why I don't help people...(as a millionaire)

hey welcome back tech late here so i don't help people anymore as a millionaire and i know that may make me sound very mean but i'm not in fact i'm trying to help people because i believe that if i were to help people too much if i had to give them a handout then it would be sabotaging their path and it's just not long-term sustainable and you know as somebody who's known for having money in my friends and family circles it's actually not unrare for people to come begging me for freebies and handouts and while i used to give people things because maybe i was a little bit more naive after more comprehensive and holistic thought about this i realized this is not the way forward and so just to give you an example somebody here on instagram they dm to me and asked me for they actually asked me for a free laptop now this is actually a question that i've been asked multiple times by multiple different people in my lives it's actually not rare apparently people just go online and ask strangers for free stuff free laptops and maybe sometimes they actually get it i don't know and you know let's go through this conversation the first thing this person asks is what laptop to get and so using my expertise i point them in the right direction i tell them hey maybe the macbooks are going to be good is going to be unique space may be good for programmers and so then this person says okay well i'm not usually one who asked for this but maybe you can help fund it for me too and you know this is like i've pointed the person down the path that they need to walk on and they need to now walk that path and not only that they need to actually be very good on this path they need to excel at it and probably come in in the first say 10 of the people who actually finish walking that path and here's somebody who is like they just don't seem to have to spare it for this and it seems like they even want me to walk the path for them and quite frankly this is not even one of the bigger challenges that this person is going to have to face right we're talking about hundreds of hours learning new coding languages and technologies and what a simple laptop purchase is something that's already holding this person up and so it just sounds to me like this person is lacking commitment and there must be so many different ways to acquire macbook if you really want to when you can pick up a little job on the side also for a bit you know maybe after one or two days of working as an uber driver you'll probably be able to afford one get a used one on craigslist or facebook marketplace or you could even borrow one from a family member but you know i see that thousand dollar phone in your pocket i see those brand name supreme sneakers that bomber jacket and so i know you've got some money out there right i see you're paying thousands of dollars for tuition you must be paying rent you know all the food costs money too and so my belief is that if you really wanted the laptop you could scrounge up the funds where it's not like we're talking about lamborghini here you can even get like a desktop and mac mini if you wanted to that might cost you just 500 to a thousand dollars even less if it's used and really the other thing take a look at me well who do i ask money from when i need funds to start some project i might need camera equipment lenses computer gear server hosting fees and yet everything i have here has paid for itself these are all investments as these products should be right any of these are productivity devices you should be gaining a return on any of these as investments and if you're not able to gain a return on investment on these things then it would be like it would just be a bad business decision it would be like hiring a business lawyer for a hundred dollars per hour when you don't even need a lawyer at that point but you just decided to hire one anyways because you thought it would be fun and so i remember a few years ago i was working on my photography side hustle and i wanted to buy a bunch of camera equipment but i didn't want to buy it myself i wanted somebody else to buy it for me i wanted to find some investors and that's when i realized well why don't i just self-fund my venture and i thought well i don't want to sell funding because i don't think i'm going to make the money back and so the truth is even though i was telling everybody that this was going to be a great idea what a great opportunity this was i did not want to put my own money where my mouth was and i realized that i did not need investors i could sell fund if i want to my business plan just sucked and i needed to come up with a better stronger business plan that would guarantee that i would get a return on the investment and if it was really that good of a plan then i would have no problem going all in and putting all of my own money into this plan because hey it's just going to be a great investment anyways right i'm going to make a multiple on that money just put it all in what's the problem and if i'm not able to reach that level of confidence where i'm willing to put at least 10 000 of my own money into a venture then i think that means that the whole venture the business plan needs to be reconsidered and just made more solid now that said there aren't plenty of people entrepreneurs who will diversify either way for example elon musk he would still take on other investors for his businesses even though he could sell funds simply as a means of de-risking because who knows any of his adventures can fail in any worst case scenario event anyways but that is more about the risking and diversification of assets which at this stage should not even be a consideration especially when we're only talking about one thousand to ten thousand dollars worth of funding and so if we go back to this message i reply to him what you funded invest in yourself earn it back right if you can earn it back then you should have no problem investing in yourself and i told them that if i were to fund it i would expect him to pay me back twofold maybe in a few years and so that's the thing that no money is truly free right even if you were to take on investment money from people who believed in you they would still expect usually a 10x to 100x return on their investment and so that's the thing to realize everybody is expecting a return on investment no money is truly free out there not the big money and so even if you had a company some unicorn startup with tons of funding from investors you're expected to pay all of that back and that's really the way to think about money any money that you spend you should also be expecting a return on investment on that and therefore if your plan is good you should have no problem spending it on anything that's going to truly make you more productive and help you earn back whatever you put in and actually you want a multiplied return on that so what i think it really comes down to is a lack of self belief you have a lot of people just sitting back in their chair saying yeah i'm gonna get up i wanna come i'm gonna get up i'm trying to do work but you have to you have to do something for me can you get me a cup of water first because i'm thirsty get me a cup of water and then i'll get to work i really want to work and nobody really believes that they can actually get real work done or actually make money from any side hustle or gear that you get them or rather maybe they're just too lazy and don't want to commit to putting in the time and so while laptops cameras keyboards mice computers and monitors are supposed to be productivity enhancing devices seems like people have a problem actually believing that they're going to generate returns on any of this stuff it shouldn't be that hard to make a return if their productivity is truly improved upon so if you think it's really going to be worthwhile and valuable for you to acquire some piece of technology or item then you should have no problem going out to get it for example you take a look at myself i bought a macbook pro for myself with my own money i also hesitated on this purchase within a few months i had landed the job at google as an ios engineer because i taught myself objective c there was a whole plan there put in place i knew i was going to develop ios applications put ios on my resume because i knew the market was hot for mobile developers and that was a pretty solid business plan my returns on that were probably over a thousand percent and if i could i would go back and buy myself a hundred more of those laptops and as for that photography side also i mentioned i realized i needed to commit more to it and really believe in the idea and make it a full-fledged thing and i ended up turning it into a business it wasn't a super profitable business because photography is such a competitive field but i covered all of my equipment costs plus more and looking back all of the gear paid for itself and so if your intentions are to further your own education career or self-improvement then if you truly believe and commit to the plan that you've set out for yourself if you have a really solid business plan then any expense should be considered an investment in which you will gain multiples back on that and kind of on a related note so techinterviewpro.com this is the website where i coach software engineers how to land jobs at top tier tech companies like google or facebook so you want to check that out at techinterviewpro.com but occasionally i would get messages from students who say they can't afford it it's too expensive and this is even for the cheaper option coderpro.com which is only like 70 bucks and i'm just here thinking wait you have already paid maybe fifty thousand hundred thousand dollars into your own tuition you've spent hundreds of hours learning programming languages your computer or laptop must afford to cost a few thousand dollars your phone costs a thousand dollars and now you can't afford to pay 70 bucks to help greatly improve your chances of passing a google on-site interview that you have scheduled upcoming in two weeks and if you were to able to pass it would get you a 250 000 entry-level starting job and i'm just thinking okay maybe this person just never even believed in themselves in the first place right maybe they thought they weren't going to pass anyway that they were going to fail either way and so it's not worth investing in themselves because their return on that investment would probably be zero and that's just not the right way to think about that i would say if you think that your return on investment is going to be zero if you were to invest in yourself then you need a stronger business plan for yourself and so here's the thing i know that if i were to buy this kid this laptop he would not cherish it he would not appreciate it and would probably just play a few games on it maybe do a little bit of coding here and there but not really commit to it the way that i committed to my own objective-c learning and education when i bought myself a macbook pro and i had to really convince myself together once i got it i felt guilty about it and i had rationalized to myself that i got this macbook because i need to learn objective c i need to do the work to earn the gear that i had bought for myself and so therefore that initial financial commitment which wasn't that large in the whole scheme of things also led to an equivalent time commitment and that time commitment is the biggest part of this and so my message to this kid is in order to truly go the distance and we're talking about a 20 to 30 year successful career as a software engineer you've got to believe in yourself and buy your own laptop to set yourself off on the right foot and you also need to buy techinterviewpro.com so that'll do for me but generally people need to already be helping themselves before other people can help them let me know though what do you think about this topic post in the comments below i'll see you there if you liked the video please give it like and subscribe and i'll see you in the next one thanks bye

Channel: TechLead Show

Views: 135,129

Keywords: techlead, tech lead, investing, investing for beginners, investing in your 20s, how to invest, how to invest in stocks, stock market investing, stock market investing for beginners, stock options, robinhood, best stock trading app, how to be a millionaire, credit score, credit card, credit cards for beginners, passive income, how to build wealth

Id: PSusAqmsLuo

Length: 10min 22sec (622 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021