Hello, my friends!

I hope you are well and you are still sticking to your New Year resolutions. In today’s blog, there won't be anything technical, just a story from my life, something hard to believe, and you'll probably call me stupid, but hey - this blog isn’t about making me look smart, but to share a story about me.

Today, I'd love to tell you how I became a professional tiler and what I've learned from this journey.

It’s hard to tell now when exactly I've come up with the idea to do tiling for a living. But I do remember that I've been looking for a solution to change my profession and drop lorry driving. It all seems weird, right? I only passed my HGV licence four years ago, but I want to drop it? Despite a good wage and a good workplace? You see, driving trucks may seem a great job. If you look for the right place, it pays well. You can easily find a job where you don’t have to do any manual handling, enjoy long breaks at each loading point, just you, the road, maybe some podcast or your favourite playlist on Spotify. Once you get back to the yard, you leave your keys and forget about the job until your next run. And trust me, for someone who got a lorry licence to escape warehousing jobs, the first three years were like a dream. I doubled my income, stopped doing manual handling, and had no one telling me what to do.

But there is one thing you can't do as a lorry driver. You can't progress your career. Or at least, you almost never can. You start as a lorry driver and you retire as a lorry driver. And the lack of perspective for someone who just turned 30 was a no-go for me. I needed something where I could put my effort and work and be rewarded. Back in summer 2019, I thought I found my solution. That’s when I found out about the School of Code bootcamp. A free bootcamp that will make my dream of becoming a software developer come true! It was a no-brainer. I applied immediately. After registration, there were a couple of tutorials to do, then creating your avatar using CSS and basic JS. I got another email, I was in the next stage. Phone call - so here I am, all ready for it, enthusiastic like never before. I got the call, I told my story, my ambitions, I shared my passion. I was sure it went well, but I was getting nervous. A couple of days later a new email. It's the final stage, a congratulation email mentioning that out of 1000 candidates, 50 of us were invited for a live demo day when 25 of us would be enrolled in the Bootcamp. I was doing my usual math. The conclusion was simple, if I got this far, I would get in!

The final day, live in Birmingham. Ouch. 50 persons, tutors, Chris the CEO, they were all there. I was no longer confident. The imposter syndrome hit hard. I was smiling, although I found it difficult to be active or get into conversations. A couple of weeks later I received my last email at that time.

This email is still with me. Straight from the CEO, 6th December 2019, Santa Claus missed me.

"Hi,

Please read until the end of this email.

We're sorry to inform you that on this occasion, you haven't made it into our final 24 bootcampers..."

It wasn’t end of my coding journey, as you all know. But despite this being one of the biggest disappointments in my career, this email was also a trigger for me to find a substitute to grow. To find a way to progress further. At that time, the only way for me to progress was to go self-employed and start a business.

We all know what happened right at the beginning of 2020. The pandemic hit the world and changed our lives forever. At that time, my wife had been already self-employed, running her beauty salon. Also, my daughter had just turned one year old. With my wife forced to close her business, my ambitions had to wait. Lorry driving was our only source of income, so I quickly changed my job to TradeTeam in Burton. I knew beer needed to be delivered to shop shelves, and this was a safe bet to survive the pandemic.

It’s getting long, and I haven’t really started my story about tiling. Please be with me for another moment; the background to this decision is just as important.

During the pandemic, everyone who usually would spend savings on holidays started doing home improvements, creating home offices, renovations of all kinds. I thought - this is it. I will become a general builder and make tons of money! I felt excited. The plan was just brilliant, apart from one thing.

I had never done any kind of home improvement. Not even a DIY, since I rent a house and never had to sort anything out myself. It's hard to believe, but at that time, I had just a screwdriver and a hammer at home, not even a drill. Imagine, say, you're an accountant, but one day you decide you want to be a car mechanic, even though you've only been to Halfords for car repairs in the past. It was that kind of decision.

It was a tough discussion with my wife. I had no arguments apart from wanting more from life than being a lorry driver. But I was prepared. I'd Googled the best tiling course in the UK, located in Newcastle, and it would take just 2 weeks before I'd be ready to start earning money at customers' properties. Only £2000, then I'd also need a van, tools, business insurance, and many other things.

To this day, it's hard to believe she agreed. I took a loan for the course, the van, and tools, and went for my first-ever bootcamp – in tiling. How naive was I? The 2 weeks flew by. I had my van, my tools, an £8,000 loan in the bank, and no idea what to do next. You see, it's a bit like software engineering; the portfolio you build in a bootcamp isn't enough for clients to let you come in and redo their floors or walls. They can smell a newbie right away, as you lack confidence. I needed to adjust my plan. I needed a mentor, my ‘Senior Developer’ in home improvement.

I was lucky again. I knew someone, a good friend of my cousin, who was a general builder. In this sector, it's hard for an employee, so when I called him, he came to my house the next day so we could find an agreement. What did I have to offer? Well, definitely commitment. He knew straight away that I would build my own business sooner or later, with tools and a van there was no doubt about it. But he also knew that I would be his best bet, as I needed to listen, learn, ask questions, and most importantly understand WHY we do something this way if I ever want to go on my own. He was also experienced, and I bet he could estimate how long it would take me before I’d build up my skills and confidence.

We worked together almost a year. I made hundreds of mistakes, as we did all kinds of work, not only tiling. But I almost never made the same mistake twice, and that's what mattered most. I learned everything from scratch, spent another few hundred pounds on tools once I realised how much more I needed if I wanted to work on my own. You see, in home improvement, no two houses are the same. And there's nothing like a straight floor or walls in the UK. I also gained one more thing: a lifelong friend, who will always come with help without asking any questions. For that alone, this journey was well worth it.

It was time to start doing my first solo jobs. With websites like MyBuilder, it's a bit easier to start off when you're building your career. With all the experience and lessons learned from Peter, I was finally ready. And things looked good initially, apart from three things. One, we had two little children at home, and both me and my wife were self-employed. This meant that no matter what, I had to get back home by 5.30 PM to take care of my kids once my wife started her first client for the afternoon. Clients don't care what your wife does. They care that the job is not finished, and I am leaving my workplace. And don't get me wrong, I'd do the same. The second one is, my kids have no idea what I've been doing all day. They aren't aware I could be on my knees for the past 10 hours lifting heavy tiles or mixing adhesive. They want a daddy that will come back home full of energy to play with them until mom is back. And the third thing is that running your own business never ends at 5 PM. This is when your source of income for that day ends. But there are still messages to reply to, estimates to complete around town, shopping to do for the following day, invoices to send or collect, and a hundred other things. At some point, my wife and I concluded that at this point in our lives, we couldn't live like this. So a few months later, I put my tools in the shed, leaving my plan to create a big building company for the future, and prioritised my children. And I don't regret this decision. Not long after, I got accepted for the School of Code Bootcamp and I've never looked back since then.

There are a couple of lessons from this I’d like to share.

One - even though you've never done something before, it doesn't mean you won’t be good at it at some point. It takes several hours, weeks, or maybe months, but if you put in hard work, you become a specialist. It worked for me as a lorry driver, worked for me as a self-employed tiler, and I know that it will work for me as a software developer.

Two - it only takes one person to make one decision to get you going. In my journey, it was Peter, who didn’t look at me as someone without prior experience, but as someone who is enthusiastic, motivated, and committed to hard work to learn. He gave me a chance, and I gave it back with all my hard work and dedication when working together.

Three - when opening your business, try not to get loans. Start with what you got and buy something only if it's absolutely necessary to complete the next task. If anything goes wrong, you don’t want to be paying it off like me now, haha.

But my key takeaway is, don’t be scared, what's the worst thing that can happen if you don’t succeed? Think about how much you will learn alongside. For me, that was problem-solving, adapting to new situations, planning, customer relations, and so much more. Do I regret this? Hell no, I would do this again!

Thank you for being with me today. If you enjoy this, please share it or leave me a comment :-) and I will see you soon!