How I spent my summer “vacation” An essay on professional growth by Ivan Boshkov

“True ownership can come only from within. It comes from a disdain for anything or anybody that impinges upon your mobility, from a confidence in your own decisions, and from the use of your time in constant pursuit of education and improvement.” 

― Robert Greene, The 50th Law

The road to 20k connections, or as I like to call it, the road to a complete shift in perspective about life.

This is a story about how a student, an individual who couldn’t get an internship anywhere applying to work for free or a minimal sum of money, used his knowledge to acquire his own clients and eventually open his own brand.

Think of this as a step by step guide you should emulate, of-course it’s not the only way to success, I never read about this way in any book, and I have read over 200 books so far during my lifetime, so you’re free to create your own path as-well, but it should give you a general idea of how the world works, or in this case how the LinkedIn bubble works.

Let’s start off the story at the very beginning, before my professional growth, before I learned how to communicate with people, before people took me seriously.

May 15th, 2018, the end of my 6th semester at the Faculty of Computer Science & Engineering.

Me, a confident young man, decides to finally pull the trigger and apply for an internship.

Before this I was afraid of applying because I never really felt ready to work in an actual company, I doubted myself, I saw how other professionals in my field worked and thought “I’m nowhere near that level yet, I’ll apply in the future when I have more knowledge” and so I did.

After passing most of the subjects I sought out to master, having knowledge in everything from C++ to Java, to the Adobe suite like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and even more high end programs like Autodesk Maya, I felt ready, this world was mine for the taking, so I applied in a total of 27 companies here in Macedonia for an internship and even attended conferences some of those companies held.

Every single one of those companies ignored my existence, I didn’t even get a response email telling me no, I was left in the dark.

Nobody acknowledged my existence.

You know how in every success story, you always read about people being rejected, or told no, or the world being against them, I’m not sure if this is a sort of destiny all of us have, to have to hit rock bottom to be able to rise up over everyone else, but it’s extremely brutal and over time you realize that that’s the most pleasurable kind of brutality you’ve ever experienced. 

Now let’s fast forward to May 30th, this company called Endava had this event called Agile Myth Busters,

I like to call this the turning point.

The turning point – we all have about two or three turning points in our lives, points where we realize what we actually want to do in life, where we have the choice to make a decision that’s 100% right in our minds and we’re completely confident in our ability to realize that idea, a point in time where we discover our calling.

-         Ivan Boshkov, How I spent my summer vacation

I met Monika Rizovska during this event, the first person to ever tell me yes.

Let me elaborate, she was this user on LinkedIn from Macedonia that had over 10k connections, this monster capable social engineering that was at the time on a level I couldn’t even comprehend.

And she told me to apply there.

Now you have to realize that I was at a low point of confidence after being rejected and ignored by so many companies, so this was a moment where my ego rose, where I started having self-worth again.

I did not end up working or getting an internship there, but she steered me in the right direction, so she deserves a spot in this story.

Anyway, carrying on, the next day I made a video about the event where I featured two people, Micah LaCerte and Jeff Larsen, and this is where I realized how LinkedIn worked.

LinkedIn has this inner bubble of people that share video content, something neither me nor anyone I knew was aware existed, because it does not exist in our region, not yet anyway, I plan on changing that.

This was a completely new world for me, so when I featured them in my video, my entire audience of connections knew about their existence, and their audience of connections knew about mine, it was a sort of mutual gain or benefit.

These two people also made videos that taught me how to present myself and sell online which I am extremely thankful for, so they also deserve a spot in this story.

And then it hit me.

“The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” 

― Robert Greene, Mastery

The next couple of months I kept writing content on my profile, each post gaining more views, comments and exposure, each time gaining more connections, it was working, I was growing.

I had a conversation with Chinedu Junior Ihekwoaba, where he told me, it’s not the amount of followers or connections you have, but how you communicate with them, communication and interaction is key.

During this time period I also had a conversation on this platform with over 5k people, I learned how they talk, how they approach me, how they present themselves and what they do, my communication skills grew tremendously.

And then this person approached me, Kirk Francis, I like to call this the second turning point.

He simply told me this line:

“Hey, you are extremely skilled, why don’t you try freelancing, the companies in your region have given up on you, so why not try branching out?”

And so I did.

On the 1st of August, I started with copywriting and SEO optimization on websites and worked my way up towards web development.

Ultimately, I became great at marketing, design, video-creation, content writing and so on.

Having officially found my calling, something I’m proficient at, something that I have a natural prowess for, my own personal brand, I connected with a lot more people on a professional level and today we’re working together towards creating really amazing things.

There’s one really important thing I realized during this entire journey, the people I meet online have one thing in common, they want to succeed and they’re ready to hire and value proper talent to help them do that, their mentality is different from the one we have here, where people hire generic robots that “just get the job done”. (this does NOT include everyone, just the people I have personally had the privilege of (not) working with and watching.)

I will carry on explaining how I do things in further detail on my blog which I plan on launching soon.

It will feature complete tutorials and guides on how to acquire clients online and how to approach people without sounding robotic or generic.

All of this happened within 3 months.

Your life can completely change at any time; all you have to do is shift your perspective.

Thank you for reading and thank you to everyone that helped me develop into the person I am today, I hope all of you make it.

I’m not sure where life takes me next, but I’m sure of one thing, it won’t be average ever again.

So, does anyone need an expert?