Just so people can ignore this easier, im looking for some non lifting related advice.
Background for perspective:
When I first joined here, I was a restaurant manager making 35k a year working close to 100 hours a week. To make a long story short, now I'm and enterprise account executive for T-mobile making significantly more. I have no college degree and all of my advancement came the hard way. I realize I should be great full for my situation and complaining about my job is not the point.
My goal is to work for myself and be able to replace my current income including all the costs associated with it like insurance for my family. Its a significant figure.
After some research, ok a lot of research, I decided to use youtube as a spring board for this since the startup costs are minimal. In total I spent about $1000 between a camera, software and things I use for videos. I understand fully how challenging youtube is but that isn't the point ( it really is formulaic when you study it but I wont go into that here)
The idea is to get paid for my hobbies such as lifting, guns, survival/bushcraft and be able to brand out and employ others.
With this context in mind, at 40, im planning on going back to school. Im thinking about either studying biology or going for an MBA. The MBA would better prepare me for business but bio would better prepare me to deliver the best possible information on training on youtube.
I have well over a decade running a business and the past 7 years I have been selling into fortune 500 companies and developing business acumen but 7 believe im not fully prepared at this point so im curious as to what some members here would advise.
I didn't read through the entire thread but from what you're saying you have two different paths here you can take. The youtube stuff I honestly would just ditch that, unless you have something that is a specific hook/niche you're not going to get anywhere with it. Even if you did it would take years before you created an income with it and even then it wouldn't be enough to survive off of alone. I know e-thot who is very successful on youtube and she doesn't make enough for it to be a real income she lives like shit while pretty much dedicating her entire life to it, she can't go anywhere or do anything like a normal person without trying to get some social media attention out of it. The problem is she has nothing else but that so she doesn't have a choice at this point, hard to have sympathy for her because she shamelessly sold herself for attention but she has grown to resent it and it's pretty sad. Trust me....you're not going to make it even as far as her, she is very well known and has come up multiple times on this forum in passing. If I told you who she was and you saw her videos and social media crap you would think she is a lucky super wealthy hot chick just living the dream life but the reality of her life is anything but that.
So as for the two paths....
The first is to just keep it moving with what you're doing now, go get your MBA to further yourself in your current career and you'll make a nice life for yourself. I honestly don't think an MBA is worth very much anymore nor is really any degree outside of engineering or medical when you take a look at the opportunity cost but that's a whole other topic if it helps you move up in your career and they are paying for it then go for it. You're never going to be wealthy from that career alone you're going to be a salary slave with your never ending mouse wheel work all benefitting someone else but in return you'll live an easy stable life. You'll punch out at 5 and you won't take your work home with you, you'll be able to retire one day when you're old and be all set.....life accomplished.
Your other path is to do what it sounds like you want to do which is start a business. There are lots of different businesses available in all ranges of work and at all points of monetary costs to enter, as long as you have some money it's actually pretty easy to pick up or start a successful business. The problem with starting/buying a business is that you never leave work, everything depends on you. At your level of entry you would pretty much just be buying yourself a better paying job, it may be a much better paying job but the trade off is that you will be a slave to it. Money fixes a lot of things but it gets pretty frustrating when you can't leave for a weekend because there will be a million fires to put out when you come back, when you close up for the night but really you're still at work, when everything and anything depends entirely on you....when a "day off" isn't a thing anymore no matter how sick or tired you are. This path if you're smart and work hard will eventually lead to being much prosperous but it's risky and again there is a huge tradeoff, down the line you'll be able to use the extra income to live a better and easier life but there is a huge price to pay getting there. I'm a business owner with a very successful business and a lot of times I envy people who just work a 9 to 5 and can take a sick day or vacation day whenever they feel like it. Pretty much my entire family tree are business owners from a simple pizza shop all the way up to multinational hotel moguls and none of them have any real freedom no matter how much money they make, your life gets molded around your businesses it never ends.....it's almost like an addiction. You're a business owner with a successful business worth good money, are you going to sit on your laurels and not do anything with the equity and income? Hell no, you're going to open another business and then another and then another......why wouldn't you? You know how to do it and you have the resources and this is your life now.
I guess it depends on what you want out of life. Do you want to just make it and accomplish the goal or do you want to go for it all and take all the risks and costs associated with that?
You're not wrong either way you go.