In today’s digital world, we have organically learned to live with technology. A word like financial freedom used to come from people who were nearing retirement or were retired already.
But today there are cases when even a 20 something old can also become financially free.
What? Is it even possible?
Yes! It is. You need not even be a rich brat to achieve it. With technology surrounding our lives, we have almost become cyborgs in a way that we can’t even remember general knowledge questions which we used to, a decade ago. Somebody, asks a question, Google pops-up on our screen immediately. The transition to this dependency has been so organic that we don’t even know when we entered the event horizon of becoming machine dependant and now there is no going back.
There are of course dark sides to technology – Uncontrollable Artificial Intelligence, People exploiting kids while they are online, online frauds and much more.
But there is a sunny side to it as well – Technology can liberate humans of today with just access to an internet connection. One can start their own creative business with a website, a YouTube Channel or a course selling platform.
Today’s story is of one of those people from Mumbai, India – Sumersingh Rajpurohit (Instagram). 25 years old, he is financially free and running his YouTube Channel (Last Moment Tuitions) which has around 474K subscribers (at the time of writing this post – Apr 2020) and he’s built a business around his educational YouTube channel – LastMomentTuitions.com. Both of his ventures are earning him a combined revenue of 6 figures+.
P.S.: This story is edited for better readability, keeping the context of the story unchanged.
[This story is part of the Lifestyle Design in Action series]
Enters Sumersingh Rajpurohit
I was in my final year of engineering. Everybody else was searching a job and I was confused because I had two options —
- Start looking for an engineering job
or
- Keep working on my YouTube channel (Last Moment Tuitions)
(Flash) Backstory —
I started creating videos for engineering students, like a friend teaches us in a very intimate way at last moment of exams. Last moment study is usually related to engineering students so the idea for the channel name sounded perfect.
Channel started growing and I gained 2000 subscribers in a span of 5–6 months. Even though it was not giving me any money at the time, but I had started the channel because I loved creating videos and helping students to pass exams. I wish, I had this kind of resource when I was doing my engineering. In that sense with this YouTube channel I was scratching my own itch.
I slowly understood the potential as the subscribers kept on increasing consistently and I was approaching 10k subscribers soon. I knew I had something going on.
Okay, back to the career options –
I chose the second option — To do what I love.
I created my first 200 videos on a borrowed phone from a friend. I didn’t even have a good enough phone to create reasonable quality videos. I worked day and night for next 8 months. I earned a total of 10,000 Indian Rupees (~150 USD at that time) from YouTube Ad Revenue.
I reinvested this whole amount in buying a new phone so that I can create better quality videos.
At this time my parents were supporting me for a place to stay and food. But they had kept a condition – Don’t provide us any money, but you won’t get any pocket money either.
That was the stepping stone for me to want financial freedom and I wanted to do it my way.
After my engineering was over, I needed an environment to focus on collaborations and understand more about what students wanted and I love reading books too. Our home wasn’t that environment for me at that time.
As Rancho said in the famous Hindi movie 3 Idiots – You just need a uniform and nobody will recognise you in college.
My college had a library, students (my future clients) and an environment for research. I still had my old college ID card. So I started going back again to college. Kept reading in Library, kept interacting with students, kept understanding which kind of content they were looking for. I had no money, so I ate with my friends from their tiffin at times. Travelled in the local train without a ticket at times. I had one goal, to keep doing what I love and help out students.
When friends, relatives and people in my neighbourhood started noticing that I was not doing the engineering job and was working on my YouTube Channel instead, they started asking questions – How will you earn from this? Did you do engineering for social service by creating online videos for free? But I kept pushing on.
I was getting a lot of traction on YouTube, but with all those views too it was not paying me as much to be financially independent. As I was slowly getting surrounded by demotivation, one day suddenly I got a call from a student who used to watch my YouTube channel and he asked for Notes for a specific video set I did a while ago. I used to create handwritten notes with Hindi guideline and put it in YouTube video description, but for this specific set, I haven’t uploaded any notes on YouTube description.
He asked me how much it will cost to get the notes for a video? And that gave me the idea and I started selling class notes for my videos 100 bucks each. Coincidentally “Demonetisation” just happened in India around that time and cashless transactions started. So I created a PayTM account and from that student, I received my first payment on Paytm.
Once I made the video class notes private, I got some negative comments too on YouTube. But I had to survive as an independent video creator. Slowly it became normal again and students started to understand. Then to make the whole thing work seamlessly, I needed a website where I could sell these notes. One of my friends – Suraj helped me make a website. That’s how LastMomentTuitions.com started and eventually, I turned it into a company.
Now we have over 80+ courses on the website. To help students which was my original goal – 70% of the courses are free and 30% are premium paid courses.
LMT has now become an education start-up aimed to help students to pass their exams. We are further including courses to help students out with life after college, i.e. Job selection, Interviews etc. Now, I’ve built a good team with whom I’m able to further add quality courses on our website. We have a small office as well now.
That’s how I became financially independent and built a 6 figure plus business.
I had never thought of achieving any of this. But my zeal to follow my heart was crazy enough, I guess.
“It’s impossible, said pride. It’s risky, said experience. It’s pointless, said reason. Give it a try, whispered the heart.”
— Anonymous
Quick afterword from Himanshu:
Here’s one prompt that I regularly use myself on deciding to followthrough on something:
If it’s not a “Hell, yeah!” it’s a “No”.
— Derek Sivers
If you could follow your heart (assuming you have financial freedom now), what is one passion project you’ll start working on?
Please share in the comments below.
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