How Far I've Come

I started learning about the online world when I was around 16.

That was somewhere around 2020 or 2021. I do not remember the exact moment. I just remember the feeling.

My brothers had already started around that age. They were learning, trying things, and most importantly, earning. So naturally I looked at myself and thought, "Well, I guess I live here too. I should probably do something."

In a funny way, I became the last one in the family to earn through freelancing. So yes, I was late. Not late in general. Just late by family standards, which is somehow worse.

I started with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro because that was the trend back then. YouTube was growing fast. Video editing looked cool. Everyone wanted thumbnails, edits, clips, and all that. So I joined the race like a very confident beginner with no real idea what I was doing.

One of my brothers was already doing well in SEO, so I also started hearing words like backlinks, citations, WordPress, and HubSpot. At that time, I did not really understand what most of those things actually meant. I just followed tutorials.

That was my whole learning style for a long time.

I was not learning concepts. I was learning survival.

Open YouTube. Search the thing. Follow the steps. Hope for the best.

HubSpot felt too big for me at that stage, so I watched a few videos and quietly walked away from it like it had personally offended me. Around the same time, I also started a YouTube channel. It got copyright strikes, and that was the end of my short and glorious creator career.

After that, I started earning a little by doing small jobs for a Shopify expert. Product research. Data entry. Some GoHighLevel work. Some Shopify design stuff. Nothing fancy, but it was real work.

Another brother of mine was into Facebook Ads, so I also got exposed to that side. I never went deep into it, but I learned basic campaign setup and reporting. Even that small exposure helped me later because it showed me that businesses do not just need one tool. They need things to connect.

Then came the cloud phase.

My brother suggested I learn AWS and cloud computing. So I did what I always did back then. I opened YouTube and started learning random things with maximum confidence and minimum direction.

EC2. Lambda. RDS. Load Balancer. S3.

Honestly, I understood almost nothing.

Now I know cloud is huge and should be learned with some structure. Back then, I thought watching random videos counted as a roadmap. It did not.

Still, I kept going.

I was also still working in those smaller support roles. I started at $5 an hour for a few months. Looking back, it was not great money, but it gave me movement. And movement matters a lot when you are still trying to become useful.

Then I got the urge to do something real.

That is where the Ringba and AWS project came in.

I made that project more complex than it probably needed to be, but it meant a lot to me because it felt like real engineering. I used the Ringba API, Lambda, a proper database, data transformation, and then connected it all to Power BI through a server because I had just started learning Power BI too.

That project gave me a lot of energy.

For a while, I became fully convinced that I was going to become a data engineer.

So I made a CV around that direction. And yes, a lot of it was written with AI. The funny part is I then went and learned the very skills the AI had already placed on my CV.

That phase pushed me into Snowflake, dbt, SQL, and also a Google Analytics course where I touched GCP, BigQuery, and Looker Studio.

Then I started applying for internships and entry-level roles.

And got rejected.

A lot.

Part of it was simple. I was not really an expert yet. And for many roles, one of the main requirements was that I should already be a graduate.

That part was frustrating, but also fair.

Fast forward a bit and I got a job that was more about operations, research, and reporting. That role helped me grow in a much more practical way. I learned about Zapier, automation tools, Supabase, Docker, and the kind of backend work that businesses actually depend on every day.

Then in 2025, I started looking for freelance projects again. I got a role as a tech assistant, and over time that turned into sales operations work. I worked closely with a founder and helped support more than 20 small businesses. At the same time, I was getting smaller projects directly and through Fiverr and Upwork.

And now I am here.

What I like about my journey is also what made it messy.

I did not grow through one clean plan.

I jumped around.

I learned things in the wrong order.

I followed random tutorials.

I misunderstood big concepts.

I left things halfway.

I came back.

I tried again.

I accidentally made some things harder than they needed to be.

But somehow, all of that still turned into progress.

Now when I look at websites, CRMs, automations, reporting systems, or onboarding flows, I do not just see tools anymore. I see the whole system behind them. I see where things break. I see where people get confused. I see where leads disappear. I see why clean operations matter.

That understanding took time.

And if I am being honest, a lot of confusion too.

I still feel early.

But I also know I have come very far from the guy who was just copying tutorial steps without knowing what any of it meant.

That version of me would probably be shocked that I now work on systems people actually use.

I think that counts.