MY STEEM STORY

A Power House Creatives Initiative

Everyone has a story – and all our stories have something in common… we all started from nothing and knew nothing. People want to hear stories. They want to hear OUR stories — they want to know who we are, where we are from, what we are doing, who and what we love, what we have learnt and where we are going. People also want us to hear their story! Being a part of the Steem network is an individual journey for every single one of us and through this initiative we will share our stories not only with all who are already here – hopefully inspiring, guiding and informing them… but doing the same for everyone else in the world too. Through our stories we will prick the curiosity of those who have not yet arrived and illuminate and widen the already open doors to our one in a million blockchain.

We invite and encourage each and every one of you to participate and share your stories too! You can find the "how to" details at the end of this post.

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MY STEEM STORY - BY @ZORD189

Where my Steem Journey began

_{(How you first discovered Steem and your very first thoughts and impressions “as you landed”.)}

About 2 and a half years ago, I was at one of the most important crossroad in my life. I was at a place I wasn't happy with, my animation job at that time. I left an advertising agency which I now called my family to venture into an animation industry just because of this term,'Try everything while you're still young'. And so I did

2 years into my first ever animation company and I've found out that it was literally a slave factory and I was the slave working time in and time out. Just being beautified with our own PCs and modern corporate cubicles but the work still is slaving. I dreaded those 2 and half years with that company and I thought I wouldn't be going animation anymore. A friend hit me up one day and to cut the story short, he was trying to pull me into an MLM business with the motive of just making money out of me being his downline. I was impressed and affected by their business plan. Eventually, I was one of them.

That business took a lot out of me, other than monetary terms. I've learned many valuable lessons through dealing with all the ups and down during that business venture, and an expensive one at that. About a year later, I told myself that I couldn't continue doing this business for its principles and pure greed for money. So I left the business and was back in my animation industry without a clue on which direction to go. Deep down, animation was still my first passion but I knew that that wasn't where the money is at. I've decided to give animation another go.

Upon leaving the business, my mindset was changed for the better. I was more aware of opportunities and I had an entrepreneur mindset. I was thinking more about my future and what extra income would mean to my family. After a week out from the business, my itchy fingers started scrolling through the internet and came across probably one of the most pioneered Steemian's video on a site called Mashables. He was none other than @jerrybanfield. I saw his promotion selling off 'I can teach you how to make 1000$ a month' selling at lower than RM100 (25usd). Wanting to look for additional income, I decided to purchase his videos in hopes to find something valuable.

He started talking about Steemit and you know....the rest was history.

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My initial challenges & how I overcame them

_{(Share a bit about the difficulties you faced at the beginning, whether it was navigation, post creation, engagement – whatever – how you resolved them and how differently you feel about it now)}

About 2 years ago, Steemit and the Steem blockchain was still at its infancy stage. I came in, lots of spam and one image post everywhere...Ahhhhh those were the days. i was nevertheless super excited about this newfound beginning. I didn't know where it would take me or how much it would affect me, but I spent RM100 for this, so it better give me something good.

I was struggling to find content to write as I'm not a blogger. I'm more of a visual person and so I started off with sharing some of the photos that I took when I was more fond of photography. I started joining contest by some of the more prominent Steemians and started looking for more opportunities on how to actually make real money. Being a tech-savvy person, I almost immediately search the web and facebook for any Steemians in Malaysia. If not, my entrepreneur side of me would want to pioneer this region. Soon, I found #teammalaysia who was and is still led by @bitrocker2020. During that time, Teammalaysia only had around 10-20 active members and when I joined the community, we've expanded a lot since then. From a mere 100 members Facebook group to now over 1000 members.

I found myself the first community. A word of advice to those who haven't find any community and wants to be a lone ranger, don't! The whole experience of Steem is about the community and you won't want to miss that out.

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My Steem blockchain knowledge

_{(Give a little bit of background on your blockchain knowledge when you began your Steem journey versus now.)}

I knew Steem had something to do with crypto and at the time of joining, I was curious. I was wondering how the whole system worked. What is a blockchain? What is token? What is bitcoin? All of these questions came to me as I started my journey here on Steem.

I knew that if I wanted to be serious about this, I needed to do some research myself. Just to make sure I wasn't in another scam and ponzi scheme which many people claims crypto/bitcoin to be. I mean, the market acceptance for crypto in Malaysia is still so skeptical and only news about how bitcoin is a scam comes out on news most of the time.

After researching, learning to transfer crypto, learning to use the exchanges, I now finally know the difference between Steemit.com and Steem.

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My Steem favourites

_{(What are the things you do mostly on the blockchain – is it blogging, vlogging? What front ends do you like to make use of and what content genre’s do you generally focus on?)}

I guess along the way I started using some of my skills to help 'beautify' the Steem blockchain a little. From conventional blogging about life (which I now still do), I started helping Steemians create banners, signatures, posters, logos for whatever initiative and need they're in. I do this because I realized that Steemians were lacking of pretty things on their blogs. So I started helping and giving my services.

I also started writing animation guides and tutorials for Steem because I find a lack of this niche. I do most of my blogging on WordPress, thanks to @steempress (founded by @fredrikaa and @howo). I still enjoy using Steemit.com as my main condenser but I would probably switch over to @steempeak soon because the team over there are doing exciting and amazingly good work for all of us!

My golden nugget advice

_{(What advice would you offer to those that are unfamiliar or new to this space)}

My advice would be to actually BE PART OF THE PEOPLE here on Steem. Whether you're here for the games or money, you really need to get yourself involve with the communities and engagement is key here on Steem. Interact with people, engage genuinely and you will soon find that this is where the Steem blockchain shines the most, in its communities of wonderful people.

My Steem hood & its peeps

_{(Share a little about the communities you belong to, discord servers you frequent and perhaps a handful of the awesome people you follow)}

Now, my only two communities that I'm part of is @steemitbloggers (#powerhousecreatives) and @teammalaysia (Country Community). These are both where I belong and would probably be here until God knows when but these are also the communities that have kept me going and have been there for me. Over the 2 years here, I've made many friends from here and abroad and even though we've not seen each other in real life, they're as real as can be.

For Teammalaysia though, we often hold meetups for Steemians but no more as of late as many have gone inactive. We were once the most active home communities on Steem. I used to also host radio shows weekly called 'Teh Tarik Sundays' for Teammalaysia Steemians.

For #powerhousecreatives, mannnn..... if you're not already a member, you need to come into our discord now. This is where you'll find the strongest of bonds and unity among its members. Led by @jaynie, we as a community have come so far and we're all here to fight for the best of this blockchain! On the more chilling days, we create some of the best content here on the blockchain. Basically a hub for passionate Steemians to dwell.

To Conclude…

And so that’s a wrap from me – My Steem Story!
Hope you enjoyed it!

And to keep the fun going, and as per the general instructions below… I am tagging the following five people to join in too! (but if you are reading this without being tagged… you are also welcome to take part… just check out the instructions below!)

ok here goes…
@bitrocker2020
@elizacheng
@littlenewthings
@redpalestino
@kaerpediem

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