After seeing the upteenth thread where a new member says "I decided to go fastlane, but I have 10 dollars and am eating a raccoon I hit with my '94 Mercury Tracer right now to stave off starvation," or "I read TMF but tell me the exact steps and don't leave anything out," I decided that apparently MJ's really simple explanation wasn't simple enough.
I don't know how else rationalize that guys like @SinisterLex and @IceCreamKid are putting points on the board in mundane fields and people are totally shocked that it's possible to make money that way, like "how could someone who owns a cleaning company for a living possibly get that rich?"
It's pretty easy, as they illustrated, CENTS+badass execution, but it's also easy in parallel fields that don't involve ripping them off. If you missed the basic principle behind their threads (which seemingly a lot of people did, because instead of using it as a launching point for the millions of possible parallel businesses, everyone just started copy/carpet gigs), I'm going to spell it out for you.
There are lots of ways to go fastlane, you can apply CENTS to figure them out. But if you're dead out of ideas, if you've got nothing, there is one way that never fails. In the last two years I have used it over, and over, and over again. Since it seems a lot of people couldn't distill the secret of "churning their own ice cream" from the other threads, here it is:
Boom.
Think it doesn't work? Think again. I'm going to make this live for you guys, at the risk of inadvertently starting dozens of non-EPA and non OSHA compliant ghetto auto body operations, which hopefully won't happen because now you guys have at least the six other possibilities whose little cliparts I pasted up above.
A little over a month ago I decided I was going to learn to paint cars. I had to buy equipment to do it. The equipment cost me $1200. I spend $700 on paint (would have been $350 but I messed up so many times on the first panel that that one consumed the entire materials supply and took three weeks) so $1900 overall. The last panel I shot took me 6 hours including dry time, without dry time, my total effort was 1 hour. Very, very steep learning curve with very, very shallow effort curve once I cracked it.
So I get the car done. I know this girl from back near my parent's house who is friends with one of my younger siblings. She's hard up and has an old station wagon that has a mismatched door because she couldn't afford to fix it or buy a better car. I make her a deal-you buy the base coat only for the door ($45.00 1/2qt ppg) and I'll use my leftover base and clear and my own sandpaper and tools and respray the door to make it an exact match, but no blending because that's a lot more effort and cost. $45 for a probably $250+ job normally.
So he does, and I do, and it looks great. Boom. Done.
So not 4 days later, I get a call from a guy this kid knows from work. He has a car that he wants repainted. He want's it done in a custom metallic (mixed by the shop, no real work on my end except evenly blending the metallics) but the shop wants $9,500 to do it. He says he'll remove all the trim and everything and sand the panels if I can do it for less (that's like at least 75% of the work, but I had the specialty tools and knowledge, whereas unbolting things and sanding requires few/no special tools or knowledge). I'm not typically down for manual labor because I prefer to get paid for sitting or sleeping, but I'm always looking for ways to make tools and other things I buy pay for themselves quickly, so, long story short, I eventually ended up getting paid $4000 for three 8-hour days of work. And I've only been doing this for a month.
I needed no degree, no education, no contacts, nothing except a computer or phone, internet access, access to electricity, and the gumption to save up $1700-2000 to risk on supplies, to increase my income from hypothetically as low as minimum wage to $160/hr. How long would your mummified corpse have been in the ground waiting for Burger King to raise your pay from $10.00/hr to $160/hr? The general managers don't make a third that much. But follow my map, have some savvy in picking a real need people have, and you, O teenage roadkill eater, can be making $7.25/hr January 1st and potentially more than $15,000/mo by January 31st. Replace my spray kit with a battery of carpet cleaners and a van, or some wicked copy skills a laptop and a modem, and you see it's the same formula, with some good advertising thrown in, to get these results.
Luck? You wish you had that excuse. You know how long it was between the time I blew my first content up on social media to the time I landed my first xx,xxx advertising contract?
less than 3 weeks.
See you with your resume are wandering around beating on doors (whether for VC for an untested unproduced and unsold idea, or for a slow-lane job), implicitly broadcasting to employers (and anyone who will follow you online) "I have no direction and no drive, teach me how I can produce some value for people so I can afford to live and eat, hold my hand, make me stable." So, predictably, you get rejection after rejection, and you keep eating that tasty raccoon.
But if you follow the map above, you switch from being like the McDonald's employee, to being like a mini version of the McDonald's restaurant itself. Word gets out. You talk, and people talk, and suddenly, it's like you're there on the corner with your neon sign glowing in the dark. People can smell the value being created inside, and people who see you know instantly "If I want something to satisfy my hunger, that's where I can go to get it." The whole game changes. I haven't looked for work in AGES pursuant to my consulting stuff. I learn new skills. I get the tools to manifest the value of those skills. Work comes looking for me. And when it does, it's the employer, it's the job, that's clutching the resume, looking hopefully at me across the desk, wanting me to do for them what they heard I did for X and Y other local business.
This is a hustle. It's not a time independent fastlane (not in its nascent stage anyway, hire others to do the work, get spending your capital on advertising rather than on bottle service at the club, build out, and you're on your way). Whether you have lawn care equipment or a team of painters or a floor sander or video equipment for rent, get the expensive tools (entry) that are built to meet needs (need, duh), that only your fastidious research could have assembled in just such a way to maximize their value (entry), get trained to use it to meet needs more effectively (Need, entry), and sit there and watch your magnitude variable absolutely explode as you with your $5000 worth of video camera go from being worth $12.00/hr at Kohls to $250/hr at Susie Q Public's wedding. Work two days, take 5 off to work on your fastlane, earn more money than you did working 5.
Now get out there, kick a$$, get started, get the cash you need to launch, and have fun...
but I swear if anybody PMs me asking what paint equipment I bought or how to find clients for car painting, Imma be waiting under your bed when you turn off the lights tonight.
I don't know how else rationalize that guys like @SinisterLex and @IceCreamKid are putting points on the board in mundane fields and people are totally shocked that it's possible to make money that way, like "how could someone who owns a cleaning company for a living possibly get that rich?"
It's pretty easy, as they illustrated, CENTS+badass execution, but it's also easy in parallel fields that don't involve ripping them off. If you missed the basic principle behind their threads (which seemingly a lot of people did, because instead of using it as a launching point for the millions of possible parallel businesses, everyone just started copy/carpet gigs), I'm going to spell it out for you.
There are lots of ways to go fastlane, you can apply CENTS to figure them out. But if you're dead out of ideas, if you've got nothing, there is one way that never fails. In the last two years I have used it over, and over, and over again. Since it seems a lot of people couldn't distill the secret of "churning their own ice cream" from the other threads, here it is:
Boom.
Think it doesn't work? Think again. I'm going to make this live for you guys, at the risk of inadvertently starting dozens of non-EPA and non OSHA compliant ghetto auto body operations, which hopefully won't happen because now you guys have at least the six other possibilities whose little cliparts I pasted up above.
A little over a month ago I decided I was going to learn to paint cars. I had to buy equipment to do it. The equipment cost me $1200. I spend $700 on paint (would have been $350 but I messed up so many times on the first panel that that one consumed the entire materials supply and took three weeks) so $1900 overall. The last panel I shot took me 6 hours including dry time, without dry time, my total effort was 1 hour. Very, very steep learning curve with very, very shallow effort curve once I cracked it.
So I get the car done. I know this girl from back near my parent's house who is friends with one of my younger siblings. She's hard up and has an old station wagon that has a mismatched door because she couldn't afford to fix it or buy a better car. I make her a deal-you buy the base coat only for the door ($45.00 1/2qt ppg) and I'll use my leftover base and clear and my own sandpaper and tools and respray the door to make it an exact match, but no blending because that's a lot more effort and cost. $45 for a probably $250+ job normally.
So he does, and I do, and it looks great. Boom. Done.
So not 4 days later, I get a call from a guy this kid knows from work. He has a car that he wants repainted. He want's it done in a custom metallic (mixed by the shop, no real work on my end except evenly blending the metallics) but the shop wants $9,500 to do it. He says he'll remove all the trim and everything and sand the panels if I can do it for less (that's like at least 75% of the work, but I had the specialty tools and knowledge, whereas unbolting things and sanding requires few/no special tools or knowledge). I'm not typically down for manual labor because I prefer to get paid for sitting or sleeping, but I'm always looking for ways to make tools and other things I buy pay for themselves quickly, so, long story short, I eventually ended up getting paid $4000 for three 8-hour days of work. And I've only been doing this for a month.
I needed no degree, no education, no contacts, nothing except a computer or phone, internet access, access to electricity, and the gumption to save up $1700-2000 to risk on supplies, to increase my income from hypothetically as low as minimum wage to $160/hr. How long would your mummified corpse have been in the ground waiting for Burger King to raise your pay from $10.00/hr to $160/hr? The general managers don't make a third that much. But follow my map, have some savvy in picking a real need people have, and you, O teenage roadkill eater, can be making $7.25/hr January 1st and potentially more than $15,000/mo by January 31st. Replace my spray kit with a battery of carpet cleaners and a van, or some wicked copy skills a laptop and a modem, and you see it's the same formula, with some good advertising thrown in, to get these results.
Luck? You wish you had that excuse. You know how long it was between the time I blew my first content up on social media to the time I landed my first xx,xxx advertising contract?
less than 3 weeks.
See you with your resume are wandering around beating on doors (whether for VC for an untested unproduced and unsold idea, or for a slow-lane job), implicitly broadcasting to employers (and anyone who will follow you online) "I have no direction and no drive, teach me how I can produce some value for people so I can afford to live and eat, hold my hand, make me stable." So, predictably, you get rejection after rejection, and you keep eating that tasty raccoon.
But if you follow the map above, you switch from being like the McDonald's employee, to being like a mini version of the McDonald's restaurant itself. Word gets out. You talk, and people talk, and suddenly, it's like you're there on the corner with your neon sign glowing in the dark. People can smell the value being created inside, and people who see you know instantly "If I want something to satisfy my hunger, that's where I can go to get it." The whole game changes. I haven't looked for work in AGES pursuant to my consulting stuff. I learn new skills. I get the tools to manifest the value of those skills. Work comes looking for me. And when it does, it's the employer, it's the job, that's clutching the resume, looking hopefully at me across the desk, wanting me to do for them what they heard I did for X and Y other local business.
This is a hustle. It's not a time independent fastlane (not in its nascent stage anyway, hire others to do the work, get spending your capital on advertising rather than on bottle service at the club, build out, and you're on your way). Whether you have lawn care equipment or a team of painters or a floor sander or video equipment for rent, get the expensive tools (entry) that are built to meet needs (need, duh), that only your fastidious research could have assembled in just such a way to maximize their value (entry), get trained to use it to meet needs more effectively (Need, entry), and sit there and watch your magnitude variable absolutely explode as you with your $5000 worth of video camera go from being worth $12.00/hr at Kohls to $250/hr at Susie Q Public's wedding. Work two days, take 5 off to work on your fastlane, earn more money than you did working 5.
Now get out there, kick a$$, get started, get the cash you need to launch, and have fun...
but I swear if anybody PMs me asking what paint equipment I bought or how to find clients for car painting, Imma be waiting under your bed when you turn off the lights tonight.
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