This Is What Escaping the 9 to 5 Really Looks Like.
What I didn’t mention earlier is that about a year before handing in my notice, me and my mate, the same one I built the travel blog with, had a lightbulb moment:
Why not sell the skills we’d been sharpening for years?
So we did exactly that. We were both 21, working full-time 9 to 5s and building a digital marketing agency on the side.
Finding clients was brutal at first. We couldn’t cold call during work hours, so we hit the streets on weekends, literally handing out flyers to open businesses, hoping someone would bite.
We decided to niche into dental marketing. The ticket sizes were high, the margins looked good and we landed some big national clients and dental chains. But after a while, we realised: this wasn’t it.
We weren’t enjoying the day-to-day. So, we scrapped the website, ditched the niche and hit reset.
New plan: Work with a mix of clients, give it a year and figure out who we actually enjoy working with, then niche down based on real experience, not just opportunity.
After winning the UK Search Award and stacking enough savings, I made the call:
Time to go all-in.
No more side hustle. No more safety net.
Full-time agency mode activated.
Around the same time, me and the same mate jumped back into Instagram, this time with way more experience and strategy. The platform had changed a lot since we were 12… but growing was never easier.
We scaled one of our shared meme pages from 0 to 600,000+ followers in under 8 months.
We’re not running ads on it yet, we’re focused on growth first, but it’s another asset in the arsenal. And it gave me another reason to bet on myself and walk away from the 9 to 5 for good.
I’m 22 now, building the agency full time, taking everything I’ve learned and figuring it out as I go.
It won’t be easy.
It won’t be perfect.
But I’m documenting every win, loss, and lesson so you can see exactly what it takes.
One year into my job, I’d finished my apprenticeship and stepped into a full-time SEO role, managing 19 client accounts plus still handling that £250k project from before.
But by this point, most of my real learning came after hours.
In true unfiltered fashion, I saw plenty of failure. Me and a mate launched a travel blog and went all in, testing backlink strategies (from high-quality guest posts to dodgy Fiverr links), content frameworks (AI-optimised mass pages vs. long-form, data-backed authority posts) and everything in between.
We tried it all. Most of it flopped.
We realised the golden days of niche blogging were dying fast. So we pivoted hard.
I dove deep into parasite SEO, Reddit ranking hacks, expired domains, and exact match domain testing. Not theory, actual execution. Late nights and weekends grinding through what worked and what didn’t.
That extra work gave me a huge edge at my day job. I wasn’t just doing SEO, I understood it and knew what worked.
As a result, I started getting better results. And those results got noticed.
Soon, I was handed bigger clients, larger retainers and global brands. I had the freedom to lead strategies and execute high-impact campaigns on my own terms.
Then came the turning point.
Two years in, I struck gold on one of the accounts I personally managed from start to finish – strategy, delivery, client calls, the lot.
I built and published a content strategy that exploded:
+1,094.16% increase in organic sessions
+319.61% increase in organic conversions (that’s 1,972 more phone calls YoY)
It was massive.
I submitted the campaign to the UK Search Awards 2024 under Best Local SEO Campaign (Large)… and I won.
It was the agency’s first ever UK Search Award win in the SEO department. And for me, it was the sign I’d been waiting for.
So I handed in my notice.
It was finally time to build my own thing.
What started as a way to make some cash on weekends at 14 turned into what I thought could be a serious career path by the time I was 16. I started climbing the ranks, from grassroots men’s football at Level 7, aiming one day for Level 1 and the Premier League.
Between 16 and 21, I worked my way up to Level 4, reffing semi-pro matches in front of crowds of up to 500 people. I travelled all over the South West, managing games that actually had money riding on them. Proper pressure.
Refereeing taught me more than school ever did.
It drilled in resilience, discipline and real leadership.
You have got to make split-second decisions, back yourself no matter what and hold your ground while 22 players and a few hundred angry supporters question your existence. It pushed me mentally and physically every single week.
I learned how to communicate with confidence, not just with words, but through presence, body language and tone. Respect on the pitch isn’t given, it’s earned. I had to manage teams, calm down managers, direct my assistant refs and keep the game flowing; while being watched, judged and challenged from the first whistle.
It also gave me an early crash course in team management and operations. I’d coordinate with match secretaries, plan travel, brief assistant refs and manage logistics to make sure everyone was on the same page. One mistake? All credibility gone.
I worked with hundreds of referees over the years, learning to collaborate with different personalities, adapt on the fly and lead when it mattered. One of the biggest things I learnt, was that experience and mistakes only made you stronger. The worst thing you could do was make a mistake but the consequences were so dire if you did, you could be sure you would never do it again!
And maybe the biggest lesson? The power of networking and reputation. Make the right connections, do a good job and earn respect and suddenly more matches (and more money) come your way. Refereeing is a hierarchy. If the right people back you, doors open.
But eventually, I hit a wall.
At 21, I hung up the whistle. I realised that no matter how high I climbed, I was still stuck in a system. Still reliant on people above me, still trading time for money and realised I would still be tied to the job for another 20 or 30 years even if I got to the top.
I wanted real freedom so I made the call to walk away.