The Hardest Project of My Life (So Far)

I’ve worked on many complex projects before.
Big client setups. Long nights. Tight deadlines.

But nothing came close to this. A project that evolved over time.
At first, it was just a simple re-design for an existing brand.
Or at least that is what I thought it was.

I saw huge potential to boost revenue for one of my clients that had an outdated online presence and declining sales. At first, I didn’t really think about how I was going to be paid here. I was just certain it would be worth it in the long run.

And then I started developing something new from scratch like crazy. I was committed to make something so good no rational person could decline, ever. And in total, I’ve probably spent more than 2000 hours creating something, no one really asked for.

Sounds naive? It was.

Where it all started

To be fair, I skipped a few parts of the original story that are worth mentioning here.
The idea I had was never really focused around just one client. It was for a big franchise that was active not only in Europe, but also in the United States.

But unfortunately, the very first prototype I created, didn’t really get a chance to prove itself because the client quickly got out of business for unrelated reasons. Thinking about it now, this is probably where I should have just stopped all my efforts. There has been enough damage already. Both physically and mentally.

I was barely sleeping, our second child was on the way and I was doing night shift after night shift because that’s about the only time I could really focus on this project without getting distracted by anything else.

Looking back at version 1 – if it is even appropriate to call it that, because it was more of a rushed beta version than anything else – I can see how much I’ve learned in just these two years. This hands-on experience taught me things I never learned in school or university. It showed me yet again how important it is to get your hands dirty if you really want to grow as a person.

But after the original recipient of my product got out of business, the management of the other business lost interest in my solution. Not because it was a bad product, but because the result had to be rushed and it looked different from what everyone expected.

The CEO of that company was afraid I wouldn’t be able to create something he liked. He is a huge fan of Shopify and always wanted me to use Shopify as a solution. But I decided to go with WooCommerce instead. He didn’t like this. But he also didn’t know that you could make WooCommerce look and behave almost exactly like Shopify – but without all the disadvantages that come with it for a business like the one he was running.

After a lot of back and forth, several discussions and almost merging our companies, we decided to part.

And so, this was no longer a project I could hand off, invoice, or quietly walk away from. This one stayed. Every mistake stayed. Every doubt stayed. But I was so invested into this project, I just couldn’t let go.

And that changed everything.

Why this one was different

Client work is stressful – but it has an escape hatch.

When things go wrong, there’s a contract. A scope. A deadline where responsibility ends. You can finish the task, close the ticket, and mentally move on.

This project didn’t offer that.

Ok, that was a lie.

It gave me several exit options, but none that would have made me happy.
I would have had to agree that I failed and this was not an option. And so, I just kept going.

Every decision was mine.
Every wrong assumption cost real money.
Every delay felt personal.

It was really scary sometimes, and still is.

There was no “client” to hide behind – only the uncomfortable question:

Why am I still doing this?

The invisible cost

What surprised me most wasn’t the workload.
It was the constant background pressure.

The kind that follows you into the evening.
That makes rest feel undeserved.
That turns free time into guilt.

I underestimated how draining it is to build something that depends entirely on your own judgment – branding, suppliers, pricing, positioning, logistics, trust.

Not the exciting parts.
The boring, heavy, unskippable parts.

The parts that you have to deal with personally.
Every single second of your day.

Somewhere along the way, I was also diagnosed with ADHD – which didn’t explain everything, but finally explained why this kind of slow, constant pressure affected me more than I expected.

At some point I realized this wasn’t just “a website” anymore.

I was making product decisions. Talking to suppliers. Coordinating delivery. Building tracking systems. Running ads. Answering customer emails. Sorting thousands of images. Maintaining feeds. Writing copy. Fixing things at night when something broke.

Not because I wanted to do all of it – but because there was no one else.

That’s when it stopped feeling like a project and started feeling like a responsibility.

Some parts I didn’t do alone. My wife took care of Pinterest and kept pushing when I was too deep in my own head to see clearly. That mattered more than she knows.

Building something you can’t abandon

At some point, quitting stops being a clean option.

Once your name is attached.
Once money is tied up.
Once other people are indirectly affected.

That’s when the project stops being “just work” and turns into responsibility.

Not in a heroic way.
In a quiet, exhausting one.

Why it still exists

There were moments where stopping would’ve been the rational choice.

But this project wasn’t built to be fast or flashy.
It was built to last – even if that meant moving painfully slow.

The result is VAROYAL – a German furniture brand that reflects that mindset.
Deliberate. Unrushed.

It’s not perfect.
And it’s not finished.

But it’s real. And it is mine.
I didn’t plan to build this alone.
That’s just how it ended up.

What I took away from it

This experience changed how I think about work, structure, and motivation – especially for people whose brains don’t respond well to pressure or rigid systems.

That’s something I’m still unpacking elsewhere. Slowly. In public. When I’m ready.

I wouldn’t recommend this path to everyone.

But for me, it was necessary.

And it’s still ongoing.

Note: VAROYAL is a German-language site, built specifically for the local German & Austrian market. Since a lot of you have asked where I have been and why there has been no new content on YouTube, this right here was the reason.