Being an Entrepreneur seems to be like being a well known celebrity back in the days. But what does it really mean to be an entrepreneur and build something from scratch. Here’s my Story of becoming the entrepreneur…
Written by
Yannic Vollmer
Let me Introduce Myself
Right, you might asking “who is this guy and why does he tell himself an entrepreneur?” This question is completely justified because nowadays there are a lot of gurus out there who call themselves entrepreneurs and showing up with their million dollar instagram and shopify accounts. But if you have a closer look on them you will find some course selling offer like “The 5 steps to generate 7-figures from facebook ads”.
I will not sell you some courses like this. And don’t get me wrong, you can make 7-figures and more from facebook ads but I think you can do it without spending $997 on some of these “guru” knowledge.
What I’m about to share with you in the following chapters is my story of how I builded 5 business, of which some failed. How I get fired from five 9 to 5 jobs and how I started from scratch, being broke and to run several businesses today. I will share all my experiences and learning from the past 15 years of building different businesses and trying different ways.
I also decided to document my current journey of owning several businesses in parallel on a weekly scale on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and all the well known social media platforms, with the the mission to give value to everyone who is trying to be a real entrepreneur. To define it more clear my mission as a content creator is to share any kind of value with at least 1 Million people around the world. So, you might will see ma face more often in the next years because I will not stop until I finally archived this goal. And guess what, yes I’m giving away all this value on social media for free. So, no hidden sales funnels that lead you to pay a couple hundreds or thousands to enjoy my content.
But let start from the beginning and let me tell you how I ended up creating this website and all the content on YouTube and Co to share my journey that I call “On My Way Up”…
It really puts a smile on my face when I think back on these days where it all started….
Should we also talk about my childhood? I’m not sure if someone is interested in this part of story?…
Ok… Let’ put together the main facts and make it quick.
Grown up in a little town in the southern part of Germany. Had a normal happy childhood. Was not the best student (Yeah it fucking bored me, but any way I finished it not that bad). While moving on “the normal way of life” I always got pumped by success stories. It ignited a fire in me every time I heard about someone that made it all the way up. So, while other kids where playing lego or watched cartoons I way playing “business” in my fantasy world and started making big plans. Wich I think build my fundamental mindset of being an entrepreneur in my early ages.
After school I made an apprenticeship as an IT-specialist. Which was fun and I learned a lot about my technology and how to develop software, which was a real passion of me at this time. Found myself sitting in an office thinking: “Do I have to do this for the rest of my work life??”
That was quick, wasn’t it?
At that moment in my young live I realized that I’m not going to go the “normal” way of worklife… To be honest working in a 9 to 5 also board me sometimes because you need to work on tasks that you’re not interested in and you even don’t know why you need to work on it.
The dream of building a own business that will pay for my living was born and I started to offer facebook services for business. Back in 2008 Facebook was really new for the business world all these business really don’t get it how they should work with this new platform. So you can imagine what was happening if a young kid starts offering a service to manage all this for any kind of business….
Yeah, they crushed me and I had a complete overload of projects. So I used to work after my “job” on my side projects and started making my first own money as an entrepreneur.
I finished my apprenticeship (With stunning good grads) and decided to study to learn more about technology and how to develop software (Looking back to this decision, I really don’t know why I moved into this direction. Maybe because of the girls…).
To be a student wasn’t what I’ve expected. I think I hoped it would be more like in the united states with this kind of crazy parties. But I also was in the IT-faculty with a lot of nerdy guys and nearly zero girls.
So I used the bored time within the lessons to scale my business and decided to offer more digital services as well as some online marketing stuff for my clients. At that moment it worked well. I made some money to pay for my living as a student and I felt great.
Then something live changing happened…
You need to learn how to stay before you walk...
I forgot to tell you how my first company was called. It was the “BIVO Internet Agency” and I was running it together with one of my best childhood friends. So, like I told you before we offered web development and online marketing services to our clients and it worked not that bad for both of us. We’ve started it at the age of 16 and scaled it up unitl like 21.
One of the clients I acquired with the BIVO turned into my first crazy adventure as an entrepreneur.
The AFRTN (American Family Radio and Television Network), hired me to develop their web platform. Which was an online entertainment platform to stream audio and video focused on the asian market. I’d seen a huge opportunity for my business to have a client that will be playing in a higher league when they will launch the platform.
It was in 2010 where we had no Netflix, no Spotify or any kind of on demand entertainment services on the market. Imagine how mind-blowing it was to work on something that will change the whole entertainment industry. I was really pumped and had a feeling that this will be the one thing that will help me to be a well known and highly successful entrepreneur.
Well, yes it was crazy.
We’ve worked like on steroids to make this complex project become reality. And after one year of working for the AFRTN they offered me to join the company in a leadership role and to work full time for the New York based start up. So, I stopped being a student and was ready to make my dream reality. And…
Yeah it nearly became reality. We developed the platform and hunted for venture capital investors. (That’s funny. At one day we got an offer from an inverse who told us to invest $ 1 billion in the company. We was like “Holy crap… a fucking billion” But it turns out that the investor was some kind of war lord from Africa who was trying to wash his dirty money from dealing weapons. So yeah it was a freaking crazy time…)
At the end the whole company was sold to a big asian enterprise and my journey to be one of the leader of this amazing business was over…
So I moved back to the german work life…
Back to 9 to 5
Was the dream over? Maybe for a short moment. I realised that I really need to make some money and had no new business idea at this time to move ahead as an entrepreneur.
So, I search for a new 9 to 5 job as an IT specialist and started to live the normal live. My boss was a nightmare living in some kind of illusions about how to run a business. And there was no way that he would listen to a 23 year old kid.
I tried to work in this hell of business and after 10 month I got fired. Why? Because this nightmare of a boss believes that I was not the right for this job…
Got Fired the Second
I was like: “Let’s jump into the next adventure” and I got hired at an huge international enterprise in the automotive business to manage the internal IT. Something like fixing all the problems of over 10k employees and their computers. Nothing special but it was nice to work with many different people every day.
I mean I learned something really interesting at this job. Some of the managers told me one they the following based in an idea I pitched him: “Someone who has visions should go and visit the doctor”…
I was like: “Fuck, did he really just said that to me??? I need to find a new job…” But they beat me to it, because of the old AFRTN websites that was still online where my name was on the leadership page… the companies directors thought I was a corporate spy…
And yes you get it… I was fired again. And they took the case to court and I ended up paying a hefty fine. And all this although the accusations would not correspond to the truth. However, it was not easy to prove the opposite.
Let’s say at this moment I was kind of really fucked up.
Geting Fired and Fired and Fired...
Got Fired the Third
What is the best if you just got fired the second time within two years. Yes you search for the next job. That’s what I thought. So I told my self: “Let’s start from scratch”. So I moved to a new city where If got hired as a project manager in a digital agency. Which was finally a working environment that worked well better for me. But to be honest it would be better for me at that time to rest a bit to come down from all the shit that happens in the years before. But just four weeks later I found myself in a new city with a new apartment and with a new job. But how do they say? “what comes quickly also goes quickly again.” Yes, I got fired again after just 6 month. Why? Well, I have to say that my performance was actually not the best.
Got Fired the Fourth (The Zoom Edition)
Thanks god I was able to got hired at an other agency within two weeks. That enables me to hold the new apartment I just rented in the new city. To be honest that saved my life at this moment because otherwise I would go totally broke.
The first time in my life I felt happy to work in a 9 to 5 job. The workmates where amazing, the projects interesting and it seems that I finally found something that worked for me.
I still was dreaming about moving back to the entrepreneur lifestyle but at this time it gave me a time to find what kind of business I want to build next.
Then after 3 years of good work everything turned. The mood of the team was not as it was at the beginning.
I think mostly because of too many changes in the companies structure. And then on a zoom call with my boss…
Yep, you get it… I got fucking fired again.
I mean what’s wrong with the business world??? You try to work you ass off to heat all the time that you are suite anymore to the job…
Yeah I was pissed.
Got Fired the Fifth
At this time I still had no idea what kind of business I should start next. So I gave the 9 to 5 a last chance. I got hired again in an digital agency… To make it short the story ended the same like the four before. I got fired… I thought that something needs to be wrong with myself. Maybe I thinking too much like owing the business I working in… Or maybe my ideas seems to be crazy. But hell, I really know that they will work if I would able to realise them. But anyway, didn’t have the chance to show them how…
All Good Things Are Five
BUSINESSBY.CLICK
After working for 3 different digital agencies as an employee I learned a lot about how to run an agency (or better how to not do it…)
So I decided to use the lessons I’ve learned and start my own digital agency in the same city. By the way the city I was working for all the agencies was Stuttgart in Germany.
Together with an old colleague from one of the agencies I’ve worked for. I founded an new agency called “Businessby.click”. Deam, this name was freaking good, wasn’t it.
But let me tell you the name is not all. We really struggled to get out first clients and the once we got ripped us, meaning that we’ve worked a lot for them to nearly got no money at the end…
It was a mess. And we really don’t got that needed drive to scale the business up. Then my business partner was really fucked up about working as an employee before and now not seeing the expected success in building our own business, so he decided to go back to the university…
So there was no future for the new young company and we quit it.
The BIG FIVE AGENCY
Let’s start it all over… Again. Let’s conclude the past years. I got fired from a 9 to 5 five times. Started two own agencies. One with success the other failed. And worked as a Vice President for an emerging start-up. Sounds like a thriller right? And let me tell you it was like living in one. All the up and downs, all the struggle, all the stress. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Maybe I got nearly broke more than once. Didn’t know if I would have enough money to afford the next week. And always got told that I’m not the right or that I will never be a successful entrepreneur. Seems to be the best time to give up, right? Some would say yes… I failed more than once. But I would not use the word fail. Let’s use “fall”. Yes I was fallen several times in trying to build business and in trying to be a good employee. But I stand up every time and started from scratch. Because I know someday it will pay off. Yep, I started from scratch. And I went deep. Everything that I’ve learned in over 10 years in business needs to be structured and optimised to build a new business that will allow me to show the world that I’m a real entrepreneur. So I wrote down everything I’ve learned, all the problems I’ve seen in other companies that hold them back to scale. And I created something so powerful that will not only scale my business. It should also dramatically scale the businesses of my clients. The BIG FIVE AGENCY was born. Which was again a digital marketing agency. But this time I made it all different. It was designed for scaling and to deliver clients real measurable results. I found the most amazing business partner in the world and I was saying to myself: “I’m back on track, fuckers.” Now everything is great… Yeah not really. I need to mention that timing is a really important key role in success. And right after it looks to work out finally a financial and energy crisis hits the german economy. Seems that building my third agency will be even more difficult than thought…
BIG FIVE Group
Finally I understand it…
Did you ever asked yourself: “What is the secret of the highly successful people out there that build that billion dollar emires?”
Well let me tell you that it also took me some time to finally understand it but at the end it is really not that complex. The key to success is:
To “Stop chaising money” and to “start solving problems.”
If you look at all the big mega companies out there hey all have comething in common… They are build on a solution for a problem they faced. If you trade your tome for money you are super limited in scaleing. But if you solve a problem and make a business out of it you’ve something highly scalebale. This is what I call a real business.
And I’m so facinated about the idea to have a real impact on the future by solving problems I decided to make this my business until the end of my life. That’s why I started the BIG FIVE Group. To create a platform, a creative workspace that all exist to connect bright minds that are passionated about solving problems. And we have a lot of them in todays world. This is where I am on my journey on the way up and even after all the madness it feels like I’ve just started on this journey…
The Big Mission
As I mentioned above I took me some time and a series of attempts to finally find that one thing that I want to to for the rest of my life as an entrepreneur. What I learned on my journey until now is, that it is for sure not that easy to build a serios business. Because even if you have the most stunning idea there are numerous challenges that need to be mastered. And what I also learned is that the once who tell you that they can help you with their knowledge and experience are not really helping you. They are just interested to sell you the next course, book or coaching without giving you the answers you are really searching about.
After that I came up with the idea to finally change this. To finally tell the truth about all the mysteries… I’m on a mission to onboard a new generation of entrepreneurs on the way up by solving problems every entrepreneur is having at some time on their journey. Therfore I will share content across all my channels each and every day that all will exist to really help people out their going their way up. Let’s write the next chapters of entrepreneurial history together by onboarding millions into the reality of entrepreneurship.