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CB-003: Escaping the Wantrapreneur Doom Loop
Killing Unicorns and Chasing Freedom
Zack Monninger
April 30, 2023
Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.
Today’s Topic: The Wantrapreneur Doom Loop
The Situation
You’re stuck in a doom loop.
If you’re anything like me that is.
Early on, it was dreams of growing a startup.
Then the appeal shifted to internet money-making schemes.
Dropshipping.
Affiliate marketing.
Some dude’s long-form sales page about flipping real estate.
Insert random passive income scheme here.
What’s on your personal doom loop doesn’t matter. We need to escape it.
But there are two GUARANTEED ways to stay on that loop:
Chasing Easy and Chasing Unicorns
Chasing Easy
“Get Rich Quick” - or maybe “Get Rich Easy” - schemes are never going away. They appeal to human nature. And humans gonna human.
Who doesn’t want passive income that magically gets deposited in our bank account every week?
Being some master puppeteer behind a bunch of websites that generate affiliate marketing income sounded super sweet to me.
But the reality is this - these things are MASSIVE time sinks. A tiny fraction who go down that route will find any success. And an even smaller number will find reasonable success.
The REAL money is selling the “system.”
During a gold rush, sell shovels - right?
Chasing Unicorns
Being the next Jeff Bezos sounds pretty good right? Start a world-changing company. Become a billionaire. Give half of it to your ex-wife later.
Don’t get me wrong - I love people who start huge businesses. If you have grand plans, please don’t let me stop you.
But unicorn chasing is NOT a clear path out of your 9-5.
Unless you have some inside market knowledge, your best friend is a newly minted NFL draft pick with poor financial advisors, or you have some unique competitive advantage - your odds of success are low.
Very low.
So figure out what your goal here is:
Change the world and become a billionaire? Then chase a unicorn.
Escape the 9-5 grind for the sake of freedom and flexibility? Chase a high-probability outcome.
The Simplest Path
Take whatever you’re paid to do now (or another expertise you possess)
Figure out how to do that as a solo provider.
Design and model a durable, sustainable business
Figure out how to generate leads
Charge for your expertise
The above is still HARD. But there’s no SIMPLER path out of your 9-5.
It’s not sexy.
It’s not glamorous.
It might not be what you want to do for the rest of your life.
But it’s the simplest, lowest risk, highest probability escape plan.
And it’s what I’m going to teach you how to do.
What You Can Expect Going Forward
If you haven’t picked up on it yet - I’ve already built a massive online course on this topic.
It’s 100% ready to go and will deliver massive value.
This email newsletter is going to explain as much as I can in ~5 minutes per week (the course is nearly 10 hours of video training).
It’s designed to be a crash course in business strategy for someone doing exactly what I’ve described above.
It’s aimed at individuals who like to work towards a plan.
I’ll offer it to the email list soon at a huge discount.
For reference, the chart below shows my first 48 months in business.
My First 48 Months in Business
It’s a 12-month run-rate chart.
So months 1-12: I generated ~$78k
Months 36-48: I generated ~$184k
This was working normal hours from my home office. No nights. No weekends.
I’m not showing this to brag. Others do better than me.
I want you to see a realistic example of what happens when every step you take is part of a larger strategy.
Soon we’ll be diving into my real expertise - modeling and strategic business design.
But first, we’re going to have to cover some fundamentals.
Some of the philosophical building blocks we’ll use to frame our foundation.
Until next time - LFG.
-Zack