I feel kind of conflicted writing this, because 2020 was a horror of a year for most people around the world. Instead, for me, and my family, it was somewhat of a start of new beginnings and some huge wins.
I feel that I have finally stepped out of a decade long black tunnel, and I can finally see the light ahead. You see, back in 2009, I lost my dad, and my wife lost her mum. For us, each losing the parent that we were closest to really took the wind out of our sails, and we both felt that we had lost purpose and a solid goal in life.
I lost interest in my old consulting business, and ended up selling it back in 2015 so that I could focus on launching a brand new startup that meant I could write software that I wanted to write. My wife felt ‘blocked’ in her art, and ended up taking on multiple part time jobs to ensure a steady income for the family while I rebuilt my career (what a crazy thing to do when you turn 50, huh?).
It basically meant a decade of ‘grind’ and living on our savings and on the good will and charity of others. I am forever grateful to family members and close friends who supported us unquestioningly during those difficult days.
But I will be honest and say that because it went on so long, there were days where I despaired that we would never see the light at the end of the tunnel, and that I was just throwing energy into something that wouldn’t last or pan out the way I expected.
People came and went into our lives during that time. Some left us in a better position, but some also left us in a far worse position. After a former co-founder lost interest in my startup and abruptly left in 2018, I ended up in hospital with a stress related heart condition, and I feared that this would mean I could not bounce back again.
But being in these depths was also what forged my inner strength, and bounce back I did. I found a new co-founder and together we built the business up to a far higher level than I ever thought possible. 2020 was the first full calendar year we worked together, and we managed to get to well over a thousand paying customers and we currently manage tens of thousands of employees on our HR SaaS platform.
In some ways, the COVID scare that shut down most of the world was a boon for us, as more people wanted an HR system to manage their suddenly remote or ‘work from home’ teams. For the first time in a long while, I felt that were in the right place at the right time. Well, more accurately, the right place at the wrong time.
I don’t like the idea that we are benefiting from something that is causing so much misery, but I re-frame that as being that we are providing a valuable service to people that want to survive the tough times we are in. In fact, rather than capitalising on this by raising our prices as many mentors have suggested, we instead slashed our prices by half to make it easier for struggling businesses to jump aboard.
My wife managed to go back to just the one part time job that she loves, and she has more time for her art and other creative passions. Our oldest son, who had moved down to Melbourne to pursue his music career also moved back home while the entertainment industry rebuilds itself, so it has been good to have the family back together again.
This week was a milestone, as it marked the first full year of me earning a steady salary from my startup. It was so good not to have to watch our pile of savings diminishing away, and to be able to pay bills using the income earned from something that just started out as an idea in my head all those years ago.
Life is good. 2020 was good, and 2021 will be better.
