Luke Saville
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Hello, I'm Luke. I'm new here to the Fastlane Forum, and I’m at risk of losing $50,000. MJ wanted my story, so here it goes:
I just turned 18 years old, and until 9 months ago, was preparing myself to be one of the fattest cows the Slowlane slaughterhouse had ever seen. I had invested $1000 of my own birthday and Christmas money in the stock market when I was twelve. For one of my school years, specifically the last quarter, which included the hardest tests, quizzes, and final exams, I averaged 100.2% across all my classes. I tried exceptionally hard in school because I didn’t see any other path than a high-paying job. My parents laid down the Slowlane propaganda thick to say the least.
Furthermore, my environment was set up to support the belief in the Slowlane. Both my parents are white-collar healthcare workers making about 100k a year with great benefits (because slaving away 30 hours a week instead of 40 is such a great thing). They own rental properties that generate a small cash flow every month with about 6-12% ROI. They both came from families where the father tried and failed miserably at business, causing bankruptcy or near it for both. As such, they both dislike the idea of entrepreneurship, viewing it as excessively risky.
Moreover, when I was young, I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, a recommendation of my Dad and an older multi-millionaire family friend who acquired most of his wealth through highly leveraged real estate investments, which reinforced my pre-conceived notions regarding wealth. Those notions were that wealth is acquired passively in combination with a high-paying job and other Slowlane dogma.
Once I could drive, I went to as many real estate conferences in my local area as I could.
But after reading TMF , my perspective changed when I walked into the next conference. I didn’t see millionaires who had the secret to success; I saw 50, 70, hell, even 90-year-old people in there who had made an awful trade, their time and health for money. I haven’t returned since because I asked myself, “Would I trade places with anybody here?” and the answer at every conference I went to was “NO!”
Last summer, I got a part-time job at a snack shack at a country club. And I felt like I was surrounded by idiots the whole time I was working there. The business was not profitable, and yet there were no discussions about customer satisfaction or value. Every single instruction was about cutting costs.
Seriously, the membership fee is about $4k a year for one family, and their priority was saving $30 a year by withholding utensils or sauce packets, instead of increasing retention/customer satisfaction.
It was also at this job where I had my FTE, where my manager was okay with ruining the $625 leather seats in my car to save the company 22 cents.
Combined with awful employee communication and micromanaging, I reduced my shifts as much as I could without being forced by my parents to get a second job.
I learned two really important lessons, though:
1. The pain of working a job, and
2. If people like this are my competition, then I could improve so much over them, even with an identical product.
About 9 months ago, I came across The Millionaire Fastlane , and then 8 months ago, I started repairing and reselling computers on Facebook Marketplace. I knew from the start that the idea was bad (it scores a 13/100 on grademybusinessidea), but I continued to do it as
1. It paid much better than any minimum wage job, as measured per hour of my time, at about $70 in profit per hour.
2. I gained some valuable business lessons and experience on something low-stakes.
3. I figured I was going to fail a lot, and wanted to get those failures out of the way, but didn't want my failures to be due to a skill issue. I was already experienced in major aspects of reselling computers on Facebook Marketplace. I was experienced in sales/negotiation/communication. After all, I studied FBI Hostage Negotiation for 2 years (15-17) before I read TMF, because I figured elite communication would be useful regardless of what I do, and I was skilled with computers because I had been tinkering with them since I was 13.
Now I'm sure that listing all that out makes it sound like I'm defending my God-awful decision to work about 1 hour a week on average and into a business that doesn't make CENTS (Massive issues with need, entry, third-party dependency, T.A.M, limited-zero repeat use, not enough margin to justify advertising or outsourcing, and the biggest issue, difficulty to replicate because my supply is fully dependent on other people listing used computers)
Overall, I only achieved about $2.5k in net profit.
Now, I have pressure to create a profitable business with much larger sales numbers by July because of my parents.
For context, my parents are willing to cover my college for 2 years as long as I get a degree they approve of. I don't think that college is the best use of $50k for a variety of reasons, so I want to use the $50k for entrepreneurship.
My Dad stated that if I could bring proof of a profitable business with real sales and some net margin (I believe he said about 40-60k in sales), he would consider re-appropriating the $50,000 he would have spent on my college to give to me to invest in my business.
Failure to meet the sales target and skipping college will lead to me being kicked out of the house, the car I drive taken away, and all other expenses my parents pay for me gone until I stop messing around and attend college.
I live with my parents, and they pay for all of my expenses (yes, I know I'm privileged), so keeping $500 as an emergency backup, I have about $3.5k in free capital to use. My dual-enrollment college/high-school (Associate's in Finance) takes me 12.5 hours a week on average, according to my tracking software, which leaves me plenty of time to run a business.
Now for the part you've heard 1000 times, where a young person gets on The Fastlane Forum and wants someone to hold their hand and act like an omniscient deity who walks them through every single detail.
Look, I'm so inexperienced that I'm certain my questions will be abysmal. I'm guessing these are questions that will need to be answered with questions. Assuming these questions are indeed awful, please include better questions for me to ask myself in the replies or specific resources.
In my situation, is it realistic to get $60k in sales in 6 months?
What specific business models and potential ideas would be best, and why?
I just turned 18 years old, and until 9 months ago, was preparing myself to be one of the fattest cows the Slowlane slaughterhouse had ever seen. I had invested $1000 of my own birthday and Christmas money in the stock market when I was twelve. For one of my school years, specifically the last quarter, which included the hardest tests, quizzes, and final exams, I averaged 100.2% across all my classes. I tried exceptionally hard in school because I didn’t see any other path than a high-paying job. My parents laid down the Slowlane propaganda thick to say the least.
Furthermore, my environment was set up to support the belief in the Slowlane. Both my parents are white-collar healthcare workers making about 100k a year with great benefits (because slaving away 30 hours a week instead of 40 is such a great thing). They own rental properties that generate a small cash flow every month with about 6-12% ROI. They both came from families where the father tried and failed miserably at business, causing bankruptcy or near it for both. As such, they both dislike the idea of entrepreneurship, viewing it as excessively risky.
Moreover, when I was young, I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, a recommendation of my Dad and an older multi-millionaire family friend who acquired most of his wealth through highly leveraged real estate investments, which reinforced my pre-conceived notions regarding wealth. Those notions were that wealth is acquired passively in combination with a high-paying job and other Slowlane dogma.
Once I could drive, I went to as many real estate conferences in my local area as I could.
But after reading TMF , my perspective changed when I walked into the next conference. I didn’t see millionaires who had the secret to success; I saw 50, 70, hell, even 90-year-old people in there who had made an awful trade, their time and health for money. I haven’t returned since because I asked myself, “Would I trade places with anybody here?” and the answer at every conference I went to was “NO!”
Last summer, I got a part-time job at a snack shack at a country club. And I felt like I was surrounded by idiots the whole time I was working there. The business was not profitable, and yet there were no discussions about customer satisfaction or value. Every single instruction was about cutting costs.
Seriously, the membership fee is about $4k a year for one family, and their priority was saving $30 a year by withholding utensils or sauce packets, instead of increasing retention/customer satisfaction.
It was also at this job where I had my FTE, where my manager was okay with ruining the $625 leather seats in my car to save the company 22 cents.
Combined with awful employee communication and micromanaging, I reduced my shifts as much as I could without being forced by my parents to get a second job.
I learned two really important lessons, though:
1. The pain of working a job, and
2. If people like this are my competition, then I could improve so much over them, even with an identical product.
About 9 months ago, I came across The Millionaire Fastlane , and then 8 months ago, I started repairing and reselling computers on Facebook Marketplace. I knew from the start that the idea was bad (it scores a 13/100 on grademybusinessidea), but I continued to do it as
1. It paid much better than any minimum wage job, as measured per hour of my time, at about $70 in profit per hour.
2. I gained some valuable business lessons and experience on something low-stakes.
3. I figured I was going to fail a lot, and wanted to get those failures out of the way, but didn't want my failures to be due to a skill issue. I was already experienced in major aspects of reselling computers on Facebook Marketplace. I was experienced in sales/negotiation/communication. After all, I studied FBI Hostage Negotiation for 2 years (15-17) before I read TMF, because I figured elite communication would be useful regardless of what I do, and I was skilled with computers because I had been tinkering with them since I was 13.
Now I'm sure that listing all that out makes it sound like I'm defending my God-awful decision to work about 1 hour a week on average and into a business that doesn't make CENTS (Massive issues with need, entry, third-party dependency, T.A.M, limited-zero repeat use, not enough margin to justify advertising or outsourcing, and the biggest issue, difficulty to replicate because my supply is fully dependent on other people listing used computers)
Overall, I only achieved about $2.5k in net profit.
Now, I have pressure to create a profitable business with much larger sales numbers by July because of my parents.
For context, my parents are willing to cover my college for 2 years as long as I get a degree they approve of. I don't think that college is the best use of $50k for a variety of reasons, so I want to use the $50k for entrepreneurship.
My Dad stated that if I could bring proof of a profitable business with real sales and some net margin (I believe he said about 40-60k in sales), he would consider re-appropriating the $50,000 he would have spent on my college to give to me to invest in my business.
Failure to meet the sales target and skipping college will lead to me being kicked out of the house, the car I drive taken away, and all other expenses my parents pay for me gone until I stop messing around and attend college.
I live with my parents, and they pay for all of my expenses (yes, I know I'm privileged), so keeping $500 as an emergency backup, I have about $3.5k in free capital to use. My dual-enrollment college/high-school (Associate's in Finance) takes me 12.5 hours a week on average, according to my tracking software, which leaves me plenty of time to run a business.
Now for the part you've heard 1000 times, where a young person gets on The Fastlane Forum and wants someone to hold their hand and act like an omniscient deity who walks them through every single detail.
Look, I'm so inexperienced that I'm certain my questions will be abysmal. I'm guessing these are questions that will need to be answered with questions. Assuming these questions are indeed awful, please include better questions for me to ask myself in the replies or specific resources.
In my situation, is it realistic to get $60k in sales in 6 months?
What specific business models and potential ideas would be best, and why?
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