As 2021 comes to a close, I thought I might take this opportunity to look back at the things that have happened in the last 365 days.
What a year it has been.
I can easily say 2021 has been one of the more eventful periods in my 21 years, and potentially the most pivotal one I might have within my lifetime.
Let's look at what has happened.
1. I found some direction in life
When I was young, I used to look for all sorts of weird ways to make money. Inspired by the Pokemon TCG, I had actually designed a card game of my own and sold booster packs in school - even made a website for it too. Then, of course, there were attempts at the cliches - lawn mowing for cash (I lived in the US at this point), selling massage tickets that my family could claim, PowerPoint RPG games, and so on.
I loved to build things.
But somewhere along the way, I guess I lost this spark. Or it got quelled by the focus and prioritisation on studies. Instead of pursuing these kinds of endeavours, my time was dedicated to getting good grades and building up my co-curricular portfolio with leadership positions and achievements.
This year, however, that spark was rekindled.
And it's thanks to a few special individuals that I've been fortunate enough to interact with - namely members of the Xplor leadership team, with a huge shoutout to Stefan Cordiner. Having 1-on-1s with Mark (CEO), Matt (COO) as well as working with Stefan really showed me the power of entrepreneurial passion - an epic combination of vision and action to bring something to life.
It wasn't something I had been exposed to before, having been brought up in a military family. But I realised that what these individuals had, was what I was looking for all along. When I was young, I used to say I wanted to become an inventor. I didn't know it then, but I think entrepreneur was really the word I was looking for.
These individuals were a reaffirmation that one could succeed with this type of spark. Stefan, in particular, whom I consider a good mentor and friend, offered me an opportunity to work with him, and showed me the groundwork in building businesses. The insights from those months were particularly incredible.
Of course, I also had the opportunity to work with other business owners from different industries in my capacity as a contractor, which provided additional kindle to get the fire going.
It's safe to say 2021 was key in helping me realise that entrepreneurship was something I was keen on pursuing professionally or at least a frame of mind that I wanted to hold onto.
2. The startup experience
Startups. It's all the craze now, or at least it has been for the past few years. It was also something I had never really been exposed to extensively before 2020, but this year was different.
As you may know, I've managed to close out the year with $45k+ earnings on Upwork. It's a milestone I'm proud of, but more than that, it's a representation of the amount of time I've managed to spend working with these different startups and businesses. These in particular were memorable.
Part-time for Title Ten. An eCommerce company. Full-time for Xplor. B2B SaaS in the childcare space. Part-time for Komu. A pod concept aiming to revitalise small-town tourism. Getting exposed to these different businesses and seeing the pace at which they move has been pretty eye-opening + an epic experience on a whole. I'm looking forward to pursuing one of my own someday.
3. Landed the first client for One Olympus
One Olympus helps creators build funnels to grow email lists and increase revenue. It was something I set up due to my love for funnels + landing pages, and really more of a passion project to have more opportunities to implement them.
I was fortunate enough to land my first client early on. We mainly took them as an opportunity to figure things out, pulling together a model that we hoped would be scalable in the long run and locking down SOPs to execute it.
After testing the model with our first client for many months, we now plan on reaching out to more creators in 2022 and closing a few more deals, depending on our capacity in University.
4. University begins
Ah - the dreaded University. I was planning on taking a gap year and continuing to work, but ultimately decided against it in view of delaying my education. For those who are unaware, I am currently a Year 1 Information Systems student at the National University of Singapore. Just finished my first semester and it has been a ride.
Lots of new people. Lots of new opportunities. Lots of new learnings.
It's been a few years since I graduated from National Junior College where I had my last kind of formal education, so it took a bit of time to get back into the groove of actual classes. It's a vastly different kind of experience from the online courses that I'm used to consuming, but an interesting experience nonetheless.
During the semester, I pursued roles in entrepreneurship organisations within the University to meet other like-minded individuals, and have plans to potentially launch my own society in 2022.
5. Started picking up development
Coding is something I've always been afraid of picking up. I like to be the best at what I do. Unfortunately, I know for a fact that coding is just something I'll never be able to attain that level with. With geniuses who have been learning development since young entering the field constantly, the skill ceiling pushes beyond the stars. It's a tough environment.
But after picking up a bit of front-end web dev, I realised that it's something that I really enjoyed. I figured it might be worth pursuing in spite of the competitive tech environment. After all, coding is becoming increasingly relevant in the world today, with knowledge about it becoming as fundamental a skill as reading.
Small wins • Cold emailing landed me some meetings with the relatively famous Singapore YouTuber & Financial Advisor, Josh Tan. It was an interesting experience talking to the man behind the videos. • I started reading again. I used to be a voracious reader when I was younger but similar to my entrepreneurial spark, my reading habits too faded. Now I'm back, and I'm looking to catch up on all the books I've missed out on over the past few years. Here are some of the books I read towards the end of 2021.
All in all, it's been a crazy year. And one that I'll likely look back on many years down the road. Looking forward to seeing what happens in 2022 :)