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Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship, extreme skill or luck at personal investing, or incredibly successful sales (probably corporate) for a company with no commission cap. Those are the two that immediately come to mind. Why do you ask?
Entrepreneurship or Sales. I know a guy who literally sells cardboard (inside sales, years of experience/connections in the industry) and pulls in over $400k
Ahh yes, the classic example of the Wealthy Baller/BSD Cardboard Salesman. Specialization is quite the phenomenon, isn't it?
But seriously, if you think about it, isn't "sales" just entrepreneurship under management?
I'm asking because I know a guy who owns a small meat store (approx. 1200 square feet with only 5-7 employees). He buys his two teenage kids brand new BMW 7 series every three years, travels all around the world each month, and his house is worth over $1MM. He told me he has no other major money-making investments other than his business. And he's not some elite genius either (dropped out of high school, no disrespect intended). Makes me think what I'm doing slaving away at my 9-6 job when I could be running a business.
That's the beauty of entrepreneurship.
1) You shouldn't go around comparing yourself to other people - you ever seen the movie "The Joneses"? Just because he has a house worth a certain amount and buys new cars all the time doesn't mean he's wealthy - he may very well be rich, but asset poor. Also, he could be up to his ears in debt, but likes to show other people that he's made it. That could also not be true, but it's likely you don't know his true financial situation.
2) Risk and return are correlated. If his business fails, there's no safety net. On the other side, he can come out way ahead as there's a potentially unlimited upside.
I completely agree with the debt part. Its always amazing to me how many people will finance their lifestyles to make people think they are successful.
This is a selection bias, you see one guy making money from his shop and think that this is the correct way to go. Well there are 1000 more guy's who went bankrupt, ended up in debts etc. you just never hear about them.
Yeah, well its great once your business is working and you have recurrent cash flows. What he did not mention was the times when he wasn't sure if he was going to have enough money to eat or pay the bills. He also didn't talk about how he saved up money for several years and put it on all on the line to start his shop or that he took significant debt to start the business without any guarantee of his business working.
As a guy who started and sold a business and has made many entrepreneur friends I can tell you that it life as an entrepreneur is not an easy one. I switched to finance versus starting another business - I prefer the risk adjusted earnings of finance. I have met a lot of very smart people working in finance, but not many are fit to run a business. There is a huge difference between grinding it out in Excel and going out there and actually generating revenue aka knocking on doors to sell your product or service and getting rejected 90% of the time.
drug dealing, arm trading, money laundering, hacking, gigolo (or male AV star), government official (city government committee member selling permits). i am not joking. at one point or another, everything that makes a lot of money turns out to be illegal anyway. lol.
Learn to code, learn CS fundamentals. Head over to SV.
Enter the rap game, you don't even need to finish high school. But got to know how to pump heavy beats.
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You can make that in the trades if you have your own very successful business. I know a handful of people (friends parents) who make that . A couple are small time/regional homebuilders, a couple run their own construction companies, one that sells construction building materials. These tend to be 2nd/3rd generation companies by now though.
Read up on Peter Theil. Not that I'm endorsing everything he says, but the dude thinks and has written about this subject more than probably anyone else on earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
http://thielfellowship.org/
That said, the tl;dr is entrepreneurship.
Trade school.
Organized crime, lottery, tech startup
Monthly ebitdad from daddy's trust fund
Beyond a salary you can generate wealth through owning a percentage (be it 0.001 or 100) of an entity which generates a profit (either through its operations or its sale) or from being paid on a commission basis to generate revenue.
There are so many options for each path that neither has insurmountable barriers to entry. However, certain subsections that people see generating significant wealth will likely become more competitive and therefore barriers will increase see: M&A MD vs. software salesperson. That said, I have seen some software sales guys clean up.
Starting a business. I would rather be my own boss and take risk versus having to deal with office politics and getting an e-mail saying I am being let go because of budget shortfalls.
Nothing in life is 100% guaranteed. However, if you wanted a job with hustle mentality - sales will pave the way.
In theory.
Hate to say it since I went to undergrad and now grad school for it, but Real Estate investing isn't rocket science. I know more than a number of people who own townhome complexes, strip malls, a couple of stand alone Starbucks or Bojangles, etc. My favorite is an fat slob eastern european immigrant who didn't pass 8th grade that owns small retail centers yet lives in a mansion and drives a Bentley.
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