mikecarlooch
Apprentice & Student Of The Game
LEGACY MEMBER
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For those unfamiliar, I have a thread in the INSIDERS section of the fastlane forum detailing my journey of execution and basically giving my all to the pursuit of entrepreneurship. Why a new thread? Because I'm too cheap to pay for INSIDERS and I want to continue documenting publicly.
If you read the thread, it's basically a sh*t show - I think I tried 5 or 6 different business ideas in the life of that thread that failed and probably 8 since I joined this forum, and probably 20 in the past 5 years. Everything from dropshipping to ebay to cryptocurrency to amazon to Minecraft servers to famous tiktoker to basketball cards to video editing agency to MLMs to liquidation business to social media guru to god knows what else LOL. Yes, tekkel syndrome indeed, for those of you who read TMF .
To pick up from where I left off, I (very recently) after years of trying things out, dedicated myself to an industry, and I will not leave it. I unexpectedly fell into the world of programming, and unexpectedly fell into the world of real estate where I need to generate massive amounts of leads, do calls, make offers, the whole shabang, which was a pretty foreign (and terrifying) thing to me 3 months ago.
So.. I quickly realized that I was curious enough about these two things to become obsessed and that I'm good at them, and I could just combine them.. And there's my industry.
As someone who's conditioned myself to seek out entrepreneurial opportunities, I went in looking for needs. What does this company I'm working for need? What can I create? What do I need to learn? What skillsets do I need to learn and who do I need to partner with..?
So.. I did. I spotted a need - very quickly..
But I didn't mention it to ANYONE until two months in.
Why?
Because I KNEW that my first client.. Was the company I'm working for.
And as a new guy in the company, I wasn't just about to pitch some idea to them.. No.
I had to first gain their trust by overdelivering in what I was there to do.
I realized that the amount of leads they were getting was minuscule - a few people sitting in a room waiting for a lead to come through on a facebook ad, I noticed some days there would only be 2 leads that came through or even NONE, and it felt like a massive waste of f*cking time..
I had enough of it - so I said - hey - here's what I'm gonna do - I'm gonna generate my own leads.
So they looked at me like.. "Ok...." a little shocked but really - not believing me.
I figured that if I could deliver on my promise to get them leads, they would trust me on my other things and maybe even take me up on my idea. and be a client.
Within 5 days I had generated them more leads than.. seemingly.. They've ever gotten by utilizing some creative strategies that I had a feeling were going to work, because I've used them before in other industries. All of a sudden we had no one to call, to having hundreds of people to call. And I can't go here without referencing @Johnny boy .
So I delivered on my promise to generate leads and got a solid amount of contracts signed within my first month in the company.
At this point I felt great about myself because I actually felt valuable - like all these years of inaction and doing stupid bullshit that wasn't going to work was finally getting somewhere.
So I continued overdelivering and about 2 weeks ago I decided to ask the big question - "My programmer friend and I are looking to create something for people like you - so I gotta ask - what do you wish existed for your business that you don't currently have?"
To my surprise - remember how I said I had an idea? He mentioned the SAME EXACT idea I had in my head.
Let's back up though - I also said I was scared to ask that question because I had no idea how to build it.
How did I solve that problem? 2 ways. I have dedicated my whole life to becoming an expert in what I want to become an expert in, and I intentionally made friends with a programmer who was also entrepreneurial-minded in college.
You know what I realized? College is one of those places where a bunch of super-talented people have nothing to do all day.
So - I partnered with him. We got a software product built for one thing that was pretty cool..
After building that project - which was kind of just a thing we did for fun but didn't really have the kind of utility we wanted..
I sent a text to the company I work for and said - "Hey - we can build you this thing - do you want it?"
Not only did they tell me they wanted it - but they told me HOW and even provided things to help me out to make it as good as possible.
So.. I took that information - drew up exactly what we wanted - sent it over to my programming friend - and now we have a functional product built that is not currently public.. It's only available for the specific company that we MADE IT FOR.
The way I'm going about it is this - I figured if we can take Paul Graham's saying "do things that don't scale" and once again overdeliver for just ONE company and make it a total godsend for the company - another will want it, then another, and then 1000.
Now - I don't want to get too optimistic - I have no f*cking idea what's going to happen. The story is to be continued...
The biggest thing I've learned the past 2 months?
When you find your thing, invest deeply. The reason I now see that I've felt anxious about the future and scatterbrained and not knowing what to do with my life was because I wasn't investing deeply in anything education-wise or execution-wise.
Even though we're just a little startup, I've never felt more meaning and purpose and passion in my life than I do right now - and failures may happen - but I do know that one of the most important things in business according to many people is that if failures are not scaling, you're doing something wrong.
To be continued.....
If you read the thread, it's basically a sh*t show - I think I tried 5 or 6 different business ideas in the life of that thread that failed and probably 8 since I joined this forum, and probably 20 in the past 5 years. Everything from dropshipping to ebay to cryptocurrency to amazon to Minecraft servers to famous tiktoker to basketball cards to video editing agency to MLMs to liquidation business to social media guru to god knows what else LOL. Yes, tekkel syndrome indeed, for those of you who read TMF .
To pick up from where I left off, I (very recently) after years of trying things out, dedicated myself to an industry, and I will not leave it. I unexpectedly fell into the world of programming, and unexpectedly fell into the world of real estate where I need to generate massive amounts of leads, do calls, make offers, the whole shabang, which was a pretty foreign (and terrifying) thing to me 3 months ago.
So.. I quickly realized that I was curious enough about these two things to become obsessed and that I'm good at them, and I could just combine them.. And there's my industry.
As someone who's conditioned myself to seek out entrepreneurial opportunities, I went in looking for needs. What does this company I'm working for need? What can I create? What do I need to learn? What skillsets do I need to learn and who do I need to partner with..?
So.. I did. I spotted a need - very quickly..
But I didn't mention it to ANYONE until two months in.
Why?
Because I KNEW that my first client.. Was the company I'm working for.
And as a new guy in the company, I wasn't just about to pitch some idea to them.. No.
I had to first gain their trust by overdelivering in what I was there to do.
I realized that the amount of leads they were getting was minuscule - a few people sitting in a room waiting for a lead to come through on a facebook ad, I noticed some days there would only be 2 leads that came through or even NONE, and it felt like a massive waste of f*cking time..
I had enough of it - so I said - hey - here's what I'm gonna do - I'm gonna generate my own leads.
So they looked at me like.. "Ok...." a little shocked but really - not believing me.
I figured that if I could deliver on my promise to get them leads, they would trust me on my other things and maybe even take me up on my idea. and be a client.
Within 5 days I had generated them more leads than.. seemingly.. They've ever gotten by utilizing some creative strategies that I had a feeling were going to work, because I've used them before in other industries. All of a sudden we had no one to call, to having hundreds of people to call. And I can't go here without referencing @Johnny boy .
So I delivered on my promise to generate leads and got a solid amount of contracts signed within my first month in the company.
At this point I felt great about myself because I actually felt valuable - like all these years of inaction and doing stupid bullshit that wasn't going to work was finally getting somewhere.
So I continued overdelivering and about 2 weeks ago I decided to ask the big question - "My programmer friend and I are looking to create something for people like you - so I gotta ask - what do you wish existed for your business that you don't currently have?"
To my surprise - remember how I said I had an idea? He mentioned the SAME EXACT idea I had in my head.
Let's back up though - I also said I was scared to ask that question because I had no idea how to build it.
How did I solve that problem? 2 ways. I have dedicated my whole life to becoming an expert in what I want to become an expert in, and I intentionally made friends with a programmer who was also entrepreneurial-minded in college.
You know what I realized? College is one of those places where a bunch of super-talented people have nothing to do all day.
So - I partnered with him. We got a software product built for one thing that was pretty cool..
After building that project - which was kind of just a thing we did for fun but didn't really have the kind of utility we wanted..
I sent a text to the company I work for and said - "Hey - we can build you this thing - do you want it?"
Not only did they tell me they wanted it - but they told me HOW and even provided things to help me out to make it as good as possible.
So.. I took that information - drew up exactly what we wanted - sent it over to my programming friend - and now we have a functional product built that is not currently public.. It's only available for the specific company that we MADE IT FOR.
The way I'm going about it is this - I figured if we can take Paul Graham's saying "do things that don't scale" and once again overdeliver for just ONE company and make it a total godsend for the company - another will want it, then another, and then 1000.
Now - I don't want to get too optimistic - I have no f*cking idea what's going to happen. The story is to be continued...
The biggest thing I've learned the past 2 months?
When you find your thing, invest deeply. The reason I now see that I've felt anxious about the future and scatterbrained and not knowing what to do with my life was because I wasn't investing deeply in anything education-wise or execution-wise.
Even though we're just a little startup, I've never felt more meaning and purpose and passion in my life than I do right now - and failures may happen - but I do know that one of the most important things in business according to many people is that if failures are not scaling, you're doing something wrong.
To be continued.....
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