This is a long-postponed introduction of mine. I read TMF and joined the forum more than 5 years ago, but mostly lurked here. Last month I read Unscipted and I feel that gave me the last push to step out of my comfort zone, so here is my short story:
I come from a family where money was not in focus, just as a necessary wrong with some medium financial awareness, but definitely against entrepreneurship. I've always excelled in school from a young age and finished among the best in nearly any STEM competition in my country and graduated as an electrical engineer without any hassle.
I met my wife in my first year of university and before I finished with the university we got married, so I started to work full-time as a software developer to make an existence and support my family. Our life went very well, we bought a house, our kids were born, and my salary increased. Before marriage I promised my wife that someday I would be an entrepreneur, so we always had some side hustle, mostly webshops, but all of them failed. Looking back they could have worked, but I didn't have enough motivation to make them succeed them as I had a very comfortable life. I've earned above-average, full home-office and mostly, I like what I'm doing.
2021 seemed to be the best year: Covid slowly ended, our third was on the way and we moved to a newly built family house. Then reality hit hard. Our daughter was stillborn. The grief took most of my mental energy, I couldn't work and our house started to have more and more cracks on the wall. As it wasn't a priority it took a year to find someone who examined it properly and turned out that the roof could have collapsed at any time. We needed to move out, but the constructor didn't want to repair it, so the lawsuit started and we searched for rent for a longer term. After 2 and a half year it is still the case and I just can hope that we have back our money.
At the end of 2023, after a year of no progress with the court, we had a chance to change lawyers to a much better, but also much more expensive, one that we couldn't afford at that time. Fortunately, we got help from family, but at that point, I decided that it couldn't be the case anymore. I needed to do something quickly. So for 2024 I had two goals:
For 2025 my goal is 50% income increase, but more importantly, to have a scaleable business, that is independent of my time(CENTS) as further increase is not imaginable without it. I want to do something location-independent as most probably we need/want to move again and it's also aligned with my software developer expertise.
So that is my story in short. I am glad to be here and try to be a more valuable member of the forum than the last 5 years...
I come from a family where money was not in focus, just as a necessary wrong with some medium financial awareness, but definitely against entrepreneurship. I've always excelled in school from a young age and finished among the best in nearly any STEM competition in my country and graduated as an electrical engineer without any hassle.
I met my wife in my first year of university and before I finished with the university we got married, so I started to work full-time as a software developer to make an existence and support my family. Our life went very well, we bought a house, our kids were born, and my salary increased. Before marriage I promised my wife that someday I would be an entrepreneur, so we always had some side hustle, mostly webshops, but all of them failed. Looking back they could have worked, but I didn't have enough motivation to make them succeed them as I had a very comfortable life. I've earned above-average, full home-office and mostly, I like what I'm doing.
2021 seemed to be the best year: Covid slowly ended, our third was on the way and we moved to a newly built family house. Then reality hit hard. Our daughter was stillborn. The grief took most of my mental energy, I couldn't work and our house started to have more and more cracks on the wall. As it wasn't a priority it took a year to find someone who examined it properly and turned out that the roof could have collapsed at any time. We needed to move out, but the constructor didn't want to repair it, so the lawsuit started and we searched for rent for a longer term. After 2 and a half year it is still the case and I just can hope that we have back our money.
At the end of 2023, after a year of no progress with the court, we had a chance to change lawyers to a much better, but also much more expensive, one that we couldn't afford at that time. Fortunately, we got help from family, but at that point, I decided that it couldn't be the case anymore. I needed to do something quickly. So for 2024 I had two goals:
- Double my income
- Run a marathon
For 2025 my goal is 50% income increase, but more importantly, to have a scaleable business, that is independent of my time(CENTS) as further increase is not imaginable without it. I want to do something location-independent as most probably we need/want to move again and it's also aligned with my software developer expertise.
So that is my story in short. I am glad to be here and try to be a more valuable member of the forum than the last 5 years...
Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member:
Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)
Access Restricted: Unlock 1,000,000+ Posts
Stop Peeking Through the Keyhole.
Open the Door.
You hit a wall because the best advice isn't free—it's earned. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has been active here daily (99.9% active rate), building a war room for entrepreneurs who refuse to settle for mediocrity.
- Active Daily: Life-changing content posted dozens of times every day. No dead threads.
- MJ's Inner Circle: Direct access to the author of The Millionaire Fastlane.
- Vetted Network: Connect with founders scaling to 7 and 8 figures.
- Proven Roadmaps: Strategy over motivation. Execution over "hustle porn."
"SCALED TO 6-FIGURE MONTHS"
"Tips and advice here saved me from huge mistakes, others allowed me to scale my business to 6-figure months."— User MitchC
"INSANE QUALITY OF PEOPLE"
"The number of high quality people I've met from this forum has been insane. All of it predicated on building real value."— User Richard Peck
"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with."
Are you surrounding yourself with success?
