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If I hear one more promise...

A post of a ranting nature...

Stan_

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I admittedly am making this post to vent out but to also get genuine feedback whether I am acting badly or not from whoever reads it (I don't expect many to).

This year started so nicely. An FTM in the previous December made me consider for the first time entrepreneurship. On the 1st of January I happily went to my best friend who kept talking about business topics to discuss my new idea. Sooner or later we 'vowed' to build something from the start that 'will be great'.
We are both college student getting bla bla and bla bla degree. We've started by getting another friend on board, buying some books on businesses and marketing (yeah, action faking mostly) and looking for ideas . Right from the get go I was reading books but he never touched any book. The excuses were always the, 'university takes time' (even though I went to uni also but hey 'my degree is easier' apparently), medical appointments which took 5-6 hours per week, 'buying food', 'cleaning' etc. At first I was compassionate and let it slide more or less, although being kinda surprised that he couldn't even put 1 hour into it.

Month of May comes around and guess what, while I've read some books and struggled to look for business ideas for the past 3 months he read 1/3 of a book and didn't spit out any ideas besides like 1 or 2 by random. Meanwhile I get a good business idea and later that month my FTE with a bunch of drunken degens waking me up at 4 in the morning, recording me and dragging a music speaker in the room because, quote 'F*ck (insert my name) who cares about him' but that's another story. Ok , now I have the idea and make an action plan of what we need to do, but do we start working on it 50/50? No, because he had his undergrad thesis to write (which he didn't finish) and after the END of the uni he 'really needed a vacation' for like 1 and a half weeks. Thankfully I got the reluctant promise all of this time that he will learn web dev from scratch to build the website that we'll need.
In July after this whole vacation I start obviously asking about when will he start doing the website that we'll need (I myself needed to do a lot of learning in the AI field for the idea). He starts going through some little Freecodecamp courses but pretty much ends there because now he goes to the other side of the country (Romania) to work almost minimum wage (like 525$/m) putting clothes on shelves because, 'I really need pocket money'. Keep in mind he lives like me with his parents so his living costs are 0 , but hey when I criticized his time allocation my only answer was 'in life you just need pocket money'. And shockingly for the next 3 months he wouldn't learn anything useful because he was tired from work

He comes back in October (he finished uni, I am in my 4th year of my undergrad) and this time he has nothing else to do on paper. Meanwhile I myself started to learn web dev from scratch to get the job done and the idea actually is starting to take shape. I get on a Whatsapp call with him and the other guy and I angrily ask him if he even knows what we're selling. He hits it in some vague terms and starts asking me about the legal accounting stuff which made me 10x angrier (I honestly want to ask any businessman here, is the legal and accounting stuff so complicated and important that it needs to be discussed when you don't even have a product to sell?). Skip forward to today (Nov. 30) he said he can basically put 5 hours a week on learning web dev. The reasons given to me literally were 'cleaning the house takes time' and 'I am reading about my medical supplements online' before I got him angry because I am 'asking too many questions'.

For the last 11 months I have been bombarded with promises. Promises on reading books, on learning how to program, on giving ideas, on finding people that can help and so forth. I also got the 'I understand where you're coming from' and 'I would feel the same' phrases thrown at every level. I got told every time by others to just relax and be compassionate, give time and have empathy cause he is my best friend after all. Oh, I almost forgot the "we'll build a million dollar business" and "I believe in what we're doing" cherries on the top.

I am f***ing sick of them. Yeah, I have a live or die mentality when it comes to the business now, I am by every sense of the word obsessed on it. That's cause I don't want to end up like a looser drinking my weekends away and dying on the rest of the week at some low paying job, cause I have my partially blind which put so much effort into taking care of me that it would kill me if I wouldn't make her proud, cause I have a faith in God that he didn't put me on earth to wither away and gave me talents to sow as the parable goes etc.. I didn't take any minimum wage job during summer, I cut expenses, I avoided as many uni courses as I could without being kicked out just to have more time to put into the business. I fought demons when I came back at 8 in the evening just to open VScode and write some lines before I went to sleep.

And I honestly feel like I am alone and overwhelmed. I feel like even my best friend abandoned me. Like I am pushing something while no one else believes in me. I don't want to do it alone, that's the truth. Admittedly that's why I joined this forum, to find people that I could learn from and share back. I put in all this time and now it feels like I might be in a giant dunning-kruger bubble of confidence while looking like a lunatic pushing a mountain from the outside. And yeah I kinda need some cheering.

But I am tired of excuses, of action faking discussions on 'wHaT iS ThE bESt Way tO lEaRN hOw tO pROgrAM". I am tired of not saying no, you know what, your excuses are bu****it and yes you have 0 clue on how to make a product so I don't want to hear your legal entity garbage . That despite being my best friend and all of the nice promises and 'compassion' on the planet the actions speak the loudest, and they say that you broke your promises.

At the end of the day what should I even do? Kick him out and basically remain almost alone? Find another guy that might be a promise printer also?
And what if I am a lunatic and the problem is me, what if my idea is bad or that am grumpy and mean? Should I look for some experienced businessman to give me advice, or try to prove my idea even further than I did? (I mean what kind of businessman would do that if I had nothing to offer).

There's a saying here, 'good friends are known at times of need' (don't know if it's anywhere else on the globe). I am starting to understand what it means finally
 
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Stargazer

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Let's be honest here. You wouldn't be kicking your friend out of anything because you don't have anything.

So you are on your own if you wish to move forward. You just have to accept that mentally and then you can start moving forward.

I would not go into business with anyone just on the basis that someone I knew also wanted a business. That's like you and a friend both saying you want to travel, so you give him these travel books on South America and a year later you are no closer to going because he has not done his bit on planning. Reason being he was thinking of European Cities.

You had no alignment from day one. That's why he has done nothing.

Dan
 

Johnny boy

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You sound like a worker. Complaining a lot and making things into a story.

Bosses eliminate drama and get back on track. Workers create drama and need emotional support. You need to read some stoicism.

When a winner is around bad people, he looks at himself and says "this is my fault, I chose to be around them" and corrects course. Or he learns how to manage it and turn it into a winning situation. They certainly do not get butthurt and vent and let things take months and months to get anywhere. It shuts you up real quick when you realize everything in your life, good or bad, is your fault, or at the very least your responsibility.

I don't even know what you are selling or what you do, something coding related I guess....

Lets talk about your actual, tangible goals and lets figure out a plan to get you directly from point A to point B.

Why would you have to 'fight demons' to do work? I love to work. I spend all my time on it, my girlfriend comes walking down the stairs at 1am mad at me because I haven't come to bed yet. What you do should be enjoyable to some degree and have a flow to it, because in whatever space you're in... you'll be competing against some weirdo like me who loves what he's doing.
 
G

Guest116255

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I admittedly am making this post to vent out but to also get genuine feedback whether I am acting badly or not from whoever reads it (I don't expect many to).

This year started so nicely. An FTM in the previous December made me consider for the first time entrepreneurship. On the 1st of January I happily went to my best friend who kept talking about business topics to discuss my new idea. Sooner or later we 'vowed' to build something from the start that 'will be great'.
We are both college student getting bla bla and bla bla degree. We've started by getting another friend on board, buying some books on businesses and marketing (yeah, action faking mostly) and looking for ideas . Right from the get go I was reading books but he never touched any book. The excuses were always the, 'university takes time' (even though I went to uni also but hey 'my degree is easier' apparently), medical appointments which took 5-6 hours per week, 'buying food', 'cleaning' etc. At first I was compassionate and let it slide more or less, although being kinda surprised that he couldn't even put 1 hour into it.

Month of May comes around and guess what, while I've read some books and struggled to look for business ideas for the past 3 months he read 1/3 of a book and didn't spit out any ideas besides like 1 or 2 by random. Meanwhile I get a good business idea and later that month my FTE with a bunch of drunken degens waking me up at 4 in the morning, recording me and dragging a music speaker in the room because, quote 'F*ck (insert my name) who cares about him' but that's another story. Ok , now I have the idea and make an action plan of what we need to do, but do we start working on it 50/50? No, because he had his undergrad thesis to write (which he didn't finish) and after the END of the uni he 'really needed a vacation' for like 1 and a half weeks. Thankfully I got the reluctant promise all of this time that he will learn web dev from scratch to build the website that we'll need.
In July after this whole vacation I start obviously asking about when will he start doing the website that we'll need (I myself needed to do a lot of learning in the AI field for the idea). He starts going through some little Freecodecamp courses but pretty much ends there because now he goes to the other side of the country (Romania) to work almost minimum wage (like 525$/m) putting clothes on shelves because, 'I really need pocket money'. Keep in mind he lives like me with his parents so his living costs are 0 , but hey when I criticized his time allocation my only answer was 'in life you just need pocket money'. And shockingly for the next 3 months he wouldn't learn anything useful because he was tired from work

He comes back in October (he finished uni, I am in my 4th year of my undergrad) and this time he has nothing else to do on paper. Meanwhile I myself started to learn web dev from scratch to get the job done and the idea actually is starting to take shape. I get on a Whatsapp call with him and the other guy and I angrily ask him if he even knows what we're selling. He hits it in some vague terms and starts asking me about the legal accounting stuff which made me 10x angrier (I honestly want to ask any businessman here, is the legal and accounting stuff so complicated and important that it needs to be discussed when you don't even have a product to sell?). Skip forward to today (Nov. 30) he said he can basically put 5 hours a week on learning web dev. The reasons given to me literally were 'cleaning the house takes time' and 'I am reading about my medical supplements online' before I got him angry because I am 'asking too many questions'.

For the last 11 months I have been bombarded with promises. Promises on reading books, on learning how to program, on giving ideas, on finding people that can help and so forth. I also got the 'I understand where you're coming from' and 'I would feel the same' phrases thrown at every level. I got told every time by others to just relax and be compassionate, give time and have empathy cause he is my best friend after all. Oh, I almost forgot the "we'll build a million dollar business" and "I believe in what we're doing" cherries on the top.

I am f***ing sick of them. Yeah, I have a live or die mentality when it comes to the business now, I am by every sense of the word obsessed on it. That's cause I don't want to end up like a looser drinking my weekends away and dying on the rest of the week at some low paying job, cause I have my partially blind which put so much effort into taking care of me that it would kill me if I wouldn't make her proud, cause I have a faith in God that he didn't put me on earth to wither away and gave me talents to sow as the parable goes etc.. I didn't take any minimum wage job during summer, I cut expenses, I avoided as many uni courses as I could without being kicked out just to have more time to put into the business. I fought demons when I came back at 8 in the evening just to open VScode and write some lines before I went to sleep.

And I honestly feel like I am alone and overwhelmed. I feel like even my best friend abandoned me. Like I am pushing something while no one else believes in me. I don't want to do it alone, that's the truth. Admittedly that's why I joined this forum, to find people that I could learn from and share back. I put in all this time and now it feels like I might be in a giant dunning-kruger bubble of confidence while looking like a lunatic pushing a mountain from the outside. And yeah I kinda need some cheering.

But I am tired of excuses, of action faking discussions on 'wHaT iS ThE bESt Way tO lEaRN hOw tO pROgrAM". I am tired of not saying no, you know what, your excuses are bu****it and yes you have 0 clue on how to make a product so I don't want to hear your legal entity garbage . That despite being my best friend and all of the nice promises and 'compassion' on the planet the actions speak the loudest, and they say that you broke your promises.

At the end of the day what should I even do? Kick him out and basically remain almost alone? Find another guy that might be a promise printer also?
And what if I am a lunatic and the problem is me, what if my idea is bad or that am grumpy and mean? Should I look for some experienced businessman to give me advice, or try to prove my idea even further than I did? (I mean what kind of businessman would do that if I had nothing to offer).

There's a saying here, 'good friends are known at times of need' (don't know if it's anywhere else on the globe). I am starting to understand what it means finally
The irony of promises is that despite once being a powerful way to indicate commitment the word has now lost its original meaning. So much so that we now have terms like empty promises, which are essentially lies.

The benefit of doing such alone is that for obvious reasons it is you who reaps the benefits. Contrary to this, with a business partner you must split some portion of the profit. Also, consider that not all good friends are good business partners and vice versa. A good friend might align with your political and moral beliefs but when it comes to building a business they are a restrictive more than anything. Similarly, a good business partner might not align with you in many ways, but together you two can form great ideas.

I will not tell you what to do, but I can tell you that (from experience) making friends business partners is much harder than initially thought. Coming to think about it, friendships aren't really formed on the ability to start/run a business.

The reply written by @Johnny boy also has its degree of truth to it. Stoicism is a mindset essential to master the ability moving on and taking responsibility of what you can. From what it seems, this friend is creating friction. You have your solution, which in this case is to remove him from the equation. May not be fun or ideal, but at least getting rid of the problem is in your control. Other people have it worse, where their parents are a terrible influence on them and yet all they can do is suck it up. See it as an opportunity to find new bonds rather than a loss of a friend
 
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Two Dog

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1. Take a breath. Actually, maybe do that a few times. It really helps.

2. Set a deadline for your partners to accomplish something productive. Tell them exactly what that would look like.

3. Commit to sink or swim with or without them.

4. Repeat until Fastlane.
 

Hadrian9

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Bro come on. You spent a whole year on this? Do you know how much you can do in a year thinking about yourself? You could spend a whole year obsessing about your habits and business. He clearly doesn’t care and just got inspired, and you clearly do. So just be friends like normal and focus on the business stuff yourself. People can be friends without pushing their goals and habits on each other. And do you have any businesses working yourself? Are you making money? Don’t criticize him if the answer is no. And don’t criticize him regardless. The worst way to convince someone is criticism. Even if you did convince him, do you really think he’d want to continue long term?

My best friend loves watching anime. If he insisted everytime I see him that I watch anime, I’d stop being friends with him, cause that’d be annoying. If I talked to him about business ideas, he’d hate me too. If you read the books, you know the rule of business to serve others’ needs and profit. Basically empathy. Same rule applies here. No offense man but I’d stop talking to you too.

Read chapter 1, 2, and 3 of How to win friends and influence people and be introspective.

About the overwhelming part, it’s cause you’ve been having this selfish and criticizing thoughts for a year and are clearly way too emotional investing in this and questioning yourself. Which means you’re most likely getting wrapped into your own thoughts way too much. Great book that’s been helping me and will help you as well.

It’s not his fault at all, it’s your fault for not focusing on yourself. Focus on your own habits and business, apologize and let him do what he wants and be cool again, and you’ll keep a friend, get better socially, become a grounded, better, and less emotional man, and have more time to focus on yourself.
 

Stan_

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You sound like a worker. Complaining a lot and making things into a story.

Bosses eliminate drama and get back on track. Workers create drama and need emotional support. You need to read some stoicism.

When a winner is around bad people, he looks at himself and says "this is my fault, I chose to be around them" and corrects course

I think you're right... Thanks
When I read what I wrote again, it does sound like I'm whining.
About the overwhelming part, it’s cause you’ve been having this selfish and criticizing thoughts for a year and are clearly way too emotional investing in this and questioning yourself. Which means you’re most likely getting wrapped into your own thoughts way too much. Great book that’s been helping me and will help you as well.
Thinking about it, it does sound like I am wrapped up in my thoughts. I'll check out the book , thanks
 
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Gabriel0504

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I admittedly am making this post to vent out but to also get genuine feedback whether I am acting badly or not from whoever reads it (I don't expect many to).

This year started so nicely. An FTM in the previous December made me consider for the first time entrepreneurship. On the 1st of January I happily went to my best friend who kept talking about business topics to discuss my new idea. Sooner or later we 'vowed' to build something from the start that 'will be great'.
We are both college student getting bla bla and bla bla degree. We've started by getting another friend on board, buying some books on businesses and marketing (yeah, action faking mostly) and looking for ideas . Right from the get go I was reading books but he never touched any book. The excuses were always the, 'university takes time' (even though I went to uni also but hey 'my degree is easier' apparently), medical appointments which took 5-6 hours per week, 'buying food', 'cleaning' etc. At first I was compassionate and let it slide more or less, although being kinda surprised that he couldn't even put 1 hour into it.

Month of May comes around and guess what, while I've read some books and struggled to look for business ideas for the past 3 months he read 1/3 of a book and didn't spit out any ideas besides like 1 or 2 by random. Meanwhile I get a good business idea and later that month my FTE with a bunch of drunken degens waking me up at 4 in the morning, recording me and dragging a music speaker in the room because, quote 'F*ck (insert my name) who cares about him' but that's another story. Ok , now I have the idea and make an action plan of what we need to do, but do we start working on it 50/50? No, because he had his undergrad thesis to write (which he didn't finish) and after the END of the uni he 'really needed a vacation' for like 1 and a half weeks. Thankfully I got the reluctant promise all of this time that he will learn web dev from scratch to build the website that we'll need.
In July after this whole vacation I start obviously asking about when will he start doing the website that we'll need (I myself needed to do a lot of learning in the AI field for the idea). He starts going through some little Freecodecamp courses but pretty much ends there because now he goes to the other side of the country (Romania) to work almost minimum wage (like 525$/m) putting clothes on shelves because, 'I really need pocket money'. Keep in mind he lives like me with his parents so his living costs are 0 , but hey when I criticized his time allocation my only answer was 'in life you just need pocket money'. And shockingly for the next 3 months he wouldn't learn anything useful because he was tired from work

He comes back in October (he finished uni, I am in my 4th year of my undergrad) and this time he has nothing else to do on paper. Meanwhile I myself started to learn web dev from scratch to get the job done and the idea actually is starting to take shape. I get on a Whatsapp call with him and the other guy and I angrily ask him if he even knows what we're selling. He hits it in some vague terms and starts asking me about the legal accounting stuff which made me 10x angrier (I honestly want to ask any businessman here, is the legal and accounting stuff so complicated and important that it needs to be discussed when you don't even have a product to sell?). Skip forward to today (Nov. 30) he said he can basically put 5 hours a week on learning web dev. The reasons given to me literally were 'cleaning the house takes time' and 'I am reading about my medical supplements online' before I got him angry because I am 'asking too many questions'.

For the last 11 months I have been bombarded with promises. Promises on reading books, on learning how to program, on giving ideas, on finding people that can help and so forth. I also got the 'I understand where you're coming from' and 'I would feel the same' phrases thrown at every level. I got told every time by others to just relax and be compassionate, give time and have empathy cause he is my best friend after all. Oh, I almost forgot the "we'll build a million dollar business" and "I believe in what we're doing" cherries on the top.

I am f***ing sick of them. Yeah, I have a live or die mentality when it comes to the business now, I am by every sense of the word obsessed on it. That's cause I don't want to end up like a looser drinking my weekends away and dying on the rest of the week at some low paying job, cause I have my partially blind which put so much effort into taking care of me that it would kill me if I wouldn't make her proud, cause I have a faith in God that he didn't put me on earth to wither away and gave me talents to sow as the parable goes etc.. I didn't take any minimum wage job during summer, I cut expenses, I avoided as many uni courses as I could without being kicked out just to have more time to put into the business. I fought demons when I came back at 8 in the evening just to open VScode and write some lines before I went to sleep.

And I honestly feel like I am alone and overwhelmed. I feel like even my best friend abandoned me. Like I am pushing something while no one else believes in me. I don't want to do it alone, that's the truth. Admittedly that's why I joined this forum, to find people that I could learn from and share back. I put in all this time and now it feels like I might be in a giant dunning-kruger bubble of confidence while looking like a lunatic pushing a mountain from the outside. And yeah I kinda need some cheering.

But I am tired of excuses, of action faking discussions on 'wHaT iS ThE bESt Way tO lEaRN hOw tO pROgrAM". I am tired of not saying no, you know what, your excuses are bu****it and yes you have 0 clue on how to make a product so I don't want to hear your legal entity garbage . That despite being my best friend and all of the nice promises and 'compassion' on the planet the actions speak the loudest, and they say that you broke your promises.

At the end of the day what should I even do? Kick him out and basically remain almost alone? Find another guy that might be a promise printer also?
And what if I am a lunatic and the problem is me, what if my idea is bad or that am grumpy and mean? Should I look for some experienced businessman to give me advice, or try to prove my idea even further than I did? (I mean what kind of businessman would do that if I had nothing to offer).

There's a saying here, 'good friends are known at times of need' (don't know if it's anywhere else on the globe). I am starting to understand what it means finally
Man I've been looking for fastlaners from Romania you have no idea, I would love to share thoughts with other romainains about this entire process that we're going through, so if you want to link up and have a chat, just let me know! Wish you all the best!
 

Hadrian9

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I think you're right... Thanks
When I read what I wrote again, it does sound like I'm whining.

Thinking about it, it does sound like I am wrapped up in my thoughts. I'll check out the book , thanks
Great! I hope it helps you out
 

JordanK

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Usually when I get this mad about other people, it's projecting a problem or issue in my own life.

A lot of the wantrepreneur tasks you have completed over the past year are almost completely worthless, but when compared to your friend it makes you feel great but as one of replies here suggests.. you haven't actually built or sold anything.

My advice would be to stop discussing this with those friends and with regards to the friendships either end it or remain friends for the other reasons that initially drew you guys together be that sport, drinking, old school friends etc... forget about them being a part of this section of your life. Compartmentalize it. I have some great friends that I never discuss business with even though it is a huge part of my life.

Don't go kicking them out of the business and have a big dramatic falling out. I guarantee if you don't mention it you'll probably never hear anything from them again about it anyways.

FINALLY, the most important task. Go find one customer in the next 30 days that will pay for your services. Whether that is a service/product you offer, for your knowledge of a particular topic or simply a short term freelance contract for you to complete something within the industry. If you can't secure at least $1 of profit in the next 30 days, then scrap the business/idea.
 
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Shoot

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They say the most important choice you will ever make is a choice of partner. And that includes a partner in enterprise, but like everyone else is saying, this relationship hasn't been consummated. You can just walk away. In fact, that's probably the best way to both keep the friend and make something of yourself faster.

It sounds like they don't actually look for value in their community. And that's the core of business, looking at a community and asking what's missing. A book won't tell you that, it takes quiet observation and smart questions in the places where you spend your most valuable time. Or just the places where you work. A job related to your degree will be both a font of ideas -- which you're already an expert in executing, which means you have possession of a market with a high barrier to entry -- and a way to fund a new business.

tl;dr: Just find new partners after you have the idea. You're sitting on a goldmine of ideas, which you will begin digging if you can get some work related to your field of study.
 

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