My name is Farouq, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.
You could say I’m an adventurous spirit, always looking to embark on a new challenge. I have such an appetite for exploration that after earning my degree in journalism, I found myself strangely drawn to the cyber forensic industry. It’s certainly a world away from the journalistic profession I had planned, but it didn’t take my love of writing away.
No matter which new field I find myself in, I always have my passion for writing in tow. I’ve found that my old skills can serve me in almost any area. From crafting persuasive emails to crafting thought-provoking pieces for investigations, writing is at the core of any job I do.
Admittedly, I still need to learn a lot more about cyber forensics, but who doesn’t? Every day we take on more challenges, coming from different experiences and perspectives, to move forward in our careers and expand our knowledge.
This ability to balance risk, knowledge, and an adventurous spirit has taken me far throughout my life. I don’t expect this journey to end anytime soon.
Cheers!
When bad things happen, learn from them and vow to not repeat the behaviors that allowed them to happen. When good things come along, take advantage of them and learn how to stimulate more good things like them to happen. That’s called creating your own luck, which is a far better option than trying to control the uncontrollable.
The greatest thrill in business is to experience success that you manufactured yourself. The joy comes from knowing that I did that, me. Taking pride in one’s craft and working hard for one’s own rewards is the opportunity of a lifetime. Failures and missteps will happen along the way. That’s natural. When they occur, get up, learn from them, and move forward.
We all have different ideas about what happiness is, which is why we shouldn’t all follow the same path. To embrace our unique passions and enjoy our own forms of fulfillment, we must be willing to step off the prescribed path and forge our own. No matter what your goals are, there’s always more than one way to realize them. Find yours.
I started the Smart Passive Income blog as a way to give back to the community of creative and ambitious online entrepreneurs like me. I wanted to help others answer the questions I once faced as well as share the tools and techniques that work for me.
Transparency is a huge part of this blog, as it is with everything I do online. My businesses, strategies, and income are all publicly shared for the world to see.
I created the Smart Income Podcast because I know firsthand how useful podcasts are for learning about business strategies and tactics. So, through my show, I reveal all of my online business and blogging strategies, income sources, and effective marketing tips and tricks so you can get ahead of the curve with your online endeavor.
I’m super thankful that the podcast has, since 2010, earned multiple awards, been featured in The New York Times, and has generated a total of over 60,000,000 downloads!
In 2017, my videographer Caleb Wojcik and I came up with the idea for a brand new tripod for Vloggers. 2 years later, the SwitchPod launched on Kickstarter and raised over $415,000 from over 4,000 backers, and today this growing physical product business is making waves in the video product space.
In 2015, my team and I created a podcast player called The Smart Podcast Player to encourage binge listening and subscriptions on websites. Thousands of customers later, this software company has now become FuseBox.fm, a suite of tools to help podcasters grow their business and connect with their listenership on their websites.
