Fancy cars & clothes as an INVESTMENT for your fastlane business.

[MajeStyle]

Hi all!

I see a lot of threads

This is my first thread on this forum. I see a lot of talking about how important it is to save money on useless things to have a bigger capital to invest on a fastlane business.

I'd like to play the devil's advocate here and post you these articles:

How spending 160k on clothes made Neil Patel 600K+:
http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/12/10/how-spending-162301-42-on-clothes-made-me-692500/
How a Ferrari made him 1m+:
http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/12/15/how-a-ferrari-made-me-a-million-bucks/

What do you think about that?

P.s.: Plot twist, you need a very good ongoing business in order to make this things have sense.

 

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[OscarDeuce]

I actually agree with this to a point - that point is if we assume you have the excess income to spend. I spend a lot on clothes, particularly bespoke suits and good shoes. When meeting with potential clients, I'm often the best dressed guy in the room. While I can't attribute a dollar value to it, I am convinced that dressing well = looking competent = more prospects converted to new clients. The same goes with cars. You don't necessarily need a Ferrari, but you don't want to take business associates to lunch in an old clunker. Looking prosperous conveys an aura of competence and capability again, that is important at least in a business like mine where I am supposed to be the "expert."

Nice clothes, cars, and surroundings also have a psychological impact on us. It's hard to develop a "prosperity consciousness" if we're dressed in rags. Napoleon Hill, of Think and Grow Rich fame had achieved a fair amount of business success prior to being drafted for World War 1. He lost everything after being conscripted to the army. When the war ended, one of the first things he did was take what little savings he had left and purchase a couple of nice suits. The rest, as they say, is history.

Cheers,
O-2

 

[ChasingPaper]

Well thanks for giving me a reason to go finance that Lamborghini Iv'e been wanting for a while. It's an investment...RIGHT GUYS!!??? RIGHT!?!??!?!

 

[davedev]

Interesting.

The takeaway I gather (from Neil's experience) was that he was in the environment where high value people walk around. (Beverly Hills Dolce and Gabbana) And Neil already had value to offer, he was skilled at what he did -- way before the clothes.

So to me, it seems to work like this.

1. become somebody. (be skilled at what you do)
2. get in the way. (go to environments where high value people hang out)
3. clothes are a 'signaler'. ( <-- for good or bad, clothing can 'signal' things that we want to be associated with or not)
4. when your competition is in jeans and T-shirts coated in Dorito dust, and you are in a smart 3 piece suit, it's easier to rise above the crowd.

And lastly. Every man benefits from a well fitting suit. Because science.

 

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[wade1mil]

Over generalization meant only to capture readers on his blog, which I applaud because it's a good strategy.
Spending $160k on clothes did not make him $600k, and owning a Ferrari did not make him $1m.
Did they play a part? Maybe. It sounds like it did for him. But they were only 1 of 10,000 things that made it happen.
Could he have done it without the clothes and Ferrari? I think he's the type of person that could have.
He could have very well said it was his outgoing personality that made him $1m because of his willingness to talk to people.
But that headline is scary to some people because they're socially awkward and don't want to "work for it."
They'd much rather believe it's the clothes and Ferrari that did it, so they can justify spending money on stuff in the hopes that all of their problems will be solved.
There are people that could have gotten better results dressed in a wife beater and flip flops.

I like how the title of the blog post is How Spending $162,301.42 on Clothes Made Me $692,500, and he says in that blog...

And because I am a conservative business guy, I tend to wear clothes that are black, white, blue, or grey.

 

[Kingsta]

This is a good point but it's not essential to have fancy cars and clothes to close a deal. I had a Gallardo and now an R8 with an Aventador on order and neither of these cars have impacted my financial success (maybe the Aventador will?). I also wore shitty clothes before I had money and I wear better clothes now I have money but it never really made a difference.

The only real difference is people will ask you what you do for a living and generally the people that do ask are people that won't benefit you because they are not in a position to.

My company has had meetings with some of the biggest companies like Goldman Sachs and I honestly don't think they gave two shits what car i drove or clothes I wore.

 

[wade1mil]

they are not in a position to

Exactly.

 

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[MajeStyle]

There are people that could have gotten better results dressed in a wife beater and flip flops.
QUOTE]

THIS made me ROFL.
Of course the whole thing is very situational, and I cannot agree with you more. I just wanted to add some pepper (does this expression make any sense?) to the trending discussions about how low your lifestyle is supposed to be while you start a company
Point is, even if you are struggling, a good APPEARANCE can matter way more than you can imagine. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram .. are very easy tools that can promote your reputation as a businessman or make you another pointless tryharder in the universe of insucces, out of the stratosphere of countless failures.
Better to not use social media at all, than using them in a bad way, especially if you have somehow related your name to your company

 

[Kak]

I started wearing suits from Jos A Bank and I drive an American car... Things are going pretty well for me. No drama at all. Worry about things that matter like the value you are providing.

 

[wade1mil]

Better to not use social media at all, than using them in a bad way, especially if you have somehow related your name to your company

I met a real estate investor a long time ago that ripped yellow binder paper in squares and wrote only his name (without his contact information) on them and used them as business cards. People couldn't stop talking to him.

 

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[RHL]

I can tell you straight up, the best lifestyle marketing can do is subsidize the cost of some of these things. It in no way even breaks even, let alone surpasses, the cost of entry.

Dan Brazilian or the YouTube Channel Tax the Rich can generate what, to a normal employee, would seem like a huge payday. But could it even scratch the surface of the costs to hire dozens of paid models for your parties, book private jets continually, buy a Ferrari F50 and then have it excruciatingly detailed after beating on it, or having $3-15M in personal cars? No way in hell.

My suspicion: What this article is designed to do is ensnare the sensibilities of action-faking sidewalkers and slow-laners. They see this article, whose title falls in the same category as stuff like 4HWW (Oh boy, only 4 hours instead of 40! That sounds easy and fun!), and think "ooh, I can get paid to do what I REALLY love" (important note: Most people who claim that they're 'doing what they love' in the slow lane are in fact just compromising to make money. They may have passed up the even higher salary of an Engineer to become a 3D animator because they "loved" that more, but even that they don't really love. What they actually LOVE would be driving a Ferrari around in the mud, or getting paid to hang out with sexy bikini models while very drunk, so articles like this, or figures/channels like the ones I mentioned are very attractive to them). It's click-bait for a very large population group. It's not a viable business strategy.

If you want to furnish your condo with $2.5M of furniture and have social marketing pay for $400,000 of it, this works great. If you want to own a $500,000 Aventador, like @regoapps and earn back $50K on videos of it, cool, you probably can.

But if you want to afford the furniture or cars or planes or whatever to start with, you need a real fastlane biz. If you could pay for an Aventador just by releasing a video every two weeks, half the internet would have one.

 

[MajeStyle]

I can tell you straight up, the best lifestyle marketing can do is subsidize the cost of some of these things. It in no way even breaks even, let alone surpasses, the cost of entry.

Dan Brazilian or the YouTube Channel Tax the Rich can generate what, to a normal employee, would seem like a huge payday. But could it even scratch the surface of the costs to hire dozens of paid models for your parties, book private jets continually, buy a Ferrari F50 and then have it excruciatingly detailed after beating on it, or having $3-15M in personal cars? No way in hell.

My suspicion: What this article is designed to do is ensnare the sensibilities of action-faking sidewalkers and slow-laners. They see this article, whose title falls in the same category as stuff like 4HWW, and think "ooh, I can get paid to do what I REALLY love" (important note: Most people who claim that they're 'doing what they love' in the slow lane are in fact just compromising to make money. They may have passed up the even higher salary of an Engineer to become a 3D animator because they "loved" that more, but even that they don't really love. What they actually LOVE would be driving a Ferrari around in the mud, or getting paid to hang out with sexy bikini models while very drunk, so articles like this, or figures/channels like the ones I mentioned are very attractive to them). It's click-bait for a very large population group. It's not a viable business strategy.

If you want to furnish your condo with $2.5M of furniture and have social marketing pay for $400,000 of it, this works great. If you want to own a $500,000 Aventador, like @regoapps and earn back $50K on videos of it, cool, you probably can.

But if you want to afford the furniture or cars or planes or whatever to start with, you need a real fastlane biz.

That is exactly the point

 

[Deleted26521]

Interesting.

The takeaway I gather (from Neil's experience) was that he was in the environment where high value people walk around. (Beverly Hills Dolce and Gabbana) And Neil already had value to offer, he was skilled at what he did -- way before the clothes.

So to me, it seems to work like this.

1. become somebody. (be skilled at what you do)
2. get in the way. (go to environments where high value people hang out)
3. clothes are a 'signaler'. ( <-- for good or bad, clothing can 'signal' things that we want to be associated with or not)
4. when your competition is in jeans and T-shirts coated in Dorito dust, and you are in a smart 3 piece suit, it's easier to rise above the crowd.

And lastly. Every man benefits from a well fitting suit. Because science.

Add onto the last sentence...
Science says a well fitting suit does attract more ladies. So just throwing it out there. As much as they may say money isn't as factor, basic psychology principles will disagree with them [emoji14]

 

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[wade1mil]

Science says a well fitting suit does attract more ladies.

So does confidence.

 

[Formless]

Worry about things that matter like the value you are providing.

Thank you.

 

[timmy]

Oscardeuce said Napoleon Hill, of Think and Grow Rich fame had achieved a fair amount of business success prior to being drafted for World War 1. He lost everything after being conscripted to the army. When the war ended, one of the first things he did was take what little savings he had left and purchase a couple of nice suits.

Cheers,
O-2[/QUOTE]
If I remember correctly...He needed to impress a publisher to run his magazines.His personality and good name got him the tailored suits he required despite being broke.They assumed he had the cash. He arranged a date for payment a week later and delivered on it because he knew he would pull off the deal. The suits in effect had to be paid forward in order to get the deal in the first instance.Classic mind over matter stuff.The difference here is his definite chief aim controlled everything he said and done. No guess work. Reverse engineered psychology at its best.

Edit....I should have mentioned "The Law Of Success" by Hill goes much deeper into his findings to analyse his philosophy. The popularised "Think And Grow Rich" which was a follow up response for the mass market, gets most of the publicity these days. He had self discipline, presentation, enthusiasm, and dress code crafted to perfection.

 

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[MajeStyle]

If I remember correctly...He needed to impress a publisher to run his magazines.His personality and good name got him the tailored suits he required despite being broke.They assumed he had the cash. He arranged a date for payment a week later and delivered on it because he knew he would pull off the deal. The suits in effect had to be paid forward in order to get the deal in the first instance.Classic mind over matter stuff.The difference here is his definite chief aim controlled everything he said and done. No guess work. Reverse engineered psychology at its best.

You never stop Learning...