20 yo Sophomore at school in Silicon Valley. Basic programming experience.
What summer project would give me the greatest hybrid of learning entrepreneurship & developing a valuable niche skill?
We don’t know, simply find schools that are feeders into the top firms (google/Facebook etc) and ask those individuals for advice. Much better to go to the source
Why are you guys so against internet fame? By being not famous you:
– Meet less interesting people
– Have no (or less) girls after you
– Are less respected in your industry
– Are generally unhappier (irrelevant people are unhappier)
The most important human beings will be celebrities as super-intelligence progresses. Rich people will buy fame with their $$$ (they already do with social media). Thoughts?
Complete disagree with all your points
1) you meet people after you becuase they know you have money/weight yo unattractive snakes as proven a billion times in history
2) completely false if you’re not a dj, rapper, sports star etc. You can be a public figure and girls don’t care (anyone see a girl walk up to a hedge fund manager as a “groupie” much less common)
3) also false, you’re tying attention with respect. Normal people are the scum of the earth and you don’t want them talking to you or knowing what you’re worth.
4) also false. Usually extremely insecure people becuase if you’re rich you have a choice to flaunt it. Famous people have big egos and typically suffer from mental illness (hence multiple celebrities with drug addiction + death/suicide). Even avicii killed himself and drugged himself to death.
5) they buy money with their fame not the same.
To be blunt if your goal is to be famous we strongly recommend against reading here. There are lots of people who love attention that will happily sell you that dream
Last question was a joke, didn’t realize I couldn’t edit it.
Real question: Is it worth it to study computer science/statistics with sights set on working at a quant shop?
Sure that can work but we would recommend going into tech if you have the talent. Going to Wall Street doesn’t make sense since it is in secular decline for most segments
What is your most effective way to meet new really interesting people worldwide who have an interesting live overall and are not just an expert in one field you like to speak about ? I’m talking about the 0.01% you’d be happy to spend more recurrent time with.
High end gyms if you’re looking for guy friends.
Women = we don’t know, we base that entirely off looks which means high end bars/clubs/gyms etc. There is no catch all there as you just talk to women you’re attracted to and play the numbers game.
College student here doing a tech internship in NYC this summer, will be first time there.
Do you have any specific advice for making the most of my internship, the pay from it, and my stay in NYC?
Pay will be handsome but hard to figure out how to make an actual good use of only 3 months of it. Also time trade-offs between experiencing the city and doing something productive out there.
Already covered on the blog.
Long story short, you’re not going to get much out of it. Just get an offer and use that to get the best full time position possible. The rest of your time = enjoy your freedom for the last year of your life before the real grind begins!
If you are not interested in partying, then the clear answer is in efficiency, get a business up and running asap.
Sure you know this but trying to “get rich” off an internship is pretty funny, you’ll make more in 2 weeks than you make your entire internship in the future… so it doesn’t matter
Been learning copy writing for a while. Where could I apply my skills and get feedback to see if my skills are good enough?
Same answer as another guy, the only feedback is putting your skills to the test to make money. Then you’ll know if you’re good or not.
Results = level of “good”
Thanks for that. Should’ve asked more specifically that where are good places to test to make money?
Twitter influencers RTing my stuff is by far the best way to get traffic to my profile/site. Any advice or unwritten rules about asking influencers to promote a product (financial services related)?
1. My product is new so I’d be ruined if they posted a screenshot of me asking them to promote me for $. (crypto influencers do this all the time)
2. Not sure they’d even do it since it seems like mostly an Instagram or mommy blogger thing
Possible workarounds:
1. Ask non-finance influencers to retweet something general of mine and hope people click into my profile
2. Just keep commenting on finance influencers’ stuff and hope they RT back
Go through the influencers you know will help your brand. Reach out and give them free trials (don’t ask for anything). Alternatively ask them if there is anything you can do to help them.
Don’t beg for anything 1) makes you look bad and 2) doesn’t work. Find a way to help them (natural tit-for-tat they help you back) and always offer free trials to people high up the chain so they can at worst say “not for me” and at best they will recommend it. If they don’t like it, they usually just email and say “thanks but wasn’t for me” and won’t make you look bad unless the guy/girl is having a horrible day.
Opinons on Cernovichs Gorilla Mind? And are you involved in it?
Have not used it so we cannot comment. We don’t take supplements and are not involved
Question: why no overhead presses in the Big 12?
You could do it, we’ve seen too many shoulder injuries due to tendons wearing down in 30s/40s so we avoid them. Only use them once and a while
Preferred providers in Singapore, Japan, or Hong Kong (countries listed in descending order of preference) to utilize to cash out crypto directly without going OTC?
Nine (excellent as always) posts since the start of last month is incredible. Thank you!
Wish we knew this, overall going OTC is the best answer. You’ll get a vig and on top of that it’s easier to do in your country. Singapore and Japan generally have the best crypto laws in terms of taxation, but OTC is the most viable option. Shouldn’t take more than 1 text message to find a buyer/seller in your area
Just to had a ressource here, bullionstar.com is imo a really good option to cash out crypto in Singapore. Trade crypto for Gold which Singapore is the best place for. 100% anonymous, no reporting at all, no tax at all, can cash out in fiat with large amounts… or store Gold with them.
I visited their shop a few months ago, looks really solid for me.
I’m not affiliated with them, I have an affiliate link but not pasting it in as I just wanted to share a great ressource.
Feel free to not publish the comment in the Q&A, but I tough you might be happy to know that this ressource exists for yourself 🙂
Cheers.
Thanks. And thanks Giviz. Have been using BS for the last two + years. They are solid guys and that small workaround (crypto -> gold -> check / cash) is what I’ve been using. Best to arrive with a nominee for bearer share assets you bring in as they sometimes scan passports. If brave enough you can grab a local kid from the bus stop across the street at Central. They cut checks in SGD, but have also let me walk out with decent sums of cash (USD and SGD) before as well. Luckily they’ve always had enough on hand in the back. You can also run everything through their website as well if you don’t want to visit. (I’m also not affiliated with them. Just good experiences combining them with bearer share instruments kept in a Certis Cisco box.)
P.S. This is the second time Giviz has assisted me. Seems like WPS site is just as good if not better than high end gyms for meeting interesting people.
Look into Bisq. It’s a way to trade crypto to Fiat through bank transfers.
Regarding e-business, you advice to target the emotional to sell.
I am in a highly regulated sector in France limiting advertising.
Do you think that the 8 figures “examinedotcom” (sol orwell) which sells scientific nutritional info-products with a purely rational arguments based on organic growth without advertising, is an exception to the rule? or is it a reproducible strategy ?
Thank you for your valuable help.
( sorry for the poor english)
We are not sure as we don’t know what you’re selling. We would say *never* go with rational arguments. This is the reality of regular people. They don’t think with their minds.
We would find any and every loophole to target emotion for your project and buy traffic that way. Sell them the feels and they’ll buy it. All the self-help people are proof of this. There is no tangible value there besides thoughts and feelings but they make more money doing it than rational people. So do whatever it takes to squeeze emotion in there.
For cash flowing assets outside of a business what yield do you look for before worrying about capital preservation?
Probably the best question on here.
Here’s the thing, we don’t think about yield as much as we think about time. If you can do nothing at all the yield can be lower and we’d be fine with it. Say you buy an internet asset and only work on it for 2 hours a day, well how much money did that make? If it made you $100 a month it was terrible. If it makes you $10,000 a month that’s fantastic. That is $1,250/hour or the equivalent of a $2.5M annual income! That’s worth it.
Then if it requires no time at all (say stocks/bonds etc) and you’re setting and forgetting. We would just use a standard barbell approach and put a weight on stocks and a weight on bonds that hits your yield based on your age.
After that for capital preservation, we suggest basic living expense calculators. If you’re young you only need a few months of living expenses, when you get to age 40 or so you need a few years sitting basically in risk free assets. Here’s the natural catch though… if you got to age 40 and are likely rich, then you don’t really need more than 3 years (a recession will only last a couple years and at worst 3 years or so), this creates a natural way for you to take on more risk.
Hope that helps may need a post on this one specifically. But. Think about it in terms of how much energy you’re using. This is why we think online is the way to go, people underestimate the ability to automate an online business. If you’re working 40 hours a week online to make $100K a year that is just awful. Essentially created a new job. We would rather have one asset making $25K a year but have that asset only require 1-2 hours a week. At least that one has potential and doesn’t take up valuable time
Thanks for that, having focused on brevity I lacked being specific. I was specifically asking about investing in fixed income. I tend to use the HY ETFs yield (JNK and HYG) as the line where I start worrying about capital preservation and security of payout, anything under and I treat as a rate play arbed vs my mortgage and anything great I have to go credit work and believe in the story. Didn’t know if there was a benchmark you used to value fixed income investment yield.
Fixed income isn’t really a focus for us we just buy baskets of high quality bonds for the safety portion of investment portfolio. Yields are too low so they don’t offer a ton of reason to invest time into.
do you have any advice for negotiating salary or a pay rise?
-how to best argue your case
-what to say/what not to say
-how much of a % increase you should request
Easy get a competing offer. We never bothered with begging. A job/career is just something you do when you have no other options. So you want to just interview to get competing offers and otherwise do the minimum (max income return) while working on something real instead.
Thoughts on a career in being a real estate agent/broker? Live in California in Bay Area, average home price is $1m+. I know a couple of them making $1 million+/year, but those are 1 out of 1000. Just feels like not much prestige and people will auto assume you’re trying to make a sale.
Worried about tech players like redfin zillow etc also killing the fees like etfs/discounts/online DIY’ers did to stock brokerage
Thx
Yes this is essentially enterprise sales, so it will work. Problem is we agree and think fees go down in future, hence emphasis on tech sales.
Why do you think passively HODL-ing cryptocurrencies is more profitable than actively trading them, buying market crashes and dips and wash rinse repeat?
Cost of trading cryptos is close to 0% and the assets are highly volatile.
You should have more valuable things to do with your time than look at a crypto chart unless you’re already at 8 figures invested in crypto
Why do you recommend the sp500 over Berk for the average investors? Berk has clearly outperformed the Sp500 for decades.
He is going to die soon.
Is it possible to maintain a regular sleep cycle for 5 days (10pm to 6am) and go out for 2 days (3am to 10am)?
I’m about to start working in my first software sales job after moving to an apartment in a new city very close to the nightlife, it’s tempting to go downstairs every Friday and Saturday night but it is seriously messing with my sleep cycle and ability to focus during the day.
I want to be the top performer in my company, do you guys have any experience with this?
Thanks!
This just means you should party less. Why do you need to go out till 10am? Become more efficient with your time and also try to meet people during the day at lunch etc. You don’t need to party for 8 hours straight just to meet someone, so figure out when the traffic is the highest and reduce your time going out by half. We doubt it will change the results.
I mean sleep from 3am to 10am
Yes it is doable, go out Thursday Saturday not back to back. Most obvious solution is don’t drink when you go out no need to
Piggybacking on this – “don’t drink when you go out , no need to” are you referring you to going out Thursdays and Saturday’s when meeting people at night?
Not drinking but still being able to go out and date is a game changer for productivity and health but wondering if that’s what you meant.
Yes it is what we meant you don’t need to drink at all. There are many people who do this, alcohol is just social lubricant
When you speak of fashion in terms of improving that to up your game both with women and in life, as appearances do matter — what are your thoughts on wearing suits in areas where people dont wear many suits? Live in Silicon Valley but I like wearing suits (I also do like polos, jeans, etc but nothing looks as masculine imo as a well tailored suit.)
Just seems like I’ll look too much like a try hard and it’ll do more harm than good for the image given the tech/casual environment in the city/etc.
The only way dressing sharp hurts you is if you personally feel uncomfortable or awkward. Also, trying to pick up people in silicon valley is like dumpster diving that area does not have very many attractive women, we would move.
Thoughts on alcohol to relieve stress/chill each night?
I don’t mean drinking every day to get drunk or drinking a marathon of 6 drinks etc every night and waking up with a hangover. I mean maybe 2 glasses of wine or so, but daily.I hear 2-3 glasses of redwine a day is “good” for you (doctor also says this but lol – I do get blood work done to get my body/liver etc tested twice a year and all looks well). Would love your thoughts.
Side note – Currently in late 20’s approaching 30’s. Work out everyday. Eat relatively clean/healthy. Thanks
Don’t really recommend it, only drink when going out to have fun. Otherwise you’re just doing damage to your body. All those studies saying to drink 1-2 a day… never held a control group for wealth. So… you’re essentially just hurting yourself.
Transitioning to a software sales job and start in a month. I am very introverted by nature, but can fake it and determined to broaden my social skills both on the job and off the job. What’s the very best way I can improve my sales/social skills before I start the job? I was thinking toastmasters and going to as many events as possible, where I know no one. Also start talking to strangers and try to talk to as many people as possible.
The only legitimate way is to get a job in sales. Everything else is nonsense and fake, practicing toast masters = nothing on the line. There is a difference when you actually have to perform (IE pressure). Stuff that has no downside if you fail = not real and won’t help you much down the line
Improv….teaches not to be afraid of social failures, makes you think on the spot, improves speed of brain functions, teaches good which can’t be faked etc..
When affiliate marketing legitimately (non-scammy physical products) can you skip doing things organically (as a way to see what what people wanna buy)…
and instead jump straight into paid traffic provided your aff manager can approve the product is converting for others? Or is this a big no no
Not sure what your question is, are you buying traffic to sell someone else’s product? If so likely low margin.
If you’re saying buy traffic once you know how it works on your own product? Then yes of course, you could get lucky and make money day one or two.
Buying traffic to sell someone else’s product.
Slightly confused as your book splits aff marketing into two camps
Paid traffic for CPA scammy affiliate marketing
Organic seo for legit affiliate.
Can you use paid traffic on legit offers straight out the gate?
Yes you can. Our point is if you’re competing against sketchy affiliates it’s less likely to work since they will go above and beyond for the sale. The offer needs to be negative on scammy affiliates and ban them for yours to work. If it’s open to all then scammy affiliates take the $$
Not asking for motivation tips as it’s bs anyways, but how do you keep yourself accountable if you fall off the “efficiency lifestyle/track” after some time?
Ha we don’t know. You simply get back to work?
Accountability is based on the individual, most people are lazy that is why we know who actually took action on our product or not. They send us emails within 6 months of making $X thousand in a month.
Question (yes or no with implications) concerning comparative advantage of Monero over Bitcoin:
Since BTC/other cryptos are open source, once AI data mines the block chain transactions to establish User ID, and then develop each potential user cross referencing other purchases/disclosures (taxes, charity, etc.), does an advantage exist for privacy cryptos or ‘clean’ versions of popular cryptos with greatest market cap?
–>If privacy, then does a severe comparative adv exist for XOM once network grows/speeds up, indicating to buy XOM or privacy focused crypto, esp with increased utility and hardware wallets.
–> If popularity and legitimacy, why not feasible to exploit BTC as a financial OSINT device? Then indicating to find crypto with established/expanding market share. This creates a 1 BTC does not equal 1 BTC scenario, driving a market for ‘clean’ crypto histories of popular currencies. HODL lovers today would roar.
Thank you for the blog. it is great.
Please repeat your question this looks like a ramble. Only one question not a run on of questions.
Thanks for another QnA.
Say you have a day job and have started building your business. Age – late twenties.
You have $80K at the bank. Investing them in your business wouldn’t provide additional benefits at this point, maybe $5-10K of them, but the rest doesn’t make sense to put them in the business.
What would be a relatively safe choice to do with the money considering all stocks and indexes are at a record high now?
Thanks!
Your best option to maximize returns is yet another online business if you already built one successfully. It will give you well over 400% returns.
Question:
In efficiency, you state that you eat carbs with 1 meal only (lunch or dinner). If this is still the case, knowing what carb sources you choose from (brown rice or Quinoa) and that you don’t count/track macros/calories, what sort of quantity of brown rice do you eat? (if prepping the meal yourself and not buying from a store)
We don’t count calories or macros. We think its overkill. Stressing about exact portions kills the purpose of being in shape because stress alone is a health killer. Simply eat a small amount and move on, if you’re gaining weight, you eat less of it. If you’re maintaining/losign fat, you’re eating the right amount.
From our experience there are only two types of people who count calories (guys in the 0.1% who obsess over their bodies and are borderline professional, and average people who will never get in shape)
Don’t count calories, waste of time. If you’re looking to stay lean, the answer isn’t in your caloric intake, it’s in your sugar intake (which includes carbs). Skip brown rice and stick with more whole grain sources such as quinoa, buckwheat, and bulgur.
No its not. It is overall caloric surplus. Does not matter if it comes from sugar or fat or whatever.. I eat tons of sugar, approaching 40 and look better than most 20 years old.. Yes I work out 20 years, but I also eat 50 to 100g of candy every night, sweets during the day.. But true I eat less other stuff so again, calories in, calories out. Sugar is toxic is another myth… What do you think your body does with bread, rice, potato, fruits? It turns them into glucose just as it does with sugar.
CALORIC INTAKE OVER ALL. You can get fat on fruits and veggies and you can be lean all your life eating tons of sugar…
Question: I’m studying and learning copywriting whilst doing gigs on Fiverr to make some money. I plan to outsource work related tasks and scale my business.
I then would use some of that surplus to do Amazon FBA selling, by building a brand and scale that business as well.
Do you think this is a viable business model and would you recommend going down this route?
Sure that’ll work for basic skills you have to find a way to scale the tasks you’re doing however. And. Fiverr is likely too low on the totem pole but we don’t know what you’re doing exactly. So if you can scale it without doing any work (outsource to India) then you’re good.
College student here. I got kicked out of a top business school, and my only option is studying Computer science.
Should I forgo Wall St. altogether and try for Silicon Valley, or do I still have a shot at Wall St.?
If you have the skills to go to tech definitely do that. If you want to go to Wall street it would be a ton harder you’d need to transfer to another top B-school and hit restart
Is it worth it to go from the Army to cyber-security consulting at a major company or take a pay cut to get into the cyber-security sales pipeline? (I’m personable enough for sales)
Cheers
We don’t know your goals but if you’re trying to get rich, then yes eventually switching into technology sales is the right move. Much harder to get rich in the army
Thanks for the site – think it’s great. Quick version. J-O-B in fin svcs – not sales so not as easily transferable. Made some lifestyle inflation mistakes. Mid 40s -amily w/ kids – Liquid about $9mm but valuations elevated everywhere so don’t see the prospective returns to get me 250/yr + kid costs. Some passive ventures have worked, some haven’t but not needle moving currently. How would you approach this situ if sick of being wage slave?
Not sure if this was a troll but 4% returns on $9M is $360K a year so you’re already done.
How to excel / add value as a young real estate agent/broker who’s looking to break into the high end luxury market (in NYC)? (Don’t have a huge high end rolodex yet, early 20s)
No experience here so we can’t answer, would read our posts on RE but we never worked in that slot.
Currently run a content site (blog) earning $1-2K a month. I know you’re not a huge fan of that business model (as outlined in efficiency) but I enjoy it. Hoping to one day sell the blog for event driven income, or build it up to a meaningful income stream. Best strategy to reinvest the earnings to grow the site?
Highly unlikely since most blogs have a name attached and have low resale value. Blogs also typically cap out income wise and stall at $100-200K unless it becomes a mega site (typically finance sites make the most money). We have never sold a blog or tried to make serious money from it so we don’t know. We would reach out to blogs that were sold for millions (typically personal finance) and ask them. We think it’s a poor use of your time
At what point do you consider creating another source of income?
Let’s say you make mid-six-figures from your main business and growth is slowing down (financial ceiling in some businesses, just like in careers, is lower than in others). Do you keep investing in it or build another business in a different industry with more potential?
Every second is when you consider it and get working on it.
Any idea you have that will be profitable needs to be started today because this is how wealth is built. Better to have 7 streams of income each generating $50K a year, than have one single stream worth $350K because it could go to zero and you’re screwed. Always find a way to take one brand and feed the traffic to yet another brand where the customer base is similar.
You’re suggesting making multiple brands in the same niche?
Hi, 2 years out of school and currently work in high yield research for a no-name asset manager on the West Coast. Trying to get into a tier 3 or better job without b-school. Networking like crazy but no job interviews for banking or good HFs (most say they want people with previous banking exp). Should I instead focus on better buy side shops e.g. TCW/Cap group or perhaps sell side research/S&T? Thanks
Sure, your other option is to try and break into the middle tier firms instead of just aiming for the big banks. Try to get into a low end IB position then transfer yet again to a larger bank.
Overall though if your income is roughly the same, then you are best off starting an online biz as usual.
Thanks for holding a Q&A and a great blog! Been following you for quite a while and you provide great content!
22 year old college student studying economics and finance. As you have mentioned many times, wall street is a declining area. Would you consider going in to tech (sales) / consulting rather than trying to get a finance related job (of course after graduation?
Bonus question: And if so, any tips how to use the degree / finance related internships as an advantage when applying to those jobs?
Tech sales is ideal, no finance is not going to help you there. We would go straight to our tech sales post and work there to find how to get in at the entry level. If that doesn’t work then go ahead and go straight to M&A banking/finance.
Tech sales will destroy consulting income, consulting is actually terrible when you adjust for the hours, we’d never do it.
Do you suggest any important things to consider if not planning to marry but have a significant other (e.g. common law marriage, not living together, no ceremonies, etc.)?
Not much to say, as long as you’re not risking half your assets for no reason do anything you want. Our only point on *legal* marriage is it makes zero sense to risk everything you worked for with no upside.
You wrote several times that following things are mostly time-sucks: books, movies, watching sports, partying/hooking up, “traveling the world”, “working hard” past a several million net-worth so on and so forth.
So … what is left on a day by day basis besides working 4-8 hours (as your recommended 30-40 hours work-weeks for people who “made it”), doing sports around 2 hours per day and “learning new skills”?
Appreciate a serious answer and not brushing it off
Seems like there is a disconnect. If you’re broke, watching sports etc and partying are a waste of time.
When you’re rich all you’re left with is a light work week and then fun which would be: partying, sports, learning new fun skills etc.
That’s the disconnect.
Our point is people do it in reverse. They try to party in 20s (end up broke and fail). Versus just getting rich within 10 years and having 60 years of fun with no stress.
I’ve been assisting our product development team over the past few months as a member of the business (sales). We are designing an application that further aids our sales staff make more effective presentations, reduces costs, and increase revenue generated. The project has taken traction all the way up to our Chief Executives. The very idea for the product stemmed from me (as do many big inititiaves at the company). I have been heavily involved with its development (product wouldn’t even exist if I never said anything). The product is scalable across other channels of the business and other companies.
How do I leverage my position into earning recurring income from the revenue generated from the project and from white-labeling and selling the software to other companies?
Well if it is possible to sell the product to many other competitors, then you would quit create the product and sell it to them. If you invent something internally all you get is a silly promotion and some extra money worth a tiny fraction of what you created. So that would be the answer, we don’t know if you can sell it to other companies (that is your call).
I have the ideas but don’t have the manpower. Everything designed and implemented internally. There has been some discussion about white-labeling it to other companies. I may pursue this and leverage myself out of direct to customer sales and into B2B/Enterprise sales like you guys usually suggest. This way I can still offer the existing product I helped build, get more in touch with the dev side, and make higher commissions. Thanks for the input. Guess I already knew the answer, just needed some external input to reaffirm.
21 yo – in shape – graduating college next week
55k Salary – not sales.
Recieving a slight waterfall as father is transferring ownership of primary home that is located in NYC
Home is paid off & mkt value 750k – 1M
2 tenants for monthly cash flow (abysmal return when compared to ratio of mkt value)
Can’t sell home until parents are 6 feet under – “sentimental value”
Thus, looking to leverage home and purchase investment piece around my university in LI – renting each bedroom or home.
Thoughts ?
No idea what to say here, if you can’t sell it there is no way to make it liquid so your only choice is raise rents? Not sure why this was a question to be blunt about it.
Niche site, grey market product, strictly SEO traffic (rank well w/ long tail not big money keywords), aprox 9% bounce, 1 min time on page, 100 daily views & $2,700 gross sales (not comish) over past 4 months. Below $10 sale price.
How do you know when you have “sold enough” as an affiliate before selling your own product?
When you clear $10K in a single day. Or more importantly, when you know you can do it. We can’t answer that one for you, you either have a skill or you don’t. Lots of people ask us when to “jump in”. The answer is always the exact same. You’re ready when you’re not asking about it. You already know it’ll work
Hello, I’m currently studying at a target university (for IB) with a mandatory exchange semester abroad. As I’m planning which college to choose for the semester abroad, I have a choice between 1) a prestigious university (with equal or higher workload), or 2) “normal” university (more free time to enjoy myself and/or to work on getting a biz up and running; also higher chance of keeping good GPA up).
If my plan is first to go into IB, then after a few years switch to biz 100% (as per Efficiency), does the name of the exchange university matter on resume for recruiting purposes, if my main university is a target school already?
Thanks for your time!
Yes it does, if you’re sure you can get a job then go for the easier fun one. If you’re uncertain about prospects you should choose the top tier one.
9V315746EE975303K
I’m at the point where I need a manufacturer for my diet product. Do you recommend going with a US based company? Thanks!
No, we recommend attending conferences/shows for your specific niche and finding which manufacturer the competition uses
Why do so many people advise against finance degrees? The mainstream idea is that a finance degree is useless and leads you nowhere and many people spew this bullshit. Yet almost everyone in Wall Street got there with finance degrees, any input?
You may be confusing finance with a business degree, which is saturated and can be learned independently for the most part.
23-Year-old. 50k saved (mostly in crypto) after first year working. About to quit as PE fund is failing & currently Seeking M&A analyst position. Have CFO consultancy income that covers base living. Expect to have 100k saved by next year between analyst, consulting, crypto.
Is it worth selling off the crypto to build a crypto payments provider? I would continue to work the three positions if I am able.
I believe that we will continue to see really great returns, but I know what I have saved isn’t enough to make a big dent even with 5x returns.
I believe you will advise to focus on earning more at this point in my career. I’m concerned that if I wait to build the provider, other compeditors will come into my country.
Sounds like you’re doing way too much. We would get a position that pays you first then use that to fund your business idea. Unless you’re sure the $50K is enough to start the business and you’re sure it’ll work… then go ahead. We would argue decentralized exchanges will kill off a lot of crypto middle men in the future though.
Just graduated college. Enterprise tech sales with base 45k+uncapped commission. first year reps generally make 70k at my firm. Second year is 120+
Need a second income source for the first year to hit the numbers outlined in the millionaire post.
Can’t decide between putting 80 hours at work to boost the commission, building an online business or bartender/waiter on nights and weekends. Also in a low cost city if that makes a difference
You already know our answer, online sales.
Have you looked anything into the crypto project Skycoin?
Trying to gather info about it now, scam or not? Trying to weigh it against other coins and figure out if an investment into the coin or a miner in their network is worth the risk.
Comparing with ethereum they have also created their own programming language CXO and it feels like the whole project is a bit over ambitious.
They claim to be much better than the bitcoin PoW with their own consensus algorithm.
The major guy behind it, Synth, seems to behave a bit childish and not answering when asked a bit tougher questions on different forums.
Any thoughts on the project or more perspective for me to investigate is appreciated.
We have not, all our investment items are in Triangle investing. Can’t help here as we don’t know, would be a lie.
Running a business that is generating $500K annual profit but is only focused on a single city and has only successfully completed transactions in said city.
The vast majority of clientele are homeowners age 50+ and the highest ROI marketing activities thus far has been direct mail, followed by cold calling, followed by voicemail/text blasting. As of now, the city is completely saturated with people receiving multiple marketing hits every month from all 3 sources
Read Efficiency and Facebook marketing really seems to be the next logical step to go deeper in the current market. Debating whether to duplicate what has been working (direct mail, cold calling, voicemail blasting) into a new city, or to expand existing marketing efforts in the city where all the revenue is being generated.
I know the answer to that question will depend on many factors, such as the product being sold, the speed at which we can either learn Facebook marketing or hire a good outside consultant to help out with that, etc. Just curious as to what your thoughts are on selling a high value, low volume item online to mostly senior homeowners age 50+.
Thank you in advance for your assistance, you guys rule!
We can’t help because we have never done this. We focus on online product sales. Our info would be terrible since we have never sold to senior homeowners 50+ years of age.
Mid-20s living in a Tier 2 European country. Money and girls is much better here versus the Tier 1 country I’m from.
However struggling to access high quality men (both friends and potential business partners), as they have been brain drained to Tier 1 countries. Any suggestions on what to do?
Ha! A rare European one we can answer. Stay there why in the world would you go to a tier one country to search for dudes? hahaha Sounds like a winning situation you have, you can always meet biz relationships at conferences don’t move to a new country for dudes (we’re dying laughing over here)
What do you think of sector bets/industry bets on the following: Timeline 10 years.
Covered in Triangle investing. So you know our answer is 2 and 3
I got a landing page setup with a Buy Button that leads to 404 error. However, this led to getting Adwords suspended due to Incomplete Information or Unavailable Purchase. Some random BS like that. Do you have suggestions for a workaround? Thx in advance for reading, hopefully a reply!
Re-start the site and just push the traffic to the new IP/website. Should be a 1 hour change, if the error was that bad we doubt there was a large customer base so won’t matter
correct. The 404 was on purpose to test whether I can sell the product, as you suggest. I had no customers.
I’ve been doing what you just commented. Just hoped whether there are any more tips I could pick up.
Clarification question (if I’m lucky): would it matter that the content is the exact same? Wondering if Google smart enough to detect the exact same content as the old bad website.
Also: I had to get a new card, and used a Windows VM rented off Paperspace. Just to cover as much of my bases as possible.
Cool probably not, even if it does you just get another address and fix the issues
What is the best ad network/funnel to market nutraceuticals for sleep problems?
FB is banning my ads. 4 yr affiliate history. I know how to churn and burn but don’t want to.
Influencers?
Never went into this market, that said you already know the answer is to go through facebook. Find a way to get compliant ads that address the market and buy as much as you can.
Influencers are by the most profitable and cost the least if possible do that. Ideally your product is legit otherwise it’ll struggle tremendously
20 yo Sophomore at school in Silicon Valley. Basic programming experience.
What summer project would give me the greatest hybrid of learning entrepreneurship & developing a valuable niche skill?
We don’t know, simply find schools that are feeders into the top firms (google/Facebook etc) and ask those individuals for advice. Much better to go to the source
Why are you guys so against internet fame? By being not famous you:
– Meet less interesting people
– Have no (or less) girls after you
– Are less respected in your industry
– Are generally unhappier (irrelevant people are unhappier)
The most important human beings will be celebrities as super-intelligence progresses. Rich people will buy fame with their $$$ (they already do with social media). Thoughts?
Complete disagree with all your points
1) you meet people after you becuase they know you have money/weight yo unattractive snakes as proven a billion times in history
2) completely false if you’re not a dj, rapper, sports star etc. You can be a public figure and girls don’t care (anyone see a girl walk up to a hedge fund manager as a “groupie” much less common)
3) also false, you’re tying attention with respect. Normal people are the scum of the earth and you don’t want them talking to you or knowing what you’re worth.
4) also false. Usually extremely insecure people becuase if you’re rich you have a choice to flaunt it. Famous people have big egos and typically suffer from mental illness (hence multiple celebrities with drug addiction + death/suicide). Even avicii killed himself and drugged himself to death.
5) they buy money with their fame not the same.
To be blunt if your goal is to be famous we strongly recommend against reading here. There are lots of people who love attention that will happily sell you that dream
Last question was a joke, didn’t realize I couldn’t edit it.
Real question: Is it worth it to study computer science/statistics with sights set on working at a quant shop?
Sure that can work but we would recommend going into tech if you have the talent. Going to Wall Street doesn’t make sense since it is in secular decline for most segments
What is your most effective way to meet new really interesting people worldwide who have an interesting live overall and are not just an expert in one field you like to speak about ? I’m talking about the 0.01% you’d be happy to spend more recurrent time with.
High end gyms if you’re looking for guy friends.
Women = we don’t know, we base that entirely off looks which means high end bars/clubs/gyms etc. There is no catch all there as you just talk to women you’re attracted to and play the numbers game.
College student here doing a tech internship in NYC this summer, will be first time there.
Do you have any specific advice for making the most of my internship, the pay from it, and my stay in NYC?
Pay will be handsome but hard to figure out how to make an actual good use of only 3 months of it. Also time trade-offs between experiencing the city and doing something productive out there.
Already covered on the blog.
Long story short, you’re not going to get much out of it. Just get an offer and use that to get the best full time position possible. The rest of your time = enjoy your freedom for the last year of your life before the real grind begins!
If you are not interested in partying, then the clear answer is in efficiency, get a business up and running asap.
Sure you know this but trying to “get rich” off an internship is pretty funny, you’ll make more in 2 weeks than you make your entire internship in the future… so it doesn’t matter
Been learning copy writing for a while. Where could I apply my skills and get feedback to see if my skills are good enough?
Same answer as another guy, the only feedback is putting your skills to the test to make money. Then you’ll know if you’re good or not.
Results = level of “good”
Thanks for that. Should’ve asked more specifically that where are good places to test to make money?
Twitter influencers RTing my stuff is by far the best way to get traffic to my profile/site. Any advice or unwritten rules about asking influencers to promote a product (financial services related)?
1. My product is new so I’d be ruined if they posted a screenshot of me asking them to promote me for $. (crypto influencers do this all the time)
2. Not sure they’d even do it since it seems like mostly an Instagram or mommy blogger thing
Possible workarounds:
1. Ask non-finance influencers to retweet something general of mine and hope people click into my profile
2. Just keep commenting on finance influencers’ stuff and hope they RT back
Go through the influencers you know will help your brand. Reach out and give them free trials (don’t ask for anything). Alternatively ask them if there is anything you can do to help them.
Don’t beg for anything 1) makes you look bad and 2) doesn’t work. Find a way to help them (natural tit-for-tat they help you back) and always offer free trials to people high up the chain so they can at worst say “not for me” and at best they will recommend it. If they don’t like it, they usually just email and say “thanks but wasn’t for me” and won’t make you look bad unless the guy/girl is having a horrible day.
Opinons on Cernovichs Gorilla Mind? And are you involved in it?
Have not used it so we cannot comment. We don’t take supplements and are not involved
Question: why no overhead presses in the Big 12?
You could do it, we’ve seen too many shoulder injuries due to tendons wearing down in 30s/40s so we avoid them. Only use them once and a while
Preferred providers in Singapore, Japan, or Hong Kong (countries listed in descending order of preference) to utilize to cash out crypto directly without going OTC?
Nine (excellent as always) posts since the start of last month is incredible. Thank you!
Wish we knew this, overall going OTC is the best answer. You’ll get a vig and on top of that it’s easier to do in your country. Singapore and Japan generally have the best crypto laws in terms of taxation, but OTC is the most viable option. Shouldn’t take more than 1 text message to find a buyer/seller in your area
Just to had a ressource here, bullionstar.com is imo a really good option to cash out crypto in Singapore. Trade crypto for Gold which Singapore is the best place for. 100% anonymous, no reporting at all, no tax at all, can cash out in fiat with large amounts… or store Gold with them.
I visited their shop a few months ago, looks really solid for me.
I’m not affiliated with them, I have an affiliate link but not pasting it in as I just wanted to share a great ressource.
Feel free to not publish the comment in the Q&A, but I tough you might be happy to know that this ressource exists for yourself 🙂
Cheers.
Thanks. And thanks Giviz. Have been using BS for the last two + years. They are solid guys and that small workaround (crypto -> gold -> check / cash) is what I’ve been using. Best to arrive with a nominee for bearer share assets you bring in as they sometimes scan passports. If brave enough you can grab a local kid from the bus stop across the street at Central. They cut checks in SGD, but have also let me walk out with decent sums of cash (USD and SGD) before as well. Luckily they’ve always had enough on hand in the back. You can also run everything through their website as well if you don’t want to visit. (I’m also not affiliated with them. Just good experiences combining them with bearer share instruments kept in a Certis Cisco box.)
P.S. This is the second time Giviz has assisted me. Seems like WPS site is just as good if not better than high end gyms for meeting interesting people.
Look into Bisq. It’s a way to trade crypto to Fiat through bank transfers.
Regarding e-business, you advice to target the emotional to sell.
I am in a highly regulated sector in France limiting advertising.
Do you think that the 8 figures “examinedotcom” (sol orwell) which sells scientific nutritional info-products with a purely rational arguments based on organic growth without advertising, is an exception to the rule? or is it a reproducible strategy ?
Thank you for your valuable help.
( sorry for the poor english)
We are not sure as we don’t know what you’re selling. We would say *never* go with rational arguments. This is the reality of regular people. They don’t think with their minds.
We would find any and every loophole to target emotion for your project and buy traffic that way. Sell them the feels and they’ll buy it. All the self-help people are proof of this. There is no tangible value there besides thoughts and feelings but they make more money doing it than rational people. So do whatever it takes to squeeze emotion in there.
For cash flowing assets outside of a business what yield do you look for before worrying about capital preservation?
Probably the best question on here.
Here’s the thing, we don’t think about yield as much as we think about time. If you can do nothing at all the yield can be lower and we’d be fine with it. Say you buy an internet asset and only work on it for 2 hours a day, well how much money did that make? If it made you $100 a month it was terrible. If it makes you $10,000 a month that’s fantastic. That is $1,250/hour or the equivalent of a $2.5M annual income! That’s worth it.
Then if it requires no time at all (say stocks/bonds etc) and you’re setting and forgetting. We would just use a standard barbell approach and put a weight on stocks and a weight on bonds that hits your yield based on your age.
After that for capital preservation, we suggest basic living expense calculators. If you’re young you only need a few months of living expenses, when you get to age 40 or so you need a few years sitting basically in risk free assets. Here’s the natural catch though… if you got to age 40 and are likely rich, then you don’t really need more than 3 years (a recession will only last a couple years and at worst 3 years or so), this creates a natural way for you to take on more risk.
Hope that helps may need a post on this one specifically. But. Think about it in terms of how much energy you’re using. This is why we think online is the way to go, people underestimate the ability to automate an online business. If you’re working 40 hours a week online to make $100K a year that is just awful. Essentially created a new job. We would rather have one asset making $25K a year but have that asset only require 1-2 hours a week. At least that one has potential and doesn’t take up valuable time
Thanks for that, having focused on brevity I lacked being specific. I was specifically asking about investing in fixed income. I tend to use the HY ETFs yield (JNK and HYG) as the line where I start worrying about capital preservation and security of payout, anything under and I treat as a rate play arbed vs my mortgage and anything great I have to go credit work and believe in the story. Didn’t know if there was a benchmark you used to value fixed income investment yield.
Fixed income isn’t really a focus for us we just buy baskets of high quality bonds for the safety portion of investment portfolio. Yields are too low so they don’t offer a ton of reason to invest time into.
do you have any advice for negotiating salary or a pay rise?
-how to best argue your case
-what to say/what not to say
-how much of a % increase you should request
Easy get a competing offer. We never bothered with begging. A job/career is just something you do when you have no other options. So you want to just interview to get competing offers and otherwise do the minimum (max income return) while working on something real instead.
Thoughts on a career in being a real estate agent/broker? Live in California in Bay Area, average home price is $1m+. I know a couple of them making $1 million+/year, but those are 1 out of 1000. Just feels like not much prestige and people will auto assume you’re trying to make a sale.
Worried about tech players like redfin zillow etc also killing the fees like etfs/discounts/online DIY’ers did to stock brokerage
Thx
Yes this is essentially enterprise sales, so it will work. Problem is we agree and think fees go down in future, hence emphasis on tech sales.
Why do you think passively HODL-ing cryptocurrencies is more profitable than actively trading them, buying market crashes and dips and wash rinse repeat?
Cost of trading cryptos is close to 0% and the assets are highly volatile.
You should have more valuable things to do with your time than look at a crypto chart unless you’re already at 8 figures invested in crypto
Why do you recommend the sp500 over Berk for the average investors? Berk has clearly outperformed the Sp500 for decades.
He is going to die soon.
Is it possible to maintain a regular sleep cycle for 5 days (10pm to 6am) and go out for 2 days (3am to 10am)?
I’m about to start working in my first software sales job after moving to an apartment in a new city very close to the nightlife, it’s tempting to go downstairs every Friday and Saturday night but it is seriously messing with my sleep cycle and ability to focus during the day.
I want to be the top performer in my company, do you guys have any experience with this?
Thanks!
This just means you should party less. Why do you need to go out till 10am? Become more efficient with your time and also try to meet people during the day at lunch etc. You don’t need to party for 8 hours straight just to meet someone, so figure out when the traffic is the highest and reduce your time going out by half. We doubt it will change the results.
I mean sleep from 3am to 10am
Yes it is doable, go out Thursday Saturday not back to back. Most obvious solution is don’t drink when you go out no need to
Piggybacking on this – “don’t drink when you go out , no need to” are you referring you to going out Thursdays and Saturday’s when meeting people at night?
Not drinking but still being able to go out and date is a game changer for productivity and health but wondering if that’s what you meant.
Yes it is what we meant you don’t need to drink at all. There are many people who do this, alcohol is just social lubricant
When you speak of fashion in terms of improving that to up your game both with women and in life, as appearances do matter — what are your thoughts on wearing suits in areas where people dont wear many suits? Live in Silicon Valley but I like wearing suits (I also do like polos, jeans, etc but nothing looks as masculine imo as a well tailored suit.)
Just seems like I’ll look too much like a try hard and it’ll do more harm than good for the image given the tech/casual environment in the city/etc.
The only way dressing sharp hurts you is if you personally feel uncomfortable or awkward. Also, trying to pick up people in silicon valley is like dumpster diving that area does not have very many attractive women, we would move.
Thoughts on alcohol to relieve stress/chill each night?
I don’t mean drinking every day to get drunk or drinking a marathon of 6 drinks etc every night and waking up with a hangover. I mean maybe 2 glasses of wine or so, but daily.I hear 2-3 glasses of redwine a day is “good” for you (doctor also says this but lol – I do get blood work done to get my body/liver etc tested twice a year and all looks well). Would love your thoughts.
Side note – Currently in late 20’s approaching 30’s. Work out everyday. Eat relatively clean/healthy. Thanks
Don’t really recommend it, only drink when going out to have fun. Otherwise you’re just doing damage to your body. All those studies saying to drink 1-2 a day… never held a control group for wealth. So… you’re essentially just hurting yourself.
Transitioning to a software sales job and start in a month. I am very introverted by nature, but can fake it and determined to broaden my social skills both on the job and off the job. What’s the very best way I can improve my sales/social skills before I start the job? I was thinking toastmasters and going to as many events as possible, where I know no one. Also start talking to strangers and try to talk to as many people as possible.
The only legitimate way is to get a job in sales. Everything else is nonsense and fake, practicing toast masters = nothing on the line. There is a difference when you actually have to perform (IE pressure). Stuff that has no downside if you fail = not real and won’t help you much down the line
Improv….teaches not to be afraid of social failures, makes you think on the spot, improves speed of brain functions, teaches good which can’t be faked etc..
When affiliate marketing legitimately (non-scammy physical products) can you skip doing things organically (as a way to see what what people wanna buy)…
and instead jump straight into paid traffic provided your aff manager can approve the product is converting for others? Or is this a big no no
Not sure what your question is, are you buying traffic to sell someone else’s product? If so likely low margin.
If you’re saying buy traffic once you know how it works on your own product? Then yes of course, you could get lucky and make money day one or two.
Buying traffic to sell someone else’s product.
Slightly confused as your book splits aff marketing into two camps
Paid traffic for CPA scammy affiliate marketing
Organic seo for legit affiliate.
Can you use paid traffic on legit offers straight out the gate?
Yes you can. Our point is if you’re competing against sketchy affiliates it’s less likely to work since they will go above and beyond for the sale. The offer needs to be negative on scammy affiliates and ban them for yours to work. If it’s open to all then scammy affiliates take the $$
Not asking for motivation tips as it’s bs anyways, but how do you keep yourself accountable if you fall off the “efficiency lifestyle/track” after some time?
Ha we don’t know. You simply get back to work?
Accountability is based on the individual, most people are lazy that is why we know who actually took action on our product or not. They send us emails within 6 months of making $X thousand in a month.
Question (yes or no with implications) concerning comparative advantage of Monero over Bitcoin:
Since BTC/other cryptos are open source, once AI data mines the block chain transactions to establish User ID, and then develop each potential user cross referencing other purchases/disclosures (taxes, charity, etc.), does an advantage exist for privacy cryptos or ‘clean’ versions of popular cryptos with greatest market cap?
–>If privacy, then does a severe comparative adv exist for XOM once network grows/speeds up, indicating to buy XOM or privacy focused crypto, esp with increased utility and hardware wallets.
–> If popularity and legitimacy, why not feasible to exploit BTC as a financial OSINT device? Then indicating to find crypto with established/expanding market share. This creates a 1 BTC does not equal 1 BTC scenario, driving a market for ‘clean’ crypto histories of popular currencies. HODL lovers today would roar.
Thank you for the blog. it is great.
Please repeat your question this looks like a ramble. Only one question not a run on of questions.
Thanks for another QnA.
Say you have a day job and have started building your business. Age – late twenties.
You have $80K at the bank. Investing them in your business wouldn’t provide additional benefits at this point, maybe $5-10K of them, but the rest doesn’t make sense to put them in the business.
What would be a relatively safe choice to do with the money considering all stocks and indexes are at a record high now?
Thanks!
Your best option to maximize returns is yet another online business if you already built one successfully. It will give you well over 400% returns.
Question:
In efficiency, you state that you eat carbs with 1 meal only (lunch or dinner). If this is still the case, knowing what carb sources you choose from (brown rice or Quinoa) and that you don’t count/track macros/calories, what sort of quantity of brown rice do you eat? (if prepping the meal yourself and not buying from a store)
We don’t count calories or macros. We think its overkill. Stressing about exact portions kills the purpose of being in shape because stress alone is a health killer. Simply eat a small amount and move on, if you’re gaining weight, you eat less of it. If you’re maintaining/losign fat, you’re eating the right amount.
From our experience there are only two types of people who count calories (guys in the 0.1% who obsess over their bodies and are borderline professional, and average people who will never get in shape)
Don’t count calories, waste of time. If you’re looking to stay lean, the answer isn’t in your caloric intake, it’s in your sugar intake (which includes carbs). Skip brown rice and stick with more whole grain sources such as quinoa, buckwheat, and bulgur.
No its not. It is overall caloric surplus. Does not matter if it comes from sugar or fat or whatever.. I eat tons of sugar, approaching 40 and look better than most 20 years old.. Yes I work out 20 years, but I also eat 50 to 100g of candy every night, sweets during the day.. But true I eat less other stuff so again, calories in, calories out. Sugar is toxic is another myth… What do you think your body does with bread, rice, potato, fruits? It turns them into glucose just as it does with sugar.
CALORIC INTAKE OVER ALL. You can get fat on fruits and veggies and you can be lean all your life eating tons of sugar…
Question: I’m studying and learning copywriting whilst doing gigs on Fiverr to make some money. I plan to outsource work related tasks and scale my business.
I then would use some of that surplus to do Amazon FBA selling, by building a brand and scale that business as well.
Do you think this is a viable business model and would you recommend going down this route?
Sure that’ll work for basic skills you have to find a way to scale the tasks you’re doing however. And. Fiverr is likely too low on the totem pole but we don’t know what you’re doing exactly. So if you can scale it without doing any work (outsource to India) then you’re good.
College student here. I got kicked out of a top business school, and my only option is studying Computer science.
Should I forgo Wall St. altogether and try for Silicon Valley, or do I still have a shot at Wall St.?
If you have the skills to go to tech definitely do that. If you want to go to Wall street it would be a ton harder you’d need to transfer to another top B-school and hit restart
Is it worth it to go from the Army to cyber-security consulting at a major company or take a pay cut to get into the cyber-security sales pipeline? (I’m personable enough for sales)
Cheers
We don’t know your goals but if you’re trying to get rich, then yes eventually switching into technology sales is the right move. Much harder to get rich in the army
Thanks for the site – think it’s great. Quick version. J-O-B in fin svcs – not sales so not as easily transferable. Made some lifestyle inflation mistakes. Mid 40s -amily w/ kids – Liquid about $9mm but valuations elevated everywhere so don’t see the prospective returns to get me 250/yr + kid costs. Some passive ventures have worked, some haven’t but not needle moving currently. How would you approach this situ if sick of being wage slave?
Not sure if this was a troll but 4% returns on $9M is $360K a year so you’re already done.
How to excel / add value as a young real estate agent/broker who’s looking to break into the high end luxury market (in NYC)? (Don’t have a huge high end rolodex yet, early 20s)
No experience here so we can’t answer, would read our posts on RE but we never worked in that slot.
Currently run a content site (blog) earning $1-2K a month. I know you’re not a huge fan of that business model (as outlined in efficiency) but I enjoy it. Hoping to one day sell the blog for event driven income, or build it up to a meaningful income stream. Best strategy to reinvest the earnings to grow the site?
Highly unlikely since most blogs have a name attached and have low resale value. Blogs also typically cap out income wise and stall at $100-200K unless it becomes a mega site (typically finance sites make the most money). We have never sold a blog or tried to make serious money from it so we don’t know. We would reach out to blogs that were sold for millions (typically personal finance) and ask them. We think it’s a poor use of your time
At what point do you consider creating another source of income?
Let’s say you make mid-six-figures from your main business and growth is slowing down (financial ceiling in some businesses, just like in careers, is lower than in others). Do you keep investing in it or build another business in a different industry with more potential?
Every second is when you consider it and get working on it.
Any idea you have that will be profitable needs to be started today because this is how wealth is built. Better to have 7 streams of income each generating $50K a year, than have one single stream worth $350K because it could go to zero and you’re screwed. Always find a way to take one brand and feed the traffic to yet another brand where the customer base is similar.
You’re suggesting making multiple brands in the same niche?
Hi, 2 years out of school and currently work in high yield research for a no-name asset manager on the West Coast. Trying to get into a tier 3 or better job without b-school. Networking like crazy but no job interviews for banking or good HFs (most say they want people with previous banking exp). Should I instead focus on better buy side shops e.g. TCW/Cap group or perhaps sell side research/S&T? Thanks
Sure, your other option is to try and break into the middle tier firms instead of just aiming for the big banks. Try to get into a low end IB position then transfer yet again to a larger bank.
Overall though if your income is roughly the same, then you are best off starting an online biz as usual.
Thanks for holding a Q&A and a great blog! Been following you for quite a while and you provide great content!
22 year old college student studying economics and finance. As you have mentioned many times, wall street is a declining area. Would you consider going in to tech (sales) / consulting rather than trying to get a finance related job (of course after graduation?
Bonus question: And if so, any tips how to use the degree / finance related internships as an advantage when applying to those jobs?
Tech sales is ideal, no finance is not going to help you there. We would go straight to our tech sales post and work there to find how to get in at the entry level. If that doesn’t work then go ahead and go straight to M&A banking/finance.
Tech sales will destroy consulting income, consulting is actually terrible when you adjust for the hours, we’d never do it.
Do you suggest any important things to consider if not planning to marry but have a significant other (e.g. common law marriage, not living together, no ceremonies, etc.)?
Not much to say, as long as you’re not risking half your assets for no reason do anything you want. Our only point on *legal* marriage is it makes zero sense to risk everything you worked for with no upside.
You wrote several times that following things are mostly time-sucks: books, movies, watching sports, partying/hooking up, “traveling the world”, “working hard” past a several million net-worth so on and so forth.
So … what is left on a day by day basis besides working 4-8 hours (as your recommended 30-40 hours work-weeks for people who “made it”), doing sports around 2 hours per day and “learning new skills”?
Appreciate a serious answer and not brushing it off
Seems like there is a disconnect. If you’re broke, watching sports etc and partying are a waste of time.
When you’re rich all you’re left with is a light work week and then fun which would be: partying, sports, learning new fun skills etc.
That’s the disconnect.
Our point is people do it in reverse. They try to party in 20s (end up broke and fail). Versus just getting rich within 10 years and having 60 years of fun with no stress.
I’ve been assisting our product development team over the past few months as a member of the business (sales). We are designing an application that further aids our sales staff make more effective presentations, reduces costs, and increase revenue generated. The project has taken traction all the way up to our Chief Executives. The very idea for the product stemmed from me (as do many big inititiaves at the company). I have been heavily involved with its development (product wouldn’t even exist if I never said anything). The product is scalable across other channels of the business and other companies.
How do I leverage my position into earning recurring income from the revenue generated from the project and from white-labeling and selling the software to other companies?
Well if it is possible to sell the product to many other competitors, then you would quit create the product and sell it to them. If you invent something internally all you get is a silly promotion and some extra money worth a tiny fraction of what you created. So that would be the answer, we don’t know if you can sell it to other companies (that is your call).
I have the ideas but don’t have the manpower. Everything designed and implemented internally. There has been some discussion about white-labeling it to other companies. I may pursue this and leverage myself out of direct to customer sales and into B2B/Enterprise sales like you guys usually suggest. This way I can still offer the existing product I helped build, get more in touch with the dev side, and make higher commissions. Thanks for the input. Guess I already knew the answer, just needed some external input to reaffirm.
21 yo – in shape – graduating college next week
55k Salary – not sales.
Recieving a slight waterfall as father is transferring ownership of primary home that is located in NYC
Home is paid off & mkt value 750k – 1M
2 tenants for monthly cash flow (abysmal return when compared to ratio of mkt value)
Can’t sell home until parents are 6 feet under – “sentimental value”
Thus, looking to leverage home and purchase investment piece around my university in LI – renting each bedroom or home.
Thoughts ?
No idea what to say here, if you can’t sell it there is no way to make it liquid so your only choice is raise rents? Not sure why this was a question to be blunt about it.
Niche site, grey market product, strictly SEO traffic (rank well w/ long tail not big money keywords), aprox 9% bounce, 1 min time on page, 100 daily views & $2,700 gross sales (not comish) over past 4 months. Below $10 sale price.
How do you know when you have “sold enough” as an affiliate before selling your own product?
When you clear $10K in a single day. Or more importantly, when you know you can do it. We can’t answer that one for you, you either have a skill or you don’t. Lots of people ask us when to “jump in”. The answer is always the exact same. You’re ready when you’re not asking about it. You already know it’ll work
Hello, I’m currently studying at a target university (for IB) with a mandatory exchange semester abroad. As I’m planning which college to choose for the semester abroad, I have a choice between 1) a prestigious university (with equal or higher workload), or 2) “normal” university (more free time to enjoy myself and/or to work on getting a biz up and running; also higher chance of keeping good GPA up).
If my plan is first to go into IB, then after a few years switch to biz 100% (as per Efficiency), does the name of the exchange university matter on resume for recruiting purposes, if my main university is a target school already?
Thanks for your time!
Yes it does, if you’re sure you can get a job then go for the easier fun one. If you’re uncertain about prospects you should choose the top tier one.
9V315746EE975303K
I’m at the point where I need a manufacturer for my diet product. Do you recommend going with a US based company? Thanks!
No, we recommend attending conferences/shows for your specific niche and finding which manufacturer the competition uses
Why do so many people advise against finance degrees? The mainstream idea is that a finance degree is useless and leads you nowhere and many people spew this bullshit. Yet almost everyone in Wall Street got there with finance degrees, any input?
You may be confusing finance with a business degree, which is saturated and can be learned independently for the most part.
23-Year-old. 50k saved (mostly in crypto) after first year working. About to quit as PE fund is failing & currently Seeking M&A analyst position. Have CFO consultancy income that covers base living. Expect to have 100k saved by next year between analyst, consulting, crypto.
Is it worth selling off the crypto to build a crypto payments provider? I would continue to work the three positions if I am able.
I believe that we will continue to see really great returns, but I know what I have saved isn’t enough to make a big dent even with 5x returns.
I believe you will advise to focus on earning more at this point in my career. I’m concerned that if I wait to build the provider, other compeditors will come into my country.
Sounds like you’re doing way too much. We would get a position that pays you first then use that to fund your business idea. Unless you’re sure the $50K is enough to start the business and you’re sure it’ll work… then go ahead. We would argue decentralized exchanges will kill off a lot of crypto middle men in the future though.
Just graduated college. Enterprise tech sales with base 45k+uncapped commission. first year reps generally make 70k at my firm. Second year is 120+
Need a second income source for the first year to hit the numbers outlined in the millionaire post.
Can’t decide between putting 80 hours at work to boost the commission, building an online business or bartender/waiter on nights and weekends. Also in a low cost city if that makes a difference
You already know our answer, online sales.
Have you looked anything into the crypto project Skycoin?
Trying to gather info about it now, scam or not? Trying to weigh it against other coins and figure out if an investment into the coin or a miner in their network is worth the risk.
Comparing with ethereum they have also created their own programming language CXO and it feels like the whole project is a bit over ambitious.
They claim to be much better than the bitcoin PoW with their own consensus algorithm.
The major guy behind it, Synth, seems to behave a bit childish and not answering when asked a bit tougher questions on different forums.
Any thoughts on the project or more perspective for me to investigate is appreciated.
We have not, all our investment items are in Triangle investing. Can’t help here as we don’t know, would be a lie.
Running a business that is generating $500K annual profit but is only focused on a single city and has only successfully completed transactions in said city.
The vast majority of clientele are homeowners age 50+ and the highest ROI marketing activities thus far has been direct mail, followed by cold calling, followed by voicemail/text blasting. As of now, the city is completely saturated with people receiving multiple marketing hits every month from all 3 sources
Read Efficiency and Facebook marketing really seems to be the next logical step to go deeper in the current market. Debating whether to duplicate what has been working (direct mail, cold calling, voicemail blasting) into a new city, or to expand existing marketing efforts in the city where all the revenue is being generated.
I know the answer to that question will depend on many factors, such as the product being sold, the speed at which we can either learn Facebook marketing or hire a good outside consultant to help out with that, etc. Just curious as to what your thoughts are on selling a high value, low volume item online to mostly senior homeowners age 50+.
Thank you in advance for your assistance, you guys rule!
We can’t help because we have never done this. We focus on online product sales. Our info would be terrible since we have never sold to senior homeowners 50+ years of age.
Mid-20s living in a Tier 2 European country. Money and girls is much better here versus the Tier 1 country I’m from.
However struggling to access high quality men (both friends and potential business partners), as they have been brain drained to Tier 1 countries. Any suggestions on what to do?
Ha! A rare European one we can answer. Stay there why in the world would you go to a tier one country to search for dudes? hahaha Sounds like a winning situation you have, you can always meet biz relationships at conferences don’t move to a new country for dudes (we’re dying laughing over here)
What do you think of sector bets/industry bets on the following: Timeline 10 years.
1) Cybersecurity
2) Automation and robotics
3) Crypto
4) Emerging markets
Covered in Triangle investing. So you know our answer is 2 and 3
I got a landing page setup with a Buy Button that leads to 404 error. However, this led to getting Adwords suspended due to Incomplete Information or Unavailable Purchase. Some random BS like that. Do you have suggestions for a workaround? Thx in advance for reading, hopefully a reply!
Re-start the site and just push the traffic to the new IP/website. Should be a 1 hour change, if the error was that bad we doubt there was a large customer base so won’t matter
correct. The 404 was on purpose to test whether I can sell the product, as you suggest. I had no customers.
I’ve been doing what you just commented. Just hoped whether there are any more tips I could pick up.
Clarification question (if I’m lucky): would it matter that the content is the exact same? Wondering if Google smart enough to detect the exact same content as the old bad website.
Also: I had to get a new card, and used a Windows VM rented off Paperspace. Just to cover as much of my bases as possible.
Cool probably not, even if it does you just get another address and fix the issues
What is the best ad network/funnel to market nutraceuticals for sleep problems?
FB is banning my ads. 4 yr affiliate history. I know how to churn and burn but don’t want to.
Influencers?
Never went into this market, that said you already know the answer is to go through facebook. Find a way to get compliant ads that address the market and buy as much as you can.
Influencers are by the most profitable and cost the least if possible do that. Ideally your product is legit otherwise it’ll struggle tremendously