5 Skills That Are Changing My Life at 43 (Still Working 9-to-5)

Key Takeaways

So, everyone always talks about needing dozens and dozens of digital skills to be able to have a successful online business, and that can seem very overwhelming, especially for people in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. And it's simply not true. And I've been testing and trying out different software and programs for the last few months now. And I've worked out that actually is only five, that's four, five, that actually matter. So, in today's video, I'm going to show you exactly what these five are and why they work, so you don't have to spend months and months and months figuring out which ones are just noise and which ones are actually genuine and helpful. And I think it's also worth me pointing out that I'm still figuring this out as I'm as I'm going along. I'm still working my 9 to5 job, but these are the five skills that I found so far that are actually making me move forward and they're they're progressing me more than anything else. And it's definitely worth sticking around because number four is something that I'm building. It's a real product. It solves a real problem. And I'll show you exactly how I'm building that and with with no coding experience whatsoever. So before we get started, you know what I'm going to say? Hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, come with me on my journey as I try and escape the 9 till5. And I say try, I will escape the 9 till5. Okay? I'm a very stubborn man. I'm very resilient, so this is going to happen however long it takes. So, I want to try and help you guys along the way so you can learn from my mistakes and don't don't waste months and months like I have done in the past. Anyway, hit the like and subscribe button and let's crack on with it. So, skill number one, content creation. And I know what you're thinking. Who's going to want to see me? I've got nothing to offer. I've got no story. Nothing to show for it. Now, that's simply not true because I'm like that. I first when I first thought about doing YouTube, you know, I saw lots of different videos on YouTube like we all have. Obviously, I'm you're watching one now of people who have been in exactly the same position as us. So, this is what I've learned so far in my content creation journey. It's not just about, you know, dancing dogs and cats and playing practical jokes and reviewing movies and that sort of stuff. If you're into that sort of thing and you want to be that person, great. you go for it. But that, you know, it doesn't have to be like that. So, if you're someone like myself, and if you're watching this video, probably yourself, content creation just has to be about basically documenting what you're working through. So for example, the idea of my channel is I want to document my journey into escaping my 925 and I want to help people along the way whilst doing that, you know, and I want to build a business around that. So I think the the key with it is that you've just got to work out what you want your content creation to be about. Now it doesn't have to be the same as mine. It could be something completely different. You know, it could be a hobby of yours. you know, if you love woodworking or something like that, you could document your um journey into making different things. And, you know, there there's there's endless possibilities with it. You know, every single video that I've done so far is essentially processing something that I've learned in that week or the week before or whatever and just telling you guys, you know, what's worked and what hasn't worked. And I think that's for me that's the best way of learning something. I I don't want to learn something that, you know, something from someone who is making 100k a month and is telling us how to do that from zero to nothing because that's just not realistic. I want to I want to learn from people who are doing it in the here and now, not 5 years ago. You know, they made it five years ago. This is what they did. That isn't essentially going to work. And it's not necessarily going to work in the present day. And I film my videos after I've finished my day day at work, after we've we've had dinner. I have a few spare hours in the evening where I can either do my um build my SAS or spend a bit of time on X promoting that way or or doing my YouTube videos. And I know my my setup's not perfect. I don't have a top-end camera. My lighting isn't great. I stumbled my words quite a lot. But that's the thing. It's not highly polished. I don't have time to spend hours and hours and hours editing. And what I'm noticing is that people actually prefer to have the raw videos. They're not necessarily polished and edited to a pristine condition. It's just, you know, they would rather have some someone that is being honest that's trying to solve real problems and something that's not necessarily relatable. And it really doesn't have to be massively over complicated. Okay? you don't have to rush out as much content as possible within that week. I initially started to try and do that and I burnt out pretty quickly. So, I don't recommend it. Just aim to start with if if you if you want to go down the YouTube channel um the YouTube route. You go, I stumbled my words. If you want to go down the YouTube route, I recommend just starting off with one video a week. See how you get on with that. If it's if you're enjoying it, if you're finding that it's helpful, then you know, try and do two or three a week. But initially just focus on one. Get yourself better in front of the camera. Try and write some sort of script. But I wouldn't recommend reading directly off a script because that can sound automated and it just doesn't sound real. So keep it one one video a week. Don't burn out and just see how it goes. Okay. So skill number two, basic design. Now, I'm not expecting you to be the next I don't know any famous famous graphic designers, but I don't expect you to have lots of loads of flare in your design. It's not needed to start with. All you need to do is learn the basics. And I highly recommend using something like Canva because Canva is totally idiotp proof. Okay, I'm an idiot, but I can still use Canva. If I can use it, you can use it, too. It's I use it for pretty much everything. You know, I've used it for creating my logo. I've used it for all my thumbnails and um for YouTube. I used it for my building my SAS for X adverts, things like that. It's it's really simple, you know, there's loads of templates on there. It's not intimidating in the slightest. So, go and check it out. Really simple to use. And don't forget that your first impression online is visual. people will decide whether to trust you or not based on how professional that your your logo looks or how your branding is or the products that you're making is. So, it's something that you have to get fairly competent at very quickly. But like I say, you don't have to complicate uh complicate it massively. Just stick to something basic, something that's easy on the eye. Don't need to add too many complicated details at this point. Use a template. use AI even to help generate it. It's but it is something that you need to to figure out pretty early on. Okay, so skill number three, digital marketing and audience growth. Now, this is something I've been spending a lot of time on recently because I don't have a a background in digital marketing. It's completely new to me. So, I'm spending a lot of time in figuring out whether I need to start doing an email like a monthly email letter. I'm spending obviously a lot of time on my YouTube content because I'm trying to figure out what my audience want. I know what I want to give, but I need to know exactly what my audience wants to see. So, that's why I'm changing a lot of my videos are slightly different. I'm speaking slightly differently or I've changing the angle of the camera, you know, del trying to decide what content to deliver based on actual data rather than just sort of winging it. We now live in a time where any Tom, Dick, and Harry can start their own online business. You don't need to have a massive marketing budget anymore. Where you did 15, 20 years ago, you needed to have tens of thousands of pounds to put behind your business to get it moving. We've been blessed with having Tik Tok, YouTube X, Facebook, Instagram applications that anyone can use. And the best thing about it is that they're completely free. So, you've got the possibility of reaching millions of people from just one post. And that is absolutely mind-blowing. It's absolutely incredible that we have access to this. And it boggles my mind that people are not making full use of it now. You know, they're there's people in there I'm going to go slightly off topic here. People that are in their jobs that they hate and they're not doing anything about it. It's like, well, you've been given this opportunity to essentially you can grow a business within a number of weeks with no upfront cost. I mean, if you said that said that to someone 15, 20 years ago, they would be saying, "You're having a laugh, mate." But this is the this is the world we live in now, and it's absolutely incredible. Okay, so getting back on topic now. Sorry, I do that sometimes. I just waffle on and go off topic. Anyway, so I want my brand to be about leaving the 905 grind for predominantly people over the age of 40 because that's me. I I'm I can give you that real story whereas I can't offer that to 20, 30 year olds because I'm no longer 20 or 30 sadly. But I can what I can offer is a real life real time escape plan documenting exactly what I do, what works and what doesn't work. And that way I can hopefully turn that into a business going forward. I can then sell my journey essentially through products, digital services, you know, building a community around it and yeah, and going on from there. And this is what this is what floats my boat. this is what you know this is what gets me up in the morning doing this. I think the key thing is that you've got to find your passion. You've got to find the niche that you want to do and give everything to it. Now it doesn't have to be anything financially you know related. It can be like I said earlier you know if you work in woodwork or you're an electrician you can start up a you know content creation channel about changing doing electronics around the house. You can sell digital products about that, you know, courses or consulting. This is the thing we like I said before, we live in an age now where anyone can do anything and they can they can sell it. They can they can package it and sell it. And you've got to jump on the bandwagon, guys, because this isn't going to last forever. And although at the moment I'm not seeing massive audience growth, you know, my most of my videos get 40 50 views and a lot of my shorts are getting five or six hundred views, which is what I'm considering pretty good at the moment. But I am getting people engaging. You know, I've had a few comments. I've had people reach out to me and say, "Love what you're doing. Keep going." That's what gives me the drive to go forward. You know, it's not just about the money. I mean, yes, we'd all love to bring in 15 20k a month. And I'm sure with constant constant work and perseverance and like I say, I'm a very resilient guy, so I'll just keep going whatever all the knockbacks I'll get and there will be many, I'm sure. Anyway, I've got this. I'll go completely off topic. What am I talking about? Yeah. So, so my audience isn't massive at the moment, but you know, I'm going to be consistent with it. I'm going to be raw, more real, because they're the sort of videos I prefer doing rather than the scripted stuff. I get actually really wound up by the scripted stuff. So, I'm this is all at the moment I'm you can probably tell this is me just improvising and speaking from the heart because that's I get more pleasure out of doing that and I think I can offer more by doing that. So, find your niche. You know, like I say, it could be the most weird thing in the world, and there's always going to be someone out there that wants to know about it, wants to learn about it, and essentially hopefully want to pay for it as well. So, skill number four, no code tools and automation. Now, this is my this is my favorite. This is what I'm still sort of in absolute awe over and disbelief because when I see some of the stuff that has been produced from no code platforms like lovable or cursor or uh there is some other ones I can't remember the name of them it just blows my mind you know I I'm building these products in lovable and I can see the AI basically creating it in real I'm basically creating exactly what I want it to do. If you say 10 years ago, if I wanted to build what I'm building now, which is I've mentioned in previous videos is a YouTube thumbnail rotation sort of SAS bit software which also gives you pro insights and competitor analysis, how you compare to them al essentially and what you can do to improve your thumbnails and titles. because at the moment I am using I have well I was using the YouTube one beforehand but it wasn't giving me enough data and you could only do two or three and I wanted to try five or six thumbnails at a time rotate them every hour to see what's working and what's not and to be honest I'm getting I get a much clearer a picture of what the data is telling me from my own one but I'm not here to to sell that because it's not even finished yet but the fact of the matter is that it's able to build this And I, like I said, I have no I know some front-end code. I know some HTML and CSS, but that's about it. I would not be able to build what Lovable has be able to build. I would have no clue. Okay, I would have absolutely no clue. But the fact that I've built this bit of software is absolutely incredible. So that's something that you need to look into straight away. So, I suppose the power of these no co platforms lets you build an MVP, which is almost like a test version of your site within days. Okay. And all for pretty much zero cost. I think I spend about $100 a month for 400 credits lovable. That's enough to get you an MVP or something. And yeah, so the hundred bucks, you know, will get you a full working MVP. something that you can get people to test to see whether there's a market for it. You know, beforehand, you'd have to spend five, six, seven, or eight thousand pounds on something just to get a basic version done so you can validate it and decide whether or not it's worth pursuing or not. But this way, the upfront cost is very, very small. You're not wasting bucket loads of time, and more importantly, you're not wasting bucket loads of money. So skill number five is selling online. Now this is something that I have a lot of interest in. I mean most I like you know a lot of people like selling. It's a little bit different than selling uh face to face sales. You know I've done face to face sales before in my previous job. So selling online is a whole different ball game on figuring that out as we're going along. But what I have noticed is that you can't be too pushy. So, for example, in this video, I've noted I've dropped in my application. I haven't pushed it on you. I haven't said you must try this now. You need it. Absolutely need it. I've just dropped it in the conversation and subtly mentioned it. Hopefully, we'll bring awareness to it. But the fact that it's not actually up and running yet anyway, so it's a bit pointless. But I'm still working all this out, you know, and I actually don't have a real product at the moment to sell anyway. So, it's even though it's something I enjoy and want to do, it's not priority at the moment. I'm focusing more on the digital marketing side, getting my YouTube channel up and running, trying to build an audience, and fig still figuring out this stuff along the way. So, even though it's not a massive priority at the moment, my plan hasn't changed. I ultimately want to build a business around helping people over the age of 40 escape their 90 or 5 grind. I've just got to try and work out what content people are going to be willing to pay for and what sort of content I can give away for free. That's something I can work out later on down the line. But I believe with experience over the next coming months when I I'm putting a huge amount of work into this, as I'm sure you guys can see, every single evening I'm I'm on this. I sacrifice watching TV, watching movies, everything like that because I'm working full-time focusing on this. So, I'm hopeful that within the next few months, I will have enough information to be able to sell to people, be able to get out the 9 to5 myself, and give people hope that it can be done. You know, an average Joe can do it. Okay, so that's about it for this video. And like I said, this is something I've done a little bit different to normal. It's something that I thought I would actually really struggle with, but actually I quite pleased with myself. I think I've done all right. I've actually, like I said, I preferred making this type of video. Drop us a comment if you if you've enjoyed it, if you prefer this sort of content to the the more scripted stuff. It just helps me out knowing what to do going forward. And hopefully you've got some value from it. And what I will say is that you need to stop focusing on the money side of content creation or or building a business. Focus more on solving problems and being seen that you can fix problems and then that way the money will come after that. Like I say, I mean, I've obviously not seen the money from it yet, but I'm noticing that that is the way it seems to be working. I'm learning more and more all the time. I'm spending more and more time researching stuff. I did this video so you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours and days and days and days doing pointless tasks. You just need to have these five skills and that's that's all you need to be able to start your own online business today. And so if you're over the age of 40, don't feel intimidated. Like I said, anyone can do this. You can find loads of people on YouTube, especially over the age of 40, thriving. Loads of people in their 50s and 60s, living life to the full because they're making content daily or every other day. Some of them are like sitting in their garden just talking stories, just just telling stuff about their past and past experiences and they've got thousands of subscribers. You know, a lot of these guys will be making 10 15k a month in AdSense, let alone their other channels of monetization. So, it's all possible, but you've just got to put in the effort. You've got to put in the grind. And it's not easy. Like I said, I'm doing this every single evening. I'm putting the work in now because I'm hopeful that within the next 12 months, I'll start seeing the rewards. And you've got to be in it to win it. Nothing comes, you know, if if you're watching this video, you're over the age of 40, you know that nothing comes for free in this world. You have to work at it. You know, unless you're in the 0.01% 0.1% of the population that's inherited wealth or you've won the lottery or something like that, you have to work for absolutely everything. But if you're working for something that you enjoy doing at the same time, then that's a bonus. That's a win-win. So, if you're taking anything from this video, you know, you got the five skills, find your niche, and start working today. Don't wait any longer. Don't put it off. Start going today. Like I say, you we've probably got a narrow window where we've got all these tools available and you have to capitalize on it now. So anyway, I'll end the video there because otherwise I'm just going to keep waffling on forever. So give us a like, subscribe to the channel, and I shall see you in the next video.