Hi Everyone

[Nannan]

Hi Everyone,

Nice to finally write to you all. I'm Nannan, and had a registered account for a year and a half now and have never introduced myself. As compensation, I'll split this intro into bullet pointed parts starting from 2015 and ending at present. I tried writing out my entire story but it took up 3 pages so bullet pointed.

Past (2015)

• Graduating College
• Enjoyed helping people but was lazy in slow lane standards
  • Timid introvert who didn't mind getting pushed around
  • Enjoyed video gaming
  • Living with parents and did not pay for anything
  • Did not help much unless they asked me to
• Thought winning life equaled:
  • A huge salary
  • Own a home, own a nice car
  • Have a great marriage and kids
• Problem:
  • College graduate. Only job offer was 40-45K programming
  • Living in NYC, so forget about owning home, worry about food first
  • *Insert money related issue due to low salary and NYC* -- Needless to say, family wasn't that pleased. They wanted me to go to grad school. I went using my college scholarship money and them helping covering the remainder. (Yea I'm a great son )
• Start of figuring out door #3
  • Friend offered me to join his startup in building assets for games. He liked my A.I project in college
  • Joined on May 24th. It was ridiculous
  • We clocked 100+ hours during many weeks.
  • Went to expos, demoed our game that showcased our A.I. Talked to a lot of people, learned a lot of coding skills not taught in school, learned problem solving on the spot.
  • Everything was good except... We did not acquire customers.
  • While in school, decided to join an entrepreneurship club on my friend's request. One issue... it was on decline.

2016

• Balancing Act
  • Grades began slipping, health deteriorated, my team mates didn't care. We kept restarting the code because the software was not perfect. We didn't consider selling it, no one did sales.
  • Entrepreneur club was hitting an all time low. No one in the club really cared. Club president was usually no where to be found. Club manager was really disappointed.
  • Something had to give.... so I quit the startup in April.
  • I was sick, overweight by 20 pounds and had low grades. But, I learned a lot from the startup hell. Programming, problem solving, money managing, people's skill, taking criticisms, etc.
• May
  • Elected club president because had startup experience. Also, no one wanted to run for the position.
  • Summer vacation began, did not search for job or internship because I was working on the startup for almost 1 year so missed all the school job/intern hunting opportunities
  • Bought The Millionaire Fastlane and decided to focus on making the entrepreneurship club great again.
• Summer, Fall, Winter
  • Got rid of all inactives from the club = 95%.
  • Club manager knew I was serious so helped recruit new members with me.
  • Rebuilt entire club focus with a lot of help, planned for executing events when school began
  • Exercised like crazy, dropped 10 pounds
  • School started and began executing with my club like crazy
  • No events worked. Kept clashing with club manager and other organizations, apparently entrepreneurship was hot and many clubs hopped on the band wagon. No one was happy.
  • Late October - November. Finally came to agreement with school entrepreneurship organization and with club manager.
  • Hosted largest event with 300+ people. Our club came back into focus at school.

2017

• Kicked off our entrepreneurship competition
• Exploded because most of the 300+ people came to check out what's going on and spread the word
• We kept executing and got more people joining our events, participated in the competition and had the University covering it.
• In addition to the competition, we hosted events with big places like Google
• Other clubs complained but no one listened, we delivered more value and overshadowed them.
• Our club received 2 awards for delivering value to the University for entrepreneurship. My team rocked, transforming a club that was on the verge of collapse into a powerhouse. Best Team Ever!
• In May, I graduated grad school, still didn't get a fulltime job . But secured a part time with my connections at the club.
• Worked for 3 months getting my skills up in programming and landed my current job in August.

2017 - Present

• Have a high 5 figure salary. I could have moved out, rented a place, perhaps get a nice car, buy all the video games I wanted and sleep in over the weekends.... But this isn't 2015 me.
  • I still live with my family because together we can live better. Besides, I like my bed.
  • I use my earnings for my family, I do a lot of heavy lifting at home and spend quality time with them. And I still have a lot of leftover because I honestly don't give 2 s... about trends and wants. I have a 401K and do own stocks in the market. So yes.... I'm crushing the slow lane ..... How the f* did this happen? 2015 me would have been proud, now me is not so happy.
• In my spare time, I work with another friend on another startup. However, it's so hard for him to adapt. It takes 3 - 5 months for him to understand that he's not solving a problem, and when we switched he has been slow in implementing his part. This is his only job while my other friends and I are balancing work, somehow the startup environment feels more like a corporation. Shares? Please...
• So, on January 2018 I have decided to start a business alone.

Thank you everyone who read all the way to this point, I tried to shorten this as much as possible. The reason why I came back on was recently I read Unscripted and had a mental breakdown creating a F*ck This List. It was so bad I called sick for 4 days, because if went to work, I would have cried or worse.

My Ask: I recently wanted to sell on Amazon. I admit this is mostly fueled from reading about FBA, not the gurus but I did pick up a course on Proven Amazon. However, my reasons are it is best to sell something physical nowadays because as a programmer who follows tech companies, I have mostly seen companies seeking VC funding, are not making a profit per customer acquisition and mostly the customers want free value. I believe physical products require customers to exchange money for that products value, essentially I'm making a profit per purchase, and Amazon has the most traffic, online merchandise and warehouse.

I have been researching about FBA since January, in addition I know I need to solve a relatively big problem so I'm now at a crossroad. Should I continue down the FBA route in attempting to sell a physical product on Amazon and eventually expand to multiple channels or should I be searching for any sort of problem to tackle regardless of making a profit per customer (My bias from reading about software companies)? Most of the companies I saw are taking a loss and each new customer isn't really helping.

Thanks again fastlane community, I am open to criticisms, clarifications and questions. I hope I can contribute soon.

 

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