Hey guys, it took me a while to think of what my first post in this community was going to be about. So I figured I would make it an introduction about myself. So who am I? My name is Ivan Corona, a Mexican native raised in good old North Carolina. I've been here for about 14 years now and I love it here. I like to describe myself as a shy, quiet, clam. I always try keep to myself, I'm not as outgoing as I'd want to be because of how timid I am. Even though I despise the fact that my anxiety keeps me from interacting with people, I managed to use this to fuel my ambition and shape me to the point where I am today.
I grew up in a very hardworking household, my father worked in construction and would take me with him anytime he could. It was because of my old man that I have what I consider good work ethic. I'm as scrawny as they come, and with that said, I hate manual labor. After high school, like a dum dum, I didn't pursue a college education so I started the 9-5 right off the bat. My uncle owns a contracting business so I worked under him. My uncle was a bit of a dick to be honest. Strict, demanding, and always on my ass about everything. He wasn't the fun, hilarious, man during the family reunions anymore. He was being a boss, so it's understandable. I worked for him for about a year until he decided to lay me off. A good while went buy without landing a job, so things got desperate so I started working in the tobacco fields. It's a seasonal job so I only worked for a little while. When that was over I told myself "FUCK THIS SHIT, I'm not going to work for anyone ever again. I'm doing this shit my way."
I started thinking of business ideas that I could start with what little money I had saved. I always enjoyed taking pictures with those shitty loud disposable cameras so I figured my first business venture was going to be a photography one. I purchased a DSLR camera with a decent set of lens and started advertising within my community. I was having no luck with this unfortunately. No one wants to hire a 19 year old and rely on him to capture memorable moments, and the fact that I'm awkward as hell doesn't help either. So needless to say, this really wasn't working out for me. It was a bit discouraging at first but I wasn't going to let that stop me. No way in hell was I going to go back to working for someone else. So it's back to drawing board.
I stumbled upon one of those scammy get rich quick ads on the internet, and I knew while I was watching the video that it was pure BS. However, it did spark my curiosity so I started researching ways to make money online. I tried cpa marketing, that was a fail. Email marketing, also a failure. I'm not very good at copywriting or storytelling, as you can already tell. Then one day, while I was scrolling mindlessly on my facebook newsfeed, I saw an ad for a t-shirt that was being sold through teespring. What caught my attention was that the ad was heavily targeted to me. The shirt was a photography shirt and it had my name it, it was scary at first because I kept asking how the hell this person knows this about me. After this I taught myself how to advertise on facebook, it's kind of scary how targeted you can get with advertise here btw, and I also learned how to design. Finally, this was my first successful busines. I'm still making money doing this btw. I am looking to diversify my income streams, it's never good to have all your eggs in one basket. So now I own two Amazon seller accounts where I sell multiple private label products and I'm also enrolled in amazon merch program. I would go in depth about how these work but I feel like I've been typing forever so I don't want to bore you with the details. I also bought in 2 bitcoins back in 2014 and it wasn't until this year when I started to trade with them. I've been doing really well with that too, now I'm at a point where I want to invest 50% of my holdings into cryptocurrencies that I stand by and truly believe in so I started researching and learning about a few of them. STEEM caught my attention for the community that is involved in it and how it works. So it was a no brainer, I wanted in. And now here I am typing my first of many posts. I'm glad to be part of this.
I'm very grateful for the series of events that led me to where I am right now. Good and bad. I'm still nowhere near where I want to be in regards to my financial goals but I definitely feel like I'm on the right track. I'm still working on managing my anxiety and trying to be more outgoing. I try to do at least one uncomfortable thing a day to help as an exercise. I'm happily married now, not sure how I pulled that one off, yeet. There is a lot more to my story but this here is pretty much the jist of it. Thank you so much for reading. Until next time, deuce.