Engineer joins the forum after 2 years of struggle with getting out of the slow lane and plans to open his own factory

[Bezrenki]

Dear Fastlane Forum community,

I’m very happy to finally join you. I’ve been visiting the forum and reading a few posts from time to time for 2 years now but I never really joined any conversation.

I finally decided to get more involved in the forum and I plan to share more with you from now on.

Who am I and what do I do for a living
I am 25 years old manufacturing engineer. I come from Poland but currently, I live and work in the UK.

My job is quite nice. I work on improvement projects in a state of the art manufacturing plant. I get to design or redesign manufacturing processes, operations, factory layouts. I also lead improvement teams and work closely with managers and specialists from many different fields.

I think I’m good at what I do. My improvement projects reduce lead time and cost. They improve quality, and efficiency.

I’m usually very independent, more or less, I do what I want. I also get to learn a lot in my job.

But being an engineer is not my life goal. I recognize that I am currently stuck in the Slowlane, and I actively work on getting to Fastlane by building my own business.

How did I end up where I am right now
In 2015 when I was working in a manufacturing factory in Poland while still studying I decided I would like to follow in my brothers’ footsteps. The general plan was to:

• Get an engineering job in a good international manufacturing company
• Get promoted to an entry manager position
• Get promoted to higher management position and profit.

To additionally accelerate my career I decided to get a good MBA too. Basically, my more detailed plan for the future in 2015 looked like that:

• Finish graduate engineering degree while working at the same time in the industry in Poland gaining valuable experience
• Apply for a postgraduate degree abroad with a very good technical university
• Get MSc title and get a good job in an international manufacturing company abroad
• Get promoted to an entry-level managerial position
• Save a little bit of money, take a loan and complete a good MBA program
• Get a higher managerial position that requires you to have an MBA
• Climb the corporate ladder and profit

I was executing my plan when suddenly in the middle of step 3 while I was finishing my postgraduate degree and writing my thesis, I’ve read The Millionaire Fastlane . This book changed everything. It completely transformed how I look at life now and opened countless opportunities for me.

I realized that I don’t need to work years for someone else and get fancy degrees to make a positive change in the world. I can do it my way. I can have my own company. That was huge.
A few weeks after finishing the book, still, on a very limited budget, I started working on my own business. So far I tried selling protein supplements online, making a health and fitness blog and developing weight loss app from scratch (I’ve learned to code myself) but all of these ideas failed.

All of them took me around 2 years to try. In the meantime, I finished my postgraduate program and got a nice job in an international manufacturing company.

Currently, I’m stuck in the slow lane job with a good possibility to be promoted to a managerial position within 2 – 3 years so on a way to 4th point in my initial career plan.

But I don’t want to be in the slow lane anymore. Despite my previous business failures, I kept on working on improving myself and developing knowledge, reading business books and educating myself to find something I can do as a business.

What is my plan for the future – Fastlane idea, the inventor way
This year I have a new idea. I always dreamt of having my own factory. My own manufacturing business. It felt impossible to me because it would require a big investment of cash which I didn’t have. I always thought that my first simple business (blog, app, supplements) could quickly generate money to fund this dream. But I was mistaken.

After a little bit of analyzing my current situation, I realized that my initial assumption wasn’t right. I don’t need a lot of money to start a manufacturing company, I can start it from scratch with quite a small investment and scale later when I have my proof of concept.

My plan is to make a company making bicycles. I have found a potential opportunity with one of the industry leaders in folding bikes. I’m talking about Brompton – 40 000 units produced per year and around £1 million turnover a month. Their problem?

“The modular design has remained fundamentally unchanged since the original patent was filed by Andrew Ritchie in 1979.”

I would like to challenge their design. A lot has changed in technology and in the way we design in those 40 years. I believe I can make a better folding bike and offer better value to customers. That’s what I’ll be trying to do as my main business focus.

How can I contribute to this forum
I think this forum is amazing. Not only had I loved books written by MJ, but I also find content on this forum really professional and extremely helpful. I’m very grateful that MJ started it.

Almost any questions I had so far in business was already answered by someone on the forum before. I’m hooked to Fastlane forum and I started reading it almost every day.

I have realised that a lot of you are already very successful in business in many different fields and your knowledge is amazing.

Even though I am really a beginner in the business world, I think I can positively contribute to this forum because I will not be taking a very popular approach. I will be inventing a product and making my own manufacturing company from scratch.

I think I have enough engineering knowledge and industry contacts to be able to do it. Marketing, sales and human resources could be a harder thing for me so that’s what I will need to learn along the way.

I can share a lot with you during my journey and I hope this information could help some people that wish to do something similar to what I’m planning to do.

What I’ve learned so far
I know I’m pretty green in the business world but I will do my best and eventually, I’m going to make my dream come true. I was a little bit afraid to write on Fastlane forum because I don’t have a working business yet, so I don’t feel that confident here.

However, I wish to share my journey with you. I think writing about my progress will help me clarify some things I’m doing.

Following advice online “How to earn money quickly, how to make business fast from home etc. is not the best advice there”. I wish I’d started reading more on this forum 2 years ago.

Following this advice, I started doing a blog on health and fitness. I’m sure with enough perseverance I would be able to pull it off and eventually start making money on it, but it felt horrible. I’m not a fitness coach, the only expertise I had about fitness was a couple of books that I’ve read so entire idea felt like a fraud. The more I was doing this the more unhappy I felt and eventually, I stopped.

It’s better to read about successful people that inspire you and how they did it then following get rich quick ideas from the internet. In my case, MJ DeMarco, Henry Ford, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Sakichi Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno definitely inspired me to pursue designing my own product and building my own factory. I personally think the commandment of Entry is extremely important in selecting your business path. The harder it is and fewer people do it the better for you.

Why I do this at all? I want to create a manufacturing company that invents products that are better than anything currently available on the market, therefore, making people life’s easier. By doing that will serve society as a good engineer and I will be a good example to my kids. I want to create an amazing future for them and I hope to show them that it is possible to achieve success both professionally and in business.

I would like to finish this post with a question for you. Can you see any problems I have with my idea/thinking? Can you please be as honest and as brutal as possible? I would be forever grateful if you’ve read my post and would like to share some thoughts on this.

 

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[Suzanne Bazemore]

Jo vjisi! Ximduni vu qutvoph - O vjopl zuas ofie tuapft moli e gepvetvod upi, cav, jnn ... O xussz ecuav zua vimmoph qiuqmi xjev ov ot. Zua'wi ciip up vji gusan gus e gix ziest - fuit vjev dupdisp zua?

Epzxez, O en ev e dsuttsueft op nz mogi vuu, vjeplt vu optqosevoup gsun vjot gusan, iydiqv zua essowif ev zuast ev e nadj foggisipv quopv op mogi. O xotj zua madl. Edvaemmz, O xotj zua qistotvipdi.

 

[Bezrenki]

Jo vjisi! Ximduni vu qutvoph - O vjopl zuas ofie tuapft moli e gepvetvod upi, cav, jnn ... O xussz ecuav zua vimmoph qiuqmi xjev ov ot. Zua'wi ciip up vji gusan gus e gix ziest - fuit vjev dupdisp zua?

Epzxez, O en ev e dsuttsueft op nz mogi vuu, vjeplt vu optqosevoup gsun vjot gusan, iydiqv zua essowif ev zuast ev e nadj foggisipv quopv op mogi. O xotj zua madl. Edvaemmz, O xotj zua qistotvipdi.

Jo Tabeppi

Vjepl zua wisz nadj gus zuas sitqupti. O vjopl zua jewi e wemof quopv jisi, cav O'n puv vuu xussoif ecuav vjev.

O fup'v vjopl O tjesif ipuahj opgusnevoup vu duqz nz ofie. O fofp'v tez jux O opvipf vu neli nz codzdmi civvis, O fofp'v tjesi DEF gomit us qsopvtdsiippt, epf O fofp'v fotdatt nepagedvasoph vidjpumuhz atif.

Og tuniupi duqoif ov gsun jisi xi xuamf qsucecmz ipf aq xovj vxu foggisipv qsufadvt epf dunqepoit.

Vjepl zua wisz nadj gus xotjoph ni qistotvipdi. O taqquti vjot ot upi ug vji liz gedvust vu tadditt op epz fotdoqmopi.

O xotj zua emm vji citv vuu.