From Wall Street to Main Street

[Burning Desire]

A $1m/year PBT Business is Worth 10x a $1m Salary.

I got lucky and landed a job on wall street a couple of years ago. Wow, I must be on a fast track to private jets and ruling the financial world I thought. Think again. It was mostly PowerPoint and Excel until 2 am. After some time in Investment Banking slavery, I joined The Buyside. Great, more money, fascinating projects and better working hours. While true, I don't own my productivity. Someone is making money off me.

Even though I make the equivalent of $250K-$300K now, and probably in 5-10 years closer to $500K-$1MM, it's all "time for money". I don't own these cash flows. It's HIGH-RISK money really, with a limited safety net and completely location dependent. I see this with my colleagues. They get used to the money. A trophy wife who gets pregnant. Kids in private school. Apartment/house in "the neighborhood". Expensive holidays. You may not believe this, but I have colleagues earning $500K a year who are NOT saving ANY money and NOT living the HIGH LIFE.

With every investment that I make, I spend countless hours trying to figure out:

• Is the NEED this business is addressing growing/changing?
• Does the business have BARRIERS to ENTRY?
• Are there CONTROL RISKS (regulation, clients, supply chain)?
• What is the total ADDRESSABLE MARKET?
• What can be done BETTER?
• Is distribution (marketing & sales) BEST IN CLASS?

Over the Christmas holidays, when stupidly bored at one point it hit me. I should, methodically, start my OWN business. The internet allows for automation and outsourcing, and even though my job is desk-bound I have sufficient privacy and time for a significant project. Finally, my financial situation also allows me to SUPERCHARGE something if I strike gold.

 

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[Burning Desire]

FEB-17 UPDATE

I set myself a couple goals at the time I started this topic.

1. Learn basic HTML/CSS: Done
2. Generate 1 business idea per day: Done/progressing
> Actually I think this is quite interesting. I've generated some really shitty ideas, but also one or two really good ones. I think one is actually an opportunity to create a business that could be worth 8 figures.
3. Create first website to gain experience in all aspects of online (SEO, hosting etc.): In progress (purchased domain, bought template, created a content strategy and wrote 10 articles while traveling for work). Currently customizing/finishing design touches.

The first website I'm starting is in distribution. There is only a limited set of sites serving this niche, and their websites aren't great. Yet, these guys get a serious amount of traffic from people and I think some of them are doing good amounts of money.

I'm taking a relative "time-intensive" approach for this project, as it's my first one. Stuff like writing copy/articles I'm doing myself for the first batch of materials. Once I have a reasonable amount of traffic I will outsource everything. Given my work, time is more valuable than money (it's "cheaper" for me to pay someone $50/hr to write high-quality articles than to do it myself given my work). The reason I'm getting my hands dirty now is to make sure I understand all the elements of running a website / online business.

I look at these projects on an investment basis. If $20k of investment gets me X amount of traffic that will generate a run-rate of $1k/mo, then even capitalizing that $1k at 30% to account for the risk it's a 2x multiple. I'm starting out slowly at this stage to make sure the newbie mistakes are made with low amounts, but once I get the hang of it and get the model right I will be investing $5-10K per month.

I've even looked at buying websites on Flippa etc. but I can't get comfortable with many of them. I believe 95% of the websites sold there are either scams or not worth the effort.