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Thirty Years Early to the Party

Daniel James

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The Situation

I'm twenty six, in a fairly odd position in life.

I have a house. I paid cash for it. I just spent a year remodeling the entire thing by myself. I'm renting the extra bedrooms out on AirBnb to pay the bills. I have two cheap cars, both paid off. I just sold my first property, a condo I remodeled and made a decent little profit on.

I've done entrepreneurial things but don't particularly consider myself an entrepreneur. All of the good decisions I've made in my life have been geared towards creating an environment to earn a living off of my writing. Which historically and currently has produced little to no income.

The Problem

Which leads me to my current problem, I didn't earn my "wealth." Nor did my family, we were broke. But my parents died and I got paid. My mom committed suicide when I was eleven and we received a settlement. Twelve years later my Dad's heart exploded to the tune of a half a million dollar life insurance policy split between my brother and I.

So call it existential angst, call it nihilism, call it the truth, but being orphaned at twenty-three and watching my parents die young has left me impossibly reluctant to waste my life in what MJ has so aptly labeled the script. So for the last nine years I have followed the dark and twisty road of following the thing I believe I was born to do: writing. Though, so far, the marketmind has unsurprisingly not given a single F*ck.

The Question

I have virtually no responsibilities to anyone but myself and I have significant amount of time to allocate however I please. My conundrum is the following: what do you do when you think you have found the reason you materialized out of the whirlpool of blood, cum, piss, and shit that is the universe only to make $14.71 a month off of it after years of effort?

The three obvious options are:

1. Slowlane a 9-5 to pay the bills and save, use whatever time is left to pursue the dream.
2. Enjoy the suck. Every great author suffered immensely financially for a significant period of time, skirt by as best you can, and if you crash, well, at least maybe you enjoyed the burn of chasing something most people never have the balls to.
3. Take the monogamous fastlane, deliver immense value, get your F*ck you money, then chase the dream. Basically exactly what MJ has done with his life... Lol.

Given that I'm here, I'm obviously more privy to numbers 2 and 3 as I'm sure most people here are. I suppose what I'm getting at is that it does seem ignorant not to capitalize on my ability to purposely save given my extremely low living expenses. That's my saving grace-- I am extremely good at managing money. I've been handling six figure sums since I was eighteen. I can live comfortably on 12-14k a year. There's certainly no Lambos involved, but I also don't clip coupons. So if I worked on a way to make 50k, 100k, virtually any mentionable amount of income, delivering value in something I found remotely meaningful, I'd be well on my way to an impressive money system.

I know in some sense the question is impossibly broad and it is naive to expect anyone to have an answer to it. What's the meaning of life, eh? Anyways, maybe it'll make for a good introduction.
 
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Maxboost

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What genre do you write in? Is the market big enough? Also, has occurred to you that maybe you aren't a good writer, maybe you should transition to something else?
 

Daniel James

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Hey Max,

I've written in a few different genre's. Memoir, technical non-fiction, but for last significant chunk of time it has been fiction. Yea it certainly has occurred to me perhaps I'm a shit writer. The only thing that would be odd about that though is no one will admit it. Obviously friends and family will lie to you, but I've had a reasonable number of unbiased parties and graduate/Ph.D literature students read my stuff and they all at the very least say it's good. Some have said exceedingly good for varying reasons. I've got a couple short stories I'd be more than happy to share if anyone would like to judge for themselves.

I'm not entirely opposed to transitioning to something else, or at least having a viable source of income, the question then is just what? In the past I've managed a couple gyms and then got into freight brokerage, but I'm not too keen on going back to them if I can help it. Freight brokering is my backup plan though if I really can't get my shit together.

Just recently I had been exploring starting a painting company or a pest control company but unfortunately it seems neither are possible due to some insane business license requirements in my county. Or at least not possible without some serious bribery or violating the control principle which has put a bit of a damper on those ideas.
 

Maxboost

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Hey Max,

I've written in a few different genre's. Memoir, technical non-fiction, but for last significant chunk of time it has been fiction. Yea it certainly has occurred to me perhaps I'm a sh*t writer. The only thing that would be odd about that though is no one will admit it. Obviously friends and family will lie to you, but I've had a reasonable number of unbiased parties and graduate/Ph.D literature students read my stuff and they all at the very least say it's good. Some have said exceedingly good for varying reasons. I've got a couple short stories I'd be more than happy to share if anyone would like to judge for themselves.

I'm not entirely opposed to transitioning to something else, or at least having a viable source of income, the question then is just what? In the past I've managed a couple gyms and then got into freight brokerage, but I'm not too keen on going back to them if I can help it. Freight brokering is my backup plan though if I really can't get my sh*t together.

Just recently I had been exploring starting a painting company or a pest control company but unfortunately it seems neither are possible due to some insane business license requirements in my county. Or at least not possible without some serious bribery or violating the control principle which has put a bit of a damper on those ideas.

Don't know if the market is saturated but if you are good at writing you might want to take a look at Sinister Lex and his copywriting threads.

The problem with artistic talents is that I would not have the heart to tell people especially my friends if they suck. It was like a guy who I used to work with. He thought he was funny and tried to be a stand up comedian. He was F*cken terrible but no one had the balls to tell him. He received fake compliments and words of encouragement. He got booed off stage and never returned. People need to hear the objectionable truth and accept reality sometimes..
 
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Daniel James

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Don't know if the market is saturated but if you are good at writing you might want to take a look at Sinister Lex and his copywriting threads.

The problem with artistic talents is that I would not have the heart to tell people especially my friends if they suck. It was like a guy who I used to work with. He thought he was funny and tried to be a stand up comedian. He was F*cken terrible but no one had the balls to tell him. He received fake compliments and words of encouragement. He got booed off stage and never returned. People need to hear the objectionable truth and accept reality sometimes..

Yea I've seen that same scenario play out in a lot of different contexts too. It's sad. I would certainly heed the signs if that was the response I've been getting.

But I do have a decent bit of evidence that at the very least I'm a pretty good writer. I have a small Youtube channel I post content on analyzing famous author's writing styles. On that same channel I've shared an audio short story. The response, although very small, to the videos has been overwhelmingly positive so I must have some clue what I'm talking about and doing. And the response to my books hasn't been boos, just crickets. And clearly the silence is worth paying attention to, but I have a feeling it's more a failure of other elements than the actual merit of the writing. Maybe I pick unpopular things to write about, maybe it's dismal marketing or product appeal, maybe I just haven't put enough content out there. Like you said, it's hard to pin point this sort of thing with creative endeavors. So I'm not quite ready to hang up the towel on it yet. Besides even if I gave up trying to get paid for it I'd still probably continue, if I were to quit it'd be my neck hanging instead of the towel.
 

Maxboost

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Yea I've seen that same scenario play out in a lot of different contexts too. It's sad. I would certainly heed the signs if that was the response I've been getting.

But I do have a decent bit of evidence that at the very least I'm a pretty good writer. I have a small Youtube channel I post content on analyzing famous author's writing styles. On that same channel I've shared an audio short story. The response, although very small, to the videos has been overwhelmingly positive so I must have some clue what I'm talking about and doing. And the response to my books hasn't been boos, just crickets. And clearly the silence is worth paying attention to, but I have a feeling it's more a failure of other elements than the actual merit of the writing. Maybe I pick unpopular things to write about, maybe it's dismal marketing or product appeal, maybe I just haven't put enough content out there. Like you said, it's hard to pin point this sort of thing with creative endeavors. So I'm not quite ready to hang up the towel on it yet. Besides even if I gave up trying to get paid for it I'd still probably continue, if I were to quit it'd be my neck hanging instead of the towel.

There is a gold thread somewhere on the forum and if I recall correctly there is an author on this site killing it. He faced the same problem as you but instead of writing about what he was "passionate" about he wrote based on what genre was selling at the moment. If I were you, write about erotic stories for women like 50 shades..sell it on amazon for 1$ and see what happens...increase if the response has been great..disclaimer: I know nothing about amazon self publishing...
 

Daniel James

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There is a gold thread somewhere on the forum and if I recall correctly there is an author on this site killing it. He faced the same problem as you but instead of writing about what he was "passionate" about he wrote based on what genre was selling at the moment. If I were you, write about erotic stories for women like 50 shades..sell it on amazon for 1$ and see what happens...increase if the response has been great..disclaimer: I know nothing about amazon self publishing...

Haha, yea, that idea certainly has occurred to me. I'm not above giving it a shot, it's actually been on my list for a minute here. It makes a lot of sense given the fiction reading demographic right now is so heavily biased towards middle aged women. I'll definitely dig around to see if I can find that thread you're talking about. If you ever come across it again feel free to message it to me or paste it here. I really appreciate you taking the time to give me your thoughts on the situation.
 
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Fastlane Liam

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This has the commandment of need written all over it. MJ Talks about it, pretty much be prepared to put in 10,000 hours if you want to make it - because theres an abundance of writers.

You could look at Freelance copywriting conversely
 

Daniel James

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This has the commandment of need written all over it. MJ Talks about it, pretty much be prepared to put in 10,000 hours if you want to make it - because theres an abundance of writers.

You could look at Freelance copy writing conversely

Yea, hit the nail on the head there Liam. The world certainly doesn't need anymore writers. I'm pretty well set on doing it until I die. I'm not too terribly far away from 10,000 hours at this point anyhow. Closer to it with writing than anything else I've done in life.

At this point I think I'm primarily searching for the optimal, preferably fastlane, way to support myself through the endeavor. Airbnb has been working out fairly well so far in the meantime though.
 

Fastlane Liam

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Yea, hit the nail on the head there Liam. The world certainly doesn't need anymore writers. I'm pretty well set on doing it until I die. I'm not too terribly far away from 10,000 hours at this point anyhow. Closer to it with writing than anything else I've done in life.

At this point I think I'm primarily searching for the optimal, preferably fastlane, way to support myself through the endeavor. Airbnb has been working out fairly well so far in the meantime though.
If you have property then definitely use it to your advantage,

You could look into freelance copywriting, you'll probably be good at it - its also a form of selling which helps in any entrepreneurial venture.

Best of luck man
 
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Vigilante

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The Situation

I'm twenty six, in a fairly odd position in life.

I have a house. I paid cash for it. I just spent a year remodeling the entire thing by myself. I'm renting the extra bedrooms out on AirBnb to pay the bills. I have two cheap cars, both paid off. I just sold my first property, a condo I remodeled and made a decent little profit on.

I've done entrepreneurial things but don't particularly consider myself an entrepreneur. All of the good decisions I've made in my life have been geared towards creating an environment to earn a living off of my writing. Which historically and currently has produced little to no income.

The Problem

Which leads me to my current problem, I didn't earn my "wealth." Nor did my family, we were broke. But my parents died and I got paid. My mom committed suicide when I was eleven and we received a settlement. Twelve years later my Dad's heart exploded to the tune of a half a million dollar life insurance policy split between my brother and I.

So call it existential angst, call it nihilism, call it the truth, but being orphaned at twenty-three and watching my parents die young has left me impossibly reluctant to waste my life in what MJ has so aptly labeled the script. So for the last nine years I have followed the dark and twisty road of following the thing I believe I was born to do: writing. Though, so far, the marketmind has unsurprisingly not given a single f*ck.

The Question

I have virtually no responsibilities to anyone but myself and I have significant amount of time to allocate however I please. My conundrum is the following: what do you do when you think you have found the reason you materialized out of the whirlpool of blood, cum, piss, and sh*t that is the universe only to make $14.71 a month off of it after years of effort?

The three obvious options are:

1. Slowlane a 9-5 to pay the bills and save, use whatever time is left to pursue the dream.
2. Enjoy the suck. Every great author suffered immensely financially for a significant period of time, skirt by as best you can, and if you crash, well, at least maybe you enjoyed the burn of chasing something most people never have the balls to.
3. Take the monogamous fastlane, deliver immense value, get your f*ck you money, then chase the dream. Basically exactly what MJ has done with his life... Lol.

Given that I'm here, I'm obviously more privy to numbers 2 and 3 as I'm sure most people here are. I suppose what I'm getting at is that it does seem ignorant not to capitalize on my ability to purposely save given my extremely low living expenses. That's my saving grace-- I am extremely good at managing money. I've been handling six figure sums since I was eighteen. I can live comfortably on 12-14k a year. There's certainly no Lambos involved, but I also don't clip coupons. So if I worked on a way to make 50k, 100k, virtually any mentionable amount of income, delivering value in something I found remotely meaningful, I'd be well on my way to an impressive money system.

I know in some sense the question is impossibly broad and it is naive to expect anyone to have an answer to it. What's the meaning of life, eh? Anyways, maybe it'll make for a good introduction.

You are a gifted writer. Write. Write more.
 

MJ DeMarco

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Congrats on managing your windfall properly.

That alone is very FASTLANE. Most people would blow everything.

As for writing, it sounds like you aren't writing for the right audience. Your writing here is good, certainly good enough to pass as an author capable of making a living. So if it isn't the product (writing) it must be the audience or reach. Have you tried a BookBub promotion?

Anyhow, thank for sharing your story ... an incredible intro and I'm happy to have you join us!
 
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Daniel James

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Daniel James

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Congrats on managing your windfall properly.

That alone is very FASTLANE. Most people would blow everything.

As for writing, it sounds like you aren't writing for the right audience. Your writing here is good, certainly good enough to pass as an author capable of making a living. So if it isn't the product (writing) it must be the audience or reach. Have you tried a BookBub promotion?

Anyhow, thank for sharing your story ... an incredible intro and I'm happy to have you join us!

The man, the myth, the legend himself-- haha. Thanks MJ, that means a lot coming from you.

I think you're right. I probably have been a bit negligent when it comes to considering the target audiences for the pieces I'm writing. I had not heard of BookBub, I'll definitely do some research and give it a shot.

Thanks for the warm welcome and writing your two books. Besides the information and raw honesty you put in them I found your personal narrative eerily familiar. Grew up around Chicago, Dad sold Ferrari's and Maserati's at Continental Ferrari in Hinsdale around the age you saw the Lambo, dropped out of NIU after my junior year to move to down to sunny southwest Florida... It's a bit uncanny actually. Only difference is you picked dry heat instead of humidity, haha.

Anyways, happy to be here. I'll keep the forum abreast of any progress or pitfalls I encounter and see where I can offer help to others along the way.
 

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The man, the myth, the legend himself-- haha. Thanks MJ, that means a lot coming from you.

I think you're right. I probably have been a bit negligent when it comes to considering the target audiences for the pieces I'm writing. I had not heard of BookBub, I'll definitely do some research and give it a shot.

Thanks for the warm welcome and writing your two books. Besides the information and raw honesty you put in them I found your personal narrative eerily familiar. Grew up around Chicago, Dad sold Ferrari's and Maserati's at Continental Ferrari in Hinsdale around the age you saw the Lambo, dropped out of NIU after my junior year to move to down to sunny southwest Florida... It's a bit uncanny actually. Only difference is you picked dry heat instead of humidity, haha.

Anyways, happy to be here. I'll keep the forum abreast of any progress or pitfalls I encounter and see where I can offer help to others along the way.

Where in Florida?
 
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Late Bloomer

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Hi Daniel, thanks for your intro. I'm very sorry to learn of your shocking and tragic loss of both your parents so young. You gained a financial legacy many people don't have till decades later if at all, but at the cost of a personal loss nobody would choose if they got a vote. I admire your fortitude to manage that sadly generated windfall well rather than blowing it at once.

Your living expenses are so low, that if you don't mind having roommates, I wonder if you could simply live in a place quite a bit bigger than you need yourself, rent out the other rooms, and there's your everyday income handled so you can dedicate yourself to see if the writing can work for you.

I remember an interview with Stephen King. He wanted to be known as a writer who was a generalist, successful in many genres. After he got a lot of money for a horror story, he felt he was still a generalist who happened to be lucky at horror. But as he thought more about the size of that check, by the other side of the street he decided, if what people are willing to pay him for his horror, then he's a dedicated and damn good horror writer!

I think Fastlane could be perfect for you. If you can make an efficient money-making business that takes half your time, there's your freedom the other half of the time to do your writing. This might be a more appealing long term solution than renting rooms, I was just brainstorming what seems like it could be an easy short term idea. - Chris
 

Daniel James

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Your living expenses are so low, that if you don't mind having roommates, I wonder if you could simply live in a place quite a bit bigger than you need yourself, rent out the other rooms, and there's your everyday income handled so you can dedicate yourself to see if the writing can work for you.

I remember an interview with Stephen King. He wanted to be known as a writer who was a generalist, successful in many genres. After he got a lot of money for a horror story, he felt he was still a generalist who happened to be lucky at horror. But as he thought more about the size of that check, by the other side of the street he decided, if what people are willing to pay him for his horror, then he's a dedicated and damn good horror writer!

I think Fastlane could be perfect for you. If you can make an efficient money-making business that takes half your time, there's your freedom the other half of the time to do your writing. This might be a more appealing long term solution than renting rooms, I was just brainstorming what seems like it could be an easy short term idea. - Chris

Thanks Chris, yeah that's exactly what I'm doing so far with AirBnb, I've got two of the extra bedrooms listed that are paying the bills. It doesn't take too much time either to maintain, just keep the place clean and turn over the bedrooms when people leave.

I'm trying to come up with an idea that compliments all of the guests I have staying with me. I'd say a third or half of them are here for pleasure/vacation. My most recent idea was starting to do jet ski rentals but after looking at commercial marine insurance among other things that seems a bit far fetched with all of the liability involved.

So my new idea is to see if I can leverage the new "Airbnb Experiences" they've introduced on the site to start doing some sort of guided dolphin/manatee tour. Maybe take couples by the artificial reefs and drop them off at one of the start park islands to camp for the night. Something like that. Just have to see how much demand I could drum up. Not particularly fastlane but it would be a blast.
 

Late Bloomer

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I like your idea of adding local fun tourism options for your airbnb guests. For the high insurance cost things like the ski rentals, could you provide referrals to an existing business for a sales commission? If you take guests to the reefs and campsites, I'd assume you aren't responsible for liability risks that happen at those third party locations. However the logistics work, this sounds like a fun, social, active part of your life, a great balance to time alone for your writing.
 
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Alvarorm1

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Your story sounds very compelling and it seems you are in some sort of crossroad in your life.

You're writing style seems very good and if you have had strangers read your works and incetivate you, I think you'll be able to add significant value in that industry one way or another.
 

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