The Value of "Hobbies" for Tech Professionals

[Applause] hello again as you guys may or may not know I am eli the computer guy and today we're going to be talking about hobbies for geeks and no i do not mean stamp collecting so we're gonna be doing this video in the RV and the travel trailer again because people are zipping around outside on their little motor boats and that type of thing so it's a little loud so I decided to come in here to do this video and I do have to say I kind of like the lighting in this environment so we're inside the travel trailer right now I have my little light above me this just kind of I don't know there's something very about this very cool I feel like I should have it like a stogie then meet Ali about the secret to this field right but then smoking is bad for your health don't do it but anyways anyways that is that has nothing to do with anything I suppose I want to talk about hobbies today because this is one thing that keeps coming up with me as I go around and I talked with different people in the business world and it's one of those things that I find very frustrating and I just one of those things as I say I just really don't grasp what normal people are thinking and obviously most the time they don't grasp what I'm thinking either so recently I did a silicon trailer a little meeting oh but somebody that came all the way here at the Adirondacks they drove like four hours to come here they stayed in a hotel that night the night before then they came they met me for like an hour and 45 minutes and then drove back so they were willing to come that far and so we were sitting there talking we're discussing all these things and then at the end of it the guy looked at me and said yeah Eli I just don't understand I don't understand what you get out of this and I looked at him and I said well you drove like four hours to see me he's like yeah one way I said well and you stayed at a hotel tomorrow eat last night just to be able to meet with me today yeah and I looked at and I said well well that's that's that people there there's real money there and they said yeah but but I don't understand how there's real money there and then I looked at him and was like how do I explain to somebody the actual value and what I'm doing if I don't if I'm not obviously billion for what I'm doing and I realize that this is a major disconnect especially in the world of technology and in business the idea that everything you do to make money should equal a paycheck or or some kind of invoice at the end of it and that's not really how the technology world works and if you can start to think again if you can start to think about your technology career in your technology business in a slightly different way you'll end up actually being more successful in making more money but you won't be doing it in the normal way so one that's what I can't explain to you guys today and explain to you guys about hobbies hobbies mainly the IRS definition of hobbies but but but hobbies nonetheless so let's talk about what you are really trying to do when you start your technology business whether you're starting a startup company you're gonna be a founder and kinky world or you're just gonna start a computer repairs don't don't start a computer repair shop in web design shop if you're gonna start a web design shop you know let's talk about what you're really trying to do here so what you're really trying to do when you start your technology venture is the first thing that you need to do is you need to find a problem that needs to be solved you need to find a solution to a problem that people care about right cuz that's really what we are doing at the end of the day we are solving problems so if people need to get on the internet and a virus is wiped out their computer we're not really uh cleaning out a virus really as far as the end user is concerned what we're really doing is reconnecting them to the internet we are getting them back on the Internet we happen to do that by using antivirus software right um we don't really build websites that's what we technically do but what we're really doing is we are providing an vertising medium for a company so a company needs to be able to communicate with their customers more effectively that is the problem that we're trying to solve for the company cannot communicate with their customers effectively enough so what we do is we build a website so that the company can communicate better that is what we're looking for so the first thing we have to find is we have to find a solution to a problem so we go out there and we try to figure out what problems are there and then what can we solve what what ideas do we have to solve those problems the next thing that we have to think about is what are we willing to do day in and day out again this is a big problem that I find with startup founders and people that try to get into the technology world is they look at all the cool stuff they look at all the sexy stuff they look at all the amazing stuff you look at train and certifications it'll keep getting funding by Y Combinator they look at all of this stuff right but one thing that they don't focus on is the grind what are you willing to do day in day out again if you look at you I the computer guy LLC if you look at what i am doing right now the idea for this is hey why don't I sit down in front of a video camera and talk about real topics and technology and business that's the idea well I sounds cool that sounds sexy and that sounds amazing but then there's a reality of then sitting down and pumping out of thousand videos right everybody focuses on everybody focuses on the idea the idea is awesome yeah but do you really want to sit down and actually turn through and do the product you want to sit in front of a video camera you want to sit in front of a keyboard and monitor and code all day do you actually want to do you actually want to solve the problem day in day out just because you know a problem I guess because you know the solution to a problem does not mean you want to solve that problem a thousand times that's one of the issues that I see you with a lot of people that get in technology business is they want to solve the problem once then once all the problem twice they don't want to solve the problem two thousand times right so then you have to find yeah you have to find a solution to a problem then you have to make sure that you actually want to solve that problem again again again and again iterate through and through and through and through and through and the next thing you have to do is you have to figure out if anybody wants you you to solve that problem right this is again this is one of the big issues we get into in technology and business is you know what the problem is you even want to solve the problem you're like I really like doing this but for whatever reason nobody cares about you you see this a lot in YouTube again I've talked about a lot of other YouTube content creators and some people think I'm being snarky and i'm really not i'm just it's an example of how this works in the real world where you go out and you look at other YouTube content creators they have created a lot of content they've spending that they've spent years and years and years creating content when I watch their content I look at their content and I go you know that seems pretty good that seems like pretty decent content to me so for me I'm thinking you know these people should be successful and yet if you look at their actual stats again their total number of subscribers after almost ten years is what I get in a single month so for whatever reason they know they want to do something they know the problem they want to solve they are willing to do it again and again and again again but for whatever reason nobody cares right nobody they just look at that and they're like yeah I don't I don't trust you to buy that from you so you get into this a lot especially like I say in the technology world where let's say you want to do in-person training you know you you're really excited to teach people on a new computer repair or web app design or something like that but then nobody wants to come to your class maybe it's because you have a weird accent you know whenever you talk to people the accent is is something you see this alike a lot of the English as a Second Language people you know basically your accent is such that people don't understand what you're talking about so you know the problem I want to teach people how to fix computers or build web design build websites you know you can do you want to do it but then when you actually go out to do it nobody wants to have that done from you right you know there's a lot of different things like this let's say you have a criminal record right so you said you know I want to go in and I want to do computer security so I know what the problem is I'm not really there because the computers are insecure I want I'm willing to go through all the steps to secure people's computers a thousand times over but you have a felony record so when you go to actually get a job or actually do any work for clients they go oh um felling record we can't allow you to do the security work right there's all kinds of things like that so you have to find a problem to solve we have to figure out the solution you have to figure out whether or not you really want to iterate that you want to do that again and again and again and again and again and again and I'm telling you guys a lot of you guys don't you want to do it one time or five times or ten times or 20 times but when you get to the 200th time you're just gonna be banging your head against the wall because you really hate doing this you have to figure out something you want to again and again and again and again and then you want to you then you have to see if people actually want you to do it and these are all these are questions that you can't answer until you actually go out there and play until you actually go out there and try to do whatever it is you want to do again whether it's computer repair or app development or YouTube content creation or teaching people right you don't know the answers to these questions until you go out there so the problem that I see again it is the modern world everybody wants to be an entrepreneur in LA I want to be an entrepreneur maybe one of the things you find out is once you start being an entrepreneur some people really like being an entrepreneur and other people don't right but everybody you know as soon as they get their stupid ass little idea Sims and their stupid ass little idea they say but this is what I want to do this is my business this is my startup company um and then the problem at that point is then they start doing all this work to make that company or that startup legitimate right so if you're going to be going out there and you're going to be charging people you know some kind of you know for products sold or services you may have to get something like a sales tax number so you have to get the sales tax number then if you're going to be bringing money in and sending money out you have to deal with QuickBooks and all that you have to get an F EIN number you have to get a bank account number there's all his basic stuff that'll take you about a day to do when Lily cost you this sub five hundred dollars if you really think you're going to be cool you know this is a real business then you even have to go i get an LLC which is going to cost you about $300 that's even more work than there's like trademark and copyright and all that kind of stuff realistically you can get up to about a thousand dollars and the stupid little crappy paperwork stuff right and then you think well I might not be doing this business then it's got to be real so I've got to do a website so then you have to build the website then you got to get business cards you've got design and buy all the business cards then beyond that then you have to think since you're going to be bringing in money from this venture then you have to worry about things like liability concerns you know you have to get general liability insurance or errors and omissions insurance and all this other stuff right there's all this stuff that goes into creating a business that if you want if from step one you decide what you're going to do is a business you have to do this and you don't even know at that point if you really want to do the work or if anybody wants you to do the work what the markets like or anything like that right you've got all of this effort you've got all this stuff that you have to do and you don't even know if anybody cares right and that's one of the big things right with the technology business one of the things that you have to be thinking about is where we make the money where we make the outsize income so outside then comes makes means we make more than it seems like we should is a very nice way to make money right the reason we make an outsize income is because we target niches that nobody else is targeting you know that's why I've done so well on YouTube is because I do long-form technology content uh nobody else does it even at this point I still don't know why but they don't so i found that niche and because i found that niche and because i am willing to do this and because you guys want to see me do this i make a very good living i am very very successful at it but that is a very specific niche right in order to find this niche i had to go through and i had to play with other things so at one point I was going to do in-person training I did a few in-person training classes so back when I own my own building from the old days of doing the consulting company I decided well my own building anyway insurance anyway maybe i'll certainly in-person classes it was really nice I get very easily get two hundred fifty dollars per head per day get a nice number of people in the class you know a thousand two thousand dollars to teach class and computer repair web design whatever uh and then I sat down and I realized I really hated um repeating myself you don't say like I like doing these videos because I can sit here I can talk to you guys I couldn't teach whatever I want to teach and then I never do this again right basically more or less I never do this again what it did like when in-person classes is that I would sit down and there was money so too I knew the problem to solve uh people wanted me to solve the problem but I didn't want to iterate on right and so that's one of the problems is you go into this new you you spend all this money you take all this time you take all this energy but you don't even know if this is something that you are actually you know are people gonna want you to do it are you going to want to continue to do it so on and so forth so one of the things to be thinking about is to think about starting your projects as hobbies a versus actual startup companies or technology companies right go out there and see if anybody cares about what you're doing before you go out there and try to try to actually make any money from it so that's where I'm looking at so so geeked camp is coming up right so hopefully we're going to do get camp and hopefully geek camp will be awesome so geeked camp is this whole idea of we're gonna go into an RV park or you know one of these camping facilities I'm gonna say that I come out I'm gonna say that i'll be there you guys can come in you can get little tent spaces you can RV spaces you can a cabin or apartment spaces whether they have available we can meet during the day we can cap we can talk about all of your problems you can go off and try to fix your problems at the end of the day we meet again hopefully it should be really cool right hopefully it should be really cool now I want to walk you through something so if I decided to make this a business from the get-go right if I decided decamp is the greatest thing in the world which I think it may be but if I decided yes this is what I want to do this is going to be successful this is gonna be awesome blah blah blah think about all the things I don't have to do to make it official so the first thing I have to do is make it its own LLC maybe bring another you on a computer guy but Weber I'd have to make it legally official somehow not only would I have to make it legally official but if I'm going to be running this as a for profit venture that I have to make sure i have general liability insurance I'm going to have somewhere between 10 to 50 people show up I don't know probably the middle million isn't going to be good enough probably two to three million and you're a liability insurance for something like this is two to three thousand dollars a year at least so that would cost anybody not only that but if it's gonna be official ah things like I have to come up with contracts and forms for you guys to sign you know again to you know release me from liability and all this other kind of stuff beyond that we'd have to come up with with policies for how you all you guys act to each other then on top of that if I if I try to come to you guys for help so like one of the things i'd like to do with geek camp is actually have quote-unquote positions so there's like the idea I have is there the ambassador position the instructor position and in the largest extent so the idea with a geek camp again what I want to try to do with all these projects is do something that hopefully will allow you put something like on your resume or at least make you feel better so like the ambassador position the idea is if we want to go to a fuel trip or if we want to go talk or interview with somebody The Ambassadors would go and and they would set that up so if we're in Seattle and I say hey does everybody here want to do a tour of a data center and people are like yeah I be great I would go to the ambassador and say hey ambassador start calling up data centers and give us an inert and get us a fuel trip of one and then that person would go off and they would do that and a valuable thing there is one that gets it there an ambassador and then to they actually get to communicate with all these data centers I mean you actually hey yes you know i'm working with eli the computer guy over here and we'd like to bring in you know 10 or 15 people to do a fuel trip of your data center right that makes you seem official you get to get to meet all those people know you have instructor level and logisitics said that's a whole different thing but talk about at a different video the thing is and so this is something hopefully you can put on your resume so on and so forth well here's the issue right this is a for-profit company right if I'm making money bringing in sponsorship or you die paying me or anything like that guess what now I have to worry about IRS rules for employees because you can put people under volunteer especially if you're a 501 C 3 it's easy but if you're actually bringing money in for a company you've got to worry again about wage laws is this person and how do you know they're an employee how do you know if they're a contractor how do you know if you can actually have them as a volunteer even if there are things like volunteers and all that do you have to get workman's comp insurance be on workmen's comp insurance I general liability insurance we were talking about before do we have to put out on top of them so I go in and this is this is just a hobby basically if I say um hey you guys can just come to the campsite that I map you can pay the campsite I don't get any kick back then we can just come and we can just do it right we can just do geek camp there's no liability cuz I'm not getting paid for this this is I'm at a campsite you're at a campsite you come over and talk to me during the day and and that's it right you know we give people these little positions there's no money coming in to the company to the organization so it's obviously not a for-profit company so I don't have to worry about I RS rules and all that kind of stuff same is true with with with liability concerns and all those kinds of things and so that's the thing to be thinking about whenever you're gonna be starting any of these projects of yours is if you start it from the get-go as a business there's all this stuff you have to worry about and it's real I've gotten little IRS files before and then not actually a little I screwed up one paycheck for one employee or the I screwed up submitting his his taxes for like one quarter or whatever it was like a four-hundred-dollar fine just for that one thing so that's what you have to worry about if you started as a business on the other hand if you start it just as a hobby and then see what happens then you don't have to worry about all that out lay all that initial expense all that kind of stuff so if we go out right so we're going to do you know geek camber and I start this thing in Seattle we're going to go on and maybe the first time through people show up hey you know an entire month three people show up okay that's cool um and then the next time we do and we're down in San Francisco maybe 20 people show up and then the next time we do it I don't know it's outside of Austin or something and 100 people show up well here's the thing at some point there's gonna be a number where it's like you know now now it would actually be worthwhile to try to turn this into a company or 501 C if I have a hundred people showing up for this thing that is a viable venture if I have three people showing up for this thing that is not a viable venture right so if I start this off as a as a hobby I don't have to outlay all that expense I don't have to worry about all the legal issues I'm not to worry about all that kind of stuff until the point where I see that it is in fact viable then I can lay out all the money or ask for investment or any of that kind of stuff because I already know the numbers right again it's not so this is the whole thing like with the whole startup world right ever everybody in the startup world they just wants they just want to pull an idea out of their ass and get a million dollars in funding well imagine if you went to venture capitalists and you said hey I'm already running this thing as a hobby and I already have a hundred or two hundred or however any many people showing up to this and they're already there we already know how much money that's worth the sponsors and all that kind of stuff so all I need is the investment to get all the lawyers fees and this and that and the other thing and then we're rocking or on this is something to be thinking about because that's the problem that I see with so many of the professionals is everything they do they want that one thing to directly lead to a paycheck you know I am going I am going to do a meet up and I expect to get ten dollars per headed to meet up and then I will make money i'm going to do this and expect to make money i'm going to do that but they don't look at is all that initial outlay all that initial time all that initial energy all that initial on something that may utter lee completely fail wouldn't it be better to start it as a hobby that started as something that's not making money get to the point where making or get to the point where it is viable and then switch it over to making money at that point again like my buddy who does a tech breakfast wrong right you know he start he started at at breakfast originally as his own little project it was just it was an advertising expense for him for his other startup company you know hey I just want to get some other you know computer geeks together to talk about how they're creating web apps you know discuss the front-end design and all that kind of stuff and the first time he did it he got like five people in the next time you didn't got ten people and then he got 25 people and got 50 people then he got a hundred and fifty people and then at a hundred and fifty people it's one of those where I remember sitting there talking with a me like you know you should be able to get sponsors for this and it's like yeah probably should be able to get sponsors for this and then they got one sponsor than two sponsors and three sponsors and then it grew and then at that point then once he got enough sponsors then he flipped it over to actually turn it into a business but originally it just started as a side thing he he bought you know a crap ton of panera coffee and panera bagels uh you know brought it in we all did this thing once a month didn't worry about it until it got to a size where he realized that this was actually a valuable thing to do so this is for something for you guys to be thinking about is don't think about turning everything you do into a business or into a start-up right away go out there and experiment go out there and play again what I want to talk about silicon trailer so this whole idea of silicon trailer where I go out and I meet you know the viewer so I answer your questions in real life we talk about your your business issues your professional issues all that kind of stuff when I first started the idea i had for silicon trailer really i figured one or two people per month would be interested in it I really did I didn't really think many people would take advantage of it I was like well you know I do this maybe one person a month shows up two people a month show up I get to meet people who actually watch my content i get an idea of what they're like i get an idea of what their problems are they get you know some advice for me yeah that shouldn't be too bad right so the initial idea is I can't one or two people a month and yet and now everywhere I go it's at least two people who want to see me and again in the New York area apparently are really popular they're just it is poor in it right you know I riding back New York that like eight people want to see me and uh you know I still get I still get emails and so that's the thing you know you just throw this idea out there and then you see if people are interested in and then if people actually are interested in it then you get to start thinking okay ha how can i make money off of this um can I charge admission can I charge sponsors how do I tweak this but you do that after you see that it's going to be viable and the other thing you have to be thinking about again with any of these projects are these businesses you're going to do the biggest problem that you're going to run into the biggest problem you're going to run to is is client acquisition and client acquisition cost and this is one of those things and not enough people talk about and I don't understand why what client acquisition cost is is how much is it gonna cost you to acquire each client so every single person that comes in to you how much is it gonna cost how much money is it gonna cost and how much time is it gonna cost ya I talked about in the past you know going out there and knocking on doors and handing out flyers pain adwords you know when i had a computer repair business that I pay for Adwords or looks like eighty five dollars per per user for per client for a new client acquisition right so one of the issues that you run into is if you start your venture as a business or a start-up from the get-go then you go out there and you're trying to acquire clients that are actually going to be paying you are actually going to be giving you something the issue is is then they start they start thinking is it really worth it to them so that's one of the things like I was sitting that I've talked with a couple of people about this with silicon trailer I've talked about how much I should charge if I was going to charge for for doing silicon trailer and realistically if I was going to charge for doing these meetings it would be a minimum of two hundred and fifty dollars you know the reasonable street value of what I'm doing sitting there for now three hours with people is worth at least two hundred and fifty dollars right but one of the the the issues with that is that as soon as I start charging people two hundred fifty dollars and then it starts to become a decision of do they really want to do this or not well one of the things you have to be thinking about whenever you're gonna be starting AirVenture whenever gonna be starting your projects and turning into a business or a startup your hobby is you have to deal with your clients and at first to figure out what they actually want and to figure out how the flow of whatever product or service that you're offering is gonna be right so if you're going to be selling computers the question is how do you sell computers to people come to you do they call you up on the phone how does this process work so when I sit down and I do silicon trailer one of the questions that I had for myself is how does this work are people going to show up on time how long are people going to want for appointments what are we going to discuss right when I first started this I had no idea what the answer dating those questions were so the issue is if I start trying to charge money right off the bat two things happen one people decide that they don't want to do it because they don't want to spend that much money and too once you start charging money people start coming in with their own expectations and says you don't know how it's gonna go you're not really sure if those expectations match reality and so you start to run into a lot of problems so if you start something as a hobby and you're not charging in the very beginning you get to see how things work out you get to see what new clients actually want you can see what are their actual needs what are you willing to provide for them how are things going well how are things going poorly and how do you get to tweak it right if you try to go for the money from the very beginning you already start running into a lot of issues and again it's it's not really worth I mean giving away 10 or 20 or 50 free appointments um will give you a lot of information about what people actually want so that when you do flip over to decide to to charge for it in the future you know how much you should charge you know what people are looking for you know how to expectations so on and so forth so that's some idea there for the whole idea of starting your little tech venture whatever as a hobby again as I say this is one of those things that and I don't see enough people doing because again I talk to you guys a lot about this in all these videos is here's a thing guys here's the thing when you find real problems to solve that you're willing to solve and that people want you to solve money follows muddy is easy I know like I talk to you guys about this and people like oh you're just arrogant or you get testicle but I'm telling you again I my peer group is business owners mutt money if you're solving problems that people want solve and you can do it again and again and again I mean that is the essence of business that's what people get paid for the reason most people don't make a lot of money in business and in life is because they're solving problems that people don't really care about or they're solving problems that people care about but they don't want to do it very much right you know the person who repairs 10 computers per day is gonna make a crap ton more money than the person that repairs to computers per day right both people are solving the same problem but one person really wants repair computers the other doesn't and again or you know the whole thing you know they're you're trying to solve problems but people for whatever reason don't want you to solve the problem if you go out there and you find where you fit and you find the problem you're willing to just iterate a thousand times people want you to do it the money will follow afterwards so think about that when you're going out there instead of trying to start your start these businesses from the get-go just start with a hobby just start playing around because again the issue that I see one of the issues that I see is the idea coming up with ideas is fun coming up with business cards is fun coming up with websites is fun talking about it talking about business and startup life is fun right it really is hey we could do this if we can do this we can do this and I look these business cards we just you know all of that stuff is really really really fun but it doesn't actually get you paid it nobody actually nobody is going to pay you simply because you have a really nice business card so the problem is with a lot of things is people focus on all this fluff all this just just scrap that doesn't really matter they don't focus on the actual product itself they don't they don't focus on what they're going to be providing and so they spend thousand two thousand and I've seen this I've seen other consultants at five thousand dollars on all this fluff and all this crap and then they completely and utterly fail because they didn't go out there and you just to start to do it simply just go out there and see does people do people want what you're willing to offer go from there go from there so that would be my phone today a whole idea of you know the technology world and hobbies is go out there and play don't expect everything that you do to lead to a paycheck just go out there play see what happens see what people are interested in and you may be surprised what you find again that's where you know like I've played around with the whole startup world I sit down I've talked with a lot of people I've done a lot of free zillion free consultations I've spent a lot of time a lot of energy because each one of those console take every time talking with somebody there's a little bit of information be gathered right if I charged then the chances are I want to talk to as many people because I'd have to go with this whole client acquisition process but just because I sit down and talk with people and see what's going on here i could see what's going on here you can see what you're interested in what you are willing to pay for this net the other thing and then you take all of that and turn it into something that is hopefully valuable and you go from there instead of trying to make money from the absolute get to go so there you go there you go that is my thought on how a hope that makes sense it's one of those whenever I sit down here and I talk directly into the camera sometimes I don't have any notes anymore it's like I hope I went through all my points I think I went through all of my points there but just like I said just think about that we see that a lot with with hackerspaces like in Baltimore in the Baltimore area things called hacker spaces these aren't accelerators are as they're not incubators their hacker spaces and what they are is like a lot of these these texts so they work at big enterprise companies they have real jobs but they like to play with things on the side so now especially like with Internet of Things people are playing with Arduino boards and people are playing with raspberry PI's and all that kind of stuff so that's one of the things that a lot of these these professionals are doing is they'll get five or six or ten people together they all chip in let's say two hundred dollars per month they all kept in two hundred dollars per month and then they rent out a little industrial space right and then in that industrial space they bring in all of their different tools so they can play around and so they do this as a hobby but think about this right their hobby so they pay any Peter two hundred dollars plus it'd be the utility bill us or whatever they go there and they play around with Arduino boards and I figure out how to make you know drones do weird stuff and they do all kinds of other wacky stuff right as a hobby but all the stuff that they're learning they're all the stuff that they're playing around with all the stuff that they're screwing around with that is still valuable skills that they can then take back to their employer and go Hey look I learned how to make an Arduino do whatever I think I should get paid another ten thousand dollars a year and so again that's where don't think about everything remember we get paid in the technology professional again as against for solving problems so a lot of people the problem that they run into is since they're always looking for paychecks they're always looking for their employers or somebody above them to tell them what to do is they just sit there they wait and they say okay um I'm gonna get a pay raise just as soon as my boss sends me through the mcse class that's not really how it works in the real world right you go out there you play the experiment you need a hobby you need to do things that aren't done that aren't going to directly pay you and then you'll be surprised by learning those things you can then turn and then again like I said turn it into a business or startup or simply get a pay raise or something like that so there we go hobbies in the technology world and all seriousness cuz again I mean like looking at geek camp right yeah geek camp I think is a really cool idea really do I think it could make money because again like I I have friends I have friends who do events I'd have friends who do events and so like I was talking with the guys there's this this group technically technically they do technically Baltimore technically Philadelphia we're technically New York they're a they're like a web magazine or whatever for the local startup scene in these different areas and so one of the ways that they they pay the bills is by doing events and so you know I was talking with them and they did an event a while ago in Baltimore to give you an idea like the money involved is that for the small event so there's there were like 25 to 30 attendees and it was a there was a talk like colleges and universities and design right over right basically for this getting 25 to 30 people show up in this startup company to have this little presentation they got paid five that was in dollars so that's the thing is I know in the admit space if I can figure out how to create an event that people want to come to that I'm willing to do that there's a lot of money there but again the issue is is it's too easy to start to start focusing on that money and be like okay I needed okay get camp has to make an amount of money and so I'm gonna start this as a business and then again I got new liability and I've got do all of these other things instead of let's focus on just having fun you know what in the beginning and maybe forever geek camp will just be a fun idea we're just gonna go and we're gonna see who the hell shows up we're not going to worry about liability insurance because it's not a structured thing we're not going to worry about IRS because again it's not a business we're not gonna worry about all that we're just gonna go and we're gonna have fun and again if five people show up cool and it's fun as if ten people show up um well that's interesting if fifty people show up well then we know that we actually have something and it can go from there right I'm very excited about geek camp I do you think it'll be really fun but anyways that isn't I thought today on hobbies in the technology world really really really really really take this seriously because so many people just focus on that money and then yeah they don't really get how all this works in the end so think about that started off as a hot kiss started off just just go out there take whatever money people offer you just take it as little hobby see what the hell happens if you have something that works if you have something that people want again you'll make all the money up at the end of the day anyway you

Channel: Eli the Computer Guy

Views: 40,179

Keywords: Eli, the, Computer, Guy

Id: NJ-ncN8c6Yk

Length: 38min 4sec (2284 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2015