Currently in accounting, 3,5 yrs in (mba + state authorized accountant), contract to stay at the same firm for 1 more year. 86k annual earnings, but high workload/hours. Started side-biz (ecommerce), but scaling is slow.
Could probably get another job with same earnings, but fewer hours (however, less possibility to do side hustle while at work).
What would you do?
Start a side business immediately. We notice 90% of questions here are about careers, yet careers don’t make people rich. Try to stay somewhere where you have a decent income and learn online sales now… not tomorrow but now.
Who are you picking to win Deontay Wilder or Tyson Fury? (or would it be a 50/50 like the experts say)
Do you expect people to offload their crypto positions during the next GFC?
Who are you expecting to become the next Democratic Party Nominee (Michael Bloomberg or Bernie Sanders)?
1) we are not betting on this fight. if forced to choose we’ll go with wilder
2) prices probably go up is our guess
3) not betting on this again. Of the two bernie probably has a better shot
You consider BTC/ETH to be risk on assets then? Or is that not even the right paradigm to look at it? The way I see it, the west has high debt/GDP and keeps going higher, so historically that ends in printing which would be good for crypto. The downside risk is no one really knows what happens to crypto in a recession since it’s never happened. Thoughts?
Already covered in triangle investing. It’s a small percent of net worth high risk high reward asset class.
No one knows for sure what happens in a downturn but we were asked for an opinion and we think it goes up due to distrust of legacy financial system
Thanks for all the value over the years! Avid fan and reader of efficiency!
Situation:
Current finalist at target uni in UK; built online business up to ~$5m revenue p.a. (~5-10% net profit margin; 50% equity retained; asset value 3-4x net profit).
Haven’t taken any money/salary out of biz, and currently going through hole so will be so for another few months.
Question:
Should I focus 100% of time on the biz? Or should I follow Efficiency and get a career on top of the biz (min time requirement for biz would be ~10-15hrs/week)?
Wouldn’t even bother with a career in your situation. If you really have the time go for it, but an extra $100K a year isn’t going to matter to you if your original situation is accurate.
Thanks!
Would you recommend using any extra time I have to build a second business instead? Or triple down on the main one?
Bc in your previous posts you advocated building up the next income stream asap. So not sure how to balance that with focusing on scaling main biz further.
Same story biz income is all that matter so yes go for it. That will never change, having one source of income is a death sentence.
1) Do you have an estimate of how much the upcoming recession will impact businesses selling B2B (software-as-a-service solving an intermediate need by saving time)?
2) You say it’s relatively easy to gain 5% returns if millionaire+. You include stock appreciation + dividends, not just dividends/cash flow right?
3) Do you recommend at this point betting on Trump winning next elections or not safe yet?
Thanks have a nice Sunday!
1) No way to estimate all we know is stocks go down around 30%
2) Sure, just look at real estate, stocks, bonds and appreciation long-term 5% has been extremely easy to obtain historically
3) This has been covered over a year ago we already bet (big) on him winning again
How do I find angles to build a relationship with people who are more talented and more successful?
Why is *public speaking* an important skill to learn? How does it help if I don’t want to become famous or become a public speaker?
1) you become talented at something useful for said talented people. Finding angles just means “trying to BS your way into a circle” which never works. Find a skill you can offer
2) If you get rich you’re forced to do presentations, go to conferences etc. If you don’t plan on being successful then it doesn’t matter. Just look at how many times successful people have to speak. You will find many videos of them. Being famous is separate.
In Spending, you mentioned Chlorella as best veggie. Assuming you mean the powder, powder chlorella > freshly juiced barley / wheatgrass / spinach / kale?
It’s the best for travel. In terms of fresh items, the rest are pretty much the same.
The point was that it’s the best for “no time” and can be carried easily with similar impact as the other 4 you have there
Hi, what’s your view on entrepreneurship courses and the whole ecosystem?
They teach it at MIT but I feel it’s different from your ways
Never went there so can’t say. That said there is no way anyone “teaches” entrepreneurship that’s usually just some scam for money. Anyone who actually succeeds just starts now and figures it out as they go
Hi WSP, while reading the sales / copywriting books listed in Efficiency I realized that while I am indeed learning alot I am at a loss of what to apply in a given scenario (eg. selling to niche X on a website).
Question 1: Do you have a framework that you use to analyze what sales technique has a higher chance of success (or should be prioritized for testing purposes) in a particular situation? Or is it just random trial and error ie. test different copy until one works?
Question 2: What cryptos do you guys buy now?
Thanks.
1) yes we copy the competitors! Best way to start is go through the top sales funnels of competitors figure out if you can do it better. Always emulate the best first then make your own adjustments. This works in many parts of life
2) in triangle investing no change
1. You guys have been posting a lot more frequently as of late; you just bored or finally getting a taste for that sweet, non-recurring, book revenue and trying to drive traffic? 😉
2. Had some downtime recently as well, and read Felix Denis’ books again. You ever feel like you sacrificed your humanity and sold your soul for all this money? Strange question to ask a bunch of bankers, but looking back on all the sacrifices I had to make to get here, it really does feel like it. I’ve come to terms with it and don’t much care anymore, but wanted to know if I’m alone in this.
Hope you don’t mind me using my transaction IDs for quick entertainment and a short therapy session. Rather good deal, and some things don’t change 😉
1) have to post frequently post a launch for traffic, most sales are first 2 weeks so we lined it up
2) Not at all actually, as usual the real money is not in finance unless you were a super MD making $5M a year
Hair-loss? finasteride seemed like the solution, but endo warned against
Thank you as always,
Don’t waste your time, either go all out (full replace like elon musk) or don’t do it is our stance
Never waste your time, I lost 1000 hours and dollars on diets, supplements…etc.
Pointless just eat healthy and avoid extreme stress. Get 15k together for a full out transplant.
Would personally recommend going on finasteride. Have been on it for 8 years now since early diffuse thinning. Hair loss halted/slowed significantly. No side effects!
Do the negative points you’ve shared about working remote still apply if the company is remote-only? (And a sales position, so numbers>)
Depends but generally yes, if you can’t get a competing offer easily you’re in a tough spot
30, $1.2m liquid. Low salary (high 5 figures) after moving from public finance to government job. Not enough energy/drive to get rich through starting a business (like the idea of it, just being realistic) or taking on a real estate project, but would be interested in investing in others’ businesses in more a LP/silent partner route. Does that make sense at my current wealth/income level and if so, any advice or resources for getting into that?
Absolutely not. You’re going to be crushed more likely than not. Giving money to other people while having no successful business yourself means you won’t be able to identify bad businesses and good ones.
Have to succeed yourself first would never do it.
How exactly did you get into 7 figures without a side biz and working a 5 figures government job?
As mentioned in post, worked in banking (pf) before government job.
Love Spending for Max Return! Just wish I read it & Efficiency 15 years ago. Just turned 33 (had some life-threatening medical issues between 26 until now due to genetic disorder).
I find myself in and out of various tiers in the book. Live in small midwestern town (all ‘house’ payments <$1,500) and work for debt capital markets team (regional bank) making $102k/year base, plus 50-60% bonus which usually hits (hit last three years, will again this year) so expecting a cash payout of ~$60k in March. Last time I used the dough to pay down mortgage, could do that again and then house would prob be paid off next year (after one more full bonus which has low targets/is easy to hit).
However, side hustle not established yet by any means. Want to get online assets generating substantial cash flow ASAP and wondering your advice on how much I should “learn” (e.g. try to do myself) vs. pay (i.e. just pay VA’s/upwork/agencies for web design, advertising, etc.) given my age and liquidity. I will smash shit down on monthly expenses & use bonus cash proceeds to invest whatever I have to to be successful, but wanted to give you most important variables: age (33) & top line outside of bonus (after maxing 401k & hsa for family plus taxes comes out to ~$4,500-$5,000/month after tax).
Have a little experience with affiliate sites & SEO pre-medical issues, and remember getting crushed by Google algo updates back in the day. Still like the idea of affiliate, just wondering how you can make margins work with ad spend? It was already low as hell with organic. I used Amazon previously, maybe that’s the problem. Do you recommend any particular platform for best margins (FB, insta, AdWords, Organic, etc)?
So:
1. How much of learning vs paying for and
2. Recommended platform for ad $ allocation?
Thanks guys love the work.
This is just a life story unfortunately, it seems your only real question is best ad platform which is already in the book which is google and facebook
Based on our read here what we would do is 1) create your own product and 2) tweak until profitable.
The first question makes no sense along with the second one. If you’re making money you spend as many billions of dollars as possible? While it’s great you’re excited these questions don’t make a lot of sense. If you spend $10k in ads but make $11K… Well then you spend a million dollars and say you make $1.1M… Well then you just keep spending more!
In terms of how much you need to be successful we estimated $50K. The entire answer has been posted on the blog many times
Sorry my first question was unclear. Allow me to try and rephrase here:
By after-tax income band, I’m aligned with the tier you defined as “early 20’s” in Spend for Max Return. You advocate *learning* certain skills at that stage. My real question was to ask: given my age & liquidity, is it better to just pay a professional to perform FB advertising for example, rather than try to read about it/run my own ads with no help, etc. And apply that logic (money vs investing my time to learn) across most the facets for the business.
In other words, how important is it to take time to learn web design vs. just paying a developer to do it for me as another example?
web design probably isn’t worth it and can be outsourced
learning how to sell is critical though so if you have the money outsource the design part
For someone who doesn’t have knowledge of specific cryptos, what are your thoughts on trying to index the top 10-20 coins by market cap using something like Hodlbot or Shrimpy?
This is already covered in our investing book in terms of what we own or would own. If you want to do more than that you can expand but need to do the research yourself
Got it. I was assuming there are constant changes and updates in the crypto landscape. But if nothing has changed since Triangle Investing was published, that’s easy enough.
Thanks!
There are two others we are looking at but not much has changed. Feel feee to research tezos (probably overhyped today but should be researched)
Thank you for the spending book. Really enjoyed it.
Who’s the author of “How to Analyze People”? (There were quite a few exact match titles on Amazon that were well-reviewed.)
Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
Feel free to read the other ones if it’s not a good skill yet.
Thank you and good luck with all the endeavors you undertake this year.
I was laid of this past Monday from IB as a 3rd year analyst. How do I reframe to other banks when vying for Associate positions? If all else fails (after 4 months of trying), should I go to Corp dev for $120k a year and grind on side biz? Trying to fix cash flow issues in short term.
Thanks,
KEG
You probably can’t get the associate slot, but would be possible to get into the third year slot again. If you’re lucky you can get an associate slot but have to downsize to much smaller firm. There is no real reframe, an associate at a small shop probably makes the same as a good 3rd year at a big shop (the small shops pay a lot less these days)
Corp dev is perfectly fine, but you need to take the side biz seriously (very seriously) already. The income doesn’t scale up and would fix your cash flow issue.
This is your call but 4 months seems reasonable. As always we recommend the side income ASAP since these things do happen (layoffs)
Do you (or your friends) have any experience running white-hat health & beauty ecom campaigns profitably at scale using traffic sources other than FB? If so, what is the #1 and #2 sources you would recommend, and why.
We won’t disclose industry those that are smart enough to read between the lines know what industry.
Yes white hat campaigns can be successfully run on google and facebook although those are the only two that really matter. Yahoo has worked too, in fact we’d bet that you can do them with any search engine. That said facebook and google are king
The reason why is due to scale, none really compete to google and facebook so if you master either you’ll always make money
Got it. Quick follow up: Given Google’s higher learning curve, what are your thoughts on YouTube specifically? Does the learning curve/video production time investment not make this platform worth focusing on, or would you give it a go if you were starting from scratch and didn’t want to deal with FB compliance issues?
Yes youtube and videos are starting to be quite popular so you may be able to monetize there. That said, Facebook and google are still king and not even close
We don’t do much on youtube so can’t really help as it would be bad info
Any advice on spending or just general tips to minimise downside in life, especially for people on FI level?
Poor have fire extinguisher in the kitchen and money under mattress, ultra-rich like Peter Thiel have doomsday escape plan to New Zeland [1] or gold stockpiles in multiple locations.
What’s reasonable in between?
I’m looking for things beside already written on this blog like 1) do not get legally married (risk of divorce) 2) do not touch the principal 3) keep it low profile 4) don’t get addicted to hard drugs etc.
Personally I formed LLCs, better insurances, more NW diversification, sold motorcycle and replaced some very dangerous sports. Some things are not worth the risk if you have 50 years of happy life ahead.
Not sure what you mean we just wrote a book on spending? It’s right there on the top right of the website.
Downside isn’t really possible if you’re diversified, once you are FI you’re set for life unless you stupidly spend the principal
I read the book on spending. It was great and have a bunch of actions items to do. But my question is not only about finances, but in general.
Sometimes in life it’s worth to be extra paranoid, especially if cost is relatively low, but impact of some “Black Swan” catastrophic.
e.g. Kobe Bryant and his wife agreed to “never fly together”. Paranoid? Yes. But it saved children from even bigger disaster. It’s also common rule for top-level military officers, politicians and company executives.
I wonder what’s your view on being sometimes extra paranoid?
Sure in life or death situations be extra paranoid don’t see an issue there
Are there any particular banks you would recommend for opening an online business bank account? Are places like Azlo sufficient?
The yields are so low and change every 12 months, just google best interest rates and choose one of those won’t make a difference
Thank you for the work you put in and your last book was a hit, really changed my mindset. I wanted to ask you guys a question that I want a brutally honest answer for.
Say someone is in that typical 9 to 5, work 40 hrs a week, and then live for the weekends path. At what point, age wise, do you think it becomes too late for that person to actually “make it”?
Meaning if they have not started a side business or anything. What age do you look at and say it is realistically too late for them to make it?
As usual never too late just depends on how much effort you are willing to put in. Most people are lazy though and prefer blacking out on weekends and ruin their lives
Fair enough but at the same time, there must be an age where it becomes significantly more difficult or just doesn’t make as much sense. In my late 20s now and while I am in sales, I’ve had a tough go at a successful scalable business route.
I am noticing now that I’m early 30s that 100% of people who blacked out on a recurring basis in their 20s didn’t make it. I’m not talking 90%. I’m not talking 99%. Universal, across the board, these people peaked in college and just kept going downhill after that.
Pretty much, you are only killing your future. If you are already rich that’s a different story
Alex,
define “recurring basis”. I do it once every Saturday night tbh.
Among my friends I’m easily the most successful. Investment Banker in tech M&A and I have an ecom business clearing 6 figs Rev since Nov.
I understand that I need to hang around more successful people. Where do I go to find these ppl to network with?
Currently trying through Twitter and group chats.
You will meet them through work, if you’re the most successful in the people you talk to most you have to leave asap. It will kill you eventually, you want to be in the middle in general
Any thoughts on the root cause and ultimate outcome of the repo market madness?
Are you betting the Nadal future at Roland Garros?
1) no real view, sticking with belief slowdown in 2021, in the mean time just buying coins
2) no
Online affiliate biz made ~$500 in net sales last month, but ~$700 expenses (traffic) exceeded that, running in the red. Expecting to run in the red for a awhile as I tweak my funnel. Regarding biz set up, with my numbers, should I register as a sole proprietorship? I know the blog advocates S-Corp, but I know I’m not there yet income wise.
When going through the journey of getting rich (job + online biz for me), how involved were your friends in terms of knowing your antics? I’ve been saying something along the lines of “just chilling” whenever someone asks me what I’m up to – I feel so distant from most around me. Maybe I should level up and find new friends?
The idea of singing to get over any fear of embarrassment is genius. I have to try it! How much time do you allow yourselves to work on skills like that outside of making money/gym/relationships?
1) sure okc is fine do it in Wyoming
2) not sure what this even means you don’t need to tell people your master plans
3) as much time as yo I am afford to lose, should be tiny
I do not hope you perceive this as a “relationship”-based answer, I think of it more as a question of time-efficiency/lifestyle question as I have social skills and get laid when I focus on it. My problem is just that having too much of active social life is more stressful for me than being bored (too much time away from work and studying, too much drinking, low quality sleep and no time to do chores) but I want to avoid killing my personality and social skills.
I am in the early years of the journey how did you meet people/socialise/date when you were killing yourself in your early twenties without the hassle of having to always be in “party mode”?
Obviously I am not at a level yet where I can justify going out twice a week as you suggest in Spending or Efficiency as I am still at university while spending most time getting work experience, maintaining the equivalent of 4.0 GPA and working on side project.
If you think university is hard your life is going to go down the drain faster. On a glance your life looks easy so keep with the schedule and get used to it
Haha, uni is definitely not hard and people who think it is makes me laugh as they still get shitty grades and are their way to graduating without any valuable work experience.
I skip most of my classes and mainly read since most teachers explain stuff in 4 hours that could be read and understood in 2 hours anyways and exams easily can be aced if you have been following along and cram the week up to + if you are busy getting work experience you do not have more than approx. 3-4 hours to dedicate to school a day.
Been focusing on work experience and currently have a better resume than most peers and even graduate-level profiles (noticed this while helping previous manager with recruiting for full-time positions). Am currently at a full-time internship at a top-tier pharma company in my country for a semester working with tech as business analyst.
All in all, I spend approx total 60-70 hours of effort on getting high-paying career straight out of uni a week + extra time spend on learning online sales through dropshipping. Which is why I wanted to find out a way to spend less time/energy on social life without losing stream of new people/girls.
From your answer, I get that I don’t have the luxury to do this yet, so I will listen to your advice, keep the schedule, maybe try to tweak my health items for more energy and then just embrace the suck. No shortcuts I guess.
You are correct no short cuts
Thank you for your time WSP.
1) Any idea how crypto would react in it’s first upcoming economy downturn? Meaning correlated or uncorrelated?
2) Similar to your post “1 million in 10 years post” as financial benchmark: What should the cash balance benchmark be to take advantage of next downturn?
1) we think it outperforms all asset classes but could be dead wrong no one knows as we haven’t had a recession since crypto existed
2) depends on your cash flow, if you’re making $1M a year cash balance should be tiny since you’re doubling net worth next Year. Max cash position is 5-10% at peak cycle.
THANK YOU for the last book. Now I got all 3 & the last one was the best one. My question is the following: any recommendations for grey hair or reversing it to look younger as long as possible? any products natural or not to ingest to prevent or reverse it ? THANK YOU
No clue as grey hairs don’t seem to matter compared to balding. Having some grey hair is fine never looked into reversing it.
Embrace the gray hair. It looks good on men. If you really want to dye it, get it done professionally at a salon.
quick money hustle question:
looking for a another hustle while bootstrapping to $50k cash for business idea
is setting up niche amazon affiliate product review websites waste of time vs.
flipping items on ebay(current hustle)? or get another job on the weekend?
Once you spend the 50k needed to start product business idea, how much money is needed for working capital if your bootstraping? ie: 1 month of capital vs 1 quarter
1) you can do both just get a second income that requires a computer. If not choose the one that gets you there the fastest
2) not possible to know, depends on your demand, inventory needed and what market. Way too hard to give a general view beyond the $50K start up for vast majority of launches. If it were that cookie cutter, major industries like airlines would never get off the ground!
If you can grow an email list to thousands of ‘subs’, how can you make the list profitable? Just scam them with new ‘hot’, trendy items?
Not sure what you mean here, subscribers are repeat business so you don’t want to scam anything and you want a recurring revenue stream from them instead. A few thousand is decent depends on the market though and price point of what you’re selling
Thank you WSP, been following since college days without a dime.
My primary job is in sector-specific PE (6Y in) and have 2 other income streams which however are dwarfed in comparison to the primary for now.
Pros of primary: Pays ok (300k). Job security and balance better than other PEs. Large exposure to my niche geographies. Allows to move to countries that I like and seriously consider.
Cons of primary: Feels constrained by the sector – personally invest asset agnostically. Getting hard to progress due to old wood in the company. Also not on great terms with manager. Because of the sector constraint and old wood, feels like I cannot fully exploit my niche and try to originate as the bases are covered/out-of-scope.
Torn between:
1.) stay, go turkey, do ok, focus on other streams but likely be unable to leave the sector later and get increasingly frustrated (already am, it’s wearing me down, my performance suffers and it’s visible!)
2.) go to some other PE that provides the platform, likely bump up in seniority and pay, but bigger pressure on bringing business and quality, likely have to stay in “financial center” city, other income streams will suffer due to time
3.) any alternative you can think of
Any views appreciated.
Honesty sounds like you’re fine, keep trying to scale up the other two items and don’t leave the cash cow income for now. You are in a great spot, just need to keep grinding it out. Your life could be 100x worse, so you’re doing fantastic by all measures
Thanks. Feel to me like I should be further and getting a bit restless given the headwinds on primary.
Anyway, just wanted add that this blog changed my life. Best of luck. I mean it.
1. Right now only have time to do a brief cardio workout every day, have been running a mile and then doing HIIT afterwards. Do you think doing this 6 days a week is too much (in terms of possibly getting injured)? (Age 26)
2. Hoping to maybe ask a longer question for two transaction IDs. Could you tell me which of these eight options for repaying student loans is best if I am trying to follow the career + side income at work path and get rich as soon as possible?
1) probably too much, you can do hundreds of push ups and pull ups before taking a shower and through a day would add that in
2) no as we have no clue based on your financial situation, also never had student debt
Situation is 60 thousand ish in debt and my job pays 55k a year starting. If you can answer based on this great, otherwise thank you anyways for all the great work
That is insane we have no idea, you should live at home and cut costs to zero. Then get a second job/income immediately
Read the recent post regarding the corona virus. I currently based in Hong Kong where it was an advanced country but not quite sure about now. The government here is incompetent and reacts very slow which results in lots of mess here… e.g. people are panicking, lining up days for face masks and there are 1k+ suspected cases so far.
Question: In the long run, shall I move to another advanced country for post-grad study/work as soon as possible for better life and finance-related career perspective?
We don’t know the market in Asia so can’t say. Don’t worry about this thing it’ll be done by end of year no doubt (face masks don’t help so if anything try to buy and resell them)
No need for any change to strategy
26, work in tech making less than 40k/year (essentially starting at zero). Feel extremely behind!
Involved in career advancement institution that will take my salary to at least 80k/year within the next 3 months.
I also need to start 2nd source and learn online sales asap, My goal is to kill multiple birds with one stone (skills/experience in tech) and you mentioned “technology support can be profitable” in efficiency.
1. Am I missing something or focusing my efforts correctly in order to catch up asap?
2. Can you point me in the right direction with tech support?
(any example/feedback helps)
Thanks
1) yes you’re making the right moves, when you move to $80K you can easily try online sales
2) we’re not sure what you’re doing so can’t even start to help. Figure out what you’re going to offer then come back “tech support” doesn’t mean anything. Tech support was referring to things like software that is sold to enterprise companies
Could a tech blog make some real money? Write solid tutorials teaching people a variety of tech topics (programming, web design, blockchain basics, etc.)
Become an affiliate with companies that sell courses/subscriptions, run ads on the site, sell ebooks.
Other option is to go straight for the looks industry.
Thanks for the reply
Blogs are trash businesses hard to scale with no recurring revs
That said it could work but you need a product eventually, those affiliate things don’t matter unless you’re a mega website like business insider
We don’t know your skill set, you need to translate your skills to recurring or consumable revenue.
18M freshman at college here. 4.0 GPA during the first semester and taking the maximum course load to graduate faster and to GPA pad for when college gets challenging.
Two Questions:
1. How do you find other future successful people? 99.9% of the people in college either complain about how “difficult” their life is or lack ambitions of becoming wealthy/successful (normal people).
Do you just keep working until you enter a mutually beneficial relationship and build it out from there?
2. Following the path in Efficiency, I am building a GPA foundation while setting things up (making contacts) to have job experience and join major-related clubs during the second year (CompSci Major).
I still feel that sometimes I am not doing “enough”. Is there a way to know when you have done enough in a day?
Also, do you have an email address? I am working on some ideas that I believe would be an interesting read (based on your “Ownership: The Green Light to Making Money” post).
1) you answered your own question, you will cross them as you move up and that’s how something mutually beneficial evolves. Just like anything else if you’re good at something you slowly get dragged to that level
2) generally speaking, working insanely hard through age 26-28 or so is never regrettable. Probably worth a post on its own, we would rather delete several months of partying in 20s if we could replace it with days in 30s hard to explain without living it
So just work as hard as you can until you feel exhausted and wash rinse repeat, you won’t regret it later. Past 30 or so is a different story
Currently in accounting, 3,5 yrs in (mba + state authorized accountant), contract to stay at the same firm for 1 more year. 86k annual earnings, but high workload/hours. Started side-biz (ecommerce), but scaling is slow.
Could probably get another job with same earnings, but fewer hours (however, less possibility to do side hustle while at work).
What would you do?
Start a side business immediately. We notice 90% of questions here are about careers, yet careers don’t make people rich. Try to stay somewhere where you have a decent income and learn online sales now… not tomorrow but now.
Who are you picking to win Deontay Wilder or Tyson Fury? (or would it be a 50/50 like the experts say)
Do you expect people to offload their crypto positions during the next GFC?
Who are you expecting to become the next Democratic Party Nominee (Michael Bloomberg or Bernie Sanders)?
1) we are not betting on this fight. if forced to choose we’ll go with wilder
2) prices probably go up is our guess
3) not betting on this again. Of the two bernie probably has a better shot
You consider BTC/ETH to be risk on assets then? Or is that not even the right paradigm to look at it? The way I see it, the west has high debt/GDP and keeps going higher, so historically that ends in printing which would be good for crypto. The downside risk is no one really knows what happens to crypto in a recession since it’s never happened. Thoughts?
Already covered in triangle investing. It’s a small percent of net worth high risk high reward asset class.
No one knows for sure what happens in a downturn but we were asked for an opinion and we think it goes up due to distrust of legacy financial system
Thanks for all the value over the years! Avid fan and reader of efficiency!
Situation:
Current finalist at target uni in UK; built online business up to ~$5m revenue p.a. (~5-10% net profit margin; 50% equity retained; asset value 3-4x net profit).
Haven’t taken any money/salary out of biz, and currently going through hole so will be so for another few months.
Question:
Should I focus 100% of time on the biz? Or should I follow Efficiency and get a career on top of the biz (min time requirement for biz would be ~10-15hrs/week)?
Wouldn’t even bother with a career in your situation. If you really have the time go for it, but an extra $100K a year isn’t going to matter to you if your original situation is accurate.
Thanks!
Would you recommend using any extra time I have to build a second business instead? Or triple down on the main one?
Bc in your previous posts you advocated building up the next income stream asap. So not sure how to balance that with focusing on scaling main biz further.
Same story biz income is all that matter so yes go for it. That will never change, having one source of income is a death sentence.
1) Do you have an estimate of how much the upcoming recession will impact businesses selling B2B (software-as-a-service solving an intermediate need by saving time)?
2) You say it’s relatively easy to gain 5% returns if millionaire+. You include stock appreciation + dividends, not just dividends/cash flow right?
3) Do you recommend at this point betting on Trump winning next elections or not safe yet?
Thanks have a nice Sunday!
1) No way to estimate all we know is stocks go down around 30%
2) Sure, just look at real estate, stocks, bonds and appreciation long-term 5% has been extremely easy to obtain historically
3) This has been covered over a year ago we already bet (big) on him winning again
How do I find angles to build a relationship with people who are more talented and more successful?
Why is *public speaking* an important skill to learn? How does it help if I don’t want to become famous or become a public speaker?
1) you become talented at something useful for said talented people. Finding angles just means “trying to BS your way into a circle” which never works. Find a skill you can offer
2) If you get rich you’re forced to do presentations, go to conferences etc. If you don’t plan on being successful then it doesn’t matter. Just look at how many times successful people have to speak. You will find many videos of them. Being famous is separate.
In Spending, you mentioned Chlorella as best veggie. Assuming you mean the powder, powder chlorella > freshly juiced barley / wheatgrass / spinach / kale?
It’s the best for travel. In terms of fresh items, the rest are pretty much the same.
The point was that it’s the best for “no time” and can be carried easily with similar impact as the other 4 you have there
Hi, what’s your view on entrepreneurship courses and the whole ecosystem?
They teach it at MIT but I feel it’s different from your ways
Never went there so can’t say. That said there is no way anyone “teaches” entrepreneurship that’s usually just some scam for money. Anyone who actually succeeds just starts now and figures it out as they go
Hi WSP, while reading the sales / copywriting books listed in Efficiency I realized that while I am indeed learning alot I am at a loss of what to apply in a given scenario (eg. selling to niche X on a website).
Question 1: Do you have a framework that you use to analyze what sales technique has a higher chance of success (or should be prioritized for testing purposes) in a particular situation? Or is it just random trial and error ie. test different copy until one works?
Question 2: What cryptos do you guys buy now?
Thanks.
1) yes we copy the competitors! Best way to start is go through the top sales funnels of competitors figure out if you can do it better. Always emulate the best first then make your own adjustments. This works in many parts of life
2) in triangle investing no change
1. You guys have been posting a lot more frequently as of late; you just bored or finally getting a taste for that sweet, non-recurring, book revenue and trying to drive traffic? 😉
2. Had some downtime recently as well, and read Felix Denis’ books again. You ever feel like you sacrificed your humanity and sold your soul for all this money? Strange question to ask a bunch of bankers, but looking back on all the sacrifices I had to make to get here, it really does feel like it. I’ve come to terms with it and don’t much care anymore, but wanted to know if I’m alone in this.
Hope you don’t mind me using my transaction IDs for quick entertainment and a short therapy session. Rather good deal, and some things don’t change 😉
1) have to post frequently post a launch for traffic, most sales are first 2 weeks so we lined it up
2) Not at all actually, as usual the real money is not in finance unless you were a super MD making $5M a year
Hair-loss? finasteride seemed like the solution, but endo warned against
Thank you as always,
Don’t waste your time, either go all out (full replace like elon musk) or don’t do it is our stance
Never waste your time, I lost 1000 hours and dollars on diets, supplements…etc.
Pointless just eat healthy and avoid extreme stress. Get 15k together for a full out transplant.
Would personally recommend going on finasteride. Have been on it for 8 years now since early diffuse thinning. Hair loss halted/slowed significantly. No side effects!
Do the negative points you’ve shared about working remote still apply if the company is remote-only? (And a sales position, so numbers>)
Depends but generally yes, if you can’t get a competing offer easily you’re in a tough spot
30, $1.2m liquid. Low salary (high 5 figures) after moving from public finance to government job. Not enough energy/drive to get rich through starting a business (like the idea of it, just being realistic) or taking on a real estate project, but would be interested in investing in others’ businesses in more a LP/silent partner route. Does that make sense at my current wealth/income level and if so, any advice or resources for getting into that?
Absolutely not. You’re going to be crushed more likely than not. Giving money to other people while having no successful business yourself means you won’t be able to identify bad businesses and good ones.
Have to succeed yourself first would never do it.
How exactly did you get into 7 figures without a side biz and working a 5 figures government job?
As mentioned in post, worked in banking (pf) before government job.
Love Spending for Max Return! Just wish I read it & Efficiency 15 years ago. Just turned 33 (had some life-threatening medical issues between 26 until now due to genetic disorder).
I find myself in and out of various tiers in the book. Live in small midwestern town (all ‘house’ payments <$1,500) and work for debt capital markets team (regional bank) making $102k/year base, plus 50-60% bonus which usually hits (hit last three years, will again this year) so expecting a cash payout of ~$60k in March. Last time I used the dough to pay down mortgage, could do that again and then house would prob be paid off next year (after one more full bonus which has low targets/is easy to hit).
However, side hustle not established yet by any means. Want to get online assets generating substantial cash flow ASAP and wondering your advice on how much I should “learn” (e.g. try to do myself) vs. pay (i.e. just pay VA’s/upwork/agencies for web design, advertising, etc.) given my age and liquidity. I will smash shit down on monthly expenses & use bonus cash proceeds to invest whatever I have to to be successful, but wanted to give you most important variables: age (33) & top line outside of bonus (after maxing 401k & hsa for family plus taxes comes out to ~$4,500-$5,000/month after tax).
Have a little experience with affiliate sites & SEO pre-medical issues, and remember getting crushed by Google algo updates back in the day. Still like the idea of affiliate, just wondering how you can make margins work with ad spend? It was already low as hell with organic. I used Amazon previously, maybe that’s the problem. Do you recommend any particular platform for best margins (FB, insta, AdWords, Organic, etc)?
So:
1. How much of learning vs paying for and
2. Recommended platform for ad $ allocation?
Thanks guys love the work.
This is just a life story unfortunately, it seems your only real question is best ad platform which is already in the book which is google and facebook
Based on our read here what we would do is 1) create your own product and 2) tweak until profitable.
The first question makes no sense along with the second one. If you’re making money you spend as many billions of dollars as possible? While it’s great you’re excited these questions don’t make a lot of sense. If you spend $10k in ads but make $11K… Well then you spend a million dollars and say you make $1.1M… Well then you just keep spending more!
In terms of how much you need to be successful we estimated $50K. The entire answer has been posted on the blog many times
Sorry my first question was unclear. Allow me to try and rephrase here:
By after-tax income band, I’m aligned with the tier you defined as “early 20’s” in Spend for Max Return. You advocate *learning* certain skills at that stage. My real question was to ask: given my age & liquidity, is it better to just pay a professional to perform FB advertising for example, rather than try to read about it/run my own ads with no help, etc. And apply that logic (money vs investing my time to learn) across most the facets for the business.
In other words, how important is it to take time to learn web design vs. just paying a developer to do it for me as another example?
web design probably isn’t worth it and can be outsourced
learning how to sell is critical though so if you have the money outsource the design part
For someone who doesn’t have knowledge of specific cryptos, what are your thoughts on trying to index the top 10-20 coins by market cap using something like Hodlbot or Shrimpy?
This is already covered in our investing book in terms of what we own or would own. If you want to do more than that you can expand but need to do the research yourself
Got it. I was assuming there are constant changes and updates in the crypto landscape. But if nothing has changed since Triangle Investing was published, that’s easy enough.
Thanks!
There are two others we are looking at but not much has changed. Feel feee to research tezos (probably overhyped today but should be researched)
Thank you for the spending book. Really enjoyed it.
Who’s the author of “How to Analyze People”? (There were quite a few exact match titles on Amazon that were well-reviewed.)
Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
Feel free to read the other ones if it’s not a good skill yet.
Thank you and good luck with all the endeavors you undertake this year.
I was laid of this past Monday from IB as a 3rd year analyst. How do I reframe to other banks when vying for Associate positions? If all else fails (after 4 months of trying), should I go to Corp dev for $120k a year and grind on side biz? Trying to fix cash flow issues in short term.
Thanks,
KEG
You probably can’t get the associate slot, but would be possible to get into the third year slot again. If you’re lucky you can get an associate slot but have to downsize to much smaller firm. There is no real reframe, an associate at a small shop probably makes the same as a good 3rd year at a big shop (the small shops pay a lot less these days)
Corp dev is perfectly fine, but you need to take the side biz seriously (very seriously) already. The income doesn’t scale up and would fix your cash flow issue.
This is your call but 4 months seems reasonable. As always we recommend the side income ASAP since these things do happen (layoffs)
Do you (or your friends) have any experience running white-hat health & beauty ecom campaigns profitably at scale using traffic sources other than FB? If so, what is the #1 and #2 sources you would recommend, and why.
We won’t disclose industry those that are smart enough to read between the lines know what industry.
Yes white hat campaigns can be successfully run on google and facebook although those are the only two that really matter. Yahoo has worked too, in fact we’d bet that you can do them with any search engine. That said facebook and google are king
The reason why is due to scale, none really compete to google and facebook so if you master either you’ll always make money
Got it. Quick follow up: Given Google’s higher learning curve, what are your thoughts on YouTube specifically? Does the learning curve/video production time investment not make this platform worth focusing on, or would you give it a go if you were starting from scratch and didn’t want to deal with FB compliance issues?
Yes youtube and videos are starting to be quite popular so you may be able to monetize there. That said, Facebook and google are still king and not even close
We don’t do much on youtube so can’t really help as it would be bad info
Any advice on spending or just general tips to minimise downside in life, especially for people on FI level?
Poor have fire extinguisher in the kitchen and money under mattress, ultra-rich like Peter Thiel have doomsday escape plan to New Zeland [1] or gold stockpiles in multiple locations.
What’s reasonable in between?
I’m looking for things beside already written on this blog like 1) do not get legally married (risk of divorce) 2) do not touch the principal 3) keep it low profile 4) don’t get addicted to hard drugs etc.
Personally I formed LLCs, better insurances, more NW diversification, sold motorcycle and replaced some very dangerous sports. Some things are not worth the risk if you have 50 years of happy life ahead.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doomsday-preppers/
Not sure what you mean we just wrote a book on spending? It’s right there on the top right of the website.
Downside isn’t really possible if you’re diversified, once you are FI you’re set for life unless you stupidly spend the principal
I read the book on spending. It was great and have a bunch of actions items to do. But my question is not only about finances, but in general.
Sometimes in life it’s worth to be extra paranoid, especially if cost is relatively low, but impact of some “Black Swan” catastrophic.
e.g. Kobe Bryant and his wife agreed to “never fly together”. Paranoid? Yes. But it saved children from even bigger disaster. It’s also common rule for top-level military officers, politicians and company executives.
I wonder what’s your view on being sometimes extra paranoid?
Sure in life or death situations be extra paranoid don’t see an issue there
Are there any particular banks you would recommend for opening an online business bank account? Are places like Azlo sufficient?
The yields are so low and change every 12 months, just google best interest rates and choose one of those won’t make a difference
Thank you for the work you put in and your last book was a hit, really changed my mindset. I wanted to ask you guys a question that I want a brutally honest answer for.
Say someone is in that typical 9 to 5, work 40 hrs a week, and then live for the weekends path. At what point, age wise, do you think it becomes too late for that person to actually “make it”?
Meaning if they have not started a side business or anything. What age do you look at and say it is realistically too late for them to make it?
As usual never too late just depends on how much effort you are willing to put in. Most people are lazy though and prefer blacking out on weekends and ruin their lives
Fair enough but at the same time, there must be an age where it becomes significantly more difficult or just doesn’t make as much sense. In my late 20s now and while I am in sales, I’ve had a tough go at a successful scalable business route.
I am noticing now that I’m early 30s that 100% of people who blacked out on a recurring basis in their 20s didn’t make it. I’m not talking 90%. I’m not talking 99%. Universal, across the board, these people peaked in college and just kept going downhill after that.
Pretty much, you are only killing your future. If you are already rich that’s a different story
Alex,
define “recurring basis”. I do it once every Saturday night tbh.
Among my friends I’m easily the most successful. Investment Banker in tech M&A and I have an ecom business clearing 6 figs Rev since Nov.
I understand that I need to hang around more successful people. Where do I go to find these ppl to network with?
Currently trying through Twitter and group chats.
You will meet them through work, if you’re the most successful in the people you talk to most you have to leave asap. It will kill you eventually, you want to be in the middle in general
Any thoughts on the root cause and ultimate outcome of the repo market madness?
Are you betting the Nadal future at Roland Garros?
1) no real view, sticking with belief slowdown in 2021, in the mean time just buying coins
2) no
Online affiliate biz made ~$500 in net sales last month, but ~$700 expenses (traffic) exceeded that, running in the red. Expecting to run in the red for a awhile as I tweak my funnel. Regarding biz set up, with my numbers, should I register as a sole proprietorship? I know the blog advocates S-Corp, but I know I’m not there yet income wise.
When going through the journey of getting rich (job + online biz for me), how involved were your friends in terms of knowing your antics? I’ve been saying something along the lines of “just chilling” whenever someone asks me what I’m up to – I feel so distant from most around me. Maybe I should level up and find new friends?
The idea of singing to get over any fear of embarrassment is genius. I have to try it! How much time do you allow yourselves to work on skills like that outside of making money/gym/relationships?
1) sure okc is fine do it in Wyoming
2) not sure what this even means you don’t need to tell people your master plans
3) as much time as yo I am afford to lose, should be tiny
I do not hope you perceive this as a “relationship”-based answer, I think of it more as a question of time-efficiency/lifestyle question as I have social skills and get laid when I focus on it. My problem is just that having too much of active social life is more stressful for me than being bored (too much time away from work and studying, too much drinking, low quality sleep and no time to do chores) but I want to avoid killing my personality and social skills.
I am in the early years of the journey how did you meet people/socialise/date when you were killing yourself in your early twenties without the hassle of having to always be in “party mode”?
Obviously I am not at a level yet where I can justify going out twice a week as you suggest in Spending or Efficiency as I am still at university while spending most time getting work experience, maintaining the equivalent of 4.0 GPA and working on side project.
If you think university is hard your life is going to go down the drain faster. On a glance your life looks easy so keep with the schedule and get used to it
Haha, uni is definitely not hard and people who think it is makes me laugh as they still get shitty grades and are their way to graduating without any valuable work experience.
I skip most of my classes and mainly read since most teachers explain stuff in 4 hours that could be read and understood in 2 hours anyways and exams easily can be aced if you have been following along and cram the week up to + if you are busy getting work experience you do not have more than approx. 3-4 hours to dedicate to school a day.
Been focusing on work experience and currently have a better resume than most peers and even graduate-level profiles (noticed this while helping previous manager with recruiting for full-time positions). Am currently at a full-time internship at a top-tier pharma company in my country for a semester working with tech as business analyst.
All in all, I spend approx total 60-70 hours of effort on getting high-paying career straight out of uni a week + extra time spend on learning online sales through dropshipping. Which is why I wanted to find out a way to spend less time/energy on social life without losing stream of new people/girls.
From your answer, I get that I don’t have the luxury to do this yet, so I will listen to your advice, keep the schedule, maybe try to tweak my health items for more energy and then just embrace the suck. No shortcuts I guess.
You are correct no short cuts
Thank you for your time WSP.
1) Any idea how crypto would react in it’s first upcoming economy downturn? Meaning correlated or uncorrelated?
2) Similar to your post “1 million in 10 years post” as financial benchmark: What should the cash balance benchmark be to take advantage of next downturn?
1) we think it outperforms all asset classes but could be dead wrong no one knows as we haven’t had a recession since crypto existed
2) depends on your cash flow, if you’re making $1M a year cash balance should be tiny since you’re doubling net worth next Year. Max cash position is 5-10% at peak cycle.
THANK YOU for the last book. Now I got all 3 & the last one was the best one. My question is the following: any recommendations for grey hair or reversing it to look younger as long as possible? any products natural or not to ingest to prevent or reverse it ? THANK YOU
No clue as grey hairs don’t seem to matter compared to balding. Having some grey hair is fine never looked into reversing it.
Embrace the gray hair. It looks good on men. If you really want to dye it, get it done professionally at a salon.
quick money hustle question:
looking for a another hustle while bootstrapping to $50k cash for business idea
is setting up niche amazon affiliate product review websites waste of time vs.
flipping items on ebay(current hustle)? or get another job on the weekend?
Once you spend the 50k needed to start product business idea, how much money is needed for working capital if your bootstraping? ie: 1 month of capital vs 1 quarter
1) you can do both just get a second income that requires a computer. If not choose the one that gets you there the fastest
2) not possible to know, depends on your demand, inventory needed and what market. Way too hard to give a general view beyond the $50K start up for vast majority of launches. If it were that cookie cutter, major industries like airlines would never get off the ground!
If you can grow an email list to thousands of ‘subs’, how can you make the list profitable? Just scam them with new ‘hot’, trendy items?
Not sure what you mean here, subscribers are repeat business so you don’t want to scam anything and you want a recurring revenue stream from them instead. A few thousand is decent depends on the market though and price point of what you’re selling
Thank you WSP, been following since college days without a dime.
My primary job is in sector-specific PE (6Y in) and have 2 other income streams which however are dwarfed in comparison to the primary for now.
Pros of primary: Pays ok (300k). Job security and balance better than other PEs. Large exposure to my niche geographies. Allows to move to countries that I like and seriously consider.
Cons of primary: Feels constrained by the sector – personally invest asset agnostically. Getting hard to progress due to old wood in the company. Also not on great terms with manager. Because of the sector constraint and old wood, feels like I cannot fully exploit my niche and try to originate as the bases are covered/out-of-scope.
Torn between:
1.) stay, go turkey, do ok, focus on other streams but likely be unable to leave the sector later and get increasingly frustrated (already am, it’s wearing me down, my performance suffers and it’s visible!)
2.) go to some other PE that provides the platform, likely bump up in seniority and pay, but bigger pressure on bringing business and quality, likely have to stay in “financial center” city, other income streams will suffer due to time
3.) any alternative you can think of
Any views appreciated.
Honesty sounds like you’re fine, keep trying to scale up the other two items and don’t leave the cash cow income for now. You are in a great spot, just need to keep grinding it out. Your life could be 100x worse, so you’re doing fantastic by all measures
Thanks. Feel to me like I should be further and getting a bit restless given the headwinds on primary.
Anyway, just wanted add that this blog changed my life. Best of luck. I mean it.
1. Right now only have time to do a brief cardio workout every day, have been running a mile and then doing HIIT afterwards. Do you think doing this 6 days a week is too much (in terms of possibly getting injured)? (Age 26)
2. Hoping to maybe ask a longer question for two transaction IDs. Could you tell me which of these eight options for repaying student loans is best if I am trying to follow the career + side income at work path and get rich as soon as possible?
https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/repayment/plans
1) probably too much, you can do hundreds of push ups and pull ups before taking a shower and through a day would add that in
2) no as we have no clue based on your financial situation, also never had student debt
Situation is 60 thousand ish in debt and my job pays 55k a year starting. If you can answer based on this great, otherwise thank you anyways for all the great work
That is insane we have no idea, you should live at home and cut costs to zero. Then get a second job/income immediately
Read the recent post regarding the corona virus. I currently based in Hong Kong where it was an advanced country but not quite sure about now. The government here is incompetent and reacts very slow which results in lots of mess here… e.g. people are panicking, lining up days for face masks and there are 1k+ suspected cases so far.
Question: In the long run, shall I move to another advanced country for post-grad study/work as soon as possible for better life and finance-related career perspective?
We don’t know the market in Asia so can’t say. Don’t worry about this thing it’ll be done by end of year no doubt (face masks don’t help so if anything try to buy and resell them)
No need for any change to strategy
26, work in tech making less than 40k/year (essentially starting at zero). Feel extremely behind!
Involved in career advancement institution that will take my salary to at least 80k/year within the next 3 months.
I also need to start 2nd source and learn online sales asap, My goal is to kill multiple birds with one stone (skills/experience in tech) and you mentioned “technology support can be profitable” in efficiency.
1. Am I missing something or focusing my efforts correctly in order to catch up asap?
2. Can you point me in the right direction with tech support?
(any example/feedback helps)
Thanks
1) yes you’re making the right moves, when you move to $80K you can easily try online sales
2) we’re not sure what you’re doing so can’t even start to help. Figure out what you’re going to offer then come back “tech support” doesn’t mean anything. Tech support was referring to things like software that is sold to enterprise companies
Could a tech blog make some real money? Write solid tutorials teaching people a variety of tech topics (programming, web design, blockchain basics, etc.)
Become an affiliate with companies that sell courses/subscriptions, run ads on the site, sell ebooks.
Other option is to go straight for the looks industry.
Thanks for the reply
Blogs are trash businesses hard to scale with no recurring revs
That said it could work but you need a product eventually, those affiliate things don’t matter unless you’re a mega website like business insider
We don’t know your skill set, you need to translate your skills to recurring or consumable revenue.
18M freshman at college here. 4.0 GPA during the first semester and taking the maximum course load to graduate faster and to GPA pad for when college gets challenging.
Two Questions:
1. How do you find other future successful people? 99.9% of the people in college either complain about how “difficult” their life is or lack ambitions of becoming wealthy/successful (normal people).
Do you just keep working until you enter a mutually beneficial relationship and build it out from there?
2. Following the path in Efficiency, I am building a GPA foundation while setting things up (making contacts) to have job experience and join major-related clubs during the second year (CompSci Major).
I still feel that sometimes I am not doing “enough”. Is there a way to know when you have done enough in a day?
Also, do you have an email address? I am working on some ideas that I believe would be an interesting read (based on your “Ownership: The Green Light to Making Money” post).
1) you answered your own question, you will cross them as you move up and that’s how something mutually beneficial evolves. Just like anything else if you’re good at something you slowly get dragged to that level
2) generally speaking, working insanely hard through age 26-28 or so is never regrettable. Probably worth a post on its own, we would rather delete several months of partying in 20s if we could replace it with days in 30s hard to explain without living it
So just work as hard as you can until you feel exhausted and wash rinse repeat, you won’t regret it later. Past 30 or so is a different story