2020 was forecasted to be my business' best yet by far while also celebrating 10 years since opening its doors. Most of the excitement was purely because I love my job and was ecstatic for all the new clients I was scheduled to work with! The calendar was full and life was good.
Then came a government-enforced lockdown in the UK in March 2020. Then came an influx of cancellations.
I work in the music industry which continues to be completely decimated by the last 11 months of lockdowns. No live music events means there's almost no income for most independent artists and lot of my successful clients have recently resorted to moving in with their parents while others are relying on their partner's income just to get by. This for me was a pretty massive sign for how awful the industry has been impacted. Seeing some of my clients and friends diversify their skillset, I thankfully managed to develop some skills in other avenues just to scrape by. But that sadly didn't cover my overheads for my large premises, which I sank A LOT of resources into getting just perfect. (The premises is one of the key parts of the business by the way!)
I not only lost 75% of my turnover in 2020, but substantial overheads meant I made a loss for the first time ever.
At the brink of gathering capital from things like selling some equipment a couple of months ago I logged into Coinbase to find my small amount of Bitcoin had grown pretty substantially over a few years. I was trying to put cash together, preparing for another abysmal year of lockdowns and really just seeing what assets I had all over the place. I even sold my characters in a few games! FML.
Like a lot of crypto noobs in the last few months I started researching coins (lurking on r/cryptocurrency a lot in that time!) and getting a feel for the market to see if Bitcoin might be a good 12-18 month investment. I was excited for where the market was going from my research and dumped what I could afford on ETH and bought some more BTC, as well as some smaller amounts in ADA and a few others. It was like the correlation between crypto and making "fast" money didn't occur to me. I was in the processing of selling a tonne of stuff thinking I wont be able to continue to operate in the field I've worked in for 14 years or that I would just have to set back up in 2022 and sink a lot more resources into a new premises. Researching crypto became a hobby of sorts but I was mainly looking to put my money into assets to sell come next year when life was back to "normal", then potentially set my business back up.
My jaw was on the floor on 9th Jan. Bitcoin rose 91% in just a few weeks. I paid every penny of my heavily accumulated overheads. Fucking phew! This week ETH profits alone just paid for the next 6 months which should see me through what should be the roughest patch before things start to pick up again. Fingers crossed! I just feel so fucking blessed to have managed 200%+ gains in such a short amount of time and at such a pivotal time in deciding if I continue with my passion or not just because of finances. It's given me a fresh appetite for life through relieving a year of stress and angst in just two tiny instants and I am sure as fuck hodling the rest!
Thanks if you made it this far. I always enjoy reading of success stories on this subreddit.
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