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Lurking for quite some time, here’s my intro

resrock

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Hello everyone.

My name is Justin. I’ve been lurking in and around these forums for a few months now.

I’m currently sitting at the bottom of a pretty big hole, one I primarily dug myself.

For the sake of brevity, let’s just say there’s no more dirt to shovel out.

I’ve put off this intro primarily because I didn’t have any value to add and quite frankly, I’m not sure if I do now.

What I do know is I have gained value from this forum and the books. They’ve changed the way I look at many things which has shed some much needed light on a path that was pitch back just a few months back.

I look forward to continuing to learn, practice, and execute the fundamental lessons of this community and ultimately have an opportunity to give back to it one day.

Thanks for reading!
 
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jon.M

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Hey Justin, welcome to the forum. Would you be open to share something about the hole you've dug for yourself? Maybe we'll be able to support you in some way. I'm sure most of us have been in bad places more than once.

Keep coming here and give your perspective on things. There's always value you can add and I'm looking forward to seeing you around.
 

ZCP

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Hey Justin!

Just get started. Tell your story. Pick a path. Start working.

You get there by starting.
 

MJ DeMarco

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resrock

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Hey Justin, welcome to the forum. Would you be open to share something about the hole you've dug for yourself? Maybe we'll be able to support you in some way. I'm sure most of us have been in bad places more than once.

Keep coming here and give your perspective on things. There's always value you can add and I'm looking forward to seeing you around.

What's the hole? TLDR is fine!

Welcome to the forum J!

Hey guys. Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm surprised to say the least that my post didn't get buried.

Forgive me if I am a bit scattered, it's late and I'm severely sleep deprived (Newborn)

The TLDR version is I've slowly but surely lost control of my financial situation because of the avoidance of a few uncomfortable but unquestionably doable tasks/actions.

To elaborate,

I'm quickly learning I've been 'stuck' because my efforts were misguided. I was and have been chasing the money, working from a point of desperation rather than trying to solve actual problems.

My mission above all is to provide for my children. I want them to have as much of my time as possible because they deserve it and being a dad is awesome. However, I'm currently and shamefully trading all the time I can to working an hourly job as is my wife. The cost of living quite literally is eating our entire incomes down to every last cent.

While I work from home which essentially eliminates the need for day care, my girls have a front row seat as to why you don't want to work for someone else. I catch the words "daddy's busy" slip from my mouth way to often throughout the day and it makes me sick to think about.

I have no choice. If I don't put in the hours, ends won't meet and the little we have won't be sustainable. I do not accept this to be my reality even if it is for the moment.

My relationships with my girls and my wife are being damaged by the families money issues. I wasted a lot of time 'fixing' these issues by pouring all my energy in to chasing shinny objects and easy fast money. It's obviously gotten me nowhere.

Now that I am starting to identify some of the mistakes I've been making, I'm just going to loosely quote George W. and say "fool me once, shame on...something something...I won't be fooled again".

I quite literally have hemorrhaged everything I was to lose both in assets and dignity. That's why I said there was "no more dirt". The only place left to go is up out of this hole. Rather than climbing out of it, I'm thinking that building a rocket ship to launch out of it is more appropriate at this point.

Thank you for the replies and general interest, I genuinely appreciate all of them.
 

whiz

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My name is Justin too. It's a great name. Tremendous.

Find a local business selling shit - like a thrift store or a car dealership or whatever.

Take the pics from their website and put em up on OfferUp and Letgo and Craigslist and shit like that.

Get someone interested and tell them where they can get the item.

Just posting this if you have absolutely no ideas... it's an easy way to provide value to both a consumer and a business owner that you can do within the next 24 hours.

Anyways, good luck.
 
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Timmy C

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Hello everyone.

My name is Justin. I’ve been lurking in and around these forums for a few months now.

I’m currently sitting at the bottom of a pretty big hole, one I primarily dug myself.

For the sake of brevity, let’s just say there’s no more dirt to shovel out.

I’ve put off this intro primarily because I didn’t have any value to add and quite frankly, I’m not sure if I do now.

What I do know is I have gained value from this forum and the books. They’ve changed the way I look at many things which has shed some much needed light on a path that was pitch back just a few months back.

I look forward to continuing to learn, practice, and execute the fundamental lessons of this community and ultimately have an opportunity to give back to it one day.

Thanks for reading!


Great intro!

Keep your chin up.

Welcome.
 

Bekit

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Hey guys. Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm surprised to say the least that my post didn't get buried.

Forgive me if I am a bit scattered, it's late and I'm severely sleep deprived (Newborn)

The TLDR version is I've slowly but surely lost control of my financial situation because of the avoidance of a few uncomfortable but unquestionably doable tasks/actions.

To elaborate,

I'm quickly learning I've been 'stuck' because my efforts were misguided. I was and have been chasing the money, working from a point of desperation rather than trying to solve actual problems.

My mission above all is to provide for my children. I want them to have as much of my time as possible because they deserve it and being a dad is awesome. However, I'm currently and shamefully trading all the time I can to working an hourly job as is my wife. The cost of living quite literally is eating our entire incomes down to every last cent.

While I work from home which essentially eliminates the need for day care, my girls have a front row seat as to why you don't want to work for someone else. I catch the words "daddy's busy" slip from my mouth way to often throughout the day and it makes me sick to think about.

I have no choice. If I don't put in the hours, ends won't meet and the little we have won't be sustainable. I do not accept this to be my reality even if it is for the moment.

My relationships with my girls and my wife are being damaged by the families money issues. I wasted a lot of time 'fixing' these issues by pouring all my energy in to chasing shinny objects and easy fast money. It's obviously gotten me nowhere.

Now that I am starting to identify some of the mistakes I've been making, I'm just going to loosely quote George W. and say "fool me once, shame on...something something...I won't be fooled again".

I quite literally have hemorrhaged everything I was to lose both in assets and dignity. That's why I said there was "no more dirt". The only place left to go is up out of this hole. Rather than climbing out of it, I'm thinking that building a rocket ship to launch out of it is more appropriate at this point.

Thank you for the replies and general interest, I genuinely appreciate all of them.

Hi Justin, and welcome to the forum. Thanks for sharing your story.

That's a rough spot to be in. I'm in a similar one, though I don't have kids. Stuck working very long hours just to make ends meet, and finding it very, very hard to carve out any space for taking the right kind of actions to build a fastlane business (or even a side gig, or even land one freelancing client, for that matter). It's overwhelming, frustrating, and scary to be in that place.

You said you've poured a lot of energy into chasing shiny objects. Do you mind sharing what didn't work? Was it just business ideas that didn't succeed? Failure to execute? Overloaded/stretched too thin?

What are the few uncomfortable but unquestionably doable tasks/actions that you've been avoiding?

Have you reflected on where this resistance is coming from? Is it lack of knowledge? Poor systems? Failure to build a habit?

Can you turn that around? Sounds like if the avoidance of these actions got you in the spot where you're at, the correction of that could get you back out of the hole.

You said, "I'm thinking that building a rocket ship to launch out of it is more appropriate at this point." Yes, we all believe in the fastlane/rocket-ship version of getting out of our current "mess," but is the need to build something complex and amazing like a rocket ship actually paralyzing you from the ability to simply start climbing? What is your rocket ship?

A lot of what you're describing sounds like mindset (e.g. language like "I have no choice"). Are there some small wins that you could set up for yourself so that you can start winning? You are an adult. You have choices. And you can set yourself into a trajectory now that will lead to a different outcome.

Which are the highest-leverage actions for you to take? Start tracking how much time in your calendar you actually devote to those actions, and look for ways to increase the amount of time you're spending on those things.

What are your job skills? Could you land a job that pays 4x your current salary so that you can work the same number of hours but free up the income to start investing in your fastlane business? (I say 4x because you'll need money for daycare if you go this route... but you don't see your girls anyway... so could it be a way to clear your head and get more leverage financially?)
 

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