As a teenager, I had two big passions, martial arts and computer games.
When I moved out from my parents home my dream was to become a Gong Fu instructor. I soon had to realize that there was very little money at all. I knew kick boxing world champions who had their basement full of medals but were barely able to pay their rents.
So I started a business based on my second big passion - computer games - a company for 3d graphics with my flat mate around 1996. We went bankrupt half a year later and we ended in a big fight because we had absolutely no clue how this business worked. I started a new one with a schoolfriend…and a year later a new one with some guys I knew from university…
In the meantime I got my master in architecture and freelanced for an architecture companies. I had my 3rd company by then and for the first time I was able to get something like a steady income out of it. I had some jobs, but never longer than 2 years and always part time, because I always hated having a boss and felt that i could do better on my own. But it tought me how the business was working. I made myself known, I was pretty aggressive in aquisition, was much cheaper than the competition, I stole some clients from former employers and pretty soon had a lot of work, although not too much money.
When I turned 30 I was teaching two days a week, worked every day, every evening and most weekends, either as freelancer or for my own projects. On my 30th birthday I had a nervous breakdown alone in my office late at night. I realized that I was very close to a burnout and things had to change.
I had to set up some criteria for the work I did:
a) It had to pay well
b) It had to be really interesting
c) It had to be good for my reputation.
Since then I only accept jobs if two of the above points apply. At the beginning I was afraid I would run out of work and I lost some clients, but it was important to focus on only the best projects. It gives me the same sense of freedom as FI does.
My tips for newbies would be:
a) know your skills and passions and find a way to monetize, try to find or create a niche and a product that is scalable.
b) don’t work for idiots if you can make 3x as much self employed, it’s not that hard, kind of like investing actually - you just need a little courage
c) be aware of your weaknesses and work on them (i had to learn to talk in front of big groups of people about what I can offer without feeling embarrassed or like a car salesman, sometimes i still do)
d) quit if you are unhappy, no amount of money is worth being depressed or worse, don’t wait for it to change by itself, it won’t, it’s only going to get worse and worse and worse and life is too short and too valuable
e) don’t be afraid to loose or be rejected, failing is a great experience. courage can be trained by failing over and over again. get up! you’ll improve every time.
f) Be humble. there is so much to learn and just because you got a fancy degree doesn’t mean you know s***. Success will come over time. When I started to my first company, I made 6 CHF/hour, today it’s hundred times as much
