My One Year Fastlane Forum Anniversary: Lessons Learned

[Jrjohnny]

Well, this is my first post in a while.

Thought I should make it a special one, so here it is:

One year on this forum, and I’ve learned a lot! Sure, maybe not a lot of material progress, but I’ve definitely changed.

From wanting to open up a restaurant (what the heck?) to investing, to YouTube, then to lawncare, I’ve definitely started some.. stuff.

This post is going to have three parts:

• What I’ve done.
• What I’m doing.
• What I’ve learned on the way here.

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What I’ve Done
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Well, going back to the beginning. Exactly 365 days ago, I joined this forum, with a very, warped and childish idea.

To start a restaurant franchise at 13! And, you guessed right, I got a lot of tough love. And I’m grateful for it!

Not a few weeks later, I had come up with a new idea! YouTube channel! I had no clue what I was thinking.

And of course it got beat down, but I’m fine with it! I remember it was around this time I began to start reading posts from the big guys.

Johnny Boy, Andy Black, Heavy Industry, Bizydad, and the man himself, MJ Demarco.

So then, I thought about it and decided on a lawn care business! I mean it fit cents perfectly (atleast in my neighborhood), and so like for a week, I was going door to door.

I definitely learned some things about people, but that went unsuccessful, so then I moved neighborhoods, and there was definitely more interest. But it never converted.

And around a month or two later, so now we’re onto my 4 month mark, I came up with an idea, so I started getting to work.

Within a month, I got supplies, and started testing, and of course, the first prototype fell apart, so, bummed out about that, I went back to the drawing board.

2-3 weeks later, I retried the prototype, but with some adjustments, and was promising until I tested it.

So around now I was like 50% there. And then I got a new way of execution, both the most promising yet most expensive.

So after another month, I had gotten a lot of mostly positive verbal feedback, so with that I took a leap of zeros, and we had tested with one serving.

It worked-ish!

So, now I was around 75% done making the product, but I was still clueless on how to execute the next few steps, but I didn’t really care!

But, around now, it’s winter time, and our supplier said that it’s out of season, and without wanting to spend a bunch on supplies, we decided to halt the progression.

But, I didn’t want to waste anymore time, so during this “downtime” I started reading into future road blocks (shipping, taxes, loopholes, marketing)

After I had done all that research, I had begun my football season, gone back to working on school, working out, so I had to find a way to balance everything out

And that’s what I’ve done so far within the year!

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What I’m Doing​

We’re going sometime within the next week, to our supplier, and we’re going to work on finishing our prototype and somehow find a way to make this a reality.

I’m also back to 3 days in the gym, and 3x a week football and with finals soon here, I’ll be able to do whatever I want in about a month.

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Lessons Learned on The Way
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I’ve definitely learned a countless amount of lessons, some quotes and some I came up with, but here are the top 5.

1. “The Best Time to Plant a Tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is right now.” Oh boy how this quote backhanded me right in the face. Just like everyone says. Tomorrow isn't guaranteed.​
2. If you get stuck dwelling on the past, you won’t move forward. If you regret it, you’re going to hinder your future. The past is set in stone. Once your able to live with it you’ll sky rocket.​
3. You're not be able to achieve the greatest and perfect version of yourself in a lifetime. Because there is no such thing as a “perfect” person, but it’s still worth it to become a better person each day.​
4. Sometimes, all you need is one good day to get the ball rolling. But one bad day shouldn’t be the one that stops the ball. The ball should always have momentum.​
5. “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life,” by one of my favourite boxers of all time, this quote is one of my favourite. Life is about learning that your not smart enough to know everything, so your willing to take on new perspectives and views on the world as you age.​

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Well, that’s my one year post. Just wanted to say I’m grateful for all you guys.

MJ, thank you for creating this forum
Perchboy, Bizydad, Heavy Industry, Andy Black, Johnny boy thank you for teaching me

-John

 

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