I am a proud ONPASSIVIAN!

I was born in a mud-brick house that did not have electricity or plumbing in the autumn of 1971, sometime after the harvest season. That’s what my mum used to tell me. Nobody was sure of the exact date. Who cares anyway? 

 

We used to live in this two-room mud-brick home as a whole family of six, including grandma. No electricity, no plumbing, no phone. There was only one telephone in the whole village. 

 

We had a small orchard in the backyard and a little river next to it, where we used to fish and swim with friends. I had a very happy childhood. Actually, I hated a few things, such as carrying water in buckets from across the street. Black plastic shoes always hurt my feet. I hated the black uniform at primary school. I used to take it off and put it in my bag right away when I was out of school. 

 

I was 5 years old; the school age was 6. Some friends had already started school. I wanted to go too. They did not accept me because of my age. I kept bugging my father every day. His foot was injured. He had a hard time walking, but he was fed up and went to the local authorities to ask if I could attend school. They accepted me. It took two months. I was so happy and successful at school. 

 

When I finished primary school, there was an exam to go to a boarding school three hours away from home. I heard that those kids were much more successful than the ones in our town. I told my family I wanted to test myself so I could take the exam. After I passed the exam, I told them I wanted to go to that school. They were against it. In particular, my mum did not want it. I could convince my father. He accepted because he did not want to be an obstacle in my future. 

 

I was not even 11 when I went to boarding school. I still see all of my friends from there now. They were like my family. At the end of high school, we had to take an exam to go to university. All of my choices were in Istanbul, the biggest city in Turkey. I did not care much about which faculty had to be in Istanbul. 

 

Poverty was the most difficult part of studying at university. I had to work part-time, being a waiter, handing out newspapers, etc. I used to work at a hotel in the summertime. One summer, I was a cook on a sailing boat. I have learned English and graduated with English Language Teaching. 

 

After graduation, when I started to work as a teacher at a private school, I walked into the teachers’ room. I talked to them; one of them had 17 years of experience, another one was about to retire, etc. I saw myself 10 years later, 17 years later, and 25 years later. I said, "no need to repeat, no excitement." It was there that I could see it live. 

 

My ex-wife was an American. We met over here in Turkey. After I finished my guiding course and got my license to be a tour guide, I decided to open a travel agency. 

 

It was the year 1998 when I had my first email address and Michael from NY was our guest. He made a small website for my travel agency as a gift in 1999. We sold a couple of tours out of there. Next year, we asked a German friend of ours. He has made a larger one for us. I have learned SEO. Our site was ranked number one on Google for our main popular keywords. That was easy back then:)). My wife was doing the sales and I was doing the SEO, official stuff, and guiding the guests. We have worked very hard and made very good money. Then we separated at the end of ten years. I continued guiding only, staying away from online businesses too. I did not even use social media properly. 

 

I have remarried a Turkish girl and have two kids now. I had to sell our beautiful dream house with a garden, just like the one I had when I was a kid. Because of the crisis in tourism in Turkey, I invested our only savings into an offline business and went bankrupt. One year later, when tourism opened up again, I went back to guiding. And this time, the pandemic hit tourism. 

 

I researched job opportunities and decided to educate myself about digital marketing since I have done SEO and Google Ads before. I have gone over them to see what has changed. I started to study social media. I have found an incredible amount of information online. These are courses given by internet gurus. 

 

Meanwhile, I have found ONPASSIVE. I said: 

''No need to learn more about digital marketing because ONPASSIVE will do it on my behalf of me''. 

 

I have always believed what Mr. Ash also stated:

''We were not created to pay the monthly bills, we have a mission in this life.'' 

 

My mission is to help orphans, poor families, their kids, and homeless people. That's why I have made this website, and that's why I delayed buying a pair of shoes for my kids and some other basic needs so that I could buy multiple founder accounts, and spend money for this site to stay up on Google. 

 

Thank you, my brother, Mr. Ash. 

You gave me this chance, you gave me hope to realize my dreams.

 

Thank you for reading:)))

 

Proud ONPASSIVIAN Süleyman Tıraşoğlu