Earl Lemongrab wrote:Vilgan wrote:People constantly find reasons to doubt others success or come up with excuses about why it can't be done.
I think that's a total strawman. Very few doubt that entrepreneurs can be successful, or that some do so with a small amount of on-going effort. However, that doesn't mean that these opportunities are easily available. If it's simple to make good money with no work, why would there be any room for new people to join? It's not like it's some kind of secret, not if books are being published. The slots should be pretty full.
So the answer more likely lies in that it's not that easy, at least to get started, or that it's not nearly certain that it will be profitable. Especially as an area of business becomes more visible, and larger companies with economy of scale start to compete.
Earl
Not sure its a strawman when there examples of doubt/excuses right here in this thread. Some examples:
susze wrote:You are sure this guy is not into MLM right? Usually people do many of those 20+ and in the end its a scam for everyone except for the one person who started the MLM
randomguy wrote:
Your missing the guys that spend 100k's to build apps and mad 4 dollars/month. The ones that buy warehouse that sit empty, and so on. You don't have any idea of about how much time and money your friend is risking. I am sure for 1 million bucks, I can work 4 hours/week and have someone else do the work. The questions is will that income stream be higher/more stable than passive investing? If you have good partners with lack of cash, the answer might be yes.
cherijoh wrote:Most entrepreneurs work a heck of a lot more than 4 hours per week launching their business(es). And the failure rate is extraordinarily high. So while there are some wildly successful entrepreneurs - especially in the tech world - these are the statistical outliers IMO. Either your friend was incredibly lucky or he's leaving out some of the details to make a better story. Does he claim that he's always had a 4 hour workweek or that that is what he has now that the businesses are cruising?
I've also seen the exact same thing in person. I left my W2 job to start a company and there were dozens of other people there who should be consulting or otherwise working for themselves instead of giving away 80% of their value to the company and only keeping 20% in the form of a salary. When I left everyone assumed it was for Facebook, Google, or to lead development at some startup. Going out on your own was an alien thought that many had trouble comprehending.
I talked to my old boss a few weeks ago and one of the their main concerns is how to get people to stay when they could make a lot more money on their own. They spend a LOT of focus on making it a "great place to work" in order to keep people from thinking about their other options. However, despite the fact it would make financial sense for more to follow in my path: not one other person has done it.
The W2 route is easy: you go to college like everyone else, you talk to some recruiters, you get a job, then maybe you talk to a few other recruiters every few years and change jobs. You never have to learn about business, think about the profit potential, worry about sales (unless you are in sales), worry about talent acquisition/retention (unless you are in recruitment/management), think about legal stuff, etc. You can build one marketable skill and frequently ride that to retirement. When most society is structured around this path: being willing to break out and find other revenue streams is unusual and a step that many won't consider. Many people seem to assume entrepreneurship is a pipe dream that only happens on TV or to specific "special" people without being willing to assume that they too can be successful at it.
The issue isn't that "all the slots are full" its that most people assume they are or assume they couldn't fill one of those slots.