The Connection Newsletter 38 - Do you party?

The Connection Newsletter 38 - Do you party?

January 14, 2019

Hello!

This is edition #38 of

The Connection

, the weekly email I send family, friends, and future friends (hello!). Glad you're here.

I spent hours doing customer calls with Reforge participants this week. I also ran

and paid ad campaign. Learned a lot with just a minuscule spend - $10/day. And Oliver took his

.

Let’s jump into this week’s articles.

Make sure to hit "Display Images" above to see puppy pics. 

. This was a fascinating read on so many levels. If you have ever dreamed about starting a side hustle or have entrepreneurial tendencies, it’s worth the read.  Some will read it as a cautionary tale, and others might think, “what a bunch of boneheads.” Both are probably right.

Here are my three takeaways:

1. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone

Entrepreneurship is hot right now, and many people look to a side hustle when they hate their job or want to supplement their income. But not everyone’s emotionally ready for the feast or famine nature of running their own business. So many of these people featured in the article who feel “taken” by the lure of creating an Amazon business would have been much happier if they focused on improving their job situation (getting a new job, finding different responsibilities, earning a raise, etc.) rather than putting $40,000 worth of merch on their credit cards in the hopes of flipping that inventory for a profit.

2. Hypocrisy

There’s a great deal of hypocrisy around what gets reported and labeled as a legitimate business and what gets labeled as a scam.

The broken promises made by

Amazon Secrets

(time freedom, work from home, passive income, etc) are no different than the broken promises made by Amway or Herbalife, except Amway’s founder Richard DeVos contributed thousands of dollars to both Republican and Democratic parties, and Herbalife paid enormous fees to bring on folks like Madeleine Albright and Cristiano Ronaldo as brand ambassadors. For more of this history, see

(podcast).  

3. Gratitude

I’m empathetic to the people who paid $3k for their

Amazon Secrets

course, and then bought tens of thousands of dollars of cheap goods they couldn’t move. I know from the outside, it looks like a bonehead thing to do. “If it’s too good to be true…”

But when you’re in deep financial straits, you start grasping for any lifeline, no matter how far fetched. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to

so desperately want it to be true

that you’ll shove your skepticism aside in order to fumble for your credit card.

I realize there’s only one difference between me and the “victims” mentioned in this story: They stumbled on a course on how to shill for easy money on Amazon. I stumbled on Ramit Sethi’s blog, and signed up for his

Find Your Dream Job

course. That program dramatically altered the course of my career and life (and therefore, my family’s life).

And I’m extremely grateful for that.

---

. CNBC wrote last week that the average millennial (aged 18 to 34) has about $32,000 in personal debt, excluding home mortgages. Also, that 1 in 5 millennials with debt expects to die without ever paying it off (

). In light of that, it’s refreshing to read about how a (not well paid) journalist can live a full life in New York City by carefully choosing how she spends her money.

“I choose libraries over bookstores so that I can put that money toward a concert or show with friends. I cut my own hair and wear drug-store makeup so I can afford drinks at the bar. Buying Nyx over Nars isn’t so bad when the $40 I save on pressed powder can go to happy hour with a friend. I turn to the same muted wardrobe again and again, because, for me, a new trend isn’t worth the price of a new, if tiny, adventure."

The point isn’t whether you should or should not aspire to this lifestyle. The point is it’s important to see a spectrum of choices and lifestyles, instead of assuming that just because you live in NYC you need to live like Carrie Bradshaw.

---

. This is an insane con story that makes Catch Me If You Can’s Frank Abagnale look like he was just stealing makeup from Walgreen’s. (If you dig con stories like this, I also recommend

(article) and

by Maria Konnikova (book)).

---

. One morning, Amy shared a story with me about a woman who was sentenced to 8 years in prison for voting while being a green card holder.

Later, I read this story about Jeffrey Epstein, a Palm Beach hedge fund manager who ran an international sex trafficking ring of young women who was only sentenced to 18 months. He served 13 months and spent much of the time outside of the gates on “work release.” And it truly feels like there is no justice.

---

. This article dives deep into the psychology of cam-girling. No matter what the industry, the better you understand your customer and the more rigorously you’re willing to experiment, the more attention you’ll seize.

---

. Great profile of The Sixth Sense director, and how he self-funded his way out of Hollywood jail and delivered perhaps the first stealth sequel in the history of modern cinema.

Thanks for reading!

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