Overcoming The Dreaded ‘Quarter-life Crisis’

At least it was affordable

I’ll do it for 2 years then maybe do a startup.

There’s an interesting project coming up so maybe after that.

I really don’t want to be a ____________ for the rest of my life.

I think I’ve made a mistake.

Since leaving my corporate job back in October I’ve heard a combination of the above from a number of friends still working in industry. It’s becoming more and more evident that the quarter-life crisis is actually a thing.

Trust me, I’m the poster boy.

I resigned at what I felt was the ‘peak’ of my career in consulting. I had just returned from my dream project — cognitive automation at an investment bank, working out of Singapore and China for 3 months. As a recent Finance/IT graduate and AI enthusiast with a career goal to work in Asia — I had hit the jackpot. I had fought and networked my way into my dream job.

Me looking very pleased with myself.

I worked with the dream team, stayed in the 5-star hotels, enjoyed the business class lounges, chose the lobster at the partner-funded dinners, partied in the mega-clubs, Snapchatted my life as if it were a documentary, and received that all-important global work experience.

So why leave?

Well, I ended up learning lessons about business, about people, and about the world that made me second guess my choice in career.

At this point, there was nothing more in consulting I wanted to experience.

The sheen had worn off — the work had lost its meaning.

I needed new goals and new challenges.

So I resigned. I left with no job lined up and no real idea with what I was going to do with my life — and nothing excited me more.

What did I do?

I left my comfort zone and went back to work. I launched businesses, tested ideas, and read countless books.

Since resigning I have;

• Built an e-commerce store for PowerPoint templates,
• Built the roadmap for an AI-powered PowerPoint design platform,
• Made a small fortune trading Cryptocurrency and flew to Melbourne to compete in a Crypto-trading tournament (lol),
• Started various drop shipping businesses, amassing over 10k Instagram followers in 2 months,
• Made it to the final round interview at a global tech giant (located in my favourite city),
• Learnt everything there is to know about chatbots and launched an agency.

I had no clue how to run an e-commerce store, no idea how to build an AI-powered anything, no experience with drop shipping, certainly wasn’t qualified to be day-trading cryptocurrency, and definitely didn’t know how to run an agency.

The point is; I was willing to try, and I was willing to fail.

And boy did I fail;

• I spent over $5000 on outsourced services that ended up destroying the front-end framework of the PowerPoint site, rendering the UI completely unusable :)

• For both PowerPoint ventures I spent over $1000 buying business names and domains that turned out to be registered trademarks — I paid a startup lawyer in Mexico to tell me PowerPoint is a trademark of Microsoft.
• Chose the most overcrowded product niches in drop shipping and spent countless hours finding content for 8 different Instagram accounts — made a loss overall.
• Lost said crypto fortune on a number of dumb trades — got terribly depressed.
• Told all my friends and family that I’d likely get the tech job, prematurely flew to the city to start inspecting apartments. Didn’t get the job.

Life isn’t about winning. Life is about learning.

Learn from failure and let the lessons dictate your next move. Through failure I learnt;

• The importance of due diligence and how to draft legal policies,
• How to manage a team of outsourced freelancers and bootstrap businesses,
• How to deal with international manufacturers, automate product fulfilment, run Facebook Ads and how to ‘growth hack’ Instagram,
• And finally, I learnt how to manage an investment portfolio, set up technical trades, and the importance of stop-losses and patience.

The best teacher in life is experience.

To all the millennial's out there seeking ‘meaningful work’, this is for you;

1. Recognise when you’re unhappy and do something about it. Don’t let it fester.
2. Get out of your comfort zone, put in the work, and test your ideas.
3. You don’t need permission to take risks, just the confidence to embrace failure.
4. Look forward to the lessons, and don’t make the same mistake twice.

Take responsibility for your own growth and your own happiness.

I’ll end this motivational poster of a Medium post with a shameless plug for my latest venture — the aforementioned chatbot agency (more on that story here). Bothello designs, develops, and analyses text and voice chatbot applications. We’ve been going since December and will be profitable by the end of the month.

I’m unbelievably excited for the future and look forward to the countless mistakes I’ll no doubt make along the way.

Support and follow our journey here: LinkedIn — Twitter — Facebook