Starting Over Financially At Age 2021 in 2025. What We'd Do.
Level 2 - Value Investor
Welcome Avatar! This is something we try to think about every 5-10 years or so. The main reason? What worked 20 years ago rarely works 20 years in the future. Every couple of decades there is a massive shift in value accrual.
2015-2025: Largest public Companies are basically: Microsoft (software, internet, cloud computing), Nvidia (AI), Amazon (Internet/E-commerce/AWS), Apple (smartphones/software/hardware), Alphabet (Search/Internet/AI/Cloud Computing). Theme here is a big battle between a few items Internet and Software. Artificial intelligence is basically just advanced software to keep it simple
2011-2014 transition period
1995-2010: ExxonMobil was the largest company in 2010 and GE was the largest in 2005. This is basically a good enough indicator for Energy being the behemoth. GE was also the largest Company in 1995.
2000 was personal computers - Microsoft. This was shorter lived since Internet, software, smartphones all came out shortly after. MSFT is still massive and around today, but that is because it expanded into all the other items (more software, more cloud computing, some smartphones and even gaming). If perfectly executed from 2000 they would have been Apple but iOS operating system was too strong
1991-1994 - Transition period from hardware to personal computing/software. 2000+ was internet/software combination
1965-1990 - Hardware mainframes and Telecom. The Biggest company was primarily IBM in 1970, 1980, 1985, 1990 and in between that AT&T was the biggest company in 1975 and 1965.
The message here is that it was all about communication and the hardware/storage equipment to support large scale computers (before they figured out how to make the PC)
What do you notice? What you notice is that Advanced Tech takes the next slot in 10-20 years. Doesn’t really matter what you call it. You can a few other high tech companies like Tesla and some internet ones like Netflix. You could also add the Financial Services bubble in the 1990s-2000s (insane banker bonuses, Wolf of Wall Street type scams in 1999 etc.)
Step One Ignore the Past
We see a lot of this stuff on X and find it hilarious. Anyone who wants to go back to the “good ole days” is telling on himself. If you were successful why would you want to go back to when you were a lesser version of yourself? Tread carefully with these types.
The past is dead, it doesn’t exist. The present is used to enjoy life *and* prepare for the future. The future *will* exist.
We’ve been writing about tech stuff for a long time now and it has been fun to watch people get emotional about prices. The future is the future. We have no emotions about it. If you invested in Amazon during the tech bubble you would have gone down from $5 to $0.30. A solid -94% decline. Save us your tears if some stock or coin is down 50%. That is nothing.
Everyone would have laughed at you. Saying you’re wrong and you’ll never recover. Reality was that Amazon the Company was doing fine. Still growing, innovating and improving the business. Today the stock price is at $205.
Therefore you have to ask yourself, are you an investor or are you going to get emotional? The vast majority of people who trade end up losing everything. Even people who have a few good near term trades here and there are not millionaires. We won’t air their dirty laundry but if someone is still struggling financially in middle age, that tells the story.
Basic Important Observations
People who long for the past are either trying to sell you some political talking point or have failed miserably in life. We are not going to go back in time. Humans will not work with large scale industrial equipment over the long-term. Robots are coming. AI is coming. Tech is coming.
Tech by its definition is removing humans. If you look it up, a definition is as follows: “involves using scientific or engineering knowledge to create devices, systems, or processes that solve problems or meet human needs”
If you’re replacing a human need to do something, that means getting rid of the position entirely.
When is that last time you called someone to buy Apple stock? That’s right, never. You just click buy on your Brokerage account.
In Bullets
If someone is emotional about prices vs. technology, they have no clue what they are doing
Focus on what products will be used in about 5-10 years
Ignore people lamenting about returning to the past
If you want examples of future trends: Electric, Robotics, Crypto, Artificial Intelligence. All of these will grow faster and faster over the next several years.
Now Onto 21 Year Old Version
We’re going to assume you have $0. This is pretty much our history. No debt, no money from parents. Literally a zero.
This is probably a fair starting point. If you got tricked into spending $200,000 on a Gender Studies Degree from No-Name University, you were NGMI anyway. Part of being smart is looking at the options given to you. If someone has a small amount of debt, it will not change any of the plans here. At most it adds 6 months to the battle with Mike Tyson (that usually lasts 3-5 years for someone to get traction).
Long time readers already know the game:
Get the highest paying W-2 possible relative to hours worked. Make sure it is white collar. Enterprise Sales, Technology are currently the best options by far. In a distant third is Wall Street since it was okay back when we were in it - before the massive dip and secular decline. If you can’t do tech or enterprise sales then force your way into bank that is not a sweat shop
Spin up a WiFi business. Please do not bother us with meaningless questions like “outside business activities”. If you’re not smart enough to have your mom or dad start a business (you don’t own anything and its all online anyway), you’re going to get brutalized in the business world. There is nothing illegal about your mom or dad owning a small E-com store that probably does $50-100K in net income initially (everyone starts at zero)
If that doesn’t work your granny runs the company and it is held in her trust fund. IYKYK
We have a ton of info on this on the paid side. If someone wants to start without learning the basics we wish them the best of luck. All organized and updated as things change
Ecom Intro - Source
Selling to Women Update - April 2025 (Source)
Two Ecom businesses to start today 2024 Sept (Source)
Automated business ideas using AI - 15 minutes (source)
Using AI to Improve Your E-Com Life (Source)
Building a Supplement Brand from Zero - Source critique and costs Source
Zero to Hero Newbies - Source
Build Audience from Zero - Source
Choosing a niche - Source
Ad Breakdown - Source
How to Rip Ads - Source
How to Scale - Source
Uncommon Marketing Strategies - Source
Do not get stuck in the past. You must use AI tools to get ahead. Do not bother with fancy logos or waste hours thinking about the business name. As long as the domain name (website) is easy to remember the rest is vanity. You can get a good enough logo just using AI tools at this point. All of this is explained in all of the other posts listed above. But you get the idea. Only way to get an edge is by spotting trends + using AI tools to help you acquire market share before the big boys figure it out
Take all excess cash flow and invest into tech. We’re heavily involved in crypto, tech stocks and to a lesser extent, some real estate. Real estate is a quasi business/investment, you can decide what that counts as. (our definition, if you’re making more money flipping real estate or off real estate income than you job - by a factor of 2x net income) then it is a business as you can quit your W-2
Key point: Income first, WiFi next, then worry about investing. If your plan is to invest your life savings of $50K into some 100x upside investment, we already know how that ends for 99.99% (in tears)
What Has Changed Since 2015 or So
The main differences are as follows:
It is easier than ever to start a business. Back in 2015 we assumed you would need about $50,000 to start a real simple e-com business. OGs will remember that rough number. Now it’s down to the $20K range or so
Wall Street is dying a slow death. Outside of boutiques, it’s nearly impossible to justify the long-term future there. Comp is flat to down 10% at every single level compared to 2015 (despite inflation being through the roof). Given our age, at this point we know a large number of MDs/Directors that get fired and are forced down 50%+ in total comp. Some are still unemployed to this day (anything past 2 years is structural in our opinion)
Wall Street will slowly but surely be eaten away by crypto. Feel free to bet against this and send hate mail when price is bad. We’ll just send back the Amazon charts. No reason to have billions of dollars in overhead running branches around the globe when it can all be done online today
Millenials are now in middle age. Majority do not have kids/families and suffer from loneliness or replacing kids with pets. Get the feeling those expensive cougar wine bars will continue to print. Also. Those arcade/alcohol bars marketed to adults. Portnoy is probably the right guy to follow for those trends (sports betting, pizza reviews etc)
The millennials that made the right choices (building businesses, internet based and investing heavily in tech?). They are all rich beyond their wildest imaginations. This would tell you that luxury areas will not be going down any time soon. (If prices went down, good reminder that Buffett himself has ~$340B to buy whatever he likes if prices decline).
“The same, the same, but different”
That’s the summary from about 8 years. The major ones are advanced AI and crypto for the next decade or so. You no longer need 10-20 people to scale a large business. You can actually get to $10M+ with only 2-3 people. This means the cost of trying to start a business is down 50%+ and your ability to generate high profit margins has improved. In short, business potential has improved! 1099 everyone and have no employees.
Wall Street has declined. In short avoid unless forced to.
Talk to two groups, young nerdy types under age 25 or so in well off areas. Then compare notes with the successful people in middle age. This will capture the mega trends. If the smart nerds are on it at age 20 and the entrepreneurs are also on it, you’ve figured out the next wave. In short, AI/tech tools + investing in tech/crypto.
Nobody Coming to Save You
At this point, there is no chance you can believe in working for a Company for 40+ years. In the rare exception that you end up being a senior person at Google/META/TESLA - you already know who you are. There are 10M+ people working in tech and the number of ultra high paying positions (anything over $1M) is slim/irrationally small.
If you don’t believe us? Just catfish as a rich person. Call JP Morgan wealth management, claim you want to bring over a $10M book. Get the convo started take an intro call and just ask “are most of your clients business owners or W-2 workers etc.”
You will learn the same thing: small biz, real estate (just another small biz) and rare stuff like pro athlete or CFO at some public company that happens to live in that city.
Autist Note: This is something we did do back in the day. Driving around a rich neighborhood with no economic activity (think Jackson Hole) and you wonder what in the world these people do. Then you call the local wealth management that serves the area… wheels begin to turn. Vast majority small business
What to Do Personally
Have no regrets. Regrets suggest the person failed. Similar to the idea of longing for the past. Many many many mistakes though.
To thread the needle would describe it like this:
Would we go back in time and start over with our current info? Yes of course. Would be Gorillianaires before 25
Would we start at zero today? No. Not arrogant enough to think it was all hard work. Luck comes in to make it past a certain level
Here is the main thing to avoid (or try to avoid)
Early 20s you don’t need to go out 3-4x a week. It is overkill. The right balance is Thursday and Saturday. If you just go out on the weekends, there is a high chance of becoming an alcoholic. If you can drink without feeling like death on Friday, you are preventing addiction. Also kind of embarrassing if you only get blacked out
When you hit $1M, don’t screen cap, simply de-risk. Don’t really care how you got there. If you sold some company keep half in cash. If you invested in something that went up 4x and you see that $1M flash across your screen? Probably time to sell. Time and time again, Mike Tyson typically shows up to teach humility the second you get to $1M
Never trade what you want for what you need. People ask tons of questions that we just can’t answer. If you have an exit number of say $10M and are currently sitting at $10.1M… Sell. Yes really. Don’t get greedy. If you’re set for life, you’re set for life. This is not just related to investing but related to business as well. If you built a small business and get a $10M offer, you sell it. You may be emotionally attached but your brain is still there. You will find a new thing to start within a few months
No need to be angry. The anger is really just repressed anxiety. If you are actually smart and talented, you have this constant nagging feeling of being “behind” where you should be. This is a useless doom loop to be in. Take ALL your energy and focus on 3 tasks you need to get done that day. Multi-tasking is for monkeys. Focus on the 3 tasks at maximum every day. This forces extreme focus on what the goal is
You will not be 20 forever, you will also not be at clubs at 40. Plan accordingly. Write out stuff you can do at 20 that you *can’t* do at 40. If you want to visit Egypt? Well that stuff will be there with 99% chance in 20 years. You can do it whenever. If you want to party in a club in Rio until 4am? You can do that in your 20s, you can’t do that at 40 (unless you want the terrible labeling and disgusted stares)
Your hobbies are your hobbies. Just write down a list of what you *can* do at 40 vs what you *can’t* do at 40. Please don’t waste our time with 40 is the new 20. You’re not fooling anyone with hair coloring at a Vegas Pool Party
Never neglect your health. Health is more important than wealth. You can’t enjoy life from a hospital even if you have a billion dollars. Steve Jobs had all the money in the world but was taken out by an illness. If you find that you’re beginning to sacrifice health it’s time to click pause and reset. Only you can figure that one out. For us the sign of over work was when the brain starts to malfunction. Example you grab your laundry and find yourself opening the microwave to throw it into the washer… You get the idea. The more common one is reaching out for your glass of water and grabbing ketchup/salt container or other objects in similar proportion to the water glass
If people are calling you extreme you have a chance. If you fit in with the masses, you’ve got nearly no shot. You don’t get extreme results without being extreme
Practically no choices matter over the long-term. The big ones are as follows: 1) what you decide to do to make money long-term, 2) if you have kids/want kids who you have them with and 3) how well you take care of your health. The rest is a rounding error
Financially the same. $20K invested per year in a 401K does not matter at all long-term. Taking the Company match is good enough. This *assumes* you will become a business owner long-term. If you become a business owner, your monthly income will likely match your full year income from W-2 when you quit. If you plan on working in a career for life? Well it’s going to be a lot harder and you better be an extremely savvy investor. Our expectation is wage compression will be seen in W-2 world capping positions at around $200-250K a year
There you have it. This is what we’d tell a 21 year old to focus on. 99% will not do any of this and we know it. Majority need results today/this week. They massively underestimate what they can accomplish in 5-10 years and massively overestimate what they can accomplish in a single year.
Takes about 3 years and 3 failures to make it. Majority don’t even try.
The rest is up to you
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.
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