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- Jun 17, 2023
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Introduction:
Hello to everyone who is reading this introduction to who I am, my life's story, & my plan to adding value into the world. This is my first post and official introduction to this forum, so I'm pretty scared of even making this my first post because it's very personal but I want to show to anyone reading this when my life has COMPLETELY CHANGED in a couple of years that ANYONE can make it, even if they've been through the worst. This read will be quite long, but I want to show where I've been, where I am, & where I want to go. The ups, the downs, the wins, the losses, and the mistakes. (Which are actually wins because you learn from them). Lastly, thank you (Yes YOU!) for taking the time to read this. I not a very good writer and will have some moments where you think "I don't want to hear your sob story” or “this is all filler” and “I don’t care and aren’t feeling sorry for you", but I'm putting everything here to show the changes that I went through in my life and how it made me the person I am today to be on this forum and meet the amazing people who are their way to executing the FastLane and learn from anyone who has or are getting into the FastLane. If you have any advice, feedback, comments, I am EXTREMELY GRATEFUL to all feedback (good, bad, and ugly) and will be reading and responding to all your comments. Thank you again and I hope you enjoy this read
My Junior High School Years:
I think starting in my junior school years is a perfect start to this since before this, I was just living life normally, having friends, living with my family, a place to live, but during this time things really took a turn for me and builds the foundation to where I am now. 7th grade was the year that started to change my life for the worst, because of my poor thinking, lack of learning, and poor decisions. But some context before I went into my middle school years, my family and I didn't have a lot growing up. Before entering junior high, my dad couldn't afford to pay the rent for our apartment since he got fired from his job and we had to move to a motel, thinking it would only be a couple of months and then moving to a new apartment. I was a very great student during elementary, I had all tests passed with 85% and above, I showed up to school everyday, did the classroom work, & my teachers would always say I would be having a great job when I'm older and that your education in school is the most important thing to make a lot of money. (You know, the slow lane junk) But entering into junior high I changed for the worst. After making new "friends" who were the type of kids to ditch classes, not do their schoolwork or anything, cause trouble, get called to the principal's office, etc. I was a part of that as well. I started ditching so many times that it started effecting my math and English grades, but I didn't care, I had so many assignments piled up that I thought "What's the point, you can do them last minute anyways." I got into fights at school, I got called to the principal's office, I talked to multiple girls trying to find the one. I thought I was one one of the "cool kids" in school, but looking back now, I was a complete dumb a$$. Even in my circumstance living in a motel & instead of figuring out how I can help my family out, I just did stupid things in school and making my life worst. Everyday when school was over & I headed home, that's when I really started to reflect on my choices more since my dad was still on the lookout for a job and can feel the pressure he had on his back. My mother also having to raise my 2 brothers, sister, and I. I felt horrible knowing I was doing these things at school without my parents knowing, but my choices never changed heading into the 8th grade. I continued this reckless behavior, still getting into fights, ditching classes, not caring about anything. After a few months into my 8th grade school year. It was the day were we getting 2 weeks of spring break from school. At the very last minute before school was over and starting spring break, an announcement on the speaker goes on with the principal of the school saying "Hello students, I know you are very eager to have your spring break, but we will be extending it for 4 weeks, due to the corona virus spreading and decided it would be safer to extend spring break for the safety of the school." When that announcement came on, everyone was celebrating as if they won the super bowl, nobody knowing that school was actually going to end that day. After a few weeks and supposedly going back to school, my parents get an email saying that we won't be returning anytime soon due to the pandemic getting worse and recommending to stay in your home at all times. After the announcement of the pandemic, my dad had an even harder time trying to find a job since everyone was being fired and nobody was willing to hire. So we didn't have money to continue paying for the place. My parents had to ask some friends around for money to help out but eventually we had to move again, this time into another motel that is even smaller. When packing out things and moving out all I thought in my mind was"I can't live like this, I need to change or eventually we are going to become homeless." (Perfect foreshadowing) So that day I decided to change my life. I started working out at the park nearby every morning at 5 AM, started doing my school work, stopped ditching so many classes, and showing up to school more, still thinking this the only way to make money. During this time I also started searching up ways of making money to help my parents out, after a couple of seconds (yes really) of thinking I decided to pursue YouTube, why YouTube, because it looked fun & if I become big I can make a lot of money if I “follow my passion” which was to play videos games and be a pro at it. I was so close to starting a gaming YouTube channel when I had a thought "This isn't the only way of making money, I mean, they are rich people in diffident areas, so why don't you research and see other options." So I started researching only on YouTube since I was lazy to read any books or articles and started seeing the old guru junk like drop shipping, Amazon FBA, taking surveys for scraps of
change. After researching I decided to pursue dropshipping since I knew I could work hard on it, but I though it would be easy and bring fast money. Just before pursuing dropshipping there was a video on my YouTube feed that really caught my attention. The video was called The Untold Truth About Wealth: How To Build Wealth From Nothing and the creator of the video named James Jani (Shout out to @Valier who is James Jani, the creator of the video. If you are reading this James, thank you for making this amazing video, and helping me change my life and seeing things in a different light, getting to know about @MJ DeMarco and this amazing forum. I absolutely LOVE your work. The feedback loop is in full circle, keep it up
) I decided to watch the video and after watching it, I just saw my whole life & mind just shift and see things from different perspectives. I KNEW that THIS Is what I wanted to pursue for the REST OF MY LIFE. After watching all his videos on his channel I started seeing a pattern of a book that he referring to a lot called "The Millionaire Fastlane " & "UNSCRIPTED ." “If he got all this information to think this way and make this amazing video from that book, I will read it as well,” I thought. So after searching up the book on google, I downloaded the book onto my kindle and started reading that day. After a few days in being 1/5th way of reading the book, I was in shock about what I was reading, from the three roadmaps (The sidewalk, Slowlane, & the FastLane and I knew if I continued this path that I would end up in the SlowLane) to the lies of getting a job and being “stable” to the exposure of those gurus that I almost fell for and school never teaching me about ANY of this, but that night would change my life completely again. After going to sleep at around 10pm, I woke up in the middle of the night to my parents fighting at 2am. I was startled by it all and worried that other people around would hear us so I tried to calm them down but wouldn’t listen. After a couple of minutes, manager knocked on our door and told us we they we can’t have this type of behavior here, especially at 2 in the morning, so we had to leave later today before 11am. That night I just couldn’t sleep and started crying to myself. I didn’t know where we were going to live, and neither did my parents. When I woke up I started helping pack our items into the car. We had a storage facility close by that has some of our old stuff, so we took our stuff and headed to the storage unit. I just couldn’t think, all I thought about was everything I did in my life leading up to this moment and regretting every moment of it. I just wanted to cry all day, never expecting to be in this situation. My parents, with not a lot of money left told us we had to sleep in the car that night. My brothers asked “how long do we need to stay here.” My mom didn’t know. We were all scared of the future and what we were going to do. Sleeping that night in the car was miserable. Just thinking about the situation made me want to punch something, but I knew that wasn’t going to change the situation, so I just went to sleep, hoping the feeling would go away. But of course it didn’t. The next morning my parents told us that we had to stay in the city (basically we couldn’t stay in the car with them, it would draw too much attention) during the day and they would attempt to find a place to stay for the meantime, so being the oldest sibling, that meant I was in charge of taking care of them. They gave us their food stamps card and got out of the car at 7am to go get something to eat. After taking my siblings to get breakfast and my parents gone to find a place. I couldn’t talk, think, or do anything. My siblings were asking me a lot of question about the situation and tried to keep my composure and be optimistic saying we are going to make it out. But deep down I knew would be living in the car for some time, and I was right. After a couple of months of being there, we still couldn’t find a place to live and school was coming up again for the next chapter of my life
High School Years:
Entering into 9th grade, school was all online. The school decided to give chromebooks out to the students who didn’t have a laptop or computer with a mobile hotspot for the kids who didn’t have an internet connection either. After the announcement my parents went to get them for us to do our school work. But we didn’t care about school. We were literally living in a car and they expected us that school is more important than our housing situation? My parents said they were attempting to find a place and everything would be ok. We tried doing our online classes but it was confusing navigating their website and when we hopped on zoom classes almost no one other students were on the call and the teachers were horrible at teaching through this method. After a couple of days we just gave up even attending them. During the day when my parents would go, my siblings & I would go to different places to visit and my favorite place during these hard times to go was the library. It was calm, a nice place to sit, read, think… until I brought my siblings along. I started to read different books from the library. Just random books topics that peaked my interest, nothing toward entrepreneurship or learning the process of building a business (Yet). I learned more about self help books, a little coding, and random subjects. But I never finished them since I couldn’t really focus with a lot going on in my head and they also didn’t really have a purpose to be read, I was just reading for the sake of reading. I didn’t know what to do anymore to help the situation and the thoughts of having the same mundane routine, being homeless, worrying about where to live started to dawn on me. I had multiple moments where I just wanted to end my life. All I thought was how hopeless I was, how much of a failure I am, and that I’ll never amount to nothing. I felt numb during that time and after another couple of months the corona virus pandemic started to slow down and the school started to bring students back to learn in classrooms. Since no one would even attend them they basically let everyone pass their school year, but things would be very different coming back. After going back to school we saw dramatic change, everyone were wearing masks, had to be distanced, desks separated, and no one seemed happy to be back. The place felt like a prison. Being in school I just didn’t pay attention. I didn’t care about my education anymore, I didn’t care about any of this, and I didn’t care about being alive, I just wanted to die. I was depressed during this time, worried so much about anything that make our situation worse. I was so scared I bearly talked to anyone of my friends, let alone about my situation. The friends I had during these years were great, they weren’t the same that I had in junior high and they were my friends that I met since elementary, and all the kids who were my “friends” were from middle school. I knew them more than anyone and saw a lot of change in them as well. From being immature in middle school, changing their ways through the pandemic, and now matured much better than even I expected. They cheered me up from time to time, but those thoughts and feeling were still lingering in me. I just didn’t care still, even being blind to the great friends, my supporting family, and still having a place to sleep, food, clothes, and being safe. All I could think about was the situation I was in. A few months come by and my grades were going down. I remember our counselor calling my parents to tell me about my grades and if everything was ok, they said that everything was fine, not telling them about our situation. Even after that I still didn’t do anything, that school year had to be the worse one I had for me mentally. I obviously did a few assignments but only enough to even pass my classes, all D’s & C’s. So during that time I knew I had enough of my life going out of control and feeling sorry for myself. I had to take control of my life again and had to find a way to do something to help out family get out of here. I knew the first thing I needed to do was make money but had to meet some requirements of doing it
1) It had to be online since I had to take care of my siblings during the day and could work on it at night
2) I couldn’t get a job since my grades were very low that I can’t get the slip permission from the school and I still needed to take care of my siblings and
3) It needed to start with no to little money. I didn’t want to ask my parents since they were already stressed and tired of the situation as well and I don’t want to be a burden to to them
So after thinking I decided to be an eBay reseller and start on that day. I started going after school to thrift shops and Goodwills to get products that were cheap and could sell for a profit. The products that my store would focus on were games and electronics because I knew the more than the average person on these things. After around 3-4 months of selling I made around 800$. I thought this was good money at the time since I only started with only 10$, but I knew this method was too slow and would take years to even grow. So after some thought I decided to do still resell, but while doing something else. During this time as well I decided to just not focus on school anymore. I even asked the school if it was possible to dropout but said I needed parents permission. I knew I couldn’t tell them that so I asked if there is a different way to dropout. They said I needed to pass my GED test to be able to have an equivalent diploma as a high school degree. I asked if I pass this then would I be able to graduate and not come back? They said yes, you wouldn’t even need to show up anymore and you would basically be a high school graduate. After that I did some thinking and research on it, the test seemed to be hard, but not impossible. But what set me back was the price which was 450$ for all subjects. (Forgot to mention that I gave the 800$ to my parents to help out with them) After this i didn’t want to go back and ask my parents for the money, they needed it more than I did. So I thought “If I pass this, then I would technically be graduated from high school, so why don’t I just pass it on my final year of high school so I could focus on entrepreneurship from 10th to 12th grade and on the last couple of months of your final year, then study for the test and take it”. I knew I could make it work. After I though of the plan I told my counselor about it and said it was possible but I would still need to keep my grades to a C or above and make up for the missing classes in 7th & 8th grade.(Yes, I’m still following this plan to this day) So I stopped doing my homework and classroom work for some time and focused on building something else. I tried taking surveys for change, selling candys in the streets, tried selling soda and snacks at school, anything that I could try to think of I did. But after trying these things they all failed, but taught me a lot of valuable lessons like managing money, being able to sell by talking to strangers without getting scared, being committed for the long term and not short term, not spend money on pleasures, putting the customer first before myself, answer the customer quickly, etc. These failures started to help me change my mindset for my future self and things started to get better. After 1 month later, in total of 1 year and a half of living in a car our parents told us the Amazing news of finding a place to live, a motel that is the has 2 rooms instead of the small cramped ones. I didn’t care if it was a trash can to live in I was so grateful and started crying, not knowing how we were dead yet I thanked God for helping us during this and getting back on my feet with these small businesses and learning from them, overcoming my depression, and thankfully having a place to live. After moving to the new place I was excited thinking what my next pursuit is but my parents asked me why my grades are so low because the school called them. That’s when I explained to them everything about taking the GED test to the businesses I took on, to explaining them I wanted to take the test in my senior year. After explaining them the plan they agreed to it and supported my decision and goal of making a business. With the emotional support (Not financially because I wanted to do it alone and figure it out instead of asking for help) of my parents I knew I couldn’t let them down so I started researching what business to pursue next on YouTube when all of a sudden the video from James Jani shows up again and had an epiphany when seeing the thumbnail. I just realized that I never finished the book from MJ DeMarco. I was so depressed and scare of the situation that I was just in that I completely forgot I even started reading it. Remembering how much that video and the first few chapters of the book really changed my views on business and life I decided to re-read it from the beginning again. After a few weeks of reading it I felt like an idiot. Chasing after all those “businesses” and bearly making scarp I knew I needed to change something. Instead of reselling what companies made I had to make my own. I re-read the book and hearing the audiobook to really soak in all the information in the book. After reading the millionaire FastLane I was ready to create the biggest business ever, or so I thought. I didn’t know where to start and was confused as well. I knew I needed to solve a problem and add value, but questions started coming to me “What problem will I solve,” “Am I old enough to even start my business?” “How would I make the design of my product and have someone make it?” They we’re so many questions that I went (and somewhat still am) through an analysis paralysis phase where I learned way more than I ever did about any other subject. I learned only about entrepreneurship during this time. I felt like Mr. Beast with his obsession with Youtube, i had that obsession with business, and still do. I started telling my family & friends all about business and entrepreneurship and i wanted them to learn as well. But they didn’t really seem Interested and wanted to have a nice job and be stable and not pursue business, which I understood. I started studying people from Mr. Beast, to Alex Hormozi, to a bit of Steve Jobs, and my favorite entrepreneur MJ Demarco, and more. But after 1 year of studying after studying I felt further away then from the FastLane than getting closer. Still confused about it all and trying putting the pieces together, I felt in love with it all. Learning how to add value to the world, seeing people enjoy your products/services and making an impact in the world and getting PAID for it! This is all I want to do for the rest of my life, to pursue entrepreneurship, even when I get millions in the bank I will still continue to build up business and provide more value to the world. Anyway am getting a little carried away and getting passing grades from my 11th grade school year, here I am entering into the 12th grade tomorrow leaving us to now
Currently Now & Where I Want To Go:
After years of going through the ups and down. I made it out as a completely different person. Even looking back I still can’t believe the whole journey I’ve been on and how it really helped me change and now to pursue entrepreneurship for the rest of my life. Yes I still live in a motel, as embarrassing it might sound I’m proud of it, if I didn’t go though all that pain and suffering I had, I wouldn’t even have thought of pursuing entrepreneurship and would have went through with the SlowLane instead. So don’t worry about me, my dad has a job that pays fairly well and we are more stable now. I’m currently in my parents car writing this which took around 3 hours to plan out, rethink, and write this (Damn perfectionist mind!). I know I shouldn’t have spent so much time making this but In the Getting The MOST Out Of Fastlane (Required Read) thread I decided to do what MJ said. Shows us where you’ve been and where you want to go. So I decided to take that to the extreme and wrote this. So to anyone reading this far THANK YOU and I greatly appreciate it and can’t wait to learn and grow with everyone on their journeys as well. Currently am still running my reselling “business”which brings in 200$ a month, which I know it’s not good but It only needs 1 hour of work a week so I’m fine with that, bringing some income to help funnel it into my business which I haven’t though of yet (again, some analysts paralysis but overcoming it) but I haven’t started on my business for two main reasons being 1) I’m heading back to school tomorrow and I need to get those grades up from my last classes so I can apply to get the permission slip to apply for a minimum wage job and get experience on business, make connections, learning the systems implemented and how it works, learn about the industry, what problems and pain points they are etc. I’m follow MJ Demarco’s video plan here to help me get the foundation going. Anything that will help me for the long term business that i want to create and 2) I only have read the millionaire FastLane and taken notes on it. So after finding out about MJ DeMarco’s other books i knew I had to read them as well. I’m current about 1/5 of the way into reading UNSCRIPTED (Amazing book) & next reading the The Great Ray Race Escape & Wealth Exposed. I also just finished making my 10/5/1 Planasy so these having these goals will definitely help me accomplish my 1 year goals. (Thank you MJ for thinking of this fantastic plan and has helped wonders seeing where I want my life to go & will watch the rest of your YouTube videos to learn more). Currently I am also working out again after seeing a little fat around the belly and knowing it’s time to get back on grind. During my 7th grade phase of exercising I went way too extreme with it and I was doing it completely wrong. I only wanted to get abs so I did 5 miles of running and ONLY ab workouts. Being an idiot back then I didn’t of even think of researching, I just took action, which taught me another lesson of researching before you do something and have a goal and plan in mind. So currently I have a lot of things to do that I want to accomplish in 1 year but my BIGGEST being to set the foundation for my REAL business (Not reselling guru stuff) and having customers and providing ACTUAL value to society and solving pain-points and problems. A problem that I’m currently facing (and would appreciate any advice) is putting everything I want to do in a solid plan to follow. I’m willing to do the hard/smart work and difficult choices but it’s very hard not having a clear cut daily plan (I know my 1 year goals but don’t know to put daily goals together to get to that 1 year plan), which for example I have to exercise at 6am, come back to take my siblings to school, then for me to go to school, come back home and do my chores, help out with my parents to help clean and take care of my younger siblings, then start reading, studying for school, doing my assignments, ship out products for my the buyer who purchased something on my reselling store. There a lot I want to do in a day, but I need a system to help me implement all into motion. I also have trouble breaking my goals down, especially for business. I know when I was going to start my YouTube channel I would need to the idea, record the video, think of my thumbnail, write a script, edit the video, make an intriguing title, and even small things to improve like thinking of new ideas, get to the point of the video and be simple, hook them viewer in for the first 10 seconds. I know all this when it comes to starting a YouTube channel, but when it comes to business I feel a bit lost. I have almost no idea where to start. I know I would need an idea, problems to solve, and value to add but where would I go next. Some advice/help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for talking about these problems I’m going though but it’s something I’m really struggle with and want to solve and take action on. Currently I have for my 10 year goals from my Planasy. My main 3 would be to have a 9 figure business and sell it and to for a liquidation event and build another greater business with the money I have and reinvest everything right back, also to have stronger relationships with my family and friends and to find people (Especially on this forum) who have ambition and want to change the world with their businesses like all the greats in the world. I want to be part of that as well. To disrupt industries, change the standards to be higher, bring tremendous value and benefit people’s lives and see them enjoy it and use it. Lastly to keep my physical and mental health in shape and be lean with muscle and to have peace with my mind and be more calm and less stressed without getting depressed about things, especially when things don’t go to plan. I know I’m going on too long and probably have important things to do but lastly again THANK YOU for reading this and can’t wait to meet all of you and learn together. With that said I’ll leave my philosophy I always follow, Before you leave the world, leave a legacy, to make the world a better place than the way you found it, to leave greatness, kindness, and especially love behind in your footsteps on your journey to your dream.
Hello to everyone who is reading this introduction to who I am, my life's story, & my plan to adding value into the world. This is my first post and official introduction to this forum, so I'm pretty scared of even making this my first post because it's very personal but I want to show to anyone reading this when my life has COMPLETELY CHANGED in a couple of years that ANYONE can make it, even if they've been through the worst. This read will be quite long, but I want to show where I've been, where I am, & where I want to go. The ups, the downs, the wins, the losses, and the mistakes. (Which are actually wins because you learn from them). Lastly, thank you (Yes YOU!) for taking the time to read this. I not a very good writer and will have some moments where you think "I don't want to hear your sob story” or “this is all filler” and “I don’t care and aren’t feeling sorry for you", but I'm putting everything here to show the changes that I went through in my life and how it made me the person I am today to be on this forum and meet the amazing people who are their way to executing the FastLane and learn from anyone who has or are getting into the FastLane. If you have any advice, feedback, comments, I am EXTREMELY GRATEFUL to all feedback (good, bad, and ugly) and will be reading and responding to all your comments. Thank you again and I hope you enjoy this read
My Junior High School Years:
I think starting in my junior school years is a perfect start to this since before this, I was just living life normally, having friends, living with my family, a place to live, but during this time things really took a turn for me and builds the foundation to where I am now. 7th grade was the year that started to change my life for the worst, because of my poor thinking, lack of learning, and poor decisions. But some context before I went into my middle school years, my family and I didn't have a lot growing up. Before entering junior high, my dad couldn't afford to pay the rent for our apartment since he got fired from his job and we had to move to a motel, thinking it would only be a couple of months and then moving to a new apartment. I was a very great student during elementary, I had all tests passed with 85% and above, I showed up to school everyday, did the classroom work, & my teachers would always say I would be having a great job when I'm older and that your education in school is the most important thing to make a lot of money. (You know, the slow lane junk) But entering into junior high I changed for the worst. After making new "friends" who were the type of kids to ditch classes, not do their schoolwork or anything, cause trouble, get called to the principal's office, etc. I was a part of that as well. I started ditching so many times that it started effecting my math and English grades, but I didn't care, I had so many assignments piled up that I thought "What's the point, you can do them last minute anyways." I got into fights at school, I got called to the principal's office, I talked to multiple girls trying to find the one. I thought I was one one of the "cool kids" in school, but looking back now, I was a complete dumb a$$. Even in my circumstance living in a motel & instead of figuring out how I can help my family out, I just did stupid things in school and making my life worst. Everyday when school was over & I headed home, that's when I really started to reflect on my choices more since my dad was still on the lookout for a job and can feel the pressure he had on his back. My mother also having to raise my 2 brothers, sister, and I. I felt horrible knowing I was doing these things at school without my parents knowing, but my choices never changed heading into the 8th grade. I continued this reckless behavior, still getting into fights, ditching classes, not caring about anything. After a few months into my 8th grade school year. It was the day were we getting 2 weeks of spring break from school. At the very last minute before school was over and starting spring break, an announcement on the speaker goes on with the principal of the school saying "Hello students, I know you are very eager to have your spring break, but we will be extending it for 4 weeks, due to the corona virus spreading and decided it would be safer to extend spring break for the safety of the school." When that announcement came on, everyone was celebrating as if they won the super bowl, nobody knowing that school was actually going to end that day. After a few weeks and supposedly going back to school, my parents get an email saying that we won't be returning anytime soon due to the pandemic getting worse and recommending to stay in your home at all times. After the announcement of the pandemic, my dad had an even harder time trying to find a job since everyone was being fired and nobody was willing to hire. So we didn't have money to continue paying for the place. My parents had to ask some friends around for money to help out but eventually we had to move again, this time into another motel that is even smaller. When packing out things and moving out all I thought in my mind was"I can't live like this, I need to change or eventually we are going to become homeless." (Perfect foreshadowing) So that day I decided to change my life. I started working out at the park nearby every morning at 5 AM, started doing my school work, stopped ditching so many classes, and showing up to school more, still thinking this the only way to make money. During this time I also started searching up ways of making money to help my parents out, after a couple of seconds (yes really) of thinking I decided to pursue YouTube, why YouTube, because it looked fun & if I become big I can make a lot of money if I “follow my passion” which was to play videos games and be a pro at it. I was so close to starting a gaming YouTube channel when I had a thought "This isn't the only way of making money, I mean, they are rich people in diffident areas, so why don't you research and see other options." So I started researching only on YouTube since I was lazy to read any books or articles and started seeing the old guru junk like drop shipping, Amazon FBA, taking surveys for scraps of
change. After researching I decided to pursue dropshipping since I knew I could work hard on it, but I though it would be easy and bring fast money. Just before pursuing dropshipping there was a video on my YouTube feed that really caught my attention. The video was called The Untold Truth About Wealth: How To Build Wealth From Nothing and the creator of the video named James Jani (Shout out to @Valier who is James Jani, the creator of the video. If you are reading this James, thank you for making this amazing video, and helping me change my life and seeing things in a different light, getting to know about @MJ DeMarco and this amazing forum. I absolutely LOVE your work. The feedback loop is in full circle, keep it up
) I decided to watch the video and after watching it, I just saw my whole life & mind just shift and see things from different perspectives. I KNEW that THIS Is what I wanted to pursue for the REST OF MY LIFE. After watching all his videos on his channel I started seeing a pattern of a book that he referring to a lot called "The Millionaire Fastlane " & "UNSCRIPTED ." “If he got all this information to think this way and make this amazing video from that book, I will read it as well,” I thought. So after searching up the book on google, I downloaded the book onto my kindle and started reading that day. After a few days in being 1/5th way of reading the book, I was in shock about what I was reading, from the three roadmaps (The sidewalk, Slowlane, & the FastLane and I knew if I continued this path that I would end up in the SlowLane) to the lies of getting a job and being “stable” to the exposure of those gurus that I almost fell for and school never teaching me about ANY of this, but that night would change my life completely again. After going to sleep at around 10pm, I woke up in the middle of the night to my parents fighting at 2am. I was startled by it all and worried that other people around would hear us so I tried to calm them down but wouldn’t listen. After a couple of minutes, manager knocked on our door and told us we they we can’t have this type of behavior here, especially at 2 in the morning, so we had to leave later today before 11am. That night I just couldn’t sleep and started crying to myself. I didn’t know where we were going to live, and neither did my parents. When I woke up I started helping pack our items into the car. We had a storage facility close by that has some of our old stuff, so we took our stuff and headed to the storage unit. I just couldn’t think, all I thought about was everything I did in my life leading up to this moment and regretting every moment of it. I just wanted to cry all day, never expecting to be in this situation. My parents, with not a lot of money left told us we had to sleep in the car that night. My brothers asked “how long do we need to stay here.” My mom didn’t know. We were all scared of the future and what we were going to do. Sleeping that night in the car was miserable. Just thinking about the situation made me want to punch something, but I knew that wasn’t going to change the situation, so I just went to sleep, hoping the feeling would go away. But of course it didn’t. The next morning my parents told us that we had to stay in the city (basically we couldn’t stay in the car with them, it would draw too much attention) during the day and they would attempt to find a place to stay for the meantime, so being the oldest sibling, that meant I was in charge of taking care of them. They gave us their food stamps card and got out of the car at 7am to go get something to eat. After taking my siblings to get breakfast and my parents gone to find a place. I couldn’t talk, think, or do anything. My siblings were asking me a lot of question about the situation and tried to keep my composure and be optimistic saying we are going to make it out. But deep down I knew would be living in the car for some time, and I was right. After a couple of months of being there, we still couldn’t find a place to live and school was coming up again for the next chapter of my lifeHigh School Years:
Entering into 9th grade, school was all online. The school decided to give chromebooks out to the students who didn’t have a laptop or computer with a mobile hotspot for the kids who didn’t have an internet connection either. After the announcement my parents went to get them for us to do our school work. But we didn’t care about school. We were literally living in a car and they expected us that school is more important than our housing situation? My parents said they were attempting to find a place and everything would be ok. We tried doing our online classes but it was confusing navigating their website and when we hopped on zoom classes almost no one other students were on the call and the teachers were horrible at teaching through this method. After a couple of days we just gave up even attending them. During the day when my parents would go, my siblings & I would go to different places to visit and my favorite place during these hard times to go was the library. It was calm, a nice place to sit, read, think… until I brought my siblings along. I started to read different books from the library. Just random books topics that peaked my interest, nothing toward entrepreneurship or learning the process of building a business (Yet). I learned more about self help books, a little coding, and random subjects. But I never finished them since I couldn’t really focus with a lot going on in my head and they also didn’t really have a purpose to be read, I was just reading for the sake of reading. I didn’t know what to do anymore to help the situation and the thoughts of having the same mundane routine, being homeless, worrying about where to live started to dawn on me. I had multiple moments where I just wanted to end my life. All I thought was how hopeless I was, how much of a failure I am, and that I’ll never amount to nothing. I felt numb during that time and after another couple of months the corona virus pandemic started to slow down and the school started to bring students back to learn in classrooms. Since no one would even attend them they basically let everyone pass their school year, but things would be very different coming back. After going back to school we saw dramatic change, everyone were wearing masks, had to be distanced, desks separated, and no one seemed happy to be back. The place felt like a prison. Being in school I just didn’t pay attention. I didn’t care about my education anymore, I didn’t care about any of this, and I didn’t care about being alive, I just wanted to die. I was depressed during this time, worried so much about anything that make our situation worse. I was so scared I bearly talked to anyone of my friends, let alone about my situation. The friends I had during these years were great, they weren’t the same that I had in junior high and they were my friends that I met since elementary, and all the kids who were my “friends” were from middle school. I knew them more than anyone and saw a lot of change in them as well. From being immature in middle school, changing their ways through the pandemic, and now matured much better than even I expected. They cheered me up from time to time, but those thoughts and feeling were still lingering in me. I just didn’t care still, even being blind to the great friends, my supporting family, and still having a place to sleep, food, clothes, and being safe. All I could think about was the situation I was in. A few months come by and my grades were going down. I remember our counselor calling my parents to tell me about my grades and if everything was ok, they said that everything was fine, not telling them about our situation. Even after that I still didn’t do anything, that school year had to be the worse one I had for me mentally. I obviously did a few assignments but only enough to even pass my classes, all D’s & C’s. So during that time I knew I had enough of my life going out of control and feeling sorry for myself. I had to take control of my life again and had to find a way to do something to help out family get out of here. I knew the first thing I needed to do was make money but had to meet some requirements of doing it
1) It had to be online since I had to take care of my siblings during the day and could work on it at night
2) I couldn’t get a job since my grades were very low that I can’t get the slip permission from the school and I still needed to take care of my siblings and
3) It needed to start with no to little money. I didn’t want to ask my parents since they were already stressed and tired of the situation as well and I don’t want to be a burden to to them
So after thinking I decided to be an eBay reseller and start on that day. I started going after school to thrift shops and Goodwills to get products that were cheap and could sell for a profit. The products that my store would focus on were games and electronics because I knew the more than the average person on these things. After around 3-4 months of selling I made around 800$. I thought this was good money at the time since I only started with only 10$, but I knew this method was too slow and would take years to even grow. So after some thought I decided to do still resell, but while doing something else. During this time as well I decided to just not focus on school anymore. I even asked the school if it was possible to dropout but said I needed parents permission. I knew I couldn’t tell them that so I asked if there is a different way to dropout. They said I needed to pass my GED test to be able to have an equivalent diploma as a high school degree. I asked if I pass this then would I be able to graduate and not come back? They said yes, you wouldn’t even need to show up anymore and you would basically be a high school graduate. After that I did some thinking and research on it, the test seemed to be hard, but not impossible. But what set me back was the price which was 450$ for all subjects. (Forgot to mention that I gave the 800$ to my parents to help out with them) After this i didn’t want to go back and ask my parents for the money, they needed it more than I did. So I thought “If I pass this, then I would technically be graduated from high school, so why don’t I just pass it on my final year of high school so I could focus on entrepreneurship from 10th to 12th grade and on the last couple of months of your final year, then study for the test and take it”. I knew I could make it work. After I though of the plan I told my counselor about it and said it was possible but I would still need to keep my grades to a C or above and make up for the missing classes in 7th & 8th grade.(Yes, I’m still following this plan to this day) So I stopped doing my homework and classroom work for some time and focused on building something else. I tried taking surveys for change, selling candys in the streets, tried selling soda and snacks at school, anything that I could try to think of I did. But after trying these things they all failed, but taught me a lot of valuable lessons like managing money, being able to sell by talking to strangers without getting scared, being committed for the long term and not short term, not spend money on pleasures, putting the customer first before myself, answer the customer quickly, etc. These failures started to help me change my mindset for my future self and things started to get better. After 1 month later, in total of 1 year and a half of living in a car our parents told us the Amazing news of finding a place to live, a motel that is the has 2 rooms instead of the small cramped ones. I didn’t care if it was a trash can to live in I was so grateful and started crying, not knowing how we were dead yet I thanked God for helping us during this and getting back on my feet with these small businesses and learning from them, overcoming my depression, and thankfully having a place to live. After moving to the new place I was excited thinking what my next pursuit is but my parents asked me why my grades are so low because the school called them. That’s when I explained to them everything about taking the GED test to the businesses I took on, to explaining them I wanted to take the test in my senior year. After explaining them the plan they agreed to it and supported my decision and goal of making a business. With the emotional support (Not financially because I wanted to do it alone and figure it out instead of asking for help) of my parents I knew I couldn’t let them down so I started researching what business to pursue next on YouTube when all of a sudden the video from James Jani shows up again and had an epiphany when seeing the thumbnail. I just realized that I never finished the book from MJ DeMarco. I was so depressed and scare of the situation that I was just in that I completely forgot I even started reading it. Remembering how much that video and the first few chapters of the book really changed my views on business and life I decided to re-read it from the beginning again. After a few weeks of reading it I felt like an idiot. Chasing after all those “businesses” and bearly making scarp I knew I needed to change something. Instead of reselling what companies made I had to make my own. I re-read the book and hearing the audiobook to really soak in all the information in the book. After reading the millionaire FastLane I was ready to create the biggest business ever, or so I thought. I didn’t know where to start and was confused as well. I knew I needed to solve a problem and add value, but questions started coming to me “What problem will I solve,” “Am I old enough to even start my business?” “How would I make the design of my product and have someone make it?” They we’re so many questions that I went (and somewhat still am) through an analysis paralysis phase where I learned way more than I ever did about any other subject. I learned only about entrepreneurship during this time. I felt like Mr. Beast with his obsession with Youtube, i had that obsession with business, and still do. I started telling my family & friends all about business and entrepreneurship and i wanted them to learn as well. But they didn’t really seem Interested and wanted to have a nice job and be stable and not pursue business, which I understood. I started studying people from Mr. Beast, to Alex Hormozi, to a bit of Steve Jobs, and my favorite entrepreneur MJ Demarco, and more. But after 1 year of studying after studying I felt further away then from the FastLane than getting closer. Still confused about it all and trying putting the pieces together, I felt in love with it all. Learning how to add value to the world, seeing people enjoy your products/services and making an impact in the world and getting PAID for it! This is all I want to do for the rest of my life, to pursue entrepreneurship, even when I get millions in the bank I will still continue to build up business and provide more value to the world. Anyway am getting a little carried away and getting passing grades from my 11th grade school year, here I am entering into the 12th grade tomorrow leaving us to now
Currently Now & Where I Want To Go:
After years of going through the ups and down. I made it out as a completely different person. Even looking back I still can’t believe the whole journey I’ve been on and how it really helped me change and now to pursue entrepreneurship for the rest of my life. Yes I still live in a motel, as embarrassing it might sound I’m proud of it, if I didn’t go though all that pain and suffering I had, I wouldn’t even have thought of pursuing entrepreneurship and would have went through with the SlowLane instead. So don’t worry about me, my dad has a job that pays fairly well and we are more stable now. I’m currently in my parents car writing this which took around 3 hours to plan out, rethink, and write this (Damn perfectionist mind!). I know I shouldn’t have spent so much time making this but In the Getting The MOST Out Of Fastlane (Required Read) thread I decided to do what MJ said. Shows us where you’ve been and where you want to go. So I decided to take that to the extreme and wrote this. So to anyone reading this far THANK YOU and I greatly appreciate it and can’t wait to learn and grow with everyone on their journeys as well. Currently am still running my reselling “business”which brings in 200$ a month, which I know it’s not good but It only needs 1 hour of work a week so I’m fine with that, bringing some income to help funnel it into my business which I haven’t though of yet (again, some analysts paralysis but overcoming it) but I haven’t started on my business for two main reasons being 1) I’m heading back to school tomorrow and I need to get those grades up from my last classes so I can apply to get the permission slip to apply for a minimum wage job and get experience on business, make connections, learning the systems implemented and how it works, learn about the industry, what problems and pain points they are etc. I’m follow MJ Demarco’s video plan here to help me get the foundation going. Anything that will help me for the long term business that i want to create and 2) I only have read the millionaire FastLane and taken notes on it. So after finding out about MJ DeMarco’s other books i knew I had to read them as well. I’m current about 1/5 of the way into reading UNSCRIPTED (Amazing book) & next reading the The Great Ray Race Escape & Wealth Exposed. I also just finished making my 10/5/1 Planasy so these having these goals will definitely help me accomplish my 1 year goals. (Thank you MJ for thinking of this fantastic plan and has helped wonders seeing where I want my life to go & will watch the rest of your YouTube videos to learn more). Currently I am also working out again after seeing a little fat around the belly and knowing it’s time to get back on grind. During my 7th grade phase of exercising I went way too extreme with it and I was doing it completely wrong. I only wanted to get abs so I did 5 miles of running and ONLY ab workouts. Being an idiot back then I didn’t of even think of researching, I just took action, which taught me another lesson of researching before you do something and have a goal and plan in mind. So currently I have a lot of things to do that I want to accomplish in 1 year but my BIGGEST being to set the foundation for my REAL business (Not reselling guru stuff) and having customers and providing ACTUAL value to society and solving pain-points and problems. A problem that I’m currently facing (and would appreciate any advice) is putting everything I want to do in a solid plan to follow. I’m willing to do the hard/smart work and difficult choices but it’s very hard not having a clear cut daily plan (I know my 1 year goals but don’t know to put daily goals together to get to that 1 year plan), which for example I have to exercise at 6am, come back to take my siblings to school, then for me to go to school, come back home and do my chores, help out with my parents to help clean and take care of my younger siblings, then start reading, studying for school, doing my assignments, ship out products for my the buyer who purchased something on my reselling store. There a lot I want to do in a day, but I need a system to help me implement all into motion. I also have trouble breaking my goals down, especially for business. I know when I was going to start my YouTube channel I would need to the idea, record the video, think of my thumbnail, write a script, edit the video, make an intriguing title, and even small things to improve like thinking of new ideas, get to the point of the video and be simple, hook them viewer in for the first 10 seconds. I know all this when it comes to starting a YouTube channel, but when it comes to business I feel a bit lost. I have almost no idea where to start. I know I would need an idea, problems to solve, and value to add but where would I go next. Some advice/help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for talking about these problems I’m going though but it’s something I’m really struggle with and want to solve and take action on. Currently I have for my 10 year goals from my Planasy. My main 3 would be to have a 9 figure business and sell it and to for a liquidation event and build another greater business with the money I have and reinvest everything right back, also to have stronger relationships with my family and friends and to find people (Especially on this forum) who have ambition and want to change the world with their businesses like all the greats in the world. I want to be part of that as well. To disrupt industries, change the standards to be higher, bring tremendous value and benefit people’s lives and see them enjoy it and use it. Lastly to keep my physical and mental health in shape and be lean with muscle and to have peace with my mind and be more calm and less stressed without getting depressed about things, especially when things don’t go to plan. I know I’m going on too long and probably have important things to do but lastly again THANK YOU for reading this and can’t wait to meet all of you and learn together. With that said I’ll leave my philosophy I always follow, Before you leave the world, leave a legacy, to make the world a better place than the way you found it, to leave greatness, kindness, and especially love behind in your footsteps on your journey to your dream.
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