Money lessons from 4 years of business.
Hi everybody, I currently make a reasonable living as a self employed creative. I would like to share my journey over the last few years of getting to this point with the hopes that it will give some insight for people a few steps behind me. Very brief background on me and then I will go into detail. 2018-2019: My last “job” was in the service industry which I left in mid 2018. After this, I did a yoga teacher training and started writing content about yoga, meditation and spirituality on Medium/my website. I successfully facilitated classes/workshops/retreats in this area however I failed to generate any meaningful revenue, could not afford to move out of my parents house and so I eventually stopped pursuing this. 2019-2020: I invested the little money I had in some camera gear and used the rest to go backpacking. My aim was to create travel content and tell stories of my journey while growing a profitable YouTube channel. While I did not manage to build a profitable YouTube channel, my skills developed significantly during this time as I was shooting, editing and uploading regularly. Eventually I ran out of money and I returned home to my parents. I will be more detailed now as I think this next period of my life has the most useful lessons and I will offer actionable steps that people reading might benefit from. **NOTE** At this point, I was a proficient videographer, editor and sound designer (I’m also a musician so audio production has always been a big part of my life). **This section is about how my passion projects accidentally lead to where I am now - multiple income streams and flexibility/freedom in what I do, and when I do it.** My first actual freelance gig was editing/sound designing for a feature film. I was able to get this gig because I had a body of work from my travels and the filmmaker was willing to work with me based on this work + I also did a sample edit to see if I was able to handle the task. I was able. When I finished this project I had more confidence because I was actually paid for my services.