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Financial freedom and independence are the states of having enough income to take care of your living expenses for the rest of your life without being employed or dependent on others. For many, this means earning passive income through investments or businesses that earn even while they sleep.

With technological improvements and the Internet’s pervasiveness, it has become even more common to read of individuals achieving these goals through entrepreneurship. One such entrepreneur is Chris Jenkins. Jenkins is an eCommerce expert and founder of luxury sneaker brand, Giovvani, who has achieved financial freedom employing his various business ventures over the years.  

Own Your Own Business

For Chris, gaining financial freedom comes with owning your own business. “If you want to make a lot of money, you need to own your own business.”

While he believes in the merit of working a 9-5 job, he encourages others to do this as a means to ultimately becoming an entrepreneur. He suggests that it can be beneficial to build a business whilst you have a job since this reduces the financial pressure and allows you to make several attempts while having a stable income. However, he believes that financial freedom from becoming an entrepreneur is more realistic and attainable in the short term. “It’ll take 20-40 years to progress to a high-earning job, and that’s if you’re lucky and beat your colleagues to the same position that you are all competing for…by owning your own business, you can skip the queue and immediately become the CEO.”

Try Different Things

The journey to financial freedom can be filled with many stops along the way. It may require trying different ideas until finally deciding on a niche and brand that works for you. Chris details that he has tried many things. He has sold real estate in Dubai with no experience and even created dropshipping websites to sell selfie sticks during its trending days. “I did website design for friends, I sold premade packaged websites online, I sold whiteboard animated videos, I did reputation management, I sold likes and followers.”

Entrepreneurship is a series of trials and errors to find a sustainable formula that works.

Chris admits that “owning your own business isn’t easy, it’s only for a certain type of person, you will have a ton of failures, and that’s to be expected but you only truly fail when you quit as it’s inevitable you will reach success if you keep on going, you obviously just have to limit financial losses.” 

Build a Sustainable Company or Brand

In 2020, after spending years traveling and working in the dropshipping and eCommerce arena, Chris decided that it was time to build a sustainable company that could grant him the desired financial independence.

“During my travels, I needed some casual sneakers but found it incredibly difficult to get anything which wasn’t covered in excessive designs and branding. This led me to spend lockdown of 2020 designing the shoes and developing relationships with suppliers which can meet the high-quality standards I’ve set for the product.”

Giovvani is a luxury sneaker brand with a focus on clean, luxury and minimally designed shoes. All shoes are hand-made and thoroughly assessed to ensure they meet strict requirements. Sales are made online through the Giovvani website, which allows the company to focus on building a cost-effective, luxury lifestyle brand.

“Whilst I still own and operate some dropshipping stores, I am now focused on growing Giovvani into a well-known global brand with a reputation for product excellence.”

To achieve financial freedom, Chris summarizes his experiences by saying, “grit and being relentless in the pursuit of your goals is essential. You cannot let it break you down and you must hold an unbreakable belief in yourself. I probably failed with 10 different businesses before I started making a good living. Then I eventually quit that business to run something more lucrative, and everything has grown from there.”

 

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