It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for Julian Cañita when he decided to live abroad with his wife. Struggling to find a stable job then, he had to step up his game and hone more skills to succeed in the demands of tomorrow.
That was when he discovered digital marketing. Now the country’s leading Facebook Ads Strategist and Coach, Julian has been lending his expertise to freelancers and entrepreneurs here and abroad.
Read through the article as Julian shares with us how he overcame the difficulties he faced as he was getting started as a digital strategist. Also, he discusses here the strategies he’s been utilizing, which he was able to use to his advantage. Moreover, he shares here some tips, which you can take note of if you are planning to start a business.
Tell us about your business. When did you start it, and why?
In a nutshell, I help entrepreneurs grow their business online by using Facebook advertising to generate more leads and sales and by teaching them how to do it through various programs 🙂
I started doing this back in 2015 as a means to generate income. My wife was assigned in Penang, Malaysia, and I decided to live with her. I couldn’t get a job there.
I discovered digital marketing and how people are actually willing to pay for someone to take it off their hands so I started freelancing.
We went back home in 2017 and I got involved in multiple communities of freelancers and entrepreneurs. I discovered that Facebook advertising is still young here and that people were actually interested to learn how to do it for themselves. So I started teaching it and developed learning and coaching programs around it.
At first, I started doing it as a means to earn. Pero when I came back home and saw how small business owners and entrepreneurs struggle with making their businesses grow, I kind of found a purpose in it. I really love teaching it especially in my live workshops where some entrepreneurs experience Facebook ads for the first time, and you’ll see it in them na sobrang daming possibilities yung na-open up sa kanila and they get excited and reinvigorated 🙂 That’s a big reason why I continue to do it now 🙂
What are the challenges you’ve encountered as a business owner?
For me, it’s really the learning curve when getting started.
To be honest, I feel like I’m there pa din.
What I mean is growing up, I, personally, was never taught to be an entrepreneur. Not at school, not at home, not with my friends.
So when I jumped into it, sobrang kapa even until now.
I wasn’t trained to sell, so client acquisition was very difficult for me getting started.
Also, I didn’t know how to hire and delegate. So for years, I did everything alone which limited my growth.
I incorporated in Malaysia without doing any sort of validation on my first business idea which flopped and left me spending 40k in incorporation fees that went to nothing.
Even here, when I got home, I had to educate myself on incorporation, registration and taxation before I considered getting help and asking others about it.
It was probably only this year (2018) that I learned to really be a business owner and not merely a service provider like I have been for the past couple of years.
3) What were your problems with filing your taxes before you used Taxumo?
When we were living in Malaysia, we were applying for our home loan.
I didn’t have the proper documentation for my income. After passing every document required, the bank only considered my wife for the home loan because I was not employed. To cut the long story short, that whole process caused a lot more hassle with the bank and the developer of our home. It even caused us to incur very sizeable penalty fees.
I definitely didn’t want this to happen again for instances like needing to apply for a visa. So upon coming home, I tried educating myself on taxation but I found it very difficult to understand. And to be honest, I was quite fearful of making a mistake in the whole process.
4) How did Taxumo help you manage our business?
From where I was before Taxumo, it made everything so much easier!
Three things that worried me were filing the correct papers, filing the correct taxes, and lining up.
Then Taxumo came along and saw that all the papers were completely taken care of, computations were done for me. Plus, NO LINING UP! As an impatient guy, this was really a no-brainer for me.
Since then, it’s just been a very simple routine for me to file and pay for my taxes every start of the month.
THEN TRAIN Law came along.
And even through this time, Taxumo helped me adjust and educated me on what the changes were. I’m super thankful for that.
There were a couple of times wherein I had issues with how I was filing and inputting. I then reached out to the support team. They immediately gave me feedback on what I did wrong which cut my payable tax from 70k to 10k!
The offer of Taxumo was definitely a no-brainer for me. And the clincher and what keeps me staying on really is the level of support both in educating me as a taxpayer and specific help I need 🙂
5) What advice can you give to people who want to start their own business?
My advice based on my own experience really focuses on what you are best at.
When I tried to do everything, it stopped me from growing my business. I was always stuck at a level which I did not want to be: servicing just a couple of clients at a low monthly rate.
But when I learned to let go of control and to trust, that was when I started to experience growth.
It was when I sought the help of other people and services like Taxumo that I was able to really focus on what I am best. It took away the stress to worry brought about the things I had difficulty understanding 🙂
Key Takeaway:
Juggling through the heavy work demands and personal errands at home is definitely a challenge for freelancers and entrepreneurs alike. Constraining your productivity, the complicated tax filing process consumes the time you could have utilized to focus on your business and profession.
However, worry no more. You can save some time going through the time-consuming tax filing process and focus on growing your business with TAXUMO PREMIUM. Taxumo Premium is our convenient and complete solution that will take care of your tax needs. We can also process your ITR so you can finally travel to the countries you love, using all the time you freed up. All you need is a computer with an internet connection, and you’re all set!
BIO: Julian Cañita is the country’s leading Facebook Ads Strategist and Coach. With over 100 clients and 800 students, he has used Facebook advertising to scale small businesses both here and abroad. Over his 4 years of experience, he has spent more than 10 million pesos on ads to generate businesses more than 10 million dollars in revenue. You may learn more about Julian Cañita and his services on his website: www.juliancanita.com
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