Hey everyone, hello from Belgium!
After selling my company, reading Unscripted after the fact and learning a number of lessons from it, I started lurking here. A community like this can only thrive when people join in and don't stay in the shadow surrounding it. So, time for an introduction!
None of my parents have a higher education, yet they have always stimulated me and my brother to do better. Given the opportunity to study, the idea was to land a good job that pays well. And "well" here means "well enough". Have a nice income to sustain a comfortable life, but no need for anything exorbitant. After reading TMF and Unscripted , seems they wanted me to get better in following the SCRIPT.
During those studies, my hobby grew into a small one-person business that I've been doing for a few years, and then sold as I figured it was not something I wanted to do for life. Looking back, it also violated CENTS in that it did not stand alone without pouring time into it.
So then what? That job of course! Which I did for quite some years. Jump in the car in the morning, drive to a customer, be an office slave, drive back in the evening. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. Which sounds more afwful than it was - I had a lot of interesting things to work!
One of those things I worked on with someone else, and before we knew it we had a Software-as-a-Service online! We've been bootstrapping that profitable for years, with the security blanket of our jobs. After a few years of being in that mode, we both decided this venture was also not the business we wanted to be doing for the rest of our lives, and sold the business. Looking back, this one had all of the CENTS boxes ticked, but it did miss the love it deserved from my co-founder and myself.
So then what? A job, of course. Self-employed, yes. But also back to the safety blanket of having something that more or less guarantees that pouring in time will leak out money.
With that safety net and some money in the bank from these previous ventures, I'm taking the time to think and dream of making a proper move from slowlane entrepreneur to fastlane. Some things are brewing in my head, they are roughly validated by CENTS (the most important "N" definitely being covered). I just don't want to run into something again and realize a few years in that it's not the thing I want to be doing.
Reading that paragraph I just wrote, I also realize it smells of inaction. Right now, focus is on making sure the proceeds from that previous venture survive long-term (first steps in renting out a property, stock market, very interesting learning material), as well as doing research into those ideas that are brewing. In these previous ventures as well as in the "job", it feels great to be able to provide value to people.
In the meanwhile, I will continue to enjoy reading progress threads (and others) on here. It's inspiring and motivating to read other stories here. Thanks, everyone, for documenting your adventures!
After selling my company, reading Unscripted after the fact and learning a number of lessons from it, I started lurking here. A community like this can only thrive when people join in and don't stay in the shadow surrounding it. So, time for an introduction!
None of my parents have a higher education, yet they have always stimulated me and my brother to do better. Given the opportunity to study, the idea was to land a good job that pays well. And "well" here means "well enough". Have a nice income to sustain a comfortable life, but no need for anything exorbitant. After reading TMF and Unscripted , seems they wanted me to get better in following the SCRIPT.
During those studies, my hobby grew into a small one-person business that I've been doing for a few years, and then sold as I figured it was not something I wanted to do for life. Looking back, it also violated CENTS in that it did not stand alone without pouring time into it.
So then what? That job of course! Which I did for quite some years. Jump in the car in the morning, drive to a customer, be an office slave, drive back in the evening. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. Which sounds more afwful than it was - I had a lot of interesting things to work!
One of those things I worked on with someone else, and before we knew it we had a Software-as-a-Service online! We've been bootstrapping that profitable for years, with the security blanket of our jobs. After a few years of being in that mode, we both decided this venture was also not the business we wanted to be doing for the rest of our lives, and sold the business. Looking back, this one had all of the CENTS boxes ticked, but it did miss the love it deserved from my co-founder and myself.
So then what? A job, of course. Self-employed, yes. But also back to the safety blanket of having something that more or less guarantees that pouring in time will leak out money.
With that safety net and some money in the bank from these previous ventures, I'm taking the time to think and dream of making a proper move from slowlane entrepreneur to fastlane. Some things are brewing in my head, they are roughly validated by CENTS (the most important "N" definitely being covered). I just don't want to run into something again and realize a few years in that it's not the thing I want to be doing.
Reading that paragraph I just wrote, I also realize it smells of inaction. Right now, focus is on making sure the proceeds from that previous venture survive long-term (first steps in renting out a property, stock market, very interesting learning material), as well as doing research into those ideas that are brewing. In these previous ventures as well as in the "job", it feels great to be able to provide value to people.
In the meanwhile, I will continue to enjoy reading progress threads (and others) on here. It's inspiring and motivating to read other stories here. Thanks, everyone, for documenting your adventures!
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