The New Lane to Financial Freedom: Why People Are Broke and What to Do About It

Level 2- Value Investor

Welcome to the Jungle! Welcome to the Jungle for those that are unaware, the way to getting wealthy in the 2020s has completely changed. You’re no longer going to be a banker on Wall Street or a “hot shot” lawyer from Chicago. While there are always 0.01% exceptions to the rule, the game has changed.

The new rules are simple: eat what you kill. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been taught the wrong by no fault of your own. The legacy way of making it has changed over the past 20 years and longing for the past simply doesn’t work. Plug your expected income into excel and you’ll see that it just doesn’t line up for the lifestyle you’re looking for in 2030, 2040 etc. (remember to pencil in that inflation and cost of living increase!)

Why Most People Are Broke

You’ve been lied to. The average Joe tells you to play it safe. 9 to 5, max out your 401K and maybe lever up with a rental property for some additional “risk”. But that’s a slow death. In the Jungle, the animals who win know that the path to freedom isn’t paved with safe bets. It’s built on equity, performance based careers and stubborn iterations during the inevitable mike tyson punch years.

People are broke because they are too scared to pull the trigger. Whether it’s stocks, crypto, or your own business, the game rewards those who have the guts to consistently bet on themselves.

It’s a bit odd to us that people are willing to get second mortgages and lever up but are unwilling to lose a few thousand dollars to test demand or set up a basic website. The risk reward skews heavily to E-com since there is no leverage and you won’t be chained to your W-2.

Essentially every $3-4K you use to test demand has the potential for a 10x or even 100x. While the first few are likely failures (just like ours), you don’t lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. After a few iterations *pop* on hits and then you can simply buy that inventory. This is how the successful Jungle animals win.

Look for asymmetric upside while your career funds all of these ideas/investments. Once you’ve got the cash flow going you can look at tech, Crypto, early-stage startups, emerging markets and anything else that you find compelling.

But this isn’t gambling—it’s calculated risk. We research. We analyze. And when the time comes, we don’t hesitate. If the ad is profitable, run that thing into the ground like a 20 year old Honda Civic.

What The Jungle Animals Know (That You Don’t)

In this community, we don’t do “slow and steady.” We thrive on asymmetry *first*, and creating income streams that earn money while you sleep. If you’re tired of mediocrity, here’s your blueprint:

1. Asymmetry is your best friend: You can’t save your way to freedom. There is a floor to cost cutting, there is no ceiling to earning. Whether it’s time, money, or skills, you need upside. Use other people’s capital/time and maximize your skills. You don’t trade your time for money, you trade money for other people’s time (OPT)

2. Curate Your Contact List: You’ve heard the standard saying: "You are the average of the 5 people you speak to the most." Stop hanging out with paycheck-chasers (your co-workers are not your friends anyway). You need to be around people who are trying to build equity in some way (WiFi biz, Real Estate biz, etc.). This will get you out of the “time for money exchange” way of thinking

3. No One Cares About You: Your friends/family might become jealous if you’re successful. No one really cares about what you’re doing. In fact, people unlikely think about you at all. How many times do you think about your neighbor You’re playing the game to win for you and the people important to your life - not attention from the masses. Embrace the grind because no one is rooting for you and no one is coming to save you either. Perform and take feedback from the market

But What About Your W-2

As stated many times, the income you get from your W-2 is just the Rock Hammer they give you to break out of Shawshank. If you run the math you’ll see that it is mathematically improbable to get rich in 2024 from a career. Outside of the “exception to the rule” meaningless comments like CFO or #1 sales guy at Nvidia.

Avoid Getting Fired: This is a lot easier than you think. Looking back if Wall Street was efficient your humble authors would have been fired at least 4-6 times. However. Since massive organizations have bigger issues to deal with, you can scrape by as a financial cockroach/leech within the organization (for years).

Be Profitable: In an ideal situation you want to simply get yourself into a revenue generating role. Sorry banking analysts and associates those slots are simply slogs. As soon as you can generate revenue at your company (revenue generator wall street, sales position in tech etc.), you are in great shape.

The reasoning is simple. Even if you’re not amazing at politics you will have a P&L tied to you. Yes. You are quite literally just an excel sheet (make this advantageous vs. depressing). If your total compensation is say $200,000 you can back into the amount of money you need to generate to be profitable and seen as an asset. Go into the the P&L of your firm (SEC.gov) and calculate what the profit margins should be.

Once you can get your profit margins to match the corporate average you are golden. If you’re really worried about layoffs then you want to be slightly above the operating margin for the division. To justify getting rid of you it actually *isn’t* your boss’s decision. It is your boss’s boss! This puts him into a pickle. Even if he doesn’t like you, he has to prove that you’re a drain/negative on the company which will make him look bad when the numbers don’t line up with his narrative. He’ll simply ignore you and focus on other matters (hint: once you’re in this camp you have no oversight and your hours drop like a rock)

Be Net Positive on Everyone: Assuming that you’ve done this, the only other item you need to do is keep the poor performers on payroll. That’s right. If the poor performers remain at the company guess what that means? They get laid off before you.

Most people try to get the poor performers fired but this will simply backfire on you. They will get rid of the person and you’ll get more work. Guess what else? You won’t even get paid for it (maybe a few meaningless percentage points). Better to just keep the poor performers on the payroll so if the economy gets rough there is meat on the bones before they look in your direction.

Really That Simple? Pretty much. As long as you are green on the Company P&L and don’t do anything to call attention, you’ll be left alone. You can bring your personal laptop to work for “taking notes” and no one will care. Hotspot from your personal cellphone and voila you’re working on your escape while everyone at the firm views you as a slight positive to the organization. No need to be the star employee since all you get is 50%+ increase in work load and a 4% increase in pay relative to everyone else doing the same work. Maybe you get promoted a year earlier, big whoop. The higher ups might get jealous of your quick ascent and stomp you out anyway. Not worth it.

Join the Jungle (Before You Get The Copper Handcuffs)

A decade ago, getting a bunch of deferred stock was called “Golden Handcuffs”. With 7 figures in vesting stock, you were unattractive to competitors and you have too much to lose by jumping ship (give up the stock). Now? It’s more like copper handcuffs. Compensation inflation adjusted is down probably 25-30% roughly compared to a decade ago. Call it $850K for an MD vs the old $1.25M average. Used to be around $550K for a VP that’s probably $450 now. The worst part? Much more of it is deferred in bank stock for 4-5 years (as First Republic and Silicon Valley Bank MDs how that worked out!)

Here’s the truth: There’s no waiting in the Jungle. Either you make your move, or someone else will. The Jungle community is about action. It’s about being surrounded by people who push you to the next level. You can see visibly as multi-million dollar companies have been built in just a few years

• Gator - Toothpaste

• Fawn - Skincare

• BowTiedBioHacker - Wide variety of health products

• BowTiedOx - Wide range from fitness to Vice products

• Ramp - Jungle Adjacent - health related products

• VampDeer - Pre-sleep product

• And a ton more…

Tens of millions of dollars in revenue is being generated, live and built in public.

If you’re ready to stop being a spectator and start being a player, it’s time to dive into the Jungle. This is where financial freedom happens. But you’ve gotta have the guts to take it.

Hit the subscribe button, dive into the archives, and start making moves. We’ve included various products that will work for 2024 and beyond. Simply go through the E-com posts and you’ll have no excuses not to start. Rip some ads, test some demand and once that profit number is flashing green… You’ll never look back.

Perhaps you’ll also be homeless on the beach in the future.

Back to the Tent.

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.

• Old Books: Are available by clicking here for paid subs. Don’t support scammers selling our old stuff

• Crypto: The DeFi Team built a full course on crypto that will get you up to speed (Click Here)

• Crypto Taxes: We have a suggested Tax Partner and 25% discount code, for information see this post

• Security: Our official views on how to store Crypto correctly (Click Here)

• Social Media: Check out our Instagram in case we get banned for lifestyle type stuff. Twitter will be for money