- Joined
- Mar 25, 2014
- Messages
- 1,798
Rep Bank
$3,869
$3,869
User Power: 275%
Hey all,
I may not have formally introduced myself here before but wanted to do so to share some background on me. I'm pretty active on the forum, and the last few years I have been all over the place with dozens of ideas, lots of failings, and lots of success as well.
Around the time I graduated high school I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I was getting strongly pulled towards entrepreneurship. I ended up attending college, and freshman year I started reading The Millionaire Fastlane . Springtime came and I ended up failing 3 classes as I think I was facing a psychological dilemma on what to do. I was getting strongly pulled towards entrepreneurship but had a sunk cost fallacy of already investing one year into college (sunk cost fallacy is greater when you are younger). I had also joined the rugby team and was partying a fair bit, and had accepted a transfer to a great school, which then rejected me after getting the upgraded transcripts. Ouch. They had a much better scholarship offering, too. Well, back to the current rugby team and school, I suppose.
Anyways, I stuck it out. Uni restricted my classes the following year so I was really behind; entering junior year, I needed to make up 5 classes or have to spend money I didn't have, going into further debt to get my degree. This was real adversity - do or die mode. To close it out, senior year I took 6 classes in the fall, 2 in the winter in Europe (on an incredibly tight budget), and then 7 in the spring - boom! Done. My GPA in those final semesters was close to 4.0, up from the 1.0 to 2.8 I was juggling freshman/year sophomore year. Uni, rugby, various student & entrepreneur clubs, failings and successes - all vital life lessons for me - so when it comes to the forum threads about college, I am always pro uni. It compresses learning & failing into an incredibly tight timeline, especially if you pressure yourself, which I think translates to entrepreneurial success.
During & after uni I was working in a grocery store, $8 an hour, until I finished up uni and was promoted full time, $12/hr. Sounds crazy, and it is, this was just over 10 years ago but I had close to $1k/mo student loan payments to make up so it was again, do or die mode. I was the best stocker there ever was, that is until one day I reached my limit and walked away. A month later picked up a proper job, insurance sales, and was making $15/hr + bonuses, so close to $60k. There were stories of some people making $10k or $12k/mo in previous years. It was my first taste of "some kind" of explosive income. Being able to go in on a Saturday, make $22/hr, be in the bonus green zone, and every sale being worth between $150 to $300. Some lucky Saturdays I would go in and walk out with a $750 day. That is, because I was in the "bonus zone", having sold over 45 policies already that month. Many weren't so "lucky" and made very little in bonuses or none at all.
That place shut down on a whim, so I found myself in a weird spot. I knew it was finally time to make it happen. Well, it wasn't glorious. A few years living at home with my parents, working oddball jobs, and they helped w/ some of the loan payments. But in that struggle, something happened. I sat down in a Starbucks, wrote a 1,000 word article, and got paid $15 via Upwork. What the hell? I just made money from a coffee shop? Something clicked. This was well before COVID, work from home, or any of that kind of concept. I accepted all types of jobs, $5 jobs, $25 jobs, one-offs, transcription, translation, anything and everything. Rinse and repeat that 150 times. In the process, I sold my first website to a nonprofit in 2017 for $500 (which is still live today, and who still pay me $100/year for doing nothing) and also picked up a couple of steady copywriter roles for both startups and large national newspapers. I started making more websites, started charging higher hourly rates, and found more steady work, and started putting clients on retainers. I remember raising my Upwork rates from $25 to $35, from $35 to $45, and eventually I landed clients at $75/hr and even $145/hr - for web dev related work, for SEO, design, logo creation, and more.
In the midst of all of that, I've had great clients, and I've had bad clients, and everything in-between. I think I have been fired at least a dozen times, and probably have fired a dozen clients as well. The stakes always get higher, so every bit of preparation counts.
That nearly brings us to the last few years and my more "fastlane-adjacent" pursuits...
To be continued...
I may not have formally introduced myself here before but wanted to do so to share some background on me. I'm pretty active on the forum, and the last few years I have been all over the place with dozens of ideas, lots of failings, and lots of success as well.
Around the time I graduated high school I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I was getting strongly pulled towards entrepreneurship. I ended up attending college, and freshman year I started reading The Millionaire Fastlane . Springtime came and I ended up failing 3 classes as I think I was facing a psychological dilemma on what to do. I was getting strongly pulled towards entrepreneurship but had a sunk cost fallacy of already investing one year into college (sunk cost fallacy is greater when you are younger). I had also joined the rugby team and was partying a fair bit, and had accepted a transfer to a great school, which then rejected me after getting the upgraded transcripts. Ouch. They had a much better scholarship offering, too. Well, back to the current rugby team and school, I suppose.
Anyways, I stuck it out. Uni restricted my classes the following year so I was really behind; entering junior year, I needed to make up 5 classes or have to spend money I didn't have, going into further debt to get my degree. This was real adversity - do or die mode. To close it out, senior year I took 6 classes in the fall, 2 in the winter in Europe (on an incredibly tight budget), and then 7 in the spring - boom! Done. My GPA in those final semesters was close to 4.0, up from the 1.0 to 2.8 I was juggling freshman/year sophomore year. Uni, rugby, various student & entrepreneur clubs, failings and successes - all vital life lessons for me - so when it comes to the forum threads about college, I am always pro uni. It compresses learning & failing into an incredibly tight timeline, especially if you pressure yourself, which I think translates to entrepreneurial success.
During & after uni I was working in a grocery store, $8 an hour, until I finished up uni and was promoted full time, $12/hr. Sounds crazy, and it is, this was just over 10 years ago but I had close to $1k/mo student loan payments to make up so it was again, do or die mode. I was the best stocker there ever was, that is until one day I reached my limit and walked away. A month later picked up a proper job, insurance sales, and was making $15/hr + bonuses, so close to $60k. There were stories of some people making $10k or $12k/mo in previous years. It was my first taste of "some kind" of explosive income. Being able to go in on a Saturday, make $22/hr, be in the bonus green zone, and every sale being worth between $150 to $300. Some lucky Saturdays I would go in and walk out with a $750 day. That is, because I was in the "bonus zone", having sold over 45 policies already that month. Many weren't so "lucky" and made very little in bonuses or none at all.
That place shut down on a whim, so I found myself in a weird spot. I knew it was finally time to make it happen. Well, it wasn't glorious. A few years living at home with my parents, working oddball jobs, and they helped w/ some of the loan payments. But in that struggle, something happened. I sat down in a Starbucks, wrote a 1,000 word article, and got paid $15 via Upwork. What the hell? I just made money from a coffee shop? Something clicked. This was well before COVID, work from home, or any of that kind of concept. I accepted all types of jobs, $5 jobs, $25 jobs, one-offs, transcription, translation, anything and everything. Rinse and repeat that 150 times. In the process, I sold my first website to a nonprofit in 2017 for $500 (which is still live today, and who still pay me $100/year for doing nothing) and also picked up a couple of steady copywriter roles for both startups and large national newspapers. I started making more websites, started charging higher hourly rates, and found more steady work, and started putting clients on retainers. I remember raising my Upwork rates from $25 to $35, from $35 to $45, and eventually I landed clients at $75/hr and even $145/hr - for web dev related work, for SEO, design, logo creation, and more.
In the midst of all of that, I've had great clients, and I've had bad clients, and everything in-between. I think I have been fired at least a dozen times, and probably have fired a dozen clients as well. The stakes always get higher, so every bit of preparation counts.
That nearly brings us to the last few years and my more "fastlane-adjacent" pursuits...
To be continued...
Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member:
Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)
Last edited:
Access Restricted: Unlock 1,000,000+ Posts
Stop Peeking Through the Keyhole.
Open the Door.
You hit a wall because the best advice isn't free—it's earned. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has been active here daily (99.9% active rate), building a war room for entrepreneurs who refuse to settle for mediocrity.
- Active Daily: Life-changing content posted dozens of times every day. No dead threads.
- MJ's Inner Circle: Direct access to the author of The Millionaire Fastlane.
- Vetted Network: Connect with founders scaling to 7 and 8 figures.
- Proven Roadmaps: Strategy over motivation. Execution over "hustle porn."
"SCALED TO 6-FIGURE MONTHS"
"Tips and advice here saved me from huge mistakes, others allowed me to scale my business to 6-figure months."— User MitchC
"INSANE QUALITY OF PEOPLE"
"The number of high quality people I've met from this forum has been insane. All of it predicated on building real value."— User Richard Peck
"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with."
Are you surrounding yourself with success?
