Risk is perhaps one of the most used term in business.
“You have to take risks when you want to do business.” That’s what my dad told me. And it’s true. Taking risks is one of the things that make the ‘Dip‘. It’s why 90% of startups fail. It’s why most people quit before they make it. It’s why most people stay on their comfort zone as employees.
While I don’t agree that everyone has to be an entrepreneur (because God wired each one of us differently), I think that it’s pretty darn awesome to be on this side of the fence.
I started SEO Hacker risking my career as an IT professional. While it’s true that I practiced IT for just 5 short months, I still traded that sweet, secure monthly income for the unknown.
The Things I Love
I was always someone who is fond of writing. Put me in a box, give me a pen and paper, and I would write the whole day. It’s simply a passion of mine to put my ideas down into paper – a step closer to turning them to a reality.
As I started SEO Hacker, I realized I was very fond of marketing. And I did have a knack specifically for online marketing. I would try to learn the ropes of email marketing, analytics, social media, SEO, CRO, and the list goes on.
Somewhere along the way I also realized that I was fond of helpful immediate solutions – which involves code. I would learn PHP, Javascript, CSS, MySQL, and all sorts of coding language, albeit shallowly so.
What I didn’t have was a love for management, accounting, finance, accounts management, admin, HR and all things related to that.
Rolling the Dice
So I took a risk. A sort of gamble.
I went to a good friend of mine in church who I knew was a very able project manager. We went under negotiations of what it would take to get him in the team and lead the management roles. The stakes were high for me to be able to get him in.
After much prayer and counting the cost, I rolled the dice. I hired the most expensive person I’ve ever hired.
It came to the point where I had just a measly 10,000php in my bank account – and I was down to my knees in despair. I lost big.
It was even more painful because his salary would sometimes be bigger than mine. That’s because my ‘salary’ is what’s actually left of our revenue after all the expenses have been taken out. And I thought to myself,
“That’s fine. So long as I can take the company forward and execute on my vision, we’re going to grow.”
And man, did we grow!
Forgetting the 20%
I focused on all the things I love. My strengths. My passion. I worked on it ferociously without much burnout. I realized that if you’re working on something you’re not passionate about, you spend 80% of your energy getting through 20% of the task.
So if you need to go through to finishing the task, that would take 400% of your energy – and you’ll finish a lot longer.
However if you just focus on the things you love, you can finish 80% with just a measly 20% energy. The efficiency of your finishing the task you love is incomparable to finishing the task you don’t love.
So what I did was forget the 20% and left it to my (during the time) very able project manager.
I got to move – and I got to finish a whole lot of work with unbelievable efficiency fueled by my passion.
Without losing big risking on hiring an expensive project manager, I would never have won big and take SEO Hacker to where it is today.
SEO Hacker is now a company that’s grossing more than $17,000 in revenue on a monthly basis. It’s exceeded my wildest dreams!
Of course, we’re not really ‘there’ yet as most of our gross revenue is mostly eaten up by expenses and business investments. The point of the matter is, oftentimes, you need to lose big to win big.
I went through it. Chances are, you will too.
Are you going to roll the dice or quit?
