Over the last few years, I’ve been haunted by shame and guilt, for the fact that I have been neglecting my personal blog ever since its conception. With a certain amount of vanity I suppose, I do think that some of my knowledge and experience could be worth sharing with others. Although, so much had happened in the last decade that I will barely scratch the surface in this first article, albeit being a long one, for which I apologize in advance. So here we go.
The Beginning
It’s been ten years since I started my journey in the world of business. One day, when I was fourteen years old, I came home frustrated from school. My mind was filled with three thoughts; what will my future be like, who will I be, and what path will I choose.
I grew up in a family where the business spirit was always present. Whether it was my grandmother who ran her own restaurant, or my parents, who established a million-dollar business from nothing, in a place that offered no future or opportunities.
My sister – who was only a year older – became a caring mother for me.
Due to the difficult nature of those times, my parents had lived through a lot of struggle, and not the usual that may come into your mind. The collapse of the Soviet Union was the beginning of a new era, which meant freedom and possibilities. However, this also came at a great cost. Only those who lived through the struggles of the 90s in Russia, or any other ex-Soviet country for that matter, would understand what I am talking about. The streets were filled with poverty, broken souls, and most of all, crime.
The most honest, ethical and hardworking people were swept under the powers of those whose conscience knew no limits of dishonesty and disdain. Being deceitful, conniving, and coldhearted was rewarded with wealth and power. While those who lived by a code of honor were regarded as the weakest of the lot.
For a business owner to be pushed and pressured by the local government or mafia had become a daily norm. My parents, being the kindhearted folks that I know them to be, were destined for many hardships.
For this reason, I barely remember receiving much attention from them in the early years of my life. My sister – who was only a year older – became a caring mother for me. She was only four years old the first time we were left alone. As much as you may think of a four-year-old not being able to take care of themselves, let alone being tasked with taking care of a younger sibling, she did a fine job in keeping me warm and fed with whatever she could find in the kitchen.
Growing up in this environment I had become well aware that being responsible for shaping my future was solely in my hands. Nevertheless, I am forever grateful to my parents who struggled every day of their lives to give me and my sister the future and opportunities that led me to where I am today.
The Decisions
Fast forward to my fourteen years, I was tasked with one single thought; what steps will I take to shape my destiny, to be the person I always aspired to be. The truth is, I never liked school, to put it lightly. I was never a good student and barely put any effort to pass my classes. Not because I found it difficult, but because I simply lacked motivation. I didn’t like my classmates nor most of the teachers, who lacked creativity and enthusiasm in what they taught. But I understood that the system rewarded those who followed the rules, those who possessed some slick diplomas and strived to follow promising careers.
What’s the point of living in a large mansion, having a nice car and all the money in the world, if there is no one to share it with, no one to truly care for you, and most importantly; say that they love you.
I attended a private International school, the one where you had kids of ambassadors and oil magnates, whose lives were set from the day they were born. I didn’t see that for myself. At least not from the position I was in with my lousy grades and the struggling business of my parents, which could no longer support the same lifestyle nor pay for that kind of education. So that day, I made two decisions.
First, I decided to really take care of my studies. I was approaching the last years of my secondary education, the years that really shape your future. The second decision, perhaps the more important one, was the question of where I saw myself in five, ten, or twenty years from then.
I based that second decision on three criteria; money, freedom, and family. For many people, money is correlated with freedom. But so often you see men and women pursue amazing careers, and yet they have very little time for themselves or those dear to them.
These people live under the false idea of success, in pursuit of happiness, only to realize that they are missing something to be truly content with their lives. What’s the point of living in a large mansion, having a nice car and all the money in the world, if there is no one to share it with, no one to truly care for you, and most importantly; say that they love you. Even more, what’s the point of all the hustle, if you can’t even stop for a moment – without a justifiable cause – to appreciate what this life has given you.
I wanted my life to be the product of my imagination.
For me, money and freedom was a separate subject. From an early age, I knew that I would never want to pursue a standard career that would eventually steal my life away and deteriorate the one thing that is truly important to me – my family.
I wanted my life to be the product of my imagination, to spend time with my wife and children, to watch them grow and be there when it rains or shines brightly. Of course, all of those three things would have to be in the same equation, but not being enslaved to a nine-to-five sort of life was also a part of it. Money had to work for me, not the other way.
The Business
I didn’t have the money to start a brick and mortar kind of business and so I settled my eyes on the digital world. Having heard of the countless stories of dot-com millionaires, I was intrigued by the idea of running an online business. Not because it was easy – although that itself is a common misconception – but because it gave me hope to achieve what I wanted, with the little that I had at my disposal. At the end of the day, what kind of a business can a fourteen-year-old start with no money, fame, nor legal authority to exercise one’s full rights?
Business is business, and unless you possess the salesmanship, creativity and cutthroat attitude, you won’t get far on your own, be it online or in the physical world.
I understood full well that there is nothing easy about running a business. Some people just happen to be at the right place and at the right time, but for most of us, this usually isn’t the case. Business is business, and unless you possess the salesmanship, creativity and cutthroat attitude, you won’t get far on your own, be it online or in the physical world.
I spent over a year trying to figure out how things work. Starting a “business” online can be as simple as buying a domain name and paying for hosting, but you won’t get far with that kind of arsenal. Some people think that they have the greatest ideas, and that as soon as they get their own website running, thousands of people will flood to it and pay money. They naively believe that the product or service they offer is so unique and desirable, that anyone who gets their hands on it will love it. Sooner or later they go in despair, realizing that the few souls who took the effort to visit their website were family members and a couple of close friends.
I had absolutely no e-commerce experience at the time and the horizons of my entrepreneurial possibilities and comprehension were narrowed to the websites I visited and the tasks I performed on a daily basis. I figured that starting something from scratch in an unknown niche would take a long while to grow and I didn’t have that kind of time. My time was limited to the few months of holidays we got in between of the academic years. So I kept pondering, until one day I was on YouTube and it dawned on me. The video-sharing platform was one of the fastest-growing social networks at the time and with the monetization through advertising, the number of new creator channels was growing exponentially. This meant, that the desire to grow channels, and therefore, the need to promote them was also on the rise. At that moment, I thought; why wait for a seed to grow when you can collect the fruits from a grown tree? To me, YouTube was that grown tree, with millions of potential customers, and so my first real business idea was born.
I immediately started searching for any possible solutions that could help promote videos and channels on YouTube. Surely enough, there were a couple of places that offered such services, and so I knew that whether or not I had any knowledge or experience in this business, it was possible and I could do it.
This is when the countless hours of learning how to build and design websites really paid off. I’ve had a bunch of failed projects that were never really meant to be monetized commercially and so this was going to be my first proper e-commerce business. Words can’t describe the excitement that I felt, as if every moment of my life was purposefully aligned for me to come to this one idea, an idea that could change the course of my future.
At the time I had about 300 dollars in my piggy bank. However, I didn’t have access to a bank account or a debit card. In order for me to buy a domain name or pay for hosting, I had to borrow a card from my parents, and so they gave me twenty dollars. These twenty bucks had laid the foundation for everything that I have and have yet achieved as an entrepreneur. For this reason, yet again, I must thank the ones who made this possible — my family.
to be continued…
