Entreprenariat: J’ai travaillé 100h PAR SEMAINE pour une pizza

Hello, friends. I receive quite a few messages on WhatsApp. I spent a good eight hours sorting through them today, responding to a lot of people. I would like to tell you something. I have received several people who have written to me on an interesting topic, which is the problem when you create a business with people. When you create a business and at the beginning there is no money. That means people who tell me they work for free. So here's something important. I will tell you right away. If you work for free, it will be written as free on your frank and you will have no value and you will go straight to the wall. I did it. I will tell you. I learned it the hard way. So I am sharing it. I am not very proud to share it, but I am sharing it so that other people do not hear about it. And it happened to me more than once because, you know, I was enthusiastic, I had ideas. I sometimes met people who were super active, who also wanted to be involved. And then I would get involved in the project. I would get carried away by the creation of the company, solving problems and putting ideas into practice. I was carried away by it, by the beauty of it, because it's something exhilarating, really. And I forgot to defend and protect and preserve my personal interests, you know, and that's extremely dangerous. I'll give you an example, and I don't want you to recognize yourself in it. I was in a group of people I knew. There was a friend who introduced me to a group of people, all that he was setting up a company. We were really at the beginning of the company. When I say at the beginning, I mean there were empty premises. It was empty. There were, there were. There were two offices running around behind each other and there wasn't even a computer. So from that moment on, I. I started working with them because they said, we're setting up a mega company. It's going to be the super cool thing. We're going to sign a big contract, money is going to pour in, we're going to recruit and all that. So I was. I was carried away by this speech. Now, there's one thing. At no point did I think about my interests. I thought about protecting my interests because I want to say something. When a project like that is successful, what do you have in your hands? You went into it. What do you have in your hands if you don't have paperwork, if you don't have a contract, if you don't have something that values your contribution, even putting this project. But we're going to go for the best, the best, the best option. If this project explodes and you get bought out by, I don't know, Sociede General and they pay you 1 billion on the couch, how much of that billion will you take? Okay, you can potentially take zero. You'll spend the next 10 years in your summer with lawyers to try to defend your rights in court. Okay? People are very supportive when there's nothing, you know, when you're in trouble, there's solidarity. And a lot of people will tell you, yes, if I had 2 million, I'd give you a million right away. But people who give you €50 for €100, that's harder to find. So what I was doing, I was working. When I say I was working, you know, working in the context of setting up a startup, it's not work from Monday to Friday, it's work from Monday to Sunday. It's not eight hours a day, it's 16, 17, 20 hours a day. Sometimes I would spend the night there. Sometimes when I couldn't take it anymore, I would fall on the couch and sleep there. And then when I opened my eyes, I would go back to work. Okay? So sometimes, for example, when I was launching something on a machine, on a computer, and then I saw that it was going to take two or three hours, and then it was already 1:00am Well, I would say to myself, hey, I'm going to quickly throw myself on the couch. I can sleep, I'm at 4am and then I'll go back. So I was, at that point, I was really a pain. The thing is, what I should have done, I'm starting to give you solutions. Listen, I'm starting to give you solutions, what I should have done because I didn't have any money to contribute. What did I contribute? I contributed my time, my skills and my ideas. I didn't have any money to contribute. But what I could have done is I could have said, okay, listen, guys, I'm going to be an investor with you. My time, my time. I could have defined a time, told myself, well, my monthly time or my hourly time or whatever it costs time, I'm not going to charge for it at that time. Now I'm not going to charge for it, but every time I work, I'm going to issue invoices for the company and give them to you. I won't ask you to pay for them. You'll pay me the day it works. Okay? Right. That's positive. The day we have success. Look, I'm going to give you an invoice for €300,000. But don't worry, I'm not telling you to pay it now. Just take this invoice for €300,000. I'm going to keep doing this work for you. I'm going to keep creating, I'm going to keep innovating, I'm going to keep running. I'm not asking for much, just €300,000 is all. Nothing compared to the millions you're going to make. Because I believe in this company. Going to make millions. We're going to make billions. Even so, if I give you an invoice for €300,000 now, don't worry, it's just good. You put it aside and that's it. If necessary, depending on the jurisdiction, the jurisdiction where you're located, Go see a lawyer. Don't say, don't tell them where I saw a lawyer, all that. No, go see a lawyer. Work with a lawyer to see how you can create value in this way. A way of creating value, even if you don't really earn a rank at the time. So the company continues to grow. There are contracts, there are clients. The money starts to come in. So the money comes into the company. But I earn zero. I don't earn a rank. I was overdrawn at that time. I was at Overdraft. I was in trouble when I put my bank card in the machine to buy a metro ticket. I wasn't even sure if the card would be accepted. I would sigh when the card was accepted. I wondered when the bank would cut it. And I continued to go to work saying, it's not a big deal, self denial, we'll give it our all, we'll work and bam. Besides, sometimes when I had to sleep at the company, I would tell myself that it would save me money on transportation today. And I was starting to run out of money. No money at all. To the point that when he brought the pizza, sometimes when he would say, come on, it's Friday, let's order pizzas, and all that, when he brought back pizzas and 2L cans of coca Cola, uh, I can tell you that I had an enthusiasm that I'm ashamed of today. I mean, somewhere there was a voice inside me that said, dude, you're working 100 hours a week for a slice of pizza and a plastic cup of Coca Cola. I mean, wake up. But I still believe in it. At some point, an investment comes in. An investment comes in. It wasn't a huge sum, it's not a huge sum, but there you go. The company got the support of an investor So a big check was written, it arrives in the bank, bam, the number increases the balance, and then it's a breath of fresh air. So somewhere, I was hoping, I thought to myself, well, at some point it's going to rain down on me in one way or another. I don't know, a bonus, A bonus. Something, I don't know. Well, that's what happened. In the days and weeks that followed, the company started recruiting people who came for job interviews. They were recruited quickly and they told me, go ahead, we have to train them and all that. So I was going to train them. The problem, the thing is, I was training people who were paid. They would arrive at 9am and leave at 5am, okay? From Monday to Friday. When they arrived at work at 9am, I had been awake since 4am I was groaning, honking my horn all the time. But I was there, sitting next to them, helping them, explaining everything to them, getting them on track. And at the end of the month, they were paid. I wasn't. While I was really starting to have trouble feeding myself properly, okay, why didn't I get paid? Why wasn't I paid? People were paid. Because I wasn't worth anything. I wasn't worth anything. Because it says free here. You should never work for free. If you say, well, you value your work, like just to speak now, you say, my work is worth €50 an hour. You count your hours and you give them €50 an hour per hour. If I work 100 hours per week, well, 50 hours. Well, there you have it, €5,000 per week. You're at €20,000 in the first month already, okay? I'm not asking you for anything, but the day the investment comes in, there's money. Listen, guys, I know that I haven't earned a place. I've been working for months, okay? I haven't earned a place. Now I'm a little bit, huh? Now it's starting to get tough. So an investor came along. He. That's great. So what I'm asking you for today is that I've advanced you a lot, a lot of hours of work, huh? How much have I advanced? Tell me. Look, look on the computer, okay? I've advanced €100,000 worth of work. That's it to start. So what I'm asking for, I'm being reasonable. I know that. Well, the investment is a little short. Hey, it's not going well. It's not El Dorado either. It's just that we didn't win the lottery. Okay, but I'm still going to ask for 20,000 K. €20,000. Okay? I'm asking you for €20,000 now. 20K, it's not a lot. I'm asking for 20K because anyway, I have to make a profit. I need to make a profit. I've been on the edge for 20 years, huh? You get rid of that and that's it. I could have been that guy, but I wasn't that guy. I was the guy who worked like a fool. So the story continued for a few more months and I was still working like a madman. And then what happened is that the investment was burned in payroll. At one point it disappeared completely. So once he left, well, the people who had been recruited also left, started to leave. Because after a while there were concerns. I mean, I realized that the salaries weren't being paid on time. So at first, the first salaries arrived without any problems the first few months. But after a while, the cash flow started to run out and the company started having trouble paying salaries from that point on. The people who were strictly coming in at 9am well, we didn't see them anymore. They all handed in their resignations, they left. They even sent registered letters demanding back pay and all that. And I was there all the time until the company closed. I didn't get a single rank when the company closed, you know, the day the company went bankrupt and I realized it was bankruptcy, well, I left hand in hand. And hand in hand, what I did, I took. I took my. I took a bag, I put my wallet, my phone, my keys in it. I looked for two or three personal items, like a USB stick, a photo, some personal stuff like that. I put everything in the bag, I took my jacket, I came out with zero, okay? Zero. And in fact, I was in a losing situation. I mean, I would have lost when the company went under, but I also lost when the company had money. And I would have lost. Even if the company had been a huge success and had been bought out for, say, a billion, I would have lost. I would have been ousted because I had no protection, I had no papers, I had no invoices. I'm just here with my enthusiasm, my hours and all that, okay? So be very careful. Never, never, never work for free, okay? That's a no go. If people need you, even if they don't have any money, if they value your contribution, if they think your contribution is valuable, well, they'll give you a percentage of the company, okay? Or even both. A percentage of the company, a profit sharing share of the company, saying, okay, the company is worth nothing. Now, guys, well, I'll give you zero. Ask me. Give me, I don't know, 20% of the shares. That's all. I'm not asking for much. I'll take 20% of the shares. That's good. There you go. You're 20. You have 20% of the shares. On top of that, there's the work that you do. And so at that point, you're well off, okay? One or the other or both. But otherwise you're in trouble. Otherwise, tomorrow he'll sell it for millions. It's happened, huh? I've heard horror stories about Microsoft, about Facebook, I think even about Apple and all that. People who are in this mindset of working hard, working for free, and believing in it are the first to be cheated. They're the first to be left out when the money comes in and the wolves, the real wolves, start to show up. At that point, you'll become more of a loser than anything else. And tomorrow they'll push you into a corner a little bit. You get pushed, you increase the time. You say, okay, go ahead, take your things and get out. We don't want you anymore. Okay? It's over anyway. You've built what needed to be built, right? Get out. Get out. Go file a complaint against us. Okay? We've seen enough of you. Go file a complaint, okay? Go to the labor court, okay? That's it. Okay. The world is very cynical, okay? The world is more cynical than you think. So when you're naive about work, and I believe in everything, and there you go, you're in the dead man's seat, huh? You're literally in the dead man's seat. Okay, thanks, my friends. I hope this message got across well, and I'll see you in a next video.