After 5 years of being a freelancer and solopreneur, I'm now back to having a fulltime job.
What happened?
Before I get to that, I wanna look back to when it started first.
It was April 2016 when I finally launched my very first product, by partnering with an already successful marketer.
I can say that was my first big break online and it was amazing.
I was still working fulltime at that time, and when I launched my 2nd product on September of the same year, that was the time I decided to resign from my job and do things on my own.
Freedom at last?
No boss, working anytime you want... I've been wanting this and I finally achieved it.
And it was great, but it was not as glamorous as what I wanted.
The catch
First off, no one is checking whether I'm working or not, so I have to push myself to do something, or else, I'll not earn anything.
Second, I ended up working more hours everyday, and even during weekends, and always thinking non-stop of ideas for my business.
And you can't avoid the pressure to earn which gives anxiety sometimes.
The Good, the bad, the ugly, of launching and JV-ing
I love creating my own products and helping people, using my skills.
I was also earning more compared to my previous jobs, which is probably the most exciting one for the good part.
It was somewhat addicting seeing those floods of Paypal notifications coming to my inbox.
But for me to be able to continue my success, I need to network with other people.
Connecting with more network is great, except for the part that you should compromise sometimes, just to please a "big fish" to promote your products.
And after they helped you, they expect you to do the same thing to them.
That means even if you're not really a big fan of their products, you have to promote them because well, they also promoted yours before.
This went on for some months, and I'm already feeling that something's off with what I'm doing (I might vlog about this specifically soon and talk about it in more details).
So by the end of 2016, I decided to enroll in an expensive program, to hopefully go the next level and escape this circle where I was trapped in.
"The Next Level"
It was January of 2017, and I was so excited to apply the things I've been learning from the expensive program I enrolled in.
There's no question about the quality of the training in that program and I was able to get results right away in my beta launch.
That made me excited even more so I enrolled in his FB ads course to get even more results.
However, when I applied what I learned, I spent too much on ads but got little results, so I lost a considerable amount of money.
And I know it's part of learning the game, but the loss is big enough that I had to borrow money to continue my business.
So as much as I wanted to leave my current space and go the next level, I had to go back again to survive.
Pandemic disrupted the business cycle
My online business was going as usual, until the pandemic came along.
At first, I thought I'll not be affected at all because well, I run an online business and I can still pretty much do what I usually do.
However, my launch on February 2020 gave a different answer.
I saw the decline in the number of sales, compared to what I usually get before.
But I still thought it might be temporary and things will get back to normal soon.
It never did.
I was still hopeful when 2021 started, specially that we now have a newborn baby girl.
I continued to learn new things, just worked with fewer and more trusted partners, and decided to launch more quality products.
And while things still worked for a while, July 2021 came and we had to rely on the credit card to survive.
So when August came, I had to do something, or else, we will be in so much debt.
I had 2 choices - launch a product or find a job.
I don't feel motivated in launching anymore so I just decided to find a job.
Found a job after gruesome application
In most of my previous jobs, I was hired right away after an application.
And I got a better portfolio and more experience now so I thought it will be easy for me to get back to employment.
I was wrong.
I had to pass through almost a month of rejections after finally hired.
I wanna talk more about this specifically in a vlog soon, so I'll just end it here for now.
My "unfinished business"
I know I have some unfinished business like my premium course Kreate and my animated collection Explainr.
I'll still continue Kreate and will probably be the only program I'll work on in the future so just please hang on for that.
For Explainr, I'll just probably replace it with all my animated collections (there's a lot of them) because I might not have the time to continue this anymore.
What's next?
Well, I wanted to be a good employee so I will focus more on doing my job these days.
Still, I will continue to vlog from time to time, so make sure to subscribe to my channel.
I will also still review software, but I'll only talk about solid and proven tools this time, and I'll avoid those JVZoo and W+ products (unless it's really good).
So yeah, just subscribe to my Youtube channel, like my Facebook page, and follow me on Instagram, and let's see how it goes in our journey.
Take care always!
Cham