The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Hi, I'm Dave from Chico California

Dave Daily

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
209%
Feb 22, 2018
163
341
54
Chico, CA
Hi there!

My name is Dave and I live in Chico, California with my three children. I'm 48 years old and work part-time as a media arts / graphic design instructor at two colleges.

I was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia to an introverted military father with a high IQ and genius brothers (my uncle, Tracy Hall, invented the synthetic diamond and was referenced in an early episode of Breaking Bad) and an extroverted beautician mother who dropped out of high school in 10th grade, but owned and ran her own salon early in life and started her own catering business later in life. I was breach born and my father always wondered if there was something wrong with me as a result. LOL! I tend to be a strange mix of my father and mother, as do we all, but I emphasize the word "strange." ;) I have my father's introversion and can turn on my mother's extroversion when needed.

I'm here to find a need and build a business around it. I've made some attempts at this in the past, but I haven't had the drive to overcome the fear that seems to hold me back. Now that I'm approaching 50, with no retirement, a massive amount of student debt, and a divorce in 2017, I'm having an FTE every time I think about what the next two decades hold.

Here's one of my entrepreneurial stories:

In 2011 I did some freelance design / marketing work for a local restaurant owner who found me through an ad I had put in a local Hispanic newspaper. The ad was free because I redesigned the logo for the editor of the paper. The ad offered a one-stop shop for all things marketing related, even though I hadn't really done this kind of work before. I figured I had some design skill (very little when I look back), so I thought it wouldn't be hard to do direct mail marketing. So that's what I did. I helped this one restaurant owner to get customers to his restaurant on the edge of town using buy one, get one free postcards. We sent out 2500 postcards per month and I thought it was going well for him, but my metrics weren't very good, because a year later he was out of business and so was I.

I thought about just going after more postcard / direct mail clients, but then I thought I could help more businesses (scale) by creating a coupon website. So I came up with this elaborate system wherein subscribers to the site could sign up to emails, tweets, and go to the site to get coupons from my business customers. I'd design the site, their coupons, and create a backend which would send out emails and tweets. I bought coupow.com and joined up with a local business incubator and had the site built. The money came from the county, so I didn't invest a dime. That was good, because I didn't actually have a dime at the time.

I invested many months in developing this business through the incubator but then found out that all the money was spent on development and no money was left for marketing the site. Plus, I couldn't find the password to my .NET backend and the programmer who built it became unreachable. I tried a few times to summon the energy to do the marketing myself, but then I let it fizzle.

Looking back, I remember blaming the incubator folks for the failure of Coupow.com, but the fault was all mine. There were steps that I could have taken to solve the problems, but I got lazy.

Since then, I've had a few false starts in business but I haven't put as much effort into anything like I did with Coupow. It's time to change that and make the end of my 40s and all of my 50s tell an entirely different and better story for me, my kids, and my new community -- including all of you here and my future customers.

I know the name of the game is value delivered so I've created a list of ideas which I'm currently putting through a CENTS analysis. I look forward to getting your feedback and giving you mine as well.

Glad to be here.

Dave

P.S. Hugh Nivers is my pseudonym for whenever I write my novel. ;)
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
Last edited:

Ravens_Shadow

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
643%
Oct 2, 2012
1,239
7,961
Austin, TX
Welcome to the forum Dave! Great intro.

I look forward to your progress thread.
 

MJ DeMarco

I followed the science; all I found was money.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
445%
Jul 23, 2007
38,079
169,497
Utah
Awesome intro my friend. Welcome to our little corner of the world.
 

Vigilante

Legendary Contributor
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
596%
Oct 31, 2011
11,116
66,265
Gulf Coast
Hey Dave welcome. If the system will let you, edit some of your personal information out as this thread will be indexed by Google.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Niptuck MD

plutocrat-in-training
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
164%
Aug 31, 2016
1,421
2,330
NORWAY - POLAND - WEST EUROPE
I'm here to find a need and build a business around it. I've made some attempts at this in the past, but I haven't had the drive to overcome the fear that seems to hold me back. Now that I'm approaching 50, with no retirement, a massive amount of student debt, and a divorce in 2017, I'm having an FTE every time I think about what the next two decades hold.

First off welcome to the forum. What you have stated above should be an underlying factor for your arrival here, and despite age just being a number, you still have a lot of time to accomplish an entrepreneurial venture that adds value to many in your desired niche field. Despite all the physical and mental setbacks you have dealt with in the past, your equation and ratio will eventually favor you due to probabilities... Never give up and the members here will be more then happy to help you along the way.
 

Dave Daily

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
209%
Feb 22, 2018
163
341
54
Chico, CA
@MJ DeMarco

Thanks MJ,

Your books are great! I've already written my reviews on Amazon.

The thing that drew me in was your genuine path. Just the fact that you came from the limo business, among other things, is what adds to that authenticity. The limo biz seems like such an obscure area to cut your teeth in, and then to build a lead generation site from that, well, it's just interesting.

Side note: My Aunt Elva (love that name ;) owned a limo company in New Orleans for many years.
 

SteveO

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
456%
Jul 24, 2007
4,228
19,294
I love Chico!!! Went up last summer to have a 46 gallon gas tank installed on my tundra. That town is a diamond!
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Dave Daily

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
209%
Feb 22, 2018
163
341
54
Chico, CA
@Arun Siva

Thanks Arun,

Our strong seated beliefs do tend to get in the way, whether they have to do with age or just beliefs that we've held since childhood. I've read Carolyn Dweck's Mindset a number of times, but putting it into action is another thing, just like reading about entrepreneurship. At a certain point, you have to have a F*ck this event to make change happen.
 
Last edited:

Dave Daily

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
209%
Feb 22, 2018
163
341
54
Chico, CA
I love Chico!!! Went up last summer to have a 46 gallon gas tank installed on my tundra. That town is a diamond!

I won't disagree with you there. Chico is the best kept secret in NorCal. It does get a bit hot in the summer though.
 

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

More Intros...

Top