Unchained - Laura’s 10-Year Anniversary of Self-Employment: A Personal Message

Episode Date: April 15, 2023

Laura’s 10-Year Anniversary of Self-Employment: A Personal Message  Laura Shin, the host of Unchained, celebrated her 10-year anniversary of self-employment on Wednesday, April 12. She tells her story and has a message that she hopes will help others on their journeys.  Links:  Original Twitter thread Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone. This week I had a significant anniversary. It was the 10-year anniversary of being self-employed. And I wrote up a tweet thread that you may have seen, but if not, I wanted to record this message for the podcast because of how meaningful this moment was for me. And also because I think that what I was saying here might help some of you. I've never revealed so much personally, but given the feedback that I've already gotten, I think it's been well worth it. Here's what I wrote. I almost never post anything personal on Twitter, but today is the 10th anniversary of my being self-employed. And for anyone who needs to hear this, I feel compelled to tell the story

of how this leap has led me to more career success than I ever could have imagined. Ten years ago today, and by the way, I published this April 12th, I began working for myself. I had been working at a full-time job where I felt that if I didn't quit, they were going to fire me. This was actually my second job in a row where I thought I was about to be fired. Back in my 20s, I had tried freelancing before, and while I'd had some publishing success, I had failed pretty miserably financially and had amassed five figures in credit card debt. This time around, my late 30s, I was deathly afraid of that happening again. I imagined myself telling my parents that I was going to freelance again and my mom having a heart

attack and dying. I now know that fear is an illusion, but at the time it felt like a real possibility. I would cry hysterically, thinking I might be responsible for my mother's death. Yet I had to try. I'm a highly self-motivated person and I never liked having others tell me what to do. So in my 30s, having learned how to manage my finances, it felt like the time. time to work for myself again. My first day of freedom was April 12, 2013. I got a Forbes contributor gig, and my first article there became their most popular article of the day. My mom was amazed and said, that'll never happen again, but within a month, I had stories that got even more views. I was having a lot of fun writing on Forbes. My stories were doing well, and since I was paid by page views, I began making

good money, plus I had other clients. Pretty soon, I was making more money as a freelancer than I'd ever made as a full-time employee. The only problem was I was getting a bit bored. By this time, I had been writing about personal finance for three to four years, and since the subject area doesn't change a lot, it was getting too easy, and there was no challenge left. A personality test once told me that if something becomes too easy for me, I cannot be bothered to do it anymore, no matter how much people praise me or pay me for it. I never realized how true that was until then.

I told my Forbes editors I wanted a change, so they threw me a bone. They came up with the Forbes FinTech 50 list and asked me to lead it with another reporter. She and I divided the list into categories and I took digital currencies. It was spring 2015, eight years ago. I remember the first interview where someone explained Bitcoin to me in depth.

It was Devin Gundry of Chain. Devin is an extremely animated, passionate person. I can think of no one better to introduce me to the wild, wonderful world of what was then called Bitcoin and Blockchain. That led me to my first big magazine feature for Forbes magazine, which, hilariously, was about how Wall Street was going to use blockchain technology to make its operations more efficient. My sources and I were so wrong. Side note, I did not put Coinbase on the first Forbes Fintech 50 list in 2015. I remember interviewing Brian Armstrong about how the industry was pivoting

to blockchain, not Bitcoin, and he just stood firm that the future was the assets themselves. And on Twitter, I put a face palm emoji. However, during this time, I was becoming obsessed with Bitcoin. I went on a personal writing retreat, intending to work on a different book idea I had, and instead spent the whole time trying to learn more about Bitcoin. The resources on this subject were few and far between. I took a self-directed course with the Digital Currency Council, somehow connected to DCG, and realized that the course was outdated, that I, even with my four months of knowledge about Bitcoin, had more up-to-date info.

But lucky me, I could call up any person. in the industry, say I was writing for Forbes, and learn anything I needed to you about Bitcoin and blockchain technology. I was completely obsessed. Unlike personal finance, it was impossible to keep up, and I always felt challenged. During this time, I wrote articles like this one on 10 reasons to invest in Bitcoin and 10 reasons not to invest in Bitcoin. And I got some early validation that people liked what I was doing. And here I included screenshots. Someone says, I was your biggest fan since 2015. While in the refugee camp, I used to translate your work for fellow refugees in Arabic to tell them about Bitcoin and latest developments. Another one on Reddit wrote,

I like this writer, so I thought I'd share. And then someone responded, she's the best in this space, in my opinion. And another one said, had a conversation recently in a surf camp in Portugal with a fellow guest, I from Tel Aviv, he from Germany, about how simultaneously humble and hard-hitting you are in unchained. I've never heard anyone not suffer fools with such grace and decency. Keep up the outstanding work. In 2016, blockchain.com announced that it would be giving out awards at that year's Coin Center gala, including one for most insightful journalist. When I saw that, I wished that in a few years, since I'd been covering Bitcoin just for nine months, that I might be good enough to be considered. I was shocked to be one of the finalists nominated

by the community and then to actually win the award. Then in spring 2016, I found out that Forbes had launched a series of podcasts, 12 in total. I asked my editor if I could launch one too. This was how in June 2016, Unchained became the 13th podcast launched by Forbes. However, there was one key difference. Because I was a freelancer at the time, the contract they wrote up for me gave me ownership of the podcast, the same way that I had ownership of the podcast. the same way that I had ownership of the content I put on my Forbes blog.

This would turn out to be an important detail later on. I launched the podcast with two interviews I had recorded on Richard Branson's Knicker Island. I released a podcast every other week and was really enjoying it. However, after the first season, Forbes dropped the show. Since I owned the podcast, I sought out my own sponsor. But the fall of 2016 was a very different time in crypto. I could not find any interested sponsors. I was practically begging people.

Finally, a marketing firm that had made websites for crypto startups took out a sponsorship for all of 2017, basically paying for the sound engineer. I didn't really make any money from it. In the spring of 2017, I went to a conference and a bunch of people came up to me to tell me that they loved the podcast. But I only released podcasts every other week while I wrote many articles a month.

That is the power of the human voice. Around this time, I started getting a bunch of job offers. Forbes had asked me to go full-time with them a few times, but I had always said I would only do it if I could solely cover Bitcoin slash blockchain. Finally, in June 2017, they were willing. I became a Forbes senior editor. I'm pretty sure I had the fastest time from hire to cover story ever in the history of Forbes. It was something like three weeks.

At least that's what my editors said at that time. Just to be clear, I had been assigned this story as a freelancer. I did not report, write, and go through edits and fact-checking on a cover story in three weeks. Also rather proud that my first Forbes cover story featured someone with a mullet haircut. 2017 was a big year for crypto and the podcast grew in popularity. In mid-January 2018, I randomly felt compelled to check the charts in iTunes, which I never check, and saw Unchained ranked really high. Someone helping me with the podcast told me what the other crypto podcasts,

which had fewer downloads, were charging for sponsorship. I realized it could earn way more from the podcast than I did at my job, so I quit. This was February 2018. This is also why it was key that I owned the pod. Hilariously, when I had taken the senior editor job the previous June, my mom had said, don't quit, because I had a history of quitting really good jobs

after a very short period of time. She knows me too well. I had always wanted to write a book, so for the next four years, I spent less than half my time on the podcasts and more than half my time on my first book, The Cryptopians. I traveled to Toronto, Berlin,

the Bay Area, L.A., Osaka, London, Switzerland, and Amsterdam to report from my book, and of course also did many virtual interviews, talking to more than 200 people. During this period, I had one of the most profound personal lessons of my life.

I was going through a difficult personal time, and so was also meditating a lot. Meditation is an amazing practice because it helps you observe your own mind. Normally, our thoughts jail us, but it's like an invisible prison since we can't see our own mind. Meditation opened up space between me and my thoughts

so that when I was in everyday life, I was better able to observe my own mind slash see that prison. And one day, I realized that while reporting my book, I would frequently beat myself up mentally. Even for really small things, like not phrasing an interview question perfectly, I would mentally berate myself so badly and make myself feel so demoralized that I wouldn't be able to work on my book for a few days. Once I realized this, I stopped completely. Even now, if I mess something up, I don't look back.

I move on, learn, and say loving, kind things to myself. A two-year-old I know is taught a saying in school that goes, I love family member, I love family member, I love friend, etc. And it ends with, and I love myself. I learned to do this when I was 44, but it's never too late. That helped me not spiral down when my editor didn't like the first draft of my book. It helped me when I endured the brutal, five-month fact-checking process for my book, which cost me more than half my advance and was so

onerous, I only had time for four social engagements. When my book was in the final stages before publication, I got information that led me and my sources to identify who we believe is the Dow attacker, which had been a mystery for five years. I revised the book and we pushed publication to 2222. publication day was amazing. I announced that my sources and I had uncovered who we believed was the Dow attacker, and I felt so much love from everyone and had the most fun day on the internet. I had a whirlwind book tour. My first official book reading at the Strand sold out. They were turning people away at the door. I also went to London, Oxford, Miami, Austin, Utah, Baltimore, or San Francisco twice, both to big crowds, Seattle, Boston.

It was beyond lovely. I had no idea that I touched so many people. I appreciate and give thanks to every single person who came out to my events and also to everyone who read my book. It really was a very, very, very meaningful, memorable, wonderful time. Since my book tour ended, I've been building out the news operation at Unchained and launched a premium offering. Over the last several months, I've learned a lot as an entrepreneur and made a bunch of really incredible hires.

In February, we relaunched the site with a new design and under a new URL, and we're working on building out even more great things for you. I had an oh my God moment last week writing my bio for the paperback version of the Cryptopians, which comes out this fall, and added that I was, quote, the founder and CEO of Crypto News website Unchained. It's crazy how that grew out of this bi-weekly podcast that I was doing on the side. I also have a new book deal. It's about FTX. And there's a lot more in the works. These are the lessons I've learned in my decade of working for myself. Small things grown organically can become much bigger.

You don't need a grand plan. I love the EL doctoral quote. Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. I would say the same is true of entrepreneurship. Other lessons. Follow your passion and joy.

It's not cheesy. It works. Marie Kondo your life and fill it only with things you love. Fear is just an illusion. It's something your mind makes up to scare you. It's not real. Love yourself. Be kind to yourself.

If there's a little voice inside you calling you to do something, go for it. Trust the universe. Trust that little voice inside of you. You only have one life. Don't spend it trying to please other people. Use it to pursue your own joy. And I just want to give a shout out of thanks to Janet Novak, Matt Schifrin, Kirby Kim, Ben Adams, Ben Kalin, Chris Curran, Elaine Zelby, Anthony Youen, Mark Murdoch, Daniel Ness, Juan Aranovich, Pamma Jimdar, Zach Seward, Ben Munster, Jeff Benson, Leandro Camino, Semukas Street Rom, Ginny Hogan, Meg Christensen, Christina Cosodas, and many more. And that's it. Thanks so much for listening.