Time-travel back to 2022. The first idea of self-employment came to me through the Instagram algorithm. I quickly landed in the »make quick money online« category of videos. Still, it triggered something in me: build something that carries my name (recognisable or not, doesn't matter). And it would be a long road from there to where I am today.
I thought about the form, and the smallest possible upfront effort, I could start with. That's how I decided to open an Etsy shop for digital products. As the year rolled over into 2023, I registered my part-time self-employment and started right away in January: set up the shop, design digital invitation cards, build templates. In the end I had 88 templates ready, the shop was online, I even had my first sale, 3 euros in my account. And then it was supposed to be all about marketing.
When I'd set up Pinterest, started the Instagram account and was thinking about running ads, I realised: »Hey, somehow this isn't the right thing for me.« It wasn't a product I truly stood behind, it had grown more out of the »make quick money online« motivation. So after a few months I closed the shop again. Learned a lot, earned almost nothing.
Then it took a while longer until I knew how to move forward. By the end of 2023 the decision to travel the world was set, and then the idea came: hey, you can combine these. I'll document my trip on social media, my podcast and travel blog, and maybe gain a foothold as a content creator. At the start I was very fixated on it, checking how the posts performed, and when the growth wasn't what I'd imagined, I quickly lost the joy of it. Then I went back to doing it much more for myself, to let friends and family take part, and was happy about everyone who dropped by and followed.
Which brings us to January 2025: I was back on Koh Chang in Thailand for three weeks, four months into Southeast Asia. The travel budget was still full, but Japan was planned for April, Canada for May and June, that would get expensive. And I wanted to work on the road to fund the rest of the trip. So I tried to offer my services online for podcast editing and social media, set up LinkedIn, promoted a lot there, and after 30-plus applications got nothing but rejections. Since it no longer fit my travel pace, I let it slide again for the time being.
Which brings us to 2026. After doing work and travel in Australia since August 2025 and refilling the travel budget there, the thought came back: hey, why not take another run at self-employment and find a client online I can look after long-term. And as luck would have it, through happy circumstances I found my first long-term client at the end of January, whose podcast I've been handling ever since, editing and everything around it. More editing jobs came in through platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. From there I discovered the world of AI tools, coding agents and automations, went through a steep learning curve over the last months, and now offer that knowledge as a freelancer too, after integrating my areas of life into one central tool that takes over, automates and visualises many processes.
Looking back, it was a bumpy road into self-employment. Setbacks, doubts and long-absent »success« (however you want to define it). Even now I know I'm still relatively at the beginning, not in terms of my skills, but of the dimensions you can operate in and where you can leverage your abilities. Luckily I'm long past the thought of »making quick, big money«. What stayed is the approach: build something solid, something I want to put my name to. In every client project and every collaboration. As a quality standard: deliver 120 % on every project.
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