(Money/Entrepreneurship) I don't really know what to do...

[BPH]

This last week or 2, I've been incredibly lazy because I don't really know what to put my energy into...

As a lot of you know, I tried my hand at dating coaching. I stopped doing that about a month or 2 ago, because after a little more than a year, my only clients were members from this forum. I hadn't even had a sales call with anybody through social media promotion, and what I was trying to do was damaging my in-person relationships with women. I hadn't been paid since April, and because this was also affecting my in-person relationships, I felt it was time to stop.

I tried to find something objective that didn't require me to play the social media popularity game, where it was a binary problem that didn't rely on sales skill - either the problem exists and I can fix it, or it doesn't, and I can't. That was email deliverability consulting, which is an actual problem...but most people solve it by having their IT guy get on it, or hiring somebody from Fiverr. There's an entrepreneurship forum I'm active on where I presented this, and a guy who's working in lead gen informed me of how others are solving this problem, detailing how he makes his money by offering full-stack lead generation, rather than focusing solely on the problem I wanted to solve.

Now...I quit my job at the beginning of this year. My boss was busy chewing me out again, and I thought to myself, "If I knew this was going to work, would I continue dealing with this?" The answer was "no", and I'd saved up a good bit of money, so I left.

Things haven't panned out the way I'd hoped, and I'm just not really sure what to do. I'm not sure where to invest my time, energy, and effort, because it feels like every choice I make is incorrect.

I could get a job, but that's just a band-aid fix. The reason I left in the first place was that I didn't have time to dedicate to pursuing this and was just going through the motions, doing the bare minimum in the hours after work.

I don't need to get rich tomorrow, but I need to find something where I can start getting paid today. And I don't know what that is.

Not sure what type of replies I'm expecting, if any, but I've been very stagnant lately because it feels like I just cannot win, no matter what I do.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

The most important thing to be successful as an entrepreneur is to just stick to it.

There's no secret. Just don't give up.

Which means you need to pick something that you can legit do for a few years.

You may have to get a regular job and start your business as a side hustle, or even a free hustle, and just keep growing it.

 

[BillyPilgrim]

Limo driver OP if you have a commercial DL

Or bartender

For entrepreneurship get into prepping. The world is going to sh1t.

Oh wait nm - guided tours of the PINE BARRENS

 

[Gamisch]

I told you before to get into the trades.

In my language they say that the sector is "greying out"( too many old folks that are about to retire or simply die ) . Meanwhile the work still needs to be done...

In the trades you can make tins of money IF you're willing to both work hard AND are willing to scientifically study your craft.

You've been with enough women now bruh...no need to prove anything anymore to anyone. The next date will at best be a repeat of the previous ones....

Get those hands dirty and afterwards wash them with clean money!

 

[Poonstra]

I know it's a cliche, but think about what you love doing.
If you love going to work you'll want to know every intricate detail of your profession.
Once you studied every aspect of your work you'll become good at it.
If you're good at it the money will follow.

get into the trades

If there's something in the trades that you love to do this is good advise. Where I'm from there's already welders out earning lawyers because the demand for skilled people is so high.

 

[sevbucmash]

I don't need to get rich tomorrow, but I need to find something where I can start getting paid today.

Start doing uber. Get rental vehicle from uber hertz rental fleet, $279 for premium qualified vehicle (get nissan or toyota). Lick the car inside and out, remove cabin air filter and pour cleaner onto evaporator if there is hvac stink. Clean daily, get carwash membership and portable vacuum. Get working. First 25 rides on your new account you only do exclusives, blue button and you always hit accept. That will be gold trial, you do 25 exclusives you will have 100% acceptance, you keep gold without ever dipping into blue. Then continue doing short bull**** rides with rider filter at 4.9 and area filter. Get yourself into platinum and then hit diamond level. Uber starts at diamond level. Everything bellow is garbage and you must suffer through it.

Blue & Gold = hispanics with comesa three children and dirty laundry bag, tranny men in skirts, etc..
Platinum = major improvement in quality of rides, you hit VIP's.
Diamond = you actually making money.

Always have your rider filter at 4.9. Obey CMT rating. Protect your star rating. Develop 6th sense for crap riders and rate them low in advance if there are flags for low rating behavior.

Basically, as you develop it's $1500 a week.

Plus you always have a backup plan for when **** does hit the fan.

If you want to be extra lazy you can do it to have a vehicle with zero deductible insurance, just do 30 rides per week. Which is realistically two days worth of work, which will pay for your vehicle rental and fuel.



Keep your record spotless. I have 1 four star rating, and 2 three stars. All 3 times I was tired and missed obvious red flags. Preemptively rating low results in retaliatory feedback from rider, which don't count. Set your PIN, that keeps coordinator bull**** away from you. Learn to observe, if you see dog, bail, use arrive and then can't find rider, or if you think rider might complain, just cancel and take a hit. Cancellation disappear after 100 rides, realistically a week or so. Avoid shady areas where people do drugs and vape, I missed an exclusive because rider got me high, so now I'm at 99% acceptance, which will disappear after 100 exclusive rides, longer than one week for me because I'm diamond, I cherry pick my rides, I use trip radar.

Uber is not something you can just start doing, it's something you must build. Once you are diamond, it's excellent money.

For you specifically, it's an opportunity to meet baddest chicks in your town. Uber is literally better than a super car. Those that rent super cars end up just driving alone. Women willingly get into Uber.

It's an opportunity to meet very powerful people, business men and politicians. People that own a lot of things.

 

[FlexpertHamilton]

Affiliate marketing remains viable.

 

[Sega Genesis]

@BPH do you think you might be suffering from a sort of depression? It's difficult to become motivated to do anything when in such a state.

Tbh I have wondered about this for awhile. Been there myself. Therapy has helped me a lot.

In any event, since you are very interested in physical fitness, have you considered becoming a fitness trainer at a gym?

A girlfriend of mine got her certification in only 4 weeks and now has a great job as a fitness instructor at a popular gym in our area.

Just a thought, good luck man.

 

[Clockwerk50]

Now, I’m not particularly financially savvy, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Back in my home country, my dad came from money, while my mom came from a poor family. My dad worked in sales but also had an entrepreneurial spirit. I believe he started three companies because his family money allowed him to make the initial investments. I remember the second one was a broom manufacturing business. He bought a machine to make brooms and mops, then carried the products on his back or took them on the bus to sell to small convenience stores. I believe the machine was extremely expensive. My mom said he got hustled, and eventually, we ran out of money and had to move in with my grandmother. He eventually abandoned the business and returned to working as a sales representative, where he made more money than he ever could running a business on his own.

Taking that experience into consideration, along with how many restaurants or other businesses operate on such low margins, I’m not particularly enthusiastic about entrepreneurship. I also see how many contractors at my job complain about struggling financially because larger companies pay them on 60-, 90-, or even 120-day terms. Hell, two of the biggest contractors I know, the roofer I used to work for and the brother-in-law of the white girl I’m currently seeing, who works in masonry, get most of their contracts through their fathers. Their fathers handle the quoting, sales, connections, and even have much of the workforce in place. Her dad is also a contractor, in his 70s, and he doesn’t have any money because he didn’t charge his customers as much as he should have.

With all that in mind, I’d say you might have better luck pursuing a career in the corporate world or government, with the goal of eventually moving into a director-level position or something along those lines. Alternatively, you could go to school to become a teacher, accountant, lawyer, or enter another specialized profession. Or I guess get in the trades, but keep in mind you have to do the whole operation (marketing, sales, health and safety, payroll, customer service, etc). Some people just don’t have the stomach to be entrepreneurs.

 

[BPH]

I appreciate all the responses I got; I wanted to come in here and reply to show you that I'm reading and that your advice isn't falling on deaf ears.

The most important thing to be successful as an entrepreneur is to just stick to it.

There's no secret. Just don't give up.

Which means you need to pick something that you can legit do for a few years.

You may have to get a regular job and start your business as a side hustle, or even a free hustle, and just keep growing it.

The difficulty I've been having is that I need to see "signs of life" so I know I'm not just wasting my time and money on something. I kinda had that with dating coaching, up until I tried to expand beyond the forum and raise my price.

Could most ideas become profitable, given enough time and effort? Sure.

But I'm running out of time and money, so I need something that can sustain me until it "takes off".

Limo driver OP if you have a commercial DL

Or bartender

For entrepreneurship get into prepping. The world is going to sh1t.

Oh wait nm - guided tours of the PINE BARRENS

I actually got a bartender's license back before COVID, but couldn't find places that would hire. Every bartender around me has been at their bar since I was going to college. Some of the barbacks eventually got a shot after several years, working non-busy shifts or working at more than 1 bar.

They make very good money and do not want to give up their shifts. I don't see myself breaking into that anytime soon as a novice.

I told you before to get into the trades.

In my language they say that the sector is "greying out"( too many old folks that are about to retire or simply die ) . Meanwhile the work still needs to be done...

In the trades you can make tins of money IF you're willing to both work hard AND are willing to scientifically study your craft.

You've been with enough women now bruh...no need to prove anything anymore to anyone. The next date will at best be a repeat of the previous ones....

Get those hands dirty and afterwards wash them with clean money!

I agree that trades are good, consistent money...but I did try this about a year ago with lawn care before I scrapped it and went into dating coaching.

There were a lot of problems....

First, the cost of equipment and maintenance was insane. Second, the customers are all competing on price - they don't give a sh** how good my service is if Jose is willing to do it for 1/4 my price. Third, I am limited to my surrounding physical location.

I looked at successful lawn care businesses and found that most of them scale linearly, not exponentially. Every expansion would have upfront costs, employee training, and relatively the same number of customers at the same margins - just "more".

Plus, there's a knowledge gap. I'm very technically savvy, but not mechanically. If a $1,500 riding mower breaks down, I do not have the know-how and replacement parts to get it back up and running.

You want me to configure your DNS records and authenticate your email sending platforms in an afternoon? Easy.
You want me to fix a riding mower so I can service customers on the schedule for the next day? I'm probably losing money.

I know it's a cliche, but think about what you love doing.
If you love going to work you'll want to know every intricate detail of your profession.
Once you studied every aspect of your work you'll become good at it.
If you're good at it the money will follow.



If there's something in the trades that you love to do this is good advise. Where I'm from there's already welders out earning lawyers because the demand for skilled people is so high.

I'm not sure if I believe that, unfortunately...because I really loved doing the dating coaching thing.

I LOVE women, and I very much enjoy the chase and seduction process of meeting and bedding a new woman. Furthermore, I love helping guys who want to have those same results. @nicksaiz65 was my very first client, and he was absolutely phenomenal - he listened to advice, he acted on it, and then he returned for feedback. We would make adjustments, and his results improved. He was fantastic.

Unfortunately, most people don't want that - they want the "easy button". They want a text script, or a DM opener, or a dating app profile makeover - I had one unsuccessful client who couldn't afford my $100/mo price tag; he thought the solution to his problem would be to spend thousands of dollars at a Miami-based immersion bootcamp...

I'm not good at selling the fantasy; I'll tell you it sucks, I'll tell you it's going to be hard, and I'll tell you that it's worth it if you can persevere. Most people want to skip the "suck" and "hard" parts, so they buy something "easy", regardless of how well it actually works.

Start doing uber. Get rental vehicle from uber hertz rental fleet, $279 for premium qualified vehicle (get nissan or toyota). Lick the car inside and out, remove cabin air filter and pour cleaner onto evaporator if there is hvac stink. Clean daily, get carwash membership and portable vacuum. Get working. First 25 rides on your new account you only do exclusives, blue button and you always hit accept. That will be gold trial, you do 25 exclusives you will have 100% acceptance, you keep gold without ever dipping into blue. Then continue doing short bull**** rides with rider filter at 4.9 and area filter. Get yourself into platinum and then hit diamond level. Uber starts at diamond level. Everything bellow is garbage and you must suffer through it.

Blue & Gold = hispanics with comesa three children and dirty laundry bag, tranny men in skirts, etc..
Platinum = major improvement in quality of rides, you hit VIP's.
Diamond = you actually making money.

Always have your rider filter at 4.9. Obey CMT rating. Protect your star rating. Develop 6th sense for crap riders and rate them low in advance if there are flags for low rating behavior.

Basically, as you develop it's $1500 a week.

Plus you always have a backup plan for when **** does hit the fan.

If you want to be extra lazy you can do it to have a vehicle with zero deductible insurance, just do 30 rides per week. Which is realistically two days worth of work, which will pay for your vehicle rental and fuel.

View attachment 15989

Keep your record spotless. I have 1 four star rating, and 2 three stars. All 3 times I was tired and missed obvious red flags. Preemptively rating low results in retaliatory feedback from rider, which don't count. Set your PIN, that keeps coordinator bull**** away from you. Learn to observe, if you see dog, bail, use arrive and then can't find rider, or if you think rider might complain, just cancel and take a hit. Cancellation disappear after 100 rides, realistically a week or so. Avoid shady areas where people do drugs and vape, I missed an exclusive because rider got me high, so now I'm at 99% acceptance, which will disappear after 100 exclusive rides, longer than one week for me because I'm diamond, I cherry pick my rides, I use trip radar.

Uber is not something you can just start doing, it's something you must build. Once you are diamond, it's excellent money.

For you specifically, it's an opportunity to meet baddest chicks in your town. Uber is literally better than a super car. Those that rent super cars end up just driving alone. Women willingly get into Uber.

It's an opportunity to meet very powerful people, business men and politicians. People that own a lot of things.

I don't think doing ride-share is realistic.

I've seen so many videos and horror stories of drivers barely breaking even once you factor in gas, maintenance, etc. There are also lots of stories of drivers getting robbed, mugged, and killed by passengers. There are numerous videos of passengers trying to cancel mid-ride so they don't get charged, and from what I understand, the company almost ALWAYS takes the side of the passenger, unless you have camera footage providing otherwise.

Beyond that, each car my family owns has over 200k miles, so I would not call them reliable. I don't think this is something even remotely worth doing.

Affiliate marketing remains viable.

Gotta have an audience to make that work.

 

[BPH]

Had to split this up into 2 due to length:

@BPH do you think you might be suffering from a sort of depression? It's difficult to become motivated to do anything when in such a state.

Tbh I have wondered about this for awhile. Been there myself. Therapy has helped me a lot.

In any event, since you are very interested in physical fitness, have you considered becoming a fitness trainer at a gym?

A girlfriend of mine got her certification in only 4 weeks and now has a great job as a fitness instructor at a popular gym in our area.

Just a thought, good luck man.

Absolutely.

I was especially depressed this past July. Nothing was going my way; I hadn't had any calls booked, I was spending a ton of money on mentorship and coaching, had aches and pains popping up I couldn't get rid of, and to top it off, my dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer. I remember not wanting to see any of my friends or do anything for the 4th because I didn't think I'd be able to get to a headspace where I could have fun.

Fitness training was actually the first thing I did after graduating. The problem is that most people are neither dedicated nor consistent.

"I have to pick up the kids today."
"I have to go into work early."
"I got distracted today, and now it's too late."

While some of those excuses may be reasonable, it meant that I was no longer getting paid, because most trainers do not get paid hourly - they get paid based on the packages their clients purchase.

I interned at a fitness club for the affluent here in Delaware, and found that almost every trainer had to work a second job, as they were not making enough through fitness training alone.

It's an option that COULD work, especially with how prevalent online coaching is - but I'm also natural and imagine I'd lose out to guys who look like the Tren Twins, or Sam Sulek.

Now, I’m not particularly financially savvy, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Back in my home country, my dad came from money, while my mom came from a poor family. My dad worked in sales but also had an entrepreneurial spirit. I believe he started three companies because his family money allowed him to make the initial investments. I remember the second one was a broom manufacturing business. He bought a machine to make brooms and mops, then carried the products on his back or took them on the bus to sell to small convenience stores. I believe the machine was extremely expensive. My mom said he got hustled, and eventually, we ran out of money and had to move in with my grandmother. He eventually abandoned the business and returned to working as a sales representative, where he made more money than he ever could running a business on his own.

Taking that experience into consideration, along with how many restaurants or other businesses operate on such low margins, I’m not particularly enthusiastic about entrepreneurship. I also see how many contractors at my job complain about struggling financially because larger companies pay them on 60-, 90-, or even 120-day terms. Hell, two of the biggest contractors I know, the roofer I used to work for and the brother-in-law of the white girl I’m currently seeing, who works in masonry, get most of their contracts through their fathers. Their fathers handle the quoting, sales, connections, and even have much of the workforce in place. Her dad is also a contractor, in his 70s, and he doesn’t have any money because he didn’t charge his customers as much as he should have.

With all that in mind, I’d say you might have better luck pursuing a career in the corporate world or government, with the goal of eventually moving into a director-level position or something along those lines. Alternatively, you could go to school to become a teacher, accountant, lawyer, or enter another specialized profession. Or I guess get in the trades, but keep in mind you have to do the whole operation (marketing, sales, health and safety, payroll, customer service, etc). Some people just don’t have the stomach to be entrepreneurs.

I think I have the stomach for it; I just don't know the way forward.

I've failed numerous times in numerous businesses. Even with pick-up, I will never know how many times I've been rejected, but it doesn't matter because I was eventually successful, as I am now.

If I go to the gym and eat healthy, I will build muscle and burn fat.
If I approach women and talk to them, I will meet someone who likes me.

I do not know what this equation looks like in terms of making money. And I don't know anybody else who does. Everybody I know who makes good money does so by working for someone else - and none of them are making "f*** you" money. I hated my corporate job when I was working at the mortgage lender, and having read The Millionaire Fastlane is what led me to REALLY commit to this.

As I said, I don't really know what kind of replies I'm expecting, or what the solution is. I just know that I'm not happy with how things have been going, and my bank account is fast approaching "you might need to get a job" status.

I just try to think about the Hormozi idea that business is like dice, and that you will be successful so long as you don't give up.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

Does your family have a power washer?

I know some people that make a killing doing power washing of trash cans/houses/driveways, etc...

One of those things that's not too expensive but a lot of people don't have one.