This post will be a book review, Efficiency by Wall Street Playboys – Is it a Guide to Financial Freedom? The Wall Street Playboys were discovered through Twitter when I saw some of their advice which looked intriguing. It is pretty easy to tell after following someone on Twitter for a bit if they are legit or not. After looking at some of their tweets and then going to their website it was pretty clear these guys were giving advice from personal experience.
The only two products they had for sale were their two books: Efficiency and Triangle Investing. They recommend you read Efficiency before Triangle Investing so that is what I did.
At the time of this writing (8/19/2019) the book Efficiency is only $9.99.
Normally when I see this the first thought that comes to mind is that it is a lead magnet to a higher ticketed item such as a “mastermind group” or some other outrageously priced course. Or during the checkout it will be through Click Funnels and they’ll try to get you to purchase up-sells and a subscription so that your initial $9.99 purchase becomes $39.99 plus a monthly fee of $19.99.
They don’t do that here. It takes you simply to a PayPal checkout page.
There is nothing wrong with up-sells but from my experience in online purchases through social media the lead magnet product you purchase is crap and was only provided to get you to purchase the up-sells where the real margins are for the seller.
None of that is going on here which was extremely surprising. When someone is trying to create a brand you find that the products and experience they provide are far superior than the people who are looking for a quick sale by capitalizing in a hot market (*cough *cough – looking at your Drop-shipping and Sales Funnel “gurus“).
On a side note the link to their book is not an affiliate link. I get nothing in return from Wall Street Playboys if you purchase Efficiency through the links I provide.
How Efficiency is Setup
For this review I’m not going to go over every single topic but I will highlight the areas that stuck out to me the most. The book starts off by telling you to stay off social media unless you use it to make you money. That is the reoccurring them here in this book which is why the title fits so well, Efficiency.
Everything you do is to maximize the use of your time in order to make as much money as possible.
What I enjoyed is they poked fun at Efficiency because they said that writing a book is a horrible use of your time to make money. It is better than trading your time for money (a job) but it is far from ideal. The reason why is people only purchase a book once. You don’t have the same person purchasing the same book multiple times which is why there are better ways to make money than writing a book.
The book starts out by giving advice on working out and by eating with a more healthy diet. This book is geared more towards males but there isn’t any reason why a female wouldn’t be able to get a lot of insight. There are topics in this book I won’t follow but that is due to my age being passed some areas they speak about in the book. The main one being marriage.
But as with just about any book the advice given isn’t going to be applicable to every person’s specific lifestyle 100% of the time.
From there they talk about college and how to play the game to maximize the school you attend. Yes, college is a game and with the ridiculously stupid high cost of tuition you have to have a game plan if you want to come out of there not saddled by crippling debt.
Next, they talk about jobs and what they recommend and how to apply to jobs when you are getting ready to get out of college. Most of that advice is geared to investment banking jobs since that is what they are familiar with. But you can use the framework they provide to just about industry. You’ll obviously have to tailor it to your job market.
One aspect that really helped me was how to use the type of intelligence you have in order to choose a career. Their 3 choices for a career are Wall Street, Technology, or Sales.
For almost everyone they recommend starting an online product business using excellent copy-writing. They also touch on if you should choose affiliate marketing instead of creating a product. To be honest, this was one of the first books I have read that was honest about affiliate marketing and the gray areas involved with it.
The whole theme of this book is using your time efficiently and every chapter in this book hammers home this point.
Here are the main points the book goes over that I pulled straight from it:
How Efficiency Has Helped Me
The biggest negative for my life in regards to their advice is I am well over the age they recommend you get started in for planning your financial freedom since I am currently 37. They recommend you get started in your 20’s, fresh out of college.
It doesn’t matter if you are going down the wall street approach or entrepreneur career path. The recommend you get started following their advice in your early 20’s. That doesn’t include the advice they recommend for getting into college and what to do while you are in college.
So in reality if you are a teenager then that is the prime age to be in so you can maximize their advice. You want time to work for you, not against you.
Fortunately, my career path has been in sales and it is what I am constantly striving to improve so I at least make their list in terms of careers they recommend. I am not in enterprise sales which is the best sales to be in per their recommendations.
I also started this website (https://evancarthey.com) as a venture that I hope to transition to as a major source of income as I chronicle my journeys through trading. Not until I show verified profitability in my trading in the six figures will I even begin to think of trying to sell anything. What I am looking to do is build a brand that people can trust with trading information through my ups and downs.
The other brand I have is my agency EC Media Solutions (https://theecsolution.com). This is an avenue I have started but have not fully dove into yet. The goal is within the next year to have a full time paying client. I’m still working on the avenue I want to start with for the marketing/sales product I wish to provide to clients. Most B2B companies in my niche have horrible lead generation capabilities so that is an area I am looking into.
Although I am behind the 8-ball from their age recommendations I have managed to be on several paths for revenue generation that they highly recommend as well as my career path.
Key Takeaways From Efficiency by Wall Street Playboys
Sell With Emotion. Being analytical this has always been a struggle for me. It is much easier for me to provide facts and figures for selling but it obviously is one of the worst ways to sell.
They go over in depth why selling using emotion is a key to be successful in sales. It is a daily reminder I have to do and listening to Grant Cardone sales tapes on my commute to and from work has really helped with that aspect.
Have an online business on the side while having a career. You should not rely on the company you work for as your sole source of income. Efficiency provides the framework to put in the work for your online based business so you can eventually leave your corporate job and go 100% to your online business. That had already been my goal so it is very encouraging to read that is what they recommend.
Use copy-writing with your online business. I started researching this two years ago when the drop-shipping “gurus” were all slobbering over Ca$hvertising. That isn’t a knock on that book, it is an excellent book. But that section of social media are full of frauds and shysters (much like the trading and investing scene). So once I realized the drop-shipping gurus were mostly full of crap I cooled on the subject.
But reading their recommendation in learning how to effectively use copy-writing has put it back squarely on my radar as a skill I will increase drastically. Especially since it will help my online business.
Books I Started Reading Based Upon Their Advice (Amazon Affiliate Links):
- How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor O Schwab
- Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman (this isn’t in their book but is on their website under ‘Approved Resources’)
- Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Zigler
- Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
Some of these books I had already read such as If You’re Not First, You’re Last: Sales Strategies to Dominate Your Market and Beat Your Competition. The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. Both of those are excellent books as well.
Conclusion to Efficiency by Wall Street Playboys – Is it a Guide to Financial Freedom?
Efficiency by Wall Street Playboys was an excellent read. I plan to re-read it again to focus on a couple of the areas that really stuck out to me. Obviously I did not touch on everything they wrote about in the book but there are some other excellent sections such as health, fitness, social, and dating.
You can tell by the advice they provided that these are guys who have “walked the walk” so they are giving information from personal experience.
It’s also refreshing to see that they are people who make their money from other avenues. So although this book and through their website may make them a little money from it, it isn’t where their bread is buttered. Therefore they are not using the cringe-worthy sales and marketing tactics that almost everyone else who is selling a product on social media uses.
You can spot the people looking to make a quick sale and not build a brand.
The book is only $9.99 and it is well worth the money. Even if you only come away with once piece of advice you will work on moving forward then the book has been successful for your life.
It is really more of a book about how to be successful overall in life. Yes, the book is focused on money but it provides valuable information on how to succeed in many other parts of your life since they all overlap (money, career, social life, dating, online business, managing time, diet, health, fitness).
This is a product I highly recommend. So if you haven’t read it yet then quit falling behind the people who have read the book and are implementing the Wall Street Playboys’ advice.
As they say in the book, “If you’re not executing every day, you’re falling behind every single day.”
