I’m not one for anniversaries but it’s been a little over a year since I quit my day job. I left that job to focus my effort full time on my Local search engine optimization (SEO) business. This has proved to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

During the last year my life has improved in so many areas. I was recently out having a few beers with Aidan Henry, who like me started off doing local SEO in Victoria and now owns Brink Events, and we talked a lot about working for ourselves and the freedom of owning a business.

Our meet-up and chat sparked me to write this post as a reminder. It’s a reminder to myself that I never want to return the corporate world. So if things get bad or I’m feeling down, I want to be able to read this post and remind myself to grind through. It’s a reminder to do whatever it takes because working for myself and having full control over my life is the so important to my health and well being.

The Journey

This journey of freedom started for me back in 2008. At that time friend who I met through DJ’ing and I started talking about life and what we wanted to do. It turned out a lot of the things involved soaking up as many cultures as we could and enjoying things like golf, surfing and adventures. We wanted to travel for extended periods of time and to do it now, not when we were retired and had plenty of free time.

The corporate world wouldn’t allow this dream life though. Two weeks of holidays is all you get until you work five whole years for a company then they give you an extra week. But no one in their right mind would take all three weeks at once and work the remaining 49. It was evident we’d have to work for ourselves to make this dream life happen.

Something else made me want to achieve this dream life now.

I had lost my brother and father a few years prior and that hit me hard. It made think about life. I had always imagined myself growing older and my family always being there. All of the sudden the loss of my brother and father made me realize that there are no guarantees in life.

There is no guarantee I’ll live to my retirement. Now you might be thinking this is a negative thought process. To me, it’s more of a seize the moment thought process.

Too many people say to themselves “I’ve always wanted to do that but I don’t….”. You can finish that sentence with a load of excuses. Some justified. Some not.

What I am getting at is these people are letting life and all the amazing things they want to experience pass them by. I don’t want to be one of them.

I didn’t want to be one of them when I started this journey. But I had no idea how to make this happen. I first started a website called Golf Instruction Guy. My idea was to make money off the site through paid video tips and online lessons.

It failed.

I took a job on commission with a member from the golf course I worked out. I was to create and sell golf holiday packages. This was going to be the best job every as I would go on the trips and give instruction.

None of the trips sold and I made no money. I still thought we could market the packages through the internet but the guy I worked with wasn’t on board.

So I started Peerless Golf. My strategy was to blog about golf tips like I did on Golf Instruction Guy and build awareness around the my golf trips. It didn’t work out well as the people searching for golf tips online didn’t have the cash to go on expensive golf holidays.

Peerless Golf taught me a lot about SEO however as I relied solely on that for traffic. It didn’t matter though as I still failed and needed a job to make my dream life come true.

Right In Front Of My Nose

It was late 2011 and I dabbled with a few ideas for affiliate marketing websites. But I was wasting my time and making no money. This job that was going to launch my dream life and give me personal freedom was right in front of my nose. I just couldn’t smell it.

My friend who I had the life talk about with back in 2008 pointed out the obvious. I know a lot about SEO. I know a lot of business owners. I am very likeable.

With those three things he told me to start selling SEO to local small business owners. It made total sense as I had learnt so much about SEO over the years.

So I started Meaningful Marketing in April 2012. But I was reluctant to talk about SEO or sell SEO services. Why?

I had just read one of the best marketing books ever called The Next Evolution Of Marketing. It opened my eyes to a world of marketing that connected more to humans. I wanted to and still do want to build and agency that focuses on that principal.

But as a another friend suggested, companies have to evolve. She said that I should start with SEO and build towards being this agency. And so I did and in April of 2013 I focused Meaningful Marketing’s content and keywords towards Victoria and SEO. Within three months my site was ranking at the top and I had 6 clients by November.

The clients continued to come and in January of last year, I said enough to my full time job.

So here I am. One year later looking back and how much I’ve enjoyed getting up whenever I want, working whenever I want, from wherever I want and being able to go where ever I want.

My plan is to head down to Buenos Aires in 6 weeks for a month or two. I want to enjoy warm weather, meat, wine and to see many of my favourite DJ’s while I am there.

I wouldn’t be afford that opportunity if it wasn’t for the all the serious of events that I’ve talked about in this post. And I want this all to serve as a reminder that I don’t want this freedom to end.