It all started in 2013 when I decided to leave the corporate world and switch to entrepreneurship. Back then I was 23 years old and felt like I had nothing to lose, pursuing the dream of having a successful private business. I thought to myself: “I’m still young and I have all the time to make mistakes and learn.” I founded and co-founded a series of startups, some of them were running at the same time like Tebadel (which currently doesn’t exist), Geeqshop (still exists), Mapture (currently doesn’t exist) and Donut Code (currently doesn’t exist). I failed with all of them except for one, Geeqshop (or Geeq Shop). However, it wasn’t sustainable to have it as a full time job because of the ups and downs of having a business that was still finding its place. In the year 2017, I went back into the corporate world, moving Geeqshop to turn into a side hustle, to have multiple sources of income.
I’ve frequently been asked by others about my journey as an entrepreneur and how I feel after going back to the corporate world, especially when I spent four years of having my own private business(es). “You must be depressed, how do you handle it?” or “we’ve always wanted to take an entrepreneurial step, why did you go back to corporate and keep your private business as a side job?” is what I would usually hear from people.
Via Geeqshop
The thing most people don’t know about the journey of entrepreneurship, or mine at least, is that there is no black and white. There is no one right way or a ‘perfect path’ to success. Each person’s path to success is strictly individual and the most important question to ask is which path makes you the happiest, or which path works the best for you. My journey with my ongoing private business has not ended merely because I work in corporate and continue to use the skills I obtain on a daily basis. It’s all about learning, teaching, and continuing to hustle everyday in whichever form it may appear. It is a person’s continuous effort to learn, try, fail and fail again in order to grow, that directs them straight into a lifestyle of success because learning sometimes means putting your feet in two places at once. Wherever you are in your journey, just don’t give up and quit or let the background noise and the opinions of others distract you from the importance of trying whatever path works best for you.
You may get confused in the middle but that’s fine and common for everyone. Trust me. This is a pattern of stepping stones, and you may trip and fall in the water but that, too, is extremely important in terms of learning how to survive. Eventually as you mature and grow you will be able to say this is for me, and there is nothing more exciting and purposeful than exploring that.
