I’ve Just Become a Full-Time Content Creator, Now I Might Be Going Back to 9-to-5

Here's the deal

Jun 26, 2022

I started writing on Medium in February 2021. Not knowing anything, really.

And boom… it kickstarted everything.

In 1.5 years, I’ve gone from 0 to full-time content creator, making 4 figures a month on Medium, Gumroad & YouTube with the help of Notion.

Now, I’m contemplating going back to a 9-to-5?

What happened?

The grass is greener on the other side

Don’t people say so?

It’s not that, though. I’m loving my content creator life. When it comes to the content. I’m not loving what that means from a tax standpoint in the country I live in (which is Germany).

Becoming a full-time entrepreneur in Germany isn’t easy. We Germans know our ways to make anything 100x more complicated than it needs to be.

That sucks.

As a full-time content creator, I have to make quite a decent monthly income to live comparably decently. Now, try that with a wife, a handful of kids, and a house.

🤯

Money doesn’t bring you happiness

Nope, but those two are not mutually exclusive.

Françoise Sagan, a terrific French author, once said:

“Money may not buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.”

So true.

Being a content creator is a dream. I write, I build things, I market my stuff, I do what I want when I want and how I want it, and I take time off when I need it.

In theory, that’s heaven.

Practically, it’s heavenly risky. My family depends on my paycheck. I don’t get sick leave. When I don’t create, I make less.

Luckily, I’ve built some passive income streams over the years, but those account for a small percentage of monthly income. Most of the $ is predicated on present work, daily labor, and consistent output.

If you snooze, you lose, right?

Old faithful, new opportunities

You might not know what I did before I went full-time content creator.

I am a trained linguist. I studied linguistics in Konstanz, Germany. And as such, I was employed as an external force on the machine intelligence team at Google Germany. For 8 years, that was my daytime job. Simultaneously, I tried my best to be a father of 5 and husband to my beautiful wife.

Then, Medium took off, I got a few little breakthroughs on YouTube, and I hit it off with Notion, Gumroad & Payhip, designing digital products.

Bingo. Content creator.

Now, my Google gig has come to an end. I was prepared to take my content creator solopreneur business to the next level.

Then, I got a call.

“Your boss quit. How would you like his job?”

They didn’t say it like this. But you get the gist of it.

A new role. The old company. Familiar faces. Management instead of data monkey. I’m joking about the latter (mostly).

What now

Got some advice?

A manager? Me. My kids don’t even listen to me.

Joking aside, this is quite the opportunity. It does have some downsides, though:

I won’t be able to write a lot on the side or create other content
I’d have to go back to 40 hours a week, with some crazy-ass timezone discrepancies as well
It might not be the perfect fit for me. I’ve never managed human beings without a diaper

It has some upsides as well:

good pay (even better once I negotiate my way up a little more)
sick leave, paid vacations, all that good stuff
a fixed paycheck every month, with some other benefits

In a perfect world…

I’d be rich from writing alone. That will never happen.

Nevertheless, I’ve got a fine thing going already. This new position still intrigues me. It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s shiny.

I want to keep creating, though. I’ve built something. I’m not ready to give it up. I need to find the time to keep going.

What am I going to do?