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Hi I'm not a dog

rblitz

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Jul 11, 2013
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Hi there.

So there it is, my so-called introduction of myself and my little self motivation. It's longer than I expected, so watch out!

Like the title says, I'm not a dog. In fact I'm a 21 year old human from Germany. I don't know, whether it's the time of day or the tropical temperatures at the moment, responsible for influencing my brain to have chosen such an amazing title...

A few weeks ago I finished the fastlane book and since then I'm constantly thinking about my first steps into the big cruel world of entrepreneurship.
It's funny, because some days before starting to read the millionaires fastlane, I signed a retirement arrangement and all the arguments from the insurance agent where mentioned in the book...

I think the turning point of my view at working for a regular company was that a co-worker of mine calculated a while ago that in his whole career he would earn approximately the sum of money a successfull self-employed lawyer would earn in one year.
I don't remember exactly what his words were, but I understood what that means to me.
No I don't want to become a lawyer nor would I want to blame other people for not fulfilling there dreams. But more on that later on.

At the moment I'm a software developer and thats my passion.
I love to write code, structure it, just stare at it and be amazed how beautiful it is.
But the passion on itself I think isn't something that brings the money in.

That discussion with my co-worker really opened my eyes. I've no interest in working 40 hours a week plus additionaly about 15 hours per week at my spare time for free just in order to get enough money to eat, to drive a +10 year old car and to pay my bills.

Another co-worker offered me his plan about getting his master degree of science. By that he would improve his chance to get into a more valuable position and get slightly more money. The simple disadvantage is that he need to visit university every saturday and needs to learn the whole sunday. All that alongside working on his 9-5 job. Oh and yeah the standard periodity of study is just about 8 years. 8 YEARS every weekend, by working on monday to friday at his regular job and all that just for getting slightly more money.

That exactly was the point at which I thought thats fine for you, but not for me.

At no time I could understand my friends and schoolmates who play computer games all the day or spending all there money and time on parties and alcohol.
Sure sometimes I play some games but since I begun programming when I was about 14 years old I enjoyed it more tweaking my code than remembering attributes of some world of warcraft items etc.
I don't want to blame someone for playing games all the day or something like that. It's there life. But I just simply can not understand how one can be satisfied by that.
And no! I'm not living in a dark basement only seeing daylight when my code takes his time to compile...

So where am I now?
In the past I didn't create something valuable for others outside my job.
At the moment I'm searching for opportunities in order to start something. I know that by don't taking any action I won't earn a penny so I need to get my as* up.

I have a very solid understanding of technology.
My passion for software engineering is simultaneously a big obstacle in finding business opportunities, I think.
The problem is that I'm more or less concentrating on fields related in developing services or apps rather than sharpening my senses in order to spot valuable ideas and transform them into actions (see I really read the book... :rofl:).

Besides that I've enormous fears of laws, taxes, liability etc. related with business. All the time I've got some horror stories in my mind resulting in jail or very high debts.
But thats one part of the risks to deal with as a entrepeneur, right?

Where I want to be someday:
In the future I want to have enough time for e.g: to learn new programming languages, discover new hobbies, walk to sports several days per week, afford some nice cars, have some money to visit beautiful places in Europe and spending much time with my amazing girlfriend. I love you!

I know that I must work very hard in order to fulfill my dreams! I need to get the ball rolling. I need to risk something. Not related to money or life but I need to accept to fail. And to get up again and keep trying!


At the end I want to say thank you! Thank you MJ for writing such an excellent book and providing a platform to exchange with other people.

Thank you fastlane members, who provide amazing information and posts.

Thank you for reading my post!

And thank you moderators for not kicking me because of my english grammar... :thumbsup:

Gute Nacht.
 
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rblitz

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Jul 11, 2013
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Hey

I spend the last days on researching various "business opportunities".
The one that instantly came to my mind is eCommerce.
I read a whole lot about it on various blogs and on the forum.

But I'm quite unsure about the taxes over here at Germany.
As far as I know by taking a quick look at the web goods imported from non-EU countries (china etc.) need to be taxed at about 3,7% of the value of the goods including shipping costs. Additionally I have to tax 19% VAT.

There isn't quite a big margin I may able to obtain, because of the taxes, right?
Would you consider eCommerce in spite of this circumstances?
 

rblitz

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Jul 11, 2013
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It's a long time since my last post. Almost three month ago.
In this three month I ran into the same issues and habits as usual. I couldn't come up was an idea to execute. Sitting around endless hours, thinking, thinking and thinking.

Three days ago I decided to just just put a website for a product idea up the web. In fact it's a landing page with a email sign up form.
It's not about earning massive amounts of money. I just wanted to do something, and that as fast as possible. Exititing the circle of thinking and worrying.
Additional I want to test and improve the process of getting products to customers and get a feel for this whole process. Because that's something I hadn't done before.

So I decided for a hosting company, bought a twitter bootstrap theme, setted up my development environment, adjusted the theme, put content on my site, installed a web analytics tool and uploaded the site.
Because I wanted to finish this first iteration as fast as possible I even didn't come up with specific ideas for my software product.
Along writing the html I thought up some cool product features and placed them onto the site.

Now I need to drive some traffic onto my site.
Thats something I don't know how to do, at the moment.
I'm not sure, whether I should post an job on elance to get someone writing me some blog posts. I'm thinking about a post related to give some tips about a specific task one could more easily accomplish with my software. Of course the post wouldn't mention my software directly.

So that's the next step.
 

Gale4rc

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Sep 23, 2013
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It's a long time since my last post. Almost three month ago.
In this three month I ran into the same issues and habits as usual. I couldn't come up was an idea to execute. Sitting around endless hours, thinking, thinking and thinking.

Three days ago I decided to just just put a website for a product idea up the web. In fact it's a landing page with a email sign up form.
It's not about earning massive amounts of money. I just wanted to do something, and that as fast as possible. Exititing the circle of thinking and worrying.
Additional I want to test and improve the process of getting products to customers and get a feel for this whole process. Because that's something I hadn't done before.

So I decided for a hosting company, bought a twitter bootstrap theme, setted up my development environment, adjusted the theme, put content on my site, installed a web analytics tool and uploaded the site.
Because I wanted to finish this first iteration as fast as possible I even didn't come up with specific ideas for my software product.
Along writing the html I thought up some cool product features and placed them onto the site.

Now I need to drive some traffic onto my site.
Thats something I don't know how to do, at the moment.
I'm not sure, whether I should post an job on elance to get someone writing me some blog posts. I'm thinking about a post related to give some tips about a specific task one could more easily accomplish with my software. Of course the post wouldn't mention my software directly.

So that's the next step.


I'll tell you one thing... You're building out the site correctly. Don't invest too much time without validating the idea. Build a landing page and see if people will even sign up for it. After that go find your customers in the real world and actually talk to them about your idea but, first talk to them about the problem your solving and see if your solution is something they are interested in. Don't pitch the idea first.

Also, keep thinking. I was in the same spot as you as far as having trouble coming up with a new good idea... Then my latest idea just hit me like a ton of bricks. Right away I knew it was a winner.

PM me your idea if you don't want to post it on thread and I can probably help you identify some traffic sources for it.

-PS, I think you might be a dog.
 
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tafy

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Aug 21, 2013
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You are looking in the wrong areas. You are a developer and are looking at eCommerce and hosting?

Do what your good at which is coding apps, services. Just need an idea.... keep thinking, lots will come but only 1 will be any good.
 

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