I’ve been writing online for years.
The hobby first started when I was an undergrad at Johns Hopkins University and discovered Shark Tank.
Back then, the show was in its early seasons and without a doubt I was one of its biggest fans. I found myself watching each pitch and wondering why business school was worth it when I was getting a free education from world-class businessmen including Kevin O’Leary, Daymond John, and Mark Cuban.
I’m all for academia, but there’s something about learning from those who have built empires that you just can’t replicate in a classroom. Real life experience doesn’t compare with what you read in textbooks.
I enjoyed the show so much that I decided I wanted to write about each pitch and critique the entrepreneurs that came on the show. So one night in my dorm room I started a blog on Blogger.com (Google’s blogging platform) doing just this.
I took notes as I watched each episode which I then used to summarize each pitch and give my review of how each entrepreneur performed in the Tank.
Over the course of a year or so, I had accumulated an audience of a few thousand, and even had some of my posts shared by three of the Sharks themselves on social media. It was quite exciting and I was loving this little venture I had created for myself online. Step by step, I was figuring out how to build and grow a successful blog, and eventually even brought on additional writers to help create content. At its peak, we even got M&A inquiries from other bloggers in the space!
But with studies, internships, and real life filling up my time, I ultimately couldn’t keep up with the show each week, and slowly but surely wound down the publication.
It was bittersweet as I had put in quite a bit of effort into building it all out, but I also felt like I had to focus on my career and needed to lay this project to rest as I couldn’t give it the attention it needed to be successful. So that was the end of my first venture online.
As I launched my career in the real estate startup world, I kind of missed having a pet side-hustle of my own. I missed the writing and the creativity of building something from nothing, but just felt like I couldn’t work at a company and also have my own projects on the side. It didn’t seem like this was done. I felt like I had to choose one or the other.
Then COVID came around and I got laid off from my job along with about half the company I worked for. And with the world in shambles and unemployment rates climbing by the week, finding a new job was not going to be an overnight endeavor. So as I explored job opportunities and learned about resilience the hard way, I decided I was going to use the free time I now had to once again revisit the world of writing online and launch my own project. But this time, one that I actually intended to turn into a business.
And that’s exactly what I did.