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.

Hitting the escape button, running for the life boats... Unscripting as a young Millenial!

RicardoGrande

Silver Contributor
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
250%
May 9, 2021
349
874
Hey TFF!:)

You can call me Ricardo, I'm a 20 something caveman that's trying to spark the flint of business and create the fire of value and productocracy!
I entered the workforce in IT after college, and immediately got smashed with the weight of the slowlane lie. I became depressed quick and tried to figure out why things were going so "wrong" when I did things so "right". Just imagine looking at yourself in the mirror on a Sunday morning and asking if your worth as an individual truly mattered in how well you could read a script over the phone and close recurring tickets.

I decided to stand up and fight, and I quickly ran into the 4HWW/bro-marketer crowd and spent almost a year trying the basic hustles (t-shirts, influencing, personal branding) and none of them panned out (Commandment E, anyone?). One day though, a book called "The Millionaire Fastlane " by one Mr. @MJ DeMarco showed up on my audible recommendations. It looked odd, a business book with great reviews, but the reviews told you directly that there's no magic bullet... but with the right framework, you could hit the "entreprenurial g-spot" and never fill out a TPS report again. Sign me up.

I had doubts but doubt turned to curiosity and curiosity to thirst.
I downed the book and Unscripted within a week, and would then listen to unscripted almost every day. It was a great kick in the @$$, but I got depressed quickly because I saw so many people executing fearlessly, starting product or service businesses, and I didn't seem to have anything. I decided to at least try taking action and did the usual upwork freelancing, made some cold calls here and there, and even built a website for a friend who owns a service business... but nothing panned out. When Corona hit, I fell down a dark hole and had to climb out with the systems in Alex Korb's "The Upward Spiral". With new systems in place, I managed to get back into a better groove, loose weight, and start computer science schooling!

Getting back on my feet though, three things almost knocked me out:
1) Due to nebulous political skirmishes by mgmt at my job, I was voluntold for a huge amount of O/T, including Saturdays, for the forseeable future.
2) My Widowed mother told me that the money I was sending her wasn't enough to help her pay off property taxes, and that she'd have to move out of the country if she couldn't find a way to make more money.
3) My cat was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma and I couldn't look the vet in the eye as he described multi-thousand dollar treatment plan to try to give him at least another year of life, not knowing I didn't have anywhere near the money to pay for it. Icing on the cake? After a normal checkup, my doctor had me go through multiple rounds of medical imaging for something they thought could've been serious, but thankfully ended up being nothing... a multi-thousand dollar nothing.

So here I am, past my quarter-century mark, working as an IT plebe with a smattering of small freelance jobs under my belt, a parent I'll be financially providing for, and a job that I've seen will put me in the splash zone for a 20-kiloton bomb for something I have no involvement in.

Is it terrible? No, it's not terrible because during all of this, I've worked on:
- Completely cutting video games from my life
- Cutting off distractions, and getting started consistently
- Cooking all of my own food and losing 25lbs since the start of corona
- Finishing about a year of online coding classes, and working my way to becoming a full-stack developer so I can at least move out of my current job if things go bad
- Writing down every idea I have or inconvenience I notice in my day-to-day life
- Started teasing out as much information as possible about business from every business owner I've come across

I know a lot of people come in here guns blazing with plenty of promises of making millions in months, but I'm not in the position to make such promises.
I admit I'll be much more of a slow burn who has plenty of questions, but I'm happy that there's 70,000 people here who respect value creation just the same. For the next while, you'll see me as I not only start local business outreach, but transfer from my foundational job to selling specialized labor as I really hit the pavement on this unscripted journey.

See you in the threads guys!
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Augusthere

PARKED
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
0% - New User
Apr 20, 2021
5
0
Hey TFF!:)

You can call me Ricardo, I'm a 20 something caveman that's trying to spark the flint of business and create the fire of value and productocracy!
I entered the workforce in IT after college, and immediately got smashed with the weight of the slowlane lie. I became depressed quick and tried to figure out why things were going so "wrong" when I did things so "right". Just imagine looking at yourself in the mirror on a Sunday morning and asking if your worth as an individual truly mattered in how well you could read a script over the phone and close recurring tickets.

I decided to stand up and fight, and I quickly ran into the 4HWW/bro-marketer crowd and spent almost a year trying the basic hustles (t-shirts, influencing, personal branding) and none of them panned out (Commandment E, anyone?). One day though, a book called "The Millionaire Fastlane " by one Mr. @MJ DeMarco showed up on my audible recommendations. It looked odd, a business book with great reviews, but the reviews told you directly that there's no magic bullet... but with the right framework, you could hit the "entreprenurial g-spot" and never fill out a TPS report again. Sign me up.

I had doubts but doubt turned to curiosity and curiosity to thirst.
I downed the book and Unscripted within a week, and would then listen to unscripted almost every day. It was a great kick in the @$$, but I got depressed quickly because I saw so many people executing fearlessly, starting product or service businesses, and I didn't seem to have anything. I decided to at least try taking action and did the usual upwork freelancing, made some cold calls here and there, and even built a website for a friend who owns a service business... but nothing panned out. When Corona hit, I fell down a dark hole and had to climb out with the systems in Alex Korb's "The Upward Spiral". With new systems in place, I managed to get back into a better groove, loose weight, and start computer science schooling!

Getting back on my feet though, three things almost knocked me out:
1) Due to nebulous political skirmishes by mgmt at my job, I was voluntold for a huge amount of O/T, including Saturdays, for the forseeable future.
2) My Widowed mother told me that the money I was sending her wasn't enough to help her pay off property taxes, and that she'd have to move out of the country if she couldn't find a way to make more money.
3) My cat was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma and I couldn't look the vet in the eye as he described multi-thousand dollar treatment plan to try to give him at least another year of life, not knowing I didn't have anywhere near the money to pay for it. Icing on the cake? After a normal checkup, my doctor had me go through multiple rounds of medical imaging for something they thought could've been serious, but thankfully ended up being nothing... a multi-thousand dollar nothing.

So here I am, past my quarter-century mark, working as an IT plebe with a smattering of small freelance jobs under my belt, a parent I'll be financially providing for, and a job that I've seen will put me in the splash zone for a 20-kiloton bomb for something I have no involvement in.

Is it terrible? No, it's not terrible because during all of this, I've worked on:
- Completely cutting video games from my life
- Cutting off distractions, and getting started consistently
- Cooking all of my own food and losing 25lbs since the start of corona
- Finishing about a year of online coding classes, and working my way to becoming a full-stack developer so I can at least move out of my current job if things go bad
- Writing down every idea I have or inconvenience I notice in my day-to-day life
- Started teasing out as much information as possible about business from every business owner I've come across

I know a lot of people come in here guns blazing with plenty of promises of making millions in months, but I'm not in the position to make such promises.
I admit I'll be much more of a slow burn who has plenty of questions, but I'm happy that there's 70,000 people here who respect value creation just the same. For the next while, you'll see me as I not only start local business outreach, but transfer from my foundational job to selling specialized labor as I really hit the pavement on this unscripted journey.

See you in the threads guys!
Things never going easy. If you wanna something special that you have to something special. You know that you're not only one on this road to fastlane. I just think my life maybe will be tougher than before.
 

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
38,025
169,138
Utah
Great intro, sounds like you're just getting started with plenty of "whys" (or FTEs)!

Welcome aboard.
 

MitchM

Act. Then Adapt.
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
228%
Nov 15, 2016
490
1,116
28
Atlanta, GA
Hey TFF!:)

You can call me Ricardo, I'm a 20 something caveman that's trying to spark the flint of business and create the fire of value and productocracy!
I entered the workforce in IT after college, and immediately got smashed with the weight of the slowlane lie. I became depressed quick and tried to figure out why things were going so "wrong" when I did things so "right". Just imagine looking at yourself in the mirror on a Sunday morning and asking if your worth as an individual truly mattered in how well you could read a script over the phone and close recurring tickets.

I decided to stand up and fight, and I quickly ran into the 4HWW/bro-marketer crowd and spent almost a year trying the basic hustles (t-shirts, influencing, personal branding) and none of them panned out (Commandment E, anyone?). One day though, a book called "The Millionaire Fastlane " by one Mr. @MJ DeMarco showed up on my audible recommendations. It looked odd, a business book with great reviews, but the reviews told you directly that there's no magic bullet... but with the right framework, you could hit the "entreprenurial g-spot" and never fill out a TPS report again. Sign me up.

I had doubts but doubt turned to curiosity and curiosity to thirst.
I downed the book and Unscripted within a week, and would then listen to unscripted almost every day. It was a great kick in the @$$, but I got depressed quickly because I saw so many people executing fearlessly, starting product or service businesses, and I didn't seem to have anything. I decided to at least try taking action and did the usual upwork freelancing, made some cold calls here and there, and even built a website for a friend who owns a service business... but nothing panned out. When Corona hit, I fell down a dark hole and had to climb out with the systems in Alex Korb's "The Upward Spiral". With new systems in place, I managed to get back into a better groove, loose weight, and start computer science schooling!

Getting back on my feet though, three things almost knocked me out:
1) Due to nebulous political skirmishes by mgmt at my job, I was voluntold for a huge amount of O/T, including Saturdays, for the forseeable future.
2) My Widowed mother told me that the money I was sending her wasn't enough to help her pay off property taxes, and that she'd have to move out of the country if she couldn't find a way to make more money.
3) My cat was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma and I couldn't look the vet in the eye as he described multi-thousand dollar treatment plan to try to give him at least another year of life, not knowing I didn't have anywhere near the money to pay for it. Icing on the cake? After a normal checkup, my doctor had me go through multiple rounds of medical imaging for something they thought could've been serious, but thankfully ended up being nothing... a multi-thousand dollar nothing.

So here I am, past my quarter-century mark, working as an IT plebe with a smattering of small freelance jobs under my belt, a parent I'll be financially providing for, and a job that I've seen will put me in the splash zone for a 20-kiloton bomb for something I have no involvement in.

Is it terrible? No, it's not terrible because during all of this, I've worked on:
- Completely cutting video games from my life
- Cutting off distractions, and getting started consistently
- Cooking all of my own food and losing 25lbs since the start of corona
- Finishing about a year of online coding classes, and working my way to becoming a full-stack developer so I can at least move out of my current job if things go bad
- Writing down every idea I have or inconvenience I notice in my day-to-day life
- Started teasing out as much information as possible about business from every business owner I've come across

I know a lot of people come in here guns blazing with plenty of promises of making millions in months, but I'm not in the position to make such promises.
I admit I'll be much more of a slow burn who has plenty of questions, but I'm happy that there's 70,000 people here who respect value creation just the same. For the next while, you'll see me as I not only start local business outreach, but transfer from my foundational job to selling specialized labor as I really hit the pavement on this unscripted journey.

See you in the threads guys!
Hey man. It sounds like you've got a great head on your shoulders and are in a good position to make great progress.

I dealt with some family money issues myself early on and understand what that kind of pressure can feel like, although of course our circumstances aren't exactly the same.

You may not need to hear this but I'll just go ahead and say it because I feel like it's a plague in this scene:

Try to stay away from opportunities that appear with a "marketing-first" approach. By this I mean click funnels and other campaigning type businesses that focus on conversion techniques first and foremost.

That stuff is good, but only once you have a business that really serves people with a great product/service.

You may realize this already, but it really does push many people down the wrong path when they're craving quick money.

Grind it out man. I wish you the best.

I used to write down 3 product/solution ideas every day and go over them with the CENTS model. This helped me get into the right mindset and now my notes are filled with 100s of ideas.

Sure, most of them are dog shit, but one of those just so happens to have become my new business.

Welcome!
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

RicardoGrande

Silver Contributor
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
250%
May 9, 2021
349
874
Thank you for the well wishes everyone!

To MJ, yes, for sure hahaha. They really suck but that pain is helping me to push and also accept the long process; so I guess I should be thankful.

To Mitch, I appreciate it and I also fully agree that bro-marketing is predatory but also value-empty. Also glad to see that someone else is doing daily ideation and that it even turned into execution, you're making it man :) . I would love to ask about the parts beyond basic ideation and validation besides CENTS when you have a moment.
 

CruxisKnight

Bronze Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
98%
Jan 7, 2021
104
102
Hey TFF!:)

You can call me Ricardo, I'm a 20 something caveman that's trying to spark the flint of business and create the fire of value and productocracy!
I entered the workforce in IT after college, and immediately got smashed with the weight of the slowlane lie. I became depressed quick and tried to figure out why things were going so "wrong" when I did things so "right". Just imagine looking at yourself in the mirror on a Sunday morning and asking if your worth as an individual truly mattered in how well you could read a script over the phone and close recurring tickets.

I decided to stand up and fight, and I quickly ran into the 4HWW/bro-marketer crowd and spent almost a year trying the basic hustles (t-shirts, influencing, personal branding) and none of them panned out (Commandment E, anyone?). One day though, a book called "The Millionaire Fastlane " by one Mr. @MJ DeMarco showed up on my audible recommendations. It looked odd, a business book with great reviews, but the reviews told you directly that there's no magic bullet... but with the right framework, you could hit the "entreprenurial g-spot" and never fill out a TPS report again. Sign me up.

I had doubts but doubt turned to curiosity and curiosity to thirst.
I downed the book and Unscripted within a week, and would then listen to unscripted almost every day. It was a great kick in the @$$, but I got depressed quickly because I saw so many people executing fearlessly, starting product or service businesses, and I didn't seem to have anything. I decided to at least try taking action and did the usual upwork freelancing, made some cold calls here and there, and even built a website for a friend who owns a service business... but nothing panned out. When Corona hit, I fell down a dark hole and had to climb out with the systems in Alex Korb's "The Upward Spiral". With new systems in place, I managed to get back into a better groove, loose weight, and start computer science schooling!

Getting back on my feet though, three things almost knocked me out:
1) Due to nebulous political skirmishes by mgmt at my job, I was voluntold for a huge amount of O/T, including Saturdays, for the forseeable future.
2) My Widowed mother told me that the money I was sending her wasn't enough to help her pay off property taxes, and that she'd have to move out of the country if she couldn't find a way to make more money.
3) My cat was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma and I couldn't look the vet in the eye as he described multi-thousand dollar treatment plan to try to give him at least another year of life, not knowing I didn't have anywhere near the money to pay for it. Icing on the cake? After a normal checkup, my doctor had me go through multiple rounds of medical imaging for something they thought could've been serious, but thankfully ended up being nothing... a multi-thousand dollar nothing.

So here I am, past my quarter-century mark, working as an IT plebe with a smattering of small freelance jobs under my belt, a parent I'll be financially providing for, and a job that I've seen will put me in the splash zone for a 20-kiloton bomb for something I have no involvement in.

Is it terrible? No, it's not terrible because during all of this, I've worked on:
- Completely cutting video games from my life
- Cutting off distractions, and getting started consistently
- Cooking all of my own food and losing 25lbs since the start of corona
- Finishing about a year of online coding classes, and working my way to becoming a full-stack developer so I can at least move out of my current job if things go bad
- Writing down every idea I have or inconvenience I notice in my day-to-day life
- Started teasing out as much information as possible about business from every business owner I've come across

I know a lot of people come in here guns blazing with plenty of promises of making millions in months, but I'm not in the position to make such promises.
I admit I'll be much more of a slow burn who has plenty of questions, but I'm happy that there's 70,000 people here who respect value creation just the same. For the next while, you'll see me as I not only start local business outreach, but transfer from my foundational job to selling specialized labor as I really hit the pavement on this unscripted journey.

See you in the threads guys!
Hey man depression is no joke especially when you are doing work that is unfulfilling to you. I hope you find it in yourself to discover your passion, gift, and calling and go for your dreams. Doing work you love that does not feel like work and you find meaningful is a truly incredible and freeing feeling. More and more people should find fulfilment in work so we have less depressed and irritable people in our communities so it has less negative impact.
 

Dora Wi

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
135%
Aug 19, 2020
46
62
Hungary
Hi and welcome! It's very inspiring to read how much work you have been doing on yourself, and didn't get stuck in that dark hole like many people do. Hardships with mental health can make it a lot more difficult to step outside the limits of the life you already know, and your persistence is really special.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

CruxisKnight

Bronze Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
98%
Jan 7, 2021
104
102
Hi and welcome! It's very inspiring to read how much work you have been doing on yourself, and didn't get stuck in that dark hole like many people do. Hardships with mental health can make it a lot more difficult to step outside the limits of the life you already know, and your persistence is really special.
I worked in mental health before and once you are in that deep dark rut it is really hard to get back up. But there is always hope and love hearing success stories
 

RicardoGrande

Silver Contributor
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
250%
May 9, 2021
349
874
Hey man depression is no joke especially when you are doing work that is unfulfilling to you. I hope you find it in yourself to discover your passion, gift, and calling and go for your dreams. Doing work you love that does not feel like work and you find meaningful is a truly incredible and freeing feeling. More and more people should find fulfilment in work so we have less depressed and irritable people in our communities so it has less negative impact.
Thanks for the comment Man!
I appreciate the mindset, but I accepted awhile back that some things may not be fun, but still have to be done (bills anyone?). It's just that some forms of producing value are less dreadful than others thankfully :smile: hoping to get an inside view on some businesses at some point and do my best to learn.
I can admit that my current employment does drag me down spiritually though, but I keep fighting anyway. In fact, I even sent in an application to @Fox 's program last week since I already started down the freelancing path with my friend's website.


Hi and welcome! It's very inspiring to read how much work you have been doing on yourself, and didn't get stuck in that dark hole like many people do. Hardships with mental health can make it a lot more difficult to step outside the limits of the life you already know, and your persistence is really special.
Haha, It's been a challenge, but I had some inspiring people in my own life that set a standard for me. It used to be almost unbearable but I just stuck with it and slowly crawled until I could stand on my own. Because I changed my life to include better systems, I'm more optimistic and level now than ever :) (though getting trapped in commuter's traffic still takes its toll lol).
As for persistence: It's really tricky, but it boils down to the systems you build into your life.
You can read Scott Adam's "How to fail at everything and still win big" for a better explanation, but at it's core, it's much like the gumball machine metaphor that MJ described in unscripted . You design your life so you live in a way that you're getting more of the gumballs that you want, just by living your day-to-day life.
 

Dora Wi

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
135%
Aug 19, 2020
46
62
Hungary
Haha, It's been a challenge, but I had some inspiring people in my own life that set a standard for me. It used to be almost unbearable but I just stuck with it and slowly crawled until I could stand on my own. Because I changed my life to include better systems, I'm more optimistic and level now than ever :) (though getting trapped in commuter's traffic still takes its toll lol).
As for persistence: It's really tricky, but it boils down to the systems you build into your life.
You can read Scott Adam's "How to fail at everything and still win big" for a better explanation, but at it's core, it's much like the gumball machine metaphor that MJ described in unscripted . You design your life so you live in a way that you're getting more of the gumballs that you want, just by living your day-to-day life.

Thanks for the book suggestion, I have put it on my list. I definitely need some further lessons to hammer in the fact that failure is not the end of the world :D But I do believe in the power of building systems and finding a way to integrate things needed to do to achieve a certain goal into our day-to-day functioning.

As for the gumball machine, I love that metaphor. When we think of persistence, we often think of a certain path or way of living that we just have to stick to no matter what, but sometimes there really comes a point when the path needs to be tweaked.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

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