Was doing well in the Slowlane, but now I'm Fastlane, $1.1M net worth

[Grindman]

Hi people

I'm a 25 year old guy from Belgium that has 2 years of working experience.

The reason that I'm making this thread is that I am currently in a critical time in my life, I'll explain it a little bit for you to understand

Career:

I’m currently working as a headhunter (engineering profiles) and make better money than most of my age ( € 63k in the bank , 68k dollars). I have this money because I went full slowlane. I saved 90% of my income during the past two years (salaries get taxed heavily where I live).


I also worked one year in IT support before, I decided to switch because I wanted to learn how to sell (my current job is commercial).


Perspectives: within on year I should be able to become assistant team manager and get some management experience under my wings (mentoring & coaching new people)


Work-life balance: Zero, I get up 5:30, commute 5:45 – 6:30, work out 6:30 – 7:30 and then start work until 7pm in the evening.


Relationship: been together with my gf for 5 years now, she wants to go move together.


The dilemma: right now my girlfriend is pushing me to buy an apartment, which costs anywhere between €180k - €270k in the region). This can eat all my slowlane grown funds if I put it all in. If I commit to a loan this big, I will also need to pay it off.


The thing is that I read the millionaire fastlane & that buying an apartment looks to me as if I’ll be burying myself in debt. I’d love to start working on my own projects but this seems highly impossible with a full time job (which I’ll need to pay off the lone)


TLDR: Slowlane guy with hardcore job wanting to go fastlane. On the verge of buying an apartment, what would you do in this situation?

 

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[GuestUser113]

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...-cant-make-your-life-decisions-for-you.33485/

 

[Josh]

If you are serious about building a fastlane business I think it would be a terrible idea to buy an apartment.

Have you spoken to your GF about your ambitions?

You have really only three options that I can see.

1. Continue with the job, sacrifice your personal and family life and build your business on the side every night and on weekends. Use every available spare minute to build your business.
2. Get a job with less demanding hours that brings in less money but still pays the bills. Use most of your free time to build your side business. Still have a semblance of a personal life.
3. Go all in, quit your job and build your business.

Number 2 is the most logical option. Number 1 is possible but you would have to be seriously disciplined. Number 3 would be a stupid idea (unless you are an extreme kind of person who prefers to live all or nothing).

In all options buying an apartment makes no sense, it will just be an added expense and create a debt burden. If you want to go Fastlane you should make an effort to reduce your expenditure as much as possible until your business has a reasonable cashflow. Why make it harder on yourself?

 

[theag]

Relationship: been together with my gf for 5 years now, she wants to go move together.


The dilemma: right now my girlfriend is pushing me

Lots of warning signs here. You should read the marriage thread.

The apartment idea is stupid. Dont do it.

Build a business on the side. Once its validated, use your savings to scale it.

Also, consider splitting up with your girlfriend if she holds you back and continues to push you down that road.

 

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[Grindman]

@Josh
Hi Josh, thanks for the advice, you gave me a new insight. I always looked at renting as wasted money, in the fastlane strategy it doesn't matter much if you rent for two years given the extra advantages you get out of it I guess? (increased flexibility, more capital free for scale-ability.

@theothers I really like my job, however lately it's a burden because of the commute and not seeing my girlfriend / family during the week (I come home at 8). Moving closer to the office will allow me to start work later & leave earlier (now I leave late (after drinks) to avoid traffic jams (not very logical I know).

I also talked with my manager today about this and he's pretty sure that he'll start his own company one day, with me as equal partners, confirmed.

So the current plan looks like:

Rent appartment within 10 minutes walking distance of work
Work better hours (no traffic jams)
Set up website regarding my industry to generate passive income
Start business with manager asap according to fastlane principles

 

[jmusic]

@Josh
I also talked with my manager today about this and he's pretty sure that he'll start his own company one day, with me as equal partners, confirmed.

Don't hold your breath. Plenty of wantrepenuers talk a great game. Like.... me.

 

[Grindman]

I accidentaly stumbled upon the forum again.

Last time I posted was 4 years ago

In the meantime a lot has changed

July 2016 I founded my company with a cofounder (both 50%)
The first year we stayed with two, in order to get stable financially.
july 2017 we started growing and as of today we're 15 people.

Right now we're documenting the business in order to scale up to 30.

Fastlane is definitely the way to go

Crazy how life goes.

 

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[Grindman]

29/11/2023 - today something special happened - I reached € 1.000.000 net worth personally (excluding all my net worth that is still in the business).

This is a big day for me because it means that even if the business goes bankrupt me & my partner have enough money to never have to work again (with a very basic salary)

Next to this there's 2 million profits in the business & the business is worth around 6 million as of today.

We have 50 people working for us and are becoming one of the TOP 10 in our country in our services.

Thank you MJ DeMarco for writing your book, it has influenced me in scaling my business.

Next steps are stabilizing the company on this amount of people & increasing profitability (to 2/3million per year), increasing the business value to 12/18 million.

After this I'm considering selling & reinvesting & blowing it up together with an investor.

 

[samuraijack]

29/11/2023 - today something special happened - I reached € 1.000.000 net worth personally (excluding all my net worth that is still in the business).

This is a big day for me because it means that even if the business goes bankrupt me & my partner have enough money to never have to work again (with a very basic salary)

Next to this there's 2 million profits in the business & the business is worth around 6 million as of today.

We have 50 people working for us and are becoming one of the TOP 10 in our country in our services.

Thank you MJ DeMarco for writing your book, it has influenced me in scaling my business.

Next steps are stabilizing the company on this amount of people & increasing profitability (to 2/3million per year), increasing the business value to 12/18 million.

After this I'm considering selling & reinvesting & blowing it up together with an investor.

Was this business in the same industry as the job you had a few years ago?

 

[MJ DeMarco]

29/11/2023 - today something special happened - I reached € 1.000.000 net worth personally (excluding all my net worth that is still in the business).

This is a big day for me because it means that even if the business goes bankrupt me & my partner have enough money to never have to work again (with a very basic salary)

Next to this there's 2 million profits in the business & the business is worth around 6 million as of today.

We have 50 people working for us and are becoming one of the TOP 10 in our country in our services.

Thank you MJ DeMarco for writing your book, it has influenced me in scaling my business.

Next steps are stabilizing the company on this amount of people & increasing profitability (to 2/3million per year), increasing the business value to 12/18 million.

After this I'm considering selling & reinvesting & blowing it up together with an investor.

Wow, congrats!

Any details you can share to help those who are following after you?

Upgraded to NOTABLE.

 

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[Nazca]

29/11/2023 - today something special happened - I reached € 1.000.000 net worth personally (excluding all my net worth that is still in the business).

This is a big day for me because it means that even if the business goes bankrupt me & my partner have enough money to never have to work again (with a very basic salary)

Next to this there's 2 million profits in the business & the business is worth around 6 million as of today.

We have 50 people working for us and are becoming one of the TOP 10 in our country in our services.

Thank you MJ DeMarco for writing your book, it has influenced me in scaling my business.

Next steps are stabilizing the company on this amount of people & increasing profitability (to 2/3million per year), increasing the business value to 12/18 million.

After this I'm considering selling & reinvesting & blowing it up together with an investor.

Crazy! Congratulations. 33 years old fastlaner!

 

[Grindman]

Was this business in the same industry as the job you had a few years ago?

Yes it was. It's something I would advice everyone: learn sales in thé service industry: low capital requirementd & if you can sell you can build a busineSs

We actually took all our knowledge, took out the flaws and we scaled it up.

 

[Grindman]

Wow, congrats!

Any details you can share to help those who are following after you?

Upgraded to NOTABLE.

Learn sales in thé service industry or learn to provide thé service so you can team up with someone to sell
As soon as you are profitable hire someone to take non product delivery or non sales jobs from you
After that delegate sales of product delivery and document your core business processen ( see thé emyth for this)

Then keep hiring sales People and service delivery people untill you can't manage them anyomore
Promote thé best ones too teamleiders
Sell

 

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[NewManRising]

Commit to your goal/mission, not people. So many people throw their dreams away and make their GF/BF their priority and drop their own in the process.

 

[Grindman]

Was this business in the same industry as the job you had a few years ago?

yes it was, that's an advice I would everyone, start in a service industry, in sales or product creation (really close to what the company does) , learn the trade & then outcompete them

 

[El1mination]

yes it was, that's an advice I would everyone, start in a service industry, in sales or product creation (really close to what the company does) , learn the trade & then outcompete them

I don't even know you yet I'm very proud of you

 

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[MRiabov]

29/11/2023 - today something special happened - I reached € 1.000.000 net worth personally (excluding all my net worth that is still in the business).

This is a big day for me because it means that even if the business goes bankrupt me & my partner have enough money to never have to work again (with a very basic salary)

Next to this there's 2 million profits in the business & the business is worth around 6 million as of today.

We have 50 people working for us and are becoming one of the TOP 10 in our country in our services.

Thank you MJ DeMarco for writing your book, it has influenced me in scaling my business.

Next steps are stabilizing the company on this amount of people & increasing profitability (to 2/3million per year), increasing the business value to 12/18 million.

After this I'm considering selling & reinvesting & blowing it up together with an investor.

If you will productize your business (make a product, not service business) and want to get venture capital, I highly suggest your read Lost and Founder.

The book itself is not very good because the founder has frankly messed up, but that's the point:

The owner has given out all of his equity to investors (92%), was put in a salary of a CEO and still had to work for 10 hour days. He no longer had a business, basically.

So keep an eye out on giving equity.

 

[EquinoxS]

Congrats!
Love the unagitated way you casually dropped that you have become a millionaire.

I'm curious. Would be willing to answer a couple of questions?

1. You wrote that your business is in the same industry. Does that mean personnel management, HR...?
2. Were you the sales guy or the product creation guy?
3. How did you recognize their was an opportunity? Was there not enough supply for the demand in the market? Or did you see flaws in the way the established business handled things?
4. If the latter: how did you skew value?
5. Did you already know how to skew value or did you have to learn something first (i.e. did you see a problem and first had to learn how to create a solution or did you already have the necessary knowledge?)?
6. What made you feel confident that your solution was good enough to hit the market?

Thanks!

 

[Elxandre24]

@Grindman

Great questions from @EquinoxS above I am really curious about those as well.

But I would like to add:
Did you get that apartment in 2015? If not how did your girlfriend react?

 

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[Grindman]

@Grindman

Great questions from @EquinoxS above I am really curious about those as well.

But I would like to add:
Did you get that apartment in 2015? If not how did your girlfriend react?

No actually I didn't, I kept renting until september 2021 and started a business in 2016. the 100k on the bank always gave me the comfort to build the business.

We eventually bought a house, but by then I had like 600k saved up so the 120k down payment was easy for us to make.

 

[Grindman]

Congrats!
Love the unagitated way you casually dropped that you have become a millionaire.

I'm curious. Would be willing to answer a couple of questions?

1. You wrote that your business is in the same industry. Does that mean personnel management, HR...? yes
2. Were you the sales guy or the product creation guy? both
3. How did you recognize their was an opportunity? Was there not enough supply for the demand in the market? Or did you see flaws in the way the established business handled things? both, their process sucked (they left the market by now & I learned about the marked potential by working there).
4. If the latter: how did you skew value?
5. Did you already know how to skew value or did you have to learn something first (i.e. did you see a problem and first had to learn how to create a solution or did you already have the necessary knowledge?)? I learned to skew value by doing, qualifying prospects & ask them what they were missing in their current solution
6. What made you feel confident that your solution was good enough to hit the market? I was an expert "technician" by the moment I started my business (read the emyth if you don't know what I mentioned there , but only read the e-myth after you started your business)

Thanks!

 

[Grindman]

I recently bought the digital version of the fastlane millionaire to read it again just for entertainment, but re-reading it enlightend me.

There's a pieced where @MJ DeMarco you write about 10 mio dollars = 500k per year = 41.6k net per month

This is an insane amount of income to live on & would create a crazy lifestyle.

I was kind of in a slump of boring ness with my business but this actually motivated me: to sell my business for 12-18 million requires a net profit of 2-3 million - we're not that far from there & the business is almost running itself.

Thank you MJ De Marco the value your book provides is unreal ( it even re-motivates me after running my business for 6 years & building it up to 50 employees)

 

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[DonyaSze]

Wow. LOVE this thread! Even though I was aware I clicked on a ‘NOTEABLE’ thread, I was still blown away by what I read. It felt like watching a small movie where the normal guy starts small and becomes a big hero in the end! So cool to feel like I’ve watched the process.

 

[Panos Daras]

Great job! Your story taught me an important lesson: starting a business in an industry you already know can give you a head start. It's easier to succeed when you're familiar with the field.