How did you build up your business/career?

[Atlas IV]

I know that this forum is full of very smart guys. Outside of seduction I imagine that many of you are very successful in your own field.

I'm curious (if you are willing to share), what do you do, and how did you get into your line of work or build your business?

For me, I'm a translator. I got into this by studying Asian languages at university. It turned out there was a lot of demand for my niche language pair, so it was a path that made sense. I enjoy languages, and can't say I've ever disliked the work - it gave me the flexibility of working from anywhere, and the pay is good. But I've done it for 6 years now, and with AI taking over this industry, I'm looking to quit and build a new business in something totally different. Just trying to figure out exactly what that will be.

What's your story?

 

[Chase]

@Atlas IV,

Girls Chase started as a blog for me because guys on forums kept asking me to start one. I never intended it to be a business. Then I got laid off, started traveling, wrote a book, decided to try selling it, decided to keep going with Girls Chase once I’d done that, and grew it from there. Started talking to lots of different smart people about what they were doing with their businesses, studied a bunch of marketing courses, and added more pieces as I went.

Don’t know that I’d necessarily recommend that path though. The folks I know who were more deliberate about studying business first and carefully selecting a niche tended to have the best results.

There isn’t an opportunity to combine AI + expertise in the translation niche?

I would assume there is. These LLMs still make a lot of mistakes. Probably a way to do, “We handle your translation fast with AI then have an expert review it to make certain the translation is pristine — none of these garbled AI-only translations like you get with other companies.”

Chase

 

[Atlas IV]

@Atlas IV,

Girls Chase started as a blog for me because guys on forums kept asking me to start one. I never intended it to be a business. Then I got laid off, started traveling, wrote a book, decided to try selling it, decided to keep going with Girls Chase once I’d done that, and grew it from there. Started talking to lots of different smart people about what they were doing with their businesses, studied a bunch of marketing courses, and added more pieces as I went.

Don’t know that I’d necessarily recommend that path though. The folks I know who were more deliberate about studying business first and carefully selecting a niche tended to have the best results.

Makes sense.

Seduction is a niche that I doubt many business school graduates would intentionally go into though, so I'm glad you got laid off or we wouldn't be here

There isn’t an opportunity to combine AI + expertise in the translation niche?

I would assume there is. These LLMs still make a lot of mistakes. Probably a way to do, “We handle your translation fast with AI then have an expert review it to make certain the translation is pristine — none of these garbled AI-only translations like you get with other companies.”

Yeah that's basically 90% of the industry now, it's all AI translations reviewed by humans.

I've looked into starting my own business exactly as you described, but the field is dominated by well-connected agencies with race-to-the-bottom pricing. It would require setting up a physical presence in China and hiring staff there to manage the accounts and outreach. It's a big undertaking and to be honest I'm not sure the payoff is worth it given the pace at which China's own AI models are improving (soon they'll be able to do it all in-house by hiring a couple of native speakers and won't need to outsource at all).

However I do see a lot of low-hanging fruit in simple arbitrage opportunities with AI, and those are what I'm looking into.

 

[empath]

@Atlas IV,

Girls Chase started as a blog for me because guys on forums kept asking me to start one. I never intended it to be a business. Then I got laid off, started traveling, wrote a book, decided to try selling it, decided to keep going with Girls Chase once I’d done that, and grew it from there. Started talking to lots of different smart people about what they were doing with their businesses, studied a bunch of marketing courses, and added more pieces as I went.

Don’t know that I’d necessarily recommend that path though. The folks I know who were more deliberate about studying business first and carefully selecting a niche tended to have the best results.

There isn’t an opportunity to combine AI + expertise in the translation niche?

I would assume there is. These LLMs still make a lot of mistakes. Probably a way to do, “We handle your translation fast with AI then have an expert review it to make certain the translation is pristine — none of these garbled AI-only translations like you get with other companies.”

Chase

The way you said it, it sounds like I was doing whatever I found fun at that time and it turned out to be well.

 

[Chase]

@empath,

The way you said it, it sounds like I was doing whatever I found fun at that time and it turned out to be well.

Yeah, but I also know a ton of guys who did the same thing and struggled or had to leave the industry, plus a few more who knuckled down hard, treated it as even more seriously as a business than I have at times, and cleaned up money-wise.

There's value in "do what you love", but I'm ambivalent about whether it is necessarily a good thing to recommend as a business strategy.

-C

 

[empath]

@empath,



Yeah, but I also know a ton of guys who did the same thing and struggled or had to leave the industry, plus a few more who knuckled down hard, treated it as even more seriously as a business than I have at times, and cleaned up money-wise.

There's value in "do what you love", but I'm ambivalent about whether it is necessarily a good thing to recommend as a business strategy.

-C

I think unless you are very disciplined being in love with the activity you do makes more sense and on top of it you need basic business sense, so no one rips you off.

Because unless you like what you do, you will want to get over with it ASAP and focus your energy on what you like to do. Hence you will never put enough time to improve and you will be making bare minimum.

And as always can't discount element of luck, but being strategic about business aspect of things is required.

Love+strategic nature= sure shot success

Love+no strategic nature= can be anywhere, more likely to fail, looted

No love+ stategic nature= money can be bare minimum to average but always hate yourself, gets eaten by competition

 

[POB]

I know that this forum is full of very smart guys. Outside of seduction I imagine that many of you are very successful in your own field.

I'm curious (if you are willing to share), what do you do, and how did you get into your line of work or build your business?

For me, I'm a translator. I got into this by studying Asian languages at university. It turned out there was a lot of demand for my niche language pair, so it was a path that made sense. I enjoy languages, and can't say I've ever disliked the work - it gave me the flexibility of working from anywhere, and the pay is good. But I've done it for 6 years now, and with AI taking over this industry, I'm looking to quit and build a new business in something totally different. Just trying to figure out exactly what that will be.

What's your story?

Could still be a niche in translation.
Like medical articles and case studies...thinking about surgeons here.
If I were a surgeon in Shangai, I would definitely be looking for a proper translation of a some of my articles, or reverse translation of a new tech from the west. AI could never do it.

Also worth mentioning...proper niching is HARD.
You probably need 30-60 days only to find a niche that is:
- profitable
- not saturated
- suitable to your liking and skills (you don't need to have the skills, you can develop them...but they need to make sense to who you are).

 

[Atlas IV]

Could still be a niche in translation.
Like medical articles and case studies...thinking about surgeons here.
If I were a surgeon in Shangai, I would definitely be looking for a proper translation of a some of my articles, or reverse translation of a new tech from the west. AI could never do it.

Actually medical and legal translation is ideal for AI because it's so specific and no room for interpretation. Every word has a 1:1 exact translation, as opposed to say a novel or a TV script which needs to injected with creativity.

There's good money to be made in it for sure, but it takes years of study to learn the terminology.

Personally I'd rather milk cows it takes a special kind of person with the patience and discipline for that.

Also worth mentioning...proper niching is HARD.
You probably need 30-60 days only to find a niche that is:
- profitable
- not saturated
- suitable to your liking and skills (you don't need to have the skills, you can develop them...but they need to make sense to who you are).

Good points. I think it's also important to test the market first and not get married to your idea. I've seen guys who spend months building an MVP for some software tool only to find out there's no demand for what they've built.

 

[Toby2030]

Since you do translations today, I imagine you like to work with text. Have you considered moving into copywriting and maybe even conversion rate optimization if you are a bit technical? With the increasing CPM prices on most paid platforms, CRO is becoming more and more important.

 

[Atlas IV]

@Toby2030, yeah that's something I've explored.

By the way, I actually made this thread to find out what other people here are doing. But I appreciate all the focus on me and my career haha