Background: doing affiliate marketing in one of the niches mentioned in Efficiency. Competition is tough on Google SERP and have not gotten sales after 5 months.
Question 1: you guys previously mentioned using search targeted keywords + ads. But right now the problem is that I don’t even have enough traffic to commence ads. Thus was thinking of off page SEO eg. Guest posting, backlink building, PBN. What are your thoughts?
Question 2: how to know when to quit and move on to a different niche?
Thx
1) yes that definitely works
2) when your revenues flatline
Do you intend to start a new e-commerce business ?
Thanks
Ha! hilarious attention to detail, will eventually do something again =)
Thoughts on the impact of a universal basic income on things like savings rates, interest rates, long-term investment planning, etc?
Well it lines up with the older post of two economies.
If it happens that means there are two economies the rich and poor. We don’t really worry about all the other stuff anymore, if UBI comes in, it’s not like they can take away all your assets. So you probably want to invest in things that people on UBI would buy (food, cheap entertainment etc.)
You mentioned private doctors a couple times. Any recommendations on finding and vetting a private doctor?
Get in contact with celebrities or athletes. All you need is one professional and they will then link you to a person in your area.
1) Would you go for 2-3M by 35 years old or 7-10M by 40 years old?
No other option, side business or meaningful income, besides a good salary until then and personal utility drops off significantly after 3M.
2) For fun, which business to own is hell on earth?
My vote goes to agencies, especially marketing agencies.
Thanks!
1) Would go with 7-10 by 40. Msot likely that guy got to 2-3M anyway, and if not, at least at 40 you’re still in shape and killing life with zero need to ever work again.
2) CUSTOMER SERVICE.
Just wondering what your perspective is on “life being a video game”.
I have this same view as I imagine life as a sand-box style video game (think Grand Theft Auto) where you can literally do whatever the hell you please.
Everything you do is a conscious decision (with a subsequent consequence), whether you steal cars, get into gun fights or go to college. Much like these games, you can increase your own personal stats such as sex appeal, muscles, intelligence, or anything arbitrary like aim.
What’s your viewpoint as life as a video game?
Not really sure what this means, essentially whatever you believe to be true is going to happen over the long-term. This is why cynical people and negative people die earlier (they view everything in that lens). So it’s a “game” in the sense that all the answers are in front of you
I’m almost 28, just graduated college last December (lost of idiotic decisions in late teens/early twenties) with a mechanical engineering degree and I am currently working in sales for an automotive supplier. Salary is roughly 80K/year after bonuses and I do get a company car with gas/insurance all paid for.
I want to make a transition to enterprise software sales and I’m wondering if it’s worth it. The two companies I’m looking at are sales force and oracle. Salesforce is based in San Fran and Oracle in Austin. I’m currently in a nicer city outside of the Detroit area with a good nightlife.
I’m also currently working on building a side business that will focus on supplements or cosmetics.
A couple of questions:
1. Do you guys think it’s worth it to move careers (I’ve only been in my current position about 2 years including my internship) or stick it out at the automotive supplier and focus on my side business? I should mention in my current career I basically have the flexibility to work from home when I want and generally only work 35 hours a week. On top of that my management loves me and expects me to progress quickly through the company.
2. For my side business, would you suggest focusing more on cosmetics or supplements or does it matter? I feel I have good ideas regardless.
1) if you’re good at sales you should leave immediately, $80K isn’t much and sounds like the upward mobility is not going to pay much
2) doesn’t matter all of the markets in efficiency can get you rich even the less talked about ones we mentioned there
Starting a supplement line, rolling out a pre-workout soon. The brand is clean, minimal, and focuses on customers who want premium products without the gimmicks, full transparency (believe this is a growing niche in industry).
Lately, been thinking about changing the direction of the brand…towards general wellness. Supplements for sleep, focus, anxiety, etc. (emotional sell).
Should I roll out pre workout and then slowly add products for general wellness? Thoughts?
Tony
Well that’s easy, do the one that makes the most money. So if you’re already profitable on one then you can move to the next. As long as you tested it an know it will convert you’re good to go.
This may be a far too basic question. Do you use contract manufacturing to make and deliver cosmetic products?
Been affiliate selling products with some success, and now planning to launch my own.
Eventually you’ll own the entire chain so you should have your own facility, till then just work with third party.
Appreciate it
Currently in a top Canadian business school, looking to make the choice between finance or accounting specialty. Is accounting something that should be considered given the possibility of opening my own firm in ~10y or should stick to finance to crack M&A in bay/wall street? Cheers
Always go to M&A if possible.
You mentioned hiring an accountant that has worked for the IRS before. Do you have one you recommend? Need a good one ASAP. (Yes I have searched) I haven’t paid my taxes for 2018 yet.
How much profit were you making as an affiliate before switching to creating the product yourself?
1) this is something you’ll have to find yourself, there are a lot of them, just use linked-in and don’t go through the big firms
2) not willing to say but there is enough data on old posts that people got an idea already
Just in relation to career, is it a mistake to stay somewhere with less hours and less all in compensation but faster promotion opportunity?
No. We recommend that approach. Lowest hours and highest promotion over jumping around for small gains if it means more hours.
Background: First year analyst in a FIG group and I’m considering switching into the M&A team. My goal in banking is to learn as much as i can and accumulate as much money to start a business.
FIG Group: established goodwill with the seniors and run way to get promoted, only issue is that everyone below VP is a new hire and I don’t think the learning experince would be as good as the M&A group
M&A Group: Generally get paid more and has a lot of top performers to learn off of, the downside would be rebuilding the goodwill I had in FIG.
If you guys were in my position what would you recommend I do?
Thank you!
Same old, if serious about starting something and leaving then you stay in the spot that gives you the highest promotion chances.
You guys seem to be moving away from your previously implied “stealth wealth” precept, no? The status signaling suggested in some of the last several posts should be fairly detectable to even the average person. How would you characterize where you stand on the topic now, and what led to the change in thinking?
Yeah we’re messing around with status goods. They work for sure. Starting to realize as long as you’re not famous (public figure) there are more upsides than we thought.
WSP is correct.
“If people can’t see it, it doesn’t exist”.
Chicks don’t care about a dude with 500k saved and a bunch of stocks/real estate. They care about a guy with 400k saved, 100k of luxury items+Ego to match, and a bunch of stocks/real estate.
I am starting to realize even Instagram is VERY important to the average girl.
3k at Neiman Marcus(jeans/boots/sneaker)+ Cheap fitting shirts and a few luxury items like gucci shades. Have Massive ROI.
I wore some $400 shades to the bars last weekend, had multiple people comment, even a guy said
“Just put those on and you can get a free drink” “You look like your in a band”. Took me off guard.
This is accurate. hahaha
Do you have a basic rule of thumb for housing costs?
Should you live with roommates if you’re not earning enough?
I’m living with my brother in a one-room appartment for 300 dollar a month, and I wonder if it’s worth spending 800 dollars on an appartment of my own. Housing costs will go from roughly 10 % to 30 % of gross monthly income.
Try to keep it under 20% of net income at all times. Having roommates is 100% fine if you’re in your early-mid twenties even. Better to be financially set.
Anything changed in crypto bull run 2020?
No we’re actually buying all this year. Bar bell of 90% cash 10% going into that space until its 5% of net worth.
If starting a side business – specifically ecommerce site – is it better to keep this a secret from your full time job and coworkers or use contacts there to help promote it in the early stages?
Never tell your co-workers anything they are not your friends and would love to see you fail.
25 years old. Living in the UK. Unemployed. £0 in savings/investments.
First question: Next step is to make money and get a career – in my position, and at my age (25), would you suggest moving into any sales (performance not hourly wage) based role if I can’t get an enterprise sales role? I’m aware I majorly need to play catch up.
Second question: My intelligence is intent and synthesis, numerical being the weakest. Regarding a career, focussing on the synthesis side, do you think a ‘recruitment consultant’ job role is a viable route or will automation kill that off – should I stick to a synthesis role like ‘estate agent’ if following that path?
Yes that is logical. Go into any sales role or more ideally, go and learn a trade related to building homes and then go down the real estate path.
if you’re not good at numerics then forget tech, you’re left with sales.
Would an electrician count as a trade here?
Sure don’t see why not.
First of all I would like to say thank you for the opportunity , I bought the E-book because of your twitter posts which are very enlightening. I want to start a real estate portfolio. I bought a house in Vegas using the VA loan 0 down, (3.65%) means I am 100% leveraged, which I like. The house has about 40k in equity. I am leaving the Vegas area. I am not sure if renting it out is a bad idea. It does not meet the 1% rule. I think I can get about 18% for rent over mortgage(escrow). The house is in an area where it will have no problem being tenant occupied , and it was built in 2016 low expected maintenance. Would you sell the house or keep it?
Would definitely keep it, if you’re in the green and confident i’ll be occupied you’re in great shape. If for some reason you think you’ll run into cash flow issues then you may want to sell. Cash flow issues means you lose your current form of income + have occupation issues.
How long did you stay in the place ?
Im thinking to use my va loan as well in so cal but rent it out on the low
4 yrs. I personally think big cities in nice areas are the best place to use VA. As long as you aren’t buying at the peak…
1. How long did it take you to grab a good following online (social media and your blog.), and what tips do you recommend early on when creating a page?
My idea is to create an overall lifestyle blog, tap into ad revenue and affiliate as I grow, releasing products along the way. (Good example would be a page like Financial Samurai, Ed Latimore, Good Looking Loser, etc.)
not sure how long it took, this was created as a joke/hobby and here we are several years later. It’s not even close to being run properly so probably best to reach out to Ed and ask him as he’s built his up over time and seems to take it more seriously
1.Favorite ETF for someone in their 20s? (aside from S&P500)
2.Favorite restaurant in NYC to impress?
1) VYM if you need more cash flow
2) Catch on a weekday
Having built an online income source that covers my expenses 2-3x and only requires 20-30 hours/month, I’m struggling with what to do with the rest of my time. This income source will likely not last forever so I’m not sure I can exit the game quite yet, though it does buy me some time to play the long game without much financial stress. Were you in my spot, how would you prioritize from these options? Feel free to add an alternative if there’s something I’m missing.
1. Learn Sales (likely by taking a sales job to start)
2. Learn Coding
3. Work on a passion project idea I have similar to this blog that likely wouldn’t make real money for a long time, if ever
4. Enjoy my life/free time and focus less on income generation and more on hobbies/interests while continuing to invest proceeds from online business
1 or 2, your first part says you don’t have enough money yet, so until you’re rich then you can do 3/4.
don’t take the money forgranted, until you’re officially done life enjoys throwing tons of wrenches your way.
Who is worth betting on for Democratic Candidate in 2020?
No opinion here we don’t watch politics and don’t know who is even running
Will Trump win again in 2020?
No view yet
When you guys selling your products, did you trademark the name?
Ive submitted to register the name of our product but it saying it could take 6-9 months to get approved and im concerned its slowing other workstreams (packaging / website etc…) until i get the name approved
Thoughts?
Yes eventually you’ll trademark/patent anything you can. Until then just sell it as is
My dad was in the same boat when he started a biz 2-3 years ago. Long story short, he just put the TM symbol on everything, even though it wasn’t technically approved yet. Had one guy try to copy what he did before the TM went thru; if you settle in court and can prove you made the product 1st, court tends to favor you and frown upon the dude trying to copy your stuff.
This only applies to US business dealing with a US/Canadian/EU offender (those countries tend to go along with US IP law claims) but for Asian countries, you’d be shit out of luck. But honestly, Asian countries will steal shit with or without a TM so not worth stressing over.
26 making 134 doing a labor / hour heavy job
Roth maxed
Investing monthly
Rental property purchase soon
What’s next/ any advice @26 ?
Get a second form of income that isn’t real estate investing.
1.) What are the downsides to enterprise software sales? $100K+ with 40 hours a week and transferable skills seem too good to be true.
2.) How important is being in a high talent city (SF/Austin/NYC) for entrepreneurship?
Nothing really, there are only a few careers worth pursing so not sure what the question is about. The downside is you make good money? Guess it’s competitive like any other field that pays a lot
Very high since there is a bunch of politics involved when joining any firm. Ideally you can stay in a lower cost city just due to investing rates
Just joined a hot startup doing sales – been really successful so far. It’s pretty early so none of the employees have contracts in pace yet. But we are having a law firm draw these up.
Where can I go to learn how to best protect myself in terms of specific clauses to include in the contract. Want to make sure there aren’t loopholes with the 4 year equity vesting, etc.
Stuff like drag-along tag-along rights, etc. -Or are these more suited for a separate shareholders agreement? (will need to prepare this, too)
Best to see a lawyer
You guys mentioned a while back about being against owning jets due to high maintenance costs. Then you recommended airline annual memberships. Any in particular for us high net worth individuals? THANK YOU
Netjets.
Might be a bit out of your wheelhouse, but I’ve been working long hours the past few months and the skin under my eyes has started to look “tired”/darker. Most advice on the internet about this seems to be sponsored posts geared towards women – I wanted to know if WSPs have faced this and if there are any efficient ways to deal with this.
Just go to a dermatologist? Doing basic stuff to keep your skin healthy is logical. Celebrities all use botox and other things so get it checked out and fixed if it makes you look older.
@BeautyTimeRN has some dark eyes tips
she knows mike, etc etc. very visible on Twitter.
30 years old…Work in a sales support role making 125K. Looking to pivot from a “support role” to pure sales. I have an offer for 160K for a tech start up that has been wildly successful in Europe and is starting up in NYC. It’s for a “biz dev” role so more than just sales, but I think good opportunity for promotions. I’m debating between that or a software sales place like SalesForce. I am trying to spin my “sales support” background into pure sales so I can start as an account executive right off the bat. Either way it will probably be a pay cut from the $125K I’m making now in a tech sales role. Do I go to the startup for more money or take the pay cut and start tech sales? Currently working on side biz as well.
hilarious same answer as always. Which one allows you to build a business. $35K doesn’t mean anything.
You wont make much more than 150 in sales support, pure sales roles will lead to 250k with more upwards in a few yrs
23 yr old. Work fulltime sales…
Health/fitness is my talent (people tell me this). Don’t want to do the whole bodybuilding competition thing / Instagram gym bro (money>attention). Currently..Juggling fitness clients and fulltime job has been extremely tedious. Thinking about doing skin care as it can be done at work ..on a laptop. I just don’t know much about the skin care industry.
1. Switch to skin care or juggle fitness & skincare with fulltime job?
Easy answer do both, our guess is going in a brand new direction without succeeding in something people tell you you’re good at is not a good strategy.
I’m a little conflicted with respect to how to structure my business. A lot of people claim it’s best to sell my own products even though I have to market myself as the brand. The alternative is to sell for someone else first. I’m into copywriting and would like to create copywriting books/courses.
Do you agree I should start my own agency and sell my own products right away or start working for someone else first?
Depends on how good you are, if you’re actually good you just go straight to doing it yourself.
Taking advice from other people is largely useless, if you’re good the results show so their opinion is irrelevant
If you have bad results it means you need more training and should sell for someone else.
Apart from IB and M&A is Private Banking (UHNWI) worth pursuing?
Thanks a lot!
No as usual nothing has changed from efficiency
Do you vaccinate (flu, hepatitis) or for other stuff?
Don’t know the answer, don’t have kids.
Why do people hate your blog when things are going poorly and enjoy it when things are going well?
Because 99% of people do not want to see someone else succeed. they are insecure so if their life is going in the wrong direction they won’t like this website. It’s a self filtering mechanism
Would you suggest moving to USA if possible to do sales if in my country sales jobs are not exactly best rewarded in terms of salary?
Almost finished university. If in my country sales jobs and “finance” jobs are equal in salaries, finance is actually better compensated, would you still suggest to go down sales route or do finance and online sales on side?
Thank you guys for great books! You have readers outside USA, really appreciate what you are giving us for free. Its crazy!
1) same story as the book outlines, you just choose the one with least amount of work since working for someone guarantees you don’t get rich and you have to start something on the side.
2) ironically same answer here, just choose the one that pays with 1) performance based compensation and 2) lowest number of hours
the answer hasn’t changed here in over 3 years and never will. You will never ever get rich working in any “salary” position. It doesn’t exist.
We’ll block all comments with “exception to the rule” of some google executive etc.
currently applying to tech sales role right now, these roles requires some travel, 30%-50% range.
I don’t have a car, nor do I know how to drive. Should I worry about learning how to drive and get a car.
Depends on location, if in a major city no way, just use uber
My focus goes off a cliff after 50hr. Instead of being able to focus, my mind just kind of splits and I’ll be thinking about social activities, housework, bills, anything really. Then I start making stupid mistakes on the task at hand.
If I take NO break then I burn out (frustration from lack of focus) and still only hit 50 hrs – 56 hours a week. If I watch tv or something I just get sucked in (go numb mentally).
How do I improve this? I really feel a mental wall at those levels of work and I don’t know why.
Spread out the day more, that’s the easiest way to give yourself time to recover
(Bought both books – email below)
When starting out on WordPress and building sites, I’m concerned about security/hacking concerns. What do you do to prevent this?
You don’t have to do anything until you’re big enough to be targeted then there are people who can add security features for you .
Do you guys believe in good and evil?
Only ask because your views coincidentally seem to align with people like Nietzsche and Machiavelli.
not even sure what this means, as long as you aren’t screwing people we really don’t care what people do.
those that tout they are “good people” are usually just screwing people so we don’t know what that even means these days
Would you guys ever do a podcast? Maybe join Mike Cernovich or Mikael Syding for an episode?
No. We hate them and don’t listen to them as it’s too slow compared to reading
You can train your ears to listen to podcasts at high speed. It’s actually faster than reading.
How has your view of superstition changed as you’ve become older (whatever this means to you)?
On my end, I’ve been thinking a lot about how thoughts “shape your reality,” and then I noticed this idea appearing everywhere. Even your Twitter mentioned it a few days ago.
Hasn’t changed at all, not worth brain cells to think of it
Just secured a solid full time tech offer at a top tier company but won’t be starting until later summer. I graduated in Dec so I have a lot of free time now.
I’m planning to use this time to offer a service (teaching high school student programming skills, private 1-1 lessons). Since my first year comp exceeds 200K when converted to my local currency, I am planning to price it at $100-$125/hour following your post. My city has very low tech talent so I’m definitely top 1% in terms of positive signalling.
My target market will be the parents who are putting their kids through private school. My reasoning is that since they are paying so much for their tuition, they should be able to afford this. What I’ve done so far is emailed all the private schools in my city, offering free Q&A service for their students who are considering my school (target).
My next step would be to send the school a PDF that outlines my service in 1 week. The most critical outcome is that they agree to email out my offer to all the parents at that school, since they likely have an email list.
Other than that, a more expensive approach would be to print out the PDF and go to all the rich suburbs in the city and place it in their mailbox.
Overall, my main motivation for doing all this is to practice my sales/marketing skills + knowing how to acquire clients. Money is just a bonus. It feels super awesome leveraging the branding of a “prestigious” school/company.
Question:
Thanks for taking the time to read. What are your thoughts on this approach? If I can’t convince the schools to advertise my offerings, what are other ways that you can think of on top of your head that would help me reach my target market?
Thanks again!
Can’t give advice on things we don’t know so if it works drop back and we’ll see if we can add anything. this is not a business we are familiar with and as you know we don’t comment on things we dont know.
Previously worked at a job that had bad team mates and worked like a sweat shop, it sucked despite the good pay. Got laid off due to politics and bad team in general. (lesson learned), it was a software engineer role.
I figure I should play politics better next time around.
Right now, I want to look for a role that give me the most pay with least amount of work, so that I can work on my own projects.
Any ideas in terms of politics to do the least work and finding the job that requires least amount of hours?(Im looking at Software engineer roles or tech sales roles)
Use our search engine for the phrase “politics” there are two posts on this topic.
I hope the two ID’s will allow me to ask two different questions.
I’m currently a 26 year old junior in college, I understand that I am greatly behind the ball but am trying to implement the advice you’ve provided to get my life back on track. I’m currently on track to join an Enterprise Sales track under Marketing Department. My eventual goal is gain enough capital to start a real estate investing business. At the moment, I have no skills that I could leverage as a business but there are two area I’m contemplating getting into
Option A: start learning/ frelancing copywriting. While I do believe I’d be good at person to person sales the written word is not my strong point but going though the struggles now may potentially help me with my career down the line plus I could perform service based business as mentioned In Your previous posts while at work during downtime.
Option B: I could use the summer to learn Web Design/Programminfg. While it may be technically be more difficult than copywriting I feel I’d have higher aptitude and worse case scenario I could enroll in the boot camps in the city or take the classes necessary while at school as electives. I can foresee a way of creating a service based business and even scaling up with this via outsourcing, and affiliate marketing. However since it would be so different from the career I would like to pursue I doubt I’d be able to get away with sneaking it in at my career. So essentially, I’d be working my two careers which I’m okay with since I am so behind the ball.
Any advice on which option I should purse would be greatly appreciated.
2. I want to eventually get into reinvesting. For the first few properties I will use my own capital but plan to eventually use leverage to accelerate acquisition of properties. At the moment I don’t have the greatest to credit, so you have any tips not markerted towards the masses to greatly increase credit score within 3-4 year window.
1) copywriting is always useful so we lean that way.Never did option 2 so we don’t know what that results in. So we’d go with option A.
2) Never had credit issues so do not know how to help there
Pretty straight forward, need to generate money ASAP and then move into RE. Probably can do two things at once, get into copywriting to make money and do RE sales to get money for the RE business idea.
I’m 30, a programmer, and have basically worked for cheap the last few years and finally landed a well paying freelancing/contracting gig for the past few months.
Right now, I have 2 jobs: working in a startup as employee #1 and a programming job for a fairly large blockchain project. I can finally put away 50% of my income per month as recommended elsewhere on this website.
Efficiency says I should find a product to sell – according to the Venn diagram, I am good at sales + engineering. But I have no idea what to choose. According to the advice on page 57, any product, marketed well enough, would do.
So I thought I’d start with marketing my own programming/consulting business first, because that leverages my existing computer skills and won’t be such a time drain. My blog is intended to be “blockchain explained very well by an insider”, that should propel me to famous blockchain programmer “Vitalik Buterin” status. For instance, I wrote an investment thesis that I’ll use (and revise) when looking at smart contract coins to invest in.
Am I on the right track? Am I thinking about ‘business ideas’ the wrong way? Maybe one doesn’t wait for a product idea to come to him, but just randomly chooses (since I have no idea about the whole product selling thing anyway, so whichever vertical I choose won’t make a difference).
this sounds perfectly fine and viable.
Assuming you’ve sold physical products online, how long (in terms # of products you put to market or time) did it take you before you found a clear “winner” when you launched it (i.e. consumer demand/profitability)?
Don’t remember. There is no real answer as you “forget” the losses. This is how life works. Ask a guy how many “no’s” he got before he met his girlfriend or whatever, he won’t remember.
Hey so I’m im working in tech sales right now making okay money. The constant cold calling is getting to me though. My brother has an hvac company that is 1 year old but it is taking off. 500k sales in first year. He wants me to become a sales guy with the potential of part ownership down the road. The issue is the company is small with 4ppl. I won’t be making as much as I am right now but the potential is there. Should I stay in in tech sales and work my way up or should I risk it and work with my brother selling hvac?
Not worth it without ownership. Why would you ever take a riskier position with no additional upside.
This is like going from Google to a startup with no equity. You’d laugh at the interviewer.
Read Efficiency many times. First time SDR role just started in NYC enterprise sofware HIGH growth company plus new/booming industry.
Recommended cold calling/SDR books? Pathway to RSM can be fast if I execute and kill it fast.
Never worked in the space so we can’t help. there is a post on enterprise sales here written by someone else.
Background: doing affiliate marketing in one of the niches mentioned in Efficiency. Competition is tough on Google SERP and have not gotten sales after 5 months.
Question 1: you guys previously mentioned using search targeted keywords + ads. But right now the problem is that I don’t even have enough traffic to commence ads. Thus was thinking of off page SEO eg. Guest posting, backlink building, PBN. What are your thoughts?
Question 2: how to know when to quit and move on to a different niche?
Thx
1) yes that definitely works
2) when your revenues flatline
Do you intend to start a new e-commerce business ?
Thanks
Ha! hilarious attention to detail, will eventually do something again =)
Thoughts on the impact of a universal basic income on things like savings rates, interest rates, long-term investment planning, etc?
Well it lines up with the older post of two economies.
If it happens that means there are two economies the rich and poor. We don’t really worry about all the other stuff anymore, if UBI comes in, it’s not like they can take away all your assets. So you probably want to invest in things that people on UBI would buy (food, cheap entertainment etc.)
You mentioned private doctors a couple times. Any recommendations on finding and vetting a private doctor?
Get in contact with celebrities or athletes. All you need is one professional and they will then link you to a person in your area.
1) Would you go for 2-3M by 35 years old or 7-10M by 40 years old?
No other option, side business or meaningful income, besides a good salary until then and personal utility drops off significantly after 3M.
2) For fun, which business to own is hell on earth?
My vote goes to agencies, especially marketing agencies.
Thanks!
1) Would go with 7-10 by 40. Msot likely that guy got to 2-3M anyway, and if not, at least at 40 you’re still in shape and killing life with zero need to ever work again.
2) CUSTOMER SERVICE.
Just wondering what your perspective is on “life being a video game”.
I have this same view as I imagine life as a sand-box style video game (think Grand Theft Auto) where you can literally do whatever the hell you please.
Everything you do is a conscious decision (with a subsequent consequence), whether you steal cars, get into gun fights or go to college. Much like these games, you can increase your own personal stats such as sex appeal, muscles, intelligence, or anything arbitrary like aim.
What’s your viewpoint as life as a video game?
Not really sure what this means, essentially whatever you believe to be true is going to happen over the long-term. This is why cynical people and negative people die earlier (they view everything in that lens). So it’s a “game” in the sense that all the answers are in front of you
I’m almost 28, just graduated college last December (lost of idiotic decisions in late teens/early twenties) with a mechanical engineering degree and I am currently working in sales for an automotive supplier. Salary is roughly 80K/year after bonuses and I do get a company car with gas/insurance all paid for.
I want to make a transition to enterprise software sales and I’m wondering if it’s worth it. The two companies I’m looking at are sales force and oracle. Salesforce is based in San Fran and Oracle in Austin. I’m currently in a nicer city outside of the Detroit area with a good nightlife.
I’m also currently working on building a side business that will focus on supplements or cosmetics.
A couple of questions:
1. Do you guys think it’s worth it to move careers (I’ve only been in my current position about 2 years including my internship) or stick it out at the automotive supplier and focus on my side business? I should mention in my current career I basically have the flexibility to work from home when I want and generally only work 35 hours a week. On top of that my management loves me and expects me to progress quickly through the company.
2. For my side business, would you suggest focusing more on cosmetics or supplements or does it matter? I feel I have good ideas regardless.
1) if you’re good at sales you should leave immediately, $80K isn’t much and sounds like the upward mobility is not going to pay much
2) doesn’t matter all of the markets in efficiency can get you rich even the less talked about ones we mentioned there
Starting a supplement line, rolling out a pre-workout soon. The brand is clean, minimal, and focuses on customers who want premium products without the gimmicks, full transparency (believe this is a growing niche in industry).
Lately, been thinking about changing the direction of the brand…towards general wellness. Supplements for sleep, focus, anxiety, etc. (emotional sell).
Should I roll out pre workout and then slowly add products for general wellness? Thoughts?
Tony
Well that’s easy, do the one that makes the most money. So if you’re already profitable on one then you can move to the next. As long as you tested it an know it will convert you’re good to go.
This may be a far too basic question. Do you use contract manufacturing to make and deliver cosmetic products?
Been affiliate selling products with some success, and now planning to launch my own.
Eventually you’ll own the entire chain so you should have your own facility, till then just work with third party.
Appreciate it
Currently in a top Canadian business school, looking to make the choice between finance or accounting specialty. Is accounting something that should be considered given the possibility of opening my own firm in ~10y or should stick to finance to crack M&A in bay/wall street? Cheers
Always go to M&A if possible.
You mentioned hiring an accountant that has worked for the IRS before. Do you have one you recommend? Need a good one ASAP. (Yes I have searched) I haven’t paid my taxes for 2018 yet.
How much profit were you making as an affiliate before switching to creating the product yourself?
1) this is something you’ll have to find yourself, there are a lot of them, just use linked-in and don’t go through the big firms
2) not willing to say but there is enough data on old posts that people got an idea already
Just in relation to career, is it a mistake to stay somewhere with less hours and less all in compensation but faster promotion opportunity?
No. We recommend that approach. Lowest hours and highest promotion over jumping around for small gains if it means more hours.
Background: First year analyst in a FIG group and I’m considering switching into the M&A team. My goal in banking is to learn as much as i can and accumulate as much money to start a business.
FIG Group: established goodwill with the seniors and run way to get promoted, only issue is that everyone below VP is a new hire and I don’t think the learning experince would be as good as the M&A group
M&A Group: Generally get paid more and has a lot of top performers to learn off of, the downside would be rebuilding the goodwill I had in FIG.
If you guys were in my position what would you recommend I do?
Thank you!
Same old, if serious about starting something and leaving then you stay in the spot that gives you the highest promotion chances.
You guys seem to be moving away from your previously implied “stealth wealth” precept, no? The status signaling suggested in some of the last several posts should be fairly detectable to even the average person. How would you characterize where you stand on the topic now, and what led to the change in thinking?
Yeah we’re messing around with status goods. They work for sure. Starting to realize as long as you’re not famous (public figure) there are more upsides than we thought.
WSP is correct.
“If people can’t see it, it doesn’t exist”.
Chicks don’t care about a dude with 500k saved and a bunch of stocks/real estate. They care about a guy with 400k saved, 100k of luxury items+Ego to match, and a bunch of stocks/real estate.
I am starting to realize even Instagram is VERY important to the average girl.
3k at Neiman Marcus(jeans/boots/sneaker)+ Cheap fitting shirts and a few luxury items like gucci shades. Have Massive ROI.
I wore some $400 shades to the bars last weekend, had multiple people comment, even a guy said
“Just put those on and you can get a free drink” “You look like your in a band”. Took me off guard.
This is accurate. hahaha
Do you have a basic rule of thumb for housing costs?
Should you live with roommates if you’re not earning enough?
I’m living with my brother in a one-room appartment for 300 dollar a month, and I wonder if it’s worth spending 800 dollars on an appartment of my own. Housing costs will go from roughly 10 % to 30 % of gross monthly income.
Try to keep it under 20% of net income at all times. Having roommates is 100% fine if you’re in your early-mid twenties even. Better to be financially set.
Anything changed in crypto bull run 2020?
No we’re actually buying all this year. Bar bell of 90% cash 10% going into that space until its 5% of net worth.
If starting a side business – specifically ecommerce site – is it better to keep this a secret from your full time job and coworkers or use contacts there to help promote it in the early stages?
Never tell your co-workers anything they are not your friends and would love to see you fail.
25 years old. Living in the UK. Unemployed. £0 in savings/investments.
First question: Next step is to make money and get a career – in my position, and at my age (25), would you suggest moving into any sales (performance not hourly wage) based role if I can’t get an enterprise sales role? I’m aware I majorly need to play catch up.
Second question: My intelligence is intent and synthesis, numerical being the weakest. Regarding a career, focussing on the synthesis side, do you think a ‘recruitment consultant’ job role is a viable route or will automation kill that off – should I stick to a synthesis role like ‘estate agent’ if following that path?
Yes that is logical. Go into any sales role or more ideally, go and learn a trade related to building homes and then go down the real estate path.
if you’re not good at numerics then forget tech, you’re left with sales.
Would an electrician count as a trade here?
Sure don’t see why not.
First of all I would like to say thank you for the opportunity , I bought the E-book because of your twitter posts which are very enlightening. I want to start a real estate portfolio. I bought a house in Vegas using the VA loan 0 down, (3.65%) means I am 100% leveraged, which I like. The house has about 40k in equity. I am leaving the Vegas area. I am not sure if renting it out is a bad idea. It does not meet the 1% rule. I think I can get about 18% for rent over mortgage(escrow). The house is in an area where it will have no problem being tenant occupied , and it was built in 2016 low expected maintenance. Would you sell the house or keep it?
Would definitely keep it, if you’re in the green and confident i’ll be occupied you’re in great shape. If for some reason you think you’ll run into cash flow issues then you may want to sell. Cash flow issues means you lose your current form of income + have occupation issues.
How long did you stay in the place ?
Im thinking to use my va loan as well in so cal but rent it out on the low
4 yrs. I personally think big cities in nice areas are the best place to use VA. As long as you aren’t buying at the peak…
1. How long did it take you to grab a good following online (social media and your blog.), and what tips do you recommend early on when creating a page?
My idea is to create an overall lifestyle blog, tap into ad revenue and affiliate as I grow, releasing products along the way. (Good example would be a page like Financial Samurai, Ed Latimore, Good Looking Loser, etc.)
not sure how long it took, this was created as a joke/hobby and here we are several years later. It’s not even close to being run properly so probably best to reach out to Ed and ask him as he’s built his up over time and seems to take it more seriously
1.Favorite ETF for someone in their 20s? (aside from S&P500)
2.Favorite restaurant in NYC to impress?
1) VYM if you need more cash flow
2) Catch on a weekday
Having built an online income source that covers my expenses 2-3x and only requires 20-30 hours/month, I’m struggling with what to do with the rest of my time. This income source will likely not last forever so I’m not sure I can exit the game quite yet, though it does buy me some time to play the long game without much financial stress. Were you in my spot, how would you prioritize from these options? Feel free to add an alternative if there’s something I’m missing.
1. Learn Sales (likely by taking a sales job to start)
2. Learn Coding
3. Work on a passion project idea I have similar to this blog that likely wouldn’t make real money for a long time, if ever
4. Enjoy my life/free time and focus less on income generation and more on hobbies/interests while continuing to invest proceeds from online business
1 or 2, your first part says you don’t have enough money yet, so until you’re rich then you can do 3/4.
don’t take the money forgranted, until you’re officially done life enjoys throwing tons of wrenches your way.
Who is worth betting on for Democratic Candidate in 2020?
No opinion here we don’t watch politics and don’t know who is even running
Will Trump win again in 2020?
No view yet
When you guys selling your products, did you trademark the name?
Ive submitted to register the name of our product but it saying it could take 6-9 months to get approved and im concerned its slowing other workstreams (packaging / website etc…) until i get the name approved
Thoughts?
Yes eventually you’ll trademark/patent anything you can. Until then just sell it as is
My dad was in the same boat when he started a biz 2-3 years ago. Long story short, he just put the TM symbol on everything, even though it wasn’t technically approved yet. Had one guy try to copy what he did before the TM went thru; if you settle in court and can prove you made the product 1st, court tends to favor you and frown upon the dude trying to copy your stuff.
This only applies to US business dealing with a US/Canadian/EU offender (those countries tend to go along with US IP law claims) but for Asian countries, you’d be shit out of luck. But honestly, Asian countries will steal shit with or without a TM so not worth stressing over.
26 making 134 doing a labor / hour heavy job
Roth maxed
Investing monthly
Rental property purchase soon
What’s next/ any advice @26 ?
Get a second form of income that isn’t real estate investing.
1.) What are the downsides to enterprise software sales? $100K+ with 40 hours a week and transferable skills seem too good to be true.
2.) How important is being in a high talent city (SF/Austin/NYC) for entrepreneurship?
Nothing really, there are only a few careers worth pursing so not sure what the question is about. The downside is you make good money? Guess it’s competitive like any other field that pays a lot
Very high since there is a bunch of politics involved when joining any firm. Ideally you can stay in a lower cost city just due to investing rates
Just joined a hot startup doing sales – been really successful so far. It’s pretty early so none of the employees have contracts in pace yet. But we are having a law firm draw these up.
Where can I go to learn how to best protect myself in terms of specific clauses to include in the contract. Want to make sure there aren’t loopholes with the 4 year equity vesting, etc.
Stuff like drag-along tag-along rights, etc. -Or are these more suited for a separate shareholders agreement? (will need to prepare this, too)
Best to see a lawyer
You guys mentioned a while back about being against owning jets due to high maintenance costs. Then you recommended airline annual memberships. Any in particular for us high net worth individuals? THANK YOU
Netjets.
Might be a bit out of your wheelhouse, but I’ve been working long hours the past few months and the skin under my eyes has started to look “tired”/darker. Most advice on the internet about this seems to be sponsored posts geared towards women – I wanted to know if WSPs have faced this and if there are any efficient ways to deal with this.
Just go to a dermatologist? Doing basic stuff to keep your skin healthy is logical. Celebrities all use botox and other things so get it checked out and fixed if it makes you look older.
@BeautyTimeRN has some dark eyes tips
she knows mike, etc etc. very visible on Twitter.
30 years old…Work in a sales support role making 125K. Looking to pivot from a “support role” to pure sales. I have an offer for 160K for a tech start up that has been wildly successful in Europe and is starting up in NYC. It’s for a “biz dev” role so more than just sales, but I think good opportunity for promotions. I’m debating between that or a software sales place like SalesForce. I am trying to spin my “sales support” background into pure sales so I can start as an account executive right off the bat. Either way it will probably be a pay cut from the $125K I’m making now in a tech sales role. Do I go to the startup for more money or take the pay cut and start tech sales? Currently working on side biz as well.
hilarious same answer as always. Which one allows you to build a business. $35K doesn’t mean anything.
You wont make much more than 150 in sales support, pure sales roles will lead to 250k with more upwards in a few yrs
23 yr old. Work fulltime sales…
Health/fitness is my talent (people tell me this). Don’t want to do the whole bodybuilding competition thing / Instagram gym bro (money>attention). Currently..Juggling fitness clients and fulltime job has been extremely tedious. Thinking about doing skin care as it can be done at work ..on a laptop. I just don’t know much about the skin care industry.
1. Switch to skin care or juggle fitness & skincare with fulltime job?
Easy answer do both, our guess is going in a brand new direction without succeeding in something people tell you you’re good at is not a good strategy.
I’m a little conflicted with respect to how to structure my business. A lot of people claim it’s best to sell my own products even though I have to market myself as the brand. The alternative is to sell for someone else first. I’m into copywriting and would like to create copywriting books/courses.
Do you agree I should start my own agency and sell my own products right away or start working for someone else first?
Depends on how good you are, if you’re actually good you just go straight to doing it yourself.
Taking advice from other people is largely useless, if you’re good the results show so their opinion is irrelevant
If you have bad results it means you need more training and should sell for someone else.
Apart from IB and M&A is Private Banking (UHNWI) worth pursuing?
Thanks a lot!
No as usual nothing has changed from efficiency
Do you vaccinate (flu, hepatitis) or for other stuff?
Don’t know the answer, don’t have kids.
Why do people hate your blog when things are going poorly and enjoy it when things are going well?
Because 99% of people do not want to see someone else succeed. they are insecure so if their life is going in the wrong direction they won’t like this website. It’s a self filtering mechanism
Would you suggest moving to USA if possible to do sales if in my country sales jobs are not exactly best rewarded in terms of salary?
Almost finished university. If in my country sales jobs and “finance” jobs are equal in salaries, finance is actually better compensated, would you still suggest to go down sales route or do finance and online sales on side?
Thank you guys for great books! You have readers outside USA, really appreciate what you are giving us for free. Its crazy!
1) same story as the book outlines, you just choose the one with least amount of work since working for someone guarantees you don’t get rich and you have to start something on the side.
2) ironically same answer here, just choose the one that pays with 1) performance based compensation and 2) lowest number of hours
the answer hasn’t changed here in over 3 years and never will. You will never ever get rich working in any “salary” position. It doesn’t exist.
We’ll block all comments with “exception to the rule” of some google executive etc.
currently applying to tech sales role right now, these roles requires some travel, 30%-50% range.
I don’t have a car, nor do I know how to drive. Should I worry about learning how to drive and get a car.
Depends on location, if in a major city no way, just use uber
My focus goes off a cliff after 50hr. Instead of being able to focus, my mind just kind of splits and I’ll be thinking about social activities, housework, bills, anything really. Then I start making stupid mistakes on the task at hand.
If I take NO break then I burn out (frustration from lack of focus) and still only hit 50 hrs – 56 hours a week. If I watch tv or something I just get sucked in (go numb mentally).
How do I improve this? I really feel a mental wall at those levels of work and I don’t know why.
Spread out the day more, that’s the easiest way to give yourself time to recover
(Bought both books – email below)
When starting out on WordPress and building sites, I’m concerned about security/hacking concerns. What do you do to prevent this?
You don’t have to do anything until you’re big enough to be targeted then there are people who can add security features for you .
Do you guys believe in good and evil?
Only ask because your views coincidentally seem to align with people like Nietzsche and Machiavelli.
not even sure what this means, as long as you aren’t screwing people we really don’t care what people do.
those that tout they are “good people” are usually just screwing people so we don’t know what that even means these days
Would you guys ever do a podcast? Maybe join Mike Cernovich or Mikael Syding for an episode?
No. We hate them and don’t listen to them as it’s too slow compared to reading
You can train your ears to listen to podcasts at high speed. It’s actually faster than reading.
How has your view of superstition changed as you’ve become older (whatever this means to you)?
On my end, I’ve been thinking a lot about how thoughts “shape your reality,” and then I noticed this idea appearing everywhere. Even your Twitter mentioned it a few days ago.
Hasn’t changed at all, not worth brain cells to think of it
Just secured a solid full time tech offer at a top tier company but won’t be starting until later summer. I graduated in Dec so I have a lot of free time now.
I’m planning to use this time to offer a service (teaching high school student programming skills, private 1-1 lessons). Since my first year comp exceeds 200K when converted to my local currency, I am planning to price it at $100-$125/hour following your post. My city has very low tech talent so I’m definitely top 1% in terms of positive signalling.
My target market will be the parents who are putting their kids through private school. My reasoning is that since they are paying so much for their tuition, they should be able to afford this. What I’ve done so far is emailed all the private schools in my city, offering free Q&A service for their students who are considering my school (target).
My next step would be to send the school a PDF that outlines my service in 1 week. The most critical outcome is that they agree to email out my offer to all the parents at that school, since they likely have an email list.
Other than that, a more expensive approach would be to print out the PDF and go to all the rich suburbs in the city and place it in their mailbox.
Overall, my main motivation for doing all this is to practice my sales/marketing skills + knowing how to acquire clients. Money is just a bonus. It feels super awesome leveraging the branding of a “prestigious” school/company.
Question:
Thanks for taking the time to read. What are your thoughts on this approach? If I can’t convince the schools to advertise my offerings, what are other ways that you can think of on top of your head that would help me reach my target market?
Thanks again!
Can’t give advice on things we don’t know so if it works drop back and we’ll see if we can add anything. this is not a business we are familiar with and as you know we don’t comment on things we dont know.
Previously worked at a job that had bad team mates and worked like a sweat shop, it sucked despite the good pay. Got laid off due to politics and bad team in general. (lesson learned), it was a software engineer role.
I figure I should play politics better next time around.
Right now, I want to look for a role that give me the most pay with least amount of work, so that I can work on my own projects.
Any ideas in terms of politics to do the least work and finding the job that requires least amount of hours?(Im looking at Software engineer roles or tech sales roles)
Use our search engine for the phrase “politics” there are two posts on this topic.
I hope the two ID’s will allow me to ask two different questions.
I’m currently a 26 year old junior in college, I understand that I am greatly behind the ball but am trying to implement the advice you’ve provided to get my life back on track. I’m currently on track to join an Enterprise Sales track under Marketing Department. My eventual goal is gain enough capital to start a real estate investing business. At the moment, I have no skills that I could leverage as a business but there are two area I’m contemplating getting into
Option A: start learning/ frelancing copywriting. While I do believe I’d be good at person to person sales the written word is not my strong point but going though the struggles now may potentially help me with my career down the line plus I could perform service based business as mentioned In Your previous posts while at work during downtime.
Option B: I could use the summer to learn Web Design/Programminfg. While it may be technically be more difficult than copywriting I feel I’d have higher aptitude and worse case scenario I could enroll in the boot camps in the city or take the classes necessary while at school as electives. I can foresee a way of creating a service based business and even scaling up with this via outsourcing, and affiliate marketing. However since it would be so different from the career I would like to pursue I doubt I’d be able to get away with sneaking it in at my career. So essentially, I’d be working my two careers which I’m okay with since I am so behind the ball.
Any advice on which option I should purse would be greatly appreciated.
2. I want to eventually get into reinvesting. For the first few properties I will use my own capital but plan to eventually use leverage to accelerate acquisition of properties. At the moment I don’t have the greatest to credit, so you have any tips not markerted towards the masses to greatly increase credit score within 3-4 year window.
1) copywriting is always useful so we lean that way.Never did option 2 so we don’t know what that results in. So we’d go with option A.
2) Never had credit issues so do not know how to help there
Pretty straight forward, need to generate money ASAP and then move into RE. Probably can do two things at once, get into copywriting to make money and do RE sales to get money for the RE business idea.
I’m 30, a programmer, and have basically worked for cheap the last few years and finally landed a well paying freelancing/contracting gig for the past few months.
Right now, I have 2 jobs: working in a startup as employee #1 and a programming job for a fairly large blockchain project. I can finally put away 50% of my income per month as recommended elsewhere on this website.
Efficiency says I should find a product to sell – according to the Venn diagram, I am good at sales + engineering. But I have no idea what to choose. According to the advice on page 57, any product, marketed well enough, would do.
So I thought I’d start with marketing my own programming/consulting business first, because that leverages my existing computer skills and won’t be such a time drain. My blog is intended to be “blockchain explained very well by an insider”, that should propel me to famous blockchain programmer “Vitalik Buterin” status. For instance, I wrote an investment thesis that I’ll use (and revise) when looking at smart contract coins to invest in.
Am I on the right track? Am I thinking about ‘business ideas’ the wrong way? Maybe one doesn’t wait for a product idea to come to him, but just randomly chooses (since I have no idea about the whole product selling thing anyway, so whichever vertical I choose won’t make a difference).
this sounds perfectly fine and viable.
Assuming you’ve sold physical products online, how long (in terms # of products you put to market or time) did it take you before you found a clear “winner” when you launched it (i.e. consumer demand/profitability)?
Don’t remember. There is no real answer as you “forget” the losses. This is how life works. Ask a guy how many “no’s” he got before he met his girlfriend or whatever, he won’t remember.
Hey so I’m im working in tech sales right now making okay money. The constant cold calling is getting to me though. My brother has an hvac company that is 1 year old but it is taking off. 500k sales in first year. He wants me to become a sales guy with the potential of part ownership down the road. The issue is the company is small with 4ppl. I won’t be making as much as I am right now but the potential is there. Should I stay in in tech sales and work my way up or should I risk it and work with my brother selling hvac?
Not worth it without ownership. Why would you ever take a riskier position with no additional upside.
This is like going from Google to a startup with no equity. You’d laugh at the interviewer.
Read Efficiency many times. First time SDR role just started in NYC enterprise sofware HIGH growth company plus new/booming industry.
Recommended cold calling/SDR books? Pathway to RSM can be fast if I execute and kill it fast.
Never worked in the space so we can’t help. there is a post on enterprise sales here written by someone else.
Sales Development – Cory Bray