FrankOhh
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- Dec 17, 2016
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Hello, everyone! My name is Franco Colomba I've been a lurker for the longest time, I made an account years ago when the Millionaire Fastlane book first came out and I lost my password and here I am with a new account to finally introduce myself.
Years ago, I read the first book by MJ DeMarco and I honestly wouldn't be who I am today if it wasn't for his book. Long story short I worked for a company, got hired as an entry level web dev and helped their eCommerce (eBay) department grow from literally $4K months to $160K a month. In the 1 year 8 months I was there we made over $2M with originally a 2 man team and eventually grew to 4 people running the store smoothly. This job was my first job that really opened my eye's and my first real life experience milestone that I was and still am proud of.
I remember I would go to work, clock in while simultaneously juggling depression, anxiety, and overall massive OCD while dealing with college and paying for classes out of pocket.
While employed there I saw more people getting laid off than at any other previous job I've had combined. What's funny was that I would see grown a$$ men with years of "education" under their belt, some with bachelors/masters degrees, or years in the Military (nothing against them) enslaved at this awful place called a job. They would suck up to all the higher managers just to look good in front of them and they would treat all the smaller guys like shit, including me from time to time.
Every day it seemed like everyone would complain about something new, but yet here they were stuck at a job they hated because you already know what societies script
does best...Luckily for me, I was put in the only department of the warehouse that was sort of "beta" and secluded so I didn’t have to deal with too much crap from everyone else.
Fast forward almost 2 years, dodging getting laid off, being micro managed, more responsibilities while underpaid and being rewarded with the occasional Friday afternoon pizza lunch break, I started to reap of the rat race. The 9-5 lifestyle was more evident to me than ever before. I would remember getting to work 30 mins earlier just to go on my phone and look at different tech news sites and read about all the startups and successful young entrepreneurs finding a way in life and living happily. During my shitty 2 x 15-minute breaks a day I would hop on Instagram and respectfully envy all those who were living the “laptop life” and trust me I know the different from sipping some Piña colada while trading on some shitty MLM forex business from actually being a real value seeking true entrepreneur. (Read this to know what I'm talking about with most entrepreneurs and a true entrepreneur)
Despite the owner who owned the huge warehouse that I ran their e-commerce store for, being a complete a$$ hole and cheapskate, I started to wonder what it would be like to start doing it on my own, to actually see the other side of life and if there really was a way out of the rat race. It wasn’t easy and I won't post all the details about it but after I read the Millioniare Fastlane book It was as if God himself was speaking directly to me at the right time and place.
Unsurprisingly I was one of the last persons to get laid off from the eBay department after being one of the original 2 guys that grew and founded their eCommerce business to a million dollar a year store. At one point I decided to give this eBay thing a try and was making my own money ($8K a month) but I had one problem and it was I wasn’t the best at finding sources for hardware and overall physical goods to sell on my store, no this wasn’t a drop shipping eBay store it was real physical items so it was twice as hard when you have zero connections or little money to purchase inventory. Eventually, as I mentioned at my peak, I was making $8K a month and to me, that was pretty good money as if I had discovered a doorway to a new world.
Despite finally getting laid off, I started to read up on more books on entrepreneurship and finances such as the moneyless manifesto and that’s when I decided I needed to make a move. Being born in Puerto Rico I had the privilege of having 7 acres 2 miles from the beach handed down to me from my father's side of the family. My original plan was simple, sell all my belongings, live with my grandparents while I grew my eBay business on the side and eventually amass enough money to build a decent little house on my property and live happily after with passive income the end.
As many of you all know, life doesn’t always go the way you want it to. Sometimes things go wrong other times they go great and for me, I finally ran into the moment and opportunity of a lifetime (more on this shortly)
So I quickly sold my car, two motorcycles and practically everything I owned and started to de-materialize myself from my possessions own me, to the point of moving overseas with just 2 boxes and my laptop. Before moving, I got a contract position as a systems analyst shortly after being laid off 2 days before Christmas of 2016. While at that contract position I saved up as much as I could and spent as little as I had to, and finally in January 14th of 2017, I decided to make the leap. The leap everyone hears entrepreneurs talk about. Now at this point, I hardly even considered myself an entrepreneur but just a kid who figured out how to sell things on eBay and had a huge desire to succeed and be someone in life and not be just another average robot to society.
As I got established on the island of Puerto Rico, my hopes and dreams of sustaining a passive online business from home quickly came to a slow halt. What I didn't know about Puerto Rico was that the market for 2nd hand goods was such a negligible scene and of unimportant ratio that literally the site that I used the most to find my physical goods locally to resell on eBay was practically nonexistent here.
I'm almost done I promise.
Now you're probably thinking "oh shit, he's f*cked" and that is exactly what my first initial thought was but something about reading all the self-help books in the previous months had prepared me for all of the hard times ahead of me including this one. Those entrepreneurial books especially the Millionaire Fastlane put a seed of hope and a dying desire to succeed no matter what I had to do even if I had to lose all my money in my savings or be homeless and kicked out of my grandparents house, something inside me told me to keep knocking and looking until I found a solution.
A swift yet hopeless Google search later, I discovered an opportunity of a lifetime. A multi-million dollar niche business opportunity was lying dormant and an idea was born that instant moment. That very same day I called one of my close developer friend who was a wiz and 10x brighter than me and I pitched to him the idea. I tossed at him all of the prior research (analytics, traffic sources, engagement, unique monthly visitors, you name it, It was there) I had done on the competitor here on the island that was doing a god awful job at it and how much money they were making annually. The dying itch and feeling that I had to move back to my home island where I was originally born was finally all making sense.
Long story short: for the past 9 months since I moved I created my first startup (we launch very very soon.) I learned so many new skill sets that I thought I could never learn, I've read 30 books so far including UNSCRIPTED (love it as well) I became part of an accelerator with one of the worlds top growth hacker, I grew my network, surrounded myself around others 10 steps ahead of me, (young guys in their 20-30s making 5-20K or more a day) and even speaking with some of the CEO's of top 400 locally owned businesses in PR. I even started writing my own book (think of UNSCRIPTED but for Millennials) called Mindless Millenials, not out yet but coming out soon.
Overall I grew into such a different person that I thought I would have never become. I left everything including the safety of living with my parents back at home in Florida, and always being able to find a job within weeks, to come to a place where I could hardly manage my Spanish properly, living off my little savings, yet I came here and kicked a$$.
Although yes we still haven't launched and I don't have any ROI to defend this story (for all those of you who call BS), I am very very confident to succeed with this startup that I just know everything is going to work out. I have trained my mindset to see nothing but positivity and that even if by some random shit storm that occurs and my startup doesn't succeed (very unlikely), I will keep on going strong no matter what gets in my way. No matter if my next venture fails and I keep failing, I will always persevere because of the words in the book the Millionaire Fastlane gave me the hope and spark that one one else had bothered to give me. I hope I've inspired someone and if I learned something from all of this is never be afraid to aspire to be somebody big, even if you are currently a nobody.Dreams don't work unless you do.
Thank you, MJ DeMarco for existing and I hope to fly out to Arizona and meet you someday.
Feel free to connect with me on Twitter or Facebook
Years ago, I read the first book by MJ DeMarco and I honestly wouldn't be who I am today if it wasn't for his book. Long story short I worked for a company, got hired as an entry level web dev and helped their eCommerce (eBay) department grow from literally $4K months to $160K a month. In the 1 year 8 months I was there we made over $2M with originally a 2 man team and eventually grew to 4 people running the store smoothly. This job was my first job that really opened my eye's and my first real life experience milestone that I was and still am proud of.
I remember I would go to work, clock in while simultaneously juggling depression, anxiety, and overall massive OCD while dealing with college and paying for classes out of pocket.
While employed there I saw more people getting laid off than at any other previous job I've had combined. What's funny was that I would see grown a$$ men with years of "education" under their belt, some with bachelors/masters degrees, or years in the Military (nothing against them) enslaved at this awful place called a job. They would suck up to all the higher managers just to look good in front of them and they would treat all the smaller guys like shit, including me from time to time.
Every day it seemed like everyone would complain about something new, but yet here they were stuck at a job they hated because you already know what societies script
does best...Luckily for me, I was put in the only department of the warehouse that was sort of "beta" and secluded so I didn’t have to deal with too much crap from everyone else.
Fast forward almost 2 years, dodging getting laid off, being micro managed, more responsibilities while underpaid and being rewarded with the occasional Friday afternoon pizza lunch break, I started to reap of the rat race. The 9-5 lifestyle was more evident to me than ever before. I would remember getting to work 30 mins earlier just to go on my phone and look at different tech news sites and read about all the startups and successful young entrepreneurs finding a way in life and living happily. During my shitty 2 x 15-minute breaks a day I would hop on Instagram and respectfully envy all those who were living the “laptop life” and trust me I know the different from sipping some Piña colada while trading on some shitty MLM forex business from actually being a real value seeking true entrepreneur. (Read this to know what I'm talking about with most entrepreneurs and a true entrepreneur)
Despite the owner who owned the huge warehouse that I ran their e-commerce store for, being a complete a$$ hole and cheapskate, I started to wonder what it would be like to start doing it on my own, to actually see the other side of life and if there really was a way out of the rat race. It wasn’t easy and I won't post all the details about it but after I read the Millioniare Fastlane book It was as if God himself was speaking directly to me at the right time and place.
Unsurprisingly I was one of the last persons to get laid off from the eBay department after being one of the original 2 guys that grew and founded their eCommerce business to a million dollar a year store. At one point I decided to give this eBay thing a try and was making my own money ($8K a month) but I had one problem and it was I wasn’t the best at finding sources for hardware and overall physical goods to sell on my store, no this wasn’t a drop shipping eBay store it was real physical items so it was twice as hard when you have zero connections or little money to purchase inventory. Eventually, as I mentioned at my peak, I was making $8K a month and to me, that was pretty good money as if I had discovered a doorway to a new world.
Despite finally getting laid off, I started to read up on more books on entrepreneurship and finances such as the moneyless manifesto and that’s when I decided I needed to make a move. Being born in Puerto Rico I had the privilege of having 7 acres 2 miles from the beach handed down to me from my father's side of the family. My original plan was simple, sell all my belongings, live with my grandparents while I grew my eBay business on the side and eventually amass enough money to build a decent little house on my property and live happily after with passive income the end.
As many of you all know, life doesn’t always go the way you want it to. Sometimes things go wrong other times they go great and for me, I finally ran into the moment and opportunity of a lifetime (more on this shortly)
So I quickly sold my car, two motorcycles and practically everything I owned and started to de-materialize myself from my possessions own me, to the point of moving overseas with just 2 boxes and my laptop. Before moving, I got a contract position as a systems analyst shortly after being laid off 2 days before Christmas of 2016. While at that contract position I saved up as much as I could and spent as little as I had to, and finally in January 14th of 2017, I decided to make the leap. The leap everyone hears entrepreneurs talk about. Now at this point, I hardly even considered myself an entrepreneur but just a kid who figured out how to sell things on eBay and had a huge desire to succeed and be someone in life and not be just another average robot to society.
As I got established on the island of Puerto Rico, my hopes and dreams of sustaining a passive online business from home quickly came to a slow halt. What I didn't know about Puerto Rico was that the market for 2nd hand goods was such a negligible scene and of unimportant ratio that literally the site that I used the most to find my physical goods locally to resell on eBay was practically nonexistent here.
I'm almost done I promise.
Now you're probably thinking "oh shit, he's f*cked" and that is exactly what my first initial thought was but something about reading all the self-help books in the previous months had prepared me for all of the hard times ahead of me including this one. Those entrepreneurial books especially the Millionaire Fastlane put a seed of hope and a dying desire to succeed no matter what I had to do even if I had to lose all my money in my savings or be homeless and kicked out of my grandparents house, something inside me told me to keep knocking and looking until I found a solution.
A swift yet hopeless Google search later, I discovered an opportunity of a lifetime. A multi-million dollar niche business opportunity was lying dormant and an idea was born that instant moment. That very same day I called one of my close developer friend who was a wiz and 10x brighter than me and I pitched to him the idea. I tossed at him all of the prior research (analytics, traffic sources, engagement, unique monthly visitors, you name it, It was there) I had done on the competitor here on the island that was doing a god awful job at it and how much money they were making annually. The dying itch and feeling that I had to move back to my home island where I was originally born was finally all making sense.
Long story short: for the past 9 months since I moved I created my first startup (we launch very very soon.) I learned so many new skill sets that I thought I could never learn, I've read 30 books so far including UNSCRIPTED (love it as well) I became part of an accelerator with one of the worlds top growth hacker, I grew my network, surrounded myself around others 10 steps ahead of me, (young guys in their 20-30s making 5-20K or more a day) and even speaking with some of the CEO's of top 400 locally owned businesses in PR. I even started writing my own book (think of UNSCRIPTED but for Millennials) called Mindless Millenials, not out yet but coming out soon.
Overall I grew into such a different person that I thought I would have never become. I left everything including the safety of living with my parents back at home in Florida, and always being able to find a job within weeks, to come to a place where I could hardly manage my Spanish properly, living off my little savings, yet I came here and kicked a$$.
Although yes we still haven't launched and I don't have any ROI to defend this story (for all those of you who call BS), I am very very confident to succeed with this startup that I just know everything is going to work out. I have trained my mindset to see nothing but positivity and that even if by some random shit storm that occurs and my startup doesn't succeed (very unlikely), I will keep on going strong no matter what gets in my way. No matter if my next venture fails and I keep failing, I will always persevere because of the words in the book the Millionaire Fastlane gave me the hope and spark that one one else had bothered to give me. I hope I've inspired someone and if I learned something from all of this is never be afraid to aspire to be somebody big, even if you are currently a nobody.Dreams don't work unless you do.
Thank you, MJ DeMarco for existing and I hope to fly out to Arizona and meet you someday.
Feel free to connect with me on Twitter or Facebook
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