How I Earned One Million Dollars doing

freelancing and transformed from ordinary to

extraordinary

In my younger years, I was fascinated by people who lived an extraordinary life. I

had the desire to do the same thing but being an average student in my academic

years; I plodded along day to and just kind of existed until I learnt that for going

from ordinary to extraordinary, I had to be a little extra.

Being an ordinary average guy, I had the basic understanding of math. When my

matric papers were about to held in 1992, the world was going crazy for the

cricket world cup. Being a die-hard fan of cricket,

“ I made a strategic decision of following the live cricket matches what so

ever happens because after all a cricket world cup takes place after every

four years. On the other hand, I had the liberty to reappear for my matric

exams next year. “

Now, this strategic decision actually backfired. Because of which I attained less

than 50% marks in my matric exams and needless to say my parents were not

impressed a bit. Tossing my dreams into a too-hard basket, the following year my

father bought commodore 64 from the USA and within days of its usage, I became

pretty good at it.

I created a small code which could copy the game from the external cassette drive

all the way to the cassette 64’s internal hard disk. That software actually went

pretty wild in the market that year. That was the time I realized my love for

computers but the problem was that I belonged to an era where they taught

English starting from the primary in government schools so getting a regular

computer education in schools was not a choice. Well the years went pass by so I

kept crumbling from one class to another and at times finding it very hard to clear

my final exams. But somehow I was lucky enough to snail forward at a very low

pace.

“ In 1997, I started doing my MBA. I still do not know how I got there. ”

One day I went to a local bookstore with my friend and I saw a magazine with a

picture of Bill Gates on the cover. I did not know who Bill Gates was so my friend

told me that he is the next big sensation and he is the richest man on the earth. So

I grabbed a copy of the magazine and went home. While going through his story

later in the evening the first thing that impressed me naturally was that he was a

college dropout. While going through his story I learnt that he created an

operating system which had a graphical interface to it. This was something which

was unheard of.

I also came to know about his plans of innovating computers and making it a

necessity in everyone’s life. So that seemed exciting as coming from a computer

background that encouraged me to really learn more about computers and learn

the advancing technologies. In 1997, internet was in its very new days in Pakistan

and while searching for the similar stories you know, I stumbled across the story of

Steve Jobs. Now before you laugh, he was another college dropout and his story

was far more impressive than that of Bill Gates. It was not just because he re-

acquired the company but he was once forced to quit for one reason or another

but he also took his company Apple to the success where he took Microsoft in a

heads on operating system competition. That inner-soul searching revealed where

my career was heading to so I wanted to move forward with computers. But I had

to find out the ways to monetize my passion with computers so while searching in

Yahoo. If you think why I didn’t search on Google, Google was not invented before

12th April 1998 so I came to know the best way to earn online was by learning web

design and development. Then you can offer those services in the freelance

marketplace.

The basic idea of freelancing is when a person works on a contract basis for a

variety of companies as opposed to working as an employee of a single company.

“Being self-employed, a freelancer is given the freedom to pick and choose

the projects and even the companies they would like to be associated with. “

This was the kind of job that seemed best for a lazy individual like me. It seems

pretty exciting to be responsible for getting the projects on time and only being

answerable to the person who has hired for one particular job. So after doing my

MBA I worked with an organization for almost a year but I could not cope with the

stiff neck environment. This compelled me to resign from my job. I went back to

my father and told him about another strategic decision. This time my wedding

was just after six months precisely and at that time I had nothing to do.

“ I convinced my father that I wanted to pursue my career as a freelancer

because web design and web development was in its early days and there is

no saturation in this business. “

I had a determination to prove a point where someone who always have been an

ordinary and below average student all his life. I had to prove how I succeed in life

once I find my true passion for work.

After a lot of negotiation with my father, we agreed on the point that I will go out

of my house and will rent out a small office because his whole concept was life

start outside the comfort of your house. For this purpose, I acquired a small office

space on the first floor of a very noisy place known as Bakramandi. On the ground

floor, it was occupied by whom I called my comrades you know the painters with

the similar tools for design and painting. I worked hard because I had no choice of

course. With my determination to stay resilient on my stance and to prove the

people around me that there is a life inside computers, I had to make a reasonable

living out of it my passion.

There was no doubt few low points and whenever I was down I used to see this

motivational talk of Rocky Balboa. It was a movie in which he gives a motivational

speech to his son. It was something like this.

So that’s how I learned and stayed motivated for switching from ordinary to

extraordinary.

“ That movie taught me that life is organic, it isn’t linear. “

You can craft the ways the direction you want your life to be led to. That’s what I

did; I took a decision and stood firm on my stance because I wanted to prove a

point. So within four months I earned a reasonable four thousand dollars and

made my father proud for the first time in my life. It was pretty late in my career

and I know I am guilty of that. So everything went according to the plan, I got

married and kept working hard. I used to sleep under my desk to meet the

deadlines of the clients. My work plate grew but so did my waistline so I had to

move to a much bigger place which is Lalazar an army colony. I hired ten people to

work for me. There were few interns, few full-time employees.

Looking back few years, I did not know where I was headed to but that one

magazine; one motivational talk really changed my life. I kept working hard to the

point where I became the first Pakistani who ranked in top ten in one of the

largest freelance marketplace called Guru.com. I am not much pleased with it

because that’s not how I wanted to be known but I am also the first Pakistani

freelancer who has earned over one million U.S. dollars in sales in seven years

precisely on Guru.com.

As a reward of my services I was given an exclusive testimonial on their homepage

a space allotted for three Americans. That’s where I learned that if we are to give

our kids a foundation to live their dreams, an opportunity worthy of their premise

then we got to give them horizons to explore the choices of their selection. In an

attempt to pay back to my community, to Pakistan I have opened an initiative

called BeingGuru. Now being guru is a social video learning platform where we

teach with free videos. We started getting registrations in a very short time from

all over Pakistan.

The registrations were from Daddu in Sindh and Zhob in Balochistan, Taxila and

even from North Waziristan. In all such areas there are people who have started to

learn how to do freelancing. All the videos that are available are for free because

what I believe that there is no shortage of talent in Pakistan but there is problem

that there is no one to guide them and whatever means are available are out of

their reach. The IT minister of Pakistan Anusha Rehman while giving speech in

2015 revealed that IT sector has become one of the fastest growing sectors in

Pakistan. A lot of contribution has been done from the freelancers all over

Pakistan. So in order to nurture that talent we decided to come up with an

initiative where we are teaching kids doing free videos. One of the success stories

is the lady from Swat who is physically disabled. She was disowned by her parents

because of her love marriage and unfortunately divorced. She saw my story on the

internet and contacted me on Being Guru.

I spent a lot of time on Skype and through few sessions I taught her about how to

get started about freelancing. She was pretty good in writing and in a couple of

months she signed up on freelance marketplace and started earning money. Later

she contacted me and told me that she had won a contract with an airline and a

manufacturing company in Arizona. She plans to move to Islamabad because she

wants to set up an office for hiring more content writers to work for her. Her kids

are back in school and this is how an ordinary life switched to extraordinary.

Another success story is of a truck art designer whose father passed away a few

years back. He being the eldest of the three kids sent me a message. It was where

he requested me to teach him freelancing as he knew I had done lots of videos. He

wanted me to give him my personal time or he does not find any other purpose to

live in life because of the responsibilities that fell on his shoulders after the death

of his father. Naturally, I feared that the boy might commit suicide; I started giving

him my personal time on Skype. But the challenge was that this guy did not know

how to use a computer. So I and my team spent a lot of time teaching him how to

use the computer and how to use Photoshop so that he can create artwork on his

own. That guy informed that he earned $100 for doing it over the past two

months. So it was another extraordinary life switch.

It is then I understood that if we want to give our children a foundation then we

have to provide them with a baseline. The best part is that even if you are a below

average student, don’t think you are a failure.

“ There are millions of ways to become successful in your life. You only have

to find the love in the work you do and you will be successful in it

naturally.“

When you taste that success, do it with a taste of humility and an ability to heal a

device which always held back your progress. That’s how an ordinary life gets

switched to extraordinary. The lesson here is that an extraordinary life is the one

that you design, it is a life that you want to live, and it is exciting and invigorating

as you want it to be. You are in charge of your life so you should be paid for

something that makes you genuinely happy.

“ To me, the best definition of an extraordinary life is just the happy life.”

According to the EU commissioner of digital economy Mariya Gabriel, By 2020,

90% of jobs in Europe will require digital skills.

Are You Ready To Get Started & Make a Place For Yourself in Digital Space?