the one place he had planned to go work for told him they'd let him know when there was an opening lol. He'd been waiting for a while. I see and hear all of these horror stories about college and debt that I seriously doubt the need for the degree if you're finally taking off with a business. I'm not in that place right now so I'm grinding in college. Thank you man for following!!! I love when you and other guys give advice and feedback.
...back to homework :playful:

Yup, if the situation is that bad over there, then go for it if you feel you must :)
I understand the college debt there are astronomical amounts lol
 
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JByers210

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Today I got to talk to @CareCPA (thanks a ton man!) and he showed me how to figure out my exact profits. I'm thankful for him and the other guys on this forum that have helped me out and sped up the process. According to all the income statements, I'm at -349.29$. Once I sell the rest of my units on Amazon, I'll be at 637.71$ profit since I've started selling this product around a month and a half ago. That will cover all the fees it took to start this LLC with LegalZoom and will make it profitable. It was good to take a step back and see what's going on with Amazon fees and my COG's. I'm so happy I launched this product even though it's not very good, because I learned so much that I wouldn't have otherwise.
I've made my first 1$..my first 100$...now I'm going for my first 1000$.

I'm in the process of making minor changes to a product and also figuring out how to add value to another product. I want to launch at least one if not both of these by the end of this month to Amazon and Shopify. This week I've been overwhelmed. I was reading threads that @JasonR and @hughjasle started and got some great nuggets..but instead of focusing on the task at hand (getting new products to launch), I've been thinking about funnels and how I'm going to do facebook ads. I'm making it a goal to launch these products as soon as possible and make my first 1000$ profit.
 
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JByers210

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Keep selling, while you're researching the the stuff.
I sent out 60 units this week that are in an FBA warehouse as we speak! Nothing crazy but I'm just bootstrapping with this product.
 
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Parker P

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Awesome thread man. I'm in the product selection phase right now, so reading this thread is really inspiring considering you're relatively new to this as well. I feel like it's really cool to catch threads like these early on solely because they haven't turned notable or gold yet, so they're more relatable to people who are first starting out (like me).
 

JByers210

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Awesome thread man. I'm in the product selection phase right now, so reading this thread is really inspiring considering you're relatively new to this as well. I feel like it's really cool to catch threads like these early on solely because they haven't turned notable or gold yet, so they're more relatable to people who are first starting out (like me).
I'm glad this thread has inspired you. That pumps me up!! I know what you mean. It's just taking action (launching a product, not action faking and trying to make everything perfect...which is what I'm going through again as we speak) that has helped me get from noob level one to noob level two lol. Stay in touch!! Feel free to PM me and talk. I want to meet like minded people and share progress and ideas [emoji16]
 

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I'm glad this thread has inspired you. That pumps me up!! I know what you mean. It's just taking action (launching a product, not action faking and trying to make everything perfect...which is what I'm going through again as we speak) that has helped me get from noob level one to noob level two lol. Stay in touch!! Feel free to PM me and talk. I want to meet like minded people and share progress and ideas [emoji16]
Will do!
 
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JByers210

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I just got a one month subscription to split.ly like @amp0193 suggested and am going to see how it goes with my product! I'm not totally sure how it all works but I'm interested in watching the results.
 

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I've taken all of the social media usernames for my brand name...but the .com domain is taken for it. I reached out to the owner and he said he is going to be releasing his own product soon and isn't interested in selling it. I bought a .com with a tagline from our business instead. Any thoughts? @MJ DeMarco I saw what you said on the thread about building a brand on anything but a .com. Would love to get your take on this.
 

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I'm getting my sample for my newest product on Tuesday! I've taken the product and just added two changes to it to make it more convenient. I posted a blurry photo as a sneak peak on my instagram page to hype it up, and people have been commenting saying it looks sweet and are tagging friends. Someone messaged me today saying they wanted to pre-order it! My first product is still selling on Amazon and doing alright (I've sold 3-4 on average a day probably).

In Unscripted , MJ talks about listening to the market's echos. I believe I've heard some this week. I re-purposed a picture I got from pinterest to my instagram page and it was just a quality picture that had to do with my niche. The picture had a handmade item in it and this week I've had two people ask me how much I'd sell it to them for. I had nothing to do with taking the picture and what was in it, but I asked one of them how much they'd be willing to pay for it. I thought he'd say 60$...he said "I would pay 200$ for it". I don't want to jump all in on something, but it seems like there is a demand for it. I checked to see if this was being sold, but all I found was a DIY project website that the picture came from. I'm going to learn how to make one myself and see if someone will actually buy it. It would probably take me a couple hours of work and 30$ in materials. I'm pumped to test this!!!

Thanks for reading!!! Any advice or anything anyone has for me I'd love to hear.
P.S. I wanted to go to the fastlane summit so bad. I decided not to pursue it this year so I can save money and dump it into my business. I can't wait for the next one!!!!
 
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JByers210

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I've been spreading myself too thin with college, real estate classes (I go to night classes), work, and this business. I came into work last week and my manager talked with me about how I need to focus on what matters the most to me and not try to do everything at once...even if it was the job. I thought about it for a while and decided to put my two weeks in. By next Friday with my next two checks, I'll have 2,300$ in my personal account and around 1000$ in my business bank account (with inventory for two products worth at least 2000$ already paid for as well). My dad owns a construction company and offered to let me work once or twice a week down the road at a job site to pay for food and gas if I want to which helps. My backup plan for cash is real estate in the not too distant future.

Here are my priorities as of right now:
  1. Spending more time on the business overall - taking action - learning more on the forum
  2. Getting my Real Estate license in a few weeks and starting to work under a mentor
  3. Getting my Associates Degree. My dad is paying for me to go to community college and I appreciate that he is putting his money where his mouth is.
I'm struggling right now with my newest product. I ordered 100 pieces and then afterwords I found out it has a patent even though there are people selling them outside of the patent owner. I think I'm going to just sell through these, take the profit, and move on to another product because I don't want to be infringing on patents. I'm definitely not trying to do it on purpose.
 

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my manager talked with me about how I need to focus on what matters the most to me

I thought about it for a while and decided to put my two weeks in.

I bet he was like, "wtf did I just do?"! haha
 
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JByers210

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My last day at my job is this Friday. I am so pumped to wake up every morning knowing I don't have to clock into the tire shop and go drive for hours a day. All the money I've put into the business has come back with more for me to put right back in. I haven't created my first handmade product yet that two people have shown interest in from the picture I posted on my instagram page...but I'm making it this week. It will roughly cost me 30$ and a couple hours of work to create. The finished product will sell for 200$. I've bootstrapped this ecommerce business with my first product so far with orders of 20, 40, 60, and now 80 units.

Here is what I am going to accomplish this week
  • Create my first new handmade item (involves learning how, getting the right materials, probably failing a couple times)
  • Get one sale for 200$ (profit 150$)
  • Get at least 10 more pre-orders for my new product being released in a few weeks
  • List a ton of stuff I own that I don't need on Ebay/Amazon/Craigslist and use that money for more inventory.
  • Read books I own but haven't gotten to yet:
- Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook - Gary Vaynerchuck
- Greatness is Upon You - Eric Thomas
- My Bible.. I've been so tired and busy with everything I haven't been in my Bible like I should. I always feel that tug to read it every day. The more I ignore my spiritual walk, the harder it is for me to focus mentally and physically. Just how it is. I've been using MJ's daily Fastlane checklist lately and I've realized every day so far that I haven't been able to honestly check off the box that asked if I had improved my spiritual being that day. Fixing that!

The job I'm about to be done with now is paying me 10$ an hour (which is minimum after taxes). I am not against getting another job to continue funding my business endeavors...but I don't want to go back to that. I'm going all in with this new handmade product and believe that I can make at least twice as much as I can at a job...while I'm already selling my first product on Amazon.

This past month I've talked to some friends that are away at different colleges and it's changed my perspective a bit. I asked if my one friend was working and he said, "No, I haven't worked since last summer." I then asked, "Do you have any saved up?" (We are good friends, neither of us care if asked about stuff like that) "No. I'm spending it all on college and housing" He will be spending 20-30K a year for the next four years to go there. How dumb. He's just one of a few doing the same thing. I'm a total beginner in entrepreneurship, but it's something I can't live without. It's hope and a real dream. I love it.

Here is proof of my sales so far on Amazon!
Capture.PNG
 

JByers210

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Today I broke my record for sales and profit in a day on Amazon with 14 units sold...I made almost twice as much as I would if I went in to work today. It's the craziest feeling. Yesterday was my first day without a job and I focused on learning Amazon PPC and how to setup manual campaigns which I believe is what made my sales so high today. I'm hungry and have so much to learn, but I'm enjoying the whole process.
 
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Did you get any market validation before you decided on your product? If so, what avenues did you take? I have a product in mind and I think it is good but I would like to test it first.
 

JByers210

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Did you get any market validation before you decided on your product? If so, what avenues did you take? I have a product in mind and I think it is good but I would like to test it first.
After a month of reading threads and researching products, I found one that I felt I could add a little bit of value to and just went for it with 200-300$ to start. It's been selling consistently so it's been working out. I had no market echos or validation, but I did read the product reviews looking for low star ratings and complaints that I could fix. I fixed the most common problem and went with it.
 

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After a month of reading threads and researching products, I found one that I felt I could add a little bit of value to and just went for it with 200-300$ to start. It's been selling consistently so it's been working out. I had no market echos or validation, but I did read the product reviews looking for low star ratings and complaints that I could fix. I fixed the most common problem and went with it.
Cool. I just read your first page in this thread and realize there is a few things I need to do. I have not filed for an LLC nor set up an Amazon seller's account.
 
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JByers210

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My first product is still selling consistently on Amazon and my new PPC campaign has been bringing in a crazy amount of sales compared to before. I'm not sure what my deal is, but the past couple weeks I've made getting pre-orders for my new product so much more difficult than it has to be. I keep overthinking it and wondering if I should do this or that. I picked up Unscripted and read through a chapter that had to do with KE and in it MJ talked about buying Instagram ads from large profiles on the cheap for about 25$. I immediately stopped reading and began reaching out to as many as possible in my niche with 300K+ followers. I've got 97 units coming in and I've only pre-sold 7 of them.....that's pretty bad but I'm getting on top of it. I already knew about the instagram accounts and buying ads, but I overthink things way too much sometimes and make it harder than it really is. Hoping to sell at least half of them by the time they get here next Wednesday.

Here are the things I need to do:
  • learn how to build a brand and read the books @AllenCrawley suggested in his thread on the inside
  • Pre-sell half of my second product by next Wednesday
  • Build my first handmade product as soon as possible
  • Get my instagram follower count up to 4K by next week
I'm going to be hustling on Craigslist and flipping things to get more cash for the business. It's consistent money coming out the other end every time I put some in!

A side note....
I've hit $5641.37 in sales so far on Amazon with my first product! For me it's crazy seeing the small milestones like this when a few months ago I would have done anything to get one sale. Time to set higher goals.
hghdj.PNG
 
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Hello All!

I'm just diving into the ecommerce adventure as well and I'm kind of confused on what avenues are best to sell my products. I can create products myself, but will be relying mostly on P.O.D. services to license my artwork and print it on bunches of products without having the overhead. I'm just not sure what I should do with my website. I got a domain, web hosting, and have a framework built up on Wix - but when I went to add products to my "store" section, they wanted me to pay $24/mo, on top of what I already paid for the site and every service that needs to be activated with it.

Should I just use my website to direct people to the P.O.D. sites? Is there a better way? I would rather people be able to order through my site directly - maybe I could link it to the other sites somehow, or just process the order through them after I receive the order on my site? - but this is where I keep banging my head off the wall. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if this post was a little scattered, I have so many things running through my mind right now haha.
 
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JByers210

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Hello All!

I'm just diving into the ecommerce adventure as well and I'm kind of confused on what avenues are best to sell my products. I can create products myself, but will be relying mostly on P.O.D. services to license my artwork and print it on bunches of products without having the overhead. I'm just not sure what I should do with my website. I got a domain, web hosting, and have a framework built up on Wix - but when I went to add products to my "store" section, they wanted me to pay $24/mo, on top of what I already paid for the site and every service that needs to be activated with it.

Should I just use my website to direct people to the P.O.D. sites? Is there a better way? I would rather people be able to order through my site directly - maybe I could link it to the other sites somehow, or just process the order through them after I receive the order on my site? - but this is where I keep banging my head off the wall. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if this post was a little scattered, I have so many things running through my mind right now haha.
Everything I know I learned from this forum. I mentioned some names in the beginning of this thread. Right now I'm mostly selling on Amazon with plans of building a brand and business that can run without Amazon down the road.
 

JByers210

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I'm not sure if it's the bad weather (its been cold and foggy nonstop) or the major drop in sales, but I'm struggling right now. I could use some fellow entrepreneurs words of advice,encouragement, or critiquing.

Sales went from 8-15 units selling a day to only selling one unit a day on my first product. At the rate sales are going, I will be in the red this month and be paying more for my Shopify store and Amazon monthly sellers fee than I'll have made from sales. Maybe this is the desert of desolation MJ was referring to?

I'm struggling with what exactly to do day to day to grow my business and get out of this rut I'm in. I've been learning Facebook Ads, reading on branding, finishing up my first homemade product, and getting sales and reviews to my new product on Amazon...but I feel like I'm just wandering at the moment and it sucks.

I'm not sure if it's smart to stick with my current niche because it's somewhat seasonal...I also don't want to run 2 ecommerce businesses. I remember MJ talking about focusing on one business only in TMF . I also don't know if starting from scratch again is a good move. Since I started about four months ago....I've made 6,000$ in sales and around 2000$ in profit. I don't want to wait half a year to do it again though and I want to keep making progress...not go backwards.

I just looked back at my first posts and my "whys" that I had for doing this. I'm even more motivated than I was when I wrote that first post. On multiple occasions lately I've wanted to ask questions from Fastlaners on this forum but I stopped myself. Mostly because I don't want to annoy anyone or come across as not wanting to find the answers myself...but 99% of the time that I've reached out and asked questions or asked for guidance from someone on this forum..each person has helped me out so much. I want to help guys out like people on this forum have helped me out one day.

(I noticed how many times I've used the word "I" in this post. This is just how it came out. I'm still new to all of this and have a ton to learn....what I really want to to know is what YOU think!)
 

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