I turn 25 today, and….

The last year was another rollercoaster ride. Every year, a lot of things change. The previous year was one such event.

Starting from last year, I decided to document my life in a blog on my birthday. If you haven’t read the previous edition. You can read it here.

Nothing but gratitude towards all those events (both planned and unplanned). Here I am again, sharing my life whilst trying to be as real as possible. Let’s see what happened

The biggest advantage of being real is that it attracts other real people in the network. They are a handful yet powerful. https://t.co/o1eHmKHR9P
— Tharun M (@testedoktharun) April 18, 2024

From my Twitter: @testedoktharun

Note #1: Everyone has problems and everyone has won. Mine is neither bigger nor lesser than yours. They are just mine.

Note #2: Don’t read ahead, this is just me rambling about my life, no value added for you.

1. Professional Life

“Appa I’ve decided NOT to do an MBA or go for a master’s, I’ve decided to stay back here to figure out something to do on my own. So please give me the freedom to do things that I love without questioning for the next 2 years”

This is what I said to my father when I was 22, completed my engineering degree, and had a zero clue as to what I really wanted to do in life.

Appa replied “NO. Don’t take the next 2 years. Instead take 3, until you turn 25 try to figure out what you are going to do for the next 10 years. But make sure you have a solid professional path planned ahead, at least have a clear vision of what you will focus on and what you will not focus on. I’ll not ask you anything until you come and say to me what you are going to do. It is your decision at the end.”

I was very fortunate to get this reply from my father. This came during a time when our family was drowned in debt. The only way out of it was to sell our family assets to reduce the quantum of it. I don’t know what went through my father’s head.

Like I said in the previous birthday blog, my full focus shifted towards building Record. For 3 months (May, June, and July) of 2023, I lived with zero income. Yes, my monthly income was zero and I was living on my savings. Finally, in August my savings were also exhausted. So I went back to freelancing. Still no signs of Record progressing ahead. My co-founder & I were stuck in an idea maze.

I was spending my time talking to 150+ investors. You can name any VC fund in the country. I would have surely sent them a cold email and in the best cases got a meeting with them. After 80+ meetings and nothing seemed to convert, I realized I was wasting my time. Because we had no chance of getting funded. Forget traction, we didn’t have a product in the first place. All we had was just irrational optimism.

This happened on one side and my freelancing income helped me to survive. I had 2 EMIs to pay back then. One was an educational loan, and another was a personal loan that we took for the family. So I earned X, paid EMIs, spent X fully and had nothing in hand. This went on for like 2 months.

Then in November, I and 3 other people in my network decided to meet up and start an agency. The idea behind it was to be a full-fledged AI-powered social media agency. Talks went on, and we quickly assembled a team, pitched a few clients and luckily closed 2 recurring clients. All credit goes to the mastermind behind the agency, Sudarshan.

So, at one point, I and my co-founder Akshay were still struggling to figure things out with Record, I was living off my Freelance income and trying to start an agency.

In November the agency kicked off well. We had recurring clients, and one-off projects and people started noticing our work, the word spread and the base was set. Meanwhile, I was able to navigate through the idea maze of Record and arrived at a strong value-prop. After speaking with enough people, this seems to be working. At the same time, my freelance clients loved my work and started giving more projects.

So, from December, work started piling up. Work didn’t feel like work after all. Everything that I did was the things that I really, really loved to do. I planned my day prior, would wake up excited, get to work, keep working, go to the gym, come back to read books and sleep.

When I look back today, my schedule was jam-packed. It included meetings, brainstorming sessions, sales calls with clients and deep work sessions for my individual contributions. I made sure I split my time to the best use of my work.

Now I had the confidence to say what I wanted to work on for at least the next decade of my career.

Full-fledged work is going on in Record. Have hired 10 interns. We did some pre-sales, and have some potential clients.

The agency we started, is called Ad-titude. We are a team of 10 right now and have made a small pivot. We mainly offer three services.

Short-form Video Production Services.
Personal Branding for Founders and Executives.
B2B lead generation.

I think I’ve some clarity. I’m going to spend all my time involving, improving and optimizing things at Record and Ad-titude. We are just starting.

While I’m writing this, the timeline my Appa gave is also coming to an end. I have the confidence now to speak with him. Let’s see how things pan out. Hoping to work hard and give my best.

Realizations

What you choose to work on, and who you choose to work with, are far more important than how hard you work.
Optimize everything for the long term.
Put your company’s interest before your interests.
If you don’t try, you will never know the result.
If you are fixated on the outcomes, you will never start and miss out on the most fun and important part: the journey.

2. Physical and Mental Health

Honestly speaking I was inconsistent with the gym. On most days I’d hit the gym when I’m working from home and have the day planned well ahead. If something suddenly came up where I had to step out, I’ll fail to go to the gym.

I’m currently at 20% body fat. Lost all the gains I had in 2023. But the strength still remains intact. I don’t know how.

I’m trying to still hit the gym whenever I can get time. It is almost 3 weeks since I consistently (5x/week) hit the gym. We have also started playing cricket regularly on the turf. I started running after 15 months. It feels so good to be running again.

Speaking of Mental Health, I’m going through cycles of anxiety. I understood anxiety is just a cause of inaction. Whenever I get anxious I realize I’ve not got some work done. The quicker I resolve the better I feel.

Overall I’m a happier person today than I was yesterday. Yes, I can say confidently that I’m happy. I do face problems, blockages and frustrations, but rarely something makes me sad.

Like writing, fitness and critical thinking, I’ve realized happiness is also a skill and I’m trying my best to master it.

Realizations:

Remember how efficient you can be if you don’t feel anxious all the time.
I’m happy but not free yet. When I become debt free I’ll consider myself free.
Going for a walk and lifting weights is perhaps the best form of therapy.

3. Financial Life

Here comes the most important part of all.

What are all these progresses without a financial outcome?

Last August when my savings drained up, I had to borrow money from my friends to keep my company alive.

Ironically, since then, my financial position has improved slightly. Not to a level where I aspired to be, but I will not complain about where I’m today.

From zero sources of income, today I’ve managed to set up three. I’ve started paying rent ever since we moved to this new place (I’ve been living with my parents without paying rent all my life)

I took a short vacation for 8 days in March where my friends & I travelled to Bali. The experience was beautiful. A blog about it is still pending. This is indeed a small milestone for boys from our background. Because we were able to afford & spend 15x more money on this trip than our last longest trip to Varkala.

Then a major upgrade happened in our home. We bought an AC by the end of March when the cruellest summer started to begin. I’ll tell you why this is a thing to celebrate. Ever since I can remember any product/gadget/equipment in my home was bought using EMI. We always had the stress of paying EMIs. Even the laptop I’m writing this from was bought on EMI. But this time I paid cash, yes, even I can believe what just happened. Through 2 good friends, we were able to get the AC on time and got it installed. It still feels like a dream to pay cash. If you still don’t understand the intensity of this situation, please check below what my Appa told me after I got the AC installed. The man himself approves it.

Another small win, indeed. What else? I gave one of my credit cards to my mother to manage all her spending at home. She feels like I’ve gifted her a sea-face view villa in the Bahamas. So now she doesn’t need to rely on Appa to keep running the household expenses.

Financial health is better than yesterday. But I’m still in some debt. Considering all the family debt burden on me.

Final Thoughts

I did make a lot of new connections in my professional network during this phase. We all mutually respect each other’s work. They all spend time with me, not for any future benefits, but for the person I am and the skills I bring to the table.
Always grateful to my friends and family who have always been by my side no matter what I do.
Every year I try to be a lesser idiot than I was, and this year is one such. Read lots and lots of books, and blogs and watched YouTube videos.
Preparing myself for whatever happens in the future.

I’ve tried to assemble and surround myself with the smartest people. We are all here for one common vision. I trust the people around me, the process, and the philosophies that have led me here. The hustle never stops. The learning never stops. I’ve let the outcome to the mercy of the hard work we do.

Overall, life seems to be good. There is still work to be done. I’ve just tried to accomplish 0.01% of my overall goals. There is a long, long way to go. Let’s see what awaits in the future.

One last note is that,

Yesterday I had nothing, today I’m fortunate to have something. Tomorrow I can go back to zero. But I’ll always have the courage to start from nothing.

To homies who made it till here

With Love 💚
Tharun