Meet The man behind the screen
Howdy there! Jordan Alexo here! I am a Portuguese online entrepreneur currently living in the sunny and beautiful city of Lisbon.
Wow… and how life has changed! Now I can wake up knowing I did money while I slept, grab a cup of coffee, fire up my computer and work from the comfort of my home. This may sound like heaven on earth for many people out there; but I didn’t get here one day to another and without paying its costs.
A Short Story about my dream
A few years ago I graduated from college in, “arts culinary”. My biggest dream was to one day become a top chef. I always had grand dreams. Although, this one didn’t last long. I guess I enjoyed more the idea of being a chef rather than all the sacrifices involved.
Once I entered into the working force, I soon realized this wasn’t the life I envisioned. Spending countless hours working inside a blazing hot steam room (aka kitchen), constantly over stressed and severely under paid. I mean you can take shit when you are well paid. On contrary, I could barely pay a room. My possessions were an old car and laptop falling apart. Some months I could save a miserable $60 because most of the time I ate freely inside of the kitchen.
But something didn’t feel right! Whenever I closed my eyes I couldn’t see myself as a successful top chef like Gordon Ramsay no, no! Instead, I saw myself wearing a stylish black suit, leaving my parked sports car beside a beautiful blonde girl. Therefore, something wasn’t right. The vision I had for myself wasn’t aligned with the path I was following.
Still I worked as a kitchen chef for a few years until one Christmas night. My head chef demanded me and other coworkers to work during the holidays. Nobody complained loudly but everyone hated the idea. Just imagine a bunch of sad and angry chefs grumbling over a steak not being well tempered.
During my shift, I had this sudden agonizing realization. I thought to myself, “Why them and why not me?”
- Why am I the one working my ass off to proportionate a great evening to my guests, while they get to enjoy their time with their love ones?
- Why sacrifice my life just to have a rented room and old car?
It may sound like a selfish thought. But sometimes you got be selfish in order to change your life. I already knew if I continued down this road then this road would lead to more of the same places. It may be places better paid but still they are the same places nonetheless. Indeed a head chef earns a good living but also works more than 80 hours per week. Furthermore, most of them are divorced or single, since it’s hard to maintain a relationship when you don’t have time for one. Others eventually become addicted to drugs or alcohol as a way to escape their daily grind.
Yeah, that’s the reality of being a kitchen chef! It has nothing to do with the glorified kitchen soap opera often watched in TV. After my realization, I still worked a few more months as a kitchen chef. One day my hunger to make more money led me to search online, “how to make money” then one thing led to another. Soon after I quit my job and started my first online business.
Road Into The Online World
I started my online journey by building small niche websites reviewing affiliate products. Usually, these websites had about 10 to 15 pages of poorly written content. I still managed to make a few sporadic sales but not enough to sustain myself. So in the meanwhile, I had move back into my parents house. At least, it wasn’t into their basement since they don’t have one.
I did this for a year or two but it didn’t feel right. Instead, it felt sleazy and not really a business. Back in 2013, I decided to build a YouTube channel called, “Prositetutorials”. Initially, my intention was to provide tutorials related to WordPress. I managed to build my channel until I was earning the minimal wage in my country mostly through Adsense. But I wasn’t satisfied!
In fact, I quickly became bored of talking about WordPress and tired of people leaving comments saying, “Oh… I thought I read Prostitute Tutorials!”. Furthermore, I broke up with my ex girlfriend and I felt it was time to change my direction.
I searched for other ways to make money online until I stumbled upon a blog talking about, “Kindle Publishing”. I found the idea interesting and decided to give it a try.
If you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about well this is a book publishing business. See Amazon has a program called, “Kindle Direct Publishing“. By enrolling into their program, you can published books inside of their platform. This is great! Because you don’t need to worry about building a website and getting traffic. Instead, you leverage their platform and their millions of customers to sell your books.
I invested the few money I had into a good Kindle publishing course. After about 7 months of self-publishing I was doing more money with my business than I ever did in my entire life. I was doing more than $6K per month. Besides, my business was consistently making money month after money nearly in auto pilot. I was amazed by the amount of money I was doing online! As you may imagine, it completely changed my life.
Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight
Although, my greatest enemy was myself. I soon became complacent and lazy. I stopped doing the things that had made me successful. I knew in the back of my head some day shit would hit the fan but I stubbornly refused to entertain those thoughts.
… And then… boom! Covid 19 intake.
Gosh! I can be creative but never in a million of years I thought a virus would destroy the world’s economy. Change the lives of billions of people overnight. Everyone took a hit, including myself… besides Jeff Bezos and a few other individuals. However, someone once told me, “this too shall pass”. If you firmly believe it and do your best, then this too shall pass.
So I’m back in action and ready to reach my new goal of becoming the best online entrepreneur in Portugal and to inspire others to live a more productive and happier lifestyle. My goals aren’t small nor easy to accomplish but as they say:
“When you shoot a bow and arrow, you aim at the clouds not because you expect to hit them, but so that you may reach the distant target on the ground.” – Sun Tzu
