i got bored so i made $100k (at 19)

Summary

In this engaging video, Sean Canela shares his journey of making $100K at the age of 19 without succumbing to the typical pressures of online businesses. He discusses his path from feeling bored with routine activities to finding success in building a personal brand. Sean walks through his various business ventures, like Instagram theme pages, SMMA, and Notion templates, which led him to his passion for personal brands. He emphasizes the importance of starting with interests and evolving with the business. Sean's story highlights how his belief in personal growth and perseverance led him to financial success, all while maintaining a fulfilling lifestyle and rejecting the need to follow mainstream 'gurus.'

Highlights

• Sean made $100K at 19 without following traditional 'guru' advice. 💰
• Started by exploring various businesses like Instagram theme pages and SMMA. 📈
• Finding his love for writing, he ventured into building a personal brand. 📝
• He emphasizes aligning business with personal passions for sustainable growth. 🌱
• Built his success without giving up personal life—enjoyed trips with friends and family. 🌍

Key Takeaways

• Boredom can be a powerful motivator to explore new ventures. 🔍
• You don't have to sell your soul or work 24/7 to achieve success. 💼
• Finding a business that aligns with your passions is key. ❤️
• Persistence and adaptability lead to growth and opportunities. 🚀
• Success can be achieved by starting now, regardless of age. 📅

Overview

Sean Canela starts his video by breaking the stereotype that making significant amounts of money requires selling your soul to the grind. At 19, he made $100K from his room, proving that success and a fulfilling life can coexist. He journeyed through various online business ventures, finally discovering the personal brand niche, which resonated with his love for writing and marketing.

The exploration wasn't easy—Sean tried and learned from multiple endeavors like Instagram theme pages and SMMA, which didn't fulfill him. It was through Notion templates that he found some success but realized his true passion lay elsewhere. Personal branding became his forte, allowing him to write, market, and enjoy life simultaneously.

Through persistence, Sean made waves in the online business scene, eventually hitting a life-changing $100K. The road wasn't free of challenges, but his passion-led approach let him live freely and joyfully. Sean's youthful adventure serves as a motivational blueprint for those daring to dream beyond conventional means.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction: Making 100K at 19 In this chapter titled 'Introduction: Making 100K at 19,' the speaker introduces how they managed to earn $100,000 in one year at the age of 19, all from their room. They emphasize doing so without succumbing to the pressure of abandoning personal values or relationships, contrasting with common advice in the online business world that often advocates extreme measures such as working nonstop or making significant personal sacrifices. The speaker sets the tone to reveal a more balanced approach to achieving financial success.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Finding Freedom with Business The speaker reflects on how starting their skating business not only led to financial gain but also increased personal freedom. Contrary to popular belief and online narratives, the business enabled them to spend more quality time with loved ones, such as traveling with friends, going on more dates with their girlfriend, and taking trips with their mom. This experience contrasts the common perception of success as portrayed online.
• 02:00 - 03:00: From Boredom to Business Exploration The chapter 'From Boredom to Business Exploration' begins with the narrator debunking the common notion that one must sacrifice their soul for success. Instead, they narrate a personal tale of transformation prompted by boredom. The narrator describes an unexpected journey of self-discovery and entrepreneurship sparked by a moment of boredom. Over four years ago, they grew tired of routine activities, such as playing video games and engaging in late-night sessions with friends. This turning point led them to explore more meaningful pursuits, steering their life towards business ventures.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Starting Instagram and SMMA Attempts In this chapter, the author discusses the natural human tendency to explore new activities when experiencing boredom. The author shares a personal experience of becoming bored with the routine activities typically enjoyed by young people, such as playing video games and hanging out with friends. This boredom sparked a desire to try something new, leading to the author's attempts at starting an Instagram account and engaging with social media marketing (SMMA).
• 04:00 - 05:00: Success with Notion Templates The chapter 'Success with Notion Templates' begins with the author sharing their experiences of seeking new ventures, avoiding negative influences, and successfully venturing into business. The author describes their first business endeavor, which was creating an Instagram theme page, inspired by content creators on YouTube.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Transition to Personal Branding The chapter "Transition to Personal Branding" explores the journey of a person who started with Instagram channels to make money. Initially, it was not profitable and only yielded $50 from selling the page after dedicating about four hours daily to editing pictures. The narrative continues with an introduction to a new business model known as SMMA, learned from Ean Gody, although it initially brought zero income. The chapter reflects on the challenges and transition in business approaches within the personal branding space.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Growing Through Writing and Client Acquisition The chapter discusses the author's experience with different business ventures, specifically SMMA (Social Media Marketing Agency) and eBooks. The author found SMMA to be stressful and unenjoyable due to the nature of outreach and running an agency, leading to its cessation. However, with eBooks, the author experienced some success, achieving notable sales.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Quitting School and Chasing the Dream The narrator describes their journey of quitting school to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Initially selling a product that only garnered small sales, they pivoted to selling Notion templates. This venture marked their first significant success in business, earning progressively larger amounts, from $1K, to $5K, and finally hitting $10K. Despite this success, the narrator questions whether they truly enjoy and see a future in selling Notion templates.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Celebrating Success and Continuing Growth In this chapter, the speaker reflects on their professional journey and decision-making process. They acknowledge that their current line of work was profitable and could potentially be scaled up. However, they admit a lack of personal fulfillment in continuing down that path. The speaker expresses a deep-seated ambition to create a sustainable income through online ventures, which aligns more with their personal dreams and aspirations. This realization prompts a critical reevaluation of their career trajectory to ensure long-term satisfaction and success.
• 09:00 - 10:00: The Power of Personal Branding This chapter explores the concept of personal branding through the lens of entrepreneurship and business decisions. The narrator shares their journey of starting a business around selling Notion templates but eventually realizing it wasn't aligned with their long-term vision. Despite the business still generating sales, they decided to stop actively pursuing it and shifted focus to other platforms like Twitter (referred to as Tox in the transcript). This narrative demonstrates the importance of reassessing business ventures to ensure they resonate with personal goals and branding ambitions.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Encouragement to Start and Final Thoughts This chapter explores the concept of personal brands and the misconception that they require one to be an influencer. Initially, the narrator misunderstood personal brands as being primarily for influencers, where you have to showcase personal information and your face. However, upon researching, they discovered that many successful business people on platforms like Twitter (formerly known as X) are leveraging personal brands effectively without necessarily being influencers. The chapter likely concludes with encouragement to embrace personal branding as a powerful tool in business, challenging initial perceptions that may deter individuals from starting.

i got bored so i made $100k (at 19) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 yo so I got bored and made 100K in one year at 19 years old and I did it all in this room but you're seeing right here but I got there without selling my soul because when you get in this online business space or whatever you see all of these gurs telling you that in order to make 10K 100K 1 million you need to like sell your soul you need to work 247 you need to ditch your family you need to do monk po 247 right you need to do all of those things and I didn't really
• 00:30 - 01:00 have to and in fact when I started skating this business I actually started earning more freedom as opposed to just money right and I started traveling with my friends I started taking my girlfriend on more dates I started having more um trips with my mom right and all of those things as you can see and it was the complete opposite of what everyone told me right because of what you see online what you see on YouTube when you want to be like success
• 01:00 - 01:30 everyone tells you that you have to like sell your soul for it right and I actually didn't and I ended up living life and how I got there was actually just because of one day I told myself that I got bored and that's literally it but anyways how that basically happened is one day I got bored from the audio things that I was doing that was like over four years ago so I got bored with like video games I got bored with like staying up at 3:00 a.m. to play with my friends I got bored with all of those
• 01:30 - 02:00 things you know and it basically pushed me as humans you know when we get bored we are naturally inclined to like try something new and that's just how we function right in my case I simply got bored of my life because I already did everything right like I did what every kid does you know play video games hang out with his friends at like 3: a.m. um go out you know and I did all of those things but I actually got very bored of
• 02:00 - 02:30 it and so I started looking for new things right and I consider myself very lucky because like when people get bored they tried to do some like degenerate stuff you know what I'm talking about like the bad stuff right so I'm very lucky to not have fallen into that and instead what I have fallen into is actually business and like the first ever business that I started was actually an Instagram theme page and so I saw all of these guys on YouTube
• 02:30 - 03:00 talking about like how to make money with face this Instagram channels and I started mine and you know it flopped like it didn't make me any money um like it technically made me like $50 because I sold the page but for like four hours of editing the pictures every single day on Instagram that wasn't a lot of money and so the next business model that I started was actually from Ean so you guys know Ean Gody right um it was smma and on smma I made zero dollar for
• 03:00 - 03:30 like six months of effort right and maybe that's just a skill issue but I actually did not enjoy smma like I did not enjoy outreaching to people reaching out to thousands of people every single day and on top of that you know I don't enjoy like the stress that comes to running an agency and so I stopped that um agency thing and so the next business that I started was um ebooks so the ebooks W actually saw some success like I think I got in total around eight
• 03:30 - 04:00 sales of like $20 so that was decent but again it wasn't like any big money you know so I dropped that and went on to sell notion templates now the notion templates I is what I consider to be my first piece in success because it got me my first 1K then my first 2K then my first 5k then eventually my first 10K in business right and so I saw some success with it but at the same time I kind of asked myself like do I enjoy selling notion templates and do I I see myself
• 04:00 - 04:30 doing this in the next three years answer was just no I mean it made me money right and I probably could have scaled it a bit and sell more like templates but I wasn't enjoying it like deep down in my heart I knew I wanted to do something else and you know I really wanted the stream of making Wi-Fi money you know making money from the internet um until the day I die right and I just don't see myself doing that with notion and so I had to ask myself m multiple times you know like do I really
• 04:30 - 05:00 see myself doing this and the answer was just no like I really do not see myself selling notion templates and so I stopped like I stopped running the business you know it still makes me sales nowadays since it's an evergreen product but I completely stopped like upgrading or making new offers there and so that's what I did you know I stopped doing the notion business and so starting the notion business actually made me stumble on tox which was Twitter and on X I saw these guys building
• 05:00 - 05:30 businesses with like personal Brands so back then I did not know what personal Brands were I thought you know you had to become like an influencer or something along those lines you know because personal Brands you show your face you use your name and you use like personal information right personal Brands and so I looked into it right and instead of finding influencers actually found the opposite like the biggest business people on X you know Twitter all of them had these profitable big
• 05:30 - 06:00 personal Brands like they weren't influencers they were actually businessmen who made a lot of money and so I asked myself like how how do these guys make money you know like I was even skeptical like how do you make um 100K at like 18 I actually saw someone make 100K at 18 you're running the same business that I have now and so like I was skeptical you know but you know here are today 100K but anyways so I saw that guy right and he eventually I actually
• 06:00 - 06:30 messaged him like I think two months in on to X and I asked him for like some sort of mentorship and so he taught me like the basics of um like a personal brand business so like make offers sell to the right people make content and all of these things right and the guy kind of told me um taught me everything about that um when I was a beginner and his advice was like actually very solid and I got my first few results but eventually you know I stopped working with him because I started to learn everything on my own right and so when I
• 06:30 - 07:00 started like getting experience I started signing clients like I started um getting more clients and if you had to ask you know what I sold back then like the first everything that I sold it was a writing offer because I found out I was really good at like writing right and so I sold writing as like one of my packages and you know people liked it people liked it when I reviewed their content right and then eventually I found out that I was was also good at
• 07:00 - 07:30 getting clients with a personal brand you know so I started sell I started teaching people how to sign clients how to get more clients you know and that work because like the great thing about building a personal brand is that you kind of evolve with the personal brand so if you started by selling like um how to grow your social media you know you would not just your main how to grow social media you know eventually in the future you would also start to sell like how to get more clients right if you
• 07:30 - 08:00 evolve to doing that and you want to do that you know and so it's not this onedimensional thing and honestly as someone with like undiagnosed adht or something I find it very easy to jump from business to business but this business it allows me to evolve along with the business right and like I told you I started with like writing offers but now I sell client apposition advice you know like I've helped all of these guys sign more clients with their personal Brands but before I was just helping people with like how to write
• 08:00 - 08:30 better tweets right I still do nowadays but I mostly help people with like um client acquisition now and so like the biggest thing that I learned when it comes to building a personal brand is you generally have to choose something that you really enjoy right like you cannot just build something out of the blue and say like it's a personal brand just because you think it's profitable no you have to enjoy it because in my case I found out that I really enjoyed
• 08:30 - 09:00 writing from doing notion right so when I ran that old notion business I actually ran it with my girlfriend and my girlfriend did all of the products so she built the notion Pages the templates and all of those things what I just did is just the marketing so it involved a lot of writing on like the sales Pages the um landing pages you know like all of those things and so that's like the thing that I enjoyed and when I came on to X I found out that I was I really enjoyed marketing right and it kind of
• 09:00 - 09:30 paid off because when I went to X I started getting clients like immediately you know and that like really fueled my passion on the platform because it showed me that I could actually start getting paid with what I enjoy right not just what other people tell me I should enjoy and so that was a big relevation for me you know and I started getting more and more clients like on my fifth ever month I got my first $10,000 month
• 09:30 - 10:00 and that was life-changing money you know because I'm personally from a third world country and money like that doesn't just happen to anyone let alone to like a 19yearold kid right and so it broke my beliefs on what was like possible and it honestly got me started on this entire journey and something that I'm like taking to the Grave right and I really enjoy a lot of these things because when I started the Journey of like my personal brand that was also the time when I dropped out yeah I dropped
• 10:00 - 10:30 out of school right after starting this and I don't know why honestly if you had to ask me but like a lot of my cells inside my body was like telling me Sean you need to do it because a breakthrough will happen soon you know like all of the cells in my body were Assisting School right and maybe that's just like a petty excuse to drop out of school but I really felt something that day you know when I dropped out I had made $ Zer for my personal brand but I still wanted the to drop out because like I knew
• 10:30 - 11:00 something was going to happen and I knew this was like the next big thing so I took the leap you know I told my friends hey so I'm going to be dropping out of school and it was like so awkward you know I I remember telling my my best friend you know I told him hey you know can we go outside I need to like talk to you and I told him hey dude I'm going to drop out and that was like a five minute um silence after that you know but eventually I told him about the business and how I think um I have like a really
• 11:00 - 11:30 good chance at it and he actually supported me in my decisions you know like he told me um yeah you will get 10K a month in 20124 because I told him my goal was like 10K a month in 2024 but I actually ended up doing it on my sixth month so you could probably feel my um excitement when I get got it right and so I actually got it on my 18 19th birthday too so when I got that 10K amount I started taking out my friends my girlfriend and my mom on like a
• 11:30 - 12:00 birthday trip right and it was one of the best birthdays that I've had all paid by Wi-Fi money internet money right and so after that I started scaling the business more and more and eventually I reached a point where I got 100K in profit during like November or October and that changed the way that I see myself like that solidified something and my identity that I am capable of reach reaching this amount right because
• 12:00 - 12:30 I had never seen that um amount of money in my life like never I have never seen someone like physically hold out their bank accounts and show me that they've made like um 7 million pesos right they in my country like 100k like 7 million peses or something so it was really like life-changing money and you know I celebrated a lot I went out with friends like I told you you know I didn't become more miserable as I started earning more money and and yeah so you know fast
• 12:30 - 13:00 forward after like 100k I started scaling the business more and more so I started building more systems I started getting more clients and you know you can see all of these posts here as I kind of progressed through X and my business like I keep updating people you know and one of the benefits of personal Brands is that you need to keep updating people you need to keep showing people your progress right because if you keep showing people your progress then you will leverage like the full um advantage
• 13:00 - 13:30 of a personal brand which is basically becoming this huge case study for yourself right compare the like traditional marketing where you have to tell people that you have these results right with the personal brand you show people so instead of telling people that you're this great guy why not just show people you know after all it's your personal brand and so that's kind of what I did you know I kept showing people I kept updating people and eventually you know I started getting 5K weeks so that's around like 20K every single
• 13:30 - 14:00 month now and that was like life changing again you know like once I keep getting onto these M Stones like the life changes dramatically you know like this um this quarter I actually plan to move out right and I have never moved out in my life I've never paid for an apartment in my life I've never paid for something like that and so with this business you know it allowed me to go into that next chapter of my life where
• 14:00 - 14:30 it's like moving out of moving out of my um Hometown and going into like an uncomfortable City and so all of that it wouldn't have been possible without this business and I'm not saying that to be like a guru and tell you and sell you like a course and how to um do the same thing you know no I'm just saying that to like show you what's possible because just like you and I'm generalizing here because you might be in a similar position you know like just like you when I started out I was like lost I did
• 14:30 - 15:00 not know what to do I knew that I would make it one day but I did not know how you know like I had that burning fashion inside of me that I will be like a millionaire or a billionaire one day you know I just didn't know how I would start or when it would start so instead of like trying to guess I told myself why the hell not get started you know you're pretty young I'm like I was like 15 when I started 14 and I had all the time in the world so I got started now
• 15:00 - 15:30 you don't have to be young to get started in this you know like they say that the best moment to start was like yesterday the second best times today so if you're watching this video I would want you to get started straight away right I'm not forcing you I'm just giving you an advice you know I'm not promising that you will get your first 10K a month in the next five months but if you get started the day the gap between you and where you want to be is going to be much more short
• 15:30 - 16:00 so if you want like a guide on how to get started with that you need to buy my course no I'm joking I actually have a free guide that you can click um somewhere up here and it'll take you to a guide that I made on how to get started with a personal brand you know because like everyone can start a personal brand you know you just need to know what skills you're going to sell and on that guy I tell you exactly what like what good skills are there to you so you can check out that guy but anyways going back to the personal branding side
• 16:00 - 16:30 of things so I built my personal brand made a lot of money enjoyed life and now here we are today and so the biggest lesson that I have here for you guys today is to just start and I know it's cliche like every video that you've watched about like something motivational it tells you to just you know something along the lines just start PE consistent and keep at it you know but that's actually like true you know like I made the Tweet talking about like how the most overused to like cringe quotes are actually true once you
• 16:30 - 17:00 start seeing success right and I don't want you to start waiting until you see success before you listen to those quotes right like the quotes where it talks about like environment matters just stay consistent never give up it's actually so true you know if I had given up after like three years of building businesses without seeing like 100k I would have never seen 100K maybe I would but like 5 years later I actually didn't give up on myself that early you know and I saw the success that I'm seeing
• 17:00 - 17:30 now at just 19 years old and so if you're going to take away something from this video it's just this you'll never know if you can make it until you start and for me I never knew when I will be successful but I knew some part of me was going to be successful eventually right and so I stopped waiting for that like perfect moment instead I start to just um putting in the work and so it paid off you don't have to be bored you don't have to Dish all of your video games you don't have to do monk mode you
• 17:30 - 18:00 don't have to do all of that but if you find yourself like overly stimulated and not have time for anything else why not intentionally try to make yourself bored so you can also make 100K no I'm joking but anyways hope you guys found some value in this video that's pretty much it for me today and stay being bored I guess all right guys talk soon