👋 Hey, it’s Orel here! Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share my journey and lessons as a solopreneur who quit his job to chase his dreams.
I am a software developer, and so far I have x3 failed projects, and x2 ongoing.
I also publish Tech Books summaries along with Anton Zaides.
Last august (over 10 months ago) I decided to quit my 6 figures comfortable job and become a full-time solopreneur.
So far it’s been mostly hard. I’ll get to it in later.
And it today’s article I am going to share my story, what made me first realize that I want to go solo and what pushed me to take the step.
The itch
The first time I heard the term “The itch” was back in 2021, when I had a job that paid well.
After reading a few dozens books that year about self-development and entrepreneurship, I decided that I was going to interview CEOs and founders, to figure out what made them drop everything and go solo.
And the answers varied wildly.
A restaurants owner told me that he started his first business because his favorite burger closed and he wanted it back.
The CEO of my company told me that he had that “itch” for quite sometime, after working most of his life for other people and when he met someone who was ready to go for it with him, he took the step.
And when I think about it now, they both had “an itch”. A good enough reason and the courage to drop everything and take a risk.
My itch
My itch was built over several years, between 2019-2021.
And the reason was extremely bad bosses.
The Army
It started in the army, where I did my mandatory 3 years service as a Fullstack developer.
The commanders in the unit I was in were awful and careless about their soldiers.
I was forced to use an old computer with 512MB of RAM and an old intel chip, long before the i series for almost a year. It was pure misery.
The first job
Then, after I was out and started working for a startup.
Long story short, when things went south in the end of 2021, the CEO started lying and hiding facts to get employees to keep working.
That was the moment when I thought: “If this man can start such a good working place, why can’t I?”
I stayed for 5 more months and left.
The last job
I think that my last job was almost as bad as the army service.
The amount of micromanagement and gaslighting was just absurd.
Me and my colleagues would get a “Hi! How are you progressing?” message between one to three times a day.
After I called it out and talked to my team leader, he started adding this emoji 🙂 to make his messages more friendly. It was just creepy.
Long story short, 0 motivation and the Monday-dread (Sunday for me) were a usual part of my week.
The final straw
I quit my job on August of that year and in June I think I started reading MJ DeMarco’s Unscripted, which led me to read his most popular book, The Millionaire Fastlane.
In the book, MJ describes his job as a limo driver and the awful clients he had.
Then, one day, after dropping his last client, he was stuck in a snow blizzard for the rest of the night.
This was the moment when he decided he’s had enough. The FTE (F*ck this event), in his words.
And I felt like this moment came to me when I tried for the last time to talk to my team leader and tell him that he makes people suffer and that changed nothing.
The next week I gave my 1 month notice.
10 months later
It’s been ten months since I quit my job, and it’s been pretty rough.
See, when all your life you live by a framework dictated to you by others, the moment you go solo you get lost.
You might think that it’s nice being your own boss, and it is. But it’s so hard getting used to it and learning how to build your own framework.
You go through many cycles of burn out and not feeling like going out of bed for days and sometime weeks on end, until you find the right recipe for you.
I still struggle with it.
BUT!
It’s not all gloom and doom.
I might have made it sound like being a solopreneur is the worst thing you can do to yourself.
But it’s pretty awesome.
I learned a tons about myself. What works for me and what doesn’t.
Which behaviors I exhibit that I don’t like and want to change and which I want to keep.
I built 4 different projects, uploaded over 25 videos to YouTube, wrote over 25 articles on Substack and got to 1800+ followers on LinkedIn.
I had 2 trips to 3 different countries and I am going again on September for a month.
Things I never imagined I’d do.
So although I had rough patches, and more are still to come, it’s worth it.
Final words
People will tell you that to become a successful entrepreneur you must have that itch that tells you that this is your calling and you have to go for it.
Well, that might be it. But this itch does not develop out of thin air.
If you’d ask me back in 2017, my dream was to be a streamer. (Age 22)
2019, my dream was to get a job that pays well and play computer games. (Age 24)
Fast forward two years to 2021, that dream became a goal of becoming independent and starting my own business. And that stuck with me for almost 3 years until I took the step. (Age 26)
To be honest, you can never know if that’s the right thing for you.
The only way to find out is give it a go and see how it goes.
Worst case? With the amount of skills and knowledge you’d acquire, you can find a job quite easily and go back to the previous life.
What I enjoyed reading this week
Strategies To Prevent Burnout And Thrive As A Solopreneur by
and - Burnout is such a common problem among solopreneurs. And in my opinion, it’s almost inevitable that you go through that.But with the right tools, you can make these cycles shorter and less frequent. And that’s exactly what David and Anfernee wrote about. - Can the notification dot boost the CTR of a button in your website? The short answer is yes. But it’s not the whole story. I’ll give Tom the stage to explain why.
How we got our first 1,000 users by
- PostHog’s inspiring story on how to got their first 1,000 active users. As a solopreneur, this story really gives me motivation to keep pushing on to find a good product that I enjoy developing and people enjoy using.
Thanks for sharing your journey! It's great to see optimism when there is failure or setbacks, because entrepreneurship requires grit and determination to move past the hard stuff! Excited to see where this journey takes you!
Thanks so much for the mention! Anfernee’s piece was great!