For us here today, I want to talk about something that I've been holding on to for a while.

And I think now is the right time to finally just finally just talk about it, and that is kind of got to take you back for a second.

Here it is.

When I was growing up when you were growing up, you have examples in your life and you have a lot of people telling you how someone should go about living.

You go to high school, you're going to college, maybe trade school.

You get yourself a job.

You worked that job, maybe climb the corporate ladder and then you go on and retire 40 years later.

I knew from a very young age that this is not the life that I ever want to live.

I don't know if it's because just stubborn and I didn't want to have somebody like you have a boss.

Maybe I didn't want to have a boss kind of controlling over my life for the next 40 years of it, where I want to go on vacation.

I had to ask them if I wanted a day off a sick day.

I had to put it by them.

They told me when I had to come into work when I had to stay in tow work and I couldn't leave.

Sometimes you can't even like clock out for lunch.

You have to bring your own lunch.

If you clock out, you got to stay 30 minutes later.

Whatever it may be, I just I just didn't wanna have that.

That person that I felt would be ruling over my life.

I knew I was just always gonna want to be self employed.

And that's actually a big reason why I got into software development, because if I knew I knew the potential, if I play my cards right, the potential of being able to work for myself from anywhere make good money while doing financial and location independence and how I didn't think that you two would be the route that actually got me there.

But it did.

And as of the second half of 2018 now self employed what that means for the channel I'll get into in a couple minutes.

But the reason I kept this a secret for however many months it's been is because I didn't want to have the expectation from y'all to be creating more videos.

I see another YouTubers.

They kind of go in tow.

I'm going to start creating twice the amount of videos, and some of them actually don't end up doing it.

And I know I was going to be one of those one of those youtubers I was going to be one.

And if I were to come out with it, I'm gonna be making twice the amount of videos now.

I was gonna do that new myself.

Better net.

I knew.

Here's the thing.

The past seven years, with the exception of two semesters, I've worked 2 to 3 jobs simultaneously over half that time these past two years, I've been doing YouTube.

So what it would be like is I'd be spending 8 10 12 hours plus in a given day on worker school or both.

Now come home it five or 6 p.m. And then get to work in planning a video recording a video editing a video up until 12 a.m. One a.

M sometimes even tell 3 a.m. I wake up at 7 a.m. and do it all again the next day.

Now, this wasn't the same hours the whole entire time, but that was the gist of it.

Maximum work, minimum sleep.

Not a very healthy lifestyle to live.

But I knew there were.

There were goals I had set out for myself and I need to reach.

I know I don't want a break from all that.

I knew I would just I would take a second, sit back, figure out this whole personal life balance toe work, life balance thing now that everything simplified.

One job, one personal life.

That's exactly what I did.

I just kind of took a step back, maintained this similar amount of videos that I have been uploading and figured out that balance.

I'm not saying I figured out to this day, but it's definitely a lot better than it was a year.

And that is that to go on and start another company and get myself to jobs again.

So what the hell do I know?

You know what the thing is?

I started another company because I wanted to improve the security of being self employed.

Everything that I'm doing right now is on YouTube or via you their separate revenue streams that go into YouTube like affiliate links in ad since, and things that nature.

But it didn't have anything of my own, which is why I started my coffee company.

And I know you don't know this by now, at least most of yours that I started my own coffee company is first of my coffee.

And since this video is all about me just telling you how I'm self employed and trying to just lay out the whole entire story for all you coffee lovers out there, let me Let me just give you this here first of my coffee.

We have one single blend.

It is a medium roast with tasting notes of red fruits and Baker's chocolate cola.

I had taste so good and 50% of the beans are from Guatemala.

50% of the beans are from Peru, and it is the best coffee I've ever had.

And I'm not just saying this, this is I wouldn't just be saying this because the whole reason I chose this blend this coffee to be the first and firm right now on Lee Coffee blend That first buy coffee cells is because it is the best coffee I've ever tried.

So your coffee lover, I'm gonna leave a link in the top of description to first supply coffee dot com.

Get yourself a bag.

Coffee?

You won't regret all of this brings us to the beginning.

Why?

I started coding why I decided to pursue a computer science degree.

And why three years after doing those two, I started my YouTube channel.

I told you all I'd say it again.

I started coding out of the pure desire to learn how to create things with code.

I continued coding out of the pure enjoyment I got from creating things with a code, all while knowing that I was able to If I play my cards right, set up myself where I'm self employed, you know, work for myself financially independent, and I could do it from anywhere in the world location independence.

So I worked.

I worked through my first few years of college getsem internships, and I began building my own APS.

I want to build the next big thing, but I soon realized that it's there's no point building something.

If nobody sees it as the old saying goes, you can have the best product in the world.

But if nobody knows about it, what is the matter?

So that led to the question.

What's my marketing plan as your average millennial?

I knew that I figured that social Media was gonna be a way to go, just getting in front of audiences for whatever Mitch my application would be.

But I didn't have thousands of dollars to pay influence.

I had more time than money.

So I decide to make my own YouTube channel with a single goal in mind.

Now that was to act as a marketing venue for my application to the end user was going to document the process, build a little bit of buzz, a little bit of hype and then boom, it's gonna launch the application and millions were down.

Right hindsight.

That's a little bit naive to think that was the case, but that was my plan.

I I knew that you could make money on YouTube through advertisements and things of that nature, but that was always secondary.

The primary goal was to get in front of his many people's possible to get them to download the app that I have yet to build this this APP idea, turning into a business and using YouTube as a marketing venue.

That was my way to become self employed.

But as work and school began to take over this dream, it became a little less plausible.

I didn't have time to build my app, but I did have time to keep making YouTube videos, because along the way I realized just how much I enjoyed making these YouTube videos.

And while the ideal situation was for me to be able to code all the time, make you two videos all the time, it just wasn't possible.

I needed to school.

I need to make money, internships, jobs, school.

That was priority.

An effect of the matter is I could spend all that time that I spent making the YouTube videos creating yeah, both appointed creating app because that is my marketing venue.

I don't have anywhere to market it.

If I if I don't spend any time making the YouTube videos spent all my time coding, it doesn't matter.

But I could I could make those YouTube videos because I saw how much I enjoyed it, and then that light in the tunnel is like you can actually make money doing this.

And if I made money doing this, then I could go ahead and start making my APS.

This this YouTube channel could fund my life, and all I could do was just spend all my time making YouTube videos in all my time coding applications, coating my own projects.

That is the dream.

So that's what I did in college.

I focused on school work, so my job still coding is computer science internships and YouTube.

In a perfect world, everything would fall into place Once I graduated college computer science degree, self employed YouTuber and I could spend the rest of my time building the APP into a business to set up my family for life.

But things tend not to work out perfectly.

When the time came, my YouTube channel wasn't making enough money.

It wasn't making a living salary.

So what I have to do well, like everybody else who graduated college, I need to get a job.

And this job ended up being a full stack sulfur engineering position in a small startup.

And as I worked that job, I continued to do YouTube.

In hindsight, be honest with you.

This not working out perfectly was probably one of the best things to happen to me because I've learned so much at that job that never would have known if I wouldn't work to just work work for myself regarding code.

Half the things I know I wouldn't know because I wouldn't have that job.

I wouldn't understand that.

JAL, as I do now, I wouldn't understand like anything that has to do with the professional software development environment.

If it wasn't for that job, everything worked out perfectly.

I graduated graduate from college and YouTube was able to save my life.

I wouldn't even be close to the developer that I am today, so retrospectively looking at it, I'm grateful that that's how everything turned out throughout my time.

Working at this job tells an 18 Kane tells 19 came in those two years, my YouTube channel was growing at a rather rapid rate, at least for me.

I was getting more subscribers every month than ever more views than ever.

More opportunities hit my email that knew what to do with, and I quickly was in a place where I was making more money doing this whole YouTube thing that I was being a software engineer.

So I want to see how consistent this stayed.

A couple months later, State consistent, even grew a little bit and, well, I decided to put in my two weeks and finally fulfill that dream of being self employed.

But I say give my two weeks It's with an ass tricks with how the owner in this company and this team it treated me and I was on this contract within.

That took a little bit for me to get onto the contract.

I don't want to just leave him high and dry hay.

Two weeks, I'm out here.

Good luck replacing me because I already had secured the funds for my position on this contract.

I want to make sure that that I was as polite as possible because, like I said, of all they've done for me.

So I said, Look, I'm on your time.

I'm going to get out of here.

But on your time, however long it takes you to find my place in without stressing out too much, I'm okay with it.

So I was actually just three weeks had gone by, brought in my replacement.

I was actually in the interview for my replacement, and then, hey, I was out of my own of conquering this dream I've had for years of being my own boss and about this whole job, like, here's the kicker.

That was the absolute dream job for me.

Smaller company, you know, could pay good benefits.

I mean, that's all fine and dandy, but I was able to come in when I wanted to leave when I wouldn't give.

And I got all my work done right.

If I wanted to leave early, I would just get there earlier if I wanted to sleep in.

I'll just stay a little bit later if I want to go for lunch.

You didn't have to punch a card and clock out from Launcher, put it into toggle.

It wasn't that big of a deal, Not to mention the work was fulfilling.

The atmosphere was supportive, and I learned more than I'd ever learn before, especially in the realm of Salford violent.

It was the perfect job for me, but it was the perfect job.

I still knew always that I want to be able to work for myself, so that's a leap.

I told Now what that means for the channel.

Only time will tell there, but I do know right now I'm doing moving forward.

My days will consist of creating you two videos.

Encoding.

My own project was just a previous change from my former Drew.

I'm not gonna be not gonna be creating that app and turning into a business toe build that maybe sometime in the future.

But that's that's not my plan.

Right now.

What I want to do is focus on my YouTube videos and focus on coating my own projects.

Get back to what I used to do in college, and that was artificial intelligence programming.

That was the most fulfilling work, most fun work that I have ever done just because of the problems that you're able to solve.

And the things that you're able to make computers do is unlike anything else.

But this time I'm doing it a whole new level in a whole new, different way.

No, I'm not focusing on putting out as many videos as possible.

This actually may mean more time coding, less time.

Let's say less videos uploaded a similar amount of time creating the videos mind you, but much more production value in a much more entertaining video.

Just less frequently, I just have a few more videos I want to get done.

And then it's time your support in watching these videos and sharing them with your friends as well as your new support for first, apply coffee.

That's what's allowed me to be able to do this.

You just gotta believe it right now.

When I say Is that these videos that I will be making these are the video job in asking for these are the videos you'll want to see.

You don't want to see these tips and trick videos I've been making for the past few months D's or the videos.