I can’t quite remember when it happened but at some point in my early 20s, my life flipped upside down.
In a matter of moments I went from trying my best to get good grades as I pursued a mechanical engineering degree, to wanting absolutely nothing to do with college.
I hadn’t even finished my freshman year, but I knew that being an engineer wasn’t the future I wanted.
Friends and family told me:
“You don’t know that yet, school is nothing like the actual job”
They didn’t understand why I was so disinterested.
They didn’t understand why I was so sure.
You see, something happened.
Something huge.
I don’t know what caused it or who pointed me in the right direction. Maybe I read a book or saw a YouTube video or something, I can’t remember.
Nevertheless, my entire worldview changed.
I remember hearing something like:
“Why do we normalize the idea of trading away 40-50 years of youthful dreams at a job we hate for 10-15 years of elderly freedom?”
It blew my mind but it also stung a bit.
Put another way:
A 9-5 job guarantees that you will spend 40-50 hours/week away from the people you love most for almost all of your adult life
I envisioned myself spending decades building someone else’s dream while having Monday - Friday predetermined for me the entire time.
I didn’t like it.
It pissed me off.
I had to do something about it.
If I remember correctly, I spent an entire weekend searching for a way to escape my potential future stuck in a cubicle as an engineer.
A way that would allow me to take my freedom back or at least get it back a lot sooner than everyone else.
There are only two real answers that still apply today:
Self-employment
Early retirement
Self-employment still requires that you work (often more than 40 hours/week) while early retirement requires a lot of money.
If you do it right, #1 can lead to #2.
Both are extremely difficult though.
It didn’t deter me.
I spent the next three years of college working ~30 hours/week at a car wash, building a small online business, and studying just enough to graduate with a 3.2 GPA.
That business was a textbook reselling business on Amazon that I still operate to this day.
I would go on to start several different ecommerce businesses that failed miserably.
They failed so bad that I ended up using my degree and getting a job as an aerospace engineer on a really cool project (google “VC-25B”).
Turns out, I didn’t like being an engineer.
I was right
I forced myself to keep the job for 18 months before one of my businesses finally took off and I quit.
It scaled like crazy and I was able to sell the business in early 2020 for a heavy chunk of change.
All of the proceeds went directly into my other businesses, stocks, Pokémon booster boxes, and retired LEGO sets.
Five years of compounding later and work is now technically optional for me.
I still work because I like to, not because I have to.
Understand that I’m not stupid nor foolish enough to believe every American out there can do exactly what I did.
There are only so many people that even want to escape the 9-5 prison system and even less are actually capable of sticking to something for longer than 30 seconds before giving up.
However, what I write about here still applies to everyone.
Want to keep your amazing career but build something on the side that allows you to make work optional in your 40s rather than your 60s?
Then you’re in the right place.
This newsletter is a documentation of several of my online businesses as I operate them in real time.
It is the newsletter that I wished existed back when I realized that I wasn’t meant to spend my life as a 9-5 robot.
Inside, I share:
How much money my Amazon business makes every month
The LEGO sets I invest in to make multiple six figures every year
How much money my supplement business makes every month.
The Pokémon booster boxes I invest in to see triple digit yearly ROI numbers
“Pokémon cards and LEGO sets, that’s random as hell… what gives?”
Simply put:
LEGO sets and Pokémon booster boxes are two asset classes that have outperformed the stock market for multiple decades now. (Google it if you don’t believe me)
I also grew up in the 90s and love a good hit of nostalgia.
They both share a unique characteristic in that the supply of them in sealed condition decreases over time as humans open them.
My Pokémon and LEGO portfolios have blown my stock portfolio out of the water for years.
That will not change.
While they do require you to effectively run an ecommerce business, the reward is worth the effort.
There are two things you should do immediately if what you have read so far sounds interesting:
First, read the 3 posts below that outline my one-person business blueprint:
Then, consider diving ALL the way in by becoming a paid subscriber of this newsletter
In doing so, you get access to:
My private mentorship group on Discord (this used to be $329)
My LEGO Investing Mastery Guide (this used to be $169)
My Textbook Flipping Mastery Guide (this used to be $169)
Buy/Sell alerts for LEGO (these will make you money)
Buy/Sell alerts for Pokémon (these will make you money)
These resources will show you how to make your first $1,000 on the internet using the same methods I used to escape the rat race:
Disclaimer
This post is not financial or investment advice.
While I will always vouch for the content I publish and the ideas I teach, there are limits to what I’m legally allowed to encourage without putting myself in harms way.
