[VolandoVengoVolandoVoy]

Nemencine

It's interesting that you accuse me and another poster of having "a negative, lecturing slant," right before you post a rambling wall of text that could be accurately described in that way.
As for your comment about real estate, good luck scaling that up to anything significant. When you are renting out by the room, in 6 room flophouses, how many of those can you really manage at any given time?
Also, don't believe everything you read on the internet. I read some of Gringuito's posts, and they don't prove anything except that he has a grasp of some of the fundamentals. The GManifesto debacle should have turned everyone's skepticism meter up.

[OGNorCal707]

(11-21-2014 01:22 PM)YMG Wrote:  

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It is glaringly obvious to me that several of you have not actually read MJ Demarco's "The Millionaire Fastlane" and are incorrectly assuming it's some scam internet marketing book along the lines of 4HWW.

I don't have the bandwidth right now to debate any arguments or accusations/attacks being made on this thread.

Probably shouldn't have come out of hibernation in the first place, in retrospect.

Good luck with everything, Atlantic. I genuinely hope that you make something entrepreneurial work, if that's the direction you choose to take in life.

Hopefully someone gets something beneficial out of this thread down the road! My goal was to facilitate constructive discussion and I hope that ultimately this is what happens.

Cheers gents. Good luck to you all.

Back to work for me now.

I can still be reached via PM.

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You're going to let a little criticism bother you that much that you regret "coming out of hibernation"? If I were that sensitive I would have quit the forum a long time ago.

[el mechanico]

I wasn't really expecting so many drama queens on a thread about oil guys? Trying to make some extra and also you ladies glossed over my post here which actually makes money.

[OSL]

(11-21-2014 04:47 PM)OGNorCal707 Wrote:  

(11-21-2014 01:22 PM)YMG Wrote:  

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Probably shouldn't have come out of hibernation in the first place, in retrospect.

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You're going to let a little criticism bother you that much that you regret "coming out of hibernation"? If I were that sensitive I would have quit the forum a long time ago.

nah, man, I really wish I had phrased that differently

I was generally thinking lately "why do I keep spending so much time on this forum????"

Every time I pop in I end up spending hours poring through threads when I really need to get back to work.

I made that comment while generally reflecting about how much time I've been spending reading through threads here lately when I've got other stuff that needs my attention.

[STEEL_WARRIOR]

Quick question before I get stuck in can a person on a UK passport do this? I know I can work all over Europe just wondering about Canada.

[Tresdus]

(11-21-2014 01:47 PM)Nemencine Wrote:  

It is a shame how this thread is getting subtly derailed, just as it is picking up good steam.

And not to mince words, i am specifically talking about the two of you: Tresdus and VolandoVengoVolandoVoy

So you're calling everyone that's not agreeing with OP and being a fucking Yes men derailing this thread? Just look at the first two pages, until I commented this thread was a massive circlejerk, not a single person offering critic of anything.
There is people in this thread on the first page that have no clue what they are talking about.

[scotian]

(11-21-2014 01:26 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  

Someone buy a car carrier and hire a driver.

Get dealers license? Run 4wd trucks up there and sell for top$$ nonstop from Florida.

Give me some of the money.

El Mechanico is onto something here, I don't know much about importing and selling trucks from the USA but I know people who have done it for their personal cars, so its possible. I do know that there are a lot of trucks in Alberta, I remember hearing once that the province, which has just ten percent of Canada's population, accounts for a full sixty percent of all the new pick up trucks sold in Canada each year. Check out this link and read the caption under the third picture (of the guy working underneath a truck), it reads... Lifted, customized pickup trucks are a common sight on the streets of Fort Mac—it's not unusual for an oil worker to buy a $60,000 truck and then put another $50,000 worth of upgrades into it. These types of trucks are everywhere in Alberta, so figuring out how to make money off of guys who literally spend 100K on a depreciating asset could make for a decent pay day. I know that the auto repair shops in the city are backed up and it can takes several days or weeks to get something fixed, I once met a guy who is a mechanic on the mining equipment at one of the oil sands sites, he works six days on, six off and goes around the city with a bunch of tools fixing trucks for cash and makes a small fortune at it.

Some of these oil guys have more money than brains and it you can figure out how to get it from them, then you can make some serious loot, I remember my moron friend (a pipe fitter, no big surprise there) called me to try and convince me to put $5000 into a scheme that would net me $40,000. I told him that it was bullshit but he went for it anyway and of course, lost $5000. This is the same idiot who came home one day with a brand new surround sound speaker system that he bought out of a guy's trunk in a 7/11 parking lot, he spent $400 on it, only to find out that they didn't work. http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/2011/09...mid-scheme

[oilbreh]

^^^
the government makes it fairly annoying to import cars in bulk, taxes, new safety inspection, if you need to change balls joints or some other parts thats easily 1-2k you gotta dump in. Parts are also double in price than the states. It was cheaper for me to buy premium tie rods online in america and have them shipped here, and probably still saved 30% over the non premium part here. Just some things to look out for. Make sure you are able to do a full inspection, or have a mechanic willing to let things slide.

[Kdog]

So many people were importing vehicles back when the Canadian dollar was at par and even worth more than the USD. It was insane that you could drive 3 hours south to the US and pick up the exact same Silverado at a dealership for 10-12k less.
I am wondering what the margins are like now that the Canadian dollar has cooled off.

[redbeard]

I think this car idea is the best one...but will take too much overhead.

There are two options:

1. Small scale. Drive up a car, sell it, fly back to wherever you bought it from.

2. el mech's idea: large scale. Buy a car carrier and ship 10 (?) trucks up there and sell them all.

My main concern is the legality of all of this.

But, if it's legal for me to buy a car, and then sell it on craigslist, why would it be illegal for me to do that ten times a month? The only way I can see it being illegal is if it's international? If so, I could just sell them in Williston.

I'd like to hear if anyone has experience/knowledge of selling cars strictly in USA.

[Tresdus]

Here's an idea someone could build on:

There's a food truck that goes around Nisku to most (I don't know, I see it at a lot of welding shops we work at) shops. As far as I can tell it sells only convenience store typ stuff like sandwiches, choclate bars etc.

Why not build a website/app where welders/other worker can sign up and the day before they can tell you what they want, pay on the app and the next day you drive into their shop and they can just take their stuff.

Offer a wider variety of food and I'm sure you could make good money.

[heavy]

(11-24-2014 02:25 PM)redbeard Wrote:  

I think this car idea is the best one...but will take too much overhead.

There are two options:

1. Small scale. Drive up a car, sell it, fly back to wherever you bought it from.

2. el mech's idea: large scale. Buy a car carrier and ship 10 (?) trucks up there and sell them all.

My main concern is the legality of all of this.

But, if it's legal for me to buy a car, and then sell it on craigslist, why would it be illegal for me to do that ten times a month? The only way I can see it being illegal is if it's international? If so, I could just sell them in Williston.

I'd like to hear if anyone has experience/knowledge of selling cars strictly in USA.

Many states, I know mine, has a restriction on how many you can register in your name per year. I believe my state is 7.

After that you need a dealers license. So it's not illegal at that point, you just need to jump through some hoops.

This sounds like a good idea though. I have no clue if it would be profitable.

[OSL]

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Idea - E-learning Courses for Getting Hired

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https://usefedora.com/

I've spoken with the guys running this company. It's basically a simple way to create a suite of online e-learning courses with payments and content management all built in. No technical chops needed.

If you look at that User Growth Bootcamp story, those guys built this suite of courses using this Fedora software:

https://learn.growhack.com/

I bet that Atlantic or Scotian (or someone with a similar level of experience) could easily build a brand around training prospective tradesmen and recruiting people to provide content for e-learning courses while then taking a cut of future profits/royalties from course sales.

Let's call this brand TRADESMAN TRAINING.

Under the umbrella of this brand, there will be a first flagship course for MWD specific to Canada.

BECOME AN OIL SANDS MWD - COURSE CURRICULUM

1. General Introduction to the Oil Sands in Canada
2. General Introduction to the MWD Position
3. Getting Starting
4. Getting Certified
5. Preparing your Resume/CV
6. Interviewing
7. Visa Matters
8. On the Job
9. Promotions and Negotiations
10. Managing Lifestyle and Finances

You create screencast videos with lectures, interviews, and actionable content that will help people take the precise actions they need, step by step, until they get hired.

Moreover, an upsell could be either group webinar trainings or personal one-on-one consultations for more targeted assistance.

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You'll notice that not all of the courses on GrowHack are created by Conrad himself but by other proven growth and marketing experts.

As such, you might have guys who have cut their teeth by being truck drivers, welders, plumbers, or whatever other positions seem to constantly be in demand with skills that can be acquired through training and certification.

So if you have these other experts come and collaborate with you by creating a course within your brand, you can negotiate a position where you get royalties or a piece of the profits from their future course sales because you own the umbrella brand and are marketing it to places where you have gained respect and influence, such as RVF (if you are Scotian/Atlantic/Similar)

These courses are obviously not substitutes for MWD training itself, but it would be a highly organized and cleaner blueprint for going through the process of becoming an MWD eventually.

In general people will pay money if you can organize information and make sure that they are getting accurate and proven stuff.

Thus it would be like either going through 100 pages of oil sands threads on RVF or paying $97 USD for a highly organized and efficient course with direct access to the instructors on the private forums inside of the product.

This is something that is software based that I think people would pay for, given the amount of interest that this forum has produced on the topic of making money in the oil trades.

Once the infrastructure is up and you've proven the demand with a flagship product, you can branch out into other occupations and recruit other content matter experts to create courses with you and then take a percentage of future profits from those course sales, thus scaling beyond the limited knowledge you might have about MWD or some other narrow field.

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In the longer run I think we are going to see more people being "forced" into blue collar work - either in substitution for college or due to not being able to get white collar work after college - and then realizing that the earning potential is at least as good as being a social media ninja at buzzfeed or whatever other stupid positions are out there lately.

That's just domestically too. Then there are the hordes of unemployed Europeans and Australians who are also interested but have no idea where to begin getting hired in Canada. I'm seeing a lot of those types chiming in on the oil sands and trades related threads. I'd bet that they would drop $97-147 to gain access to a course plus weekly webinar QnA sessions.

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Food for thought.

All of this is meaningless until the idea is tested out first.

A good way to do this (if you are Scotian or Atlantic or similar) would be to create a Launchrock Page under the domain "MWDTraining" or "TradesmanTraining" and then put the link to this signup page in your signature on your RVF profile.

You can specify what the course is and that it's being built and people can sign up for the launch.

Pick a metric - let's say in this case launchrock mailing list signups - and then see how many you can get in a month. If you get 500 signups in a month then that's a pretty strong sign that you have user demand (although it might be better if you set up a way for them to actually pay you in advance at pre-launch lowered price).

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This is how I would do it if I wanted to test demand for and then launch a course in this space.

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[OSL]

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I keep getting sucked back into the forum by all of you scoundrels.



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I am willing to invest in and collaborate on that exact e-learning idea I just laid out.