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First off, I love the vibe in here.
Well, the vibe of those who keep pushing others to jump in. You can almost feel the energy.
Now take a seat, because my simple intro grew a little longer than I intended...
So, I'm 34, from Belgium.
I work as a technical engineer, steel detailing. At first as an employee for a contractor, now as a freelancer close to 5 years almost, 10 in total.
The work isn't bad, I make a decent living, but it's still exchanging time for money. Definitely slowlane. The biggest problem is that I don't love it. It's a service I provide because I'm good at it and there aren't a lot freelancers nearby which drives prices up. That's OK for now, but definitely not for the rest of my life. Not even the next 10 years. Within 5 I need something else.
I've been convinced for nearly 5 years there's a lot of money to be earned on the internet. Stories like the million dollar page (selling a pixel per dollar was it?), message on a potato, glitter in a letter,... Some magnificent simple ideas that blew up. However, I have no illusion about coming up with something like that, I might, but probably not. However, those were different triggers for me to really want to create something.
About two years ago my mind had shifted from 'I need to create something that makes me wealthy' to 'I need to find a void/niche I can fill'. However, I was dismissive about physical sales. Up to a point I'm quite convinced our dutch market is rather limited when finding a niche. There are only about 20 million Dutch people (Belgium and Netherlands combined), a niche will result in a really small audience making it hard to scale up. There's such a disadvantage in comparison to an English market (942 million). Nevertheless I did try selling some products, creating fictive ads on dutch equivalents of craigslist, just to see if there was a nibble. Alas, no decent results. Once I even bought a stock because I was absolutely certain. I still got 8 great Damascus chefs knives somewhere in the closet. Seems people weren't as interested as I thought (reminds me I still have to dump those at cost).
Since physical sales didn't seem to be possible I shifted to information. I created several websites using WordPress. I've already deleted 2 of them and a third is still withering away (I really need to delete that one too). My 4th website is still running. Dutch. Fully related to my full time job. I get about 100€ in adsense revenue, after hosting I've got about 60€ beer money. It's something, but I'm not sure it's scale-able or if I could start selling info-products. It's more b2b than b2c. I'm still pondering if I should put more effort into it or just let it ride its course...
Somewhere about 1.5 years ago I started reading again. About 30-45min before going to bed. I needed more education, bought about 20 books at the same time and picked up one after another. 4-hour work week was my favorite. Then I started reading TMF . After reading half of it I stopped reading. It was the worst thing that could happen to me. After reading about 30min I would try to go to sleep, but would lie awake for up to 4 hours and more. Thinking... About everything. It was absolute agony. And even worst of all, I'd read some again the next night. After a week I was so sleep deprived I had to stop. Until this day I haven't read the full book. (I should schedule in some time around Christmas to finish it).
A few weeks ago I got to finish some long-running projects. Stress-levels were coming back to normal again and some time was freeing up again. I made another mind shift and realized, if I wanted to create a new website, it should be one that adds value to other peoples lives, free of charge. Then they'd be more willing to buy any product if I would create one. The website should also be for consumers, that market just seems more logical to me, but my personal knowledge isn't directly related to consumers. I know a lot about construction, which can be applied to normal housing too, but there are probably at least as much websites about fitness/weightloss/cooking/crafts as there are about construction/renovation/small projects to increase value,... It's a process and it's gone this far. I'm not sure what to do with it yet.
When surfing the net again a week ago I passed the same names over and over again, Tim Ferris, Pat Flynn (listened to several podcasts during running past summer), John Lee Dumas, Ramit Sethi,... And suddenly I crossed paths with TMF again. The forum this time. I've been reading ever since. Lost a lot of sleep again too. But the energy. It's addictive. I listened to Andy Black's radio interviews about adding value. Read about how Biophase tackles ecommerce, SinisterLex's venture in writing copy, Kak's persistence in sourcing materials. I devoured thread after thread...
And everyone is right. The magic sauce isn't in here, but I already took my first step. To free up some more time I posted an application on upwork for some freelancers to lighten my load.
Next step. Go out and try to meet new people. Talk and see where I could add value.
I'll have to try and tackle some personal boundaries since I work from home, don't go out much and have just a few clients, but I need progress. I'll find some way to meet new people. We'll see.
Well, for an introduction, this can count. Sort of my life's story on wantrepreneurship. But hey, pleased to meet you all. Feels like I already know some of you after reading so much. I'll be sticking around for much longer, but I'm not sure I'll be adding value just yet. I've learned a long time ago, when you're not the smartest in the room, sit quiet and listen. And when you are the smartest in the room, you are in the wrong room.
Thanks for reading!
Well, the vibe of those who keep pushing others to jump in. You can almost feel the energy.
Now take a seat, because my simple intro grew a little longer than I intended...
So, I'm 34, from Belgium.
I work as a technical engineer, steel detailing. At first as an employee for a contractor, now as a freelancer close to 5 years almost, 10 in total.
The work isn't bad, I make a decent living, but it's still exchanging time for money. Definitely slowlane. The biggest problem is that I don't love it. It's a service I provide because I'm good at it and there aren't a lot freelancers nearby which drives prices up. That's OK for now, but definitely not for the rest of my life. Not even the next 10 years. Within 5 I need something else.
I've been convinced for nearly 5 years there's a lot of money to be earned on the internet. Stories like the million dollar page (selling a pixel per dollar was it?), message on a potato, glitter in a letter,... Some magnificent simple ideas that blew up. However, I have no illusion about coming up with something like that, I might, but probably not. However, those were different triggers for me to really want to create something.
About two years ago my mind had shifted from 'I need to create something that makes me wealthy' to 'I need to find a void/niche I can fill'. However, I was dismissive about physical sales. Up to a point I'm quite convinced our dutch market is rather limited when finding a niche. There are only about 20 million Dutch people (Belgium and Netherlands combined), a niche will result in a really small audience making it hard to scale up. There's such a disadvantage in comparison to an English market (942 million). Nevertheless I did try selling some products, creating fictive ads on dutch equivalents of craigslist, just to see if there was a nibble. Alas, no decent results. Once I even bought a stock because I was absolutely certain. I still got 8 great Damascus chefs knives somewhere in the closet. Seems people weren't as interested as I thought (reminds me I still have to dump those at cost).
Since physical sales didn't seem to be possible I shifted to information. I created several websites using WordPress. I've already deleted 2 of them and a third is still withering away (I really need to delete that one too). My 4th website is still running. Dutch. Fully related to my full time job. I get about 100€ in adsense revenue, after hosting I've got about 60€ beer money. It's something, but I'm not sure it's scale-able or if I could start selling info-products. It's more b2b than b2c. I'm still pondering if I should put more effort into it or just let it ride its course...
Somewhere about 1.5 years ago I started reading again. About 30-45min before going to bed. I needed more education, bought about 20 books at the same time and picked up one after another. 4-hour work week was my favorite. Then I started reading TMF . After reading half of it I stopped reading. It was the worst thing that could happen to me. After reading about 30min I would try to go to sleep, but would lie awake for up to 4 hours and more. Thinking... About everything. It was absolute agony. And even worst of all, I'd read some again the next night. After a week I was so sleep deprived I had to stop. Until this day I haven't read the full book. (I should schedule in some time around Christmas to finish it).
A few weeks ago I got to finish some long-running projects. Stress-levels were coming back to normal again and some time was freeing up again. I made another mind shift and realized, if I wanted to create a new website, it should be one that adds value to other peoples lives, free of charge. Then they'd be more willing to buy any product if I would create one. The website should also be for consumers, that market just seems more logical to me, but my personal knowledge isn't directly related to consumers. I know a lot about construction, which can be applied to normal housing too, but there are probably at least as much websites about fitness/weightloss/cooking/crafts as there are about construction/renovation/small projects to increase value,... It's a process and it's gone this far. I'm not sure what to do with it yet.
When surfing the net again a week ago I passed the same names over and over again, Tim Ferris, Pat Flynn (listened to several podcasts during running past summer), John Lee Dumas, Ramit Sethi,... And suddenly I crossed paths with TMF again. The forum this time. I've been reading ever since. Lost a lot of sleep again too. But the energy. It's addictive. I listened to Andy Black's radio interviews about adding value. Read about how Biophase tackles ecommerce, SinisterLex's venture in writing copy, Kak's persistence in sourcing materials. I devoured thread after thread...
And everyone is right. The magic sauce isn't in here, but I already took my first step. To free up some more time I posted an application on upwork for some freelancers to lighten my load.
Next step. Go out and try to meet new people. Talk and see where I could add value.
I'll have to try and tackle some personal boundaries since I work from home, don't go out much and have just a few clients, but I need progress. I'll find some way to meet new people. We'll see.
Well, for an introduction, this can count. Sort of my life's story on wantrepreneurship. But hey, pleased to meet you all. Feels like I already know some of you after reading so much. I'll be sticking around for much longer, but I'm not sure I'll be adding value just yet. I've learned a long time ago, when you're not the smartest in the room, sit quiet and listen. And when you are the smartest in the room, you are in the wrong room.
Thanks for reading!
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