Son, I am about to shatter your entrepreneurial wet dreams.
The system doesn’t care about making you rich. It only cares about feeding off of you and spanking you when you misbehave. But it can’t say that to your face. So, instead, it sells you a dream so that you cook yourself like the perfect happy slave.
It’s based on the tried and tested – Problem > Reaction > Solution algorithm.
The Problem
The first part of the equation and the most voluminous one is The PROBLEM.
What’s the problem?
Poverty. The system loves calling you a “brokie” directly and indirectly. Isn’t that a bit suspicious? Why is mainstream and alternative media so obsessed with your bank balance?
Why are they bothering you? Why is Andrew Tate and other annoying prophets from the manosphere constantly in your face flashing money?
Why? Why? Why?
The last time I checked, they weren’t your friends—certainly not mine. And yet all of them are so obsessed with your wealth? But if you die tomorrow, well, none of them would even know it.
The goal is to make you feel inferior to them or should I say to the image they’ve built.
They have to crush your self-esteem and make you open to suggestions on how to fix it. If they make you feel good about yourself the way you are, well, the rest of the plan just falls on itself.
So, instead, they make you hate yourself and open your “port” for their special firmware.
It’s their job to create a sensation inside of you that you are a loser who needs to work hard, maybe even to the point of symbolic death.
And if you are not winning, it’s because you are not doing the right things — the things they know and understand better than you.
The Reaction
Inner animosity and desire for more is your reaction to the problem. It’s amplified by the fact that every man is some sort of loser. The question is, of course, to what degree and in what areas.
And guess what? The system decides that too. When the system or its PR team refers to success, it’s talking about money, of course.
Money is the king of the socially engineered human world. And therefore, you cannot be considered a success if you don’t have it.
By showcasing wealth possessed only by the top of the pyramid (a.k.a. the 5%-ers), the system is essentially pitching the entrepreneurial dream to 95% of the population.
Solution
After educating you that you are a poor SOB and making you hungry for a cure to self-loathing, the system starts feeding you solutions.
Think Rich Dad Poor Dad type of retardism. They will inform you that “you can’t make money working for someone else”…that “salaries are for losers”…and that “you have to own something that increases in value 100 times” to generate big coins.
True in theory. False in reality.
Why?
Because they are missing an important piece of the puzzle, namely, the scary fact that 99% of ventures FAIL regardless of anything — money, effort, resources, or intellect.
Read that again. Ok. Let me repeat.
99% of entrepreneurial ventures FAIL regardless of anything.
You can have a 190IQ and still fail.
You can work 100 hours a week and still fail.
You can pour 100k into something and still fail.
I am not making this up. Neither am I hyping you while preparing some cheesy motivation punchline.
I am speaking the truth here. They don’t call me Truth Seeker for nothing.
You are probably asking why.
It’s simple. The market is like a game of musical chairs. If the music stops when you are too far away from a chair, it’s gg no re ez.
But let’s make this a bit more vivid.
Imagine that you save 20k (or worse borrow it from the bank) to open a restaurant in 2018. You rent a place, renovate it, hire staff, think of a marketing strategy, and spam the Internet with it.
It works. You start getting clients. So, somewhere at the end of 2018 or the beginning of 2019, you start making money.
You have 10k of profit. And then COVID-19 says “Hello, motherfucker!” The restaurant is closed and you are left with at least 10k in losses and/or debt (of course there’s also interest). And no, you can’t make it work online because your location and ambiance were the main properties of the place. You can’t fight the big chains that deliver either.
So?
You lose.
But, guess what?
Everybody else wins and gains something from your loss. Everybody except you.
If you borrowed money, the bank wins because you have to pay it back with interest.
If you set your own money on fire, you still lose (at least you don’t deal with banks).
But the economy ALWAYS wins. It took your money out of your account and put it into its system like a bodybuilder who injects tren.
The people that you hired win because you paid them while they were working.
The landlord wins.
The real estate agent wins.
The state wins because you paid taxes, insurance…etc.
The food delivery guys win.
The success coaches win because you bought their motivation/scam courses.
And you?
You get empty pockets, a busted dream, a crashed ego, and a sliced soul.
Of course, some people will say the obvious — you should have known that restaurants are destined to fail.
But the brutal reality is that the same applies to all other businesses.
Think of the startup bubbles. Think of all the high IQ coders who had big ideas (or so they thought) that lost it all.
The market is vicious. And when you are an entrepreneur — you are taking the risk. Yes, potentially you will be rewarded the most, but in 99% of the cases — you are just a cigarette that the system smokes in between a session with a prostitute.
And here’s something you should never forget:
Until an idea is a reality, it’s nothing but a potential maybe.
Doesn’t matter how good it is, how smart it is, or how much work you will pour into it. Until something works, it’s nothing but a potential maybe. An illusion.
You can gather 10 men with PhDs to create a business and they may build something that ultimately fails to make money.
It’s roulette…and sometimes the Russian kind.
The ACTUAL Solution?
Is to find a job.
LoL.
I am not joking. And I will explain why so that even a lobotomized raccoon can understand.
Job = You get paid to work and always have a net profit
EWD (Entrepreneurial Wet Dream) = You pay to work and run in a deficit 99% of the time
This sounds extremely counter-intuitive given the current narratives swimming in the dirty online ocean.
But if you consider the following facts, it all clicks:
- Most businesses fail during the first year.
- Many BIG businesses that succeed in the beginning fail in the long run and their owner BAILS OUT by selling everything — sometimes with a profit (successful exit), sometimes even, but many times in a deficit.
- The state loves to eat small businesses. It makes your life a living hell as if it wasn’t already. Get ready for random checkups, corruption, and dirty tactics from other “entrepreneurs”.
Where I live, tow trucking was big for a while, and probably still is — big money in moving cars near their afterlife. One guy took out a loan and bought a tow truck to get into the business. From the outside, it looked like it was working.
But one of his competitors set his tow truck on fire. No joke. Other NPCs don’t like money-printing NPCs. The truck was barely saved from destruction.
Insurance? LoL. Those pencil neck fap-masters didn’t pay — they used some loophole as they often do.
Survivorship Bias
“But I know about this guy who was on Shark Tanks and became a millionaire by selling scrappers for removing chewing gum from your sole,” says The Dreamer.
Shut up.
All those stories. All those successes. All those examples are….wait for it…. survivorship bias a.k.a. focusing only on the winners.
If 1000 people lose, but 1 man wins, guess what, the media reports the winner. Even though the 1000 failures paint a much more realistic image.
Of course, they will sell you some low IQ idea that the difference was hard work, but that’s a slim part. Action is needed, but timing and luck — damn — that’s the unbeatable combo.
So, what to do instead?
One of the safest and most lucrative approaches is to become an expert in a field a.k.a. a higher-tier worker.
Someone who can’t be replaced by the next wave of kids who are about to turn 18 in 2025.
Examples: IT nerd, dentist (preferred over other medical professions), engineer, some kind of instructor, aluminum welder…etc.
But even if that’s not an option working a basic office job e.g., filling the TPS reports is still better.
You remember that movie Office Space. It came out in 1999, some of you reading this were exploring nipples for the first time at the time, but it still resonates today.
What if I tell you that this movie is RETARDED if you can read it properly?
How so? Everyone thinks the movie is about pursuing your dream because “corporate jobs suck”. Well, they do suck. But if you have RIQ (reality IQ) above 10, you have to look deeper.
The guy is essentially complaining that he has to do 15 minutes of work a week and the rest is nonsense. He has many bosses bitching about some TPS reports. He is depressed. Sad. A cog in the machine — all that blah, blah, blah. Eventually, he rebels and becomes a construction worker. Amazing.
The reality?
The guy is a complaining first-world pussy. Yes, that’s right. How so?
In his corporate job (the beginning), he owned the system rather than the other way around.
He was working a cushy job, requiring little work and giving him a steady paycheck (probably with multiple benefits) and a lot of extra time to pursue other endeavors (e.g., writing, reading, powerlifting…etc.)
If he gets fired, he will get a severance package. And he carries little responsibility for the success of the company. Also, every single paycheck he receives (for 15 minutes of work) is a plus, not a deficit.
At the end of the movie, he has a new job that will also suck but for a multitude of other reasons. There’s nothing wrong with working a physical trade except for one thing — it’s more demanding on your body, and you do a lot more than 15 minutes of actual work, probably for the same or less money.
And when you come home, you don’t even have the energy to stand up. The only option left is to go to bed or watch a mind-numbing movie. I can guarantee you that after 1 month, Peter (the protagonist) will be begging to return to the TPS reports.
Entrepreneurship Will Not Make You Free
There’s this myth. That owning your business will make you free. It could, but it more than likely won’t.
First, it ties you down to a single location (or forces you to go to multiple unwanted locations depending on the business method).
Second, if you have a loan to repay — the bank owns you and your business.
Third, all responsibility is on YOUR shoulders. You can’t just QUIT. It has to work. You are responsible for this “baby”. You can’t just “find another one”.
Fourth, you have NO TIME off. If you are a business owner, you are always on. Always online. Forget about passive income. Such things never existed and never will.
The Ideal Scenario
Ideally, you will be a niche/almost irreplaceable expert working on short/mid-term projects. Nothing is better than that.
I can give you 2 examples. One is being a well-paid actor. Have you ever noticed how famous actors never become entrepreneurs? Or at least rarely?
Why? Because they don’t have to. Their job includes the best of both worlds. They have a salary that they receive even if the movie is a total bust. In other words, they aren’t pressured by the movie’s success nearly as much as the investors.
Second, they get to quit without quitting. A movie doesn’t take 50 years to make. It’s like a year of shooting for an average actor at best. And if they don’t like the staff (director, writers…etc.), they can remind themselves that it’s temporary. If they do like them, they win again as they may collaborate in the future.
Hence big movie names never bother with nonsense such as starting a company. They just leverage themselves.
Of course, this isn’t realistic for the average person. You have a higher chance of kissing a helicopter in motion than becoming the next Brad Pitt.
So on a smaller scale that means something along the lines of locally successful artists, dentists, senior developers, cyber security analysts, architects, specialized welders, painters…etc.
Those jobs are highly involved in comparison to the TPS reports above, and the involvement comes with a lot of responsibility. But on the positive side, it’s precisely that involvement that makes them more actualized a.k.a. fulfilling.
The choice is somewhat ours.
But one thing is certain, son.
If the system is selling you something, it has a higher chance to benefit from it than you.
Entrepreneurial Wet Dreams is one of those things.
🙂
P.S. Here are my books. (I never made enough money out of them to quit working. So, I guess I know all of this from experience.)
Good job..thanks
Nicolas Taleb in Fooled by Randomness makes a similar point: so much of the the success in life is due to to chance but there is always a narrative concocted after the fact to explain why they were successful.
Most risky ventures fail but because of the optimism bias of mainstream media and of society in general, we focus only on the winners (i.e the 1 out of 1,000,000 writers who writes a best seller). We don’t see all the losers (all the dead bodies).
Taleb further states that success should only be measured at the end (it’s not over until the fat lady sings) because given enough time, risk and randomness will catch up with them. Many times what appears to be a successful venture ends up blowing up. He focuses more on financial enterprises, but it applies to life in general when large risks are taken (i.e. a successful bodybuilder winning several tittles until his sudden death from a heart attack).
It is kind of similar to how literal lottery works. Mainstream media only focuses on the few winners of the ultra big prizes while completely ignoring the millions who won nothing.
Entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly like that in most of the world. At least in my current country of residence (Spain), the income most entrepreneurs do barely allow them to cover basic costs and expenses (especially taxes, which are brutal in most of Europe), leaving them with minimal saving capacity. Going bankrupt and being forced to sell after a few years is maybe not a 99% chance like TruthSeeker says, but it’s certainly not uncommon. Having a well paid 9-5 job requiring low to none physical effort/presence is a blessing you should protect and take advantage of as much as you can.
I wish i knew these things when i was younger.
Instead was doing stupid stuff and dreaming all day.
Now i am 32 y.o, stuck at a low paying factory job (400 euro) in Eastern Europe.
One of the best rebuttals I’ve seen of this myth that social media has popularized in the last decades.
A few years ago I used to believe it and even considered quitting my current 9-5 job in IT despite I’m fairly well paid (for the standards of my country). However, I eventually reached conclusions similar to yours and realized the harsh reality behind the entrepreneur life. If you have lucrative and demanded skills, being a 9-5 job employee is not something to be ashamed of. It is not a bad idea to seek some form of passive income, but you have to be realistic. Chances are that it will be just a nice extra to your main source of income, not a complete replacement.
In fact, most content creators I know who have a large enough following still have some kind of full-time job that helps them to truly make a living. Their online revenue is barely around a minimum wage at best.
Add just think what a terrible existence a content creator must have. Constantly having to come up with new ways to amuse followers, monitoring the number of followers and likes, answering comments. They become slaves of their smartphones. Never putting them down. All for very little money. It is specially hard for men. They actually have to produce content that is somewhat interesting or useful. Much easier for woman. If they are somewhat young and good-looking, just by becoming online clowns and strippers, they can gather more followers than the most interesting male creators can.
Something very unfortunate about this is that the older generations don’t understand it, apparently they are as naive as the young people of today are, they think that starting a business is easy, fed by shitty books like rich dad & poor dad, not knowing that they can easily be walking money launderers, but the gullible spend their money on motivational trips (I’m not joking), equivalent to a quarter of a year’s salary, just so that they can be talked to about motivational things and supposedly be rich the next week.
I have met several mentally deranged people who think that because they have a skill they can make money on the internet making shorts and all that stuff, the competition out there is fierce and ruthless, the jobs that last over time are like slavery, that is, from 9 to 5, but the others disappear or are not sustainable.
It is also necessary to mention the people who emigrate to a country where there are more opportunities but do not take advantage of their time and just settle down. I know several cases of people who only came to waste time, and they did not take anything back to their countries.
The thought of slavery reaches some people who think that if it is profitable, they can try it in 10 years and still succeed, not knowing that the market and global companies decide the trends and which market sector dies, for example, carpentry or similar arts are no longer profitable, it must be something more or else it will barely cover basic expenses, and more examples.
The thing is that for many people (especially those beyond their 40s) without demanded skills entrepreneurship is their best option if they can afford it, especially in countries with job markets where even getting a blue-collar job is surprisingly difficult or subjected to abusive conditions (forced unpaid overtime, off-the-book salary below minimum wage, etc).
A lot are aware of the reality behind running your own small business and don’t fool themselves with delusions of grandeur and wealth. It’s simply the lesser evil.
The subject of this post once again reminds of one of Jon Lajoie’s songs called “Nine to Five”. Although the song kind of makes fun of nine to five office jobs, it doesn’t even paint that bad a picture about them. So yeah, a default message of most of Lajoie’s songs.
Anyway, for me, I can nowadays appreciate nine to five jobs a lot. It wasn’t like that in the past sadly, because if I would’ve known what to do, I would’ve been able to gather a very nice sum of money through passive income. And I really mean passive income, just a small percentage of wage to cheap passive index funds through years and decades. Nine to five would’ve easily been enough to make it work. I would now also have a very comfortable bumper if something urgent appeared, for example health related or unemployment etc.
I’ve got a very small inner circle and I’ve never been an entrepreneur, but I’ve known a few. To me, a big problem is what Truth says “you have NO TIME off. If you are a business owner, you are always on. Always online”. This is something that seems to break entrepreneurs, it eventually gets you, no matter how big your “inner motivation” etc. are. I’ve often thought that for me to be an entrepreneur, I would have to be doing something that I really, really like. And that thing just doesn’t exist. I don’t like doing anything so much that I want to be doing it 24/7.
Another thing is that it often seems to derail people into downward spiral health-wise. “Healthy body, healthy mind, healthy mind healthy body” doesn’t seem to do well with entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurs I know are time bombs, they drink a lot, they stay up all the time, either because of work or because of stress. Their relationships are fucked, they are all very difficult to be with because they are often very angry.
Oh yeah, to add one thing to this, my country is considered a very good one for entrepreneurs.
I don’t know how work ethics are in usa and western nations, but in poorer places the 15 minutes real work day is completely out of reality . The bosses owners would Squiz the hell out of the worker unpaid overtime making them have toomuch responsibilities , make the work of many persons etc. generally it is better to be self employed or be civil servant and a few other exceptions.
The advice be super indispensable specialist is not really an advice, it is also hard to become one to study overcome competition, pass exams , and when you achieve the high status job market demands might have changed . Surely it is harder than having a eg small shop . I know a lot of non bright people manage one and live a typical comfortable life , non stupid expert.
I agree on everything (except for a minor detail which I’ll explain in this message) and reached the very same conclusion 17 years ago, but sadly the 2008 global recession prevented me from securing one of those pretend jobs where you get paid no matter what you do, I saw it slipping away between my fingers and I immediately knew what kind of negative impact it would have on my life. But it is what it is and I’m still fighting for it while laughing at all the idiots who think they know better than me. They hate me out of their desire to be slaves, they can’t stand someone not being a slave which they consider should be a slave too.
Very good rule of thumb: if something is disproportionately promoted (i.e. not a normal washing machine ad, but one of those ideas which are promoted until your brain bleeds, like becoming an entrepreneur with no money or networking), is because someone is out to rob you.
The minor detail I disagree from Office Space is that the protagonist (IT worker) was already living a similar life to his construction worker buddy. He lived in the very same kind of house than him (not only next door but same wall) and had similar days after working (drinking beer). So, he is impled to not have a higher salary, that all the education and mental effort was wasted because a construction worker was living the same life without being required to do any of it and without his mental health being as damaged as him. Of course his physical health was more damaged in the construction job, but not his mental one.
Also the construction worker wasn’t afraid for his job due to office politics and periodic fire-everyone rounds, he wasn’t invested in a job which was to screw him in the end, like being required to work on weekends at his sociopath boss’ will.
It’s those reasons, like living the same life outside of work already, and improving his mental health due to getting out of office politics repercussions that made it a better decision for him, as a backup plan after trying to “get rich quick”.
The mental consequences of office work should be taken into account.
Most 9-5 jobs in the private sector will be replaced by AI. Saleswomen are becoming rarer in large stores. There are no butchers or bakers. Try getting technical support from the book Faces.
In European countries, dentists are usually entrepreneurs.
This ideal of freelancers and consultants is very rare. It is one per thousand of office workers. These are people who know about ten. That is why they are paid for three. Because they work for ten or twenty. Some of them are truly entrepreneurial because they have chosen a niche, and no one has guaranteed them that they will succeed, or that they will survive the next few years. Also, their lives are not easy. Simply put, all people who earn a lot, work a lot. Whether they are a surgeon, an IT millionaire, a CEO, a criminal, a professional athlete, an underwater welder, an elite prostitute, a chef…
I don’t know about other continents, but entrepreneurs in Western Europe and North America have received unrealistically high material support from the state during and after Covid.
The time perspective is also unclear. Yes, we will all die in a hundred years. Most of us much earlier. What does it mean if an entrepreneur fails after 50-60 years and retires as a millionaire? In a modest European, not EU, economy, I know very few people who were entrepreneurs and actually failed. Most of them were doing things on the border of legality or were unrealistic about taking out loans.
One of the best articles out here. Do you have a favourite one truthseeker?
While the article is a well-formulated corrective to the asinine “just become a millionaire entrepreneur, bro” narrative, there are few moments I still would like to highlight where I believe it may go a little overboard:
1) There are only very few cushy white-collar jobs where you work only 15 minutes per week or even per day and still get paid generously. Most do require some (and plenty – quite a lot of) work. Maybe not as much work as a hard, physical blue-collar profession, but “15 minutes per week” white-collar jobs are incredibly rare sinecures and were so even in past.
2) The example of a well-paid actor is an exaggeration. Most actors barely scrape by. Only the 1% of the 1% is able to make a comfortable living and I do believe you have more chances of being a moderately successful entrepreneur than a highly-paid actor.
3) 99% of businesses definitely do not fail. That number is surely high, maybe as high as 70% or 80%, but definitely not 99%. You can try being an entrepreneur and be reasonably successful, if you are hard-working and get lucky. But yes, things are stacked against you and most likely you won’t be very successful, let alone become a millionaire.
Overall, I do agree with the article’s recommendation. The best path today is to study some very hard technical or STEM subject at a good university (mathematics, engineering, computer science/programming, chemistry, medicine, veterinary science, accounting or other financial), become really proficient in your line of work, learn one or preferably two foreign languages that are in demand well and put aside at least a third (preferably more) of your after-tax income in secure “passive” income streams. By “passive” income streams, I mean reliable index funds, treasury bonds or savings accounts at large banks or banking conglomerates, not some stupid blog or a shady website selling supplements. These funds or accounts may be low-yield from returns standpoint, but are relatively (keyword: relatively) secure in these turbulent times and their failure essentially means the end of our industrial civilization, so losing them will be the least of your concerns, if that actually happens). Again treasury bonds, index funds or savings accounts won’t make you a millionaire, won’t offer you the “slurping-$5000-champagne-on-a-private-yacht” lifestyle, but they are something tangible and possible, requiring some work and a lot of patience.
Much better than living in a fantasy dream full of unfulfilled delusions and dismal failures.
Here, in my timeline, everybody has been assimilated/its heart eaten by A-17/Dani/LIllith and A-18/Dragon. Im waiting for the end in the form of meteor. Do not teach your sons to read label, that will spare them. Preserve innocence fellas. Theres nothing much left. John The Revelator/Steve is Azathot, he kinapped the system with “Virgin” Mary, they were eating babies till they were caught and people rebelled, she is an utter monster. I tried to protec the balance of life and death, but i failed. Sorry bros. If there is somebody left, do not learn label. Good luck boys in da bunkerz.
The advice I give to young people today is if you are not in a top profession and school (medical, legal from a top school, very very top business school), then either (a) get a high-paying technical job such as driving a combine harvester, crane operator, precision machinist (CNC operator) or (b) get a job with a local government in a blue state. (a) jobs pay well and are always in demand. Did you know the US brings in over 10,000 workers per year from South Africa alone to operate harvesting equipment on large farms during harvest season? Did you even know there is such a thing as harvest season? These people earn more in a few months than in a year in South Africa. Why import workers? Because not enough people in US know how to do this work. Here, young people are told to “go to college” and get a (useless) liberal arts degree, then end up as an unpaid intern. And no, do not go to a private technical school that will put you in debt for life, rather, go to the local community trade college for free. Still plenty of these around. Don’t fall for the private college ads. And train for the most specialized jobs. Not auto mechanic, plenty of those, and not truck driver. Try auger drill operator, road paving equipment operator, harvest equipment operator. Operating heavy agricultural equipment is good because those jobs are typically not unionized so you do not have to get seniority at a union to get the good jobs (or have a relative as a union member). Look at the job lists at the trade college before choosing a sector and pick one that has the most openings at this time. Be ready to move where these skills are in demand. And if you choose wrong, no problem, if you went to the community trade college you will not be in debt and can retrain for another job. As to (b), in Democrat-controlled states the government is in alliance with the civil service unions (police, fire, county clerks) and constantly raise their wages and benefits in return for political support. These are guaranteed jobs for life where you never get fired even if you mess up because they still have union protection. I know of one manager at the municipal power company whose group literally cut an active power line by mistake, cutting off power to half the city. He was not fired and later retired with one of the largest pensions in City history. He was not even an electrical engineer, just a bureaucrat manager. In the old days, government jobs paid less but had better benefits, but today they pay better and have better benefits, retirement pensions and job security. In California prison guards can earn up to $400,000 per year with overtime, and they can retire at age 40 at over $100,000 pension per year for life plus full benefits. And it is not dangerous work, just tedious, and the guards actually have very little contact with the prisoners (most monitoring is remote). These jobs are so valuable that basically you have to have a relative who is already a guard to get a job (same as longshoremen). In California you will find a lot of relatives working in the same government office. It’s not nepotism per se, rather, the workers already there are the first to find out about job opportunities and they tell their relatives to apply first, plus clue them in on what is expected and how to get the job. So you have to have your ear to the ground to get one of these jobs but it is not impossible if you have a reasonable education (associates degree from community college is fine) and make some contacts with government employees. The key is to find out when there is job opening and go for it.