Hey everyone,
I wanted to take some time to introduce myself. I listened to both Unscripted and TMF about a year ago and have been lurking here for about the same amount of time. There is something about this forum that reminds me of theories about how our social milieu/network influence our own life outcomes, the ‘hang with successful people if you want to become successful yourself’ idea. This community seems like it brings a net positive to the life of many of its members, as it seems to me that most of the posters here are very enthusiastic, knowledgeable and helpful. So, I thought joining would be a good idea. Thanks for having me!
A bit about myself: I’m in my early twenties and, unlike some entrepreneurs who have had an entrepreneurial spirit since birth, I have only developed a taste for entrepreneurship in the last year and a half or so. Before that I did not even know what business entailed, and was under the impression that whoever got rich just got extremely lucky. Some learning experiences later, I realized that I was wrong in my assumptions. The realization that wealth creation is not mere luck, but also requires deliberate effort, felt like an eye opening moment to me if I ever had one. I felt ‘in control’.
For my very first venture, I attempted something similar to Amazon FBA. Sourced a generic product from China, got a logo printed on it and tried to resell it in Europe for a nice profit. This eventually failed. I simply couldn’t sell my inventory because the incredibly low barrier of entry lead to a market flooded with competitors and with dried up demand. This was before I had read any business books, including Unscripted and TMF . It was interesting to read about the Need and Entry criteria that MJ DeMarco outlines after having messed up on those.
Even though I would consider this first venture a failure in the P/L sense, I still consider it a personal victory. Before I started it, the whole process of sourcing and selling products was a complete mystery to me. It was just ‘something that some people do and I am not that type of person’. But now I am confident in my ability to source a product from a supplier when necessary, even if that would require some more learning on my side.
After leaving this first project behind and deeming it unworthy of further time investment I searched for new opportunities. I stumbled upon video creation. Of course I had to learn a new set of skills. I had never recorded nor edited any videos. Things like lighting, cutting up videos in Premiere Pro, compression, denoisers etcetera were like arcane magic spells to me. Learning about all that stuff was really fun and rewarding though. AND now I actually manage to turn a consistently recurring and scalable profit that is detached from my own time, however small that may be currently.
Recently, for another project, I learned how to create an online store with Shopify and modify it slightly through tinkering with the code. Even though my skills in that department are still rather limited, I am happy to have had the opportunity to at least learn how to use a website maker like Shopify. I am currently figuring out social media paid advertising. Setting up the accounts is doable, but learning how to optimize the return on ad spent is something I still have to do.
To me personally the most important lesson I have learned so far can be expressed as follows: Perhaps I currently do not have the knowledge nor skills required to reach my goal, but I do have an ability to learn and adapt, which makes it possible to obtain that knowledge or those skills. Entrepreneurship is not something ‘some people just do and I simply am not those people’, I can actually be like those people if I put in the conscious and deliberate effort.
So, that is a little bit about me and how I have been involved in entrepreneurship so far. I’m looking forward to learning from and also contributing to this forum (with whatever limited knowledge I may have )!
I wanted to take some time to introduce myself. I listened to both Unscripted and TMF about a year ago and have been lurking here for about the same amount of time. There is something about this forum that reminds me of theories about how our social milieu/network influence our own life outcomes, the ‘hang with successful people if you want to become successful yourself’ idea. This community seems like it brings a net positive to the life of many of its members, as it seems to me that most of the posters here are very enthusiastic, knowledgeable and helpful. So, I thought joining would be a good idea. Thanks for having me!
A bit about myself: I’m in my early twenties and, unlike some entrepreneurs who have had an entrepreneurial spirit since birth, I have only developed a taste for entrepreneurship in the last year and a half or so. Before that I did not even know what business entailed, and was under the impression that whoever got rich just got extremely lucky. Some learning experiences later, I realized that I was wrong in my assumptions. The realization that wealth creation is not mere luck, but also requires deliberate effort, felt like an eye opening moment to me if I ever had one. I felt ‘in control’.
For my very first venture, I attempted something similar to Amazon FBA. Sourced a generic product from China, got a logo printed on it and tried to resell it in Europe for a nice profit. This eventually failed. I simply couldn’t sell my inventory because the incredibly low barrier of entry lead to a market flooded with competitors and with dried up demand. This was before I had read any business books, including Unscripted and TMF . It was interesting to read about the Need and Entry criteria that MJ DeMarco outlines after having messed up on those.
Even though I would consider this first venture a failure in the P/L sense, I still consider it a personal victory. Before I started it, the whole process of sourcing and selling products was a complete mystery to me. It was just ‘something that some people do and I am not that type of person’. But now I am confident in my ability to source a product from a supplier when necessary, even if that would require some more learning on my side.
After leaving this first project behind and deeming it unworthy of further time investment I searched for new opportunities. I stumbled upon video creation. Of course I had to learn a new set of skills. I had never recorded nor edited any videos. Things like lighting, cutting up videos in Premiere Pro, compression, denoisers etcetera were like arcane magic spells to me. Learning about all that stuff was really fun and rewarding though. AND now I actually manage to turn a consistently recurring and scalable profit that is detached from my own time, however small that may be currently.
Recently, for another project, I learned how to create an online store with Shopify and modify it slightly through tinkering with the code. Even though my skills in that department are still rather limited, I am happy to have had the opportunity to at least learn how to use a website maker like Shopify. I am currently figuring out social media paid advertising. Setting up the accounts is doable, but learning how to optimize the return on ad spent is something I still have to do.
To me personally the most important lesson I have learned so far can be expressed as follows: Perhaps I currently do not have the knowledge nor skills required to reach my goal, but I do have an ability to learn and adapt, which makes it possible to obtain that knowledge or those skills. Entrepreneurship is not something ‘some people just do and I simply am not those people’, I can actually be like those people if I put in the conscious and deliberate effort.
So, that is a little bit about me and how I have been involved in entrepreneurship so far. I’m looking forward to learning from and also contributing to this forum (with whatever limited knowledge I may have )!
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