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providing additional help and value worth of 1000 € per month by 31.12.2021

otek

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Jul 26, 2021
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Hello from Finland!

Read the books and decided to do introduction post with specific challenge laid out.
I'm 28 years old and have family with two young kids. Started out the usual slow lane way - school, university, secure job. Two years ago switched career from auditing related to data-analytics and coding. But I am still an employee.

Currently going through an identity shift. Previously did not consider myself as entrepreneur. Even though I started my personal investment company this year, having small investment from family member. Reading the books I have started to view the current job as a means to an end and myself more as an entrepreneur.

Considering the investment company, it has lack of control problem. I can't predict the market with 100 % certainty.
Seems that it would be better and more meaningful route to do services or products that help people.
And I can keep the investment company on background.

Challenge: to provide recurring help and value worth of 1000 € per month by 31.12.2021.
Longer term goal is to help people massively and be free.
 
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Andy Black

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May 20, 2014
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Hello from Finland!

Read the books and decided to do introduction post with specific challenge laid out.
I'm 28 years old and have family with two young kids. Started out the usual slow lane way - school, university, secure job. Two years ago switched career from auditing related to data-analytics and coding. But I am still an employee.

Currently going through an identity shift. Previously did not consider myself as entrepreneur. Even though I started my personal investment company this year, having small investment from family member. Reading the books I have started to view the current job as a means to an end and myself more as an entrepreneur.

Considering the investment company, it has lack of control problem. I can't predict the market with 100 % certainty.
Seems that it would be better and more meaningful route to do services or products that help people.
And I can keep the investment company on background.

Challenge: to provide recurring help and value worth of 1000 € per month by 31.12.2021.
Longer term goal is to help people massively and be free.
Welcome.

Can you get freelance work providing the service you currently get paid for or used to do?
 

otek

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FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
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User Power
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Jul 26, 2021
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50
Welcome.

Can you get freelance work providing the service you currently get paid for or used to do?
Thank you for suggestion! Very probably I can. It's actually quite interesting decision on what to do next to get where I need to. Warning, I'm going to write quite a long post to clear my head on this decision. I hope that this train of thought is interesting or valuable to others too.

Decision parameters, constraints
-> available Industries / job types: Currently working on a very small data-analytics/science services related start up we provide almost anything related to analytics, automated reports, dashboards, web-apps etc. There is a problem if I start to do something too similar - competing against my employee. This filters out some ground.
-> time. I have maybe two hours of time per day where I can concentrate on something different than my family or job. But on weekends I probably could make this to 8 hours (8 hours for my new ventures 8 hours for family fully - I probably could sell this to wife ). So I have 8+8+2+2+2+2+2 = 24 hours per week.

My skills
-> From current job: dashboards, automated reports, data manipulation. Also have made some web apps with data manipulation and automatic report generation
-> AI technologies, I have studied AI field and made demo apps using machine learning and deep learning techniques.
-> Investing, valuation, understanding financial statements. Some skills in accounting and auditing.
-> Related to sales side. I Have done sales related tasks on my job, cold calling, e-mailing and so forth.
-> One maybe weird specialized skill I have is related to business knowledge and information on Tesla and its business environment. This has been and is almost my only investment currently on my personal portfolio. I don't believe in diversification, it dilutes your returns. Of course I need to be right with high probability for this to make sense. But I believe with conviction that Tesla will be about 2 - 5 Trillion USD company in 10 years.

Time to acquire new skills and hone existing:
-> I think I could acquire new skills quite fast if needed. I have enough supporting learning skills to learn pretty much anything.

Other resources:
- I'm currently also a student in University in field of computer science and data science. However I'm not currently doing studies much at all - due to these other ventures. But maybe the uni could be leveraged somehow (recruiting easier etc.). If someone wonders, my previous university degree was finance/accounting related.
- Personal networks
- Finland's business networks

and all the other resources on the world

Just writing some quite random thoughts out, to straighten out my head
These parameters above have lead me to consider something related to renting some products - or apartments - and using data-analytics and machine learning - if of use - to gain competitive advantage.
With real state investments additional advantage would be that my wife has eye for taking pictures and styling. Longer term would be great to own - say 30 apartments. Maybe she would be interested in managing these and not go back to her work. Renting out would be good, because it has quite good time detachment. Automatic systems could probably be made to make it even more detached from time.

One Idea, which I already pursued somewhat, was to create automated trading bot. Backtesting couple strategies, it already made positive returns before commissions and slippage. Of course after costs would probably be about break even or negative. This route, however seems little bit devoid of meaning and it is of course not for sure 100 % certain. I think - maybe delusionally- that this could however be made work in maybe a year, if I put in 100 % effort. But in the end, it seems easier and more meaningful to just do some products or services that also help others.

With respect to my current job. It is a small firm - there's only four of us and we have experienced a lot together, I and my coworker are pretty much treated and acting like we are partners in the firm - even though we have no equity. Maybe one route could be to try to get into "real" partnership with them. If I would succeed - say I get 10 percent equity - my current job would maybe be more meaningful. I would also benefit if the valuation of the firm raises. But this route has somewhat of a control problem.

Other route I have dreamed of is to start wholly new company. For example a company leveraging the AI technology and/or just simpler rule based automation systems seems like a good way to provide value. One question I have asked is, how to take most boring possible industry and make it more efficient and valuable? Maybe there could be ways to leverage code, data-analytics and machine learning to automate some processes or make processes more efficient and so forth.

I have thought about what to say my employee if I just start freelancing on the side. I have already told them that I'm going to buy Cybertruck, and I want to build bigger house for my family so I simply just need money. They would probably view it more from the side that I need extra income, and not feel so threatened that I'm going to take business away from them. Maybe I could even find my employee some new clients on my own time - do some personal work with the client - but also possibly get leads for my employee. This side job thing could probably be done in a win win way.

Synthesis
Seems that I could have clearer vision for the road ahead. But I have already some ideas and resources to use.
To gain skills and go where i need to (1000 € challenge by year end) I can do the following:

1. We can buy a new apartment for us and leave this current one for renting purposes ( I have actually planned on this already). This could probably make about 500 € per week after costs.

2. I have 24 hours for concentrated work after family time per week. Apartment renting would not eat up all. As Andy suggested this can be used for freelance work. However I'm not sure if I can use it directly in data-services related work due to then competing against my employee. Maybe there's some win win model?

But in any case I can do the following which are not in the companys field.
- Building simple websites for small companies (I already have skills in HTML and CSS, some in javascript)
- seo optimization services, with two steps
1. Building infromational site tracking self driving car progress - just for practice and I would like to use this myself - then trying to SEO optimize
2. Selling SEO optimization
- Arbitraging, using web scraping to find deals
- copy writing
- digital marketing
- Excel VBA macros for automation. I did couple of these in my previous job - maybe my employer would not mind me doing these as freelancer - I could also maybe provide leads

Other more random hustle opportunities
- Find items I don't use anymore and sell them
- Rent out my golf bag
- Rent out my fathers trailer which he does not use (either buy from him or comissions)
- I could help my father in other ways too:
-> he has empty industrial building with crane. I could help him find tenants
- I could help my brother to find job or start a company with him (he has currently completed his degree in game design and engines - however he has mainly focused on virtual reality)
- I could maybe help my sister in someway who is doing bioinformatics related research at university
- I could help my mom maybe someway in his job as a director of community school
- write research reports on stocks, publish on website I create

Conclusion
For now, I choose the apartment renting thing. That one has quite clear steps ahead. That's not enough for the provide value for 1000 € challenge however. I need to do something more. There's also time to do other things. I start out with one side hustle/job.

Feel free to give further feedback, criticism, advice.
 

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