Tag entrepreneurship

What to do if you feel like a loser at 40

Adam Leave a comment
Man staring on a road with a plan In his hand.

So you are forty years old with a list of boring, entry-level jobs. No girlfriend and no kids, no formal education, and you feel like life passed you by. You will never be a success story. Here is the truth: you can still turn your life around. Here are some ideas.

1. Stop doing what you are doing
If you are dwelling on the past or what could have or should have happened, STOP. That is not going to change anything. In fact, it will make it worse, because you are not making any progress forward.

2. Accept where you are
Take full responsibility for where you are in life. Not because of your friends or your parents. Not because of your environment, but because of the choices you made and the route you chose to take.

3. Make a plan
Decide what you are going to do from this point forward. If it’s going to be going back to get a degree or starting that business, make a detailed, step-by-step plan of what you are going to do every minute of every day for the next five years.

4. Go for it
Give it everything you’ve got. It’s live or die—give it every single piece of energy you have. Think that every day for the next five years is going to be hard and almost impossible if you don’t give it every single piece of willpower to change.

5. Once you achieve your goals
Once you achieve your goals in five years, be grateful and appreciative, because you could lose it fairly easily by falling back into your bad habits and thinking patterns.

Important lesson from a failed entrepreneur

Adam Leave a comment

I am a failed entrepreneur. I started many businesses, and some had short-term success. However, they all failed and cost me a lot of money and time, something I will never get back.

Follow your passion, not the money.

I would create businesses that had the potential to generate a lot of money but were hack jobs rather than something that would contribute positively to society.

I would have made lots of money if I had followed my passion for sports and martial arts. But if I had failed, I would have enjoyed the journey of following my passion rather than the money.
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What happened when I increased my earnings to $15,000 a month

Adam Leave a comment

The beginning 

It was 2014, and I just turned 27. I worked for an insurance company making about $45,000 as a temporary worker. In my spare time, I would work on website ideas and try to get them programmed by programmers in India.

The company

 Then I came across a database of phone numbers online and decided to make a phone book website. It took two months to create. After three months, I got many website visitors a day, and it grew fast.

I was amazed

The website made money even when I wasn’t there, and lots of it. It required very little maintenance except for the occasional person asking me to remove their information. I thought it set me up financially for life.

Silly decisions begun

I quit my regular job without two weeks’ notice. I finally moved out of my parent’s house and got an apartment as big as my parent’s house. I was a successful entrepreneur, after all.

 I had an incredible time buying things I didn’t need from Amazon. I was taking trips all over the country. I even stayed in new york city at a $ 700-a-night hotel in the famous times square. I was surprised when nobody spoke English at the hotel bar.

The crash

My website crashed and got hacked. It was unexpected, event none of my previous websites got hacked. I did know what to do. IT WAS TOO LATE when I finally found a way to fix it. Google algorithms have pinged me. I was losing website traffic quickly and the earnings even quicker. Although I tried for months, I could not recover the website.

Some things I learned from it.

  1. Refrain from expecting the money to keep coming in. I wish I had saved and invested some of the money that I was making.
  2. Everyone was surprised, so every idea that I had for improving the website was a good one for family and friends.
  3. Before you quit your job to pursue a venture, ensure it has an immaculate success rate and has been operational for at least two years.
  4. Technology changes, and it changes fast. You are a winner one day and a loser the next.

The conclusion

It was a good experience. I learned a lot, and the money allowed me to do many different things; however, I wish to be more careful with my decisions and created a financial cushion before I quit my job without possibly returning.