[HN Gopher] I built a business that lets me live on the beach fu...
___________________________________________________________________
I built a business that lets me live on the beach full time
Author : Jbrus
Score : 190 points
Date : 2021-08-01 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.expatsoftware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.expatsoftware.com)
| dmje wrote:
| Biggest lesson I learnt was when talking to a dev guy I know
| about MigrateDBPro[1].
|
| For those who don't know it, it lets you push / pull WordPress
| sites really easily - local to staging, staging to live, live to
| staging. It handles media files, database, and it's really solid.
|
| Anyway. I explained it to him and he simply didn't get it. He was
| like "yeh, but I can do that by dumping the SQL from the live
| site then importing it to the destination and running a find-
| replace, then pulling down the media via SFTP".
|
| It dawned on me then that - brilliant though he is (and he really
| is: one of the best all round devs I know) - he couldn't see the
| benefit because he 1) was too good at what he did that he didn't
| see that most people aren't like him, and 2) he simply wasn't the
| audience.
|
| Now - me - I too can run a SQL dump, a find replace and an
| import. But - I'm running a business. I have about 50 clients, so
| about 150 sites (local/staging/live for each). My imperative is
| to be able to do these migrations with zero effort and in minimal
| time. I _could_ do it manually, but the time it takes me would be
| non-trivial.
|
| I fork out that $249 every year for the MDBP premium plugin
| without even pausing. It's a no-brainer.
|
| It's the same for me with ManageWP. $100 every month - I don't
| even think about it. Gravity Forms - $259 p/a - ditto.
|
| The point is: these tools are absolutely areas that I could save
| money on, but:
|
| 1) They make me look good to my clients / save my ass on a
| regular basis 2) They save me a shedload of time, every single
| day, time that I can spend actually working on client / paid work
| 3) They're all pretty unsexy: all 3 live in a crowded market, but
| they do what they do better, faster and in a more solid way than
| the competition
|
| The lessons here are probably obvious: make things that make
| people look good, make things that save people time - but also,
| don't underestimate how apparently "dumb" or "simple" or "silly"
| a thing can be, and still be a viable, profitable business.
|
| [1] https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/
| sjg007 wrote:
| >Anyway. I explained it to him and he simply didn't get it. He
| was like "yeh, but I can do that by dumping the SQL from the
| live site then importing it to the destination and running a
| find-replace, then pulling down the media via SFTP".
|
| There should be a name for this.. I want to call it Houston's
| Law. Basically when dropbox was pitched on HN everyone said it
| was dumb and easy. To paraphrase: "It's just rsync with a fuse
| filesystem..."
| mastrsushi wrote:
| This man quite literally has his head buried in the sand.
| ekster wrote:
| Just in time for lots of jobs to go fully remote so you can do
| this without lots of complicated or risky steps. I hope lots of
| people try it!
| vidarh wrote:
| Lots of ways to make it less risky too.
|
| E.g. asking existing employers to step down to part time or
| going on contract while taking on part time contracts
| elsewhere. When I took my first contract (currently back on
| full time), I took a 40% contract and negotiated with my then-
| boss to step down to 60%, which let me build up a bigger
| cushion first before I went onto contracting full time.
|
| Critical that people don't underestimate the multiple they
| should be asking for, though, and actually set aside enough
| money and ensure they're properly insured etc.
| fridif wrote:
| I never understood why people don't like cubicles or just the
| office in general.
|
| The only thing I can't stand is the commute and area around the
| office, unless you are very fortunate to be working in a woodsy
| location with a lot of parking and open space.
| handrous wrote:
| Qualities of offices vary widely.
|
| I once worked for a few months (thanks to an acquisition) in an
| open-office plan a few stories up a tall building.
|
| Whole floor was open _except_ HR (team room along the outside,
| with windows), a few meeting rooms (along the outside, with
| windows) and managers ' offices (along the outside, with
| windows). All those closed-in rooms around the perimeter were
| fully glass, since otherwise the rest of the place would have
| been really damn dark. _One_ of four walls of exterior windows
| was part of the main, open, office area.
|
| The specific situation at my desk: my back to my skip-level
| manager's glass-walled office, whose desk faced in at my back
| (else other people would be able to look over the manager's
| shoulder as they worked, and obviously that's horrible), area
| behind me also a major walkway for ~1/6-1/5 of the total floor,
| desks were truly-open cubicle-system-construction thingies-so,
| "walls" are the same height as the desks, nothing resembling an
| actual visibility- or noise-blocking wall anywhere. The woman
| whose desk was directly across and facing mine often hummed to
| herself while "in the zone". In my line of sight, just top-left
| of my monitor was a large TV mounted on the central pillar
| (bathrooms, elevators, tiny break & coffee room) playing
| (muted, mercifully) company propaganda and announcement-videos
| and slideshows all fucking day. The floor shook when anyone
| walked anywhere on our ~half of it, which meant my monitor
| shook. Probably 150 people on that floor. So, my monitor was
| shaking much of the time.
|
| There were also some pretty astounding cultural problems that
| overlapped (the fucking nerf-fights the balding 40-year-olds a
| couple desks down from me would engage in daily, to pick maybe
| the most minor problem), but I'm sticking just to the problems
| with my desk _per se_. I have _no idea_ how anyone was expected
| to get anything done in that environment. It was _hell_.
| vsareto wrote:
| This is likely an unpopular opinion, but cubicles are usually
| great only for folks who have never really experienced anything
| else.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| yeah, when I went from retail to the cubicle, it was awesome.
| You mean, I can leave something here and it'll be right there
| the next day without anyone complaining? Finally!
|
| Hot-desking is devil-spawn though.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Very true. If you have experienced either single office with
| window or team room with window then cubicle or open office
| are pretty much the same.
| fridif wrote:
| I have experienced remote work from my bed for 2 years now
| and I can confirm that I do prefer working from my bed in
| every circumstance.
|
| But if push came to shove and these employers decided
| _literally everyone_ must come back to the office (and not
| this bullshit where select politically alligned teams dont
| have to), then for $150,000 a year I can survive just fine in
| a cubicle.
| the-dude wrote:
| I have experience with offices which had rooms. With doors.
| Scarblac wrote:
| I've always worked in noisy open plan offices, cubicles sound
| great. Never were a thing here though.
| cheriot wrote:
| My employer's open office is _so_ loud. They literally just
| built a new one, bragged about how great the design is, and it
| has the same problems as the old one.
|
| How am I suppose to work when I can hear every sound made by
| 100 other people?
|
| At least divide things up into team size rooms.
| roydivision wrote:
| Renting deck chairs?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| One can trivially build a business that lets you live on the
| beach full time - renting beach umbrellas on a beach :)
| Felger wrote:
| Or move near the beach to work almost full remote, like me.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Or as Lawrence says in Office Space, "Well you don't need a
| million dollars to do nothing, man. Just take a look at my
| cousin, he's broke, don't do shit."
| tomcooks wrote:
| This was the right article at the right time.
|
| Trying to get hired but having a hard time enjoying the little
| dance I have to do to pass 5/7 steps interviews, dealing with
| hierarchies, schedules set by others, etc.
|
| I should focus on my projects, scale my profitable SaaS and get
| more passive income streams.
| oliv__ wrote:
| I'd suggest focusing on one thing. My 2c
| allears wrote:
| You're gonna get skin cancer.
| weimerica wrote:
| Well I'm going to die of something. Might as well enjoy the
| ride.
| thrill wrote:
| But no cubicle claustrophobia.
| eplanit wrote:
| I think it's great that he's accomplished this -- but he acts
| like he inventing Consulting, and is the first to live a beach
| life (or whatever one's paradise is) as a result. That's been a
| thing for decades now, especially for that 30-45 year old sweet-
| spot-o-life phase he's in. I'm glad for him, sincerely,
| regardless.
|
| However, he does deserve to get bitten by clients who read his
| article and get offended by the (very immature and very
| unprofessional) condescension towards clients and their "silly
| ideas" that he _blogs_ about.
| vsareto wrote:
| This stuff probably gets easy once you have 20 years of
| experience you can show to potential clients like he does.
|
| Once you have that, you can attract other senior people to your
| lifestyle business, which seems like what has happened:
| https://www.expatsoftware.com/services.html
|
| Even with 6 years personally, going to clients on your own is
| intimidating
| Traster wrote:
| This is such a great article because it takes an existing genre
| (Lifestyle coach) and actually does what they're meant to be
| doing. There are all those people on social media who spend their
| entire time performatively having a good time in order to sell
| you material about how you too could live like a king whilst
| doing nothing (with the advice actually being worthless, because
| their true revenue stream is to sell you worthless advice and by
| definition, they can't advise you that you too should be selling
| worthless advice - what you really need is _passive income_ ).
|
| At the end of the day, this seems like a great lifestyle for
| _some_ people. But I 'd soon miss my family, I'd soon be worried
| about which school I want to send my kids to etc. etc. Also,
| maybe I'm not in the same industry as this guy, but I would find
| it very difficult to pick back up if I went off traveling for
| months between gigs.
|
| Oh also one thing I feel like I should always bring up - a really
| confounding problem to this advice is the pre-requisite is
| "actually be good at something". It's like when Gordon Ramsay
| walks in to a shit restaurant and tears them to peices about all
| the reasons it's failing, and you want the owners to turn around
| and say "Of course we're not as successful as you, we're not
| world-renowned multiple michelin starred chefs! We're not good at
| this!"
| lordnacho wrote:
| > I see articles like this come past on the Internet every once
| in awhile, and they are invariably received with hostility.
| "Sampling Bias!" "That guy could only do this because of $X!"
| "That wouldn't work today in this economy!" "If all this stuff
| really worked, why tell us about it instead of milking it for
| millions. He's probably just trying to sell us his book!" Lots of
| reasons why we should quickly dismiss everything that was said
| above and carry on the way we were before.
|
| Part of me thinks the worst thing I ever learned about was market
| efficiency. Once you've heard that argument from a professor, you
| can apply it to just about anything. Heck I even had colleagues
| use it against me, despite being specifically hired to beat the
| unbeatable market.
|
| The guy in the article is right though, it's bogus. There's lots
| of little things you can do that might turn into a business. The
| existing players have not hoovered up all the opportunity, and
| new opps come along all the time. People talk about things that
| are profitable even if they haven't locked it all up for
| themselves.
| varelse wrote:
| There's definitely some survivor bias here - that doesn't
| diminish from what he's achieved in any way.
|
| But also as Krishnamurti said "Truth is a pathless land." And
| as Lin Chi said "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him."
| Take the parts here that resonate with you and build the rest
| the way in a way that works for you. It will probably take
| commitment and multiple failed attempts to get there. Just
| accept that from the get-go. Not everyone has the tolerance for
| risk to go down this road though.
| CPLX wrote:
| > Part of me thinks the worst thing I ever learned about was
| market efficiency. Once you've heard that argument from a
| professor, you can apply it to just about anything.
|
| This is a really astute observation.
|
| Both my parents were economics professors and I have a degree
| in economics. I feel like this concept was instilled in my
| core, and poisoned my thinking, but it's fundamentally not
| true.
|
| I've come to finally learn in old age that the market is _full_
| of inefficiencies that can be exploited, they are everywhere.
|
| If you're reasonably smart, or even just well-informed on a
| specific subject, things that seem obvious and trivial to you
| will in fact be observations you can profit from.
|
| The world is _full_ of $20 bills lying on the ground to
| reference a popular punch line.
| chubot wrote:
| I agree that there are ineffiencies everywhere. But does
| anyone actually teach that market efficiency means you
| shouldn't try to identify opportunities?
|
| Doesn't market efficiency just say that _someone_ is going to
| be the one to identify the inefficiency and make a ton of
| money in the process? The market doesn 't become efficient
| unless people do things.
| VRay wrote:
| I found an arbitrage opportunity with cryptocurrency a few
| years back, but it took two months to convince my friend to
| let me run the trading bot I cobbled together to exploit it
| on his account (and that whole time I was waiting for my
| accounts to get approved..)
|
| It magically generated about $8000 in a couple of days, and
| then the market came crashing down and the inefficiency it
| was exploiting disappeared forever
|
| Pretty **ing frustrating, and it's all the Efficient Market
| Hypothesis' fault
|
| You should look up the debates that Warren Buffett has had
| with people about the EMH, it's insane
| CPLX wrote:
| Yes as a theoretical construct the concept is totally fine.
| But speaking as someone who has heavy exposure to
| mainstream academic economics it's usually taken way way
| further than that.
|
| There's a concept called the EMH and I think there's a very
| strong tendency in Econ and pop culture to skip ahead and
| assume the hypothesis is basically true most of the time,
| often in the face of painfully obvious evidence to the
| contrary.
| mancerayder wrote:
| > Part of me thinks the worst thing I ever learned about was
| market efficiency
|
| I agree and I think it's partially a circular argument. In
| discussions of stocks, you'll hear that one 'cannot beat' 'the
| stock market' and you'll hear phrases like, "already priced in"
| "efficient market hypothesis" and so forth. Which is different
| than the sentiment that it's 'very hard' or even 'unlikely' to
| do something like that, which I sympathize with.
| ethn wrote:
| Market Efficiency is a convenient argument of faith which has a
| more nuanced rational basis, but absolutely in the general case
| is untrue.
|
| In the long-term, markets are certainly efficient. However, the
| period of inefficiency is determined by the absolute quantity
| of profit dollars available in the market which in itself
| determines the competition. That is, the quantity of ticks
| (time) required for a dynamic optimization w.r.t. profit
| extraction is the measure of competition in some market, and
| thereby the degree of efficiency.
|
| It is then true, that in the most competitive markets, the ones
| with the most capital, have a very small window of
| inefficiency, but they do exist. It requires a lot of capital
| to dynamically extract profit from those inefficiencies. An
| example of this would be the near hegemony of Citadel
| Securities in making markets. It is impossible for anyone today
| to compete in the market-making (an advanced arbitrage)
| industry without tons of capital.
|
| However, we are time-bounded beings so there is always present
| an inefficient market. The challenge of the proprietor is then
| to determine that market which can provide a return to his
| constrained capital.
|
| For instance, a restaurant can give a 15% annual ROI, which
| outperforms the S&P. The Citadel is not going to be interested
| in this inefficiency because that ROI is unavailable to the
| amount of capital they're trying to invest. So what we see is
| that the most competitive markets beget the most capital,
| because they have the most profit available to extract
| absolutely; then the most amount of resources, where capital is
| the analogue, are invested into those markets--so any
| inefficiency is quickly eroded.
|
| This means that just like the restaurant, there are markets
| that remain untouched for long periods of time due to their
| inability to return large amounts of capital in absolute terms.
| These markets then have a great ROI in terms of percent. It is
| these markets that are available to the proprietor with low
| capital.
|
| This is why the startup advice of finding a niche first is so
| salient, they are always necessarily underserved non-
| competitive markets. There's the other cycle from crossing-the-
| chasm which removes enterprises from this market who have the
| same idea as they scale, that's a separate explication, but
| this cycle allows the period of inefficiency to be maintained
| in those markets through that self-regulation.
| Retric wrote:
| Efficiency isn't about mathematical perfection, but when you
| dig into the numbers it's rare to find significant
| exceptions.
|
| First efficiency isn't about winners and losers. A lottery
| has negative returns even though someone still wins.
| Similarly Google was an absolutely great investment yet
| venture capital firms tend to under preform the market on
| average.
|
| The nuances run deep. T-Bills seemingly vastly under preform
| the stock market, yet buyers are generally being rational.
| milesvp wrote:
| Two economists are walking down the street and pass by a
| hundred dollar bill without picking it up. A little while later
| one turns to the other and asks "was that a hundred dollar bill
| on the ground?" To which the other replies "nope, if it was
| someone would have picked it up already."
|
| I'm with you, this joke haunts me daily. I studied economics in
| undergrad, and market efficiency is such a basic tenet that
| it's really hard to see opportunities that don't just look like
| a mirage.
| Gimpei wrote:
| This is quite a caricature of the profession. I studied
| economics in grad school and most of the time was spent
| discussing all the ways in which the market is not efficient.
| Not saying there aren't problems with economics, cough cough
| DSGE cough, but I don't think assuming efficiency is one of
| them.
| nixnax wrote:
| That joke is wildly inaccurate.
|
| The $100 is vaguely seen in the middle of the street during
| traffic. Is it actually $100? Maybe it's just a dollar bill.
| And are you good enough to grab it without getting hit?
|
| Maybe it's true if you come from a rich background and have
| family wealth to fall back on, which I suspect is where most
| of these people are coming from.
| tW4r wrote:
| The first one then replies: "no, you're not getting it, it's
| a VC funded business aggressively attracting customers"
| Aunche wrote:
| Of course market ineffiencies exist, but you need to stop and
| think if you're doing something novel. This would help people
| avoid pyramid and Ponzi schemes.
| anm89 wrote:
| Deleted
| chrisdalke wrote:
| I think you are both agreeing -- He's saying that what's
| "bogus" is the idea that the market is perfectly efficient
| and there are no opportunities.
| anm89 wrote:
| You are correct.
| caffeine wrote:
| I think an efficient market is for intro to economics what a
| frictionless vacuum is for intro to physics - a way of
| accessing some fundamental truths, rather than a description of
| something frequently encountered in the world.
|
| The existence of the hedge fund industry is a paradox for the
| idea of efficient markets. If markets are efficient, then the
| value added of hedge funds is zero. And if markets are
| efficient, hedge funds should only be able to charge their
| value added in fees, which is zero. Hedge funds charge a lot of
| fees. PE and VC funds charge even more. So markets are not
| efficient.
| steven_bishop wrote:
| What are the most common tech stacks the contractors use ? How
| can someone get into contracting ?
| mynegation wrote:
| Depends on the area. Banks and finance use a lot of
| contractors. Java/Spring reigns supreme, but there are gigs for
| C#, C++ etc
|
| There is a lot of contract work in Frontend/Backend and
| understandably it uses most popular stacks:
| Javascript/React/Ruby/Rails/Python/Django/PHP etc
| tomcooks wrote:
| Look at remote jobs boards and filter by contract or keywords
| lime "agency"
| paulcole wrote:
| > And catastrophic health coverage is like $100/month for a
| healthy guy under 40. The math kinda works out.
|
| Love how every one of these articles is written from the
| perspective of somebody who has no idea what it's like to deal
| with expensive chronic illness.
| DeltaCoast wrote:
| He did caveat by saying a "healthy guy under 40".
| mypalmike wrote:
| It's certainly a lifestyle that self selects for healthy
| people. That said, in the US, ACA coverage now means you can
| get insurance at nominal rates with annual caps that you can at
| least plan around. Chronic health issues previously meant you
| might not be insurable at all if you decided you wanted to
| freelance.
| blunte wrote:
| Some things not mentioned in TFA:
|
| Avoid debt. Don't buy a new car with a 48 month loan. Don't buy a
| house. Don't get a high limit credit card. All these things work
| against your ability to live the lifestyle he describes.
|
| So if you already have the debt, sell what you can, aggressively
| pay off the rest, and stop adding more.
|
| Next, don't fall in love with someone who isn't of similar travel
| mentality. Otherwise you are torn between wanting travel and not
| wanting to leave your partner.
| [deleted]
| refactor_master wrote:
| > "I suppose", I said, "I could stick around on a Contract..."
|
| Will definitely try this, since I already work from home 4 days a
| week.
| adevx wrote:
| This is me in a nutshell. The only thing that I must do everyday
| is handle email. Which takes about 30 minutes a day. I can do
| practically nothing (work related) for months on end and than
| suddenly work almost day and night to either get a new feature of
| the ground or rewrite certain parts of the stack. There was a
| moment where it really hit me that unless I start some kind of
| SaaS business, I would always have to work for clients and bill
| hourly to generate income. After that realization all work for
| clients felt like a waste of time. That was the driving factor to
| build something that would be able to grow organically and
| sustain itself.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| Can I ask what Saas business did you build? Link maybe?
| adevx wrote:
| I'm a bit hesitant to share as I speak openly about active
| police investigations and have a non-mainstream opinion about
| the current vaccination policy. It comes down to a
| subscription based service where people request a service,
| and others advertise to provide that service. The users
| ads/profiles are also what drives organic search to the site,
| creating a feedback loop that allows me to more or less sit
| back and watch it grow.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This honestly seems entirely reasonable compared to the "here's
| how I founded a billion dollar" company articles. There are only
| so many billion dollar companies, and no matter how many people
| try and do the exact same thing Paul Graham did, it isn't going
| to create more.
|
| On the other hand, a small consulting company that allows you to
| vacation frequently and live on the beach is entirely achievable
| for a lot of people. The economy can sustain an awful lot of sub-
| seven figure one-man companies. I don't really see that this guy
| exploited any kind of market inefficiency as the current top
| comment seems to suggest. He just identified a career that pays
| more in return for less security.
|
| As the author said, you gotta purchase your own healthcare, but
| catastrophe only coverage is cheap for a guy under 40.
|
| The only real issue is you can't possible know if that's gonna be
| you. I suffered through years of spinal degeneration in my
| mid-30s. Definitely not typical, but part of the reason it didn't
| destroy me is I was at a boring enormous company that offered
| super cheap long-term disability insurance and could perfectly
| well afford to let people miss six months of work. If you've only
| ever experienced startups with a $5 million budget that are
| skirting by on margins of hours before going under, it may be
| hard to appreciate that all of the corporate world is not like
| that. You actually can get a reasonable level of security.
|
| But you never know if you'll need it or not. It's not like the
| gods come down out of the sky and ask if you're okay with it
| before throwing you catastrophic health problems.
| golemiprague wrote:
| Healthcare is a non issue for most non Americans and if you
| travel outside the US you can buy a decent health care for much
| cheaper than what it cost in the US.
| wantsanagent wrote:
| How do people get paid under these scenarios? What is your
| residency status and where do you pay tax?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-01 23:01 UTC)