Upload
lenhi
View
214
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
How I Earned One Million Dollars doing
freelancing and transformed from ordinary to
extraordinary
In my younger years, I was fascinated by people who lived an extraordinary life. I
had the desire to do the same thing but being an average student in my academic
years; I plodded along day to and just kind of existed until I learnt that for going
from ordinary to extraordinary, I had to be a little extra.
Being an ordinary average guy, I had the basic understanding of math. When my
matric papers were about to held in 1992, the world was going crazy for the
cricket world cup. Being a die-hard fan of cricket,
“ I made a strategic decision of following the live cricket matches what so
ever happens because after all a cricket world cup takes place after every
four years. On the other hand, I had the liberty to reappear for my matric
exams next year. “
Now, this strategic decision actually backfired. Because of which I attained less
than 50% marks in my matric exams and needless to say my parents were not
impressed a bit. Tossing my dreams into a too-hard basket, the following year my
father bought commodore 64 from the USA and within days of its usage, I became
pretty good at it.
I created a small code which could copy the game from the external cassette drive
all the way to the cassette 64’s internal hard disk. That software actually went
pretty wild in the market that year. That was the time I realized my love for
computers but the problem was that I belonged to an era where they taught
English starting from the primary in government schools so getting a regular
computer education in schools was not a choice. Well the years went pass by so I
kept crumbling from one class to another and at times finding it very hard to clear
my final exams. But somehow I was lucky enough to snail forward at a very low
pace.
“ In 1997, I started doing my MBA. I still do not know how I got there. ”
One day I went to a local bookstore with my friend and I saw a magazine with a
picture of Bill Gates on the cover. I did not know who Bill Gates was so my friend
told me that he is the next big sensation and he is the richest man on the earth. So
I grabbed a copy of the magazine and went home. While going through his story
later in the evening the first thing that impressed me naturally was that he was a
college dropout. While going through his story I learnt that he created an
I also came to know about his plans of innovating computers and making it a
necessity in everyone’s life. So that seemed exciting as coming from a computer
background that encouraged me to really learn more about computers and learn
the advancing technologies. In 1997, internet was in its very new days in Pakistan
and while searching for the similar stories you know, I stumbled across the story of
Steve Jobs. Now before you laugh, he was another college dropout and his story
was far more impressive than that of Bill Gates. It was not just because he re-
acquired the company but he was once forced to quit for one reason or another
but he also took his company Apple to the success where he took Microsoft in a
heads on operating system competition. That inner-soul searching revealed where
my career was heading to so I wanted to move forward with computers. But I had
to find out the ways to monetize my passion with computers so while searching in
Yahoo. If you think why I didn’t search on Google, Google was not invented before
12th April 1998 so I came to know the best way to earn online was by learning web
design and development. Then you can offer those services in the freelance
marketplace.
The basic idea of freelancing is when a person works on a contract basis for a
variety of companies as opposed to working as an employee of a single company.
“Being self-employed, a freelancer is given the freedom to pick and choose
the projects and even the companies they would like to be associated with. “
This was the kind of job that seemed best for a lazy individual like me. It seems
pretty exciting to be responsible for getting the projects on time and only being
answerable to the person who has hired for one particular job. So after doing my
MBA I worked with an organization for almost a year but I could not cope with the
stiff neck environment. This compelled me to resign from my job. I went back to
my father and told him about another strategic decision. This time my wedding
was just after six months precisely and at that time I had nothing to do.
“ I convinced my father that I wanted to pursue my career as a freelancer
because web design and web development was in its early days and there is
no saturation in this business. “
I had a determination to prove a point where someone who always have been an
ordinary and below average student all his life. I had to prove how I succeed in life
once I find my true passion for work.
After a lot of negotiation with my father, we agreed on the point that I will go out
of my house and will rent out a small office because his whole concept was life
start outside the comfort of your house. For this purpose, I acquired a small office
space on the first floor of a very noisy place known as Bakramandi. On the ground
floor, it was occupied by whom I called my comrades you know the painters with
the similar tools for design and painting. I worked hard because I had no choice of
course. With my determination to stay resilient on my stance and to prove the
people around me that there is a life inside computers, I had to make a reasonable
living out of it my passion.
There was no doubt few low points and whenever I was down I used to see this
motivational talk of Rocky Balboa. It was a movie in which he gives a motivational
speech to his son. It was something like this.
So that’s how I learned and stayed motivated for switching from ordinary to
extraordinary.
“ That movie taught me that life is organic, it isn’t linear. “
You can craft the ways the direction you want your life to be led to. That’s what I
did; I took a decision and stood firm on my stance because I wanted to prove a
point. So within four months I earned a reasonable four thousand dollars and
made my father proud for the first time in my life. It was pretty late in my career
and I know I am guilty of that. So everything went according to the plan, I got
married and kept working hard. I used to sleep under my desk to meet the
deadlines of the clients. My work plate grew but so did my waistline so I had to
move to a much bigger place which is Lalazar an army colony. I hired ten people to
work for me. There were few interns, few full-time employees.
Looking back few years, I did not know where I was headed to but that one
magazine; one motivational talk really changed my life. I kept working hard to the
point where I became the first Pakistani who ranked in top ten in one of the
largest freelance marketplace called Guru.com. I am not much pleased with it
because that’s not how I wanted to be known but I am also the first Pakistani
freelancer who has earned over one million U.S. dollars in sales in seven years
precisely on Guru.com.
As a reward of my services I was given an exclusive testimonial on their homepage
a space allotted for three Americans. That’s where I learned that if we are to give
our kids a foundation to live their dreams, an opportunity worthy of their premise
then we got to give them horizons to explore the choices of their selection. In an
attempt to pay back to my community, to Pakistan I have opened an initiative
called BeingGuru. Now being guru is a social video learning platform where we
teach with free videos. We started getting registrations in a very short time from
all over Pakistan.
The registrations were from Daddu in Sindh and Zhob in Balochistan, Taxila and
even from North Waziristan. In all such areas there are people who have started to
learn how to do freelancing. All the videos that are available are for free because
what I believe that there is no shortage of talent in Pakistan but there is problem
that there is no one to guide them and whatever means are available are out of
their reach. The IT minister of Pakistan Anusha Rehman while giving speech in
2015 revealed that IT sector has become one of the fastest growing sectors in
Pakistan. A lot of contribution has been done from the freelancers all over
Pakistan. So in order to nurture that talent we decided to come up with an
initiative where we are teaching kids doing free videos. One of the success stories
is the lady from Swat who is physically disabled. She was disowned by her parents
because of her love marriage and unfortunately divorced. She saw my story on the
internet and contacted me on Being Guru.
I spent a lot of time on Skype and through few sessions I taught her about how to
get started about freelancing. She was pretty good in writing and in a couple of
months she signed up on freelance marketplace and started earning money. Later
she contacted me and told me that she had won a contract with an airline and a
manufacturing company in Arizona. She plans to move to Islamabad because she
wants to set up an office for hiring more content writers to work for her. Her kids
are back in school and this is how an ordinary life switched to extraordinary.
Another success story is of a truck art designer whose father passed away a few
years back. He being the eldest of the three kids sent me a message. It was where
he requested me to teach him freelancing as he knew I had done lots of videos. He
wanted me to give him my personal time or he does not find any other purpose to
live in life because of the responsibilities that fell on his shoulders after the death
of his father. Naturally, I feared that the boy might commit suicide; I started giving
him my personal time on Skype. But the challenge was that this guy did not know
how to use a computer. So I and my team spent a lot of time teaching him how to
use the computer and how to use Photoshop so that he can create artwork on his
own. That guy informed that he earned $100 for doing it over the past two
months. So it was another extraordinary life switch.
It is then I understood that if we want to give our children a foundation then we
have to provide them with a baseline. The best part is that even if you are a below
average student, don’t think you are a failure.
“ There are millions of ways to become successful in your life. You only have
to find the love in the work you do and you will be successful in it
naturally.“
When you taste that success, do it with a taste of humility and an ability to heal a
device which always held back your progress. That’s how an ordinary life gets
switched to extraordinary. The lesson here is that an extraordinary life is the one
that you design, it is a life that you want to live, and it is exciting and invigorating
as you want it to be. You are in charge of your life so you should be paid for
something that makes you genuinely happy.
“ To me, the best definition of an extraordinary life is just the happy life.”
According to the EU commissioner of digital economy Mariya Gabriel, By 2020,
90% of jobs in Europe will require digital skills.
Are You Ready To Get Started & Make a Place For Yourself in Digital Space?