Taking risks: Why I left my job and how can you help us

A few months ago you could have asked me about my projects and I would have said that I was planning them. Yes, that was true, I had been planning for a couple of years without actually doing anything. One day, I just decided it, taking risks was the only way out of my situation.

This is a post about how Enso Journey came to be, and I know you are not used to this, but you may get some insights and learn from my experience, also I would love to solve all your doubts about this topic.

Taking risks is a very difficult step, you need to put your whole into it. I just hope to land safely. Photo by Andrew.

What did I do for a living?

I worked in a bank. I won’t tell you which, but it’s ranked in the greatest place to work here in Mexico. I had a lot of good friends there. They used to tell me that it was for a good cause, and yes, we were aiding small business to grow and thrive. We also made people poorer.

Soon the work started to become monotonous, I was getting bored and loathed going to work. I was hired as developer, but last time I coded something for the bank was over a year ago. I was feeling sad and very depressed. So I had to take the risk.

During this time, I met a good friend. We started a couple of projects, all of them turned into very small successes. But not enough to keep us out of our jobs. It was a bit disappointing but I decided to use what I have learned so far.

So I gathered some courage and decided to launch something that would help people with timeless resources instead of just giving them money. I started Enso Journey in my head.

I stopped planning Enso Journey and just launched

The first thing I thought I should do was build a plan, think of ways make this site work and so on. Instead, I was a week away from my birthday, so I had to build something as fast as I could. I resorted to my best friend. As curious as it sounds I have never met Kym in person, we have always talked using the net as our world. We have worked before when I was in school, but this was the first real life project we would tackle.

Like a week before the launch, I asked Kym if she would like to write with me. She quickly agreed and we were in the path towards the first posts. I installed the blog and set up a simple maintenance page. Used a theme as base and modded from there. It took me 2 days to code and install everything.

I wanted the site to have a lot of things and sections and at least 5 articles of content, but quickly I realized that would never happen. We had to adapt and ask a hard question. What would be the minimum that we needed to launch?

We wrote about us and one post each, and we decided to go live. We launched and shared around in facebook with out personal accounts. Not much happened. but we decided to write one post each every week. It was a small amount but it would give us a bit of momentum and practice before the date I set for myself to leave my job: December.

Iterating

When I was learning how to code, one of the first things that I studied was iterations. The idea is to build version 1 and then get feedback to launch version 1.1. This may sound annoying for everyone who needs to update an app, but for the developer this means less cost and a lot of saved time. I applied the same idea to the site.

After the site was launched I decided that I had to improve it each and every week, adding at least one feature that I was missing. This helped us to focus on writing good content and it allowed me to sleep somewhat regular hours. Here is the simple rundown.

• The top navigation: Yes, the site launched with a terrible navigation. I know that a lot of web designers, developers, and SEO experts would boil be alive for this one. But I corrected it the same day we launched.
• Added categories: I still need to group the posts in better categories, but for a week or so, we only had the Uncategorized category. Hey, nobody said I was smart while taking risks.
• Built the Facebook and Twitter profiles: I signed in and customized the look and feeling. Nothing too fancy, and we asked friends to join. That didn’t work out in twitter tho. I also faced another problem, most of my friends don’t like to read in English. A huge challenge if you ask me.
• Added the page that described our vision: I was really sick when I wrote this one and I had my full body filled with flu medicine. We had a lot of laughs when Kym reviewed what I was writing.
• We started with social sharing: We were really unsure where our target audience was, so we started sharing in every little social network and bookmark we could find. Soon twitter, facebook and google+ proved to be the top places where readers could come. Thanks for being part of this call.
• I had my first guest post: Kathy from Bliss Habits was so kind to offer me a guest post. I had been sharing the material from all the people I follow on twitter around, which got me noticed by Kathy. She decided to allow me to guest post for her site and I took the opportunity and wrote as fast as I could, the best post I could about joy. As you already figured, I was happy so this was somewhat easy. Ever since I decided to share the good content around and be good to my peers. helping other grow truly helped Enso Journey take a leap forward.
• We added a small revenue system: We added the book recommendations page. It uses a small affiliate program by amazon, we would really appreciate that you take a look there and if you like buy using our links. That will help us bring more income. More on this below.

These are some simple examples of what we did. And we are still seeking ways to offer you great value and somehow, make a living. The problem is that a lot of things started to change over at my job, and I couldn’t take them anymore. The greatest place to work turned into a bad place and I decided to quit, curiously my friends are doing the same. It may sound crazy, but i won’t sacrifice my happiness for money, that’s for sure.

What it’s coming for Enso Journey

We plan to continue taking risks. And with all we discovered while building this place, we decided to make a small online course to help you avoid the same mistakes that we did. The idea is to form in you the right mind frame, so you can survive all those moments where something doesn’t turn out the way you want. This course is already being developed and soon we will start testing it.

I also believe that there are a couple of habits and values that a great Enso Warrior needs, so we are planning to release a small PDF report. This one is still under development and planning, but it will be done before the year is over.

Also you may want to contact us. And I would love to help you build a site or plan it out for a small fee. We could tailor the price to your own needs, so if you are interested, please contact us.

One tiny favor we need

Since both, Kym and I are unemployed (she studies full time and I work as a freelancer), we want you to help us. You can buy from our affiliate links in the books section, also from now on each time we recommend a product we will use an affiliate link. Don’t worry, you won’t get charged more, but we get a small part of the sell, think of it as donating us a bit of money, which is great karma for you.

You could also hire me as a consultant. I can help you build great websites, so you can add value to your customers. I have been trained in white hat SEO practices and marketing too, so I can help you get your ideas out there.

Another great way to help us is buying from Kym’s PaperSquare Etsy store. She has some of the best origami figures out there and can take custom orders, check it out, you don’t lose a anything by just looking around. Oh, and she likes to add a bit of extras and discount coupons in each order.

The last one is the easiest one. You can share our content around using your social networks. We have those handy buttons above and below the posts, it’s easy and it takes a couple of clicks. You would be making us a huge favor, that is a massive amount of good karma for you. And my best wishes go to you if you take any of this actions.

Thank you for reading and helping us now that we are taking this huge risk. We will keep adding our best content. Thanks for being part of our dream. You are awesome for helping us.