Drawing his way to 100k

It took 4 years for Janis Ozolins to figure it out

Janis Ozolins tried to figure out this creative business for a couple of years before he quit his job. Even after quitting, he still had to somehow make sense of it. That’s why you’ll like to dig deeper into his story. He didn’t have a grand idea.

He tried many different things that went nowhere and learned through the process. Eventually, by simmering all of those and serendipity, he found something that worked for him and that people liked: drawing.

Let’s ask Janis a few questions!

---

Trial and error

Your ability to figure things out has been crucial in your journey. Although, life has a way of making your head spin with crazy thoughts and emotions at the worst of times.

So, have there been moments when you couldn’t believe you could figure things out? What do those moments look like? How do you handle them to come out victorious?

Janis Ozolins: When I got the initial desire to live this laptop lifestyle (make money online), there were a bunch of projects that I failed at and that I was not able to figure out. But I think that was a very crucial thing. The most important was that I had this very strong North Star and a very strong belief that I could figure things out. If others have, why not me?

Basically, I just had my direction for that North Star, which was a laptop lifestyle. I had the belief there were ways I could get there, and there were many different ways to get there. I just kept trying things until something worked. There were a lot of things I was not able to figure out.

But with a North Star, a strong belief, and a lot of flexibility, I knew I could get there. So, I kept doing all those experiments. Trials and errors led me to have this nice, lovely work and life that I currently have.

An intentional business

You seem to enjoy what you do. Although there’s always a part of grunt work in whatever we do, however much we like it.

What is it that’s grunt work for you in what you’re doing? What’s the pea under the pile of mattresses?

Janis: In pretty much anything we love to do, there is some percentage that we don't enjoy. Whether it's relationships, work, hobbies, or whatever else.

But to me, what is the grunt work? Sometimes when you get just too many emails, it feels a bit tedious to answer them all. Although I really enjoy the conversations I have by email with a lot of my followers and subscribers, sometimes it's just too much.

Of course, I don't enjoy anything related to bookkeeping and keeping track of finances and things of that order. That's no fun.

Content creation is fun. Sharing is fun. Yeah, the majority of it really is fun. There's very little that I don't enjoy.

I really enjoy teaching, teaching the course, and doing workshops for others. That gives me a lot of energy.

Overall, the maintenance and administrative tasks are tedious. Everything else is fun. This is really fun so far, but I'm very intentional about it too.

I’d add that sometimes freelancing can get a bit harsher as well because it’s not necessarily that you don't enjoy it, but instead of freelancing, you would rather create your own content.

But all this is intentionally built, and I'm working my way to a place where I can do what I love as much as I can and want, and I do as little as possible the things I don't, but of course, there always will be some.

Sporadic client work

After interviewing and researching dozens of independents, you start realizing that they all do some sort of client work, whether that’s freelancing, consulting or running an agency.

How key was freelancing in your journey? Could you have built your course and community without it? What part has freelancing played in your business and journey as a creator?

Janis: It actually wasn't key in any sort of way because when I started creating content, my general business plan was if I could build an audience in an ethical way, share something that people find valuable, and be a decent human online, I was sure there would be ways to monetize that. I was really focused on building an audience, creating content and interacting with others.

And that led to my audience and to some potential freelance gigs. People just DM’ed me and asked, “Hey, can you do this for me?”

When I quit my job, I had a decent runway. So, I was not in a place of needing freelance gigs. My goal was not to quit 9 to 5 and start freelancing to make money as fast as possible.

So I just kept building an audience and said yes only to freelance gigs that made sense. For example, working on exciting projects or with an exciting person. I said yes only to those gigs which really made sense and said no to anything else. So freelancing is more a supplement to my finances, but I still take some whenever it makes sense.

I never had to seek out freelance work. It always came to me through the free content.

It didn’t have an influence on building my course. Because there was a certain number of people reaching out to me asking, “Hey Janis, how do you do this? Can you teach me this?” That was the trigger to build a course.

---

Where are you on your journey? Are you in the trial-and-error phase? Or have you figured out something that works for you? Let me know by replying to this email or commenting on Substack.

---

3 juicy links of the week

1. Thinking in Bets: How to Make Decisions Like a Poker Player

   1. This article is a great reminder that luck plays a massive role in our life outcomes, and we should integrate it in our decision-making framework.

2. How to do marketing

   1. A great resource I randomly found online. It’s a great reminder of what goes into marketing and that we should start there if we want to make any money.

3. What makes a bad client

   1. You might be dealing with clients, and the bullet points in this tweet are pretty accurate. There are way more nuances to it, but I like this high-level description. Obviously, there’s no replacement for experience. The more we get burnt with bad clients, the better we are at spotting them early on.