Up until this very post I’ve spent exactly 100% of my online career writing for the money. Wha? Yes I said it writing for the money. I dare say that every single thing I’ve written online, to this point, has been for the purpose of driving traffic, converting traffic, following up, or otherwise selling in some way shape or form. That is not what this is. What this is, is a place where I’m going to document some of what I’m doing and why online and in life and today in particular I’m just going to dump.
Today I own one moderately successful online web app. I’m not a developer per se though, no actually not a developer at all. I’ve learned a little.
I’m not a writer exactly though I produce a lot of content, and I’m not a designer but I did design the aforementioned moderately successful web app and a number of other sites.
Today this post is a tree falling in the forest with absolutely nobody around to hear it, and that is just fine. Today I’m saying fuckit. I’m not optimizing for keyword density and I couldn’t give a shit about title tags, META descriptions, or backlinks. Today I begin actively, systematically moving towards a goal via a real plan and for reasons other than just fucking cash and my goal here is to get some of this out in black and white to make it real where I can see it.
I cannot remember a decision I’ve made professionally that wasn’t designed to put more money in my pocket, exclusively, that is to say without too much regard for anything else, sure lifestyle I suppose, control over my time, but in terms of enjoying what I do, I think I can honestly say that it never really came up in the equation. Today I am seriously fucking done with that approach.
When all the things you’re doing you do for money you’re fake. You have to say a lot of things that have nothing to do with who you are, or maybe that’s just being a grown up but I don’t think so, it feels fake and reserved and disingenuous and after a while you (I) gotta wonder WTF am I doing? More importably why?
So yeah, I have this web app. It’s pretty cool, I provide tons of data to a crowd that desperately needs it, the problem is I don’t like the crowd, it’s probably more technical than most of them are equipped to handle and it’s in a really really spammy, get-rich-quick type of space unfortunately so rising above that noise with a legit product is tough, and that’s what I offer, a legit product. The other problem is my crowd is a naaaaarow. OK that’s fine it’s profitable, but I hate writing content for it and the material is too technical to outsource to just anyone, so there you are.
I have a day job, of sorts. Ok it’s not a job it’s more like a gig. This gig I also got into, I think, strictly for the money and god I am bored with it. It is a distraction… but from what? There’s the rub. It’s a distraction I suppose from what I should be doing …. which is… something I like? – right? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do as humans is pursue a thing we like, that we’re passionate about?
So what am I passionate about? Well, I get a major woody for technology. I mean I love tinkering with code and I have since I was 11 and had my first Commodore 128 and an IBM PC Jr., writing idiotic programs in Basic that would whistle and turn the screen colors or a choose your own adventure that lasted all of 8 minutes, but as I mentioned I am not a programmer, no, and nor do I want to be at this point at least not in any sort of a full time capacity, in fact I’ve been in sales in one way or another for the last 14 years and I don’t know if there’s anything more opposite from straight coding than sales.
Which has me thinking… is tinkering with code just my escape from sales? Drop the smile and the hand shakes, stop answering questions with questions and uncovering objections and hide out behind a computer screen for a little while? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter… I don’t think. But back to passion.
So I love all kinds of technology, think it’s super cool, I’m not a code genius and probably won’t be but man oh man do I have ideas. I have an idea a minute and an awful lot of them have to do with services I can provide, mostly in the form of a web app or mobile app or some other technology that would be so dead simple and that would make you so efficient at what you do that is such a no-brainer that you’ll be begging me to let you pay $97 a month for it, at least. Yes it’s true I have no idea what you do but trust me I have an idea for your business and you are going to love it. It will change your world.
I didn’t say, by the way, that I don’t like need or want money or more appropriately the things that money will do for you but I’ll be damned if I’m going to make my life decisions exclusively with the money in mind.
So I guess that’s what I’m really passionate about is big ideas that make a serious difference in a persons business or work life. Or little ideas that can bring efficiencies to the parts of your business that you don’t love or that are tedious or repetitive or that you’d just rather streamline… or eliminate.
I hate waste, inefficiency, bureaucracy, and any system that favors seniority over merit.
So. There it is. I kinda started before but I’m seriously starting right now. I’m reading and implementing Running Lean right now to rapidly shake out the myriad of ideas that are bouncing around in my head (and in my files). I’ll blog here about my experience as I go through it… periodically I suppose.
I do have one confession to make, I’ve read a bunch of books and then completely ignored everything they had to say and just did what I wanted. RIght now I am stopping this practice.
As I type this I have a BETA version of a mobile marketing product that I’m about to roll out on a limited basis. But it appears that what I really need to do now is back up and implement some of what I’ve read and that means customer interviews as far as I can tell.
I’d apologize for the rambling if I thought you were reading but I know you’re not and besides I’m not writing this for you I’m writing this for me. But then again… if you are reading this God blessed you with patience or a strange sense of humor. Until next time.
