This is my third and final "introduce yourself" post for Steemit. Thanks for all the positive comments and upvotes so far.
Googling how to get laid caused me (indirectly) to discover meditation and affirmations and I went from unhappy stoner to meditating entrepreneur.
I drank less, exercised more, and ate more healthily. I stopped smoking cigarettes and, finally, I was able to go for a day without smoking weed. For me, this meant that I suddenly had the motivation and clarity to be able to create my own website.
And in 2005, that was a website with static HTML. I was so pleased with myself that I was even talking to some people at work about it. I was incredibly lucky that someone recommended WordPress.
Getting clients
I was going from freelance gig to freelance gig doing meaningless, shitty design work in drab, soul-crushing offices. My days started off walking down the tunnels of the London Underground (also known as "the tube") at Finsbury Park.
However, questions remained in the back of my mind: What if I worked for clients directly? How do I get people to come to my site so they can get me to do work for them?
In the summer of 2006, I had a light-bulb moment. A Google search turned up an article that advocated creating more pages to attract traffic to a website.
The penny dropped. I needed to write more blog posts.
As the weeks and months passed, I wrote more, and more visitors came to the site. At the end of the year three businesses had contacted me through the website to see if I’d work with them.
Falling in love with my business
Soon I was being asked to do website designs and other online work. Simultaneously, I was working to improve my website, getting it to look better by amending various WordPress themes.
My confidence in my abilities improved to such an extent that I gave up doing the freelance gigs and worked on my business from home 100% of the time.
Passive income – the beginnings
Also during this time I began to read more business literature. One book that made a great impression on me was The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.
I also forced myself to meet other people who shared an interest in online business through London meetups.
I began following bloggers. I was inspired by Tim Ferriss, Glen Allsopp, Lisa Irby, and others (the list is truly endless). I also fell in love with the concept of passive income.
I started to collect email subscribers through my website and sold an e-book to them. My first digital product sales. The first of many. I was hooked.
The numbers were modest at first: a few hundred dollars passive income every month.
Passive income upturn
I’d been posting tutorial videos on YouTube and then made better quality video courses on web design and put them up for sale on Udemy.
I made nearly $300 in the first month and nearly $1000 the next month. I realised the opportunity. So I continued to create more free and paid courses.
During this time, other passive income sources were growing and others were coming into play.
I’d started writing Kindle books. I had a little bit of advertising revenue coming in from Adsense. There were affiliate commissions. And, I was also selling my courses on a variety of other platforms: Skillfeed (now defunct), Skillshare, StackSocial, Dealfuel, as well as on my own site.
Leaving London
I created my wife by my affirmations. Everyday for a few years I affirmed I'd meet a beautiful, nice, young women. Problem was I'd forgot to affirm that we'd get on. (I'm hiding that away so no one will see it but it's true).
My marriage had broken down by the end of 2011, five years after our wedding.
By September 2014, we had finalized the divorce and sold the house.
By this point, I’d been living in London, England, for 25 years. Every income stream I earned was location independent. I had little reason to live in one of the world’s most expensive cities. All I needed was my laptop and decent wifi and I could make a living.
I eventually settled in Chiang Mai, a small provincial town in the north of Thailand.
In the last three years I’ve lived and worked in Chiang Mai, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, Phuket, Bangkok, all in Thailand; Phnom Penh in Cambodia; Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam; Cebu in the Philippines; Prague in the Czech Republic; Berlin in Germany; Bratislava in Slovakia; as well as returning to England from time to time. All this means I get to take photos of my laptop in exotic locations.
Two of my greatest loves in my life are traveling and helping people realise their dreams. I’m lucky that I’m able to do these two things most of the time.
I now have more friends in Chiang Mai than anywhere else, although I have no idea where this journey will end.
Where did it all go right?
I trace it all back to that day when I surreptitiously googled “how to get laid”.
That set me on a path of personal development and self-discovery that still isn’t over.
I still monitor my thoughts and try to stop them if I think they’ll lead to suffering.
I still meditate every day.
I still make sure I’m enjoying the moment rather than putting all my attention on a future event. Online business is all about goals. Goals are important but never more important than the present moment.
I’m sure I’ve benefited from this outlook as I meet a lot of guys in Chiang Mai who aren’t happy because they’re not as “successful” as they want.
I want to shake them and say, “dude, you’re living in Thailand, you’re working for yourself online, you’ve got a beautiful girlfriend, you have a roof over your head, and can afford excellent food and drink. That’s fucking SUCCESS!”
The temptation is to always want more and not appreciate what we have.
But, heck, I’m enjoying writing this right now. And I’m helping people. I’m inspiring people to discover the amazing life changes that I’ve benefited from.
Everyday, people take one of my free courses at http://robcubbon.com/freecourses
Everyday, I get emails and messages from people saying that I’ve helped them. Who wouldn’t be happy about that?
Now I feel really inspired talking to Steemians.
Web 1.0 helped me discover meditation, Buddhism, personal development, affirmations, etc.
Web 2.0 helped me build a business on the back of a blog, a YouTube channel and an email list, travel the world and ultimately settle in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I’m now happy knowing that I can literally do anything I want after I get out of bed every morning.
I thank the world that everything turned out so well. I’m so happy – a single 49 year old with no wife, no family, living in paradise.
I’m not the traditional ideal of a happy middle-aged man but maybe the traditional ideals of jobs, relationships, nation states, western values, and a lot more besides need re-thinking.
Certainly everything I was told about how to live my life (get a good stable job, buy a house, get married, have kids, live in the suburbs) turned out to be fantastically wrong.
Web 3.0 is now challenging more sacred cows.
I’m glad I have a front seat for that.
Introduce yourself #1: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@robcubbon/how-to-get-laid-from-no-hope-slacker-to-traveling-entrepreneur-no-really-introduceyourself-1
Introduce yourself #2: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@robcubbon/how-i-went-from-unhappy-stoner-to-traveling-meditating-entrepreneur-introduce-yourself-2
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