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guirren

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Hello everybody,

My name is Stephen (its English version, at least), and I come from central Europe. I've known for a long time that I want my life to be different, rather than ordinary. That I wanted to enjoy this one life I have and not spend ~40 years of it working for someone else for the majority of every day. I had the luck of falling in love with English and learning it very easily and quickly, which allowed me later to read books that either weren't translated into my language or that simply had slightly different meaning in the original compared to the translation.

So I started with the best selling and famous books such as Rich Dad, Poor Dad, How to Win Friends and Influence People, one book about selling I can't remember the name of, etc. I also joined an MLM that helped me with further reading and motivation to not be ordinary, even though I never made it far in that business. Eventually I came to the conclusion that while I haven't started a business yet, I can still learn and got interest in investing. Of course being young and having low salary meant that I was effectively embarking on the slowlane journey, as I came to know it after reading TMF . I felt that I was already miles ahead in terms of thinking, spending, saving, compared to the average Joe. However it was only after reading TMF that I realized I had to change my mindset yet again.

After TMF I dove into Unscripted , which I still haven't finished, mainly because of finally joining this forum, where I found another well of information to be absorbed by the greats of this community, hence the gap between joining and introduction -- there has been a lot of lurking and reading involved. I originally found out about TMF on Reddit, however the entrepreneurial community there is nowhere near the quality of any single random post here, so now I spend a lot of time here and know that I have a LONG way to go.

In terms of entrepreneurial success on my part, there are none so far. I am still changing my mindset, mostly thanks to the Astonishing Secrets thread by @IceCreamKid , realizing there are so many layers and not just the "I want to be an entrepreneur so that I have a lot of money and eventually a lot of time to enjoy life." Learning to find problems in people's talks, learning about copywriting, humility, endurance, and other qualities of the top entrepreneurs. I still struggle with finding the problems within conversation with other people, not least due to the fact that I am a totally phlegmatic person, meaning that I don't see problems in most of the things other people do. I guess I still have plenty to learn. This community definitely gives me the hope that I will be able to accomplish what I seek one day.

To say that I have no entrepreneurial experience would not be totally true, however. My girlfriend, albeit a pianist, embarked on an entrepreneurial journey some 2.5 years ago, and for about the last year I have a bigger part in that business (a blog and piano related products - ebooks, video courses). For now we have it only for our country in our language, and I would love to push it internationally eventually, however at this point she doesn't feel like she's there yet. So I help out in any way I can, be it insights from TMF by @MJ DeMarco , anything I find on this forum, or anything from my skillset. For the time being I am helping out with her business, until I find an idea for my own that could truly propel me to the Fastlane.

Thank you to anyone who took their time to read this, thanks to everyone who at any point in time posted any valuable information to this forum so that even newcomers today can read it and reap the benefits of your wisdom, and of course thanks @MJ DeMarco for writing TMF and creating this forum. Once I feel I read enough on the free side, I will dive into the Inside. For now though, back to the lurking, as I much rather read than write - usually not many people want to read that anyways.

Have a nice day everybody :)
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Welcome Stephen, great to have ya!
 

million$$$smile

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Welcome to the Forum Stephen.

I must say, you have a good command of the English language. Have you considered translating some of the books you've read into your native language? It would seem as though there might be a need...
 

guirren

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Thank you for welcoming me and for those nice words, @million$$$smile.

I love English, I read a lot in English and try to constantly improve my level of the language. That can't be said about my native language though, as I don't cultivate it as much.

The really famous books, such as RDPD, are already translated. However, TMFL is not! [emoji846][emoji846]

I might look into it after all... Thanks!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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guirren

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I have a little update to make, kind of like a journal entry. I was never a journal person.

Since then, my girlfriend became my wife, and a couple weeks ago we welcomed our first child.

It's been now a year and a half (since Jan 1st, 2019) that I quit my job to fully supplement my SO in her - now our - businesses. Apart from the online blog mentioned above, we also have a piano school, which at the time of the previous writing had a mere one classroom and about 40 students, about 5 teachers, bringing in no income, as we left all the money in the company. Since then we added another classroom, meaning another about 50 students, and this summer we are finishing a big reconstruction that will give us our own concert hall for about 40 people with a grand piano, as well as another small classroom for teaching, bringing the capacity of the school to about 130 students and having hired more teachers, bringing the total to 13 for now. We also have to do some clever tax optimalisation, so that we can finally take some profit from it, as we have done it basically for free now. Given the optimalisation, however, we should be able to generate mostly a passive-ish income of couple hundred dollars a month, up to $2k, which is great (could cover a mortgage for our dream home, almost). Running the school still takes some time, but we will seek to get that to a minimum. We are also preparing our own software for the organisation that I completely designed from scratch in Adobe XD (had to learn the basics for that), and our friend the developer will put it to reality. Should have the software ready by September.

The online business (blog and courses) meanwhile continues generating a sufficient income for a good living, we added another more advanced course, and we are getting closer to translating it to English and launching an English version. I also enrolled in an MSc course in International Management that had some classes relating to entrepreneurship, and I will prepare the transition to an American market in my final dissertation this fall. If all goes well and as planned, this will serve as an extensive research and a roadmap for our English branch of this business.

Nonetheless, I am still not sure whether the English version is the way to go, as it demands the presence of my wife, the teacher. And we will want at least one more child in the coming years. I have still my eyes open to a potential new business, that could be run by me, that could really provide the means necessary for the house, which is our next big goal. (Costs about $430k to $640k in a country with an average NET monthly salary of $1,100, median even lower).

We will see where we'll be in my next update :)
 

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