Random Chat, Thoughts, Posts, and/or Rants Thread

[jdm667]

A new word has emerged, "Greedflation". I saw this happening during and after the pandemic. Mega companies were/are making higher profits even though their costs have increased. They either make their packaging smaller and charge the same amount, or simply raise their prices because they can. I've seen this in my small town where some businesses just raised their prices because of "inflation". Reality....I think it was just an excuse and opportunity to make bigger profits.

I think I read a similar article. It was saying the profit margin of big companies was like 10% or 11%. Admittedly, that is a lot of money at the scale they work at, but I wouldn't say 10% is an obscene profit margin.

If salary + benefits are 50% of their expenses, a 10% raise for everyone would mean half of their profit margin is gone.

Still, I do think some companies are taking advantage and raising prices by more than they really need to match inflation.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Ing]

I think I read a similar article. It was saying the profit margin of big companies was like 10% or 11%. Admittedly, that is a lot of money at the scale they work at, but I wouldn't say 10% is an obscene profit margin.

If salary + benefits are 50% of their expenses, a 10% raise for everyone would mean half of their profit margin is gone.

Still, I do think some companies are taking advantage and raising prices by more than they really need to match inflation.

I don’t know someone doing that not

 

[Subsonic]

This week I had a really profound experience of progress.

I looked through my journal from last year and at around this time (a year ago) I was just getting into guitar and business. Back then I found it impossible to make money on my own without a job. I also told a friend that the one thing I want to do before death is play the guitar solo from valley of the damned by dragonforce (it seemed so incredibly far away and impossible to do and I love the solo).

This week I archived both of these thing younger me tough was impossible. I made about 230€ and 150 of that as "online income". I also played that solo and the whole song for some people. My mom was there and she really didn't expect me to play the solo. Seeing her face drop was funny.

The actually lesson is a different one however. The solo is, when done 90% accurately and with a few variations, waaaay easier than it looks or sounds. Making money with a business, when trading time for money is also way easier than it seems.
Right now it seems mad to be making thousands each month and to have a real business. Probably next year, I will be there and think "man this is not hard but having a franchise with tens of locations is (ambiguous word here)".

Also there is the point that both of these things don't help me find a girlfriend, even though I believed they would. Like how can a girl not instantly fall in love with me, when I am making a few hundred a month from my own business and able to play a 3 minute long technical show off guitar solo?

 

[mikecarlooch]

Hey guys - does anyone have an established physical product b2c brand?

I'm looking to get some feedback on a concept to see if it's valuable to you.

Just have one quick question in DM!

Thanks

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[PureA]

Hey guys - does anyone have an established physical product b2c brand?

I'm looking to get some feedback on a concept to see if it's valuable to you.

Just have one quick question in DM!

Thanks

hit me

 

[Xeon]

AI has done it again.

Skybox AI

Skybox AI: One-click 360° image generator from Blockade Labs

skybox.blockadelabs.com

EDIT: ChatGPT never ceases to amaze:

Q: "I've another sheet within the same google sheet, and in this sheet, I need a formula to concatenate 13 cells from this other sheet called 'Desktop tags'. Write a google sheet formula for this"

To concatenate 13 cells from the "Desktop tags" sheet, you can use the following Google Sheets formula:

=JOIN(", ", 'Desktop tags'!A1:A13)

This formula will concatenate the values from cells A1 to A13 in the "Desktop tags" sheet, separating them with a comma and a space. If you need to concatenate a different range of cells or use a different separator, simply adjust the cell range and/or the separator text within the JOIN function.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Subsonic]

Guys do you have a recommendation for sportscars suitable for small people?

Why am I asking? My grandma is a car lover and I had the idea of renting a sportscar for her as a gift. I talked to her a bit and was going to book a day with a r8 but she said she can't really reach the pedals in that car. (She's about 1,50m tall).

What are some other cool options I could get her?

 

[Skroob]

Guys do you have a recommendation for sportscars suitable for small people?

Why am I asking? My grandma is a car lover and I had the idea of renting a sportscar for her as a gift. I talked to her a bit and was going to book a day with a r8 but she said she can't really reach the pedals in that car. (She's about 1,50m tall).

What are some other cool options I could get her?

 

[Private Witt]

Guys do you have a recommendation for sportscars suitable for small people?

Why am I asking? My grandma is a car lover and I had the idea of renting a sportscar for her as a gift. I talked to her a bit and was going to book a day with a r8 but she said she can't really reach the pedals in that car. (She's about 1,50m tall).

What are some other cool options I could get her?

Japan has your solution

View: https://youtu.be/KSriktakUTw

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Mike Ronin]

I don' t know if this is of use:

What to do with a swollen battery

Removal and disposal of a swollen battery can be dangerous, but leaving a swollen battery inside a device can also cause serious harm. Read all warnings carefully and proceed at your own risk. All batteries are hazardous waste and must be disposed of properly.

www.ifixit.com

TL;DR Swollen batteries are potentially dangerous and should be handled with care.

100%. One of our employees had a Vape battery blow up in his pocket. He has had surgery on his leg and will miss about 4 months of work.

 

[heavy_industry]

100%. One of our employees had a Vape battery blow up in his pocket. He has had surgery on his leg and will miss about 4 months of work.

Reading this while vaping made me very uncomfortable.

I wonder what is the incidence rate for exploding vape batteries, and who is liable for the damage (manufacturer, seller, or end user).

Most vapes are being produced in places where human safety is not exactly the top priority, unfortunately.

 

[LightHouse]

Here's my take on the in-person meetups, having been to a few and having been gone from this place for a while (and I speak 0% for MJ, only my own observations):

1. The old school still hosts an annual meetup, it just has nothing to do with the forum
2. MJ was much more willing to stake this bet when the forum had a lot more givers, and a lot less takers. As he mentioned, his degree of calculated risk has everything to do with the ebb and flow of forum participation
3. If you want this place hopping (and a natural outgrowth of a healthy thriving forum is by extension interest in in-person meetups) than start to GIVE MORE and TAKE LESS and the forum will come alive again
4. Based on the activity or lackthereof I have seen coming back here, I think you could sell out a forum of people hoping to GET RICH QUICK but what has made the meetups work in the past is an all-hands-on-deck approach where the speakers fed off each other. It's not a TONY ROBBINS SHOW where there's a main attraction. It's not a seminar series where you have a bunch of headliners. The original meetups were everyone participates. The people you would want to have speak are not chimps that you give a peanut and they clap the symbols. There needs to be MUCH MORE CYNERGY for an old school type meetup to have the same value as you have read about.
5. Beyond the finances, it's a ton of work for the people who put this together to screen speakers, make arrangements, logistics, etc...
6. There's NOTHING that would prohibit you from meeting people this month in Dallas, or Tampa, or Houston, or where ever. Local meetups, although not sanctioned Fastlane Forum events, have ALWAYS been valuable for networking. Maybe start there.

Nothing's likely to happen in the immediate term. MJ's brand has been carefully managed. An event is either going to set up as a home run, or not happen. If you sold tickets NOW, 2 things would happen :
1. It would SELL OUT regardless and
2. Most of the people coming would be people you've never heard of or maybe wouldn't want to hang out with

So for those who really want a meetup in the future, INCREASE THE VALUE of the content on the Fasrlane Forum and the meetup will happen as a by-product of the success of the community. It's a heck of a lot of work, and based on what I have seen lately here you might have a tough time having a calculated ROI that makes any sense.

I wish this chat about the summit was it's own thread seeing as it would get it's own sense of traction.

I totally agree with you here DH, At the last summit, I noticed it was a lot more ear's to mouth's. Which presents an ever present challenge to an in person event. You either keep it small and intimate, so there can be deep connections made. Or you allow it to be large, which then means that there are far fewer chances to make connections and, you have people projecting messages 1 to "a lot more " many. The latter, works if it is industry specific, because the larger audience is likely more tuned into whatever the speaker is talking about.

When you host a "less focused" (better wording?) event like the summit where the topics can be of wide variety, the whole thing becomes a challenge as it grows and adds a variety of people.

The 2020 summit was great, but I was only able to meet a few new people there that i hadn't met before. I think that was at the tipping point of size before it turns into a conference, which is a whole different animal.

A side note: Years later and I still don't understand why people (usually that have never been to an event) want to have it livestreamed. Whatever content you think you are going to get, can be found on the forum or you wouldn't be privvy too. Meetups and summits have little to do with the content, and everything to do with making actual connections with people. You can't do that hiding your face viewing a zoomcast of an event... you have to touch grass.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[loop101]

Why do I have to contact the City to find out where to dispose of old gasoline and why do I have to transport old gasoline to a special fancy hazardous waste center all the way on the other side of town to get rid of it?

Someone please solve this problem. This is stupid.

This guy gets it...

I spent a couple of days trying to get rid of 2 gallons of old gas. The gas was for a generator I ended up not using, and didn't want to run old gas through it. I was told to mix it in to my (new) truck's gas, but if I wasn't going to run it through my generator, I certainly wasn't going to run it through my truck. No gas station would take it. The city hazardous waste disposal wouldn't take it because I was a resident of a different state. I finally found a lawnmower repair man who took it, if he could keep the gas can, which I agreed to. In the 70s people would pour old gas on leaf piles to "get the fire going", and it worked pretty good.

 

[Andy Black]

Sturgeon's law says that "ninety percent of everything is crap".

What's crazy is that the difference between the bottom 90% and the top 10% usually ends up being a pretty small difference.

For example, today I'm going through the process of hiring a developer on Upwork to do some contract work on my website.

90% of the applicants failed to fill out the screening questions, were rude/condescending, or could not follow other simple instructions. This is really simple stuff, but most applicants just didn't do it for whatever reason.

Compare that to the top 10%. They answered all of the questions, explained things in a kind and professional manner, and some even took initiative and started looking into potential fixes for my problem without prompting. (That last one puts them in the top 1% and takes like 5 minutes to do!)

For you it might be answering phone calls right away, greeting every customer with a smile, or even just showing up on time every week. This stuff can be small, but doing that extra 10% might just earn you a customer for life.

Key takeaway: Don't be a sturgeon. Put in the effort and do a good job with everything you do. You don't have to be the absolute best, but you should always aim to be in the top 5-10% in whatever you do.

Huh? These are people looking for work? I'm shocked so few have what seems like common sense and manners.

 

[xShepherdx]

Huh? These are people looking for work? I'm shocked so few have what seems like common sense and manners.

"Work" is probably not the best term to define what they're looking for.

It seems like many of them are 1) lazy and want easy money or 2) are scammers. Probably more of the first one, to give them some credit.

My dad was a career firefighter in a large department and explained the hiring process to me when I got my first job as an EMT. I think the lesson is relevant here.

The story goes like this:

If a fire department opens up 5 new jobs and there are 3,000 applicants, how many people are you really competing with for a job?

Well, certainly not 3,000. Here's why:

- 50% of the applicants don't have the proper certifications for that department or position.

- 30% show up to the interviews unprepared. Some don't know anything about the department. Some don't have their resumes. Some show up in flip-flops. (Yes, that happened. A guy in my hiring group showed up in flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt. Totally professional buddy.)

- 10% can't pass a background check or psych eval.

- Of the remaining 10%, some will get jobs at other places, some won't see the email for the interview or show up on the wrong date, others can't pass their skills tests, etc. Basically, all the regular stuff that can happen to any of us on a bad day.

So in the end, out of 3,000 applicants you end up actually competing with around 30 people (or 1%). These are the people who wore suits to the interview & tests, carried multiple copies of the resumes, knew the departments inside and out, etc.

I knew several of these guys, and they all knew it was only a matter of time before they got hired. They all had their dream job within 2 or 3 years max.

Ironically, the guys who put in less effort would spend way more time interviewing because they could never get hired. They would apply for years on end but just couldn't get the job they wanted.

So more effort = less time and less overall effort in the end.

Or, to put it in a business context: When you put effort into your business and pack it with as many skews as possible, you're not competing against the whole marketplace. Rather, you're only competing against the top ~1% of it, which is usually a very small number of companies.

As for common sense and manners... The bar is already pretty low but boy do people love to play limbo with it.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Antifragile]

Reading this while vaping made me very uncomfortable.

I wonder what is the incidence rate for exploding vape batteries, and who is liable for the damage (manufacturer, seller, or end user).

Most vapes are being produced in places where human safety is not exactly the top priority, unfortunately.

Time to quit vaping? !

 

[PureA]

Reading this while vaping made me very uncomfortable.

Drop the vape. If you like nicotine use pouches, gums, lozenges, or patches.

 

[heavy_industry]

Time to quit vaping? !

Drop the vape. If you like nicotine use pouches, gums, lozenges, or patches.

100%
I'm done being addicted to simulants.

But I want to be very strategic about it, otherwise my productivity and mental health will tank.

First one on the list is quitting caffeine (Q2). Getting rid of nicotine in Q3.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

My favourite way to sell:

"I'd like to buy X."

"Here you go."

"Thanks."

 

[Andy Black]

The bar is already pretty low but boy do people love to play limbo with it.

Love this.

 

[Andy Black]

It's funny how I (think I) can tell from the avatar that I don't want to accept the Facebook friend request.

When it looks too professionally done my alarm bells go off.

Then I click through and Yep, the banner tells me they're selling something.

So No, I'll not accept the friend request thanks.

Hope that helps.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

FFS...

And now I just logged into LinkedIn.

Someone PM'd a couple of days ago saying they spotted me liking their post about XYZ. I think that's clever. But he then asked if I wanted a link to a webinar about XYZ. I think that's not as clever, especially when it's a long message and looks copy/paste. I think they should have started a conversation instead.

Anyway, I ignored that message. But this morning they sent a link to the webinar anyway and asked if I wanted to be on the email distribution list to get more webinars.

Blocked.

 

[loop101]

*ouch*

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1646400997890330626

View: https://twitter.com/CatchUpFeed/status/1646400997890330626

 

[Subsonic]

100%
I'm done being addicted to simulants.

But I want to be very strategic about it, otherwise my productivity and mental health will tank.

First one on the list is quitting caffeine (Q2). Getting rid of nicotine in Q3.

Read Allen Cars "The easy way to quit smoking"

Idk if you heard of it already but it has been lifechanging for lots and lots of people. A hackbook of that book freed me from a addiction many people claim is unbeatable. The best part is that I did not have to suffer one bit.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[UK_Mike]

I spent a couple of days trying to get rid of 2 gallons of old gas.

Surely if you have any outside space, the easy way is to pour some in a tray and leave it outside, maybe with something to stop local wildlife from drinking it. It'll evaporate pretty quickly, then you repeat until there's none left. Or just mix it into your car's tank - stick 10 gallons of new fuel in, and half a gallon of the old, your car will probably* not notice the difference.

( * Just a suggestion, do your own research, if your incredibly expensive engine explodes after doing this it's not my fault. Obviously doesn't apply if you have an electric car, don't pour it in that.)

 

[GPM]

100%
I'm done being addicted to simulants.

But I want to be very strategic about it, otherwise my productivity and mental health will tank.

First one on the list is quitting caffeine (Q2). Getting rid of nicotine in Q3.

I am curious as to what makes you want to stop taking them.

Do you take much of either? Is it at the point of addiction where you can't perform properly without them at all?

 

[GPM]

I should start doing this. My wife is the worst for this. She is addicted to this mental hot sauce that isn't easy to get our hands on, so I usually buy like 3 bottles at a time. She can be down to the last drop on the last bottle and then cries about how it is empty. Well tell me when you are on your last BOTTLE and I will get you 3 more! Don't tell me when you are on your last drop.

Same goes for TP, shampoo/conditioner, dish soap, bread... Actually same goes for everything lol.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[heavy_industry]

I am curious as to what makes you want to stop taking them.

Do you take much of either? Is it at the point of addiction where you can't perform properly without them at all?

It got to a point where these stimulants are going nothing for me.

What could have otherwise be an awesome cognitive booster for increasing productivity, now it's stupid daily maintenance that I have to keep doing just to be able to maintain focus and wellbeing.

There is nothing wrong with caffeine and nicotine. If you use them in a smart way, they are your allies. They are proven nootropics that might even have some neuroprotective benefits.

But I wasn't smart about it, and now it's time to take a step back, and re-introduce them later in a very controlled and disciplined manner.

 

[Primeperiwinkle]

This week I had a really profound experience of progress.

I looked through my journal from last year and at around this time (a year ago) I was just getting into guitar and business. Back then I found it impossible to make money on my own without a job. I also told a friend that the one thing I want to do before death is play the guitar solo from valley of the damned by dragonforce (it seemed so incredibly far away and impossible to do and I love the solo).

This week I archived both of these thing younger me tough was impossible. I made about 230€ and 150 of that as "online income". I also played that solo and the whole song for some people. My mom was there and she really didn't expect me to play the solo. Seeing her face drop was funny.

The actually lesson is a different one however. The solo is, when done 90% accurately and with a few variations, waaaay easier than it looks or sounds. Making money with a business, when trading time for money is also way easier than it seems.
Right now it seems mad to be making thousands each month and to have a real business. Probably next year, I will be there and think "man this is not hard but having a franchise with tens of locations is (ambiguous word here)".

Also there is the point that both of these things don't help me find a girlfriend, even though I believed they would. Like how can a girl not instantly fall in love with me, when I am making a few hundred a month from my own business and able to play a 3 minute long technical show off guitar solo?

Make asking 500 women out for coffee a goal and see what happens.