The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Fear and Action-Faking in Entrepreneurship-- a 19 year old's guide to askholing.

Justin W.

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
135%
May 2, 2017
37
50
33
California
-Woke up at 11:45AM.
That's a good step in the right direction.

-going to bed now at 12:42AM
This might be holding you back more than you think, going to sleep late. When I started going to bed at 9PM, I figured out that I could actually wake up at around 4AM. Why the hell would I want to do that? I'm not even a morning person! When I work out in the morning (at home with bodyweight exercises, like the Spartans of ancient Greece!) it sets me up to have an energetic day. Waking up that early will have me falling asleep earlier, too. This is in-tune with my circadian clock. I set an alarm clock across the room, when it goes off I get up. I don't hit snooze & go to bed, that doesn't help me get quality sleep at all. Benjamin Franklin and several other famous people effectively worked on 6 hours a sleep a night, I'm making this one of my habits and it has been working well for me.

That other book I mentioned, "The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod is an invaluable book to use to get into good habits and supercharge you for your day. If you need a bodyweight workout book, the best I have found is "You Are Your Own Gym" by Mark Lauren, I've used others which actually led me to injure myself, but Mark Lauren has trained thousands of military personnel including Navy Seals & Army Special Forces Green Berets, and the information contained within his book won't hurt you. It's better than wasting money on a gym membership, and besides, military personnel have been using bodyweight exercises throughout their training for the last 2000 years.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
G

GuestUser091

Guest
I noticed a trend in all of your posts. They all have one thing in common.



For almost 2 weeks nothing has changed. I'll tell you what will change, if you don't. Your money your sitting on right now while you watch TV after waking up at 5pm everyday is going to dry up.



Unless you have sales, you don't have a company. You have a job that pays you $8 a month for 12 hours of work, then "autopilot".

Is your goal to see how many hours a day you can work while still staying at $8?

My goal is to get my dropshipping site up to making money which it will. I made a lot of progress today on getting it ready. I expect to be getting up to a sale a day in the next week.

When I started going to bed at 9PM, I figured out that I could actually wake up at around 4AM. Why the hell would I want to do that? I'm not even a morning person!

I actually had a stretch of time when I was waking up at 6AM, going to bed at 9PM every night. It was fantastic. I totally believe you and need to start doing it again.

If you need a bodyweight workout book, the best I have found is "You Are Your Own Gym" by Mark Lauren

My brother does bodyweight workouts and swears by them. I'll check it out.
 
G

GuestUser091

Guest
Day 13 5/15/17
Current Goal:

PRIMARY: 5+ hours a day of business work for 7 days straight (5/15-5/22)
AUXILIARY: $100+/day profits for a week straight by June 1st

Current Ventures:

-shopify dropshipping store
-a social media marketing company *(autopilot with no intentions of growing it)

Hours Worked on Business Today: 6.5 hours

Earnings: $8
$8= monthly earnings from my marketing company

Summary of Today
-Woke up at 10:50AM.
-made the mistake of checking my phone before getting ready for the day (I have a rule against that) because I got a voicemail and rationalized "maybe it was an emergency". Total BS, just some customer service rep from Google following up with me. Then from there replied to a text from my mom about moving me out of the apartment with my brother and when they're going to do that. F*cking had a near panic attack about being broke, homeless, and just totally lost my cool for an hour and was affected the remainder of the day. ALL BECAUSE I CHECKED ONE F*ckING VOICEMAIL FIRST THING IN MORNING. Never again. It was an objectively terrible way to begin the day.
-Called up a shipper about shipping the package containing the assets of my old company to my friend in Poland. They agreed to meet with me 11AM Wednesday. After it ships, my old company will be completely off my mind which will be a huge relief so that's why I made it a priority today.
-went to the beach to read and also make some calls regarding getting new contacts, shipping the Poland package, etc. Was there for about an hour and a half
-came back to pack up and prepare the 50lbs package I'm shipping to Poland. Took me about an hour an a half to get it all organized.
-read a few news article that I shouldn't have read and regret.
-did a brief stretching workout to be able to do squats again without pain. Spent too long on this.
-started back up my doing my adwords course for about 30-60 minutes
-viewed my Hotjar dropshipping site analytics and saw that tons of people were just bouncing. Hotjar shows you exactly their mouse movement which is super helpful. I spent the rest of the day looking at other sites, seeing what I should add and improve, and then putting it on my site. I think my site is 3x more convertible now.
-once again lost discipline and watched an old funny video of a friend and I that went viral on the internet a year ago. Then proceeded to view /r/circlejerk for 10 minutes. I blame it on the poor start to my day. The beginning of ones day determines the character of the rest of it, and while I recovered pretty well from my stressed out start, I still had hiccups. Overall, a decent day, but it could've been better, starting with my morning and not checking my phone no matter how big an "emergency" I think it is.
-Checking on "an emergency" in the morning just set me back 2 hours in my sleep schedule, going to bed now at 2:57AM.

Big Items for Tomorrow:
-optimize my site more for conversions
-learn more about Facebook ads and optimize my current ones
-learn more about Google Adwords and optimize my current ads
 

Van Halen

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
220%
Mar 3, 2017
168
369
28
United Kingdom
Stop thinking about working on your "business" in X many hours per day.

Start think about working on your business on what *single* IMPORTANT task can I do today that will move it FORWARD. Maybe that's testing a new product. Maybe that's creating your store page, so you can test the product tomorrow.

The time you worked on your business doesn't matter. What takes you 24 hours could take someone else 20 minutes. The completion of the task is what matters, and you improve efficiency as you learn and progress. Again, the time it takes to do the task does not matter if the task is done to the best of your ability and it moves you forward towards where you want to go

At the end of every working day, you should have a single task that you will complete the next day. These tasks will snowball into something. You may hit a "failure" at some point - a product doesn't work, or you get a refund, that's okay - work that into the task for the next day and keep moving.

Once your single important task is done everyday, you can do things like your accounting for your business, or other administrative tasks.

If you don't know what your task should be, find one of the many free Ecommerce groups on Facebook - there are a handful of decent ones, and take their course. Go from there.
"Results (not efforts) - regardless of the challenges, resistance, and problems-are a primary focus of the successful." Thats from the 10X Rule
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Justin W.

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
135%
May 2, 2017
37
50
33
California
I like that you can identify areas in which you might need improvement and take steps to correct yourself.

One thing I think may help you would be writing your daily goals down on some paper where you will see it frequently throughout the day, and focus on doing them one at a time. When you complete one goal, move on to the next. If you catch yourself drifting from your current goal, that's the time to correct yourself. Making a habit of self correction is invaluable, which I've seen you're already doing to an extent. If you can catch yourself when you start to drift from your goal and correct yourself at that time, it will help your focus significantly.
-read a few news article that I shouldn't have read and regret.
If something doesn't help me achieve my goals, I try not to get involved to begin with. Try not to dwell on your regrets, they will eat you alive.

-did a brief stretching workout to be able to do squats again without pain. Spent too long on this.
If you're having pain that prevents you from working out, it should be addressed. It's good that your stretching, and personally stretching always takes me longer than I want. When you get into good practice you will build good form. What helps me is staying entirely focused on my stretching and doing my best to keep my form as flawless as possible. When you feel you're done with one stretch, move quickly to the next. You'll likely want a good stretching book to help you with the common misconceptions surrounding stretching, I know I've already recommended you 3 different books, and I wouldn't do so without the sincere belief that you would benefit from them. If you feel it may help you, I'd recommend the book "Stretching & Flexibility" by Kit Laughlin, it's a book wrote by several teachers at a stretching school in Australia. It's the best stretching book I've ever used. Workouts are incomplete without proper stretching, and I learned the hard way that most of the stretches taught in school are either ineffective or damage your body over time.

Don't beat yourself up over your pitfalls, make a mental note that you could have done better and identify how you could have done better. That way, if something similar happens again, you will be prepared. What's really important is congratulating yourself on your improvements, focus on the fact that you are improving one step at a time. This will build your mentality up in a positive manner and you will be excited to improve yourself even more. When you build up a list of things to congratulate yourself on, you feel great about it and you inevitably want that list to get longer each day. I try and congratulate myself while I eat dinner, then I'm not busy talking with my mouth full.
 

Amon

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
274%
Jun 29, 2016
85
233
Cleveland, OH
I've been managing the social media of a restaurant (not my parents') for about a year, lost a client in March because I've taken my business model as far as I want it to go and have it running basically on autopilot. It's too much damn work (12 hours a month, $20/hr)

Too much damn work? HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You only need 6 hours of sleep. That leaves 18 hours a day. And you're only willing to put in 4, maybe 5?

I'm just gonna start making predictions here about who really has the chops.

Do you want a hobby - or do you want a business? This thread is screaming that you are not ready to be starting any type of business. Try waking up before noon first, then try again.
 
G

GuestUser091

Guest
"Results (not efforts) - regardless of the challenges, resistance, and problems-are a primary focus of the successful." Thats from the 10X Rule

I'm a big fan of Grant Cardone myself and have read some of his books. I'm also a big fan of results too but I really believe counting the hours for me AT THIS STAGE is the best way to guarantee results. If I actually count the hours I'm working on business (not eating, not driving, not reading, not running errands, etc), I think it's pitiful to work 1-2 hours on any day I'm sitting down and deciding to work. You either fully work or you fully rest, no inbetweens. Seeing that I was working 1-2 hours a day really motivated me to work harder because I felt like that deeply conflicted with my identity. And in paying attention to the hours I worked, I got objectively more work done over this past week than perhaps any other week yet this year. And it wasn't the most fantastic week either.

A lot of people are disagreeing with me over counting the hours and instead I should be focusing on the quality/results, but the thing is that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I've tried to be the quality/results guy for a year and it has gotten me lazy work days, maybe an hour of decent work, and then just blow off shit. In the past, I've been almost too focused on what the "quality" of my hours have to be that I fretted and made a big deal about doing any work, became perfectionistic, and thus got very little done. Maybe I'll go too far down this path I'm on and I'll be putting in 10 hours of work a day doing piddly shit and then I'll have to readjust. Many things are a spectrum and "quality vs quantity of work" is just another spectrum that demands balance. It is up to everyone's own individual judgement to make these gray area decisions, importantly with not totally blind adherence to, but rather, reasonable consideration from "gospel" (AKA Grant Cardone and other entrepreneur opinions).

I've heard your opinions and I will continue to do what I believe is best for me right now and that is to focus on quantity over quality. Not forever, but for now because I've been so unbalanced and on the perfectionist/must get perfect result side of the spectrum for so long to my clear detriment.


One thing I think may help you would be writing your daily goals down on some paper where you will see it frequently throughout the day, and focus on doing them one at a time. When you complete one goal, move on to the next. If you catch yourself drifting from your current goal, that's the time to correct yourself. Making a habit of self correction is invaluable, which I've seen you're already doing to an extent. If you can catch yourself when you start to drift from your goal and correct yourself at that time, it will help your focus significantly.

I do write my goals down on a piece of paper with a "Frog of the day" (from Mark Twain) that must be done before everything else. You're right, it's an excellent habit and really keeps you on focus.

That way, if something similar happens again, you will be prepared. What's really important is congratulating yourself on your improvements, focus on the fact that you are improving one step at a time. This will build your mentality up in a positive manner and you will be excited to improve yourself even more. When you build up a list of things to congratulate yourself on, you feel great about it and you inevitably want that list to get longer each day

I am aware the power of focusing on overcongratulating myself for every little improvement because it's human nature to get magnetically pulled towards focusing on the negatives of everything (which the new media feeds off of with the false "sky is falling" mentality 24/7 that makes it especially toxic). It ties in with gratitude. My personal view on gratitude is that the ungrateful man throws everything away and doesn't accomplish anything because he thinks "life sucks, what's the point of achieving my dreams, this sucks, that sucks, I'll just wallow here in my pain" while paradoxically the grateful man who already is grateful for his life will think "Life is awesome, it'd be such a waste of my life to not achieve my dreams, this is awesome, this is awesome..."

The list of things to congratulate myself on is an interesting concept, I do already write down 3 things a day that were "amazing successes" in my journal format but perhaps a long a$$ centralized list would be of greater impact to look at and see "wow, I achieved 87 pages of awesome shit, lets keep going." I'll start one and see how it goes, thanks.

Too much damn work? HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

12 hours a month is too much damn work for the context of the social media marketing company for what I'm receiving. In isolation, 12 hours a work of month is nothing of course.

You only need 6 hours of sleep. That leaves 18 hours a day. And you're only willing to put in 4, maybe 5?

A lot of eating, sleeping, running important errands, reading, working out, travelling, etc in between all that. I'm counting (recording with this Pomodoro app)the raw hours I'm sitting in front a computer or doing something else related to working on business. I believe I can hit 8. Other people like Tim Ferris say you can get only 4 hours of quality work done a day but I disagree. Try recording how much actual work you get done on your business a day and you'll be surprised to see how much of what you thought was work was just driving, shitting, eating, errands, unimportant tasks, etc.

And everyone is saying I'm the one against quality work whereas I'm very strictly recording time spent on business related work.

Try waking up before noon first, then try again.

Done so for the past 3 days.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
G

GuestUser091

Guest
Day 13 5/15/17
Current Goal:

PRIMARY: 5+ hours a day of business work for 6 days straight, NO BREAK DAYS (5/17-5/22)
AUXILIARY: $100+/day profits for a week straight by June 1st

Current Ventures:

-shopify dropshipping store
-a social media marketing company *(autopilot with no intentions of growing it)

Hours Worked on Business Today: 0 hours (break day)

Earnings: $8
$8= monthly earnings from my marketing company

Summary of Today
-woke up at 10:55AM
-went to get an eye exam at Costco for new contacts as I have only 2 weeks left. Also got laundry detergent.
-Decided F*ck it, I worked my a$$ off with very little indulgence for the past 5 days. I'm taking the day off.
-Took the day off, watched plenty of TV
-modified my goal for "5+ hours a day for the next 6 days straight, NO BREAKS DAYS". I'm making the decision ahead of time to not take any other break days for the next 6 days and hopefully longer. I did 5 days straight of grueling work whereas my average in the past of mediocrely-focused work has been 1-3 days straight, so it's only logical to do 6 days straight now which will probably be a record for me if done.
-going to bed now at 2:55AM, need to wake up early to meet with someone to ship a package of my old company's assets cheaply to my long time friend and buyer living in Poland

Big Items for Tomorrow:
-optimize my site more for conversions
-learn more about Facebook ads and optimize my current ones
-learn more about Google Adwords and optimize my current ads
 

Contrarian

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
583%
Nov 13, 2014
284
1,656
38
Jalisco, Mexico
So, it's been about two weeks now...

There's some nuggets of good stuff here. You've been getting up progressively earlier each day, and now you're actually waking up in the morning.

You have some semblance of self-awareness, in knowing that you need to sort your shit out.

You have actually increased your "working" hours.

And yet...I still don't understand what the hell you're actually doing. I've gone back and read through all your Summaries of Today. I don't see virtually anything in there that actually constitutes productive work.

Taking an AdWords course does not constitute productive work. That's the sort of thing you should be doing outside work hours.

Going to the beach to read a book about having "No Excuses" does not constitute productive work.

Messing around in your site's analytics does not constitute productive work.

If you're only working five hours a day, how can you spend "too long" on your stretching exercises? You have 13 other hours in the waking day to do those!

You've done virtually nothing of value in the last two weeks and now you want a big pat on the back and a self-congratulatory day off! WTF! I don't get it.

A wise man once said that if you want something to get done, ask a busy person to do it.

Let me summarise for you what I've done and will be doing today:

- Woke up at 6:45. Had a shower and sunk two coffees.
- Worked on stuff I'm doing in the ForeverJobless incubator from 7:30-11:15 solid.
- Walked into town to get a haircut and grab a sandwich
- Spent two hours making calls to candidates for my recruiting work

Now I'm taking a short break to write this post (it's 3:40PM here).

As soon as I finish this, I'll be putting together some email sequences that need to go out for my other sales job.

And then I'll be making sales calls with some pre-booked appointments mixed in until 9PM.

Then I'll have dinner, read for an hour, and go to sleep.

I have four different "jobs" to do right now, and yet I still got more done in the morning alone than you do in a day. And I'm not saying this to claim I'm in any way exceptional, because that's not the case.

Do you want to win, or not?
 

Imgal

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
329%
Aug 9, 2015
486
1,599
@LordPhenny - the first thing I have to commend you on is consistency. Too many people start progress threads and then never come back to them. It shows that you have determination and drive to keep coming back and doing this.

One thing I see a lot of in your updates is busy work. Work that makes us feel productive at the end of the day, but honestly hasn't doesn't move any of us forward. I've been in the phase where I think spending hours learning from courses is being an awesome entrepreneur because then I'll become the fountain of knowledge that everyone wants. The truth is however isn't that. I would keep taking courses because I was scared to actually go out there and take action so I wanted to make sure I learnt everything so people wouldn't be able to challenge me, that I'd know all the answers and I definitely wouldn't lose any money.

Here's the reality though. The three months I spent following that routine? I wasted so much time and potential income it was insane. No-one is going to start out perfect, but the truth is that even if we have 2% more knowledge than the Average Joe then we're valuable to them. It's simply our ego holding us back from doing things.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like you're too comfortable right now and it's more painful to change than stay as you are. I've been a total wet blanket in pushing myself this last year because I was comfortable. I have a nice place to live. I have food in the cupboards. Sure if I kept on going in the same vein I might run out of cash in a year or so in the worst case scenario, but I kind of knew that in that worse case scenario my family would save me (writing that actually makes me want to slap myself round the head).

Wake up call? Finding out a parent was potentially seriously ill. First thought was them. Next thought was right I need to be able to raise enough cash for medical bills and to support them going forward and there's not a chance in hell I'm going to put myself in a position where they need to save me.

That shook me up enough to stop pretending that I was working when I was actually just playing at being an entrepreneur and stepping up and make plans then take immediate action. We will trip, we will fall but we all need to do that.

My question to you is what is driving you to change right now... and is it really big enough? It feels like you're playing really small right now and I actually think if you can find the big enough motivation to step this up 100% you're going to achieve amazing things.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Contrarian

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
583%
Nov 13, 2014
284
1,656
38
Jalisco, Mexico
@LordPhenny - the first thing I have to commend you on is consistency. Too many people start progress threads and then never come back to them. It shows that you have determination and drive to keep coming back and doing this.

One thing I see a lot of in your updates is busy work. Work that makes us feel productive at the end of the day, but honestly hasn't doesn't move any of us forward. I've been in the phase where I think spending hours learning from courses is being an awesome entrepreneur because then I'll become the fountain of knowledge that everyone wants. The truth is however isn't that. I would keep taking courses because I was scared to actually go out there and take action so I wanted to make sure I learnt everything so people wouldn't be able to challenge me, that I'd know all the answers and I definitely wouldn't lose any money.

Here's the reality though. The three months I spent following that routine? I wasted so much time and potential income it was insane. No-one is going to start out perfect, but the truth is that even if we have 2% more knowledge than the Average Joe then we're valuable to them. It's simply our ego holding us back from doing things.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like you're too comfortable right now and it's more painful to change than stay as you are. I've been a total wet blanket in pushing myself this last year because I was comfortable. I have a nice place to live. I have food in the cupboards. Sure if I kept on going in the same vein I might run out of cash in a year or so in the worst case scenario, but I kind of knew that in that worse case scenario my family would save me (writing that actually makes me want to slap myself round the head).

Wake up call? Finding out a parent was potentially seriously ill. First thought was them. Next thought was right I need to be able to raise enough cash for medical bills and to support them going forward and there's not a chance in hell I'm going to put myself in a position where they need to save me.

That shook me up enough to stop pretending that I was working when I was actually just playing at being an entrepreneur and stepping up and make plans then take immediate action. We will trip, we will fall but we all need to do that.

My question to you is what is driving you to change right now... and is it really big enough? It feels like you're playing really small right now and I actually think if you can find the big enough motivation to step this up 100% you're going to achieve amazing things.

Great post! Now I feel bad for not being as polite as you.

The reason this thread is irritating me so much is probably because reading it is a little like looking at my past self in the mirror, and not liking what I see.
 

Imgal

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
329%
Aug 9, 2015
486
1,599
Great post! Now I feel bad for not being as polite as you.

The reason this thread is irritating me so much is probably because reading it is a little like looking at my past self in the mirror, and not liking what I see.

I know exactly what you mean! You and I are just doing good cop / bad cop!! Your post sparked me into rethinking about how I used to deal with things. Without your post this one would never have popped up!
 
G

GuestUser091

Guest
Taking an AdWords course does not constitute productive work. That's the sort of thing you should be doing outside work hours.


I would keep taking courses because I was scared to actually go out there and take action so I wanted to make sure I learnt everything so people wouldn't be able to challenge me, that I'd know all the answers and I definitely wouldn't lose any money.

I might not be the best at explaining exactly what the hell I'm actually doing in a day so it might look like I'm an 19 year old kid jacking around pretending to work. Keep in mind I'm leaving out a lot of details in my daily summaries that I don't have to time or energy to divulge on. But honestly, I know when I'm jacking around and working to feel busy vs when I'm actually working hard making real progress. I feel it in my gut. What you guys are claiming are wastes of time were actually very important. Those 5 solid days were days I was 85%+ happy with.

The idea that as a 19 year old not going to college with virtually no work experience in dropshipping being able to just jump in the field and "work on it" is a fiction. You guys probably had to learn sales or whatever your skill is one time or another. Apprenticeships are as old as mankind and everyone must go through them. Just because you guys are older and are basically done with learning/apprenticeships (e.g. college, internships, etc) doesn't mean unskilled younger people like me shouldn't go through them.

However, I do still recognize the fine balance between knowledge and work. Too much knowledge and too little work, you accomplish little. Too much work and too little knowledge, you also accomplish little. You guys think I'm with too much knowledge and too little work from the few hundred words I'm writing online daily, without experiencing my actual life. I disagree with this on instinct. And this isn't a pride thing-- I will be the first one to admit that I blew a day or didn't work that hard. But where you're saying I have I know I didn't.

I'm objectively acting on what I'm learning. That adwords course led directly to a sale today. And I will get more sales and more sales in the coming weeks. Don't worry.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
Last edited by a moderator:
G

GuestUser091

Guest
Day 14 5/17/17
Current Goal:

PRIMARY: 5+ hours a day of business work for 6 days straight, NO BREAK DAYS (5/17-5/22)
AUXILIARY: $100+/day profits for a week straight by June 1st

Current Ventures:

-shopify dropshipping store
-a social media marketing company *(autopilot with no intentions of growing it)

Hours Worked on Business Today: 8 hours

Earnings: $14
$8= monthly earnings from my marketing company
$6= PROFIT from dropshipping site

Approximate Summary of Today
-woke up at 10:10AM
-went to meet a lady to ship my package of assets of my old company I sold to my friend in Poland
-came home and learned I got a sale on my dropshipping site from Adwords.
-wasted time reading about the Haymarket Affair
-watched the Hotjar videos to see what people are doing when they're coming onto my site. Got some good info from that on what to improve.
-swapped out an item from aliexpress which took a while because I had to photoshop the watermarks off
-went to the gym for 40 minutes
-went to the beach to read for 40 minutes
-did 30 more minutes in my adwords course
-did general improvements to my dropshipping site
-picked out 5 more items for my site to add. Took a while because i had to find the lowest prices for each and ones that had good shipping times
-wrote beginning/first draft descriptions for those items that I can expand upon tomorrow
-complained to shopify about not being able to reduce my gif sizes on my homepage and thus having it load very slow. Also asked them about apps I was overcharged for and a browser tab feature I want.
-fixed my coupon popups that were costing me customers and money
-fixed a minor mess involving social media posting
-going to bed now at 2:59AM

Big Items for Tomorrow:
-optimize my site more for conversions
-learn more about Facebook ads and optimize my current ones
-learn more about Google Adwords and optimize my current ads
 

Imgal

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
329%
Aug 9, 2015
486
1,599
What you guys are claiming are wastes of time were actually very important. Those 5 solid days were days I was 85%+ happy with.

You sound really defensive. I promise you that no-one in this forum wants anything but success for anyone else. We're not trying to put you down we're actually trying to help you. It sounds like you are very aware of your objectives and what you are trying to achieve and maybe those who have been engaging with this thread have been seeing it wrong - we've seen it as accountability and maybe you wanting support when it's in fact a progress thread for you to be able to refer back to yourself and we should all back off.
Keep in mind I'm leaving out a lot of details in my daily summaries that I don't have to time or energy to divulge on.
It sounds like these are what you feel are the more life changing elements if you feel we're misjudging you. If it is you'd help others by sharing so they can see how they push you forward.

Again though I think I've read the reason for this thread wrong and from now on will step back from it. I wish you all the best.
 
G

GuestUser091

Guest
You sound really defensive.

I didn't mean to come off that way and in fact made an effort to not to come off as defensive, but apparently I may have failed. I'm trying to respond as even keeled and non-defensively as possible because I really do appreciate that people are trying to help me out and criticize me when I need to be criticized. But when I don't agree with criticism (like doing dropshipping related courses "is not work" when one knows nothing about dropshipping), I will have to reply and explain as non-defensively as I possibly can why I think that criticism is invalid.

I'm not here to build a yes-man thread of "you can do it! All mistakes are okay!" and attack all criticism. That breeds failure. Instead, I encourage criticism. ALL successful people have had tons of criticism on their climb (be it constructive or hateful in nature) and without it they wouldn't be successful. As you can see earlier in this thread, I do infact agree with criticism I think is valid. I will also disagree when I think it's invalid but that doesn't mean I'm upset, offended by it, or want it to stop.

we've seen it as accountability and maybe you wanting support when it's in fact a progress thread for you to be able to refer back to yourself and we should all back off.

It's both and also a thread for people who want to gain financial independence themselves and are interested in seeing someone else do so, start to finish. Keep criticizing me and calling out my shit.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
G

GuestUser091

Guest
Day 15 5/18/17
Current Goal:

PRIMARY: 5+ hours a day of business work for 6 days straight, NO BREAK DAYS (5/17-5/22)
AUXILIARY: $100+/day profits for a week straight by June 1st

Current Ventures:

-shopify dropshipping store
-a social media marketing company *(autopilot with no intentions of growing it)

Hours Worked on Business Today: 6.6 hours

Earnings: $8
$8= monthly earnings from my marketing company

Approximate Summary of Today
-woke up at 12:50PM
-downloaded "The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt" to my phone. I just finished "Titan: The Life of John D Rockefeller Sr" in about 3 weeks (6 hours long) because I have made a habit out of briefly listening to parts of audiobooks (mostly historical/biographical ones) whenever I'm eating or driving. Business related ones like on Vanderbilt and Rockefeller especially keep you on task when you're done eating and ready to go back to work.
-did a live chat with Shopify regarding why my gifs on my site were glitching out. At the end of the 20 minute chat, the agent said he will email me back in 24 hours when he figures it out.
-re-started Google Adwords because my site can now load properly and fast as hell because I removed the two gifs on my homepage (sorta unnecessary gifs).
- finished preparing 4 new products (i.e. descriptions, pictures, etc) I had chosen and imported into Shopify last night. Put this on my site ready to sell in a nice grid layout on the homepage versus just the 2 products I had on the homepage before.
-went to the beach and read for 30 minutes a marketing book by Seth Godin and also briefly caught up with my friends and other people demanding my attention over text. These short daily beach times are perhaps the only thing holding me back from insanity.
-did an hour long stretching workout that was mixed with work. Too unfocused.
-found 3 more items to add to my shopify dropshipping site, wrote descriptions and added them to be live on the website so that 9 products can now be bought on it.
-tried to figure out how to get a Facebook ad with a "buy" button and multiple product options to be made. I think this could be very effective in making sales and I see other people doing it. I couldn't figure it out because it's a beta feature and it's probably lost somewhere in facebook's menus what I want but I will work more on it tomorrow.
Going to bed now at 2:00AM

Big Items for Tomorrow:
-continue optimizing my site for more conversions
-try the Facebook ads with the buy button
-Finish Google Adwords course and optimize my current ads
 

Ika

Busy Idiot
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
344%
Aug 9, 2016
271
933
Germany
I haven't read the whole thread, but your goal is to make 100$/day by June 1.
That means you have 13 days to reach that goal.

Will your current daily actions result in 100$ per day?

If yes, keep working.
If no, adjust and start working.

~Ika
 
G

GuestUser091

Guest
Will your current daily actions result in 100$ per day?

If yes, keep working.
If no, adjust and start working.

~Ika

I'm working as fast and as hard I can to get to that goal. Can still reach it by June 1st with a bit of work and luck. It's an auxillary goal though; my primary goal is 5 hours a day of business work (not including gym, errands, non-business related work, etc)
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
G

GuestUser091

Guest
Day 16 5/19/17
Current Goal:

PRIMARY: 5+ hours a day of business work for 6 days straight, NO BREAK DAYS (5/17-5/22)
AUXILIARY: $100+/day profits for a week straight by June 1st

Current Ventures:

-shopify dropshipping store
-a social media marketing company *(autopilot with no intentions of growing it)

Hours Worked on Business Today: 5 hours

Earnings: $8
$8= monthly earnings from my marketing company

Approximate Summary of Today
-woke up at 11:45AM
-figured out that I can't run the FB product ads with the "buy" button. It's a beta feature and is "being rolled out slowly" and apparently I'm not one of the accounts it's being offered to or my page needs more likes. Oh well.
-Did about 2 hours of a cross between watching my adwords course and applying what I've learned directly onto my ads
-Went to the beach 45 minutes. Super nice and hot today.
-came back and spent an hour and a half on listing my old desk on various local sale sites/apps. Spent way to long on this and kinda got carried overboard with applying all the marketing shit I was reading at the beach to making my listing perfect (which it is). But nonetheless, I should've spent no more than 20 minutes doing this and this didn't even count towards my total business work count.
- went to the gym for an hour
-did 2 more hours of a cross between adwords course and adjusting my ad settings. I finished the course and now have a broad overview of the immense power of adwords. It honestly makes Facebook Ads look like childsplay in the scope of options and customization and crazy shit you can do. I think I will come to master it eventually after much trial and error. But you only have to be better at it than most other people when it comes to making a profit. And it seems like the vast majority of people out there think they know Adwords but really don't and are losing money, kinda similar how most guys think they know how to fight but they really don't and get beat up when they pick a fight.
- troubleshooted a problem with my client's geofilter for about 10 minutes
-going to bed now at 2:30

Big Items for Tomorrow:
-continue optimizing my site for more conversions
-re-start Facebook ads and run a new test ad
-optimize Google Adwords for more conversions and lower costs
 
G

GuestUser091

Guest
Day 17 5/20/17
Current Goal:

PRIMARY: 5+ hours a day of business work for 6 days straight, NO BREAK DAYS (5/17-5/22)
AUXILIARY: $100+/day profits for a week straight by June 1st

Current Ventures:

-shopify dropshipping store
-a social media marketing company *(autopilot with no intentions of growing it)

Hours Worked on Business Today: 5.8 hours

Earnings: $8
$8= monthly earnings from my marketing company

Approximate Summary of Today
-woke up at 11:50AM
-sold my desk for I listed just yesterday for $45. Later figured out that it was selling for new at walmart for $71... also I found it in the dumpster out the back of my apartment. Nice desk, even nicer profit lol. Not counting it in the earnings counter though because it's not really business related.
-made my first Facebook ad with a product (one variation albeit). Did probably the tightest/most exacting targeting I've ever done on a certain customer archetype. Not a half-assed ad by any means, I'm proud of it.
-went to the beach to read for about 45 minutes
-did some market research to get a better idea of the customers in my niche
-worked out for 30 minutes
-did 30 minutes in a Sony Vegas course. I need to learn Vegas for doing video ads because video ads are just a great weapon to have. And also the Youtube channel I'm looking to start when I become financially independent.
-collected all the files of my old company into one huge 13.6GB archive that I need to upload tomorrow for 5 hours. Cleaned out my old company's windows account, tabs, files, kept everything I need and deleted the rest. Relieving to have that baggage of a 2 year long failure out of my life but still probably shouldn't have done this and should've spent time doing adwords optimization as those ads aren't running. I would probably have to do this in the next two days though but I regret not working on adwords instead for those few hours. Puts me half a day behind.
-researched protein consumption and nutrition for about an hour
-got some advice from a friend that is making me reconsider my dropshipping niche, will have to think about it but for now I remain committed to it and am not looking to hop ship any time soon.
- going to bed at 2:43AM, really need to get this back down to 12AM and eventually to 11PM

Big Items for Tomorrow:
-add 9 more products to my site (w/end goal of somewhere around 45 total products on the site, currently at 9)
-continue optimizing my site for more conversions
-optimize Google Adwords for more conversions and lower costs
 

Waspy

Float like a butterfly
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
461%
Dec 6, 2016
480
2,214
30
U.K.
Do you even own an alarm? WTF even is your sleep pattern?

I had a lie in today and got up at 7am, it a Sunday, an extra hour never hurt anyone. Got up, had leisurely breakfast and started working at 7:45. I've done at least 3:30 hours work and its 11:30. I'm going to meet my brother for lunch and coffee later, probably get back at 4pm. Work for another 4 hours between 4pm and 10pm, hit the Gym for an hour and be in bed for 11:30.

What am I saying? You can have a bloody chilled out Sunday with socialising, working out, cooking meals and still get 8:30 hours of work in. What are you doing with your time?

As other have said. Get a job. A job is 8 hours a day. You can still put in your current 5 hours on the business.

8+5 = 13.
24 -13 = 11.

11 whole hours to eat, sleep, socialise. And you will have a regular income.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Envision

Legendary Contributor
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
779%
May 5, 2014
861
6,707
I might not be the best at explaining exactly what the hell I'm actually doing in a day so it might look like I'm an 19 year old kid jacking around pretending to work. Keep in mind I'm leaving out a lot of details in my daily summaries that I don't have to time or energy to divulge on. But honestly, I know when I'm jacking around and working to feel busy vs when I'm actually working hard making real progress. I feel it in my gut. What you guys are claiming are wastes of time were actually very important. Those 5 solid days were days I was 85%+ happy with.

The idea that as a 19 year old not going to college with virtually no work experience in dropshipping being able to just jump in the field and "work on it" is a fiction. You guys probably had to learn sales or whatever your skill is one time or another. Apprenticeships are as old as mankind and everyone must go through them. Just because you guys are older and are basically done with learning/apprenticeships (e.g. college, internships, etc) doesn't mean unskilled younger people like me shouldn't go through them.

However, I do still recognize the fine balance between knowledge and work. Too much knowledge and too little work, you accomplish little. Too much work and too little knowledge, you also accomplish little. You guys think I'm with too much knowledge and too little work from the few hundred words I'm writing online daily, without experiencing my actual life. I disagree with this on instinct. And this isn't a pride thing-- I will be the first one to admit that I blew a day or didn't work that hard. But where you're saying I have I know I didn't.

I'm objectively acting on what I'm learning. That adwords course led directly to a sale today. And I will get more sales and more sales in the coming weeks. Don't worry.


Dude you're full of F*cking shit.

This:
Summary of Today
-woke up at 10:55AM
-went to get an eye exam at Costco for new contacts as I have only 2 weeks left. Also got laundry detergent.
-Decided F*ck it, I worked my a$$ off with very little indulgence for the past 5 days. I'm taking the day off.
-Took the day off, watched plenty of TV
-modified my goal for "5+ hours a day for the next 6 days straight, NO BREAKS DAYS". I'm making the decision ahead of time to not take any other break days for the next 6 days and hopefully longer. I did 5 days straight of grueling work whereas my average in the past of mediocrely-focused work has been 1-3 days straight, so it's only logical to do 6 days straight now which will probably be a record for me if done.
-going to bed now at 2:55AM, need to wake up early to meet with someone to ship a package of my old company's assets cheaply to my long time friend and buyer living in Poland

IS F*ckING HORSE SHIT.

I'd be embarassed to live this life. F*ck i couldn't imagine living this life.

I will promise you one thing you will never make it without discipline and right now you have none.

You need to get your shit straight and that starts with building discipline. F*ck a business you cant even run your own life right how are you going to manage employees, customers, and all the other moving parts of a business?

I promise you right now there are kids your age or younger literally working their brains out 18 hours a day to get the same goals you have. The only difference is they're going to get them because their disciplined and willing to sacrifice. You won't if you keep this up.

And honestly this thread just belongs in the #landfill cause its straight bullshit back and forth.
 

MJ DeMarco

I followed the science; all I found was money.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
445%
Jul 23, 2007
38,076
169,493
Utah
Hours Worked Today: 1.5 hours

You trolling us?

Woke up at 5PM and watched 4.5 hours of TV.

Now you're wasting our time. (And certainly not worthy of receiving my time or effort into helping you.)

Earnings: $8
$8= monthly earnings from my marketing company

The one thing that's been consistent in this entire trainwreck of a thread.

I imagine if I checked in 4 months from now, it would say the same damn thing, "I made $8."

Sad that some of our most respected members have been trying to help you and the best you can do is "I made some F*cking chile" and "I went to Costco." Seriously?

3 freaking pages and nothing?

Have you even read the book this forum is based upon? Me thinks, not.

Unless something changes, and fast, this thread is ready to fall into the #landfill.

Perhaps @biophase can give a candid opinion on the big nothing burger in here?
 

biophase

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
474%
Jul 25, 2007
9,120
43,260
Scottsdale, AZ
Perhaps @biophase can give a candid opinion on the big nothing burger in here?

I couldn't even read this thread. A whole a lot of nothing here. I got more done last week in a day that included a 14 hour 1 day whitewater rafting trip. We talked about this during the trip. 3 fastlaners sitting on a boat in a river in the jungle in Colombia on a Friday afternoon. Got home at 10pm exhausted, but we still got work done from 10-12am and then crashed.

We work so we can do what we do. This OP doesn't want to put in any work so will never get there.
 
G

GuestUser091

Guest
You guys are getting trolled hard.

Now you're wasting our time. (And certainly not worthy of receiving my time or effort into helping you.)

We work so we can do what we do. This OP doesn't want to put in any work so will never get there.

The beginning of the thread is sorta trainwreck, the 2nd page shit gets better but probably 30% the level of work you guys would care about. I'm genuinely trying and not trolling you guys. My effort is just pathetic and I need to try like 10x harder obviously.

MJ I have your book and looking to read it as soon as I'm done with the others.

I'm gonna start including just the business related activities and leaving out most of the misc non-business related activities (e.g. making chili, reading, etc) a bit more because the business action is all that matters really plus it's easier for you guys to read/understand exactly what I'm doing rather than having shit like my eye exams mixed in between actual work.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
G

GuestUser091

Guest
Day 18 5/21/17
Current Goal:

PRIMARY: $100+/day profits by June 1st

Current Ventures:

-shopify dropshipping store
-a social media marketing company *(autopilot with no intentions of growing it)

Hours Worked on Business Today: 0 Hours

Earnings: $8
$8= monthly earnings from my marketing company

Approximate Summary of Today
-woke up at 11:30AM
-took the day off because I lost all willpower, not happy with it because there goes my goal
-went to bed at 7AM

Big Items for Tomorrow:
-add 9 more products to my site (w/end goal of somewhere around 45 total products on the site, currently at 9)
-continue optimizing my site for more conversions
-optimize Google Adwords for more conversions and lower costs
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

MJ DeMarco

I followed the science; all I found was money.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
445%
Jul 23, 2007
38,076
169,493
Utah

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top