The Cost of Choosing a Different Path

In my previous post, I talked about how I ended up becoming interested in entrepreneurship, even though no one in my family or my surroundings had ever been an example that inspired me in that direction.

It all sounds fun when I say that my first boss was the person who inspired me to become an entrepreneur. It makes for a nice story.

But let me walk you through what it's actually like to dream of becoming an entrepreneur while growing up in an environment where people genuinely believe that every boss is an oppressor and an enemy. More importantly, I want to show you what that kind of environment does to someone's personality and mental health.

Let's go back to 2016, after that story with my boss happened and I discovered entrepreneurship.

I didn't immediately change my plans.

I spent 3 more years working as an employee. The difference was that during those 3 years, I became obsessed with learning. I read books, spent a good amount of money on courses, bootcamps, and programs. I got scammed more times than I'd like to admit by fake gurus, but I considered it part of the learning process.

At the same time, my career kept progressing. I slowly moved into executive roles, became an art director, and eventually started managing creative departments. Looking back, that experience helped a lot because leadership is a huge part of entrepreneurship.

By the end of 2018, while working at the agency, I started noticing something that kept bothering me.

I was leading large projects, carrying a lot of responsibility, yet I wasn't getting paid well at all. I saw people doing the same work as me, sometimes even less, earning far more simply because they owned the company.

Little by little, that frustration kept growing.

The idea of leaving the comfort of a monthly paycheck and becoming an entrepreneur became stronger every day until 2019 finally arrived.

That was when everything reached its breaking point.

Especially after my friend, who also happened to own the agency I worked for, refused to pay me for a project that I personally handled from the very first idea all the way to delivering it to the client. Ironically, that same client wanted me to leave the agency and work directly with them, but that's a story for another day.

At the beginning of 2019, I made the decision to quit.

The funny part is that I had absolutely no idea what entrepreneurship actually looked like. I had no business plan, no roadmap, no strategy, nothing.

I simply jumped.

Whatever happened next, I'd deal with it.

Although quitting wasn't only about entrepreneurship.

The amount of stress I had accumulated during that period was unbelievable.

Most of agency projects required constant travel. I was working nonstop without giving myself any real rest. Some days I would spend an entire day without eating. I was surviving on very little sleep, way too much coffee, and despite all that effort, I still wasn't getting paid fairly.

At the time, I had no idea what was happening to me psychologically.

By the beginning of 2019, I ended up taking about 2 months completely off. No work. Nothing. I just wanted to recover from everything that had happened.

I only learned much later that what I had experienced wasn't normal exhaustion or something temporary. It actually required serious treatment instead of simply taking a break.

After those two months, I decided to begin my entrepreneurial journey.

Not by building a startup, launching a product, or hiring a team.

Just as an independent creative.

I wanted to take projects here and there and learn every step of the process before ever reaching the stage where I would need to build teams or scale a business.

Keep in mind, I was only 24 years old.

Still young. Still naive. Still lacking real life experience.

As soon as I started working independently, I ran into a reality I never expected.

The society I grew up in, as I mentioned in a previous post, simply didn't understand what an independent professional or an entrepreneur was.

Those models didn't exist in their minds.

Imagine someone with a good job, a decent salary, someone who looked like they were on track to achieve the biggest Moroccan dream of buying a house and getting married at 24. Someone parents would proudly use as an example for their children.

Then suddenly...

That same person becomes someone who wakes up whenever they want, sleeps whenever they want, doesn't go to work anymore, and spends most of the day sitting at home in front of a computer doing... who knows what.

At first, people assumed I was just taking a short break before finding another job.

But as the months passed, from their perspective, I was still doing absolutely nothing.

The gossip kept growing.

I started hearing people say, "Poor guy. He was doing so well. Allah Ihdih."

I noticed the way people looked at me changing.

The way they treated me changed too.

Some even started spreading stories that I was suffering from depression.

Others invented completely random stories that, to this day, I have no idea where they came from.

Meanwhile, I was simply an introvert sitting at home, working on small projects, trying to experience my first months as an independent entrepreneur in the making.

Despite all of that, I tried not to let it affect me.

I had a clear vision.

A clear goal.

I genuinely didn't care who talked or what they said.

Until all that pressure eventually reached my parents.

People kept asking them why their son had stopped working.

That was when my parents also started putting pressure on me to go back and become that successful person everyone recognized. The guy who wakes up early, goes to work every morning, comes home exhausted at night, eats, sleeps, and repeats the same routine every single day.

That was the only successful model they had known for generations.

Eventually, I explained my vision to them.

My mother understood some of it, even though she never truly accepted it.

My father didn't really understand the situation either.

The good thing about him, though, is that ever since I was little, he never interfered with my decisions.

So while he didn't agree with me, he never forced me to do anything.

Ironically, the thing that ended up helping me the most was Covid 19.

The entire world was suddenly forced into the exact same lifestyle I had already been living for months.

Working from home.

Staying home.

Doing everything remotely.

The same thing everyone thought I was wasting my life doing.

That was when the social pressure finally started fading.

Around that same period, I also started seeing the results of working independently.

Yes, my income increased dramatically. I was making in one month what used to take me an entire year.

But honestly, the money wasn't the biggest reward.

Freedom was.

Being able to work however I wanted.

Whenever I wanted.

The way I wanted.

That flexibility was priceless.

During those Covid months, I stayed completely focused.

I learned an unbelievable amount about independent work.

Entrepreneurship itself also became much clearer because this time I was taking courses while actually living the experience.

I could finally identify my weaknesses.

Since I'm naturally introverted, I realized I had to work hard on becoming more social, improving my communication skills, and developing stronger leadership because those are essential if you want to become an entrepreneur.

I also had another clear goal.

If I wanted to continue on this path without falling back into the same social pressure, then once the lockdown ended, I had to leave the environment I grew up in.

I knew I couldn't truly grow there without people constantly trying to pull me back.

To them, I had become an anomaly.

A threat to everything they considered normal.

Someone living a life model that hadn't existed in our family for generations.

Everything sounds exciting and inspiring up to this point.

Then something strange started happening.

The same psychological state I had experienced at the beginning of last year slowly came back.

I thought all I needed was rest.

But once again, I started feeling constantly exhausted.

I couldn't tolerate talking to people.

I couldn't tolerate doing anything.

All I wanted was to isolate myself, sleep, or waste time doing absolutely nothing.

The confusing part was that this time, my life was actually good.

I loved what I was doing.

I wasn't frustrated about money anymore.

Quite the opposite.

I was earning more than I ever had.

I was living alone.

Eating healthy food.

Training regularly.

Living close to the beach where I would go almost every evening to relax.

Life, objectively, was great.

Yes, I was still working a lot, especially because I had clients across different time zones.

But it felt strange that I was experiencing the exact same psychological state despite living under much better circumstances.

I ignored it.

I kept pushing because everything seemed to be moving in the right direction.

I convinced myself that I just needed fewer clients and more physical rest.

Surely the feeling would disappear.

It didn't.

It only became worse.

Eventually, I started questioning everything.

Why was I finally living the life I had wanted, doing work I genuinely loved, achieving the goals I had worked so hard for, yet still feeling this way?

Then one day, while watching YouTube, something happened.

I loved watching lifestyle vlogs and "day in the life" videos from independent professionals because they always inspired me.

One day, I came across someone describing exactly what I had been experiencing.

Every single symptom.

He called it "burnout".

That was the moment I stopped and thought...

Wait.

I need to understand what burnout actually is.

That was when I discovered I wasn't simply burned out.

I had already reached one of its most severe stages.

I'll talk about that in the next post before this one becomes even longer.

May Allah grant healing and well being to all of us.