I saw him on TikTok first. An Albanian guy, making money, hanging around influencers, doing something I couldn’t quite figure out. So I researched. I joined his telegram group.
Then his community launched small, maybe a hundred members, but half of them were Albanian like me, and something about that space felt different.
For the first three weeks I had no idea why I was even there. But then people started sharing their stories, and I realized: nobody was judging me here.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t being told what I was doing was nothing or nonsense. I was finding myself.
By week three, everyone was doing something. Real estate. Personal branding. Crypto. I had nothing. So he gave me one piece of advice: document your journey.
I didn’t know what I’d document. I had no skills. No plan. Just a rough ideabuild a personal brand, share the process.
So I made a video on YouTube. Seven minutes of me saying: hey, I’m Firdeus, I’m building a personal brand, and I’m going to share everything I learn, every failure, every win.
Forty-five views. One like. One fire emoji comment.
But in that community? People cheered. For the first time, I had confidence even though I’d achieved nothing. So I made more videos. LinkedIn. Threads. TikTok. All the platforms.
Months in, I realized something was wrong. I was busy as hell, but I wasn’t learning anything. I wasn’t moving forward.
I was just talking, just sharing. The thought overwhelmed at me: where’s the value? What are people actually going to do with this?
So I pivoted. Created motivational content channels. Got four hundred followers on one, three hundred on another.
Then all my videos got restricted. Deleted both. Started on Instagram talking about confidence and fear of judgment. Three months. A few views. Nothing.
One day, a CEO from the community a real estate guy I’d been asking for advice told me straight: You’re struggling.
There’s no real skill behind this. You’re just talking. You need to learn actual skills.
That night, I deleted every social media.
And I actually meant it.
I found a creator on Substack whose content I related to. Invested in three of his courses. One on building AI tools. One on running. One on growth. I stopped performing and started building.
I completed my first AI tool. Learned writing frameworks that actually work. S
And here’s what I learned in one year of this mess: it’s going to be hard. Overwhelming. Stressful.
You’re going to think about quitting every single day. You’re going to feel like everything you do disappears into the void. You’re going to be frustrated, lost, asking yourself what the hell you’re doing.
But none of that matters if you don’t have a reason.
For me, it started with money. But as I dug deeper, I realized the journey itself had become the reason. The building. The learning. The process. Money’s still part of it, but it’s not the engine anymore.
Some days I want to break my laptop and quit everything. And then the next day, I’m glad I didn’t. And the day after that, I’m back in it.
That’s what kept me going when I had zero results, zero followers, zero validation.
Not the promise of success.
Not the hope of getting rich quick. Just the stubborn knowledge that this the work, the building, the becoming was worth doing, even if nobody was watching.
So if you’re stuck where I was, asking yourself why you’re even trying: what’s your reason?
Not the easy answer. The real one. Because that’s what’s going to keep you up through every frustrating day when nothing makes sense.
That reason is everything.
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