When to Expect Results, How Good Will You Be

Level 2 - Value Investor

Welcome Avatar! We should prune all the lazy people with this post and also give hope to people still juggling 50 projects like they attend a clown university. There are two major mistakes that will set you back years: 1) focusing on things you are not gifted at and 2) Giving up before you even got a chance to see results. The *hard* part here is knowing the difference. Are you quitting or simply not talented at it? Are you focusing on something you’ll never be good at? Or. Just haven’t had certain parts click.

This will help you organize all of that into one post.

Part 1: Sales Funnel is a Life Skill Funnel

Surprise! The first step is the most important and actually gets rid of about 80% of people. Majority have no *self awareness*. If you want to see the highest amount of nonsense go to a private high school where everyone grew up rich. These kids typically think they are gods and could go professional in sports, manage a billion dollars and design a rocket better than Elon within 24 hours.

Yes really. Most people are this delusional. People who played high-school sports actually believe they could have played a different sport and gone D1 (hilariously false) and on top of that think they could go pro (comically false).

Process of Elimination

After a person has passed general puberty (draw the line around 19-20 years old for men and 16-17 years old for women), you already know what natural talents are available.

If you can’t figure this out, you’re going to spend the next decade on wasted ideas that will never work. Just because tech pays well does not mean you should enter tech if you look like Ryan Gosling. You should be going into sales. If you’re naturally good with your hands and can build anything from scratch, might want to go into home building instead of software sales. So on and So forth.

Elimination: We doubt many of you are under 18 but just in case you are: 1) if under the age of puberty you should *still* register higher than normal than your peers in the task, 2) after you’ve hit general maturity, it takes ~12 weeks to figure out how gifted you are at the task - art, sports etc. and 3) If you’re not at bare minimum top 5-10% or so with limited effort? Move on. Sorry, not that gifted.

We’ve got no problems saying we could never be doctors (terrible empathy and terrible emotional communication skills). Would also fail at art. Would also fail at music. Would also fail at cooking. Would also fail at 50 other things. Doesn’t matter though, dialed into strengths - selling stuff online, quick math calculations, technology forecasts and ability to *read* emotion not deal with people’s emotions.

Create a List: If you’re unwilling to say you’re clearly not good at something then you’re a decade behind. Seriously a decade. It means there is no self awareness. This is a major red flag and 911 level disaster. Your parents/friends are not going to be able to give you any input. They either say “no chance” (haters) or they say “yes it will work!” (always positive). This is entirely on you.

Discovery - Is Really Overlap

Say you are good at 10 things. Now the goal is to try and figure out where the market will pay the most. Again. Where the *market* will pay the most. Not what you wish you could do all day. No matter what industry you choose, you’ll be eating those Sh** sandwiches for at least 3 years (or more) for 99% of people.

AI Tools: With AI there is absolutely no excuse. We’re looking at a few online businesses to purchase and AI is pretty accurate (source). We found a business that works well for someone else (not for us) based on what the company needs to improve.

All you have to do nowadays is look at 30-40 companies (with AI) to figure out where you will slot right in. Perhaps you’re a top 0.1% person in Rugby knowledge. While this seems worthless as an American, if you can target New Zealand and Australia, we’re certain you can make 6-figures online. Fortunately, the internet allows exactly that.

The point here is that the internet allows you to find where your talents fit best. Pre-internet if you were good at some niche item like Rugby or Ping Pong it was impossible to find a way to earn from it. Now? Top performer in anything can be monetized.

Evaluation - Forever

This is something that you will do for the rest of your life. The second you succeed with your first business winner you’ll notice the same thing: 1) you get a bit bored, 2) a new idea comes along, 3) another person notices another avenue you can go down, 4) you open the new one and consider if the first one is even worth our time… So on and so forth.

Evaluation: The quick math is actually pretty simple. When you stop growing at 20% per year it is probably time to look at a new idea. Doesn’t mean you need to sell, doesn’t mean you need to quit just means the business is hitting maturity.

You have to be smart about this. Maybe one year is just an outlier due to a trend (like furniture sales during COVID or gardening sales in the same time period). If you take out weird events like that, the rule is directionally true. Just because one month is only up 15% doesn’t mean much at all. You have to look at a trailing 12 month period and mark any months where something absurd happened.

You can ignore the bottom left quadrant. You want to use contractors and never have employees (if possible). If you are ever considering an HR department that means sell immediately for 99.99% of people who do not need to be billionaires to be happy.

Only metrics to evaluate are: 1) sales, 2) margins and 3) total addressable market.

This is all you personally need. Are you making more/less with each sale and how much of the market are you taking. If the entire market you are in declines by 10% but you are up 10%, that means *keep at it*. You’re up 20% in the relative market and if you think it grows long-term you better be working *harder*.

Practically speaking, all other metrics are vanity. Social followers, number of page views, number of employees, number of stores, etc. All that matters is top-line, bottom-line and market share.

Intent/Purchase/Sale

After all of this is done, you can now decide “what are my intensions with this business” “am i putting my talents in the right direction” “should i buy a new asset and fix it” “should i sell the current asset”

That’s going to be much more personal and much more niche. Not much we can do to help you there outside of sheer numbers. The way to think about it is as follows:

1. If you’ve truly optimized some 9/10 times you’re better off keeping niche websites as cash flow machines. At 4x earnings, selling won’t make sense. You can automate, get it down to a few hour a week and make much more than 4x over a 10-year span

2. If you decide to buy a new asset, you need to be sure you can fix it. Go through all their analytics and customer acquisition sources. Decide which area is lacking and be sure you’re correct. If that particular avenue is where you thrive? Buy. Fix and either sell or keep as cash flows. See point 1, in the end you end up keeping a lot of them

3. “Am i putting my talents in the right direction” - This is where a little luck comes in handy. No clue! If you found a niche you won’t know if the next niche is better until you try. That’s how life works. Most people think they need to drop everything to start something new. Total lie. Even Coinbase was built on weekends with 20 hours a week. No excuses.

Part 2: Timelines

Once again. Everyone is gifted in different ways. Some are extremely unlucky and have no talent. Even those guys can get to 7-figures with pure grit and effort. We’ve never seen a guy fail that tried for 5-10 years with 100% effort. Perhaps 0.1% of people have bad luck, but, it’s rare.

Businesses “Three Years”: You will eat glass, sh** sandwiches and punch the floor of your cramped apartment many many times. There will be holes in your wall when manufacturing issues come up. After you’re through the disaster period, lasts about 3 years, you start to see significant results. This is a *general* rule. It’s always up to you to decide if you’ve put in max effort or if the biz idea is truly broken (if you tested demand this is unlikely).

For the ultra talented you can get big numbers up in one year. If you’re making a ton of mistakes and basically not naturally gifted at anything, could be five years. Vast majority of people see the results after year 3. Most quit by year 2-3.

Finding a Talent - 12 weeks: Yep that’s it. If you try something new for 12 weeks and don’t see large newbie gains that are drawing complements? Not particularly good at it. If you do something for 12 weeks and people think you’ve been doing it for a couple years? You found a skill/talent.

Don’t bother with the whole idea of 10,000 hours. It’s largely nonsense. The idea of taking 10 years to become elite at something *presumes* you’re already talented at it. If you’re registering great results in 12 weeks it means your 10-year results will be elite.

Finding What You’re Bad At: Under a month. Assuming you’ve tried a bunch of random tasks by age 18 or so, you will know with certainty where your strengths and weaknesses are. If you’re not self aware to know this, your net results will be down 90% versus your potential (not an exaggeration). Being able to admit when you’re not good at something is 90% of the headache.

Part 3: Summary

If you are still wasting time trying 50 different “ideas”. Go ahead and quit all of them. Yes seriously. Quit all of them if you’re trying to do 10 things at once.

1. You will focus all your effort on one skill. Sales. This can be in person sales or online sales. Doesn’t matter. Even if you’re not gifted at it, you need proficiency in sales. This is never going to die. Sales is useful in 100% of life: money, dating, etc.

2. You will go through the funnel listed here, you will find at least 5 things you are good at. Don’t waste our time saying you’re not good at anything. You will register top 10% in multiple things. If you register Top 0.1% in anything, we’re sure you’ll be rich.

3. Most likely scenario is you’re good at say 3 things, then you find where those three things meet in some sort of industry. Say good at sales + math + summarizing complex topics. Well Tech Sales is where you’re starting your career and you’ve wasted time looking at all other industries.

It really is that simple. Figure out if you’re good at logic, intent or outright sales. Start there niche down and before you know it you’ll be buying up all these underperforming businesses on Empire Flippers. Losing your mind, homeless, on a beach.

Autist Note: Title suggests “how good you’ll be”. The real answer is anyone reading this can get to $3-5M. Don’t bother telling us it isn’t possible. It is. Even boring businesses like HVAC will get you there. The rest of the numbers, $10M+? Lady Luck.

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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