Authors: Allen Wong
1
7
The Mindset
A lot of you who are reading this book are probably not going to be app developers, and many of the app development strategies would not apply to your line of business. But throughout the years of interacting with other successful people, I noticed that there was still a common mindset among us. Sometimes just developing that mindset for yourself can make the difference between being successful or not. So, I leave you with some of my final thoughts on what it takes to be successful and what being successful should mean.
Lifehack #22: Be more than what society expects of you.
If you ever watch TV or movies, you’ll notice a generalization that the picture perfect family is a middle-class family where the dad spends most of his time at a nine-to-five office job and his children grow up following in his footsteps and taking a similar office job.
This is what society expects of you. They want you to go to high school to prepare for college. And they want you to go to college, so that you can train for your nine-to-five job. They don’t teach you how to make millions of dollars. They don’t teach you how to form a limited liability company. They don’t teach you much about being successful in general. And there’s a reason for this. They don’t expect you to amount to much, because there’s a 99% chance that you will not be a part of the top 1% of income earners.
But if you look at my situation and my age, you’ll see that anyone can break out of the mold and go beyond society’s expectations. It took only one year for me to jump from having the median U.S. household income (around $50,000) to being above the top 0.1% income (above $1 million).
So, why did that happen? What was different about me compared to the rest of the people? It was simple. All my life, I was training and studying to have the skills to create great things. But the problem was that I wasn’t working for myself. I was working for another company. I was helping another CEO/founder build his dream so that he would get rich. And I only did it, because that was what was expected of me.
Lifehack #23: Don’t be a follower. Be a leader.
You should always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Don’t try to mimic what other successful people are doing. Create your own thing. When other people start copying what you do, then you’ll know that you’re the successful one. You’re the leader, and they’re the followers.
According to
Millionaire Next Door
by Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D and William D. Danko, Ph.D, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in the U.S., but they make up two-thirds of the millionaires. This is why working for yourself and being your own boss is one of the keys to success.
As an employee, you are limited by the salary that is given to you. If the product you worked on makes millions of dollars, you’re not going to be enjoying a big piece of those millions of dollars. You are stuck with a much smaller salary and occasionally a little bit of stocks in the company. You just helped make someone else millions of dollars. Thus, your income will always be capped off by how much someone is willing to pay you.
When I was working for myself in college with my first business venture, I realized that I could make so much more money by being self-employed rather than being employed by others. There was no limit to how much money I could make. I could keep working on more and more projects, and then I’d increase my income more and more each time. I was only limited by time.
Lifehack #24: Hack away the unnecessary things in your life.
Making more money each day is not as important as having more free time each day. If you have the benefit of youth, then use it. The younger you are, the more likely you have free time. Once you start a family and a career, you have less and less free time to self-educate and explore your talents. Being young also means that you have fresh ideas and are full of energy. So, let time work on your side and not against you.
Time management is probably one of the most important things you’ll learn in business or even in life in general. The reason is that time is one of those things that you cannot get back. You can lose all your possessions and your money, but you can always get it all back through work. But if you lose time, there’s no way to get back the time you just lost.
When wealthy and successful people hang out with me, they are not envious of my income. Instead, they are envious of my efficient time management. Anyone can make a million dollars if you gave them all the time in the world. But making a million dollars in less than a year without working at all? That takes a lot of time management skills. And one of those skills is being able to remove all the unnecessary things in your life that are taking up your time. Do you watch a lot of TV? Watch less. Do you play a lot of video games? Play less. Do you sleep for more than eight hours? Sleep less.
Tether-free Principle
Most of my free time was made possible because of my ‘tether-free principle’. When I was working full-time at Columbia University, taking care of my mother, and coding apps in my spare time, I came up with a plan to eliminate as many tethers as possible in my life.
A tether is something that forces you to do a certain task either at random periods in time or at a fixed time period. A tether can be something as simple as paying your bills by mailing a check, or something as complex as holding a 9-5 job. Each of those tasks are holding you back from the free time that you could spend building your dream.
The key to true happiness is not about making the most money. It’s more about having the most uninterrupted time in your life to do the things you want to do.
There are some tethers that are almost impossible to cut away. For example, you should still shower every day and go to the bathroom every day. But take advantage of that downtime and make them work for you. When I take a shower, I try to think of new app ideas, or try to figure out how to solve a bug in one of my
programs. A lot of my ideas came from when I was showering. It was a relaxing part of my day, and it allowed my mind to wander and be a bit more creative. And when I was sitting on the toilet, I would spend the few minutes testing my apps out or trying other apps to see what my competitors were doing.
Another major unavoidable tether in your life may be your phone. But the impact of this tether can be reduced. For example, I don’t give my phone number to just anyone. In fact, if it can be avoided, I wouldn’t give my number away at all. If someone wants to contact me, I give them my email address. Your phone acts as a tether to your life. You could be working on the most important business discovery in your life, but then a friend calls you up and you two end up spending an hour chatting about nothing important. Or worse, you end up having one of those people who love texting you long paragraphs and each time you reply with one word or one sentence, they reply back with another essay.
Side note: If you’re one of those people, please note that there’s a reason why text messages are only 160 characters long. Please have the decency to call or put your story about your girlfriend problems in email form, so that my phone doesn’t vibrate and beep every 10 seconds for the next half hour. Thank you.
And finally, when you have a successful business going, try to automate the process as much as possible. If customers are asking you the same questions over and over again, create a FAQ (frequently asked question) on your company website. After I did that for my apps, I reduced the number of customer service questions from dozens a day to maybe one or two a day. Now, all of my businesses are truly passive income.
The last major tether in my life was my full-time job. By doing office work for 40 hours a week, I was not getting the free time I wanted to expand my businesses. Thus, I had to quit my Columbia job after working there for more than two years.
Family and a social life can be tethers as well. But these would fall under necessary tethers. Family should always come first before business. You can always replace money, but you cannot replace your family. And your social life should be what keeps you happy when you’re not working. Think of it as a stress reliever to your work-mode life. But keep in mind that having a girlfriend or boyfriend can be very time-consuming. When I started coding apps, I broke up with my girlfriend at the time because I wasn’t giving her the time that she deserved. So when you get serious in your business, there may come a time when you have to choose between your work and your significant other. What’s better is if your girlfriend/boyfriend understands that you need time to work on your projects, and doesn’t interfere with your work.
One way to measure how successful you really are is by seeing how much time you need to spend working. I know many doctors and lawyers who are wealthy, but they are married to their work. As soon as they stop working, their income drops as well. They are tethered to their work even though they are considered by society as “wealthy”. But what kind of life would that be if you cannot spend time enjoying your wealth?
If I disappeared from the face of the Earth for a year, my income would still stay consistent. Even all of my bills are automatically being drafted from my checking accounts. And all of my income automatically gets deposited into my checking accounts.
When you reach that level of free time, the possibilities for creating new business ventures and/or enjoying your life are endless.
Lifehack #25: Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
This falls in line with the concept that you should diversify your investments. Except this time, I want to talk about diversifying your income. At the time of this writing, I have over a dozen different sources of income. This is because you will never know when you will suddenly lose a source of income, especially if someone has control over your income. And this was a lesson I learned the hard way.
Before my 5-0 Radio app became successful, I had set up a Google AdSense account for my company. I put the mobile ads on my website and everything was fine. However, after my 5-0 Radio blew up and went viral, people started hammering my company website. This uptick in new visitors caused my AdSense account to go from earning a few hundreds of dollars a day to suddenly a few thousands of dollars a day. This must have raised a red flag in the AdSense system, because after sustaining thousands of dollars a day in revenue for a while, Google banned my company’s AdSense account for having invalid clicks. I appealed the decision and explained that my app had gone viral. I only got a cookie-cutter response back from them along with their denial of my appeal.
That was a devastating blow, because it took out about a fourth of my income. To add insult to injury, Google even kept the past two and a half months of revenue and never paid me for all the earnings I earned prior to my 5-0 Radio app’s popularity explosion. I think they owed me around $100,000 when all was said and done. It was the most money I had ever lost in a day.
Ever since then, I decided to stay away from AdSense for my apps and their no-tolerance policies. I now use about half a dozen different advertisement companies to advertise on my websites. The amount they pay me isn’t as high as what Google paid me, but at least they don’t randomly ban my account because of sudden spikes in user clicks. In fact, all the advertisement companies that I now work with all know me personally. They all beg for me to give them more ad inventory, because of my millions of ad impressions per day.
There was even a day when the Vice President of Quattro Wireless (now called iAd) called me personally to congratulate me for my success and for the business I gave them. He even asked if he could meet me in person at an Apple developer event called WWDC. This happened after I earned $70,000 worth of ad revenue in a week through Quattro Wireless. Since the advertisement revenue was split at around 50-50 at the time, it meant that I single-handedly helped their company raise $35,000 in a week.
That $35,000 could have gone to Google. But Google’s ban left a sour taste in my mouth, and I decided to never help Google again. That is the sole reason why I never developed a single Android® app, even though I could be earning more revenue if I had done so. The only way I’d forgive them is if they helped me earn back the $100,000 that they denied me. Having the uncertainty of getting banned again made my life stressful, and it wasn’t worth the extra money. I remember that every email I got from Google gave me chills, because I didn’t know what other bad news they had to give me.
Ever since then, I learned to treat each successful day like it was my last.
They say that you should treat every day like it is your last, so that you would appreciate your day more. Once you keep having successful days, you may start to lose motivation to work further. It is very easy to rest on your laurels when you have achieved greatness (especially when you get it fast and at a young age).
So instead, I pretended that each day was the last day I’d be earning a lot of money. Because of this mentality, I get to wake up each day feeling as though I won the lottery. That way, I stay humble, and only spend what I’ve already earned. And even then, I’d be wary of spending, because I’d rather save and invest the lottery winnings.
18
Dealing with Success
I haven't actively sought fame since I was 19. Ever since that incident with GunBound, I figured that it was better to be successful anonymously. Even when news outlets like CNN, ABC, NBC, and FOX News wanted to do interviews with me over my apps, I dodged them. It was the apps that people were buying, and not me. I didn’t think it was worth it to sell out my privacy for more money.
If seeking and gaining attention is what makes you happy, then you are getting yourself onto a slippery slope. Fame is dangerous in that it never lasts. You may be on the front cover of magazines one day, and then become a has-been the next day. Fame is also a double-edged sword. While fame can help you sell your products, it can also attract jealous people who want nothing but to take you down for being successful.
You should also be careful about using exotic cars as your motivation for success. Being motivated by expensive material goods is unfulfilling. Once you’ve own the exotic car that you want, you will get used to the feeling within a year or so. It will not stay as a constant source of happiness.
Lifehack #26: Be true to yourself and own it. Don’t be a poser.
If you really must own an exotic car to be happy, then you might be glad to hear that it doesn’t take much to own an exotic car these days. You can even buy a Lamborghini Gallardo for less than $90,000 if it is old (more than 7 years old) and has high-mileage (above 20,000). And if you think that $90,000 is expensive, then you have to remember that the true cost of owning a car is how much you’re paying for maintenance, gas and depreciation. Thus, if you buy a $90,000 Lamborghini and then turn around and sell it for $90,000 a few months later without spending any money on the car, then you’ve pretty much owned a Lamborghini for free. And if you have connections with a car dealer, then you can even go to car auctions and buy used cars at wholesale prices. Then without ever registering the car under your name, you can drive those used cars without ever paying taxes. And even if you do plan on registering the car under your name, you can set up a limited-liability company in Montana (a state with no sales tax), and buy and sell cars under that company without ever having to pay taxes on it.
You could do all of that as well, but then you’d just be seen as poser. And if you’re okay with that label, then you might want to start evaluating your goals in life. Are you doing this for your ego? Are you doing this for the fame and attention? All of these reasons are signs of low self-esteem, and a lot of people will see through it. There may be gullible teenagers who buy into it, but everyone else will call you out on it and see you as disingenuous.
I know people who buy used Lamborghini’s without even owning their own house first. Usually it’s the younger, egotistical kids with wealthy parents who do these things. But can you blame them? They live under the shadow of their wealthy parents. That makes them desperate to become successful or at least appear successful, because that’s what’s expected of them. They also have wealthy peers who compete with them in pissing contests, so they’re always trying to show off to keep up with appearances. Since their parents lavish them with gifts, they are used to getting what they want when they want. It’s this “spoiled brat” attitude that causes them to keep buying high-end cars and other luxurious things with no remorse. They feel as though it is their privilege, and nobody is going to say no to them.
They’ll also lie and cover up facts to create the illusion that they are more successful than they actually are. They care more about their status than most people do. They make a little money in their business at a young age and then spend it all on cars while living under their parents’ roof. Financially, a wealthy person would choose an appreciating asset like real estate over a depreciating asset like a high-end exotic car. So these people aren’t making wise financial decisions. They’re simply buying these cars as status symbols.
There’s this one teenager I know from the exotic car forums who does this. He comes from a family of wealth and goes through Lamborghini’s like they were clothes. He had a connection with a car dealer (presumably through his family connections) and was able drive Lamborghini’s with very little financial loss. He barely kept any car for more than a few months, because he would have to sell the car before it depreciates. I’ve lost count of how many Lamborghini’s he has owned, but it is around a dozen or so. What amazes me the most is that he’s still a teenager at the time of this writing.
That’s the true story behind his cars, but he’ll never tell you that. He leaves out all of these details, because he wants you to believe that he’s successful at his business. But the truth is that his business is not even doing that well for him to afford multiple Lamborghini’s. And although he’ll take all the credit for his business, he’ll leave out the fact that his wealthy parents were the ones who invested it and gave him help. This gave the illusion that he earned all of the success by himself. A lot of people fell for it at first, but as more people looked further into it, they realized that this guy was actually just a poser. He pretty much lost all credibility when he constantly kept bragging about buying this and that without actually going through with it.
The lesson here is that you should not be this poser when you come across a little bit of wealth. You should either be honest about your financial situation or don’t tell people at all. Just don’t lead them into believing that you are more successful than you actually are. It will backfire on you when people find out the truth. And the truth will come out eventually. It came out for this kid after a few months, and now he’s pretty much the laughing stock of the car forums (whether he realizes it or not).
Lifehack #27: Be confident, not conceited.
Having confidence is important in all aspects of life. Whether you’re in a business meeting setting up a new partnership or in a bar trying to attract a girl, confidence is the trait that people look for. However, some people, especially those with a little bit of success, end up coming off as being conceited rather than confident. And being conceited is not a very good look on a person. So how can you tell if a person is being confident or being conceited?
Confident people are people who can laugh at themselves. If they can take a joke about their weaknesses, then they’re showing signs of confidence. On the other hand, a conceited person doesn’t take criticism very well. He will try to hide his insecurities and even get defensive and angry if you point out his flaws. He may try to downplay the effects that the criticisms have on him, but he is secretly dwelling on it for days and even months. You wouldn’t know it until months later when he gets defensive about the criticisms and starts ranting about haters and what not.
Confident people are people who adhere to moral and ethical principles. They don’t resort to doing immoral things to get what they want. They don’t choose profits over friends and fans. They have their priorities straight. Thus, if a person lacks integrity, then he is not a confident person. A conceited person is one who relies on drugs, women, and/or fancy cars to feel important. That’s because conceited people are the ones who are insecure and self-conscious about how others view him. So if the person is constantly showing off his girlfriends, cars, and expensive purchases, then he is conceited and not confident.
Conceited people also like being better than the people around them. They set their goals based on what other people are doing. If his friend gets an expensive car, then he feels the need to get an even more expensive car. They like to compare themselves to others because they feel insecure about themselves. And they are always trying to show that they are better than other people in order to cover their insecurities. Confident people don’t need to compare themselves to others. They only aim for standards that they set for themselves.
Confident people also take pleasure from praising other people. Conceited people only talk about how good they are. They are not secure enough to admit that some people are better than them at something. Thus, they rather talk about their strengths while pointing out the weaknesses in others.
Conceited people are also close-minded. If you try to correct them, they will ignore you. If you try to advise them on something, they will ignore you. If you try to teach them something, they will ignore you. Conceited people think that they’re great the way they are and don’t need to improve themselves further. They always think that they’re right, and they’ll find excuses when they realize that they’re wrong. They will shift the blame onto others for being wrong. And they will make up a B.S. answer when they don’t know the answer to something. Confident people, on the other hand, know that they have room for improvement. They enjoy learning from others, and know when to admit that they don’t know something.
The even more conceited ones are those who are so insecure that they try to cover up their conceitedness. They are afraid that people will call them out on their arrogance, so they resort to sneaky tactics to hide their conceitedness.
These sneaky conceited people will use dishonesty to deceive others. They are obsessed with people’s views on them, so they will make up lies about themselves. Or if they fear getting caught, they will purposefully be ambiguous about something and let you make assumptions about them. And when you ask whether your assumptions are correct, conceited people will not give you an answer, because they want you to believe in your false assumptions that favor them. They don’t want to admit to making purposefully deceiving statements. For example, they’ll talk about how they made money on their early projects, and then show off their expensive things. They want you to assume that they could afford those expensive things because of the money they earned from their early projects. But in reality, their early projects didn’t actually make that much money to afford them their expensive purchases. So when you ask them about how much money their early projects made, they will either dodge your question or lie. But if you ask people in the same line of business or the people who worked with them on those projects, you’ll find out the truth and realized that these conceited people were being deceitful by leaving out the facts.
The sneakier conceited people will also label themselves inappropriately. They will call themselves CEOs of a company, even though that company only consists of one employee. They know that people associate CEOs with success and wealth, so they are actually trying to label themselves as successful and wealthy. But the truth is that anyone can start their own company for a few hundred dollars and call themselves the CEO of it. Those who know that their company isn’t all that great will be able to see through this poorly-veiled attempt at deceit.
The sneakier conceited people also love to humblebrag. By this I mean that they subtly brag about how wonderful their lives are while making seemingly humble, self-depreciating statements. For example, they’ll say something along the lines of, “The champagne on this first-class flight to Paris tastes horrible.” While they want you to believe that the horrible champagne they’re having is the focus of that statement, what they really want you to know is that they are on a first-class flight to Paris.
Some other tricks that the sneakier conceited people use are taking pictures that show off their wealth. They will then caption those pictures without talking about the thing that they are really trying to show off. It is their way of humblebragging through images. For example, a person can take a picture of his shoes while sitting in the front row seats at a NBA game, and only talk about how his shoes look in the photo captions. What the person is trying to do is show off his front row seats to an NBA game without appearing as though he is showing off.
The sneakier conceited people also use false modesty. When you praise them, they will purposefully refuse praise just so that they can hear it again. For example, if you tell a conceited girl that you think she’s really pretty, she’ll say something along the lines of, “Huh? You think I’m pretty? I’m not that pretty.” This can actually be false modesty. She may be fishing for more compliments. A confident person would instead turn the conversation around and start praising the other person.
There is no need to be conceited to become or feel successful. Only the weak must resort to bragging to feel significant, while the confident ones don’t. It’s much like how only the small dogs feel the need to bark to look fierce, while the big dogs don’t.
Lifehack #28: Try to avoid depending on validation from others.
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
– Bruce Lee
One of the keys to being rich is staying humble. I know a lot of young people who obtain wealth really quickly and then blow it all while thinking that money comes by easily. Once their income stops or slows, they end up with a bunch of bills and expensive toys that they can no longer afford. Their shopping sprees fueled their ego, and their ego kept them happy. But as their ego grew, it took more spending to keep them happy and keep them feeling as though they were progressing. However, a lot of times that ego also keeps them from doing productive work.
Ever notice that a lot of famous music artists only make one or two great songs and then are never heard from again? They got so used to partying and not working that they don’t feel motivated to work hard any longer. And you can’t blame them either. The record labels usually push them to go to venues after venues until they’re burnt out and need an outlet for their stress. That outlet changes from person to person. Sometimes it’s drugs. Sometimes it’s women. Sometimes it’s throwing expensive parties.