echospheregroup

Category: Business Lessons and Patterns

  • Should a 21 year old give all money to investors

    A 21 year old who had a company that was sold for $30,000,000.00 would almost certainly not be on Quora asking this question.

    A company that size would have many employees, and either a smart owner or great counsel. Board of advisers, or investors already who have advised the company to that size. 30 Million Dollars is no small feat.

    I’ll assume this is hypothetical and I’ll answer this all the same.

    You diversify. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

    First, we’re going to assume that you owned only 50% of the business. I’ll throw that in there. As it’s rare to sell a 30 million dollar business and have 100% ownership. For the sake of argument, and to make things simple, 50%.

    Then, we’re going to assume you have sales costs, lawyer fees, and taxes to pay on your earnings.

    So all in, I’m going to assign a number of money you actually made on that sale, we’re going to say you earned 9.5 million dollar from your share after all expenses. So of your 15 million (50%), 5.5m went to taxes and other expenses. You made 9.5 million.

    Putting all 9.5 million to investors would be a bad and risky move. You are young, so if you want to turn that money into more money, you need to invest in yourself.

    • 1.2 million into savings.

    You want enough into savings that you can live minimally off the interest. Depending on what type of savings it’ll be different. I’m not going to get into inflation and other factors. But let’s assume at a solid 2% return (still a bit high). To simplify things, that’s $24,000 year earnings.

    That should be enough money for you to live off of until you get going with your next project. That’ll cover food, living, travel/gas, everything as if you were making minimum wage. This is free money.

    • 2.5 million into stocks and higher risk investments.

    Get yourself two primary brokers to each manage 750 thousand. Then get a third broker and use 1 million and copy Warren Buffet’s top 5 portfolio stock investments. They don’t need to know about each other.

    Diversify your portfolio for each of the two 750 thousand ones. You want a nice range of options. But keep focused. Maybe have one do energy and the other do health care related or something.

    • 500 thousand into cryptocurrency.

    Crypto is a thing right now. But don’t put too much into it. Just see where it goes. I’d recommend using 400 thousand and spread that between 5–6 major cryptos (seek advice on the market), then spend that last 100 thousand and put a small amount into every single new crypto as it gets released. Expect to throw a lot of money away, but you never know when that next bitcoin will come. Being first in the door could potentially have a massive payout.

    • 350 thousand (value) to go towards your parents.

    You wouldn’t be where you are now without your parents. If you sold a company for 30 million. Then your parents did something right.

    Time to pay them back. Pay off their mortgage, buy them a new car, send them on vacation. They’ve earned it, dealing with you for 21 years.

    • 50 thousand into something nice for yourself.

    Wait, why only 50 thousand?

    You are young. You have a lot to learn, and the biggest mistake anyone makes when coming into money is spending too much on themselves for “extra” luxury uneeded things. You do not want to tempt yourself and get that ‘taste’ of success too early.

    Always set the bar low first. Because no matter what you do, each time you get wins in life, you’re going to raise that bar to reward yourself. And if you set it too high, you will be broke.

    You will thank yourself in your future if you can keep this to under 50 thousand.

    What do you do with that 50 thousand? You buy a lower end brand new car. Toyota, Chevrolet, Ford. Or you buy a used higher end car. A used lambo, a used mercedes. You do not buy a brand new luxury car. Worst investment you can ever do.

    • 1.5 million into investing in yourself.

    So what is investing in yourself?

    Investing in yourself is learning, getting knowledge, getting educated. You want to improve yourself daily. Get a mentor. Pay for coaching lessons.

    I would recommend getting a coach for stocks, investments, and crypto. Pay for someone to teach you these things.

    Buy a ton of books, every business book you can get your hands. Read every single day.

    Take webinars online, go to local seminars, anything business related to help your future.

    Hire some top coaches to get you up to speed and provide you the most value possible. Lessons that will follow you for life. Lessons you can utilize and earn more money. The more you invest in yourself, the faster, and further you will go in life, and the more money you will make.

    • 1.2 million into private investment.

    Work together with your lawyer and find local angel investors, and Entrepreneurs and do private investments together with them.

    This is extremely high risk, but you can still diversify and start small. 1.2 million can fund a lot of start-ups and small businesses. With the right guidance, and starting young like you can be extremely rewarding.

    I would also look into real estate. Especially global, China and Hong Kong have massively growing markets. Doing private real estate deals can pay off well.

    • 2 million into your next business venture.

    You’ll put aside 2 million into your next business venture that will hopefully give you another 30+ million dollar sale.

    As you’ve already been successful once as an Entrepreneur, it only makes sense to do it again. Each time you do a business, you are better off then the last time.

    Do not use all the money at once. Spend it wisely. Hire a proper CEO for your start-up. Put together a proper team. And get an adviser to manage that 2 million dollars for you.

    • 200 thousand into other expenses.

    The last 200 thousand will go towards your lawyer and other costs you have for doing all the above things.

  • Why covering your laptop camera with tape is important

    Camera’s and microphones are the two easiest things things to hack on a laptop. And I mean very easy. Anyone with a few months to spare and access to google can learn how to do it.

    Years ago when I was in China I was getting updated on cyber security from one of our partnerships.

    We were going over everything from basic hacks a 9 year old could do to more sophisticated ones that professional blackhats do. This was to ensure all of our companies assets were up to date and complaint with expectations to be working with sensitive data from our clients and customers from China.

    One of the first things they showed me was how easy it is to get access a camera remotely. And over a dozen different methods of doing it.

    Back at my hotel where I was staying at the time, I had a laptop on my desk by my bed which I always left on, but locked.

    As well as at my home office in Canada, I had a few laptops there as well I had plugged into a backup battery power bar, so they had about 42 hours total of backup battery should power ever go out. I was using these as self cloud storage’s. So they were on as well.

    Within 5 minutes of the lesson just knowing my IP address (for my Canada office) and my QQ chat account on my hotel laptop they had access to my cameras in both my hotel room, and my home office. I was able to see my rooms from the board meeting through the eyes of my camera. And this was an amateur hack, something a 12 year old could learn online. The laptops did all have anti virus.

    Not only with cameras. We did microphone as well as other windows processes as well. All basic methods. They were able to push software onto the devices through vulnerabilities in the router/network and other means.

    No system is safe, but there are steps you can take to prevent certain methods (especially amateur). Most people though are not aware, and probably never need to.

    We did some advanced security lessons by which one of the professional consultants showed us how easily he can obtain direct access to devices, not just amateur stuff like cameras.

    He was able to get full remote access to my home office laptops in under 4 minutes of his demonstration. Which then he had full mouse/keyboard and screen share on. He was able to access emails, web browser, and over a dozen external harddrives and all contents connected to my network. Prior to that meeting I wasn’t even aware that was possible.

    We also did a safety test on my VPS (virtual private server) that I had hosted with Hostmonster and Godaddy at the time. This was a few years ago. I got permission to test our VPS’s security. The consultant wouldn’t do it without permission, which we got from a live chat agent.

    Within 4 minutes again he had access to our root VPS server. He bypassed the hosting servers basic security that was loaded by default on our virtual server. He was able to show me the root files of all of my CPANEL accounts that hosted our websites on Magento and WordPress and we were able to make live changes to my sites. To that, I was not happy. I was expecting a lot more security from those hosting companies, not with them anymore though.

    And this all done by an experienced consultant who works in the security industry to prevent malicious intent. Not a blackhat with evil intentions.

    This was a two day consult. About 11 hours total. So we covered a lot of what can happen in the world. It was then and there I realized the need for certain companies, and high profile people to utilize cyber security firms.

    Since then I always cover my mic and camera with tape, as well as make adjustments to device settings and network advanced settings to reduce amateur hacks.

    But if an experienced blackhat wants in, they’ll get in.

  • Why Shopify Stores Fail 1

    Shopify stores are just like any other business. It’s not that the Shopify store itself is failing, but rather the business is failing. And most businesses fail. Thousands of businesses are started each week, and very few ever succeed.

    It comes down to the Entrepreneur who’s running their business. The abilities, knowledge, experience, and resources of that person. A lot fail – especially recently due to lack of information, people completely underestimate what’s involved with running a business, so most fail. This is okay.

    People just don’t understand how to get quality traffic who are willing to spend money at the store. Marketing is a huge pitfall and not many people realize the work that goes into it to succeed. There is actually too many people who just don’t understand.

    With the surge of Entrepreneurs starting their own businesses in the last couple years, many ‘fake gurus’ online have been boasting about starting a business, and how easy it is. Social media is flooded with people showing off the ‘easy’ businesses. Due to all the hype online, there is tons of people starting businesses lately.

    Here are some things they don’t tell you. Much of this can contribute to reasons why businesses fail.

    “Working Your Own Hours” is a very common saying, and catch phrase. Truth is, starting a business requires a lot of hard work. Most people who want to be successful are doing 70–80 hours a week minimum. You don’t really get to work your own hours. You eat, sleep, and breathe your business. It’s not until you find success and have a team that can take over workload do you get to cut-back and choose your own hours.

    “Financial Freedom” is another catch phrase used in the hype the last couple years. It takes a while to earn money in business. Most of it needs to go back into the business for growth, and you can’t really take money out right away. Everyone online is telling people that business owners make millions, this isn’t true. It could be months, and years for most before they are able to take money out. Again, it’s not until you’re successful where you have earned enough to take money out and reap the rewards.

    “Work Smart, Don’t Work Hard” – this is one of the biggest BS lines I’ve ever heard. Working smart is not enough, working hard is not enough. Whoever thought it was smart to tell Entrepreneurs not to work hard, but work smart instead should be kicked off the internet for causing such damage to the Entrepreneur world. If you want to make it in the business world, you need to do both. You have to be working hard everyday, and work smart. After-all, your competitors are doing both, if you want to compete and stay alive, you need to do both. Doing one is not enough.

    “Be Your Own Boss” – This is only partially true. This is good for the solo-Entrepreneur starting a small business, and keeping it small. You get to dictate your own business. However, once you grow your business to where you either have investors, or staff, you’re not really your own boss anymore. You are working for your company. Your money is not your own. Any mistake you make costs other people their jobs/lives, and other peoples money. When you take on investors, your investors are your boss. When you have staff, you are working hard to ensure you keep your staff employed. For most companies, you need the staff, you need the investors to grow/save your business. You need them, they don’t need you, so they are your boss.

    “How Easy It Is” – It’s true, starting a business is easy. Anyone can start a business. Every self-appointed business guru explains to everyone that starting a business is easy. But that’s the easy part, and no one ever tells you the rest. What they don’t tell you is that running, and growing a business is hard. Running a business and trying to make it successful is extremely hard. For 99.99% of people, it’ll be the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your business/career life.

    “Chances Are You’ll Succeed” – Fact is, most people fail. Most people fail their first time, sometimes their second time, sometimes even their third time. Failing is good, failing is learning. Fact is, 8/10 businesses fail in the first couple years, and only 3% last longer than 5 years. People always forget to mention this when teaching/coaching others, especially online and on social media. They want to sell their product, so they leave this out to encourage everyone to buy their product that teaches them business. Negativity and the truth doesn’t sell their brand/lifestyle product.

    Lets get going