Hi, I'm 29 from Slovakia. Have master's degree in electronic engineering. Currently working as a software developer.
I have first read the MJ's book The Millionaire Fastlane about nine years ago during my time in university. I would say it was pivotal in my understanding of how practical life works and how to really get ahead.
At the time I was repairing smartphones, laptops and other electronics on the side. I sourced the spare parts through Ebay. I made a website, had a friend create business cards for me, a big banner to put on the fence of my parents' house. I even got myself some shirts with custom print with circuit board traces and stuff. I wanted to scale it, but it just didn't happen. I wasn't thinking big enough and I didn't even try. In the summer break I went to work for established repair business. They had lots of problems solved already - kiosks in popular shopping malls, spare parts in stock, so I could compare. You could get your phone fixed in a matter of hour/s instead of days or a month from me. The only advantage I had was lower price, since I only needed the service needed to provide for only 1 person. But race to bottom is not winning strategy. Attracting customers with low budget wasn't my dream. In the end I abandoned this side-job the competition was there and established and I came to dislike the whole business. The manufacturers don't care about repairability, for them it's even beneficial to make things unrepairable. The phone gets morally deprecated with time even fully working - that's just the nature of tech. I wanted to move on.
I had an idea of designing custom made electronics. I made some devices for some friends, but then realized why nobody is doing it. The design is the hard part. Then you can manufacture it 1000s of times at ease. If you do one-off stuff it takes a lot of time. Then it has bugs. For example: a friend bought some 3phase motor for a garage gate and wanted a remote control. I said fine: I bought a used PLC programmed it, bought some sensors, remote control board, switches etc. wired it up - worked fine. Now some time later he called me that the gate almost killed him! When the gate was closing, he pressed the button to open it. I programmed such when it happens so that it just reverses the motor. Trouble is a 300kg gate has inertia and can't be reversed instantly. It broke of the hinges and fell on the forklift that was standing under it. I have added 3 second delay between direction changes and now it's just fine and work well. But things could have ended differently. Such a silly little mistake... Now most people don't even know what they really want and 99%-time people are better served by a product that is already made, tested and figured out.
After I finished university, I went on to get a first full-time job as an electronics engineer for a company doing some electronic optics. All of the prior years, all the hard work in studying and getting a degree I was finally doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. And you know what? I hated every part of it. So much so I just quit after 50 days. I was lost. I thought now I want to be a manager or some people facing person. I considered becoming realtor agent - parents thought I went crazy. I then looked up salaries in Europe and set my aims at Switzerland, started contacting people there through LinkedIn and got a consulting job, but it turned out that there is only a training in Geneva then it's either Germany, France or Belgium. Well, still a good move so I went with it. Corona hit full time (this was February 2020). Ended up in Munich working for BMW (indirectly, but at their premises). It was exciting to be in a different country, yet the job sucked just as the previous - it was electromagnetic compliance of parts - measuring cables and such. The saving grace was some programming that I enjoyed. After few months had mental health issues that landed me back home. I was at square 1. Went after my people person job idea - got an SAP consultant position. It was interesting at first learning new stuff, then I realized I'm just a fancy IT support. The disappointment crept back. I wanted my life to be more interesting.
I had an idea of teaching programming for kids 13-17 (maybe even adults as a hobby), Arduino. I wanted to create instruction videos, platform where kids could learn electronics - but more practical stuff not the boring thing, things I wanted to learn in the university - how to design circuits, program robots, build stuff etc. not calculus, and boring a$$ equations... To get experience in the teaching and instructing I got myself a teaching side job at a nearby technical high school about subject of server technology - which at a time I knew nothing about. It went fine, got some exp. teaching kids, liked it. Then I negotiated 4-day work week at my main job, so I could work on my business on the side. Honestly, I didn't do much on the free day, so I was disappointed in myself. I went on to an entrepreneur's workshop - I got hyped up and decided I would be an entrepreneur now - decided to quit the job. This didn't go well. Instead of boosting my productivity I became instantly depressed, seeing in what situation I got myself into. I got into contact with CEO of a company that does something similar with the kids as I intended. Tried to partner up, but it didn't go anywhere. Anyway, I signed up for a summer camp with the company as an instructor to get further experience doing exactly as I previously intended: teaching kids' program with Arduino and build cool stuff. The experience was fine. I could do it, but without anything going already (business-wise) and with my lackluster commitment I just didn't see it viable. So, I refocused - decided I will be a freelance programmer. Chose C# as my language - I both liked the community / development environment and had experience with it. I found a job on contract and was back on track.
In the same time (second half of 2022), I tried producing and selling red currant products. My father has planted lots of red currant plants over the years and he sells the produce by weight in the summer during the harvest season. In a good year the yield is about 300kg. I thought why not sell a more refined product. So, I set to create wine. My goal was to create 70L just to test it. Well, I managed to make 230L. I also made about 30kg of jam. As for the products themselves: The wine quality ranged from good to drinkable (depending on batch = 50L container). Yam turned out fine. I bought bottles, created custom labels - looked neat. Where I failed was selling the stuff. I went to a local Christmas market, but sold only 7 jams in 4-5 hours. But honestly apart from that market I didn't even try. I could have contacted local business if they are interested in the wine / jam. For the jam I even got some official paperwork for small producer so everything was legal. For the wine I think I wasn't sure if I didn't need some extra license or something so this held me back. In the end we still have about 50 jars of the jam - I don't mind, the jam is great and we had the wine distilled as to not let it all spoil. Looking back the wine was such a hassle - you have to tend to it, make sure everything is okay, there is specific timeline for certain operation that has to be done, otherwise the quality is affected. Certainly not an easy business. I learned lots of stuff in the process, but financially it was a flop a it was my fault.
After I had the contract programming job, I found it much easier to start working on the kids teaching stuff. After the whole corona situation and children learning from home, everybody was sick of online learning I decided to do it in person instead - again to gain further experience. I first tried to negotiate with local public school but there would be lots of bureaucracy involved and the pay would be on the school term's (so laughable). Instead, I opted to get some other space. I negotiated with our mayor and got a timeslot slot in local library. I created a website - landing page, with posibility to enroll. Created a poster to be put in local info table, video invitation and ad for broadcast. I even got to source the damn business cards again, from the same friend - again and I wasn't happy about the design - again. In the end they didn't matter - again. The launch was successful however I got about 8 students on the first day and they kept coming. Problem was - this was meant to be a preliminary stage to the teaching platform, because I had no intention to scale this offline business. It would mean hiring highly specialized instructors or training them, negotiating premises in other places on top of producing the teaching content. Well, I never got to the next stage. I created a little side job for myself that kept me busy and I didn't have time for building it further- not what I intended.
After a few months my mental health crashed again. This time it crashed really hard. I lost it all, the main contracting job, the side gig, even the ability to work at all for almost a 3/4 of a year. Lost the ability to sleep even - thanks to all the meds. I don't want to dwell on this part. Beginning of this year I got myself together and slowly started applying for jobs. In the end got 2 offers. My sleep got fixed. Since august I started full-time as a software developer. Honestly I'm quite happy now. Having been through hell even slowlane seems enticing. I like coding, it's something that I can see myself doing indefinitely. So now I just want a nice stable work life (at least for a while), while I gather experience. Eventually I could then do contract work for nice sums. This is a nice default fallback option.
But but but. Circling back to the subject: I want an interesting life. This was the original motivation to pick up MJ's book. For me this was always about the whole picture. Finances are just a part of it and I feel I made progress in financial matters for now. Now I want to focus on other areas for a while. I have one longstanding goal - I want to get to know and make friends with interesting people, who have something going for in some area of life be it professionally or a cool hobby, even in a dating aspect. I just want to really grow my network preferably in person. This goal is like 10-15 years old. I made some progress here and there, but I'm not satisfied. I want to get to know more people, in wider area potentially in other countries as well, hell even globally. I want to get inspired by seeing what others are up to, but crucially to know them and be able to pick up the phone and have... options. My basic strategy so far is to look up events nearby and just go there. This way I was to a painting course, joined public speaking group, a philosophy group. This was 1,5 years ago. What I noticed is that I got stuck to these groups. I just kept coming there and it sucked all my time. I should have continued exploring.
Anyways: I feel conflicted: I came to an entrepreneurship forum to say that I don't intend to start a business (yet), but yet I feel this is the right place with people having the right mindset to help me move forward. Growing a network is just more important for me now. I like the idea I seen here of contacting 100 business / people to inquire about their problems and then selling the solution, this would align well with growing my network. But I really just want to focus on getting to know people. Well, this forum seems like place packed with just the type of people I'm looking for. So, here I am.
What are your thoughts?
I have first read the MJ's book The Millionaire Fastlane about nine years ago during my time in university. I would say it was pivotal in my understanding of how practical life works and how to really get ahead.
At the time I was repairing smartphones, laptops and other electronics on the side. I sourced the spare parts through Ebay. I made a website, had a friend create business cards for me, a big banner to put on the fence of my parents' house. I even got myself some shirts with custom print with circuit board traces and stuff. I wanted to scale it, but it just didn't happen. I wasn't thinking big enough and I didn't even try. In the summer break I went to work for established repair business. They had lots of problems solved already - kiosks in popular shopping malls, spare parts in stock, so I could compare. You could get your phone fixed in a matter of hour/s instead of days or a month from me. The only advantage I had was lower price, since I only needed the service needed to provide for only 1 person. But race to bottom is not winning strategy. Attracting customers with low budget wasn't my dream. In the end I abandoned this side-job the competition was there and established and I came to dislike the whole business. The manufacturers don't care about repairability, for them it's even beneficial to make things unrepairable. The phone gets morally deprecated with time even fully working - that's just the nature of tech. I wanted to move on.
I had an idea of designing custom made electronics. I made some devices for some friends, but then realized why nobody is doing it. The design is the hard part. Then you can manufacture it 1000s of times at ease. If you do one-off stuff it takes a lot of time. Then it has bugs. For example: a friend bought some 3phase motor for a garage gate and wanted a remote control. I said fine: I bought a used PLC programmed it, bought some sensors, remote control board, switches etc. wired it up - worked fine. Now some time later he called me that the gate almost killed him! When the gate was closing, he pressed the button to open it. I programmed such when it happens so that it just reverses the motor. Trouble is a 300kg gate has inertia and can't be reversed instantly. It broke of the hinges and fell on the forklift that was standing under it. I have added 3 second delay between direction changes and now it's just fine and work well. But things could have ended differently. Such a silly little mistake... Now most people don't even know what they really want and 99%-time people are better served by a product that is already made, tested and figured out.
After I finished university, I went on to get a first full-time job as an electronics engineer for a company doing some electronic optics. All of the prior years, all the hard work in studying and getting a degree I was finally doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. And you know what? I hated every part of it. So much so I just quit after 50 days. I was lost. I thought now I want to be a manager or some people facing person. I considered becoming realtor agent - parents thought I went crazy. I then looked up salaries in Europe and set my aims at Switzerland, started contacting people there through LinkedIn and got a consulting job, but it turned out that there is only a training in Geneva then it's either Germany, France or Belgium. Well, still a good move so I went with it. Corona hit full time (this was February 2020). Ended up in Munich working for BMW (indirectly, but at their premises). It was exciting to be in a different country, yet the job sucked just as the previous - it was electromagnetic compliance of parts - measuring cables and such. The saving grace was some programming that I enjoyed. After few months had mental health issues that landed me back home. I was at square 1. Went after my people person job idea - got an SAP consultant position. It was interesting at first learning new stuff, then I realized I'm just a fancy IT support. The disappointment crept back. I wanted my life to be more interesting.
I had an idea of teaching programming for kids 13-17 (maybe even adults as a hobby), Arduino. I wanted to create instruction videos, platform where kids could learn electronics - but more practical stuff not the boring thing, things I wanted to learn in the university - how to design circuits, program robots, build stuff etc. not calculus, and boring a$$ equations... To get experience in the teaching and instructing I got myself a teaching side job at a nearby technical high school about subject of server technology - which at a time I knew nothing about. It went fine, got some exp. teaching kids, liked it. Then I negotiated 4-day work week at my main job, so I could work on my business on the side. Honestly, I didn't do much on the free day, so I was disappointed in myself. I went on to an entrepreneur's workshop - I got hyped up and decided I would be an entrepreneur now - decided to quit the job. This didn't go well. Instead of boosting my productivity I became instantly depressed, seeing in what situation I got myself into. I got into contact with CEO of a company that does something similar with the kids as I intended. Tried to partner up, but it didn't go anywhere. Anyway, I signed up for a summer camp with the company as an instructor to get further experience doing exactly as I previously intended: teaching kids' program with Arduino and build cool stuff. The experience was fine. I could do it, but without anything going already (business-wise) and with my lackluster commitment I just didn't see it viable. So, I refocused - decided I will be a freelance programmer. Chose C# as my language - I both liked the community / development environment and had experience with it. I found a job on contract and was back on track.
In the same time (second half of 2022), I tried producing and selling red currant products. My father has planted lots of red currant plants over the years and he sells the produce by weight in the summer during the harvest season. In a good year the yield is about 300kg. I thought why not sell a more refined product. So, I set to create wine. My goal was to create 70L just to test it. Well, I managed to make 230L. I also made about 30kg of jam. As for the products themselves: The wine quality ranged from good to drinkable (depending on batch = 50L container). Yam turned out fine. I bought bottles, created custom labels - looked neat. Where I failed was selling the stuff. I went to a local Christmas market, but sold only 7 jams in 4-5 hours. But honestly apart from that market I didn't even try. I could have contacted local business if they are interested in the wine / jam. For the jam I even got some official paperwork for small producer so everything was legal. For the wine I think I wasn't sure if I didn't need some extra license or something so this held me back. In the end we still have about 50 jars of the jam - I don't mind, the jam is great and we had the wine distilled as to not let it all spoil. Looking back the wine was such a hassle - you have to tend to it, make sure everything is okay, there is specific timeline for certain operation that has to be done, otherwise the quality is affected. Certainly not an easy business. I learned lots of stuff in the process, but financially it was a flop a it was my fault.
After I had the contract programming job, I found it much easier to start working on the kids teaching stuff. After the whole corona situation and children learning from home, everybody was sick of online learning I decided to do it in person instead - again to gain further experience. I first tried to negotiate with local public school but there would be lots of bureaucracy involved and the pay would be on the school term's (so laughable). Instead, I opted to get some other space. I negotiated with our mayor and got a timeslot slot in local library. I created a website - landing page, with posibility to enroll. Created a poster to be put in local info table, video invitation and ad for broadcast. I even got to source the damn business cards again, from the same friend - again and I wasn't happy about the design - again. In the end they didn't matter - again. The launch was successful however I got about 8 students on the first day and they kept coming. Problem was - this was meant to be a preliminary stage to the teaching platform, because I had no intention to scale this offline business. It would mean hiring highly specialized instructors or training them, negotiating premises in other places on top of producing the teaching content. Well, I never got to the next stage. I created a little side job for myself that kept me busy and I didn't have time for building it further- not what I intended.
After a few months my mental health crashed again. This time it crashed really hard. I lost it all, the main contracting job, the side gig, even the ability to work at all for almost a 3/4 of a year. Lost the ability to sleep even - thanks to all the meds. I don't want to dwell on this part. Beginning of this year I got myself together and slowly started applying for jobs. In the end got 2 offers. My sleep got fixed. Since august I started full-time as a software developer. Honestly I'm quite happy now. Having been through hell even slowlane seems enticing. I like coding, it's something that I can see myself doing indefinitely. So now I just want a nice stable work life (at least for a while), while I gather experience. Eventually I could then do contract work for nice sums. This is a nice default fallback option.
But but but. Circling back to the subject: I want an interesting life. This was the original motivation to pick up MJ's book. For me this was always about the whole picture. Finances are just a part of it and I feel I made progress in financial matters for now. Now I want to focus on other areas for a while. I have one longstanding goal - I want to get to know and make friends with interesting people, who have something going for in some area of life be it professionally or a cool hobby, even in a dating aspect. I just want to really grow my network preferably in person. This goal is like 10-15 years old. I made some progress here and there, but I'm not satisfied. I want to get to know more people, in wider area potentially in other countries as well, hell even globally. I want to get inspired by seeing what others are up to, but crucially to know them and be able to pick up the phone and have... options. My basic strategy so far is to look up events nearby and just go there. This way I was to a painting course, joined public speaking group, a philosophy group. This was 1,5 years ago. What I noticed is that I got stuck to these groups. I just kept coming there and it sucked all my time. I should have continued exploring.
Anyways: I feel conflicted: I came to an entrepreneurship forum to say that I don't intend to start a business (yet), but yet I feel this is the right place with people having the right mindset to help me move forward. Growing a network is just more important for me now. I like the idea I seen here of contacting 100 business / people to inquire about their problems and then selling the solution, this would align well with growing my network. But I really just want to focus on getting to know people. Well, this forum seems like place packed with just the type of people I'm looking for. So, here I am.
What are your thoughts?
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