MJ was right! Lessons i am learning first hand.

[ejames]

I know I don't post here alot since I am super busy with my startup but we are starting to hit huge scales.

One lesson that we are currently experiencing from MJs book is satisfying the selfishness of others will make your incredibly wealth!

We currently have customers beating our doors down demanding cash, competitors trying to hack our site and its only the beginning to say the least.

I think its safe to say we dont have a tail wind behind us but more like a whirlwind behind us.

Here is what one customer said about our site.

"This was awesome! I was having such a very difficult time getting my gift card traded on any other website and then I found these guys. I much prefer to get my money transferred to my paypal because it was so fast. Usually other places take 5-10 business days because they mail you a check, which is horrible, and takes too long. Here it only took two days and I was able to buy some food and buy a few things online. If I ever get another gift card I am 100% coming back recommending it to my friends. If anyone doubts this, you shouldn't it worked and I'll personally tell everyone who asks me that it is worth it"


Gabriel Rosario gave Ejgiftcards 5 stars. Check out the full review...


So, yeah mj was 100% spot on. If you satisfy the selfishness of others that is your golden ticket.


Anyway it looks like we might be hitting 1MM in revenue by the end of the year if not exceed it.

 

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[BD64]

Congrats on the success, but is this thread meant to actually provide value or brag?

One lesson that we are currently experiencing from MJs book is satisfying the selfishness of others will make your incredibly wealth!

That is the only thing about lessons. Don't tell me your biz is hitting $1MM and that's all that you can share. I would love to hear more, in a bit more detail. What challenges and hurdles did you face? Failure? Explain some of your lessons, etc.

 

[ZF Lee]

We currently have customers beating our doors down demanding cash, competitors trying to hack our site and its only the beginning to say the least.

Congrats on your success, but competitors hacking???
How bad?
Damn, I hope you don't need to go legal on them :/

 

[ejames]

Congrats on your success, but competitors hacking???
How bad?
Damn, I hope you don't need to go legal on them :/

Well we traced it we think its giftcardzen but its not even worth the effort to investigate further. We got protection from cloudflare so the $200 per month we are paying is well worth it. We also have a Web application firewall installed so that helps a great deal. We actually took a hit a few months ago and servers went down for two complete days. Thats two days with no incoming orders, which probably came up about 15-20k in lost orders.

 

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[ejames]

Congrats on the success, but is this thread meant to actually provide value or brag?



That is the only thing about lessons. Don't tell me your biz is hitting $1MM and that's all that you can share. I would love to hear more, in a bit more detail. What challenges and hurdles did you face? Failure? Explain some of your lessons, etc.

Bragging? No not at all. I was just saying that i learned first hand that helping others or satisfying their selfish needs will make you wealthy which is what MJ said in his book.


Aside from Industry specific challenges I think the biggest lesson I learned this year was patience. Good things take time to happen and success doesn't happen over night. Before with my other business ventures that didn't work out, we were being very impatient and we violated some of the fastlane commandments.

We are currently in our second year of business and we still have a long way to go. Our goal for next year is to double our rev. I say rev because we are reinvesting all profits back into this business.


Another lesson I learned is to keep personal expenses low. My apartment in NYC was costing me 5k a month which I gave up and moved into a tiny room. I also had to give up partying temporarily (that was about 15k expense per month) so that I can focus on the business.

So I guess my main takeaways that I learned so far is

1. Patience.
2. Keep personal expenses low.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

mj was right.

Hope you don't mind, but I printed this out 1,000 times and giving it to my significant other.

All kidding aside, congrats.

So I guess my main takeaways that I learned so far is

1. Patience.
2. Keep personal expenses low.

Great move in dumping the $5,000 apartment. That investment savings will pay 1000s fold.

 

[TKDTyler]

Another lesson I learned is to keep personal expenses low. My apartment in NYC was costing me 5k a month which I gave up and moved into a tiny room. I also had to give up partying temporarily (that was about 15k expense per month) so that I can focus on the business.

What kind of parties are you going to that you spend the equivalent of $500 a day?

 

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[ejames]

Hope you don't mind, but I printed this out 1,000 times and giving it to my significant other.

All kidding aside, congrats.



Great move in dumping the $5,000 apartment. That investment savings will pay 1000s fold.

Absolutely! I am using that to reinvest in the company.

 

[ejames]

What kind of parties are you going to that you spend the equivalent of $500 a day?

Lots of high end clubs in NYC where a shot of tequila is $20.00 and a shot of Jonny blue is $85.00. Sometimes to get in you have to spend a 2k minimum on a table. I wish i could kick my younger self! I spent $10k in one friggin night! WTF!? Moving was good for me because hanging out with the wrong crowd only brings you down especially when your buying drinks for everyone etc which is absolutely not worth it. MJs book gave me a 180 degree paradigm shift.

Before I was equating high income === wealth which is a false statement. Yes I had a very very good income right out of college with 0 financial literacy which at 23 spells disaster.

This time I am doing things differently though.

 

[TKDTyler]

Lots of high end clubs in NYC where a shot of tequila is $20.00 and a shot of Jonny blue is $85.00. Sometimes to get in you have to spend a 2k minimum on a table. I wish i could kick my younger self! I spent $10k in one friggin night! WTF!? Moving was good for me because hanging out with the wrong crowd only brings you down especially when your buying drinks for everyone etc which is absolutely not worth it. MJs book gave me a 180 degree paradigm shift.

Before I was equating high income === wealth which is a false statement. Yes I had a very very good income right out of college with 0 financial literacy which at 23 spells disaster.

This time I am doing things differently though.

Ahh that makes a lot more sense. I'm glad you figured it out!

Seems like a lot of us go through some stage of spending money terribly. I think after college I bought a 5k sound system for no reason lol

 

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[ejames]

Ahh that makes a lot more sense. I'm glad you figured it out!

Seems like a lot of us go through some stage of spending money terribly. I think after college I bought a 5k sound system for no reason lol

Yup! You live and you learn. I F*** up alot!

 

[MattR82]

Holy crap that's a lot to spend on partying lol.

I was the same though, my first two to three years in oil and gas and I blew through a few hundred k traveling the world partying sidewalk style. Idiot.

Congrats man, cool to hear your success story, and a good point on identifying a selfish need.