7 years ago, I thought I made my biggest life mistake......
7 years ago, I thought I made my biggest life mistake......
The first being IIT preparation of course 😣
“I will be an astronaut and will travel in space when I grow up”
“No, I want to be an actor”
Some might even have a goal to be a
doctor
football player
engineer
cricket player hitting centuries.
Back in the 90s, very few people had the idea of starting their startup and no one knew about wtf was metrics, the Internet, or even the word ‘startup’.
All we knew was business means Dhanda…
But very few people were doing it…
So the only thing we had was to dream of those fancy job titles that we used to hear in our school or maybe from our Bua ka beta who was earning well 🙂
And his reaction when he heard our plans was like:
We all had very different dreams during our childhood, some of you might still be pursuing your dreams and most of them today are not and the reason might be very different for everyone.
As we grow up, we often reflect on how great our school days were, even though we thought growing up would be so much more exciting. But life has a way of steering us in unexpected directions.
Growing up I always wanted to be an artist. Still, somehow, the inner artist inside me turned into an engineer because someone else convinced my family that engineering is the best thing in life.
And as every student even I started preparing for IIT JEE 😀 to get into IIT Bombay, do engineering and booom 6Cr package would be on my way…
But the most funny thing was Instead of a 6 CR package I got 6 marks in IIT JEE.
Yes, it was only 6 out of Idk 😅
The IIT dream faded away, and everyone was sure: ” Jaise Taise 12th hogya Btech to bilkul nhi hoga tere se, normal graduation kar le bas”
Sadly, they were right. I took four years to complete my three-year BSC degree.
And years later (7 years ago), I thought I made my biggest life mistake again (The first being IIT preparation of course 😣)
I was sitting in my parent's home staring at my laptop after quitting my well-paying job to pursue designing full-time as a freelancer.
Why did I leave the job? Well 👇
Jokes apart, Have you ever been in a situation where you know you can do it more but your current role or job is restricting you from doing it?
No No, I was not born to be a founder or thought I would be having a team and building a SaaS.
I was just clueless (well, if you are a founder and if you are clueless then you should get in touch with thecluelesscompany) about my Job and wanted to try what I truly wanted to do, and that was being a freelance designer.
But being a freelancer also comes with great freedom but uncertainty is paralyzing.
In the first year after leaving the Job, I took 👇
Any Job I could in Design
Worked 80/Hours /week (yes, I’m Inspired by Narayan Murthy sir)
Learned the hard ways of setting boundaries.
Slowly with time and learning I 👇
Niched down to focus on UI/UX for startups
Started networking with people on LinkedIn and Twitter
Started saying No to Unfit clients
I know all this sounds easier being said than done, but trust me there are no hacks or quick shortcuts to anything…..
Because when you will start freelancing or even your job it’s not easy to
Find your niche and get a job or client for the same
Have all those skills since the beginning
Build trust when you are just starting
How I did do all this? I will explain everything in my newsletter soon 🙂
And between all this hustle my first breakthrough came when I landed my first high-paying client through LinkedIn the project was so big that I had to hire the first person to handle overflow work.
With one step at a time and growing slowly, I turned into a full-time founder from a freelancer, I know this sounds so easy but it was not. It took so many countless nights and rejections to become a founder and start a company.
Even being a founder has so many challenges:
Had to develop systems to handle clients
Working with the team and delegating tasks
Meet my amazing team (some are WFH) 👇
But as said you start getting things done when you start putting effort into it.
Today, I run a successful agency (Team Codesign) and have launched a product (SpeechtoNote), and at Team Codesign we are, creating impactful digital products.
We’ve launched 500+ digital products
We’ve helped thousands of users enhance their workflows
10 years back I never thought I would be here but the only thing that worked for me was believing in myself 💪
Btw, How did your childhood dreams evolve? I’d love to hear your story.
Before we say the final goodbye to today’s topic, here are 5 Interesting things I came across last week 👇
Building Initial team for seed startup by Andrew Chen
Use Reddit and AI to find winning startup ideas video by Greg Isenberg
Understanding Your Brain by Evan LaPointe
Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
If you liked the “reading experience” please share this with a friend. It would mean the world to me❤️