I know we have a retirement thread and a what’s happening thread…but I was moved to start this by a comment from @wyld.at.hrt in the Man Utd thread.
He has moved from a successful career, taken a salary drop and negotiated with his wife to try something different. Follow a career pathway that he wants and enjoys.
Its a brave and inspiring move. I’m not sure I could have done it. A career in pensionable employment in health services was hard to walk from, though I would have preferred to be a writer or poet…neither of which would pay the bills. Obviously.
Anyway, post retirement I get to do things I want…but what freedom would we experience if we had the bravery or wildness to do something different.
Fair dues to @wyld.at.hrt …brave and happy.
Not as inspiring and brave as @wyld.at.hrt, but I’ve also ‘done somehting different’ and gone from a high paying stressful career where things were zero sum - ie. I win, you lose - that I ultimately came to hate to something where helping others is the core of my work. I’m very fortunate to be able to walk away from the money and make this change while my family and I are relatively young and its just such a privilege getting to spend a large chunk of my work day really help people through tough times.
Well I went down on this path in 2020. I was doing a good role for a MNC, earning good money and getting to travel all over the world. Then in 2020, COVID hit and I was let go. I was proud and thought I could continue living at the usual standards for a year without a job and take my time to look for a job. Ended I remained jobless for 2 years. My savings pretty much dried up.
But I thank God because this was probably the most important period of my life. For some reason, because we were on lockdown, I managed to lose 40kg of my weight and my doctor took me off my meds - 8 pills a day for diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol. I never managed to get back to a full time job. I took on freelance jobs and God has always blessed me with enough, in fact more than enough. Despite being in my late 40s, without a full time job in expensive Singapore, I never felt like I was in a dire situation.
5 years down the road, I did put on some weight, but still healthy thankfully to still be off medication. While my peers talked about the stocks, the next car to buy, I had to give up my car and live a simpler life. But I never regretted because my current life frees me to do things I probably wouldn’t do in the past. I only earn 25% of what I used to but I never felt richer than now.
Money is very important and necessary. But how much is enough? When we talk about resources, it’s always money but we forget that there are perhaps more important resources in our lives like time and our talents. And yes you can use those resources to make more money or perhaps you can use them for things that may not leave behind more inheritance but a legacy and memories of a life more fulfilled.
I took a redundancy opportunity about 15 years back now - switched from the corporate world to the education sector - have been much happier. Still working in IT but it makes a huge difference when your employer’s focus is on providing education and not shareholder value. Came with a decent reduction in salary, and associated sacrifices, but also ditched travel as part of my job which was important as had young kids at that time too. A better work life balance overall.
Is there some specific tech issue you think would be needed to know about for what you’re interested in? Or is it a general sense that the world is at a certain place with Tech competency that you havent kept up with?
Thinking of wanting to start an online shop for something in south wales acting as an extra service for local shops ranging from bargoed down to swansea etc ( keeping cardiff isolated for another venture kind of thing if this goes well)
But its the nonsense of figuring how to register the company name on the uk gov website ( nigtmare to navigate ) then the easy part sounds like setting up the business account, but then its the web design and linking the site for stock orders being live and getting the understanding of how something like shopify payments work ( idea is something like 20%goes to me , 80% to thr other business etc…itll be 24 hr service in theory that t he market can sell stock that in reality is just sat there for days/weeks …but the idea i have would make their product available out of hours etc, they get notified etc etc
Also thanks limie for the response, it really is something i want to pursue, but not 100 % confident that i can if that makes sense because the way its all set up makes a simple idea sound more intricate that it needs to be .
I’ve never looked into this specifically, but so many people who are successful started from scratch so there have to be good resources out there walking people through how to do this stuff. LinkedIn learning is normally a pretty good place to start. Some of the courses require subscriptions, but there is a LOT of good content there for free (or at least there used to be). You could do a couple of ecommerce ones to start and use that to figure out what you have questions over and need to dive deeper into.
If you pair that up with using the various LLMs (claude, chatGPT, Copilot) to guide you through areas you’re still not sure with you should be able to make a good amount of headway. These things get a lot of grief, but they are incredible resources for solving this sort of “I dont know where to start” problem. Just pick one and type out exactly what your idea is and ask it to lay out an implementation plan of everything a complete novice would have to consider to get it up and running and it’ll give you a pretty decent roadmap and even hold your hand as you work your way through it
Yeah run through a few ideas with gemini, and all in all its been quite good, its just the human element of the unknown etc…ideally its something if i knew 100% of how to do this sort of thing , it would be possible to get it up and running in a few days /weeks…
But because of self doubt, its the fear of the unknown etc…so this is causing some delay from me wanting to just tell my TL where to stick the job🤣
How much time is it going to need once set up? Is it something you can have running alongside your current job and perhaps reduce hours before stepping away completely?
According to gemini, its something that could take a few hours a week.
As it stands its just something i want to start ( whilst learning more from the field , and any money would sit in an account accumulating until enough is made for something to be done in cardiff, it will help with local community development in its own fashion, but its also something that could help local business in the various boroughs of south wales .
I think the thing that is going to really allow you to start making progress is getting comfortable with the concept of not knowing what you’re doing and having to learn as you go. Its not reasonable to think you’ll have all the answers you need before you start and you’re going to make a ton of mistakes along the way. That’s just part of the path of building something like this.
Been playing around with some various AI software and have launched my first start up Billbriar. Designed to automate invoice follow up emails and trying to get support to vote for it
