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My story - 23 years old from Belgium

Adgo

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Hello everyone, my name is Adrien I'm from Belgium.


I'm a 23 years old student and I'll finally receive my Master degree in October from one of the top 10 business school in Europe.


While most of my peers in class are applying for jobs in the best companies around the world, I'm not really interested in that alternative, thanks to my past entrepreneurial experience.


5 years ago, I hired an American freelancer who developed an Instagram bot for me for $150. I started selling it on some forums and I kept investing the money I was making back in the development of the bot, to improve its features and performances. A few months later, I had 5 working versions priced from $9.99 to $29.99 for sale on my own website. Everything was automated and all I had to do was to answer the customers’ emails and watch the money flow. I invested in SEO and was making between $2000 and $3500 a month while I was in my first year at the university. My income eventually grew to $5200 in June 2014 when it started decreasing for several reasons: one day the website my bots were using changed and I had to adapt the software’s code. Unfortunately, the developer stopped working as a freelancer and I had to hire someone to develop the 5 versions again. Then Instagram started to change their API to slowly reduce to efficiency of bots and my revenues dropped. I tried multiple costly alternatives to solve the problem, in vain.


I’ve also been replacing broken iPhone parts as my own “part time job” for 7 years now. I made approximately 35.000€ of turnover with a 50% margin.


These experiences made me realized that, no matter how small you start, money is not so hard to earn, when you bring value to people. Why would I work my a$$ off full time for someone else and get pay 2000€ a month when I was making twice as much as a student?


I know that I want to be self-employed as soon as possible but I’m not sure if I should first work for another company to “gain experience” as everybody say. For how long? Which company will provide me a better experience than the experience I will gain if I try to do it be myself?


I don’t have a precise idea about what business I would like to start and that’s mainly why I read the Millionaire Fastlane book and I'm here today. I would like to learn more about past experiences of others, receive advices and find answers to my questions.
 
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Longinus

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Welcome, fellow Belgian.

I know that I want to be self-employed as soon as possible but I’m not sure if I should first work for another company to “gain experience” as everybody say. For how long? Which company will provide me a better experience than the experience I will gain if I try to do it be myself?

This depends on your situation I think. If you have totally no clue what to do, I would advise to work for a boss for a few years.

If you have ideas (and your earlier successes prove this), and you have no bills to pay, you could try them right now and make it work.

Keep in mind that choosing for a day job might lead to total dependency in the future. Escaping the monthly paycheck can be a tough process.
 

Wim

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Other Belgians? Yeah!

It's so nice to see people younger than me get it and run with it.
Took me till I was 35 (basically now) to finally just go for it. Down side is I can only see it work with all the paperwork in place. While Belgium is very expensive in taxes, combo of taxes and penalties would eat me alive instead of allow me to struggle.

What did you settle on in the end, Adrien? Curious to find how it turned out.
 

The Abundant Man

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Self-made men are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and position and have learned from themselves the best uses to which life can be put in this world, and in the exercises of these uses to build up worthy character. They are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, or friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results. . . They are in a peculiar sense indebted to themselves for themselves. If they have traveled far, they have made the road on which they have travelled. If they have ascended high, they have built their own ladder . . . Such men as these, whether found in one position or another, whether in the college or in the factory; whether professors or plowmen; whether Caucasian or Indian; whether Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African, are self-made men and are entitled to a certain measure of respect for their success and for proving to the world the grandest possibilities of human nature, of whatever variety of race or color.-Frederick Douglass(Former slave to a successful businessman and speaker)
 
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