Beginning of a New Era!

Today, I was reminded of the time when I visited Islamabad for the very first time.

As a 16-year-old, I was to visit NUST and deliver a session on how to get started on Fiverr.

I wrote down 3 goals and made them public after I returned from that session in 2016:

• I will get admission at NUST
• Buy a house in Islamabad
• Build a business in Islamabad

Since then, I can say that there has been some progress;

• I got admission at COMSATS Islamabad and then dropped out
• I live in Rawalpindi now, though most of the people in my vicinity like to call it Islamabad.
• I run a sustainable business and it is completely virtual

Looking back, I feel, I kinda half-ass on my goals that I wrote for myself but I’m happy that how I progressed towards it.

The only thing I’m not quite happy with is the business part.

I run a design studio and make websites for a living. As a 20-year-old something, I have 2 offices; in Lahore and Rawalpindi, I have 15+ team members and I service around 100 clients each month.

I have realized that this is something that I don’t want to continue in the long-term after learning, working, and building my agency and digital presence for 6 years.

I’m not ungrateful. I’m proud of what I have built. I will be doing $200,000 in revenue from my design studio and digital presence by the end of this year.

I’m just no particularly happy of how I’m doing it.

There are 3 primary ways you can make money from the internet:

1. Selling services
2. Shipping products
3. Attracting attention

For the last 6 years, I focused primarily on acquiring digital skills from the internet, i.e, learning web design, and then selling that skill as a service in the digital ecosystem.

Selling services is lucrative if you can position yourself right, it is sustainable if you have the right processes and it is quick money.

But, it is not scalable in true sense. And there is no such growth in it once you have acquired specialized skills and have several years experience servicing clients with those acquired skills.

For the next 6 years of my life, I want to focus on two things:

• Become an indie marketer with zero clients, zero employees and zero offices
• Automate my design studio to the extend I could and then maybe try to flip it or keep it running in the background without my much involvement in it

I haven’t decided on what I will be doing. It could be anything from developing and shipping WordPress plugins or Shopify extensions, running a content website, drop-shipping physical products or creating a lifestyle brand.

It is going to be tough, interesting and I want to share this journey with you.

If you are interested in getting updates on how I will be building a sustainable business from my laptop with zero employees and zero clients, you can add my email to your contact list and follow me on Twitter. Plus, I will be sharing how I am automating my agency with processes in place.

If not, you can unsubscribe to stop receiving emails from me and we can still be friends.

👋 till the next update!