I decided to leave my startup job without having any solid financial backup.
I was not very sure about what I’m going to do in future. I thought that I have done the necessary work for the startup (Babygogo) where I was working as the head of content marketing and now my heart wasn’t feeling good in it.
I joined the startup in January, helped in pivoting the product from a doctor focused app to a parent focused app. We got some exciting results in a short time from our efforts in content marketing (starting from May).
- One of our videos went viral, fetching more than one million views in just 2-3 days.
- A single viral article increased our blog traffic to 25,000 visitors in a few days.
- Also, we improved our traffic to app conversion ratio significantly.
There was much more work to be done, but now they had a solid digital marketing team. Honestly, I was losing interest in the work so I decided to pull the trigger and resigned as any work done without interest or forcefully yields no output.
I did not have a lot of money in my bank account, because whatever I earned was spent on my household expenses.
If we talk about the savings, all my savings were been invested into the stock market. I thought that I’ll sell a portion of my stocks to get the sufficient amount of money required to run my house till December.
I also prepared a rough financial plan, to keep things going on till the year end, while I planned to put some efforts into the work of Cash Overflow (that I started out of my hobby last year).
I never tried to monetize Cash Overflow traffic so I was not sure how much income could be possible from a small traffic of Rs 30,000 per month (yellow color for future expected income).
I was trying to be logical but my wife had a better logical version to which I did not have any answer. She said, “No one is asking you to leave work. Your efforts are yielding good results and everyone is happy with your performance. You will get a salary raise with the next round of funding of the startup, and looking at the performance of Babygogo, they have a bright chance of raising their next round in a couple of months”.
She advised me to keep working for the startup and handle their marketing work but also start spinning out something of my own to make a regular income.
It could be indeed a logical move if worked on correctly. Firstly, I’ll start making some source of income from one of my side projects and then leave the job, sounds good. And, I should have listened to her, but I listened to my heart. I took an intuitive decision and as always, my wife supported my decision.
But I had confidence in myself that I will definitely figure out some source of income by December and selling off my stocks will give me enough money for my survival till year-end.
I put my resignation in August.
Then, guess what, something magical happened and two of my stocks skyrocketed almost 2.5X.
Interestingly, I had invested most of my money into these two stocks only.
I made a profit of about 4,50,000 from my stocks. I transferred the required funds into my savings account and re-invested the rest of the money in the stock market again.
On Aptech, I made a long-term capital gain, which means that I don’t have to pay any taxes on my income of 279,454 rupees (one strong reason to invest in the equities). On Indian Bank, I made a short-term capital gain, so I have to pay income tax @15% of 1,90,356 rupees.
Do you think that I am a smart investor?
No, it was just my luck.
In any case, I was going to sell my stocks because I already put my resignation on 1st August. I did my thorough research when I bought both the stocks last year, but it was a coincidence that stocks gave me spectacular results in August & September only.
I started investing in stock markets in 2010, and this is the first time that any of my stock gave me double returns. On my journey of learning value investing, I had booked major losses in 2010 and 2013 in the stock markets.
I won’t advise you to blindly invest in shares because that gave me good returns in bad times. It could have been the opposite way as well.
Do you think that I will be lucky every time?
No, I am not sure, but yes, I hope so.
Do you think that everyone should make decisions like this?
Absolutely No. Even I was afraid to make a decision like this.
Then what do I want to tell you through this article?
I just wanted to share my experience that how I took the decision in my tough time and how unexpectedly good things happened with me. I was just lucky at that point of time, or actually..
Hard Work + Intuition + Persistence = My Luck
99% of the time, I play the role of a logical man. I make excel sheets and count pennies as every one does.
And, 1% of the time, I look within, listen to my inner voice, and I consult with myself.
Since I was not enjoying my work, it was very clear for me to leave the job sooner or later. I waited for an entire one month (July) to rule out if that was a temporary phase but it was not.
I had some money for the next few months, and from here I got the confidence to take the tough decision now rather than lingering it on for another 2-3 months.
If I had taken the decision of continuing my job, my work would have suffered. There was far less chance of another viral video or article because I was not able to put my heart into my work. I would be at loss and even the startup that was paying me a regular income would be at loss, which I could never accept.
I am inspired by this beautiful story as told by my favorite author Vineet Nayar in the Economics Times.
Someone out there is waiting to throw you on a train you believe to have missed, if only you decide to take that chance.
“It was 3:00 am when the train stopped. A boy, just 8 years old, stepped out of the train, attracted by the fascinating scene outside.
The train starts moving. Someone shouts. The boy is jolted out of his dreams and runs to catch the train. He catches the side bars but fails to pull himself up. He keeps running and tries again and again but fails each time.
Fear and doubt creep into his mind. The train gathers speed.
A critical choice faces him — give up or take a chance and keep running. He runs again, faster, taking one more chance to get on the train; feeling hopeless but not giving up, yet.
Seeing the boy losing the battle, a vegetable vendor runs towards him and throws him into the last compartment of the train, to be reunited later with his family, sleeping unaware.
I have always wondered why did I keep running? Why did I take that chance despite fear and doubt overpowering my mind? Did my taking the unlikely chance of running create the magic of someone helping me to get on the train?”
The critical decision-making phase comes many a times in our life and many choose an easy path. I’m not saying that choosing the easiest path is bad. It’s the choice. The choices that we make today, shape our tomorrow. That’s what some people refer to as Karma. I chose the path that my heart wanted to, no matter if it was easy or full of obstacles.
What would you do when you have to take a critical decision in a state of fear and doubt?
I am not sure how many times I will take intuitive decisions like this in the future, but yes, I got positive results from the decisions made in the past after listening to my heart, even if those sounded illogical at that time. I believed in myself and I did it.
You just have to trust yourself once you have made the decision. Making a decision means choosing one option from the available set of many options. When you choose one option, you decide not to choose the rest of the options.
Don’t be doubtful for the options that you left on the table. Don’t be in a state of confusion after making your final decision. You have to be persistent with your efforts to make things a reality.
Today, I published the results of monetization experiments with Cash Overflow website traffic. (60,000 rupees of income last month)
The article was originally published on CashOverflow Blog. You can connect with me over Twitter or write directly to me pardeep@cashoverflow.in