Everywhere I look, I see success stories, happy photos, amazing travels, but almost nothing about the struggles of life and entrepreneurship. Let’s start this post on the right foot by getting something straight: 90% of things you see on social media do not correspond to reality. Now that we got that out of the way, let me share all my life story full of failures.
Since a very early age, I felt like a misfit, a fish out of water, the traditional education system did not feel right for me. The traditional path - get good grades, get a degree, and get a good job - never resonated with me.
I always struggled to talk about it with my parents or friends, as they were hard-programmed to that traditional setup. My plan was always to prove to them all that there was another way. I worked in silence and built multiple unsuccessful businesses, from Amazon FBA to dropshipping, affiliate marketing, blogs, social media agencies, and many more. I also fell for some scams along the way, as I wanted to make money so badly and quickly to get out of my life.
Years passed by, and I kept failing, mostly because I would not stick with one thing for too long. I would jump to the next shiny thing and quit whatever I was doing. After one month and seeing no results, I would just say, “This does not work…”
Looking back, I can see now, how naive and stupid I was. Building something and expecting to make money after one month is such an unrealistic belief.
I struggled a lot during college. I was taking a degree to please everyone else but me. I felt so lost and in such a dark place, too afraid to talk, but also when i found the courage to talk, it seemed no one would care, and I would just get, “You have to finish a degree to get a good job. No other way around it.”
One summer, my girlfriend (now wife) and I decided to do a summer trip to Southeast Asia. We were both about to turn 24 at the time, and we worked part-time jobs that year, to save enough money to do this trip. During our trip through Thailand and Cambodia, we tried to become travel influencers without much success. Again, here I was expecting to see results straight away. We did manage to get some amazing free stays by sending thousands of cold emails to hotels (it is definitely a numbers game). Traveling from place to place, connecting with many amazing people, sharing ideas and thoughts, trying new food, we felt we could definitely live this life.
One night in a tiny island in Cambodia, we were having a few drinks, playing beer pong, and sharing some laughs when we met a couple, she was French, and he was German. They were the owners of the hostel we were staying in. We sat down and talked for hours. They told us that they were planning to go to Australia on a working holiday visa to work and make money. She said the hostel business was not easy, and it was time for a change.
That same night, we went to bed, and Rita, my wife, turned to me and said, “I know how frustrated and depressed you have been these last years. What if we would go to Australia? It is a country that we always wanted to visit.” I am and always have been very rational, but that night, when she said that, I felt relieved. I finally could breathe again. That same night, we booked two tickets to Sydney. A few days later, we were landing in Sydney with just a backpack and $500 in our pocket.
I knew this was a survival situation, and I had to make it work. My wife did not speak any English, so her finding a job would be very difficult. Everything was on my shoulders.
That moment, knowing we would not have money to eat in a few days, I lost all my fears and discovered something inside me that I never felt before: a beast that would do whatever it takes to survive. I started knocking on construction sites asking for a job as a laborer. After three days, I got a call, and the next day, I was working. I took whatever job I could to be able to provide for and protect my wife.
The first year was a struggle, always fighting for the next job. Something would happen, and all the money we had saved up would be gone. I worked 12, sometimes 14-hour days, six days a week, not in an office, but doing hard physical work. I would spend hours jackhammering 2mm out of a concrete floor, inside a building where you could barely see or breathe because of all the dust.
Sometimes I would arrive home, take a shower, and just lay in bed without any energy to do anything else. My wife had to feed me like a baby, or I would not eat.
Hard times make strong men.
In the second year, things started to improve. My wife got a job, money was coming in, we had made some friends, and were living in a nice house with another Portuguese couple. Life was finally good.The money allowed us to build a life in Australia. We felt Sydney was home.
But as you know, life ain't easy, and all good things tend to end. A visit to the doctor left me shaking and scared for my life. “You need to be seen by a specialist, as this might be cancer.”, he said. There I was, 26 years old, full of dreams, potentially facing the most deadly disease. The next day, I went to the recommended doctor to do a biopsy of the tumor I had on my right parotid gland. For the next three days and nights I barely ate or slept, waiting for the results. On the fourth day, I got the news. The tumor was benign. Thank God! I felt like I had another chance at life. I cried like a baby. What a relief. Not everything was good news. I still had to remove the tumor. This was supposedly a long and complex surgery that involved quite some risks.
I decided I wanted to do the surgery back home, in Portugal, with a great doctor advised by family and friends. I also wanted to be close to my family if something would happen.
On the 3rd of March 2020, we flew back to Portugal, supposedly for one month, in order to go through surgery and have some time to recover from it before we flew back.
I had the surgery on the 10th and remember waking the next day in the hospital room and seeing all the news about COVID. Everything was shutting down. Flights cancelled. People panicking and dying.
Our return flight was re-scheduled multiple times until it was cancelled. Australia had decided to close its borders for two years. We could not return back to our lives in Australia. We had lost everything we worked so hard to work for.
Again, I had to reinvent myself. All my fears came back. I was again surrounded by the same people and the same environment I had escaped from three years before. And I had no job, no degree, nothing. But I had to make it work. I found OutSystems, a low-code platform, and started learning and studying. For three months, that was the only thing I did. I started applying, and after two weeks, I had landed a job as a low-code developer.
When I left Australia, I was making around $2000-2500 AUD per week, my salary for this job was 900 euros per month. You can imagine how I felt, but I knew I had to start somewhere, somehow.
I worked my ass off, and after COVID ended, I started applying for jobs in Australia to get a sponsor visa, as our visas, because of COVID, had expired. I was getting rejected left and right, and it seemed that our chances to go back to Australia were very low. I decided to open my options and try to find work in other countries all over the world where I would get a better salary. All I knew was that I did not want to stay in Portugal, in that same environment I hated, and earning a shitty salary. After two years, I got an offer for a better job in Berlin, Germany. Three years after our lives completely changed because of COVID, we were again moving to another country, now as a married couple.
These last three years proved to me that I could do whatever I set my mind to, as long as I put in the work consistently, I would get anywhere I desired.
We have now been in Berlin for two years, I have been promoted once, making more money than what I was earning when we left Australia. We recently had our first child, a baby girl, and my life just gained a new meaning.
I now started a new journey trying to become an Indie Hacker, building small projects that solve pain problems. My goal is to keep doing this until i succeed and make enough monthly income that allows me to quit my 9-5 and work on these projects full time. Freedom is the final goal.
If you got to this point, i want to thank you for taking the time to read my life story, and I hope you can take something from it. Being consistent and progressing every day will compound and succeeding is just the inevitable consequence of doing that.
You can subscribe to my newsletter and follow me on X (@Lou_Matalonga) if you want to keep following my journey.
Check my first small project babyanalytics.app .