mikecarlooch
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A "Do What You Love" Disaster
This thread is for young people like myself, who grew up in the digital age.
Those of us that are young, in our teens or early 20's have grown up in an era where hustle porn is constantly blared in our faces.
"Do What You Love!" They say.. Constantly. We consume hours of motivational content on YouTube of successful people sharing all of these different ideologies that could be horrible advice in some cases but we think to ourselves "If they're rich, everything they say must be right!"
The last year of my life could be turned into a book on what NOT to do - As I myself am someone who got so consumed in hustle porn that it lead me to take action on things that were just plain stupid (keep reading..).
Flashback - 6 Years Ago
Being a YouTuber was starting to become something that every single kid on planet earth wanted to become. The ULTIMATE "Do What You Love" Concept.
At this time, YouTubers like the FaZe Clan Call Of Duty Clan started becoming extremely popular.. Every single kid under the sun including myself wanted to be exactly like them.
At that same time, the FaZe Clan and other YouTubers started moving into houses with each other - showing off their nice cars, seeming to have the time of their lives making videos with their friends. Doing what they love..
As someone that is obsessed with things I'm interested in, I got an idea one day. I wanted to do the exact same thing. I wanted to get a group of people that were also passionate about making YouTube videos and doing what we love all day, and move into a house, just like the FaZe Clan guys.
I was 13 years old at the time when I got this idea, and for most kids that age, an idea like that would eventually die out. Parents would get in the way, limiting beliefs, life, etc.
Not me though... This idea stuck with me like a fly caught in a massive spider web. It's just the type of person I am, if I start something, I will not stop until it either completely fails or it succeeds (a blessing and a curse at the same time.. keep reading to find out why).. It wouldn't go away and I was so confident that I was going to make it happen that I got absolutely obsessed with the idea and started planning it out.
But the "plan" was nothing other than "There's a lot of content creators in california that I can make videos with, maybe I should move there!" ... "Oh, how about florida?? All the content creators with big mansions and nice cars live in places like that.. Maybe I should too" There was no strategic planning or numbers or any thinking behind anything.
I was about 15 years old when I started getting into making money and selling things on the internet, and I'm not going to lie, the part of my life from 15-17 years old where I sold things on ebay and amazon from garage sales and discord groups was one of the best learning experiences ever.. I learned so much about buying, selling, and making a profit during these years.
But - I had nowhere near enough money to go move to Florida with roommates and do what I love.. Make content for youtube. I was making a few thousand bucks from it, but nothing crazy.
All of a sudden when I was 17, covid hit. I bought all of the hand soap, masks, pools, EVERYTHING that I could get my hands on and I was flipping all of these things for 4-10X the price I was buying them for. (not proud of profiting off of fear now that I look back..). At this same time, I started seeing a trend for a boom in the basketball card market so I started buying them. I was buying LeBron James cards, all of these cards I thought would absolutely explode in value, and.. I ended up being right. One soccer card I purchased for 300 dollars I sold for $10,000.
I had about $20,000 dollars after flipping sports cards for a little while (which was all shear luck and being in the right place at the right time) and then all my friends online started hyping up how crypto currency was gonna EXPLOODEEE.. Barely knowing anything, I listened to them and put money in. not long after I had doubled my money from $20,000 to nearly $40,000.
This is GREAT and all right? But what does this have to do with me moving out of my parents house to make content and do what I love and become a YouTuber?
You see, one of the reasons I wanted to move was to show everyone around me (family, friends, etc) that I was capable of being independent. My ego was insane... like really insane.
Even though I had made this money and I was still living with my parents rent free at 18 years old with no expenses.. There was three problems.
1. I got lucky with the money I made and I actually had no idea how to make a sustainable business with the money what-so-ever
2. I felt like I had to prove myself because I told so many people I was going to move out of my parents house after high school and I felt like if i didn't keep my word people would call me a loser
3. I still had that nagging voice in my head from watching all the faze clan videos and gary vee videos telling me "do what you love" and I felt like I had an obligation to move to move out of my parents house and go live the youtube dream.
So.. What did I do? I found two other people who were just as delusional as me (respectfully) and we all agreed that we were going to be youtube millionaires!!! Wow !! My dream is finally coming true.. it's only a matter of time before I'm doing what I love with fun people around me.
Looking back now, that was all cool and dandy, but it was so ridiculous - none of us had made a dollar from our social media followers, yet we were about to go on a journey that would cost so many thousands of dollars. One of the people I moved with didn't even HAVE a YouTube channel with real videos.
"But f**k it", we all said. The three of us barely knew each other, but faze clan did it so we can do it too! yay!!
So we did. We signed a lease on a house that had way too much space (it was bigger than my parents house) that was going to cost each of us around 875 dollars a month including utilities.
A week after I graduated high school at 18 years old, I drove to Orlando, Florida and met my new roomates.. It was absolutely AMAZING!!! For about 1 day..
One of the people I moved in with on the first night started having mental breakdowns and it startled myself and the other roommate I was with.. And guess what?
One night, two weeks into this 1 year lease that we signed - a total of 0 videos were created, 0 dollars were generated, and me and my friendly roommate couldn't stand the other roommate. We got up one night, two weeks into the lease, and we told the roommate we couldn't be around that we couldn't stand it, and we left. We went to a motel, and we didn't plan on going back to this house we had been talking about for years.
Suddenly.. Reality set in.
I couldn't go back to new jersey.. My ego was way too big to admit failure, to admit I was wrong and that this was a stupid idea to move to florida without any plan.
Now we had this 1 year lease we had to get out of... We had a crazy roommate threatening to sue us.. and we had to get another place to stay (more money spent)
It took us 3 months to break the lease on the first place, but we still believed in our vision.. We STILL wanted to do what we love!! So guess what we did... We signed yet ANOTHER 1 year lease on an apartment in ANOTHER part of Florida!
I started thinking.. What am I doing here? What do I do now? I'm living in the hood now - my money is being drained - my ebay business isn't making much money - I didn't want to get a job because my ego was too big and I had a lot of money saved up so I didn't feel like I needed to..
And I didn't. I spent the 11 months that I was in this new apartment learning about how to create a business.
While the knowledge I gained was endless (this is where I discovered MJ, and a ton of other books that ultimately changed my outlook on money, business, and life), and it will serve me till the day I die..
I realized something. I made myself BELIEVE that I wasn't able to do anything at home with my parents. I thought I HAD to be in Florida in order to make progress.. But I didn't.. I just needed to sit down, focus, and LEARN. if I did that, it didn't matter WHERE I was.
I didn't start thinking like a business and making more money until the LAST month of being in Florida.. That was after I was $25,000 poorer from all of the money I spent living down there for a year.
The pressure from "doing what I love" caused all of this. The thought of not succeeding as a youtuber and doing what I love struck me like a spear to the heart..
Ultimately, after the lease ended, I moved back to my parents in new jersey. I almost got sucked into moving to ANOTHER house.. and I almost did. But after what I went through with this, I was a much smarter person at the end of it. I didn't go. I humbled myself and went back with my parents.
Looking back now, I'm grateful for this whole experience. I will never make these mistakes again in my life and I will conduct myself in a much more calculated and strategic manner and think smarter.
What I'm trying to get across to people my age or younger than me or maybe older than me who feel the same pressure to make a stupid decision like this one "doing what they love" is that we all need to learn to think critically. We need to know what advice to take and what advice is absolutely terrible. Advice may be super good for someone else but horrible for you. Before you take advice and are about to take a massive stupid action like this, evaluate your life circumstances and ask yourself "is this smart?" "is there a return on my time investment from this?" "can this actually make my life better?"
Don't make a mistake like this.
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