I came across Billy Murphy’s website foreverjobless.com a week ago and I instantly resonated with him.

There is a ton of websites out there with experts teaching how to make money and succeed in business. The problem is those people never succeeded in business themselves. If they had succeeded, they wouldn’t bother making another website on how to make money.

They’re just selling hope. I’ve been selling hope myself. I got into this trap of advising people on how to make money without having achieved my financial goals myself.

I make around $700/month online (fully active income – not passive!!!) but I’m way behind advising anyone on how to be a successful entrepreneur. It’s easy to sell hope and do what everybody does. It’s tough to think outside the box and solve problems that others don’t touch because they seem “unsolvable”.

Billy’s website is indeed different from anything else out there. He’s not selling anything. He doesn’t have to because he’s making money with his multiple businesses. He launched the website just to tell the truth, to help others and also become a better writer.

Anyway, Billy motivated me so much with his writing that I’ve decided to take action. Let’s get serious. No more BS. No fake hopes. No cheating. Let’s play the long-term game: Set a real goal and keep getting closer to that goal every day little by little. Ignore the white noise around you. Stick to watering your bamboo seeds everyday until they sprout (Check Billy’s article here)!

My goal as an entrepreneur is to achieve financial freedom by providing value to others. After coming across Billy’s website I realised that it’s a sort of an MBA course or the entrepreneur’s bible. For this reason, I decided to commit myself to the following Forever Jobless Challenge:

1. Read all Billy’s articles.
2. Reflect on my mistakes based on the teaching of every article.
3. Write an article with main points/additional notes/my thoughts after reading each one of the 20 must-read posts that Billy has on the sidebar of Forever Jobless.
4. Make a video for every must-read post (20 videos in total).

My ultimate goal is to convince Billy to mentor me and let me work with him. To achieve this goal I need to do lots of work myself first and complete my Forever Jobless Challenge.

Irrespective of whether I’ll manage to convince Billy or not, completing the challenge is a +EV decision anyway. If he agrees to be my mentor one day, that’s gonna be the maximum + EV outcome ever! If he doesn’t, I’ll have invested a great deal in myself by following his advice anyway. I’ll have become a better entrepreneur and person. That’s +EV anyway! So, the whole challenge is +EV, that’s why I’ve decided to do it. 

I might also help Billy’s message reaches more people out there who will also take action like I did. So, that’s win me, win Billy, win others.

So, let’s move on to the first article and video.

EV: Millionaire’s Math

Billy is always trying to keep things simple in business using a sort of Warren Buffett approach. Let’s look at the facts. No emotions. Just facts and numbers.

One of his core teachings is the concept of the expected value. If you are a rational player and you want to maximise your profit you should be calculating the EV of all available decisions and choosing the one with the highest EV. Simple as that.

Let’s say that your friend George asks you to play a game. Hey, if you play this game with me 3 things can happen. A: 50% you lose €20, B: 20% you win €5 and C: 30% you win €50. Wanna play?

The only thing that should look at to determine whether you play or not is the expected value of this game. What’s the expected value of the decision: I play!

To work out the expected value you have to multiply each probability with its relevant outcome and sum it all up. If the sum is positive, it’s in your favor to play the game. Play the bloody game, don’t think twice. If it’s negative say goodbye to George!

Let’s calculate the EV of George’s game.

EV = 50% * (-20) + 20% * 5 + 30%(50) = -10 + 1 + 15 = €6. It’s positive. Play the game with George! Either George loves you or he is stupid.

Suppose now that somebody asks you: If I toss a coin and I get tails, I’ll give you €200. If I get head, you’ll give me €100. Do you play this game or not? Work out the EV yourself!

Your EV of entering this game for you is:

EV = P(T)*200 + P(H) *(-100) = 0.5*(200) + 0.5*(-100) = 100 – 50 = €50

That’s a game with positive EV. You should be playing this sort of games. You should be chasing these games rather than staying away from them! You should be striving to play these games as often as possible.

I asked my dad, my girlfriend, and my mum. They wouldn’t play this game. They all said:

“Do you mean if it comes out head I have to give you €100? Hahaha!”

Yea but if it comes out tail you get €200.

Yea, it sounds good but I just don’t like risks.

You see how people think. They are risk-averse. They fear loss.

I then asked them again. What if we played this game 10 times? Would you be willing to play? They rushed to ask again: “Do you mean if it comes 10 times head I have to give you €1000? That’s definitely a no!”

What??? As much as I love my parents and my girlfriend, they are all are playing against themselves.

Math says that if you play this game infinite times, the mean value of the outcomes for you is going to be €50. Well, you will not live forever to play this game infinite times but you get the point! The more you play this game, the better.

Billy suggests that you’re better off by consistently chasing these +EV opportunities instead of looking at the possible losses. If you keep focusing on your losses, maybe short term you think you’re better off but long term you’re losing a lot.

In life, a lot of these +EV opportunities are +EV because they look risky to most people who try to stay away from them.

Now, it’s not always going to be that straightforward to calculate the EV of a decision. But you should be always trying to do your due diligence and come up with an estimation of your EV.

Have a look at Billy’s graph here. People are reluctant to give up their mediocre job which guarantees x dollars per month instead of investing in themselves for example. So, they decide to follow this straight line of financial growth. But look at somebody who invests in themselves. They don’t mind suffering a short-term loss by eating up their savings at this point but then they enjoy a higher growth and long-term are better off than these linear guys, the risk-averse ones.

Life is much longer than you think. Think long term, keep playing seemingly “risky” games, you’re gonna get to your financial goal a lot quicker.

How to Create a Business that Prints Money

What do most people do in business? They come up with a fabulous idea: “I’m gonna make an app which does x, y, z, w! You know there is no app out there that does this!”

They spend months (time which is their most valuable asset) and money to make something. Once it’s ready they spend more time and money on marketing their product.

Man, sorry but people are not interested in your product! They were never interested. Did you ask them? Did you do your due diligence? No. Maybe there was a reason why that app didn’t exist before.

Others are launching a product in a “booming market” hoping to get some portion of the pie with a rationale: “Well, even if we get to the 3rd place we’re still be making good money”. They don’t even understand why the first is first, the second is second and the third is third.

Is Amazon Kindle publishing hot? Let’s publish the shit out of ebooks and market the shit out of them and get the bronze medal! Man, it doesn’t work like that!

You see, people focus on what others are doing rather than WHY they’re doing it.

I created a programme for those who want to live in Russia for some time just because I wanted to live in Russia for some time. I created 35 videos, I did the best video editing I could, perfect sound, etc. I created an awesome leadpage which took me two weeks to make, I made sure there were no grammatical errors in my text. Everything looked neat! 

Hey, hey, hey! Hold on a second that’s all great but how many people would love to relocate to Russia as you did?

Mmmm, not sure. But I have a great email list.

Yea, but did you ask them first if they’re interested in the videos you’re planning to make?

No, I thought that even if a 5% of them bought the course, I would be still making great money.

Well, after launching the course that projected 5% ended up being 0.008%.

I am also one of those who publish ebooks on Amazon. I started writing my books as I had a passion for writing. In the beginning, it used to take me three months to write a fifty pages book. I would edit the book for endless hours. My first four books are still selling after three years because they do add value.

I then started outsourcing books to ghostwriters and publish a book every week. I used to think: “Well, the more I publish the more chances are that people will buy one of these books every day.” False thinking! Why? If each one of all these books doesn’t add any value, why would somebody buy it? Why would someone move to the 4th page on Amazon Kindle to see your book which is inferior to the competitor’s book? Totally absurd thinking…

Billy says that you if you want to create a cash cow business which prints money you have to solve two main questions:

1. What extra value does your product add to a given market?
2. How can you reach the market to let them know about that value?

Simple as that. Business should not be rocket science. However, no one spends time to do their due diligence and address these two questions before they go any further (convert pages, social media, mail lists, copyright, etc.)

Also, remember that if you have a great product people will do the marketing for you. You will not have to convince them to buy your shitty product. 

How To Set Goals If You’re Not Sure What You Want

Billy in this article stresses the importance of knowing yourself. It’s always worth spending the time to know yourself. Socrates said, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom”.

Billy also suggests that it’s important to bet on your strengths quoting Peter Drucker. You can’t really grow by investing in your weaknesses.

I’ve written myself an article about whether we should focus on our strengths or weaknesses. I definitely agree that we are more likely to capitalize on our strengths but I also shared three concerns in that article:

1. What if you have built your strength to such an extent that any marginal improvement towards your strength is not that important as opposed to an improvement in an area that you have always neglected.
2. What if your strength is not as enjoyable anymore as it was before? OK, you probably enjoy things that you’re good at but what if you don’t find something as sexy as before?
3. What if you have multiple passions and want to live a diversified life? What if you are a mathematician in your 30’s and a degree in history is now more interesting than a Ph.D. in your first field, ie. mathematics?

Just a few thoughts for discussion.

Billy then says that we sometimes think we know what we want but we actually don’t. We’re just too busy doing whatever we think we want. We don’t spend the time to question the way we have chosen.

Next awesome point by Billy. Why people don’t achieve their goals:

1. They quit too soon because they don’t get instant results.
2. They don’t have a plan to achieve the goal, they don’t break a goal down, they are reluctant to hire somebody to help them, etc.
3. They don’t want the goal deep enough. They just think they want it.

I resonated with what Billy said about the size of somebody’s platform. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have but what’s your impact on your followers’ lives. Have you motivated them to take action? Has their life improved by following you?

I also resonated with Billy’s hard decisions about getting deeper into trading or poker. OK, I know I can beat the game, I can get more zeros in my bank account, more houses, etc. Does that change the world? Is it significant enough in this life?

Billy shares a concern he has that once he achieves something he gets bored. I’ve always had the same problem myself.

You know, sometimes I think about the following: When you set a goal and fail, you get frustrated, you feel you lose. On the other hand, if you achieve the goal, you rush to set another and another which is, in essence, a sort of goal chasing without an end. You’re still unfulfilled and sort of frustrated. There’s always something else you haven’t achieved. This sometimes makes me think that life probably should be purposeless.

I sometimes admire people who always wanted to become a doctor, their life was always a straight line. No excitement, no new hobbies. Just one thing. And they’re happy with that one thing. The never deviated from the first path they chose. Their life is something like a straight line.

A question I’d like to ask Billy is this: At the current point of my life, I want to achieve my financial freedom. Let’s say that to achieve that I choose to engage in activities that I wouldn’t engage if money was not involved (as Noah Kagan suggests).

For example, I decide to spend time to learn the mechanics of e-commerce in order to buy an e-store just to generate cash flow so I can then do what my muse wants me to do, to follow my inner self totally.

Is that a -EV decision? Am I not going all in? Am I not burning my ships by doing this?

Billy himself set a goal to not have any financial goal for a year and do things he only enjoyed. But maybe at that point, he had a cushion, I mean some passive income that would enable him to do so.

Second, Billy wrote in his article “how to create a business that prints money” that following your passion does not necessarily guarantee that you’ll succeed financially.

Third, when Billy had some health problems he really valued having enough cash to spend on getting the best medical service and recover quickly. To make an analogy it’s always good to have a safety net that would allow you to bring your plane back to a high altitude and not crush.

Next point I want to make is The more I read Billy’s articles the more I realise it’s not random that I came across his work. There is always a reason we meet certain people in our lives. It’s like we attract them because they will help us and we will help them to find their purpose too.

Paul, Billy’s follower wrote to Billy: “You need to understand that you are an incredible talent, with a real message and purpose. I would hate to see you attempt to take a shortcut to your real purpose – impacting other people’s lives. This is a “god given” gift, don’t waste it.” – Paul

The one motivational message that I share on my About Me page on my website is: Those who compromise their dreams just to feel financially safe, commit a crime against themselves and humanity.

The last thing that I learned from this article is that you need to set realistic goals. Otherwise, you’ll end up beating yourself, feeling discouraged. In the beginning, I set myself the challenge to make a video every day Monday to Friday after reading one article on ForeverJobless.com. To make a video, I first read carefully Billy’s giant articles (they are not articles, they are ebooks!), I then take notes, I write an article with basic points and my thoughts, I shoot the video, I do all the editing myself and upload on Vimeo. To make a good quality article and video takes time and that gave me lots of stress during the first week. To increase my chances of completing the challenge, I need to readjust my plan. 3 videos per week, every week. I’ll go more slowly to guarantee that I’ll make it to the end.

And one last last thing: Billy recommends two books which will help to discover your unique abilities. He just took a picture of them and added to the post! No affiliate links or anything! That’s why I love this website! lol

How to Achieve your Goals

A Goal comes with a specific plan

People don’t set goals, they list dreams. If you don’t have a plan with specific actions on how to get to your goal, then that’s not a goal; that’s a dream.

It’s Goal – not goals!

Don’t set more than one goal at a time. You should have only one primary goal. People set too many goals, they get overwhelmed and give up. Do you have too many? Choose first the one that will help you to achieve the rest of your goals.

Break it down

Now, think about this. When you set a goal, you break it down and engineer a plan about what you have to do on a daily basis, you are guaranteed to achieve the goal. Do you have to walk x miles? You just have to walk every day a distance of x/100 for 100 days. There is no way you can’t reach your destination if you walk every day x/100 for 100 days! This is the mindset!

Be realistic with your goal

Don’t be unrealistic about your goals. Maybe you can’t hit the gym 5 times a week but can you stick to 3 or even 2? It’s better than 0 anyway! Readjust to find the golden ratio between hard work and manageable stress so you don’t give up. That’s a learning process.

Set life-changing goals

The goal of clearing your email inbox every day will not probably change your life. If you’ve never been into sports and you decide to take up a new sport and excel at it, that’s a really life-changing goal.

Set Tier Goals

But at the same time, be realistic. If you have never done any sports in your life, don’t start off with an ironman challenge. Start with a tier goal as Billy says, an intermediate goal. Maybe set an Iron baby, Iron Kid, Iron Youngster, and then Iron Man!

Also, setting tier goal keeps you more engaged in your goal. You can have a goal for the year and tier goals for 30-90 days. The tier goals give you feedback so you readjust certain things plus it serves as a reward.

Define your Goal Well

You have also to be specific about what you want to achieve. I said in an earlier video “I want to achieve my financial freedom.” After reading this article I realized my goal was not well defined. What does financial freedom mean? How much money is that a month, a year? But, sorry, I’ll figure that out later. For now, I have a clear goal to finish – the Forever Jobless Challenge. This is my tier goal which will help me to achieve my financial freedom later.

Share your goal with caveats

Share your goal with others only if they help you to achieve it and keep you accountable. Shouting around about your goal doesn’t take you closer to it. On the contrary, it gives you the illusion that you’ve achieved something.

That’s why I decided to keep the ForeverJobless challenge to myself and stay away from distractions. I could be publishing all these articles and videos on my website and youtube channel but that would only make my progress slower. Because in that case I would also be tempted to promote this stuff on social media, check out the likes and views, reply to comments, etc. No. At least not now. I know this can motivate others later once I have achieved something. For now, do the fucking work dude! 🙂 

No exceptions – the daily plan is holy

Did you set a daily plan? No exceptions. Stick to the daily plan no matter what. I started the ForeverJobless Challenge during the Christmas Period. I did that on purpose. Distractions will always be around you. You can’t get rid of them. It’s your reaction to the distractions as a Stoic would say. That’s the only thing you can control and you’d better learn how to control it ASAP. It would be easier to fool myself and wait until Next Year to start the challenge.

Work on you Goal first thing in the morning

Work on your goal early in the morning before life catches up on you with distractions and tasks that you can’t avoid. It’s just a matter of math again. Maximise your chances of sticking to the daily plan every day. Facilitate the goal. Make it easier.

Put your To-Do List on a Diet

Eliminate extra items from your to-do list. Either dump them or delegate them. I have a ton of tasks hitting me every day while I’m making these videos. I delegate most of the tasks to a freelancer in Philippines that I found on Upwork. A minute ago I asked her to send me only one email at the end of the day (when I’ll be done with my daily plan) with all the questions and issues together instead of texting me on Whatsapp.

It’s a +EV decision to pay $3 per hour for task delegation so I focus on my primary goal. I know that. There is no doubt about it in my head. I want Billy to coach me after the end of this challenge. Go, go, go!

It’s OK to be unbalanced

With a life-changing goal, you’ll try to convince yourself you need day offs. I’m working too hard. I should be balanced you’ll say to yourself. You will miss one day, two days, more days and you’ll miss the goal in the end. Now you have an excuse for mediocrity. I have to be balanced anyway. And then you’re back to zero and your mediocre life which is costing you a lifetime worth of unbalance. When I read this point I really felt better as I have been using this excuse myself often.

Don’t multitask!

Eliminate distractions when you do the work. Billy gets up at 4:30 and works on his primary goal when everybody else is sleeping. What I love most about my iPhone is the airplane mode! Turn it on!

Another awesome tip by Billy. Delete your browser history and leave one window open related to your priority goal before you go to bed. Make it tough for distractions to touch you.

Allow time for play

What did the guy say here? Maaaan! Book your holidays, work hard to achieve your quarterly tier goal, then go play, charge your batteries, fire the creativity, come back strong and go again! Why is everyone doing the opposite?

Get a Coach

People are reluctant to invest in themselves. Hiring somebody to save you time, frustration and help you get faster to your goal is a +++EV decision. Of course, some coaches will be not what you expected but investing in trying different coaches to find the right one is again a +++EV decision!

Don’t Compete with Others

The last thing that I wanted to share from Billy’s article is that you should not set goals to compete with others. I often say I want to get 100K subscribers on YouTube. OK, right sounds good but why do you want that? What you’re gonna do with those subscribers? How will they change your life? How will you change their lives? Remember to achieve a goal you must want it a lot. If you set goals just because others have the same goals you will most probably give up along the way.

Also, this is another video with some extra thoughts on how to achieve your goals.

Entrepreneurial Diworsification

Another awesome article with an awesome title. What does the title suggest? If you are one of those entrepreneurs that are launching a series of businesses and websites to diversify and not keep all eggs in their basket, you’re doing the wrong thing. Why?

1. You can’t create a successful business if your competition put their 100% of their efforts into the business whereas you’re putting 50%, 33%, 25%, 20%, etc.
2. You will learn more by getting a website from 0 to let’s say 1K/month than ten mediocre ones from 0 to $100/month each.
3. The value of a $1K/month website is more than the value of 10 $100/month websites.
4. The potential network you can build with one high authority website is bigger than with 10 small spammy websites.

People get into this entrepreneurial diversification madness with the rationale that if Google penalises your one site, you can still rely on the rest. Totally wrong! That instantly shows they start doing business with a loser’s mentality. You can’t get into business with this mindset. They will kick your a**.

Also, people usually follow the same monetisation and marketing practices across all their “shitty website” portfolio. So, that’s not really diversification. In case Google decides to penalise you, they will penalise all your 10 websites at the same time!

Billy suggests that you create a business that makes money and learn through execution. Once you develop the business to a significant extent, then why not, you can set things to auto-pilot or sell the business and only then start a new one.

Talking about myself, I’ve also fallen into this trap like most newbies. I’ve got two websites and been thinking of launching a third one, two YouTube channels, been publishing books on Amazon using two accounts, creating courses on Udemy… I mean all this good but in an earlier video in this ForeverJobless challenge, I mentioned that my goal is to achieve my financial freedom. I won’t achieve that by splitting my efforts into 10 things at a moment when I’m not making significant money out of any of those 10 things.

I know this is going to be my biggest challenge. My website is livediversified.com That speaks volumes! Anyway, at this moment of my life, I’m just taking a break after finishing a series of projects, courses. I’m now diving into a sea of knowledge by making these videos and reading Billy’s articles. My mistakes in the past place me in a position to appreciate Billy’s teachings to the maximum. So, let’s keep going with my challenge. Knowledge, as Billy says, is what I need right now and what I should be investing my time and money in.

Dream Life

Money can buy happiness as soon as you use it to increase your happiness. If you are after money without knowing what to do with it, you’re most likely heading for less happiness.

There are two common cases when more money usually doesn’t buy more happiness.

1. The monetary goal you set is not significant enough to increase your happiness.
2. Your monetary goal is taking away from your happiness because you could be happier right now without more money!

I came up with the following two sketches to prove Billy’s points above (no comments regarding my drawing skills!!): 

1 – In the first example, Johnny thinks he will be able to achieve his goal by staying on a 9-5 job and working more and more to achieve his goal. But if he did the math, he would realize that’s impossible. He would better quit his job right now and try something different. If he stays on his current job he’s guaranteed to fail and be unhappy. That’s a fail plan, Johnny!

2 – In the second example, Jake is earning much more than what he needs to achieve his goal of traveling the world. However, he keeps working in the office in order to earn some more money, and save in order to travel the world one day. In reality, he doesn’t need more money. He just has to convince his boss to let his work remotely or find a job that would allow him to do so. Working in the office and chasing more money results in more unhappiness for him.

The problem with both cases is that people don’t take the time to put the numbers down on paper and work out a plan towards their goal. Ask yourself what is you want? What do you need to have to achieve what you want? How can you get there? If the way you’re on will never lead you there, bet your chances on something else otherwise you’re guaranteed to fail!

In a period of my life, when I used to work in investment banking I would make money and more money as I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I used to think: “Well, money will always help me to achieve what I want when I know what it is”. I was in that money hamster wheel as Billy says. But if you asked me back then, how much is enough so you quit your job? Well, I wouldn’t be able to answer that question. Also, if you don’t get out of your money hamster wheel, how do you expect yourself to have the clarity to see what is you want, to make a plan and go for it?

Infrastructures of Wealth

WTF??????

This article is fucking gold!

This article was written for me. To kick my ass. I’ll explain to you why.

First of all, this article was inspired by a quote by Arnold Swarchenegger who said:

Building infrastructure is one of only three ways to lock in a benefit from a dollar one hundred years in the future. Number one is to build public works that will last for that long. Number two is to use your dollar to invent something that will still be used in a century. And number three is to educate your children and grandchildren so that they see the benefits of knowledge and educate their own children and grandchildren in turn. Do any of these successfully, and you’ve invested wisely. You may even be remembered for it. – Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Billy applies each item of this three list quote to how you can make a successful long-term business.

Most entrepreneurs being driven by the hype of what’s hot now build a temporary income infrastructure. They first reap the temporary income of that infrastructure. When the income starts declining they carry on with selling their knowledge on that temporary income infrastructure. Remember it’s easier to sell hope on making money than making money.

As the infrastructure is trendy, the second generation of temporary incomers buys the hope. But they buy high in an inflated market ready to explode. The second generation reap less temporary income than the first generation and decide to become hope sellers too! So do the third and the fourth and the nth generation, or maybe let’s say fourth tops…

Soon, all the temporary incomers end up looking for the next hot temporary income infrastructure. Better say temporary active income infrastructure. Because all these guys are sweating over their infrastructures to drink as many drops as possible from what’s left…

This article hit me badly. It really opened my eyes because Billy is using the Amazon Kindle publishing hype to prove his point. I’m one of these guys that believed I can make a sustainable business on publishing a ton of ebooks on Amazon.

If you want to build a real business do one of the following:

1. Make something that improves people’s lives today and tomorrow.
2. Invest in real estate or in something that mathematically likely to generate passive income for you today and tomorrow.
3. Help people to think in a more prosperous way instead of selling fake hopes
4. Don’t invest in knowledge which will be useless in 10 years; invest in knowledge which will be compounding on your long-term success.

God, all this sounds so bloody straightforward. Why is everybody doing the opposite including myself? Because we’re all looking for the easy route. The quick gains. The instant gratification. We sacrifice our valuable time, our talents, our inner muse on a shitty short-term benefit. Even worse, we take other souls with us on this vain journey. This is a crime. This is a loss of energy. This is entropy. This is a sin, guys.

Entrepreneurial Quicksand

Billy in this article explains why he became a successful poker player. Why? Because he outthought his opponents!

Everybody is playing as the books or a guru suggest. They don’t bother to answer why they should be playing as the books or the gury say. They focus on “what” rather than “why”. And then somebody called Billy comes who went a little deeper than the books or the gurus, he questioned everything and worked out a different style of playing.

When the sheep from the herd play with Billy, they don’t understand what he’s doing. They think he is being irrational, crazy, lucky. They can’t believe he is playing such a crazy game. This guy is not playing by the book. That’s not a guru style. They end up losing their control. Anger governs them, they start playing irrationally themselves and Billy goes away with all the money on the table…

If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re waiting for a guru to tell you what to do, then you’re not a real entrepreneur. How do you expect yourself to win in business if you’re just one of the thousands that are doing the exact same thing? Another Billy will soon come and take everything from the table.

I just checked the dictionary and I found that an entrepreneur takes initiative and is willing to risk loss to make money. If you’re always following somebody who will tell you what is the right thing to do that’s contradictory. Maybe you’re not an entrepreneur. Maybe you’re a client of that guru among thousands.

Free Business Idea

Billy says Business doesn’t have to be hard.

Step 1: find a problem someone has

Step 2: solve that problem for them

Step 3: collect money

However, everybody does the opposite.

Guy 1:  Man, I wish someone would solve this for me

Guy 2: love to help man but I’m too busy looking for business ideas

Stop following blogs that say yea you can do it fast now money blah blah blah. Start solving needs.

Billy gives a great business idea for free. Article marketing.

If you write articles you know well that when you finish a great article it comes to marketing the article. Either you know how to do it but it’s boring or you don’t know how to market it and it’s frustrating. You’d love to keep on writing and assign the marketing to someone else who could do it right and deliver results. That’s a great idea that solves a real problem. People would pay to buy this service. You don’t need a proof for this, do you?

That’s a great idea and Billy gives it for free. Why? Because no one is gonna hustle to solve this problem. Limiting beliefs will arise. Oh, marketing is tough. You can’t do much about it. The results are just random. Some things work others don’t work.

Ohhh if it was easy others would have done it etc. Or others will say that’s too simple. There are marketing agencies for those that want to pay. Just a ton of excuses.

Of course, it’s tough to solve hard problems. You’re gonna invest hours and hours without getting paid. You’ll fail and fail again. But if you don’t give up and solve the problem you’re done. If your solution makes their lives’ easier people will pay for it.

You don’t even have to do hard work on the marketing side. People talk. This is how I came across Billy’s website because somebody said to me: Hey, you know most of the blogs out there is shit. If you want to read only one website that tells the bloody truth, read ForeverJobless.

Another thing that I realized after reading this article. To convince someone to pay for your service or product, you need to explain with numbers what it can do for them. If you can prove that it can make an extra $500 per month for them, why wouldn’t they pay you $100 or $200 per month? I mean they will try you even if you ask $300/month!

And you know something else. This is really mind-blowing. To create a profitable business you don’t have to do what everybody else says. Make a blog, write an ebook, grow an email list and then sell.

Rather:

1) Look for hungry people

2) hustle, hustle, hustle

3) discover a better recipe

4) charge a handful of people little or 0 money for your recipe

5) find more people and show the results of your recipe

6) charge more and more

7) bring in more chefs to cook your recipe

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Another great article. What is a sunk cost? It’s a cost that has been incurred and cannot be recovered.

People invest time and money in a project, an idea, a startup, a house, a relationship, a friendship. Sometimes though an investment doesn’t deliver the expected results. Nevertheless, people decide to keep investing with the rationale that they have invested so much already. That’s the sunk cost fallacy!

If a project didn’t work, forget it. At t=0 you should only invest in the project with the highest +EV. You should never factor how much you have invested in any of your previous projects because that’s costing you more money, more sunk costs in the long term. It’s just a matter of optimality. It’s a matter of mathematics.

I’ve fallen myself into this trap a few times: “…But have a look at my blog, so many articles, so much money spent on advertising, have a look at the domain authority, it’s 20! If I give it up, it will go back to zero!”

This is just emotional thinking without any logic. Sunk costs are difficult to ignore but you really have to take the tough decision now. You know what’s the right thing to do and there is no doubt about it!

I’d like to add something here to try to make the tough decision easier.

Maybe you invested money and time but it was not all loss. You learned something from a project that didn’t work, a business, a relationship. You came out wiser and next time you’ll take better decisions. Focus on the lessons that you learned. There are tons of examples of very successful entrepreneurs that had to abandon their previous sinking ships to get on the right one that made them successful.

Learned Helplessness

What’s learned helplessness?

Imagine that at some point in your life you want to achieve x, you try and fail. But failure is painful and you don’t want to experience that pain again. So, what you do… you never try to achieve x again because that guarantees no more pain! Yeah but that’s not enough. I’ll also have to convince myself why I’m not trying anymore. Because otherwise, I’ll feel bad about not trying or they’ll call me a loser for not trying. Mmmm… let me think…

1. I am a visual learner that’s why I don’t read.
2. Everyone in my family is fat. Genetics man! Nothing you can do.
3. Sorry, I’m really bad at remembering names.
4. My teacher said math is not for me when I was 2 years old, yeah.
5. I had to quit running. My right leg is a nanometer longer than my left leg.

Job done! Excuse found, no more pain, let’s live an awesome life!

You’re not living an awesome life! You’re living a mediocre life. You’re fooling your own self. You live the life that someone else has chosen for you.

Guys, let’s get serious:

1. All good things take time and effort.
2. Just between you and me, you never tried hard to achieve your goal.
3. You can fool everyone on this planet except one… yourself!
4. Did you fail? That’s good. Fail more. Failure is growth.
5. Tell them: “I appreciate your feedback but…FUCK OFF”
6. A little pain is better than a whole life full of pain.

Go do some un-digging now, feel a little pain and choose the life you want.

How to Get Lucky in E-commerce

In this article, Billy gives four examples of successful deals he has done in the e-commerce space. For all these deals to get lucky he had to think outside the box, to operate as a real entrepreneur.

The only way to succeed in business is by getting rid of the limiting beliefs and the learned helplessness which prevent you from taking action.

Has it occurred to you that you came across somebody selling something very cheap? A house, piece of land, shares, etc. What was your first thought? That’s “too good to be true”, it must be a scam, it sounds dodgy…

By thinking so, you instantly give an excuse to yourself for not doing the work to find out why they sell so cheap. You possibly ignore a high +EV opportunity by fearing a loss. You prefer to stay in the comfort of your learned helplessness.

A real entrepreneur though is the one who will hustle to find out why they’re selling cheap. Probably the seller is stuck on a problem and can’t see a way-out. A real entrepreneur sees the opportunity there, buys cheap, works out a creative solution and then sells high!

Remember +EV is hidden where the majority are being driven by fear and are not doing the math to assess an opportunity. Only there can you find room for arbitrage.

As an entrepreneur, you should be avoiding clear, transparent waters. The easier it gets to know the truth, the more the competition. The more the competition, the less the EV!

Another point that Billy makes is that in business we fail to see things from the other person’s perspective. Just because we wouldn’t sell something for such a low price, the other person shouldn’t either.

Hold on! Maybe the priorities are different for the other person, their life circumstances. They may want to sell something quickly because they got bored, they are moving to another country, they want to buy a house, a million reasons. It doesn’t always have to be a scam.

Or you know what, just because you are a rational player it doesn’t mean that everybody else is also rational! Because you can put emotions on the side, it doesn’t mean that everybody else can do it. Yes, it can happen! They are selling cheap because they are being irrational!

Does that mean that you will always succeed? Does it mean that it will always be worth getting into muddy waters? No. You will waste time and effort. Yes, but if you consistently get into muddy waters when everyone else prefers the transparent waters (low EV) you put yourself in positions to get lucky in the end.

How to Buy a Ferrari for $20k

In this article, Billy gives an example of how you can enter a business deal in which you invest $20K and little work to buy a Ferrari. Of course, a Ferrari doesn’t cost $20K but you invest your $20K which generate let’s say $2K per month towards the repayment of a Ferrari deal.

Three main takeaways that I kept from the article:

1. Billy doesn’t enter the deal alone but invites someone who has experience in the business. He’s willing to give up a little bit of the deal to increase the level of success of the business. It’s always worth it giving away part of a deal to somebody who can bring increased probability of success, expertise and accelerated results to a project. But most people are reluctant to share with the rationale: “Well, why share my profits? I want everything to myself.” It’s always worth spending money on a coach, a mentor or somebody who has already achieved what you want to achieve.  
2. Most people work for the money instead of having the money to work for them. They don’t understand simple concepts such as the concept of investing and compounding. Why buy a Ferrari in cash when you can invest your money and let it grow enough to get you the Ferrari you want? Keep the rest of the money for another investment that will come up.
3. People stay away from things that are too good to be true giving up high EV and prefer safe “too true to be good” options. They prefer not to take action with their limiting beliefs instead of just putting the numbers down on paper and run to pull the trigger!

James and the Bamboo Trees

James and Derek two neighbors decide to grow bamboo trees in their garden. James with patience sticks to his long-term plan of watering and taking care of the bamboo trees. On the other hand, Derek is impatient, he’s looking for shortcuts, he’s cutting corners when it comes to caring the bamboo trees. Eventually, Derek gives up, he decides to grow apples which don’t require so much care and are “hot” in the market. After 5 years James’ patience gives fruits and his bamboo trees grow tall and strong whereas Derek is left with his small mediocre apples which he never seriously took care of and now can’t sell.

In this video, I’m using some extracts from Billy’s story and I add my thoughts – takeaways.

The Penny Stakes of the Business

Billy entered the world of poker playing penny stakes. He soon became good at it and grew his account from $50 to $1000. At that point everybody kept saying: Take it out man cause you’ll lose it! You see again how people think: Fear of loss instead of a winning spirit.

Billy was at crossroads. On one hand, he knew it was so easy to play penny stakes and that guaranteed no loss (safe route, the one that millions of penny stake players follow). On the other hand, he had that feeling that stepping up the game to higher stakes would lead to higher EV.

What’s interesting here. Penny stakes players reach a limit with their game and in order to make more money, they teach others how to play penny stakes. Typical thing…

Billy did the right thing to go for higher stakes. As for his high stakes teachers, he found 1-3 people who seemed to know what they were doing and followed them closely ignoring everybody else. He also says that’s his strategy when learning something new and that really resonated with me. I’ve been following a few people online but when I came across ForeverJobless, man that was something different, fresh, genuine. That’s why I decided to do all these videos and build a plan after reading everything Billy has put out there.

Guys, this article is enlightening. There is indeed so much noise out there. So many people selling penny stakes dreams, small dreams. People who are playing suboptimally earning short-term profits, inviting everybody else to earn temporary profits and then after a 5, 10 years, fire and ash everywhere. There is nothing left. And then let’s move to another easy thing to get in and make temporary profits. Typical story out there…

You Don’t Need Money to Start a Business

People believe that to start a business they need money but money is their excuse for not taking action. Even if somebody gave them a ton of money now, they would waste that money putting it on the wrong things! Because they don’t have a plan and never learned through execution. They are just waiting for money. They never did anything.

Or you know what, they would rather go on holiday and not spend that money as they wouldn’t know how to invest it. Typical example – wannabe startupers looking for funding so they have a monthly salary while experimenting with business. Sorry man, I’m not gonna give you my money.

You have to understand that your time, your sweat is money. Use it to solve a problem. Hustle. And then you’ll reach a point that yes, you’ll need money. At that point, you will know exactly why you need the money and how you’re gonna use it. You’ll be 100% sure that it won’t go wasted.

Plus, when you reach that point, it will be easy to raise money. Because people will see value in what you have already created alone, with your sweat. They will see the foundations there already done by you alone.

The money will come as a result of taking action. Putting in the time every day is like growing a bank account. You build an asset. Today is worth more than yesterday, tomorrow is worth more than today. What you need is action. Not money.

The Packed Gym of Failure

Every year early January gyms are packed with New Year resolutioners who want to get in shape. For the first week or two everybody shows up but February comes and the gym is empty again. Why the hell is that?

Billy says that people don’t hit their goals because either they quit too soon because they don’t see instant results, or they don’t have a plan or they didn’t want the goal enough.

OK, let’s take the last one out. If you didn’t want the goal, you were probably influenced by someone else, you went against your calling, your inner-muse. Forget that.

As for those who quit too soon because they didn’t see instant results, what results were you expecting? Probably you didn’t understand what it takes to get the results, you didn’t do any planning in the beginning.

So, it looks like the root of the problem is reason number 2: “people don’t have a plan and they don’t stick to the plan” and this is what Billy focuses on in this article.

The plan is simple. Show up every day. Take the small action towards the goal every single day. Successful people are not superhumans. They place another brick on the wall every day, they walk one step further.

If we apply this in business, there is a gym of entrepreneurs who always compete to cover a certain demand. Over time some quit, so the ones who don’t, enjoy more customers and more customers. In the end, the successful entrepreneur is the one who showed up every day when the rest kept quitting.

I set this challenge to myself to film 20 videos for all the must-read posts that Billy has on the sidebar of ForeverJobless. The end goal was to convince Billy to mentor me and let me work with him. I had read all his articles before doing any video. It would have been easier to just write a nice email to him from the very beginning but I didn’t.

I wanted to go deeper into his work, read again all the articles, put down my thoughts on paper and film a video. Of course, that’s 10 times more work than just reading but this process helped me to understand better his philosophy.

To do all this work was not easy. In the beginning, I was feeling pumped after having done 3-4 videos. Then I started getting into the temptation: “Well, I’ve done enough work so far, I can’t wait to contact him. Maybe I’ll never achieve my goal to convince him, maybe he is busy, is it really worth doing 20 videos?”. A ton of excuses for not sticking to the goal!

However, I didn’t give up on my daily plan even when I got an automatic email from him asking if he could help me with any of my goals. I wanted badly to respond to that email. I didn’t. I thought it was not the right time yet.

This is video Number 17, I’m really close. What kept me on track was the deep understanding of the goal and the daily action towards it. It’s amazing how quickly my efforts compounded.

Sometimes, I was tired and stressed but I still worked towards the goal even a little bit. So little, the little much that I could sustain.

Another thing that I did differently this time is that I focused only on this challenge. I eliminated distractions, I outsourced all other tasks to a VA, etc.

I’ve learned a lot from doing this challenge and I now feel stronger to set another challenge hopefully with Billy as a mentor in the journey.

I Dare you to Fail for a Year

People assume they are not good at something without ever trying to become good. Hold on. Did you put in the work day after day for some time and you failed? No! So, how can you say you failed? That’s not fair!

It’s amazing to make progress every day by failing. Imagine you keep watering your bamboo seeds every day and you keep failing to see them sprout for one year. And then one day there they are! You succeeded! That was so lucky man!

Imagine you commit yourself to going to the gym three times a week for a whole year. 52 * 3 = 156 times you visited the gym for that year. Visualise yourself. Visualise the results in your health and body.

Imagine you commit yourself to writing 500 words 5 days a week. That’s like an essay you used to write in school, right? But that’s 52*5*500 = 130000 words in a year. That’s 2-3 books and you keep convincing yourself that you don’t have time to start a blog or write a book.

You keep saying I’m not good at languages, I’ll never learn English. Imagine you memorise 7 new English words every day for a year. That’s 2555 words. With the vocabulary of this size you can understand 90% of everyday English conversations.

I’m making this video on the 31st of December 2017. For the next year I, want to focus on one problem that people have, hustle, solve this problem and create a successful business. I’m gonna work for 0$/hour and invest sweat equity. Time to fail guys!

Don’t Cap Flow State: Extreme Hyperfocus

In this article, Billy stresses the importance of working in a flow state. What does flow state mean? It’s like meditation. You know the classic “focus on your breathing” meditation technique in which you observe only your breathing. Working in a flow state means all your attention is at what you’re working on, you’re 100% there.

The results of working in a flow state are extraordinary. Billy mentions Gary Keller and his time blocking technique in which you allocate 4 hours a day early in the morning to focus on your 1 thing, your top priority. Billy goes even further and makes sure that there are no distractions even after your time block so you don’t cap your flow state.

Billy says that there is no magic way to get into flow state. The only thing we can do is eliminate the chances of getting out of the flow state. Open up only one tab or document for your 1 thing the night before, install a Chrome extension called Kill News Feed to win the battle against Facebook, and put your phone in airplane mode!

Imagine that for a year you only set yourself 1 goal instead of 10 and plus you enter a flow state every day eliminating all possible distractions. Can you imagine what sort of results you can get?

So, the recipe for success:

1. Schedule your time block as early in the morning as possible.
2. Eliminate distractions (put your phone in airplane mode).
3. Work on your 1 thing, the one that when achieved everything else becomes so easier or unnecessary.
4. Allocate extra time after your time block so you don’t cap the flow.