Young & Stupid: How I Made 2.5 Million
andrewfashion.com
andrewfashion.com
I don't think I believe any of this, other than that he wants to make money off of the internet because everyone wants to make money off of the internet. For one, he claims to be writing a book, despite having an apparent 5th grade reading level. I hope he spent about $100k of that $2.5 million on a ghost writer before he lost it. Also I'd bet he's telling the truth about being a high school dropout.
For another, he claims to be running bemodel.com, but that site does nothing but display stock photos.
I also find it hard to believe that anyone who would point out "The Secret" (and not the book version either, but the movie based on it) as their inspiration could ever scale a website to enough traffic to make $100k+/mo. I'm skeptical he could even spell PHP let alone use it.
I have to say, it's VERY tempting for me to buy his ebook about making women chase me. That has to be a non-stop laugh riot.
We realized that he had to have been keeping this in his pants all night, and as my brother and I made our way to the car I told him "you realize that we have to see what that is the moment we get home".
Upon arrival back at my brother's apartment, we proceeded to watch the movie, and were mystified that someone had tried to compile an hour and half video around the idea of "positive thinking"; much less that someone had thought enough of it to carry it around in their pants to impart to strangers at a party.
Page two, where he goes on to describe how he spent all his money on frivolous crap, is the icing on the cake. It combines just the right proportions of cautionary example and ridiculous schadenfreude to make a good story.
My personal philosophy is that you've got to get yourself correctly life-balanced. Adding money just amplifies your current habits. So if you're working 24x7 with no life balance, adding a lot of money will just amplify that out-of-control nature.
What's sad to me is that there was nobody in this guys life who could act as a mentor and provide advice.
All the expensive cars are much more of an issue. Fun is fun, "status" is a total waste.
It's also the pervasive attitude of using money as a means to impress others. No amount of money will fix that, because there's always someone richer to impress. You mightn't think wasting 30k in vegas was fun, but I'd ask if he would do the same thing in a less 'glamorous' place.
Frankly I would see the cars as less of a waste because presumably they still have some resale value.
edit : I'll just add to that, think of any mentor you can. Now ask yourself : would that mentor suggest blowing that cash on gambling, strippers and expensive gifts for an (obviously) fair-weather girlfriend was a good idea?
Spending 1.75% of your total net wealth on entertainment, in one go, though, is dumb. Maybe it was multiple trips, but still, Las Vegas is a very easy, and very unsatisfying, way to spend large sums of cash. The only worse item on the list is $20K in strip clubs.
All the expensive cars are much more of an issue. Fun is fun, "status" is a total waste.
Cars aren't fun? Maybe you don't enjoy driving, but I sure as hell do. If I had a $2.5 million windfall I'd be buying some fancy cars too.
Which isn't to say the message isn't useful to people (although I nearly spit out my soda upon seeing him go on about The Secret).
It sounds like he has a good sense for churning out websites which are useful to people though, so kudos to him (and hopefully he can pull another one out and actually hold onto the money this time).
Reading the post reminds me of a lot of kids I grew up with who were basically hustlers; they just wanted to be rich and would try anything they could think of (usually some combination of managing musicians, selling drugs, or stealing cars) to attain it.
In retrospect, I don't think any of them ended up being rich.
This kid did though, so what do I know.
;)
Anyway, it has nothing to do with "bragging" when you complain about errors.
But those things are all secondary. He, unlike 99% of anyone who attempts anything, put in those 10K, 20K, 30K hours, and through those countless iterations made his own luck.
A year ago, he was launching a social network for models: http://www.andrewfashion.com/2010/08/16/whats-been-going-on-...
Now he's leveraging his antics to get in with the HN crowd. He doesn't write great, he doesn't have any real insight to things, and yet he's on the front page of HN and will probably make some $ out of all of this. He'll probably land 2 or 3 more articles, establish himself in the community, and then launch bemodel with a HN/Reddit post that will get lots of free traffic.
I dunno? On some levels I think he's a twit, and on other levels he seems like a savant
So what's the moral?
Make $100,000/month = Make $100/month.
Buying a $420,000 house = Live in mom's house
Buy a brand new BMW = Buy a 1982 Volvo.
Write a post saying how you made tons of money and blew it = Please buy my book - this Volvo isn't getting any newer
and here is the second post with screen caps of his earnings with his publisher id in the top right corner (for google) http://www.andrewfashion.com/2009/12/04/young-stupid-how-i-l...
If not, what would you do with the extra hours every day?
To me, $2.5 million sounds like a pretty good start towards a comfortable retirement, but I'd want to supplement it with another couple of million before I really declared myself ready to never work again.
I actually did the calculations yesterday and figured out that on my current budget, even adding in an extra 50% to cover random things I might need or want, I would only need 1.4 million dollars to live this way until I'm 100 years old...