I hated the job I had landed on right out of college ended up starting a decal business. This was way back 2004 and I was ranking well in Google, made a few hundred dollars, started relationships with other reviewers and was having a ball. But for some reason, I stopped and did email marketing. I didn’t have to go back to corporate but I did, but the good thing was,I ended up learning much more about internet marketing, SEO, search paid ad, and the like.
The second time thatI left my job was in 2010. Before I left, I made connections with developers and had an idea for a children’s app as I already had a son then. I thought of applying to accelerators so I started working on the app. After 3 months though, we used up all our savings and I ended up halting that again to look for another job. Luckily, I found one and stayed there for 4 years but I promised myself that that was going to be the last job that I am going to have. So why did I fail on those times?
Here is the advice I gave myself:
To my 24-year old self – The first time, I thought I just didn’t know enough and felt like I had to learn more but you will actually learn a ton more just doing this business that you would working in all these companies.
To my 30-year old self – Do not get religious on how you are going to make money. I thought I was going to get into an accelerator and this is how I was going to ‘make it’. But when I left in 2014, I wasn’t religious. I did podcasts and video courses but when my big consulting client left only 3 months into being on my own, I tried everything. I applied for part time jobs, did copywriting jobs, went back to my old company and worked out acontract with them for me to do some PR, helped people in their app launches – I threw everything and anything, which I believe was the main reason why I ‘made it’ now.
We’re all going to make mistakes and we won’t know exactly how things are going to pan out so do not get religious to the one way that you are going to make money as things will start to falter.