In this post series you will earn:
How you can become successful despite of debt, no education and adversity
A creative approach to be employed for the exact dream job you would like to have
How to convince business owners of offering the job you want to - even if it does not exist yet
In my early 20s, things didn't look too good for me.
I dropped out of college to pursue my dream of becoming an entrepreneur, knowing that with this degree I pursued and a formal education I would hardly be even having a middle class lifestyle later on.
There had to be a better way than college. I had to do my own thing.
The problem was, the last 12 years of formal education didn't leave me a clue about what a company really was, and much less how to start and operate a business on my own and what to look out for.
And so my first few attempts at becoming a big entrepreneur often failed miserably, burning the few thousand Euros of cash I had received from my parents as a start in my adult life within months only.
But I didn't give up and tried another business, and another one after that - only to fail even harder than I did before every time.
Persistence alone does not make you successful I figured out, what a powerful lesson to be honest.
Out of desperation I wanted to become rich really fast and ended up becoming poor much faster. Another powerful lesson.
The failed businesses were leaving me in debt with a high demand on monthly payments to be made or otherwise I would be done. Not exactly the job I wanted to create for myself.
The motivational seminars i attended didn't really help in such a situation either to be honest.
And so I had to swallow my pride, let my dreams of a life in abundance die or at least postpone them for a while and face the harsh reality of not knowing how to pay my rent for next month.
Unfortunately, since I dropped out of university and had no degree I was only qualified for the lowest possible jobs you can imagine. And after several attempts to get started in all possible directions I really started with something of a publicly very low standard - salesman for an insurance company.
Although this job taught me a lot and gave me the necessary time to lick my financial wounds, regroup my thinking and recover from those breakdowns, it was far from the job I wanted for myself.
This job never was very interesting or exciting and paid only a very low minimum salary.
Despite the fact that you could make more money than I did in sales for insurance if you would put effort in the job, I never became a top producer in this field because of the nature that these products are just designed against the clients which you can learn about in my other blog post about financial products.
You can also learn in detail about what kind of training an education such a company really gives you and what their true intentions for employees and customers are in our post about Financial Literacy.
And so I barely scraped by those next years with an annual salary for around 20.000€ per year in income, while watching all my ex-classmates receiving their degrees and working for some big company in a high position with salaries at least twice as high as mine, if not three times - and that was only at the start.
The job I wanted to create for myself seemed to turn into a nightmare.
But the insurance job did one massively positive thing for me, and that started to change my life from then on. To be honest, since I was not determined to become the insurance superstar I didn't put too much effort into that job.
Coming late and leaving early, hardly making any calls or sales and doing anything to get through the day. I really was not the employee anybody wants to have.
And since I really couldn't explain why my first businesses all failed, I was determined to figure out the exact reason for my failing. Others have built companies from scratch too, and were living the life I dreamed about - so there had to be something to it these people understood what I missed.
And even though I hated reading initially, I knew many of these wealthy people were writing books about their experiences and journeys to success. With the many free time I had because I just didn't care about the job, I stopped partying and hanging out with a lot of friends, and my spare time now became a learning time - reading every book from successful people and about business, finances and marketing I could get my hands on. Thank god books were cheap!
Even though this attitude got me fired from my insurance jobs a few times, it was no problem to get hired by a different insurance company again after you have worked for one before. So if they fired me, I would just apply for the next best insurance and they would again welcome me since they do simply take advantage of their salespeople and try to squeeze them out. Another reason why my efforts were minimal.
And so I played this game for the next few years, making me wiser and smarter every day and expanding my knowledge into fields of really huge possibilities. It still was bad, but I came slowly closer to creating my own job, I had that feeling already in my gut.
Armed with knowledge, but 5$ in your bank account
The strategy worked well!
After only 3-4 years of reading at least 3 books per month I knew more about sales, marketing, finance, management and business development than anyone I ever came across. My personal growth skyrocketed.
In most fields I was so good, that nobody I came into conversation with even had a clue of what I was talking about. Awkward somehow, but I liked it.
It was clear that I had learned much more than all my former friends in their college degrees and could do much better than they did at their jobs.
This has to be the time to get out and create the job I dreamed about!
However, attempts to put this new knowledge to use in the insurance industry and finally showing any effort in my job were not bringing the success I expected.
The problem was that I presented my ideas to my bosses, which were between 50 and 60 and had never worked outside of a big insurance company, much less even had an idea about what entrepreneurship could mean.
The best rejection I got was from one of these grandpas telling me:
“The internet just doesn't work and anything you try with it will certainly crash and only create losses for us. Don´t waste time on your stupid ideas”
And while he was saying that new startups around the world were transforming our industry with blockchain technology and taking away market shares like never before.
But that was just another thing the old man did not understand…
Life-lesson learned: if an idiot is in charge, you will never accell with your career at that company.
Never.
Luckily I never put a lot of effort in those jobs and used the time for my personal education.
Well, if my company and industry doesn't seem to care about my knowledge then I will try it somewhere else! After all, it was about creating my own job, right?
And so I applied for every possible job I could find, even though they were certainly not making me rich and fulfilling my dreams either.
But I had to find ways to battle-test my new knowledge, I wanted to be sure of what I was doing before I would start a business again and experience failure once more.
It is always safer to burn other peoples cash than your own - especially if you have failed a few times already and burned all your reserves.
My self-confidence in starting another business was just too low, and I also had not saved anything since I was still in debt from the last businesses.
While sending out my CV to all kinds of jobs where I believed I could make an impact, all the new knowledge I had gathered was carefully highlighted and specified for the position I applied to. This really took some great effort to adjust for every single position.
And certainly many of these companies would have use for someone skilled in sales, marketing or business development - those things always need improvement, it is a never ending story!
But interestingly, not one of those many jobs I applied for could care less about those skills. If any feedback apart from a “no” was received, it was that they require a degree for that position.
Wow! How ridiculous.
You can educate yourself constantly, learn every possible material out there, spend years of your life with every night and every weekend improving yourself and then - they say without the formal education you are of no interest to them. Wow!
It was shocking, but once again the harshness and ignorance of reality has caught up with me.
These are the lessons not taught in school.
And again, I was far from creating my own job.
So there I was, armed with knowledge, eager to work hard, young and disciplined - but nobody wanted to employ me.
This really was a tough load to swallow. As long as you have not received any formal document for your education, on the job market your personal education seems to be worthless.
Or at least it appears that way in the eyes of those HR-people which always act as the gatekeepers to any lucrative job. Thinking back it appears logically since these people themselves only have a degree and hardly anyone will ever educate themselves afterwards, so of course they cant value this kind of effort, and unfortunately there is no degree for having read hundreds of books no matter how valuable.
And so I had to continue to get by somehow with the tiny salary ok 20k per year working a dull job for a company that only tries to take advantage of its customers, but hey at least I would not have to put in a lot of effort in the job because really I couldn't care less about it.
Living in the old appartement a little longer.
Drive around in the shitty car a little longer.
For starting another business I would need some fresh cash first.
But I refused to let my dreams die because some HR people didn't want to let me into better jobs.
Read on and find out how you too can create ultimately your dream job yourself!