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Comment by rapind | Hacker News Reader

> It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself. They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy and anyone can do it with the right mindset and a few key tips.

This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb, assume 99% of influencers are full of shit. Stay off instagram.

Running a business is definitely hard. I don’t think it’s for everyone. You need to handle failure, long hours, lack of balance, and disappointment in a sort of irrational way. Kind of like a fanaticism / religion of self. Ultimately it’s probably not healthy!

I don’t recommend persevering due to FOMO. See if working for others scratches the itch so you have something to compare it to.

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> This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb, assume 99% of influencers are full of shit. Stay off instagram.

This 100x! Many of the big influencers in these indie/startup/productivity niches seem to earn a lot of money at first sight. If you look deeper, a lot of these influencer seem to be making a lot of money from courses they are selling instead of operating the business they sell courses about.

My all time favorite is Robert T. Kiyosaki's book "Poor dad, rich dad". Pretty much everything he teaches about financial success is fiction. In reality he worked a regular 9 to 5 job, failed at starting his own business, and finally made money by selling this book and providing seminars.

Just looked at his Twitter. Seems like he's gone off the deep end and is now grifting like Alex Jones. Posts about Fauci, woke liberals, FBI + KGB working in cahoots....pathetic, really.

Pathetic to have different political opinions? Is that where some of us has landed. Anyone speaking against my own views are pathetic worthless and worthy of scorn? Then you wonder why society has divided into culture wars and why so much hate exists in the world.

It’s one thing to have viewpoints, there are a lot of traditionally conservative ideals that have value, but, like many things, become a nightmare scenario when taken to the extreme.

I think the “pathetic” comment is aimed at the fact that if you’re running with the Alex Jones camp, you’re not really on planet earth anymore.

Watching an unwell person publicly spiral into paranoia and conspiracy-obsession and then calling that a "different political opinion" is a pretty bizarre take.

Possibly not when you share those opinions and are into conspiracy and paranoia yourself. Plenty of people like that, unfortunately.

Not familiar with this author and which particularly views he shared - but between COVID passport, COVID being human made, Fauci funding COVID and the FBI paying to hide Hunter Biden's laptop, conspiracy theories are being more accurate than mainstream news.

You are welcome take a look for yourself and ponder whether you'd take business advice from him.

He was always a Trump-like persona whose audience tended towards the same demographic.

I fell into this whole startup hustle bubble a while ago, obviously I also read the book "Rich dad, poor dad". At least I tried, it was bad. Not only was it unrealistic, it also dismissed a whole lot of external factors at play at accumulating such wealth and didn't feel realistic at all. I did not know that he worked regular 9 to 5 and only generated his wealth by providing advice how to build wealth, but its not really surprising and fits the picture fairly well.

It made you poorer and him richer though, so from his perspective it's a good book.

This genuinely made me LOL

Basically, how VCs works too. And that's why we have to take their feedback carefully.

Yes, definitely. Invariably they're looking out for #1 first.

The takeaway I got from him was positive. First, start buying real estate and renting. THEN, with that financial security try to build a business of your own if you are motivated. The first part is hard to fail at, and you can do it while working a full time job.

He also mentioned that property is a liability, not an investment. I guess many property management companies would disagree.

> THEN, with that financial security ..

Nah, you'll just mooch off your stable unearned, unproductive income source for the rest of your life. It's called rent seeking -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking and it's the absolute core of the disease that is modern capitalism.

You are completely correct. I hate this stuff that's peddled on YouTube, it's pretty simple, ask yourself what do they get out of telling you this if they are making so much money doing it. They are making money selling you courses.

What made me more susceptible I think is that my father made his money grinding up, buying a few flats , moving into full on property development. I paid no attention to his business until it was too late for me to learn from him (he died). Sure I worked on his building sites as a teenager, grafted cleaning out flats after tenants moved out (this is while my mates enjoyed their school holidays). He did pretty well and I grew up in a pretty affluent way. The stress was awful for him. I believe it fucked him up a bit. I have a few bad memories of him being a bit horrible. I forgive him that now looking back at the pressure he was under.

After his death I was desperate to emulate him. I began to think working for a salary was a mugs game. I paid for some bullshit property courses. Never went all in on anything thank god.

Anyway, eight years later I've accepted what I am, I'm in a job I actually like. I'll plough my furrow doing software and getting better at it. It's modest, but it's more certain. And uncertainty is the root of stress for me.

One bit of advice he gave me when I was complaining about working and having a manager etc "son, the bank manager is my boss, he can call in my loans any time" I can see now that this is a great antidote to the bullshit financial freedom advice on YouTube

I appreciated your comment. However with respect to what your Dad told you :

> "son, the bank manager is my boss, he can call in my loans any time"

that would have been true for him (being in property development). But there are people who build successful businesses or just work for themselves who never go into substantial debt and thus are free of any such 'creditor boss'.

True. Though anyone I know who is owns a business uses debt to grow it. But you make a fair point.

I’ll teach you to become rich by teaching other people to become rich by teaching other…

It’s charlatans all the way down.

I am a fairly successful YouTuber, and the same thing exists in my space. It pains me to see the YouTube gurus out there, fleecing people of their money by selling them dreams. Dreams they themselves have not achieved.

Beware of anyone who is selling risk-free shortcuts to hard work. They also go by a different, less appealing name: get rich quick schemes.

It's the same way many startups make products that they sell to other tech companies.

And the ones that make money whose products sold to those "I bought shits from this popular guy", "I'm trendy now", too much bias.

What do people think of Alex Hormozi in this regard?

i don't understand why people fall for it. if anyone is making a killing in their business, they're not going to sell a book about how to create a killing in thay field. (a) they don't need to because they're already making a killing (b) ahy create more competition for yourself/give away your secrets? if selling your secrets nets more money than the business... then obviously it wasn't a good business

In Italy we said: who knows make business, who do not teach how to make it. We have some journalists here selling courses I did not understand what business they was successful…

Would you mind naming who specifically you would put into that group?

E.g. Would you put Pieter Levels into that category?

The insidious part is that these grifters make it seem as if everyone had a fair shot at the startup game, when in reality they just pretend it to make their audience of potential customers larger.

My experience going to business events is that all of the startup founders who made it had parents well into the top 1% or 0.1% of the income range. That's why it's so common to raise a $100k friends and family seed round and not even feel worried about losing it all.

If OP wasn't privileged enough, he/she might be doing everything correctly, but the results without a $100k megaphone will be very different.

Who are these “influencers” everyone is talking about? Never once in my lifetime I have ever heard anyone say “building a successful startup is easy!” WTF?

No, of course not. If it were easy, why would it take six payments of $24.95+S/H to teach you how to do it?

Shipping and handling for a digital course? Sounds suspect but if it’s guaranteed to make me rich and put me on a beach in six months, I’m sold.

This also applies to other fields. People also believe that it is simple to make money through day trading. There are many tiktok influencers and youtubers who portray themselves as millionaires, trading on a beach while digital nomading and giving nonsense advice. Yes, it is possible to make money day trading, but it takes a significant amount of learning, practice, patience, time, and discipline, and even then, the results are not always consistent, and it is not for everyone.

biaheza on YouTube makes a bunch of good videos debunking the git rich quick schemes and showing the other side of the coin. https://www.youtube.com/@biaheza

Is he really though? I did view a bunch of his videos and realized the "Dropshipping course" for 294$. I obviously haven't watched the course, but dropshipping is basically one of the most popular "get rich quick schemes" on YouTube aside from daytrading.

I think he does talk about the difficulties in starting/running a drop shipping store in some of his vids. But I do agree, it add any cred that he's still trying to sell a "dropshipping course". I definitely wouldn't recommend anyone start drophipping, be it following his course or any other.

I've been working on day trading now for just over 5 years. I even took a sabbatical for 1.5 years to fully dedicate myself to it. Still struggling to be consistently profitable. I figure it's going to take me another few years to have be in the place where I feel I can give up my other career entirely. Easily the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

Definitely right, 99% of influencers about day trading are full of shit

i don't know nothing about day trading but it sounds hard AF to be profitable. even if you by some miracle figure out the winning formula... it won't last. others will figure it out and the game will change again. sounds exhausting!

As I understand day trading is a full time job. How do you work on that for 5 years without profits?

> I figure it's going to take me another few years

What are you planning to learn or what skills are you planning gain or sharpen during that period?

CAVEAT EMPTOR friend. I have day traded for 3 yrs. There is no edge to be had for retail day traders. It’s a suckers game, where the odds are stacked against you, just like in a casino. The platforms that trade against retail order-flow make all the money by front running trades at the sub-millisecond level, on every trade. It’s called electronic market-making. Everyone is a glorified speculator. Evidence is ask any of these influencers for an audited trade history or P&L… you’ll never see one. You may get lucky trading and win big, like a gambler, but if you keep playing, you’ll give everything back, then if you buy on margin or leverage with options, you’ll lose it all and more. There are no repeat fund managers that make the top of the list year after year. It’s just dumb luck, they get paid management fees (2 and 20) to gamble: Please save yourself years of misery.

I don't understand how OP could take that seriously. I can't think of anyone who has built a successful business and can trace their origins back to "I was very inspired by people on Twitter". I thought it would have been obvious that real success takes real work. "Digital influencers" are nothing more than sad people craving for attention online. Their success relies on idiots trying to mimic their "success". It's an emotional Ponzi scheme. Don't get stuck swimming in their vomit.

And you're really almost hitting the point directly - but this guy just seems to "want" to be the owner of a tech-startup, rather then someone with a good tech idea who then turns it into a successful business.

Everyone is selling a dream, and people are willing to buy because they fall in love with the "idea" of the dream - I think unless I had some actually insane, never thought of tech, I would NEVER want to be a tech-startup. Everyone is trying to take advantage of you to fulfil their own dreams, ironically

Anyone who thinks working from a beach is possible has never tried.

The screen isn't always readable.

And many people who sit nearby aren't working and maybe living and making memories.

Lifeguards. Ice-cream salespeople. Pamela Anderson. FALSE!

Don’t forget about regular interruptions by the beach sales team network if you end up on a resort there part of the beach path is public access.

Having done enough of the travel to paradise to work to realize for me that it doesn’t provide either with enough depth, and if I like deep experiences I should consider that.

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