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Because I Can

liquidglass

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This is a GOLDEN thread as others have said. I'm glad to see so many great posts from like-minded people on here.



My wife had an equally interesting point. The more you expose your life to people, the more vulnerable you become to their assumptions.

Your wife makes an excellent point. This is why no one, even family members, know what I do. They just see the results.
 
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DeletedUser394

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Had my first 'because I can' moment. I use a 100 euro banknote as a bookmark. I was asked why and I answered with 'because I can'. The banknote represents how I no longer live paycheque to paycheque. In the past I'd have taken that hundred and spent double with credit as soon as I had it. Now if I lost the 'bookmark' tomorrow I wouldn't care because I'm in complete control of my finances, which is something most people can't say. :coolgleamA:
 

bkypes

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That is a hard mindset to grasp for people who trade their time for time based compensation.

My friends always ask me how many hours a week I work and it's impossible to give them a straight answer on that. My time is so divided up between everything that I am doing that it's not possible to quantify how many hours I put in per week. When you're working on the clock you do everything you can to do a little work as possible and still get paid. When you're working for yourself you bust a$$ to do as much as possible in the time you have.
 

SeanKelly

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I wouldn't care

That's a quite an accomplishment and you should be proud of yourself, but you should care about losing money no matter the amount. I understand what you're saying though
 
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DeletedUser394

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That's a quite an accomplishment and you should be proud of yourself, but you should care about losing money no matter the amount. I understand what you're saying though

I wouldn't care because it wouldn't affect my financial statement.
 

SeanKelly

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Kak

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bavapyhe.jpg


In the men's restroom at my lawyer's office. :D
 
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GuestUser8117

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See, there's three kinds of people: dicks, pussies, and assholes. Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just want to F*ck all the time without thinking it through. But then you got your assholes. And all the assholes want to shit all over everything. So, pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while, because pussies get F*cked by dicks. But dicks also F*ck assholes. And if they didn't F*ck the assholes, you know what you'd get? You'd get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit.

Funniest shit I've ever read. Lmao.
 

Mr Cracker

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Thanks for this thread. It's very motivational for us working every day to get to the top so one day I can say "because I can... "
 

hedgehog757

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I would not have known that was advice until after read TMF and being on this forum. Maybe she should read a few things here!
 

MJ DeMarco

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Bumpty Bump!
 

Charnell

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Oh lawd, powerful bump, sickening story. I can imagine the person in the OP, and it's found easily by googling "frumpy old woman".
 
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Iwokeup

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Thanks for bumping this!
 

Supa

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thanks @Vigilante and all the other great members in this thread. You all gave me some goosebumps while reading through it, y'all gave me the feeling of being within like-minded people, that already are what I want to become.

And to the people complaining about Vig's direct and honest attitude. He propably did more for that girl than anybody else in her life did before. If you cant handle the truth then better get a soft pillow, because you are going to sit another 40 years at your desk in another person's company.
 
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ExCubeCommando

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I thought you guys and gals might get a kick out of a quick "fast lane" exchange I had today.

I stopped by my office, which is about a 9 iron away from Best Buy's corporate office.

Someone stopped by my office while I was there, and asked me if I would help them on something. Something that they... as an employee of someone else's company... was tasked with accomplishing. Could I have done it? Yep. Could they do it without my (uncompensated) help? Yep.

"Sorry. I'm leaving in 5 minutes and can't help you." I said.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Home" I said.

"At noon? Why?" she asked.

"Because I can. That's the difference between you and me."

She knew exactly what I was talking about.

She looked at the decanter of Jim Beam Black that I keep on a shelf in my office.

"Why do you have that here?" she asked.

"Because I can. That's the difference between you and me. That decanter represents my ability to do what ever the hell I want. And you can't. And that's freedom to me." (I seldom if ever drink from that decanter, by the way. It's more symbolic for me than practical. But I can...)

She left, and went back to the cubicle that had been assigned to her by her employer.

I left, and went home and played with my 7 month old baby.

You could come back to the office 5 years from now... and either she or someone exactly like her will still be occupying that cubicle.

Blaze your own path.

If I hadn't gotten laid off 4 years ago, I'd be sitting here right now (Sunday morning as I write this), dreading the thought of heading back to the cubical Monday morning.

When I started my business, I would stay up late at night doing mundane things like working on my fliers to hand out to customer prospects, and questioning myself if I was crazy for doing this. Things of course got better as I slowly built up my customer base.

My business is steady now, and it pays the bills. I don't seem to be making as much as I did in the corporate world, but then again, working from a shop in my basement, I can claim a lot on my expenses, so in reality, I'm probably doing about the same as before.

But it didn't take me long to figure out:

I CAN give myself a raise anytime I want by working to get more customers, and not rely on external sources, or having to kiss someone's butt.
I CAN eat lunch when I want.
I CAN run my customer contact schedule to best avoid rush hour traffic (I'm in northern Colorado, and most of my customers are in the Denver area).
I CAN go to the bank and post office when I want without having to tell someone.
I CAN have a beer while I work if I want.
I CAN take a nap during the day if I want (but I'll make up for it by staying up until 2am).

When I read your post, Vigilante, I thought of the time in the beginning of my business when I would be pulling my hair out of my head figuring out how to solve the problems I was facing. Going from a corporate environment where you can tell customers 'someone else' is to blame because they didn't get a problem solved in a timely fashion, where when you're self employed it's solely on YOU to figure out how you'll solve their problem!

This women just didn't 'get it', but maybe you got her to think. Unlike running your own show, she didn't have to be creative when faced with finding a solution to a problem - 'management will take care of it'. In my business, having to learn to improvise is commonplace. Being on this forum is incentive for me to strive to continue to learn and improve.

Whenever I'm working on some pain in the butt repair item that won't cooperate, should have taken a 1/2 hour to fix where I've wasted a better part of a day on, and I'm cursing while thinking about throwing the damn thing against a wall........well, I'll take a break to pause and remember I don't have to go back to that cubicle that had been assigned to me by my employer.

Thank you!
 

Vigilante

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This thread will make a brief cameo appearance at the upcoming Fastlane Summit.
 

jpmartin

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One more aspect of "workers" that they don't get about entrepreneurs...

They are "at work" when they are sitting in their cubicle. Entrepreneurs are "at work" in their car, at dinner, and walking through a mall. We're not confined to time that is quantifiable on a time card.

That is a hard mindset to grasp for people who trade their time for time based compensation.

I used to track my time, not because I'm an ex-consultant (who hates time sheets), but just to see how much time I was spending on a project that would some day become my slowlane-to-fastlane exit. Because they teach you, "What cannot be measured, cannot be manged." - I couldn't disagree with that, until I heard the counter phrase... " The things that really count, are not necessarily visible and things that are visible, don't necessarily count" (or something to that affect).

What you said above... makes 100% CENTS!
 
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Unknown

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Somehow I've missed this thread all these years. The first few pages were hilarious. When I first joined the forum I was an idiot and I got berated by half the forum, but within the first month Vigilante gave me a personal phone call. We talked for 5 minutes or so, and his advice has been life changing for me. My wife has been able to stay at home with our son, and it's thanks to his advice. If you get advice from someone like Vig or MJ take it and run with it. If it offends you then you're in the wrong place.
 

GMSI7D

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It's a jarring mindset for people sometimes that they live in a prison of their own making.

You --- don't --- have --- to --- live --- like --- that.


i am afraid that people who never had any power or success won't use it the right way once they have it

why ?


let me explain

people who are frustrated won't enjoy success the same way that people who have always enjoyed success

first example :

lottery winners: most of the time , they lose all their money because they were frustrated so they spend money like crazy and they don't know how to manage money

second example :

nice guys who finally get good with women after years of humiliation.

as an author said , nice guys will take revenge by making girls cry with their new power

because they have been treated like s**** by life and women all their life

so they will use their new power like crazy for justice in their life.


and so on with thousands of examples : french,russian revolutions, civil wars, rape during WW2 etc.


the list is endless



once a frustrated guy finaly master a power , chances are he will use it in a wrong way : too much, too naive, revenge and so on
 
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