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'Quit Your Day Job Is Garbage Advice' (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: While Daymond John was building his clothing line FUBU, which would evolve into a $6 billion brand, the entrepreneur was living on the tips he made waiting tables at Red Lobster. "I was working at Red Lobster for five years as a waiter as I was running this business," the Shark Tank star said at the iConic conference in New York City on Wednesday. At first "it was 40 hours at Red Lobster and six hours at FUBU. Then it was 30 hours at Red Lobster and 20 hours at FUBU, because money started to come in." Even after FUBU started to take off, John continued waiting tables. He wouldn't do things any differently if he could, he told the audience on Wednesday: "Don't quit your day job. [...] Let's say I was making an average of $40,000 a year," he continued. "After five years, that's $200,000 of salary. I would have had to sell $1 million more worth of FUBU product to bring home the $200,000, but I didn't have to do that. I just had to sacrifice time."
please pay attention to this, as the other (unstated) part matters equally: get a job
Anywhere else... not so much.
A few points why bringing up a start up at Red Lobster works over basically any other kind of job:
1. You can pick your hours and change them on a moment's notice.
2. It's not brain heavy work. You can keep the start up as your primary focus.
3. You don't have to worry about your employer accusing you of using their resources (and IP) to start a business.
It actually makes a lot of sense to get a job working at Starbucks/Red Lobster/serving food anywhere when doing a start up to ensure that the rent isn't something you're worried about and you can put that extra focus on the startup.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Because everyone knows money is far more valuable than time...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
He probably got to eat for free, and take home left overs and feed rest of his family too. Saved money definitely. Only compromise is having to agree that what Red Lobster dishes out is food then have the gumption to eat it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Most billionaires probably have garbage advice, once you separate out the survivor bias. That said, this tidbit makes more sense than most.
That's the trade-off. Different people will make different trade-offs
"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend" - Theophrastus
First - you're missing an 'a', and second - keep doing a mindless, thankless, demeaning work after you don't have to do it anymore is the shittiest advice, ever. I know people who say if it wasn't for their job, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. There is _literally_ an infinite number of things and stuff you can do when you don't have to go to work. Almost an infinity of them are a better experience. And if you don't like any of them, you can always kill yourself.
Who's telling people to quit their day jobs? is that a thing now? fuck this generation gets dumber ever time i read an article about them.
The summary says you shouldn't quit your day job, but obviously he did because he doesn't still wait tables at Red Lobster. It's about WHEN you quit your day job.
This will be a fairly personal decision, but a bunch of factors come in to play. first of all, if you can't survive on the money your startup is providing, then obviously you need to keep your day job. And once you can make more money running your own company than spending that same time at your day job, it's a no-brainer to quit to focus on your startup. The real challenge is the in-between states, and that's going to depend on your opinion of your existing job. Is it something you enjoy? and does it provide you the flexibility to work on the other project that you're passionate about? in that case stick around. Is it something you despise? Do you absolutely detest going to work each morning? is it interfering with your passions? In that case it may be worth taking a pay cut to work on your startup.
Have a day job that pays the bills and work a side business that brings in cash flow.
Never follow your passion, but always bring it with you. -- Mike Rowe
https://www.prageru.com/sites/...
There are only two things I can tell you today that come with absolutely no agenda. The first is “Congratulations.” The second is “Good luck.” Everything else is what I like to call, “The Dirty Truth,” which is just another way of saying, “It’s my opinion.”
And in my opinion, you have all been given some terrible advice, and that advice, is this:
Follow your passion.
Every time I watch the Oscars, I cringe when some famous movie star—trophy in hand—starts to deconstruct the secret of their success. It’s always the same thing: “Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have what it takes, kid!”; and the ever popular, “Never give up on your dreams!”
Look, I understand the importance of persistence, and the value of encouragement, but who tells a stranger to never give up on their dreams, without even knowing what it is they’re dreaming? How can Lady Gaga possibly know where your passion will lead you?
Have these people never seen American Idol?
Year after year, thousands of aspiring American Idols show up with great expectations, only to learn that they don’t possess the skills they thought they did. What’s really amazing though, is not their lack of talent—the world is full of people who can’t sing. It’s their genuine shock at being rejected—the incredible realization that their passion and their ability had nothing to
do with each other.
Look, if we’re talking about your hobby, by all means let your passion lead you. But when it comes to making a living, it’s easy to forget the dirty truth: just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean you won’t suck at it.
And just because you’ve earned a degree in your chosen field, doesn’t mean you’re gonna find your “dream job.”
Dream Jobs are usually just that—dreams. But their imaginary existence just might keep you from exploring careers that offer a legitimate chance to perform meaningful work and develop a genuine passion for the job you already have. Because here’s another Dirty Truth: your happiness on the job has very little to do with the work itself.
On Dirty Jobs, I remember a very successful septic tank cleaner, a multi-millionaire, who told me the secret to his success:
“I looked around to see where everyone else was headed,” he said, “And then I went the opposite way. Then I got good at my work. Then I began to prosper. And then one day, I realized I was passionate about other people’s crap.”
I’ve heard that same basic story from welders, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, HVAC professionals, hundreds of other skilled tradesmen who followed opportunity—not passion— and prospered as a result.
Consider the reality of the current job market.Right now, millions of people with degrees and diplomas are out there competing for a relatively narrow set of opportunities that polite society calls “good careers.” Meanwhile, employers are struggling to fill nearly 5.8 million jobs that nobody’s trained to do. This is the skills gap, it’s real, and its cause is actually very simple: when people follow their passion, they miss out on all kinds of opportunities they didn’t even know existed.
When I was 16, I wanted to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps. He was a skilled tradesman who could build a house without a blueprint. That was my passion, and I followed it for years. I took all the shop classes at school, I did all I could to absorb the knowledge and skill that came so easily to my granddad.
Unfortunately, the ha
Quit your job and get government assistance while you do your startup. Then when you get rich you can find ways to hide your wealth from the government, avoid giving back as much as possible, tell the public you would be happy to pay more taxes (while avoiding them as much as possible), treat your workers like shit, and then give small amounts to charity so you show Tue world how morally superior you are.
Well, we can always earn more time, right?
it demands both your time and mental energy. You will never be able to put the time and energy you need to invest into that new enterprise if you are working 40-50 hour weeks at something unrelated. Making something new succeed take work, lots and lots of real, multiple hour per day work. Very few people are capable of spending 20 hours a day running at full speed. Those who can succeed by doing so are the outliers, not the standard.
The only way you will ever have enough time and energy to put into a career shift or new entrepreneurial adventure is if you make a plan and take the risk.
That said, the best advice I've ever hear about the conundrum of working and career shift/dream jobs is to work full time and save at least half the money you make. You can quit that day job when you are able to fun your new enterprise with the money you have saved. If you've saved half your years salary, you then have a years worth of money to live off of while you engage in your (hopefully) new enterprise.
Getting experience in the job you want to make for yourself is immensely important as well, so if you can work a day job where you are gaining experience at the thing you want to do, especially if you can manage to find yourself someone who is willing to mentor you along the way, then you will learn the lessons you need to learn before you flail about on your own.
Many people fail their new enterprises, not necessarily because they lack skill in whatever discipline in the field, but because they failed to realize that half or more of their new job is actually running a business. Talk to and make friends with successful business owners. They don't always have to be in your field, but they will probably have a lot of insight into how to manage doing what you love doing along side of making sure that your business or new career remains viable.
And this is why the Actor/Waiter trope is so common.
In theory, the food service schedule is flexible - but that depends a lot on where you're working. Fast food and fast casual (Red Lobster probably is the latter) are moving to a "just in time" scheduling paradigm. They forecast their labor needs, and you show up when they tell you. If you're lucky, you might be able to trade shifts, but the whole JIT scheduling system also makes sure that people don't work more than a certain number of hours/week (to make sure the employer doesn't have to pay for certain legally required benefits) and OT calculations and all that.
OTOH if you're wait-staff or kitchen crew at a small chain or one-off place, and the owner/manager is willing to work with the crew, then sure.
And if you're starting at 30 hrs/week and ask to go down to 20 or 15, that's probably doable too.
BTW, 40k/year (TFA example) at full time is $20/hr, pretax. I'm going to guess that Red Lobster doesn't pay $20/hr.
Hell, most entrepreneurs that I know are putting in a minimum of 60 a week and its usually closer to over 70 hours a week.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I was working as a software developer on a very demanding project, pulling 60+ hours a week most weeks while I wrote my first novel.
It was a long process, and it was very hard, and yes I had no free time between my money job and my passionate speculative job.
As time went on I finally finished the book, and sold thousands of copies.
I am proud to say that today I make 6 figures a year...
...as a software developer, because that's my real job and nearly every novelist who ever lived didn't make a living at it, and it is important to have realistic dreams.
I've seen enough Shark Tank to notice that the other judges are always saying "I can't invest with you because you don't believe enough in your idea to quit your day job" or "you're not 100% committed to this when you're not doing this full time."
Like any from anyone who "made it big". And it's not even that they try to deceive and mislead you because they don't want you to succeed.
Any time one of those self-made billionaires tells you how he made it and what to do, you're essentially listening to someone who won the jackpot in the life lottery telling you the numbers he played. At the same time, you could ask a thousand people who didn't make it who will tell you exactly the same, but they just didn't have the luck to be at that right place at the right time that this guy was.
That what he did worked for him at that time when he did it is obvious. Just like playing those numbers on that day worked for the lottery player. You will not reliably repeat this by doing the same, for this too many variables changed in the game. Even if there was no FUBU today, opening a chain like this today would fail simply because the market changed and there is no longer the amount of young people with expendable money, just to name one factor that makes or breaks this business.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Most can't, and then get told they're a failure as a human being when they can't. The worst thing is lots of them believe it. That's where the race to the bottom starts.
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I could swear I've even heard Daymond spouting that crap on the show, too.
to his competitors. When he was competing the competitions were pretty friendly and it didn't occur to anyone he'd lie to them. He gave them a routine that was massive overwork. They tried to stick to it and of course burned themselves out.
What's the old saying? Never ask a man how he made his first million. Odds are if someone didn't inherit it or win the lottery they did something awful to get it.
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I've seen enough Shark Tank to notice that the other judges are always saying "I can't invest with you because you don't believe enough in your idea to quit your day job" or "you're not 100% committed to this when you're not doing this full time."
Another dirty secret is that they don't want you to live on any of the money they invest, lots of startup founders are living in their parents basement.
At the craps table, I only stand on my left foot, and I only talk in the third person, and I've won lots of money, so it should work for you too.
-Xoltri
The end result is being a net worth of $300M. Who cares about a measly $200k for giving up that many hours of your life? 20 hours a week over how many years to increase your net worth by 0.06%? No thanks.
Ignoring the idea that whatever these billionaires did might not work for anyone else, what they did actually worked out for them. The counterfactual is that if they didn't do these things they wouldn't have their success. Hard to say, but because the odds are very long, I suspect that these elements were important *to them* even if it tainted by selection bias. Call it a mini-anthropic principle of sorts... Isn't that what they say about the lottery. You can't win if you don't play.
Of course the environment that we all find ourselves in is different and constantly evolving, but at least we can take away from this free advice is that you don't really need to know shit to become a billionaire, but being lucky isn't sufficient either. You need to work hard and have the stomach to take some calculated risks. All the calculations in the world won't replace luck, but without those other elements, you may be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, but still have no chance. That isn't totally bad advice in the abstract about life in general even though the specifics for a person might be total bullshit for a different person.
Americans in manufacturing used to work an average of nearly 70 hours per week. So I'd say that it isn't an unrealistic number for most people.
Source: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/
I've been part of several failed startups, plus a couple of very successful ones. The ones which failed the most spectacularly were the ones which had very early injections of seed money. The ideas were certainly viable, but the problem was that the investment took the immediate focus off of making money. Of course that was partly the point of the investment, to focus on development, however it was a strategic and grave mistake. In all cases, whenever the investments dried up, the ventures had to go out of business - because there were leases and employees and services to pay for, which could not be sustained.
The most succesful ones started with nothing but, say, a $1500 line of credit at one distibutor and a corner in somebody's garage. At the very outset, every single transaction made money. They accepted no outside investments. They just kept cycling the profits back into the business, with a very low overhead, fanning the embers until there was so much work to do, they had to hire people to get it done - and before long find bigger space to do it in. One such company, a wholesale distributor which followed the telemarketing model of sales, grew no less than 35% annually for about 10 years before going public via merger. At the time of merger there were about 270 employees.
I work in manufacturing and currently work 90 hours a week. That said, I still make less than 40,000 USD. Americans are quite privileged making Donald Trump's rhetoric ever more perplexing.
...gives advice about how to become successful without bothering to work out why he didn't fail. He may well have had regular bowel movements. Does he recommend that in his recipe for business success too?
Maybe it's just me, but I have a problem with the idea of taking any sort of career advice from someone described as a "Shark Tank star" ... except, perhaps, on how to become star on Shark Tank.
Oh yeah, it was called...slavery if I remember correctly.
Work 70+ hours in unpaid dirty jobs; the wet dream of many of today's industrialists.
So I'd say that it isn't an unrealistic number for most people.
Who is talking about being unpaid? Of course, these people should be paid enough to pay for shelter, food, security, and family. That said, there are too many freeloaders who work only 60 hours a week or less and make way more. That's just unfair to people who actually work for their money.
And I am not his mom or his best bud.
Startups are simultaneously a lot of fun and as depressing as shit because most of you (99.9%) will fail and by the time you admit that you're burned out and lost all confidence. If you don't have something to put the breaks on you'll keep hacking even though your smarts and quality of work turns to shit and you don't realize it.
In the morning your brain is fresh, but by late in the day your brain has turned to mush anyway. A job without much responsibility is a relief. You can pay the rent and stop worrying about that. Hang out with coworkers which will likely be mostly nice because few crave aspire to keys at the Red Lobster executive washroom so without the backstabbing that takes place in startup land - (don't claim you know a man until you've worked in his startup!), and you remind yourself there is life during and after startup. And when you do get back to work the next day, your brain is fresh.
Life expectancy? Health and enjoying life?
Sorry, there is no reason for people to work such outrageous numbers of hours.
Unless they are being paid double overtime and choosing to do so.
Like Trump the more you post the more you reveal.
And it ain't pretty.
Is Karma a Bitch? I imagine you hope not.
so yeah, there's that too.
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So he takes a 20% cut right off the top of his merchanidse?
FUBU sounds like overpriced crap.