How I messed up my great career?
I know many people starting with great hopes, eating their brains out, and burning both ends of the candle: those who want to grow their startup or try to create passive income to gain financial freedom.
Some succeed and realize their dreams, whereas others leave their dreams on the pillow. One way or another, it closes the sale. To succeed or not to succeed.
Mine is a story of limbo. An ambitious college student hungry for success gives up on everything one night for no reason.
An ad on a university job board
Two freshmen wandering around the campus see a job ad while looking at the boards. One of them says, “Hey! They are looking for a web designer; you know these things. Call them.”
The young man gets the job immediately. He has improved himself, yet he is green as a gooseberry. He gets web design tasks little by little. He enjoys earning money. After working for a few months, he starts working with another agency. He works like a beaver during the entire day and attends classes at night.
He also develops his own web pages whenever he finds a chance. What is HTML, CSS? He tries to learn WordPress and Joomla. Though he does not earn money, he continues learning for months with the motivation to succeed. One, two, three… He develops countless web pages on various topics.
He somehow manages to drive traffic to the website and starts to earn a little. He cannot hold his entrepreneurial spirit inside. He realizes that it is impossible to reach his dreams by working somewhere else and quits his job. Now, he spares his all time to develop his own web pages.
3 years of crazy-fast pace
You know the classic garage story of startups. Though it is impossible to find a garage in our country, the crazy-fast pace of 16 hours starts to pay off. Business gradually grows, visitors come in crowds.
Posts about popular topics such as flash game pages, music videos, information about plants, and even posts about needlework. Tasks focusing on making money out of foreign currency through content marketing in foreign languages. Each topic was researched; original content was created for specific areas. Through the most advanced SEO techniques, the website’s ranking improved in searches.
Some projects I was working on at that time
The business network expanded via MSN and webmaster forums. There were expert contacts in every field. The first partnership agreements were contracted with foreign companies. The business grew.
Back-up servers and ads invested in managing traffic in times when we haven’t even heard of Cloud. Aiming constant growth, an organization that tracks budget following the Adsense revenues and similar ad platforms or direct customers and makes small purchases has emerged. This is a one-man band, don’t mind organization.
The ease and loosening period
Now that the system is settled, things are running like clockwork. The money is in the bank account without the long working hours. There is nothing left to work on but trivial maintenance and add-content tasks.
Crushed under the two years' belated graduation expectations, he now has a new mission. And the focus is split.
Once you run out of the road, catching it up is very hard. Even though everything seems excellent, your competitors working around the clock will never forgive your ease. Your web page rankings slowly drop, your visitor numbers decrease. The more the numbers drop, the more you lose your motivation — feeling it in every cell you have. Things that step up like a growing snowball become a snowball that melts under the sun all of a sudden.
Downfall
Things get to such a point that you realize you can’t turn back and pay no mind at some point. The downfall, at that moment, is accomplished. The winds have changed overnight. Your successful work has suddenly flown off because of your comfort.
You can start everything all over again; you can succeed all over again. Yet, you have lost your motivation so much that you feel intimidated, and your knees knock together when you think of the effort you made in the beginning.
With this downfall, I made my decision and switched to a corporate job. I have always found myself in the tasks related to startups, although I think I have moved away from the world of entrepreneurship. What I learned from this experience has been a key to open different doors.
Life showed the hard way that each business improves through scraping and with great efforts. Once you are on the increase, it can go beyond, and you cannot even imagine. You have to work with all your strength to not lose that speed.
It has been exactly 10 years when I look back. I am now working at Softtech Ventures at the heart of the startup ecosystem. Doing my best, I work with entrepreneurs so that they can reach their dreams.
To prevent the ones gaining speed from confronting the same reality.
We hope you stay creative and colorful…
