The Revamp for Euphorya in 2016 - Issue #20
My first startup website i did for my company Euphorya, i use blogger, hack the xml and just get it done! Simple clean site, i was inspired by Apple.com. I’m a no coder, but i’m happy enough to make this. It was early days in 2011!
Euphorya is my 1st ever startup company founded in 2011. From graphic design, I added more services and products to the company. As we grow we hired people online to do stuff for us, but there are pros and cons dealing online or with people. But is all good! I’m happy. But I was a very new startup solo-founder! So as years grow I wanted to improve the business model!
There is a lot of homework to be done, from jumping to a whole new platform of web designing. Every day is very challenging because from time to time things will change in the terms of product market and also the understanding of building digital products online. So take a good look at those days where I started to use Blogspot as a platform with the one-page area where I could put all the beautiful things on the pages of the websites to run my creative design agency. I like the idea of the platform having strong analytics and SEO with some nice graphs showing some real-time results. Is amazing to see these things. In my first 2 years running the registered firm in 2011 and 2012 running the platform with amazing google products was awesome. I’ve always love google products and how I build stuff with the platform that they have.
From google maps, google apps (now know as Gsuite by google cloud), Blogspot, google analytic, Google AdWords, Google Adsense, Google API, and other platforms like youtube is really amazing how you could grow your business in terms of marketing. Back then it was all marketing, getting your brand name out there around the circles of your friends and family. It was really awesome, the ultimate goal to be able to provide these services from graphic designs and web design was amazing. We had a lot of great responses, people love the quality of the product, they love the stability, the security, the design, the funny & cool things we did. Those were the days.
Firrusanwar is my friend from my hometown Yishun, I introduce him to the business model of Euphorya, we shared alot of stuffs about tech. He have no background knowledge about tech. We are just curious about it! So we collaborated and work together to make things happen. This photo was in my room back in 2011.
So I wanted to do things differently, it was then I had to go through a stage where I have to bring to a different platform. Which is learning WordPress. It was really tough. It was back-end, dedicated hosting, themes, plugins, learning how to use FTP, and tons of other stuff in terms of security. I realize WordPress isn’t everything, after all, there are more programming languages like PHP and HTML/CSS/javascript that could do even more and it depends on your ideas of how the interface and experience work running a platform on the website. It was challenging because i had to juggle time recording videos, editing videos, publishing video content on social media, and running it live from back to back. Tons of graphic design work from the year 2013–2016 that I haven’t even upload on social media. Busy completing all my client's work. I had no time to see the deepest part of our data analytic results from the demographics and run time. I only had smaller real-time graphs to show me but it was okay, anyways content become viral, it created impact and also the marketing was perfect. Juggling and struggling were never easy to manage on all these. I feel like I was studying at school running all these. I felt like if I fail this exam it will suck so badly. I had to do better.
And now, I tell myself to do better in my exams. As in the way i do things around now. Is very challenging because project time frame and managing really technical stuff is not easy! No one would understand honestly. It was all sad and gloomy for me because I felt I was totally stressed out and exhausted. I took so much break, travel, and also filled my time to recharge myself spiritually which is i spend time more on praying and trying to understand more things. It was really difficult and age was catching up, people around me see me as if I’m doing okay or things will be fine. Which is not. Every day is a brand new day for me to understand to learn as I take it slowly and clearly. Is really important to know what you’re really doing. Your intentions and ideas must be very crystal clear. Super clear that you could execute well without any irrational decisions, doubts or worrying so much from the voice of others' opinions.
The first product in Euphorya, Graphic Design — illustrates the faces of people! Launch in 2011. All we got to do is just trace the image. It was something I really like because it gives a branding identity to people. The colors suck, but I like the tracing! Wish they have a tool that can do very detailed vector drawing!
I began to listen to myself quietly again, it was tough because so many people around me had good advices and great ideas for me.
And i always been trying to understand how people think and how people around me are just saying oh this is okay, or this is not good or this is better. So with the people around me telling me what to do with my life or work life, it was tough. Because some of them were my families and friends, I love listening to them but is just that at times you got to know what you really want to do and what you wanna focus on in life or work. So it was very challenging yet I have to learn to take care of myself well, tell myself to be quiet, and listen to my inner voice again. So i spend a lot of time away from all these distractions and focus on what I really wanna do and to build all the awesome products and services again. It has benefited a lot of people in many ways, so I must tell myself to do my work properly and get things done well. Everything else, find balance.
I didn’t know why we need this pen. But i ordered this customized pens for business purpose. It was very exciting because i just started my business. Pen is for signature for Cheques & also for simple drafting i use when i’m with client.
Originally published at www.fajarsiddiq.com on October 20, 2016.