Hi Im Elliot
and welcome to my blog,
I’m from Dublin, Ireland, and have been working in marketing since I graduated from college with a Bachelor of Business in Marketing in 2014. However, I’m not like your typical college graduate.
Instead of going off job hunting. I used my newly acquired marketing skills to work on my own businesses. I’ve learned a lot in my 4 years in college and even more in my 7 years of running my own websites and social media pages.
But that part of life is kind of boring. Let me tell you a little more about the real me…
It all began in 1991...
Little Elliot was born with a head full of curls and two rosy red cheeks. I spent my childhood growing up in an outer suburban village in South Dublin.
It was a nice little place and I do sometimes miss my old friends and all the memories I had there.
I went to an Irish speaking primary school that teaches the curriculum primarily in Irish, so I’m technically bilingual. But I guess there’s not much use for the Irish language outside of Ireland.
I lived in Dublin for about 10 years until my parents separated. My father was a heavy drinker which didn’t help the relationship as you can imagine.
So when my mum moved out my dad raised me and my three brothers for a few years before we eventually moved out of my dad’s to live with my mum full time. In between that time me and my brothers lived with my aunt because my dad checked himself into rehab for alcohol addiction.
A lot of people reflect on their parent’s break up and say it was hard. However, on reflection, I think I took it in my stride. I mean it was difficult at times when I would miss my dad or my mum. But overall, I feel it made me a stronger person today.
I’ve always had an easy-going outlook on life and always try to stay positive in spite of what life throws at me. I feel like a positive mindset is a superpower.
When I moved to be with my mum. We moved to a town on the east coast of Ireland in Co. Meath. My aunt lived there too so my mum was near her direct family.
There was a lot of moving for me around that time. I spent a good two years moving schools and homes until finally, my mum secured a house in the area.
Then the dawning of teenagehood began…
The Bold Teenage years - 2000s
Fast forward a few years and I’m a teenager. At that time I was living with my aunt. I just began secondary school or what you Americans would call middle school and was off to a bad start.
I didn’t get along well with people in my new school and was always arguing with teachers.
Every week I was on a new report card. It was always for silly stuff like talking in class and constantly disrupting people sitting near me.
When the teacher would call me out to be quiet I would give them lip back. Frankly, I was just being a little shit.
On reflection, I think my parent’s separation affected me more than I like to admit. I also think I was just looking for attention from people. Perhaps a lack of attention at home made me overcompensate in school.
If you’re looking at that picture above and wondering who I am. I’m the one in the green jumper and shirt. If you’re thinking I look too young to be drinking alcohol. I had just turned 18 and the legal age in Ireland is 18.
Because of constant behavioral issues, my mum decided to take me out of that school and move me to a private school about 5km away.
It was a much smaller school with a nice community of teachers and pupils. Still, the behavioral issues didn’t stop until my 4th year.
I believe I had a change of mindset towards exams and my future when I turned about 17 years old. I just decided to stop arsing around and get my finals done.
And then boom the news hits... hes dead
Did you ever just begin to try and better yourself and then something creeps up and slaps you in the face. That was this moment, we got the news that my dad died. He went back on the drink and basically drank himself to death this time.
The next few years of my life were all over the place. As you can imagine the trauma of losing a parent at a young age is tough. The year after he died was quite the emotional rollercoaster. I started college the same year he died.
The college years...
College was full of fun and new experiences. I began college studying Recreation and Leisure. On reflection, I think it was the best course I could have done. I was exposed to so many different avenues of life.
I became qualified in so many different leisure and sports disciplines from rugby, to swimming, football to athletics. But the main goal of that degree was to become a qualified personal trainer.
That was one of my goals early on in life so I decided to pursue it. I ended up getting qualified as a personal trainer and working in leisure centers and gyms for a few years during college.
In the first picture, you can see me trying to light a fire with a box of matches. Wow thinking back on that house I lived in during my third year makes me shiver.
As a student, you’re always sticking to a tight budget so spending money on oil to heat the house isn’t your main priority
In the other pictures, you can see me having a good time and a very drunk time at that. I mostly drank in my first year at college and calmed down after.
I think drinking so much was a bad idea especially because I hadn’t fully gotten over the death of my dad. My first year in college was definitely the toughest for me mentally.
But the thing about freshman year is that every one parties. It’s kind of what is expected of you or you just become a social outcast.
Graduation 2014 & my first blog
2014 was the year I graduated from college with a 2.1. It wasn’t too shabby despite the fact that I had never truly put my all into the exams.
After I finished college I lived in the North West of the country because of a relationship I was in at the time. I ended up doing Special Needs Assistant(SNA) work. A SNAs job is to take care of children with special needs. So I worked in various schools and care centers for a few years.
On the side, I had also launched a gaming blog called CODifornia(now offline) and a gaming accessories website called ButtonBash Gaming(also offline).
Below are the first 6 months stats for CODifornia. I half-arsed writing articles and never truly put much effort into it. That’s why these stats aren’t too impressive.
You’ll see the power of not making half an effort on articles if you continue reading.
CODifornia was a Call of Duty guides website where I managed to rack up a few million pageviews in 2016 with the release of Black Ops 3. And I did it all with zero backlinks.
After the blog picked up steam I integrated ButtonBash Gaming into it and drove traffic from the blog to the store. I managed to sell about $5,000 worth of products from completely cold leads.
The relationship ended in 2017 and I moved back home to my mum’s in Meath. The next chapter of my life began when I took the leap and decided to move to Thailand.
Thailand & Teaching children
Moving to Thailand was such a life-changing experience. I spent a year teaching English to grade 2 and 3 pupils. I also traveled to Vietnam and different parts of Thailand. The freedom of traveling and exploring different cultures is priceless.
However, website building and blogging went to the wayside. I ended up losing the domain for CODifornia and that was the end of that.
After spending a year in Thailand I went home to Ireland to recoup and think seriously about my future. This is when I discovered Stoicism.
Stoicism and finding mental strength
When I lived back in Ireland I decided to get fully qualified as a teacher which would mean going back and repeating some subjects from high school and then completing a Masters in Education.
I returned to education for a while and after a few months I decided it wasn’t for me. It was then I made the decision to have another crack at making websites and earning money online.
In my year back home I discovered Stoicism through a great YouTube channel called Everyday Stoic.
For those that don’t know what Stoicism is. Stoicism is a school of philosophy that began in ancient Greece and Rome around the 3rd century, BC. It is a philosophy of life that maximizes positive emotions, reduces negative emotions, and helps you build your character.
Practicing stoicism really helped me strengthen my mindset on a lot of things. The main thing it teaches is to not care about the things that are beyond your control. It may not seem difficult but many people let this cripple their actions.
Fearing rejection, fearing what others think. It all stems from caring about what others think. I learned that I need to remember that what others think doesn’t matter because what others think is beyond my control.
November 2019 A new beginning
With a fresh and strong mindset, I decided to launch Kavo Gaming. The goal was to get it to one hundred thousand pageviews a month by November 2020.
So I set off writing and covering a range of different games from Call of Duty to Need for Speed. I wrote over 150 articles in the first year.
However, success came way faster than I expected. Within the first 6 months of launch, I had racked up 320,000 pageviews per month. Something that I never thought was possible.
As you can see from my analytics screenshot above the blog was only up a short 3 months and was pulling in over 14K monthly pageviews.
Not only were the pageviews incredible but this blog is in the gaming niche. A heavily competitive niche, which is extremely oversaturated.
For once I had realized that not half arsing things pays off big time. One of the main reasons I didn’t grow as quickly as I did with CODiforia was because I wrote short lazy articles that provided little or no value to the readers.
The big G (Google) doesn’t like low-value content and neither do readers.
2021... the dawn of personal branding
2021 marked a turning point for me. With the madness of Covid 19 and being separated from friends and family, I sought out to create more streams of online income.
I said to myself why not combine my teaching skills with my qualifications. So I made the decision to teach digital marketing primarily blogging and website creation.
But this time I wanted it to be personal. I wanted to make myself the brand and offer my services as myself and not just another faceless company or brand.
The blog is growing every day and it feels great to be able to help people make their mark online.
I’m going to return to this page in a year’s time with an update on how things are going.
For anyone who made it this far. You now know what I’m about. If you have any questions or need help. Use the contact form below.
I wish you all the best on your online journey.