Hello everyone. I've been posting here for over 2 years but I've been pursuing wealth and financial freedom for over 3 years. I discovered this forum while trying to search for business info and I stayed this long because this forum is full of great advice and articles.
However, I will be leaving now because I feel like I've learned everything that I need to learn or could learn from being here and I feel like my coming here from this point onward would just be a waste of time. I've had a long struggle over the years and as a parting gift I'd like to detail some of my mistakes and the lessons that I've learned to help out others.
Mistake #1 (Not checking to see if a product/idea exists or if it's somewhat defensible once built)
I thought that if I came up with a good or great idea that I should pursue it immediately. I was burned several times by doing this. After spending weeks or months working on a website or project I would find out that a similar business already exists and that it would be next to impossible to gain significant market share without offering the customers in that market a much better deal than the companies already in existence were offering, which I wasn't able to do.
To give you an example of what I mean, I had the idea to build a website and app that would enable Westerners and other people seeking to manufacture goods in China and other countries like Vietnam, India, etc. to describe what they were looking for or wanted developed and have the managers of factories bid on the project, giving them the ability to get the cheapest price without having to directly call up the factories and try to negotiate.
Negotiating with factory owners/managers in China is typically very stressful as not only is there a language barrier, but the business culture in China is much different to the one in the U.S.
Here, we sign contracts after a deal is reached, whereas in China they expect you to sign a contract before negotiations begin; no American wishes to sign his or her name to a contract without knowing what kind of deal they'll be getting.
Another cultural difference is that Chinese like to negotiate hard on every single aspect of the deal, making you work hard to save every last penny.
I hoped to remove some of these barriers and make it easier for Americans to produce goods in China. I would receive a small percentage of every transaction, like 5%, but I was willing to receive a smaller percentage on really big deals.
So, I spent several months coding the website and smartphone app and hiring freelancers to perform coding tasks that I wasn't able to do. After spending countless hours and thousands of dollars I was prepared to launch my service.
However, a week before I launched Alibaba, which is the world's biggest website for outsourcing released the exact same functionality that I was building for free. Not only that, they had a large team of employees that were helping with actively finding products and factories to help satisfy their clients.
Whereas my app/website depending on factories actively seeking out orders and placing bids, Alibaba's system automatically showed these orders to factories, and they have the largest collection of factories signed up on the internet, making it easy for their existing customers to see orders. On the other hand I would have to call factories or email them to get them to sign up, because without an active user base there wouldn't be any point in having a great service.
I tried to go ahead with my plan anyways but I was turned down by factories left and right who didn't want to pay for a service that Alibaba was giving them for free.
I was devastated by this setback and sulked for several months afterwards, figuring that there was no point in trying if the larger businesses could just give customers the same product I was offering either for free or much cheaper than I was capable of doing, since they had much more resources than I did. Even if the idea is a new one, they could build it much faster than I could so if the idea isn't defensible, then there's no point in building the product.
For instance, there was an article about a company that was posted here a few days ago which was based on selling products through Pinterest. No doubt this can be a very profitable business, but the risk is too great since Pinterest can just shut them down at any moment and decide to implement a similar system just as Twitter has been shutting down companies that operate on their API so that they can generate more revenue themselves.
If you play in another companies sandbox, don't get surprised if they kick you out of it or put such severe restrictions on you that your business will be a shell of it's former self. Go for something defensible and also try to come up with a unique idea or at least a good idea that you can implement yourself.
Mistake #2 (Trying to register a business, buy foreign domain names, trademarks, etc. right away.)
For the business above that I just described, I registered the trademark, started a California LLC(huge mistake), and did all the legal requirements because I was certain that it would succeed and I didn't want anyone stealing my intellectual property or registering the business name before I did.
Not only did the business fail, but in California you're expect to pay all the necessary taxes whether or not you generate any revenue so I was out over $1,000 without having earned a single penny. Had I waited to test the idea first I could have saved myself a lot of money, not to mention also registering an LLC in California is a bad idea either way.
The best two states to register an LLC are Delaware and Nevada, especially if you're planning on becoming a large company.
Mistake #3 (Depending on freelancers to build my website/apps)
The lure of hiring freelancers to build your site or app for you can be very enticing but it's usually a bad idea for several reasons. Most freelancers are not very good programmers, and will end up wasting your time and money bidding on your projects even though they know that they can't fulfill it.
They figure that they'll learn how to build what you want along the way but they act very confident when bidding on the project in the first place, making you think that they know what they're doing. Also, even if a freelancer knows how to program and comes cheap, which is extremely rare, you'll still have issues if you want to add extra features or hire a different programmer to work on your site and they have trouble working with someone else's code or don't know how to add the necessary feature.
My suggestion is to learn how to program. It's painful at first but by going to sites like Stackoverflow, watching tutorial videos and experimenting yourself, you'll learn how to become a good(not great) programmer in less than a year if you devote at least one hour a day to this endeavor.
A year might seem like a long time but you'll be surprised how quickly time goes by, just think if you had started learning how to program a year ago you'd be where you want to be by now. In the meantime you can throw up a basic landing page with a coming soon message, to see if people are interested in the products that you want to build; by doing this you can gauge interest without actually building the site or app ahead of time.
This prevents you from wasting your time building a product or service that nobody wants. The founder of Zappos didn't know how to program, nor did he have a warehouse full of shoes to sell. He wanted to test out his idea to see if people were interested in buying shoes online so he threw up a basic website with only a few shoes listed on it and when someone ordered one he would physically go to a shoe store like Reebok and buy that shoe and mail it to them.
After establishing that there was interest he then hired programmers to build a complete site and took out loans to sell more shoes at a cheaper price. First establish a need then devote more time and resources to it.
Mistake #4 - Letting my ego prevent me from trying aka fear of failure.
There were many times when I backed off an idea or project because I was worried about failing, or not put forth as much effort as I should have because I figured there's no point since I'd fail anyways. The worst was when the idea would involve using my real name, which I didn't want out there because I didn't want my real life friends knowing that I was trying to become an entrepreneur; I wanted to hide my failures.
The biggest obstacle that you will encounter in your path to wealth and entrepreneurial success is a fear of failure. Everybody has it; even people who've succeeded already. But, the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that the successful people experience a fear of failure but push through anyway whereas the unsuccessful people tend to let this fear hamper their efforts; they'd rather not try and preserve their ego than to risk failing.
My tip for dealing with your fear of failure is to view failure as a learning experience. The more times you fail, the more you'll learn. No one starts off knowing everything; the best way to become a successful entrepreneur is not by reading books or articles; it's by getting out there and trying to build something and attract customers. You'll fail a lot along the way but with each failure you'll become a better entrepreneur.
Mistake #5 - (Wasting too much time on things not related to my business)
A lot of people have mentioned this before but if you want to succeed you need to devote nearly 100% of your waking hours to your business. Don't cut yourself off from the world completely as you might go crazy, but try to avoid spending too much time hanging out with friends, watching television, etc. as these things will just waste your time and hold you back from where you want to be.
These same friends that you waste so much time hanging out with will be in the same situation 5 years from now; do you want to be there with them slaving away and taking orders from someone else throughout the week just to have a couple of days of fun during the weekend, or do you want to be fulfilling your dreams and living an amazing life?
It took me a long time to figure the above info out but after 3 long years I've finally reached my destination and will be spending the next year or so really ramping up my efforts since I've created a business that's making me money like crazy without having to invest much money into it and I'll be raising money from investors soon to help fuel further growth to make this a company worth billions.
I don't mention this to show off, but it's the reason why I'm leaving since I can't afford to waste anymore time on this forum when I need to focus and devote almost 100% of my waking time to my business to help it become huge.
I'll answer any follow up questions anyone has on this thread but after that I'll be off permanently. I'd like to thank everyone here who's posted good advice over the years on this forum as I've learned a lot while I've been here and I hope this thread will prove useful to others on the path.
However, I will be leaving now because I feel like I've learned everything that I need to learn or could learn from being here and I feel like my coming here from this point onward would just be a waste of time. I've had a long struggle over the years and as a parting gift I'd like to detail some of my mistakes and the lessons that I've learned to help out others.
Mistake #1 (Not checking to see if a product/idea exists or if it's somewhat defensible once built)
I thought that if I came up with a good or great idea that I should pursue it immediately. I was burned several times by doing this. After spending weeks or months working on a website or project I would find out that a similar business already exists and that it would be next to impossible to gain significant market share without offering the customers in that market a much better deal than the companies already in existence were offering, which I wasn't able to do.
To give you an example of what I mean, I had the idea to build a website and app that would enable Westerners and other people seeking to manufacture goods in China and other countries like Vietnam, India, etc. to describe what they were looking for or wanted developed and have the managers of factories bid on the project, giving them the ability to get the cheapest price without having to directly call up the factories and try to negotiate.
Negotiating with factory owners/managers in China is typically very stressful as not only is there a language barrier, but the business culture in China is much different to the one in the U.S.
Here, we sign contracts after a deal is reached, whereas in China they expect you to sign a contract before negotiations begin; no American wishes to sign his or her name to a contract without knowing what kind of deal they'll be getting.
Another cultural difference is that Chinese like to negotiate hard on every single aspect of the deal, making you work hard to save every last penny.
I hoped to remove some of these barriers and make it easier for Americans to produce goods in China. I would receive a small percentage of every transaction, like 5%, but I was willing to receive a smaller percentage on really big deals.
So, I spent several months coding the website and smartphone app and hiring freelancers to perform coding tasks that I wasn't able to do. After spending countless hours and thousands of dollars I was prepared to launch my service.
However, a week before I launched Alibaba, which is the world's biggest website for outsourcing released the exact same functionality that I was building for free. Not only that, they had a large team of employees that were helping with actively finding products and factories to help satisfy their clients.
Whereas my app/website depending on factories actively seeking out orders and placing bids, Alibaba's system automatically showed these orders to factories, and they have the largest collection of factories signed up on the internet, making it easy for their existing customers to see orders. On the other hand I would have to call factories or email them to get them to sign up, because without an active user base there wouldn't be any point in having a great service.
I tried to go ahead with my plan anyways but I was turned down by factories left and right who didn't want to pay for a service that Alibaba was giving them for free.
I was devastated by this setback and sulked for several months afterwards, figuring that there was no point in trying if the larger businesses could just give customers the same product I was offering either for free or much cheaper than I was capable of doing, since they had much more resources than I did. Even if the idea is a new one, they could build it much faster than I could so if the idea isn't defensible, then there's no point in building the product.
For instance, there was an article about a company that was posted here a few days ago which was based on selling products through Pinterest. No doubt this can be a very profitable business, but the risk is too great since Pinterest can just shut them down at any moment and decide to implement a similar system just as Twitter has been shutting down companies that operate on their API so that they can generate more revenue themselves.
If you play in another companies sandbox, don't get surprised if they kick you out of it or put such severe restrictions on you that your business will be a shell of it's former self. Go for something defensible and also try to come up with a unique idea or at least a good idea that you can implement yourself.
Mistake #2 (Trying to register a business, buy foreign domain names, trademarks, etc. right away.)
For the business above that I just described, I registered the trademark, started a California LLC(huge mistake), and did all the legal requirements because I was certain that it would succeed and I didn't want anyone stealing my intellectual property or registering the business name before I did.
Not only did the business fail, but in California you're expect to pay all the necessary taxes whether or not you generate any revenue so I was out over $1,000 without having earned a single penny. Had I waited to test the idea first I could have saved myself a lot of money, not to mention also registering an LLC in California is a bad idea either way.
The best two states to register an LLC are Delaware and Nevada, especially if you're planning on becoming a large company.
Mistake #3 (Depending on freelancers to build my website/apps)
The lure of hiring freelancers to build your site or app for you can be very enticing but it's usually a bad idea for several reasons. Most freelancers are not very good programmers, and will end up wasting your time and money bidding on your projects even though they know that they can't fulfill it.
They figure that they'll learn how to build what you want along the way but they act very confident when bidding on the project in the first place, making you think that they know what they're doing. Also, even if a freelancer knows how to program and comes cheap, which is extremely rare, you'll still have issues if you want to add extra features or hire a different programmer to work on your site and they have trouble working with someone else's code or don't know how to add the necessary feature.
My suggestion is to learn how to program. It's painful at first but by going to sites like Stackoverflow, watching tutorial videos and experimenting yourself, you'll learn how to become a good(not great) programmer in less than a year if you devote at least one hour a day to this endeavor.
A year might seem like a long time but you'll be surprised how quickly time goes by, just think if you had started learning how to program a year ago you'd be where you want to be by now. In the meantime you can throw up a basic landing page with a coming soon message, to see if people are interested in the products that you want to build; by doing this you can gauge interest without actually building the site or app ahead of time.
This prevents you from wasting your time building a product or service that nobody wants. The founder of Zappos didn't know how to program, nor did he have a warehouse full of shoes to sell. He wanted to test out his idea to see if people were interested in buying shoes online so he threw up a basic website with only a few shoes listed on it and when someone ordered one he would physically go to a shoe store like Reebok and buy that shoe and mail it to them.
After establishing that there was interest he then hired programmers to build a complete site and took out loans to sell more shoes at a cheaper price. First establish a need then devote more time and resources to it.
Mistake #4 - Letting my ego prevent me from trying aka fear of failure.
There were many times when I backed off an idea or project because I was worried about failing, or not put forth as much effort as I should have because I figured there's no point since I'd fail anyways. The worst was when the idea would involve using my real name, which I didn't want out there because I didn't want my real life friends knowing that I was trying to become an entrepreneur; I wanted to hide my failures.
The biggest obstacle that you will encounter in your path to wealth and entrepreneurial success is a fear of failure. Everybody has it; even people who've succeeded already. But, the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that the successful people experience a fear of failure but push through anyway whereas the unsuccessful people tend to let this fear hamper their efforts; they'd rather not try and preserve their ego than to risk failing.
My tip for dealing with your fear of failure is to view failure as a learning experience. The more times you fail, the more you'll learn. No one starts off knowing everything; the best way to become a successful entrepreneur is not by reading books or articles; it's by getting out there and trying to build something and attract customers. You'll fail a lot along the way but with each failure you'll become a better entrepreneur.
Mistake #5 - (Wasting too much time on things not related to my business)
A lot of people have mentioned this before but if you want to succeed you need to devote nearly 100% of your waking hours to your business. Don't cut yourself off from the world completely as you might go crazy, but try to avoid spending too much time hanging out with friends, watching television, etc. as these things will just waste your time and hold you back from where you want to be.
These same friends that you waste so much time hanging out with will be in the same situation 5 years from now; do you want to be there with them slaving away and taking orders from someone else throughout the week just to have a couple of days of fun during the weekend, or do you want to be fulfilling your dreams and living an amazing life?
It took me a long time to figure the above info out but after 3 long years I've finally reached my destination and will be spending the next year or so really ramping up my efforts since I've created a business that's making me money like crazy without having to invest much money into it and I'll be raising money from investors soon to help fuel further growth to make this a company worth billions.
I don't mention this to show off, but it's the reason why I'm leaving since I can't afford to waste anymore time on this forum when I need to focus and devote almost 100% of my waking time to my business to help it become huge.
I'll answer any follow up questions anyone has on this thread but after that I'll be off permanently. I'd like to thank everyone here who's posted good advice over the years on this forum as I've learned a lot while I've been here and I hope this thread will prove useful to others on the path.
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