Jean Galea

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How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky

Last updated: January 12, 2023Leave a Comment

Many investing and financial independence blogs try to teach you how to attain a level of wealth that will put you and your family in a comfortable position and potentially not having to work for the rest of your life.

I think things are quite simple really. 

If you want to get rich, you need to take substantial risks and work extremely hard with a laser-sharp focus on something for several years.

This is how the founders of startups become rich.

This is also how the best investors make outsized returns on their investments.

And who is wealthier than entrepreneurs and investors these days? Sure there are many other illegal ways of getting wealthy, but if you stick to the legal ways, aside from inheriting wealth, entrepreneurship and investing is the way to go.

Building a business is the best way I know of getting richer than the average person. Once your business is successful and you have capital to deploy, investing is the way to multiply that money exponentially to reach even higher levels of wealth and financial independence.

The investing part is what I see many people misuse in two main ways.

The Entrepreneur Who Can’t Let Go

Many entrepreneurs do the first part of building a business and working very hard, but can never let go of the business. It ends up consuming all their life and depriving them of time, which is the most important and unreplenishable asset you have.

It takes them away from their families and from wonderful experiences they could otherwise have had if they were not locked in an office working on their business 24/7. As an entrepreneur, it is very important to keep the exit in mind, be it by selling the business or by putting a management team in place to substitute you.

The Wannabe Investor

On the other hand, I see many other people, especially younger ones, who get into investing too early when they don’t yet have capital to deploy. I highly encourage people to start educating themselves about money and investing at a very early age, however, in my opinion, the actual investing should start at a later stage when you already have substantial capital to deploy.

If you don’t yet have that capital, you are likely to make two mistakes:

  1. You will probably spend too much time thinking and worrying about your investments in comparison to the returns you are likely to make.
  2. You are more likely to invest money you shouldn’t be risking. Money you can’t really afford to lose.

Reason number 2 is also why I don’t like the idea of homeownership for most young people. By buying a home, they are tying up all their money plus future income into an asset that is not really an investment, and will also prevent them from having experiences such as traveling long term and living abroad, which would bring infinitely greater rewards both on a personal level and from an investing and knowledge perspective.

In short, the wannabe investor is foregoing the hard work of building a good capital base, and that will seriously hamper his chances of ever becoming financially independent or wealthy by any measure. That’s why we see so many financial blogs focus so much on frugality (often going to ridiculous extremes). They don’t have the capital, so instead of adopting a growth mindset and looking for ways to make more money (entrepreneurship) they try to save more and more of their average incomes as employees, and that’s not a good way to become wealthy.

At max, you might be able to become financially independent in your forties or fifties but only afford to live in very cheap places, and that’s not real independence in my books.

One of my favorite business gurus, Naval Ravikant, shared some very cool tips on Twitter about getting rich that I felt were worth sharing here on my blog:

Wealth vs Money vs Status

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Ethical Wealth

Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

What should you avoid?

  1. Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.
  2. You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity — a piece of a business — to gain your financial freedom.

Basic Rule of Getting Rich

You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.

What should you do?

  1. Pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people.
  2. Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and, above all, integrity. Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling.
  3. Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
  4. Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.
  5. Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools. Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.
  6. Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage. The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah, Trump, Kanye, Elon.
  7. Leverage :
    “Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” — Archimedes
    Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).
    8.1 Capital: Capital means money. To raise money, apply your specific knowledge, with accountability, and show resulting good judgment.
    8.2 People: Labor means people working for you. It’s the oldest and most fought-over form of leverage. Labor leverage will impress your parents, but don’t waste your life chasing it.
    8.3 Products: Code & Media. The Internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven’t figured this out yet.
    Types of Leverage
    * Permissioned Leverage:
     Capital and labor are permissioned leverage. Everyone is chasing capital, but someone has to give it to you. Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you.
    * Permissionless Leverage: Product (Code and media) are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. An army of robots is freely available — it’s just packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it. If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.
  8. Learn Foundational Skills: Leverage is a force multiplier* for your judgement. Judgement requires experience, but can be built faster by learning foundational skills. There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes. Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers. Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching.
  9. Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.
  10. Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.
    [Read Point 3 again].
  11. You should be too busy to “do coffee,” while still keeping an uncluttered calendar.
  12. Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.

Parting Note:

There are no get rich quick schemes. That’s just someone else getting rich off you.

Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve.

Foot note:

*Force Multiplier: In military science, Force multiplication or a force multiplier refers to a factor or a combination of factors that dramatically increases (hence “multiplies”) the effectiveness of an item or group, giving a given number of troops (or other personnel) or weapons (or other hardware) the ability to accomplish greater things than without it.

Filed under: Business

Can You Withdraw Money from 2Checkout & Stripe to Wise Borderless?

Last updated: January 09, 20233 Comments

Many online businesses use 2Checkout to collect payments for their products, as an alternative to PayPal or other payment gateways.

If you’re one of the many online businesses that sells in USD but has its local bank accounts in another currency (such as Euro) you will be losing money every time you transfer due to exchange fees from your bank.

A better alternative would be to set up a TransferWise Borderless account then link it up to 2Checkout as your bank account, using the USD account details provided by TransferWise in your Borderless account. Note that 2Checkout only allows one active bank account at a time, so if you already have a bank account set up, you will need to remove that bank account and add the TransferWise one.

Filed under: Business

How to Change Ownership of a PayPal Account

Last updated: April 05, 20202 Comments

Here’s how to change the ownership of a PayPal account, which typically needs to be done when your company gets acquired, among other cases.

  1. Add new email -> Confirm it -> Make it primary.
  2. Delete old email (so it can be reused on another PP account)
  3. Change Business Name
  4. Change Business Contact

Each requires verification steps of some kind, but in that order you can essentially migrate it to new ownership.

  1. Are You Losing out from PayPal’s Exchange Rates?
  2. 🤔 Which PayPal Account is Best for You?
  3. 💸 Changing Your PayPal Withdrawal Currency
  4. Accepting Credit Card Payments via Braintree in Europe
  5. Braintree vs PayPal Fees, Which One is Cheaper?
  6. 💸 Understanding PayPal Cross Border Fees
  7. How to Withdraw From PayPal into a Maltese Bank Account
  8. 💳 Withdrawing Money From PayPal for Non-US Accounts
  9. Which PayPal E-Commerce Checkout Service Should You Use?
  10. 🤔 Should You Open Separate PayPal Accounts for Each of Your E-Commerce Stores?
  11. 🆚 PayPal VS Wise Borderless
  12. 💳 Linking Virtual Bank Accounts and Cards to PayPal (Revolut, Wise etc)
  13. How to Change Ownership of a PayPal Account
  14. How to Buy Bitcoin and Crypto With PayPal

Filed under: Business

The Best Networking and Personal Development Groups for Entrepreneurs

Last updated: January 09, 2023Leave a Comment

Update 2022: I’ve started my own community and am no longer a member of any other groups beyond the NFT communities I’m in.

You might still find the communities below useful so I’ll leave this article up anyway.

Entrepreneurship can be an exciting but lonely experience. You start off with nothing and most likely with your peers thinking you’re chasing an impossible dream, or worse, doing nothing of worth. If you manage to prove your worth and build a successful business, you’ll also lose touch with those same peers because your concerns are quite different from theirs, and they most likely start to regard you as the lucky guy.

They say it’s lonely at the top, and that certainly applies to successful entrepreneurs. You don’t need to achieve great wealth or success to start to feel that. Even the mere fact of owning a business and being fully responsible for your and your family’s financial future (not to mention that of the employees who depend on your company)

Baby Bathwater Insititute

Baby Bathwater is a collective of entrepreneurs, founders, thinkers, pioneers, and good-hearted, open-minded humans.

I’ve heard great reviews of these events from friends and look forward to attending at some point.

Visit the Baby Bathwater site

Entrepreneurs’ Organization

EO is a global network exclusively for entrepreneurs. EO helps leading entrepreneurs learn and grow through peer-to-peer learning, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and connections to experts.

Entrance to the EO requires you to have a business that generates more than a million dollars in revenue per year, and costs around $6000 to join. It’s aimed at entrepreneurs who are experienced and successful and certainly not at those just starting off on their journey,

Although it might seem a bit elitist, I think the requirements and high fees make sense. The success of the organization depends on its members sharing many of the same concerns and dilemmas, as well as providing useful contacts and advice to each other. It’s safe to say that a beginner entrepreneur will not have the same concerns and capacity to help others that a seasoned entrepreneur at the helm of a $1m and multiple-employee business will.

There are several events throughout the year, and you get subsidized rates to first-class hotels and tours as part of your membership. You’ll find entrepreneurs of all ages and industries in the EO, which means you will also widen your field of knowledge and be able to learn from other sectors that you were previously unfamiliar with or even unaware of.

An important feature of the EO is the local chapter that meets in your city. Big cities like Barcelona even have several chapters. Each local chapter consists of around 8 members who meet for half a day on a monthly basis to discuss their personal and business lives as well as network between themselves. This peer group support addresses the problem I described at the beginning of this article directly, and many EO members vouch that these meetings are the most important benefit of being in the EO.

Apply to join the EO

Dynamite Circle

The Dynamite Circle was created by Tropical MBA founders Dan & Ian, and has grown over the years to become the number one network for young entrepreneurs that work online in some form or fashion. It’s not limited to online business owners, however, the majority of people in it have remote teams and online businesses.

That’s to be expected given that the Tropical MBA was originally all about becoming location-independent, and one of the forces that gave rise to the digital nomad movement. Nowadays both founders have given up the digital nomad days and are based in their own respective cities, although they retain the freedom to move if they wish to. This is a path that has been followed by many others including myself. Constantly traveling from one place to another eventually gets tired, and you’re bound to fall in love with one place more than all the others and want to base yourself there. In my case, that place is Barcelona.

The Dynamite Circle holds big meetups in several cities every year, with the biggest events of the year being DC Austin in April and DC Bangkok in October. You will also find smaller groups that meet up informally in most major cities.

An online forum is also an integral part of the DC, and you will all other DC members on the forum ready to help and give advice to your dilemmas. If you wish to, there is also the possibility to be placed into a mastermind group that meets every so often online and discusses things in further depth.

I’ve been a member of the DC for a number of years and found a ton of good information in the online forums, so I’d say that the value of the advice and content there has already covered the cost of joining.  I’ve also realised that many of the online business entrepreneurs I followed online have been in the Dynamite Circle themselves for quite a while.

A question was recently asked on how DC members would describe businesses and people within the Dynamite Circle. Here are some replies I felt were really good:

DC businesses are optimized for profit and lifestyle vs trying to impress people.

It’s popular in the business world to think that the point of starting businesses is simply to make money. Not here in the DC. We believe our businesses can be so much more– a path to personal freedom, legacy, a secure foundation for a family or community, or as a means forfinding deeper meaning and abundance.

Low overhead / lean, founder operated, online, positive cashflow, bootstrapped.

Online-first, location independent businesses between 6-8 figures a year.

To be honest I should probably have joined the group back in 2012 when I lived in Chiang Mai and everybody was talking about it. Unfortunately, I had attended one of their meetups then and I didn’t particularly click with the people present there, so I wasn’t that enthusiastic about joining.

Looking back at the forum postings though I can see that I could have picked up on certain things earlier than I eventually did. For example, there was talk of Bitcoin and crypto back in 2014, when I started reading up on crypto seriously only in 2016. That’s just one of the many benefits of being part of a circle of driven and highly informed people. You get to know about opportunities years before anyone else does, and thus have a headstart in capitalizing on them.

Join the Dynamite Circle

Do you know of any other networks worth joining? Let me know in the comments section.

Filed under: Business

Where to Buy and Sell Websites – The Best Brokers and Marketplaces

Last updated: February 18, 20213 Comments

There comes a time when you need to sell your baby, I am referring to your website/s of course…

So in such a time, what do you do, where do you begin? Here are the sites I recommend you visit. This also applies to when you’ve got some cash on hand and want to make an investment in an existing website, rather than building something from scratch.

Make sure you read my beginner’s guide to buying and selling websites if you’re not familiar how the business works.

Investors Club

investors club

Investors Club is the newest platform of the bunch, but I really like the idea behind it. Basically, it’s a pay-to-join club where all members will be able to browse all the details of the properties available to buy. There is no need to apply and sign NDAs for every project, as happens with other platforms, since the buyers here are all serious and paying money to be in the club in the first place.

There is also the possibility of investing in websites and having the Investors Club team manage the project for you, making this an ideal platform for beginner investors as well.

QuietLightbrokerage

This broker specializes in sites valued at 60k to 5 million USD. They provide an excellent guide on calculating the value of your website.

[Read more…]

Filed under: Business

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Jean Galea

Investor | Dad | Global Citizen | Athlete

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