The story started
About Ali's Experience!
Hey, what’s up people, As-Salam-U-Alaikum [ this is how we greet in KSA & as Muslims ]
My name is Muhammad Ali Ghulam Yasin, and obviously its kinda long, so you can call me Ali. Before I start talking about my experience at Pearl Lemon Group. I’d like to introduce myself. Basically, I’m 26 at the time of writing this, and I currently live in Saudi Arabia, but I’m originally from Pakistan (so a Pakistani Guy ^_~ ).
I’m a warehouse manager ( what?). Well, yes, it’s my daytime job. I graduated with an IT degree but have been working as a warehouse manager here in KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) for about 3 years now. Are you wondering why the warehouse? Why not any other job? It’s simple, I was forced to, because of financial problems ): plus, it’s safe from covid-19 😉
I’m an online educator as well, but that’s another story for another time.
This is me, if you’re wondering how i look like
How Pearl Lemon Group Become Part Of My Life:
I’ll start from the beginning, and hopefully you’ve already grabbed a cup of coffee (or maybe tea ;), because it’s gonna be a long story. The story will allow you to taste different flavours of my journey, and hopefully you’ll enjoy reading it, as much as I enjoyed writing it.
So, it’s covid period (pandemic) and everyone’s panicking, well, I mean THE WHOLE WORLD is in panic, except me! I’m cool (because I live in a warehouse, which is far away from the city). So, at the end of November 2020, I come across Pearl Lemon Group on angel.co, a U.S. based website for startups, angel investors, and job-seekers looking to work at startups. So, obviously I applied for the partnership program at Pearl Lemon Group (because they pay and are remote (*^▽^*)) as a Web Developer. Let’s fast forward a bit, to when I got accepted.
Upon acceptance (for a 7 day trial period), I’m rained by a nice amount of tasks, such as:
Video Editing, Technical SEO, WordPress Speed Optimization etc. And it’s not rocket science for you to guess that I was accepted for a 3 months partnership program, after successful completion of the trial period.
btw I’m on udemy.com as well, if you’re interested
I started changing (⊙_⊙)？
When I started working on my three month partnership program. Slowly but gradually, I started thinking differently. Simply speaking, I started thinking about business and learning how business is managed, how to turn some ideas into a business. I also learned how to create a process involving selling and buying, and maybe customer service, etc.
The reason for this change was Deepak (Pearl Lemon Group’s founder and CEO). During my partnership program, one of the tasks I was assigned was watching Deepaks training videos (plus attending live ones [not compulsory]) , and writing subtitles for courses he created (which are free at deepakshukla.com). Above all, the first thing that caught my attention was how he knew who was doing what, and who wasn’t working, who needed to be assigned a task, etc. He was freaking everywhere, everytime, like a ghost who never sleeps `(*>﹏<*)′. Basically, his management skills were (and are) awesome.
So, along with learning how to program, how to develop websites, I was also analysing him and learning through his videos. Understanding concepts such as motivation, productivity, using tools for every other task (and believe me, there’s always a tool available for every task, maybe in a form of website, plugin, web app etc.).
I learned a very important lesson \^o^/
Tell me something, did you ever try working maybe on YouTube? Believe me, I did (◕‿◕), and that would mean I did brainstorming, trend researching, recording videos, editing videos, publishing and I’m not done yet. Now I’m back to brainstorming and coming up with really catchy titles, writing amazing and SEO optimized descriptions, doing relevant ranked keywords research and I’m not done yet. There’s the thumbnail creation, and performing after publishing tasks such as posting my videos to all social media platforms. And finally my video is a huge success on YouTube, because I followed the correct and appropriate steps.
Guess what, What I gained through that process was nothing but failure, demotivation and burn out. What Pearl Lemon Group taught me, is not to put everything on yourself. Tell your colleagues that you need help with a task, there might be something that you don’t understand, ask your colleagues. Doing things all by yourself is a trap that we all fall in and that is why most of us failed to achieve our goals.
The lesson I learned was, don’t try doing everything by yourself. Yes! You can be a genius and yes, you can do all this. But DON’T, this is the biggest reason why people fail. So, if you’re going through such a process, get help from your friends, colleagues etc. or hire someone, that’d be closer to success than doing everything by yourself.
Heck, all giant and successful companies have co-founders, and I don’t think I need to tell you why! Now go and find a co-founder for your next big hit 🙂
What am I up to?
Honestly, after working at Pearl Lemon Group for couple of months, I started having dreams. I’m more confident in doing anything I want. I mean if I can learn wooCommerce (which I was afraid of), I’m confident that I can do anything.
So, long story short. I’ve started working on a side project and it’s an Agency.
Basically, my friend brings me projects and I hand them over to the people I recruited (project based). We started doing different kinds of projects, such as Graphic Design, IT Solutions and Web Development.
And, Did i mention…
Sorry, i think I was so into writing this article that i forgot to tell you what i really did at Pearl Lemon Group. I mean my Role in here.