Well, first of all let me wish you a very happy and profitable new year. In this topic I want fellow DPers to take a look back, not just at 2007 but at all those years since they were just starting out. I'm sure everyone here will love to know each others experiences before they even started out, not just at business but internet in general. Personally I love to take a peek at other peoples lives because this is a very valuable way of knowing what you could possibly do wrong or right, it helps in choosing the right direction and making the right move sometimes. So now after sitting in peace for about 5-10 minutes, I looked back at all that has happened up to now and this is my story. Note that this is going to be a long and by long I mean long post about nothing but my life and experiences so far. I'm not trying to bore you but I am just trying to share all that has happened so far in my life and what I feel about it. This is the purpose of this topic, and I'd like you to do the same. To me everyone's life story or 'autobiography' matters - no matter who they are or how old they are. They have got the rare gift called life and have lived in this world, they have their experiences and something to say about them as they percieved them. And the fact that we're all mostly hardcore computer and internet users here with similar interests. I want to hear their experiences in their own words. Let me get this thing started. Note that I am not marketing anything here in this post, I know it's long and you might think I'm marketing something, but just trust me and know that there are 0 links, 0 product names in this post. Nothing. It's just about my life and views on business etc. That's it. -- It is Feb 06, 1998. I get an Acer computer as a gift from my dad on my 6th birthday. My dad starts teaching me little things he learned himself from his office colleagues about computers. I'm hooked to computer games. I get a new printer soon and I start learning powerpoint, word etc and keep printing out random stuff I made in powerpoint etc and showed it with great pride to anyone I could find. About 3 years later I know Ms Word, Powerpoint, Excel and a lot of windows and computer hardware related stuff very well for any kid of my age. By this time I became a touch typist and majority of my time would be spent on the computer when I'm done with studies, and not TV as the case was a few years ago. Everyone who visited my house was surprised just by my typing speed and my age, my computer teacher at that time became friends with my parents, kept visiting us regularly until she left for India. During this time, as my dad would tell me later, she would convince my dad to keep motivating me further and that I had the potential to be the next "Bill Gates". Nothing much of significance happened up until 2002, I had learned a lot by this time especially for my age. Now at 10 years old I got a phone line and dial-up internet at my house. I knew very little English back then, Hindi was my first language and I was just 10 years old and still learning English at school. I was lucky enough to join a community related to a game back then, and I soon joined their IRC channel. Here I discovered a lot of things about the western world and everything in general. As I was a kid living in the middle of nowhere in a very conservative country known as Saudi Arabia (I think the place is out-of-sync by at-least 2 centuries as compared to much of the western world) - I was left behind in almost everything. Anyways, I was learning a lot of new things. I built my first "website" consisting of random buttons and text using the famous Geocities PageBuilder. I remember being so excited that I called my parents from the living room and showed it to them. When I showed the same website on the community's IRC channel, I was introduced to HTML. So now at 11 years old I quickly learnt HTML, CSS and Javascript from W3Schools and launched a personal website and offered free web-design as a hobby. It's year 2004 and I know XHTML, CSS, Photoshop, Javascript and a lot more about web development etc in general. I am doing free websites and meeting the demands of people 3-4 times my age. It's year 2003 and my studies begin taking a hit due to my excessive computer and internet usage. My parents are worried as-well because the telephone bill would go up to 1,500 Saudi Riyals or $500 USD a month, plus around 500 Saudi Riyals or $170 USD or for prepaid dial-up cards. My dad earned a modest $3,500 per month and still does - and he was paying $670 + all the other normal expenses like school fees, books, clothes etc just for an 11 year old - and I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters too. (Typical for an Indian family) I somehow managed to pass 8th grade with border-line marks, mostly due to my teachers giving me 'grace' marks for my good behavior and maybe because I was famous among them in my for my computer knowledge and skills, I kept doing powerpoint presentations etc for my school assemblies for many teachers. My computer and internet life was going very good, I was quickly learning even more stuff and by the time I was 13 I also added PHP, MySQL, Photoshop, Flash and basic web promotion to my skill set. I knew a lot lot stuff about computers in general. By this time my parents were under the impression that I'd be focusing on my studies too, but they were wrong. By the time I was in 9th, that is in 2005, I was doing terrible at school. We followed an Indian educational board called "Central Board of Secondary Education" or CBSE of India, and we had three terms. My first terminal marks were all in single digits for every subject except for English, Social Science and Hindi where I'd just write whatever I could remember from class tutoring. My parents thought the solution to this was tuitions, but nope. My performance detoriated even more in the second term. I was also having issues with my social development by this time. I turned into a very, very shy person to the point that my teachers began thinking that I'm not 'right' in the head to some extent. My parents were by my side though and believed that I was normal and it was just my personality which was that way. They told me to focus on studies as well and limit the computer usage a bit. I couldn't follow their advice as I was just addicted to the internet and literally lived in two worlds - one was the cyber world and other the world I am in. I would keep thinking about the other world (the internet) where I had a very active life all the time and not a day would go without me being on the internet for at-least 10 hours. I also got a separate room and I'd pretend that I have slept and later on wake up in the middle of the night and then quietly start my Compaq Presario laptop and be on the internet until late in the morning like 3 - 4 am. I used to doze off in the school and hence I was beaten numerous times by the teachers, and now I'd be slapped, get hit on the knuckles with a wooden scale, kneel down outside the class and what not almost everyday at school for poor performance and dozing off. This is common practice in countries like Saudi Arabia, India etc and it's nothing unusual so don't get surprised. So here comes the 3rd or the final term and it's the results day. I was quiet anxious but I believed that I'd pass just like I did in 8th. When I went into the class the teacher said "Congratulations boys. Everybody has passed except three boys". I was happy and never thought I'd be one of the three. The kids asked "Mam who? Who are they?" etc. And she proceeded... "Xyz, Sameer and Xyz... please stand up." By this time I got a huge shock and I felt that wierd feeling in my stomach. (My name is Syed Sameer, sorry I forgot the other two boys' names) I knew deep down that I have most probably failed but still believed it was something else. The teacher began speaking to us and said lots of things about how we performed poorly throughout the year and how important studies are etc, then finally she said that we will have to repeat 9th class and that she expects us to do better this time. The other kids were crying and begging the teacher to pass them and give them a chance. I wasn't crying or begging but I was lost in thought almost instantly, thinking about what my parents will say and feel. When I stepped out of the bus I went into a grocery store near my house who's owner was a very good friend and a sort of a mentor for me - he knew me from my childhood and I was very frank to him. I explained to him what had happened and did all my crying there, I asked him to go home with me as I feared my parents reaction and I had no idea how to tell them. He agreed, locked the glass door of his little shop and quickly went to my flat with me. He explained to my mom what had happened and told her not to say anything and to calm down my dad when he arrives, and that he said he will come too at the time my dad arrives. My mom saw my report card and said that it's my dad's mistake that he got me a computer and got an internet connection. So my dad comes home and gets to know about my failure from my mom. He gets mad at me and tells me that he's going to send me to India to a school with a hostel straight away. I became very depressed at this point and lost all my self confidence, I not only felt like a loser but I convinced myself that I was one. I was also under a strange delusion that I had lost my mind due to being on the internet too much - this was due to my teachers repeatedly telling me and my parents that I'm not 'right'. So in June 2006 I fly alone to India and arrive at my grandmother's house in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India. She takes me to a lot of hostels and boarding schools but all of them rejected me due to my horrible one digit mark performance. They said they could take me in 8th grade, and I told my dad that if they put me in 8th grade I will fail again on purpose. So my dad asked my grandmother to look for normal day-time schools and try to get me admitted in one of them in 9th. I got admitted in St. Fidelis Sr. Sec. School, a catholic school, and I had signed an undertaking that if I failed I'd be booted from the school immediately - no questions asked. I was now living with my grandmother - who is an extremely disciplined, intelligent and honest lady. Now for at-least six months I was partially away from computers, I just used to spend around 3-4 hours in a very cheap internet cafe every day. I had two cousins too here and with them I'd go out on their bikes (they're common here in India, and where I live is almost a rural area so nobody really checks license etc, and if they do you can bribe $5 - $10 and they'd be happy) -- I'd go out on their bikes and meet their friends, spend a lot of time with them and slowly I began re-gaining my self-confidence and social skills. I consider this year as the most beautiful year of my life, I loved the new school and all the teachers and students, it was a fun place. I passed with 53% marks which was not bad for someone who got barely 10 marks in each subject an year ago. I was still having an active internet life and now I had a lot of skills. It's year 2007, I'm 15 and I realize that I'm good enough to start freelancing. I not only knew PHP, MySQL, AJAX, Javascript, XHTML, CSS, Photoshop but I was exceptionally good at it. I knew how to be and act like a professional. People would never think I'm 15 unless I informed them. However I was still very un-organized and lacked the kind of discipline which a freelancer or anyone in any business needs. Very fortunately I came across a bunch of self improvement books (No no... I'm not going to market or name anything here if you were wondering ) and I actually started applying many good things I learned from them. I quickly became very organized and with a little bit of coaching from my grandmother I came on the right track. I was a different person now with a very different mind set. I got my first freelancing project for a PHP/MySQL CMS for $250 from a friend I knew on MSN. I used this money to buy a cheap used computer and later on bought a used N-Gage through which I got very cheap but slow internet access via GPRS + bluetooth. My parents were reluctant at first when they got to know this through my grandmother and said that they'd be telling my grandmother to see to it that I don't go overboard with the computer again, I said and rightly so that I was now responsible and smart enough to know what I should be doing, however they didn't really believe me and my grandmother would keep giving me lectures now and then. Anyways, now it's like March 2007 and I am really beginning to learn a lot of things. I'm doing at-least 5-6 hours of pure reading on great places like SitePoint, DigitalPoint etc regarding lots of things regarding freelancing. I realized that I was one of those freelancers who believed that there was a silver bullet that somebody will magically discover their skills. I decided to change and quickly began applying all the knowledge I had gained from hours and hours of reading forums, articles, tutorials and discussions with people with similar interests on MSN etc. I learned one golden rule from a SitePoint article and I quote "The greatest designer or developer in the world will not make as much money as a mediocre designer or developer who has good sales skills". So now my daily reading was focused on how to sell things, not just web-design but how to get be a good business person with sales skills in general. I learnt so many things like marketing, getting into the minds of clients / buyers, choosing the right words, the right look, the right style, the right people, I learnt what outsourcing in web-design & development was and how I could use it to my benefit. I learnt web promotion too, in great detail, I learnt SEO and various other web promotion techniques. All I did was read, read, print, and read more. By August 2007 I was a equipped with brilliant sales skills and design, coding, promotion and managerial skills (as I'd find later on) -- and guess what -- I spent a grand total of $0.00 (except for the small GPRS bill) on all this. I'd do just one thing the entire time I was on the internet - and that was reading. Note that I read only stuff that I thought was legitimate and good. During my time I came across various e-books, books and other stupid non-sense things like that. However from what I already read at SitePoint and DigitalPoint and due to my excellent social network consisting of similar guys I was smart enough not to be pulled into that kind of stuff and waste my time. I never spent a cent on things like that. I knew where to hang out, what to grasp from a particular article / tutorial or forum or a person and how to apply it on later. Now I have to share another very valuable experience I had regarding business in general. (Again, I'm not going to market anything.. in-case you are wondering - again ) To me business is similar to natural selection / wild life or what-ever you'll call it. It's like a jungle where you start as a little baby. Let's say you are a little cub. Right from the moment you are 'born' (or enter into business) you begin grasping and learning all kinds of things necessary for your survival. There may be a cub who right from the moment he is born and till his death keeps learning and grasping new things, changing this and that and finding out what works and what doesnt, being better at them. Being better at hunting, protecting his family, learning all kinds of skills - watching others, learning from them. Then there is a cub who's got the wrong kind of genetic makeup (in business you can call this the wrong kind of 'mind-set') - he isn't bothered to learn or improve his skills, but still he's got that stomach to feed to survive. Maybe he does try to learn, but he is either not fully dedicated and focused or he's just expecting someone to come along and teach him - which doesn't happen, everyone's got a prey to catch. So obviously what happens is this cub is unfit and he doesn't get to survive. OK, well, I'm not biologist and this may not be natural selection at all, but I'm trying to give you a general idea about different kinds of people in the business world. Lets take a look at these forums for example. Also the SitePoint and most other internet business / webmaster related forums. You will find all the kinds of 'cubs' as I listed above here. There are the newbies, of many kinds. One is the kind like I once was - they are smart enough to do their own research, after they've found that the big guys are busy with their own successful business and they're not going to come hold their hand and show them 'Hey this is how you can achieve..". They smartly learn to hunt themselves and by this I mean they read and grasp as much stuff as they can regarding whatever it is they want to do. They make sure that they become close to people already doing what they want to achieve and learn from them. Just like a little cub learns how to hunt by watching and doing. They too learn by grasping information, the right kind of it, then applying it, then keep changing what they are doing, also doing new things, until they find out what works and this is where they are no more into this category, they're the 'big guys' themselves. But the learning doesn't ends there they keep learning and keep doing new things, and remain successful. They never make half efforts, they give in 110% on anything they do. They learn not to hop around from project to project, idea to idea, but rather stick at one thing and giving their best to it, then move on to the next thing on the list. Then there's the other kind of newbie too. Most of us were once one of these types. It's just a matter of how fast you realize what's right and change yourself. Topics like "How can I earn ... by ....?" etc usually come from these guys. They have the will to do something but they are either not experienced enough or just plain lazy to grasp all that information which is available to them 24/7 for free at a click of a button. They will make all kinds of excuses and expect someone to come and hold their hand, show them the way and say "Hey, this is how you earn / do this.." Pretty soon they just give up, or become a prey for those bad eBook guys (I'm not implying all eBook stuff is bad, but most of it is and we know this), or they finally become experienced, realize that they need to be smart and gather as much info as they can, learn and watch others and smartly learn their tricks in-directly. All the crappy hosting / web-design / development / forum sites popping up each day and closing down 2 weeks later come mostly from these guys. You could go on and on and tell them do this and that, read this and that, go to this place and find out this info, but no, they want you to spoon feed them and hold their hand and show them the way - which is not possible. Why would you or someone else do that? You've reached where you are the hard way, you've worked hard to feed yourself, why should they be an exception and get it the easy way. If they have to survive, they have to be fit. And the advantage in the business world as compared to the wild nature is that here you can be fit if you want to, genetics have little to none role to play in your success or business survival. As long as you have a normal functioning brain with the average human IQ, it's your desire, smartness and hard work which gets you where you want to be. 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So here's what I suggest for the new people or the one's climbing the ladder out there: In the internet business and maybe other businesses too, you have to read, read, and read some more. You have to read the right kinds of things, from the right sources. You have to mingle or at-least try to get near the guys who have already achieved what you want to do, and you also need to get in touch with other small players who might be close to or slightly higher up the ladder as you are. For me the two most important things were reading, learning, doing and making contacts from various places. I didn't care how successful the other guy was, I would just make sure he / she has a will to do something, isn't lazy and that's it, I'd be friends with him / her and make 10 more friends that way - get access to 10 more minds filled with their own ideas and thoughts which may not be there in my mind - it's called social networking. One of the most powerful things not just in business but in all aspects of life. You are a human being, there are six billion just like you, with their own thoughts and ideas, you need to look inside their minds and get those ideas and thoughts, learn from them. Do you learn to speak by yourself as a little child? No. Do you learn to take your first steps by yourself? No. You learn from watching and knowing others. This is one of the reasons I posted this topic too. Also one thing I'd highly recommend is learn how to percieve or interpret things the right way. There's a certain way we must communicate with ourselves. Unfortunately most teenagers seem to communicate with themselves and interpret things in a kind of stupid way - I find it a bit difficult to describe in words. Remember that all celebrities, popular business men, leaders etc are master interpreters, they know how to interpret the things going around them in the right way. You need to connect with your emotions, feel them and not show them just for the sake of it, you need to feel them naturally. This is hard at first, especially for me as I had a limited social development, but I'd suggest finding a role model you like, it could be anybody, and then interpret things and communicate with yourself just like you think he / she might do. Get into his / her (real) persona (note: not the persona or character he / she plays if he / she is a celeb, but his / her real self) and feel what he / she may feel in a particular situation. Pretty soon your mind will be automatically programmed the right way to interpret things and it will all come naturally to you. Remember that no matter what you think or believe, the way you connect with yourself and interpret things does show really well on the outside. If you're unprofessional, lazy, careless and stupid / random thinker on the inside, it does show outside yet nobody will tell you. Ever seen a celebrity or a charismatic person? You can trust them and their emotions. Then there are the dull guys, faking emotions, smiling when others smile, laughing when others laugh, saying what others may want to hear, even though what they say may not be true, copying all the mannerisms of people around them and always appearing different and acting differently to different people, basically giving others control of them because they know they are dull inside, these are the 'personality fakers' as I like to call them, and they think nobody can detect their internal communication and how they interpret things, people and events around them, but they're wrong. It shows on their face, it shows in the slightest of their movement, be it facial or a slight body movement or gesture, trust me, it all shows. We're all programmed to be some-what of a mind readers and we are always doing it on a sub-concious level and this plays a big role in our judgement of people and things around us without us realizing it. See Discovery or Animal Planet and you will see this thing does exists in many animals - including us. (We are animals too ) Now regarding my life. Well, after all this today, I look back at what I was and now what I am. All due to discipline, skills, and the desire to do something. I worked hard, and I worked smartly. You've got to do both in business, just one thing won't work. You've got to work hard, and work smart. Today I proudly earn more than what my dad still does (the $3500) from various sources and I don't mean to compare or anything but it's something that doesn't make me feel guilty about how I made him spend so much on me and he never said anything to me. When he sent me to India I knew he did it for my benefit, and I am really thankful for him for doing that. I got my social life back, and more importantly I learned the benefits of a disciplined life through my intelligent and hard-working grandmother. I still don't call my self one of those 'big guys' and I'm still taking off and climbing higher up. I have miles and miles to go as I have a huge goal in my mind which I just like to keep to myself. I'm really excited about this year. Another good thing I found about business is that is eliminates common problems teens have these days such as boredom and depression. You could go ahead and watch as many movies you can, listen as much music as you want, play as many games as you want but eventually you'll get bored of this and keep craving for more. With business comes many things, besides great life skills, discipline, professionalism etc. One thing is that each day you have got something of great interest to you to look forward to, and you've got work to do. This will keep you busy as hell and being busy is the #1 cure for boredom. Usually when you're involved in business you will have to talk to a lot of people, and this also improves your people skills as you discover the multitude of personalities and minds which exist here. I personally also find that I begin getting negative feelings and a mild depression if I'm not working or being involved in something constructive and have nothing to look forward to. With business you know you are working towards something nice, which will benefit you, and it gives you great feelings when you see the results, and it is almost like a never-ending game with an entertainment factor which never goes down, you keep playing it daily and face new scenarios and challenges, and learn how to deal with them. And you've got lots and lots and different kinds of RI or real intelligence to deal with, and not AI or artificial intelligence. And the best thing is you can make an actual profit while doing so. The different goals you set are your 'levels' in this game. One thing to remember though is that you can't play this game on easy mode. There's only one mode for this game and that's the hard mode. You keep playing again and again until you're good and experienced enough for the hard mode. I don't know if others feel the same way, but this is my personal discovery with myself. Oh well, you deserve a cookie if you've read all this. Now I request you to sit back, relax and take a look back at all these years and the significant life experiences you've gone through. I and I'm sure others are eager to read it. Once again, thank you for reading. Remember that each person is just as important as you are.
Woah.. thank you for reading. I really didn't expect anyone to read all of it, but if you did then you just made someone's day. Also I'm eager to read your and everyone else's story here. This topic is not just about my story, it's about everyone's story. There's an incredible amount of things we can learn by seeing how others have been driving this vehicle called life so far.
Oh goodness! That's a very long post! Headache, headache! Give me my advil huhuhu My turn. My 2007 had been a blast. Thank you.