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Lex DeVille said:
I hate instragram. I'll never use it for marketing.

TikTok on the other hand, I think that is possibly the biggest marketing opportunity, at least for personal brands. Youtube is always a favorite of mine, except their recent practices are making people think twice about using them.
Click to expand...

If you promote your own IG story to girls in your area, they come talk to you and it's even better than Tinder lmao
 
There are lots of personalities you can find who have gotten rich independently from real estate (i.e. without creating a fund of other investors) and using bank loans.

Anyone similar for stocks? All I've ever seen are fund managers who take other investors' $$$.
 
thechosen1 said:
There are lots of personalities you can find who have gotten rich independently from real estate (i.e. without creating a fund of other investors) and using bank loans.

Anyone similar for stocks? All I've ever seen are fund managers who take other investors' $$$.
Click to expand...

Jesse Livermore, u/DeepFuckingValue - two extreme examples

Probably not many though due to generally low stock market returns, hence why they need OPM for their position sizes to make those small gains worth their time.
 
thechosen1 said:
There are lots of personalities you can find who have gotten rich independently from real estate (i.e. without creating a fund of other investors) and using bank loans.

Anyone similar for stocks? All I've ever seen are fund managers who take other investors' $$$.
Click to expand...
Yes. Definitely. But you’re playing a different game today. Everyone is an “investor” now and everyone thinks they are smart money. I have had stocks get wonderful news and go down. I have had stocks get horrible news and go up. This market is nuts.

That said, the real question is: Why limit yourself? If you provide value to yourself, why not sell it to others as well? More resources coming in means you can afford more resources that further divorce your time from your income. More money = more freedom.

My 9 figure RE mentor has never taken outside money besides the bank loans. I believe, with his track record, a fund would make him wealthier, with less work. The problem is, like so many other small business owners, they don’t believe the less work part.

The reality is, every company out there that’s bigger than him is proof that I’m right. The notion that the CEO of (insert big a$$ reit) “somehow crams more in a day than them” is the wrong mentality.

Sure, they have more hours worked in their name per day, but they live the same 24 hour day as anyone else.

Here’s to hoping I can talk him into a fund at some point. I’d love to raise money for him, it would be nuts.
 
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Kak said:
Yes. Definitely. But you’re playing a different game today. Everyone is an “investor” now and everyone thinks they are smart money. I have had stocks get wonderful news and go down. I have had stocks get horrible news and go up. This market is nuts.

That said, the real question is: Why limit yourself? If you provide value to yourself, why not sell it to others as well? More resources coming in means you can afford more resources that further divorce your time from your income. More money = more freedom.

My 9 figure RE mentor has never taken outside money besides the bank loans. I believe, with his track record, a fund would make him wealthier, with less work. The problem is, like so many other small business owners, they don’t believe the less work part.

The reality is, every company out there that’s bigger than him is proof that I’m right. The notion that the CEO of (insert big a$$ reit) “somehow crams more in a day than them” is the wrong mentality.

Sure, they have more hours worked in their name per day, but they live the same 24 hour day as anyone else.

Here’s to hoping I can talk him into a fund at some point. I’d love to raise money for him, it would be nuts.
Click to expand...
I agree honestly. I am limiting myself.

I guess I have always told myself I’m just not the right kind of person to “raise” money from investors - a silly thing to think.

Or I thought it was dishonest to make money by AUM rather than real performance - but that is also a silly limiting belief!

Wanna start a fund? I have ideas ;)
 
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There are people out there whose highest aspirations are to push people around them to be better and to celebrate their victories with them.

If you aren't surrounding yourself with people like that, ask yourself why.
 
I'm getting so f*cking tired of people. It's not even funny anymore.
 
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Raja said:
What happened?
Click to expand...
Just personal sh*t. I'm here trying to close a 7 figure exit at 26 which is stressful in itself, while the people around me seem to care more about having arguments with each other creating a negative net that just drains the living soul out of you. Can't even focus.
 
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@MoneyDoc
You may need better people around you. In the absence of that, get a good book.
 
MTF said:
It probably doesn't need another thread but I think many will find it useful:


View attachment 37962
Click to expand...
Regarding the first finding, people can hate facebook but its a money making machine, just look at the Q1 2021 earnings : "The company reported revenue of $26.17 billion for the quarter, which was up 48% compared with a year prior. Facebook’s net income grew 94% to $9.5 billion, from $4.9 billion a year prior."
Facebook revenue rises 48%, driven by higher-priced ads.
 
Any free resources for projects to polish my css skills?
 
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvQmDIcd4SU&ab_channel=BarrettStrong-Topic


P.S. This post might be misunderstood as for intentions of it.
Thinking about, in all those negative voices about eating the rich,
taxing them to hell or whatever twitter is at now, some positive
attitude is helpful.
 
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Kak said:
Mindless losers on display for all.

View attachment 37976
Click to expand...
I'm about to do... let's see... half of these in the next couple of weeks?

Flying to my buddy's wedding in Amarillo, selling at a market / trade show, been going to restaurants like normal with nobody wearing masks... Haven't heard of or seen any huge repercussions from any of this in a longggggg time.
 
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If you live in the states - go buy gas and groceries today.

Several states got hit with gas shortages, primarily North Carolina, but given how interconnected the national supply channel is, this will likely affect other states soon.

This will interrupt various supply chains, so make sure that you have grabbed extra food too.
 
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WillHurtDontCare said:
If you live in the states - go buy gas and groceries today.

Several states got hit with gas shortages, primarily North Carolina, but given how interconnected the national supply channel is, this will likely affect other states soon.

This will interrupt various supply chains, so make sure that you have grabbed extra food too.
Click to expand...
Meh, I could use a diet. :rofl:
 
Kak said:
Mindless losers on display for all.

View attachment 37976
Click to expand...

After you've met enough people, you start to feel as though you've met the same person again and again, and you realize that you can comfortably put people into buckets for their psychological profiles.

Some people just get off on following rules and they try to make other people follow all of the same rules, regardless of the merit of said rules.
 
Hot take that might put me on the naughty list...

I keep hearing about “Asian hate,” but I haven’t seen any or heard any, and I am friends with a lot of deep southern folk who voted for Trump.

What I think could be going on is this is being used to distract from legitimate criticism of the CCP, the Chinese government, which has been accused of genocide, as well as being the epicenter of the coronavirus.

It’s nothing to do with the people, but everything to do with the government.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just to share some thoughts...

A few weeks ago, one of my church leaders asked me, 'ZF, do you want to share something on the pulpit for Mothers' Day?'

I got taken aback at first...I hadn't done public speaking in a long time.
I asked my sibling about it, and he just said, 'Just say no...no need to trouble yourself.'

But that felt really silly.
A lot of people HATE church, but that shouldn't be an excuse to not give anything.
So I said to my leader, 'How about I don't just share a testimonial...how about I make a video?'

He said OK, so I started work...

At first, I looked at CURRENT Mothers' Day videos made by churches to see how they did it.

I noticed they focused on mothers' reflections, rah-rah pumping them up with love...but not much on exhorting us folks on loving our mums better.

Even quite a few Christian vids did not discuss anything on the Word...which is like bread without flour.
So there was room to make a video that discussed tenets of the Word, and skip the Mothers' Day rah-rah.

Read the Word, reflected on it...and decided to make a video based on how Jesus loved his mother Mary, and how we can learn from Him to love our mums better.

There were many other Biblical mothers like Naomi and Hannah, but since Jesus' the OG, I went with Him.

Spent 4-5 days on the script.
It took that long because I had to read tons of blogs and commentaries to make sure I won't twist the Word.
(Gotta give pastors credit for all their time spent on prepping sermons)

Then I sent the script to my leader to check.
This step may seem normal, but you may be surprised how little folks follow-up on prepping presentations and events.

The next part was the technical stuff...assembling visuals and soundtrack.

I liked the style of James Jani and Nas Daily, which was all about motion...snippets of small videos with text (that didn't stay in one place). So I applied their approaches.

I wrote the script having some general ideas of what visuals to find
(eg for dialogue 1, have this clip of mother with son, for dialogue 2, switch over to mum working hard at kitchen, etc)

Hunting for good video clips was a bit tough at first, with Shutterstock's paywall. But I found lots of stock videos on YouTube that had no or smaller watermarks. And because I picked Jesus' mum Mary as a main topic character, she already had plenty of movies made on her.

Soundtrack was tough.
Not only did I have to pick matching music...I had to time different sections with the emotions of the various video messages.

The best Christian-ly soundtracks I could find were from Piano Guys, One Voice Children's Choir and some violin pieces. So I decided to look for other pieces outside the church.

Since most music out there is 90% sex and drugs, I thought I was doomed.

Then I remembered an anime series I watched some time back: 'Violet Evergarden'

Basically, it's a story of how a teen soldier, Violet, learns how to feel emotions and write letters for a postal office after she loses her guardian, Major Gilbert.

I tried some of the OSTs against my visuals, and found they matched OK!

The final works:

At the Mothers' Day service, folks were blown away by my video.
Got comments like:

"This is really well put together. Good job on the edits!"
"This is emotional...a lot of potential"
"Meaningful...beautiful."


The truth?
I hadn't made a video like this in the last 5-6 years since high school.
So it's interesting what we can do when we work to create something, instead of just buying something from a store or hiring on Fiverr...

Had I listened to my sibling, would I have created the video at all?
Would I really know what I could actually do?




Later, for my mum's birthday, I didn't run out to go buy a birthday card as most folks do.
I just took out my watercolours and painted one. Did flowers and stalks.

Turned out pretty well after 5-6 years of no practice...all I needed to do was to start with light colours, wait for it to dry before applying medium and darker tones. And to watch out for 'bleeding' from wetness...I did not use high-grade paper.

My mum was pretty pleased.

I feel a bit sad though...I realised that when we are young, we have more space to start picking up arts, handicrafts, cooking, music...and when we enter the SCRIPT and the working world, we just have no time to build up further mastery in these things. How much more does the SCRIPT rob us of, besides financial freedom?
I think that should be one of my aims for getting wealthy...having the time and resources to master cooking, music and arts.
 
Last edited:
ZF Lee said:
Just to share some thoughts...

A few weeks ago, one of my church leaders asked me, 'ZF, do you want to share something on the pulpit for Mothers' Day?'

I got taken aback at first...I hadn't done public speaking in a long time.
I asked my sibling about it, and he just said, 'Just say no...no need to trouble yourself.'

But that felt really silly.
A lot of people HATE church, but that shouldn't be an excuse to not give anything.
So I said to my leader, 'How about I don't just share a testimonial...how about I make a video?'

He said OK, so I started work...

At first, I looked at CURRENT Mothers' Day videos made by churches to see how they did it.

I noticed they focused on mothers' reflections, rah-rah pumping them up with love...but not much on exhorting us folks on loving our mums better.

Even quite a few Christian vids did not discuss anything on the Word...which is like bread without flour.
So there was room to make a video that discussed tenets of the Word, and skip the Mothers' Day rah-rah.

Read the Word, reflected on it...and decided to make a video based on how Jesus loved his mother Mary, and how we can learn from Him to love our mums better.

There were many other Biblical mothers like Naomi and Hannah, but since Jesus' the OG, I went with Him.

Spent 4-5 days on the script.
It took that long because I had to read tons of blogs and commentaries to make sure I won't twist the Word.
(Gotta give pastors credit for all their time spent on prepping sermons)

Then I sent the script to my leader to check.
This step may seem normal, but you may be surprised how little folks follow-up on prepping presentations and events.

The next part was the technical stuff...assembling visuals and soundtrack.

I liked the style of James Jani and Nas Daily, which was all about motion...snippets of small videos with text (that didn't stay in one place). So I applied their approaches.

I wrote the script having some general ideas of what visuals to find
(eg for dialogue 1, have this clip of mother with son, for dialogue 2, switch over to mum working hard at kitchen, etc)

Hunting for good video clips was a bit tough at first, with Shutterstock's paywall. But I found lots of stock videos on YouTube that had no or smaller watermarks. And because I picked Jesus' mum Mary as a main topic character, she already had plenty of movies made on her.

Soundtrack was tough.
Not only did I have to pick matching music...I had to time different sections with the emotions of the various video messages.

The best Christian-ly soundtracks I could find were from Piano Guys, One Voice Children's Choir and some violin pieces. So I decided to look for other pieces outside the church.

Since most music out there is 90% sex and drugs, I thought I was doomed.

Then I remembered an anime series I watched some time back: 'Violet Evergarden'

Basically, it's a story of how a teen soldier, Violet, learns how to feel emotions and write letters for a postal office after she loses her guardian, Major Gilbert.

I tried some of the OSTs against my visuals, and found they matched OK!

The final works:

At the Mothers' Day service, folks were blown away by my video.
Got comments like:

"This is really well put together. Good job on the edits!"
"This is emotional...a lot of potential"
"Meaningful...beautiful."


The truth?
I hadn't made a video like this in the last 5-6 years since high school.
So it's interesting what we can do when we work to create something, instead of just buying something from a store or hiring on Fiverr...

Had I listened to my sibling, would I have created the video at all?
Would I really know what I could actually do?




Later, for my mum's birthday, I didn't run out to go buy a birthday card as most folks do.
I just took out my watercolours and painted one. Did flowers and stalks.

Turned out pretty well after 5-6 years of no practice...all I needed to do was to start with light colours, wait for it to dry before applying medium and darker tones. And to watch out for 'bleeding' from wetness...I did not use high-grade paper.

My mum was pretty pleased.

I feel a bit sad though...I realised that when we are young, we have more space to start picking up arts, handicrafts, cooking, music...and when we enter the SCRIPT and the working world, we just have no time to build up further mastery in these things. How much more does the SCRIPT rob us of, besides financial freedom?
I think that should be one of my aims for getting wealthy...having the time and resources to master cooking, music and arts.
Click to expand...
I think for special events like Birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc… the older you get the more it’s kind of expected to buy cards or spend money on gifts than hand making them. I personally would rather enjoy making something but I’m not Vincent Van Gogh. The result may not be that great, haha. But I agree, it’d be nice if more people accept and pick up the arts and use their creativity rather than default to buying things.
 
thechosen1 said:
Am I the only person who constantly feels like I might be in the wrong vehicle for the fastlane?
Click to expand...
It seems to me that some sort of constant self doubt is inherent to being on your own. On good days, I feel it less, on bad ones, more. At least this is my experience... I think it helps pushing myself forward though.
 
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