It was Sunday night—a Sunday night just like this one.
But back then, things were different.
In the early afternoon I’d started to feel a slight discomfort. Heart palpitations. A little sweatiness of the palms.
A strange taste in my mouth.
Depending on how much caffeine I drank, this could get a lot worse. On a good day I’d get to bed early, fall asleep quickly, and get a reasonable night’s sleep, waking up refreshed.
All too often, though, I’d set my head on the pillow and find myself unable to drop off, my heart pounding, and all kinds of weird scenarios going around my head.
The reason? The next day was Monday, and I had to go to my corporate job.
The Corporate World
The corporate world is a strange marriage of extreme tedium and stress that borders on the inhumane. The most obvious (early) literary chronicler of this phenomenon is Franz Kafka, but David Foster Wallace also did a damn good job of it in some of his short stories, and in the posthumously-published novel The Pale King, which concerns a tax office.
Of course, I am perfectly capable of understanding the need for large organisations, and the reason the corporate structure is in place. But it can be mentally damaging for the people who work within it, and it is generally inefficient even from the point of view of the business.
The key reasons for this are outlined in Oliver James’ book Office Politics. Here, James argues that modern office work is essentially subjective in nature—that is to say, it is impossible to say objectively whether someone is doing a good job or not. In a world where much of the graft involves shunting electronic files around, or filling out spreadsheets, anyone can come up with a convincing argument for why they are doing it right. And even when there are supposedly ‘hard’ markers in place, like revenue targets, it’s not hard for the participants to claim that they did a fantastic job ‘considering the market’, or ‘in spite of the competition’.
What this means is that corporate work is about politics more than the actual work. Because needless to say, the more favoured you are within the organisation you are, the less your work will be questioned. Get on the wrong side of the boss, though, and pretty much anything you do can and will be questioned and picked apart.
The best training you can possibly get for a corporate job is not learning the ropes of whatever industry you’re in, but instead reading the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, or The Prince by Machiavelli.
Now, this is all well and good if you are someone who has the ability and the inclination to play the political game well. But the truth is that that is only a minority of people. And the playing field gets more and more ruthless as people vie for position and try to outdo one another for one of the very few top positions.
On those Monday mornings that I dreaded so much, we would all have to attend a long meeting in a cramped, fluorescent-lit and overly air conditioned room, where each member of staff would be required to related the business successes (and failures) they’d committed the previous week. We would be grilled by the boss, and sometimes the managing director. If you didn’t know the answer to a question, or made some minor mistake, or demonstrated that you weren’t getting results, then you would be verbally ripped apart in front of everyone.
It was a grand guignol, an arena of psychological violence, and a bloodbath for ethics and morality. There was back-stabbing and oneupmanship and outright betrayal as people scurried to save their own skins at the expense of their colleagues.
Maybe, just maybe, if any of us had actually given a fuck about the company or what we were charged with selling, this could have made some perverse sense. After all, when people care deeply then passions naturally run high. But the truth was that none of us did give a fuck. To a man (and woman) we were there simply for the money, nothing more, nothing less.
(Of course, I shouldn’t really speak for my former colleagues. But I would be willing to be a fairly large sum of money that I’m right).
I put up with this sort of thing for many years, and it only strengthened my desire to one day break out and work for myself. That was why I began to build this website, and to start guest-posting content elsewhere. Because I knew that the corporate roles I had inhabited were neither a good fit for my personality, nor brought out the best in me, nor paid me the amount of money I aspired to earn.
Perhaps you identify with this. Perhaps you too feel like a square peg in a round hole in the corporate world. If so, I sympathise with you. And I just hope that my story shows you that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Starting An Online Business
In many ways, starting a blog like this one is the worst way to begin your career as an online entrepreneur.
Yes, you will build an audience over time if you create good quality and publish consistently. But it’s a long game, and you won’t necessarily see good money quickly.
If you want an idea of how long it might take, consider that I started this website in 2014 and I only gave up my corporate job at the end of 2017—that’s a full three years later.
I could have done it a lot more quickly had I followed a more directly monetizable-route, such as building a niche site.
A niche site, in case you don’t know, is a single-interest site that caters to a narrow, niche audience. For example –
- Spanish wine tasting
- Italian coffee enthusiasts
- Ice cream makers
- People who want to buy DJ equipment
(Disclaimer: I don’t pretend that any of the above are a good niche to get into. I just made them up off the top of my head!)
Anyway, when you set up a niche site you will first research and select a niche that appears profitable and relatively underserved. You will then create content that serves that niche (articles about fine Spanish wines, etc), and within it you will include affiliate links to high value products of interest to the audience.
Then, whenever anyone clicks on one of your links and purchases, you will get a cut of the revenue (often 50% – 75%, although it depends on the individual deal you strike with the vendor).
Once your niche site is up and running, and you’ve created, say, 20-50 pieces of content for it (which you can do much more quickly than you think) then as long as the site ranks well with Google, then you can pretty much sit back and watch the commissions roll in.
(Disclaimer—that’s not quite true. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. You’ll need to do some maintenance. But not as much as with an authority site such as this one).
But the fact remains that once you’ve spent the time required to put your site together (and by the way, this is very cheap to do—you’ll hardly need any money upfront to start) then it can continue to make money while you sleep, and, more importantly. work on other projects.
I really wish I’d started a niche site or two back in 2014. The reason? Because if I had I would have established a nice, baseline income, which would have kept things ticking over while I built up this website and wrote my books.
It would also have got me out of that corporate grind I described before a lot quicker—and banished my Sunday blues for good.
If you’ve read this far then you probably identify with what I’m talking about, and you’re probably wishing that you could start building niche sites for yourself so that you can dig yourself out of the corporate grave.
Well, fortunately for you, my friend Kyle Trouble of thisistrouble.com has just released his new Pro Niche Site Course.
It’s a comprehensive video course lasting over four hours (plus loads of bonuses) where Kyle explains in detail exactly how you can build your own niches sites and start making money from them immediately.
Of course, Kyle has skin in the game. Not only has he built up thisistrouble, but he also has another 12(!) niche sites, including Ukraine Living. These net him a handsome five-figure income on top of the money that he makes from his other business ventures.
If that sounds like a sweet life, then it is. And if you want to learn the precise steps to building a profitable niche site then Kyle is hands down the best man you can learn from.
(Full disclaimer: yes, I am an affiliate for Kyle’s course. But I am also a happy customer—I’m working through it right now, and I can tell you that it’s worth every cent. Plus, of course, I would never recommend anything to my readers that wasn’t of the highest quality).
So if you want to banish your Sunday night blues for good by escaping the rat race and starting your own profitable online business then i can’t recommend this course highly enough. It’s not cheap, but often we need to invest in ourselves to get to the next stage in our careers, and, as i said, this course it worth every cent. (And actually, with the bonuses, Kyle probably could be selling it for a hell of a lot more.)
Plus, if you implement Kyle’s advice and build a decent niche site then the likelihood is that you will make back what you paid on the course and more in the first few months of trading.
That being said, my advice to you is to get on Pro Niche Site now—it’s currently open, but I have no idea when Kyle’s going to close the doors again.
Finally, as an extra incentive, for this week only (until 19th August), if you book the course though my link then you will also get a FREE hour of Skype coaching with me on building your personal brand, dating, or anything else you’d like to discuss – worth £200 ($255).
(As stated, this offer is only extended to those who book Kyle’s course through my link).
BOOK TO ENROL IN PRO NICHE SITE NOW (AND CLAIM YOUR FREE HOUR’S SKYPE COACHING WITH ME)
