Erich Stauffer

Blog

  • Nothing Man – How to Self-Identify Yourself

    What do you do?

    This question terrifies me. What do you do? How am I supposed to answer that?

    I’m assuming you’d like to know where I work or what I do at my job. How would you like me to answer that?

    I could tell you that I have a “day job” working IT and do full-time consulting on the side. This answer is rarely satisfying because to them (and me), IT means so many things and no one really knows what consultants do.

    One day I attempted to record everything I actually do for people rather than use labels like “IT guy”, “web designer”, or “business consultant.” What I found that I was more like an operator or information repository. I would get requests and spit back results or information. I’m a human Github.

    So you’re at a networking event or a nice dinner party and the person across from you asks you what you do. What do you say?

    I have a friend that always starts off by talking about his family. He says, “I have a wife and five kids, with another one on the way.” Only then does he go into what he does during the day, and even then, he does not usually mention the actual business name.

    In the movie, Anger Management, Jack Nicholson’s character asks Adam Sandler’s character, “Who are you?”

    Sandler’s character starts off by stating his position and the company he works for, but is quickly interrupted by Nicholson’s character who again asks, for him to tell “Who you are.”

    Sandler then says he’s “a pretty good guy, likes to play tennis…” to which Nicholson says, “Not your hobbies, tell us who you are.”

    Sandler can’t come up with a good answer so he asks other people in the room to tell him who he is. Everyone laughs.

    Sandler then retries by talking about how he’s “a nice guy, easy going” to which Nicholson says, “You’re describing your personality. We want to know who you are.”

    Finally, Sandler admits he doesn’t know how to respond. I’ve been there.

    I’m the first to admit I don’t know how to describe myself. Often times I will pour over data that I’ve created (blog posts, tweets, emails) just to get a sense of who I am. I still don’t know.

    I help organizations categorize products, people, and information, but I don’t know how to categorize myself. Maybe that’s because I’m a person and not a blog post.

    People are complicated. That’s not new information. We are capable of doing a lot of things, but from another person’s perspective, it’s easier to remember someone else for one specific thing. This is called “shoeboxing” or ‘filling that slot in your brain’.

    To some clients I’m their “IT guy”. To others I’m their “web guy”. To my children, I’m their “Daddy”. To my parents, I’m their “son”. The roles I play are contextual based on where I am and what I’m doing, which is why it’s so hard to pick just one thing when someone asks, “What do you do?”

    There is a saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” My brother says this. I used to, but I’ve since learned that it’s good to be good at something.

    In Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, he talks about how it was valuable for him to know how to do “everything” so that anytime he was able to take advantage of a situation, he could. This is an extreme example, but not too different from what liberal arts colleges espouse about getting a well-rounded education.

    Let me spin this positive.

    People who used to be good at a lot of things were called “renaissance men”, which is less commonly known as “polymaths” – someone who “spans a significant number of different subject areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.”

    Polymaths are adroit, they have skill, cleverness, or resourcefulness in handling a variety of situations. Today we might call that “emotional intelligence”, but it’s more than that. It’s purposeful, deliberate practice from someone with perseverance and grit.

    When someone says they are good at a lot of things, but the master of none, what they’re really saying is that they’re adaptable and a problem solver.

    The world is changing pretty fast. It may not be such a good idea to become an expert in any one thing so as not to have that thing go away in a short amount of time – far better to learn how to always be adding value.

    The next time someone asks me what I do, I’ll say, “Nothing, man.” Because I do whatever people ask me to do. That’s how I add value.

    Update 3/10/2014:

    I just watched The Lego Movie and although I am unable to find a transcript of Emmett’s speech to the Master Builders, in general he says something like ‘There is nothing special about me.’ It made me think of this post. He’s Nothing Man, too – and yet he’s able to use this as a strength – and save the world. Maybe I can too. 🙂

  • My Old Band, Shog, Rocks Fair Haven Christian Church in 1998

    Shog was a Christian rock band from 1996-2002. Jason Cobb played bass and I sang lead vocals. We attended and played Fair Haven Christian Church in Trafalgar, Indiana.

  • How an eCommerce Business Grew to Become one of the Fastest Growing Companies in Indiana

    This is a story about how One Click Ventures became one of the fastest growing companies in Indiana.

    One Click Ventures

    One Click Ventures (OCV) started out as a man and wife team (Randy and Angie Stocklin) in their Greenwood, Indiana home with $20,000 in 2005. They now own a portfolio of niche retail websites, including SunglassWarehouse.com, HandbagHeaven.com and Scarves.net, which brought $5.3 million in revenue 2011 alone.

    In 2006, the couple acquired SunglassWarehouse.com. In 2007, One Click moved to a 1,000-square-foot facility in Greenwood, Indiana. That same year, Randy and Angie hired their first full-time worker. By 2008, the Hoosier company expanded into a 4,000-square-foot facility (still in Greenwood), and two more affordable fashion brands were acquired: HandbagHeaven.com and Readers.com.

    OCV grew quickly, eventually touting nine online brands in the affordable fashion and travel product industries. By 2012, the One Click team moved into a 68,000-square-foot facility in Greenwood. All of One Click’s team operates in-house, with people in marketing, technology, merchandising, customer happiness, business intelligence, order fulfillment and human relations. (Wikipedia)

    According to the OCV About page, Randy and Angie Stocklin are, “Looking ahead, One Click has the team and infrastructure in place to significantly scale-up its audience, customers, and revenues. One Click will continue to aggressively grow the company by acquiring, developing and managing Internet properties.” They do this by leveraging their team and their group of brands.

    You can get a sense for what systems and technology they are using by reviewing their job ads. For example, they use X-cart for their shopping cart. They have a “Content Team, Tech Team, Customer Experience, and other OCV departments.” They use Google Analytics and focus on customer retention and lifetime value. They use “ESP automation and database tools” (ESP stands for “email service provider”). They compute GMROII (Gross Margin Return on Inventory Investment).

    You can also get a sense for their marketing strategy by looking at what each brand is doing online. For example, they use email marketing (and have a full-time Email Marketing Specialist), design custom landing pages. They put links to their social media, shipping times, email specials, and help/chat/contact in the very top of every page. They have a “Free Shipping [when/if]” on every page along with their phone number. They use credit card logos, BBB logo, a Bizrate log, and a Paypal logo at the bottom of every page.

    You can get some real insight from previewing OCV’s Team page and Brand page to get a feel for what type of team you’d like your e-commerce company to have and how to manage multiple brands through one organization. I’ve attempted to build multiple brands under one organization so I know this is not an easy feat to undertake and manage, but OCV seems to do it with ease. Randy and Angie Stocklin are two of my e-Commerce Heroes that I look up to a lot. Thank you for being such great examples for our community.

  • 50 Things I Learned from over 600 Hours of Business Podcasts

    In the past six months I’ve listened to over 600 hours of business podcasts. That’s equivalent to sitting through a 15-credit semester of lectures in college. How did I do it? My drive to work each day is one hour, one way – and I listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed so each day I’m listening to at least 3 hours of business podcasts. If I have to travel to a client at night or on the weekends, I’m listening to more podcasts on the way.

    5 Benefits of Podcasts

    • On-demand learning – you can browse and download a podcast about almost any topic at any time
    • Location-independent learning – you don’t need to be sitting at a desk or in front of a computer – you can listen anywhere
    • Free to listen – books, audio books, and learning courses almost always cost money, but podcasts are fre
    • Multiple distribution channels – you can listen to podcasts via iTunes on your computer, the Podcast app on your iPhone, or through Stitcher Radio (stitcher.com or app)
    • Free mentorship – you normally would have to pay a coach, mentor, or mastermind group to get the kind of one-on-one advice podcasts provide

    600 Hours of Business PodcastsWhat business podcasts did I listen to?

    50 Things I learned from listening to over 600 hours of business podcasts:

    1. Take massive action
    2. Avoid the imposter syndrome
    3. Wake up early
    4. Network
    5. Seek a mentor
    6. Follow up
    7. Go to conferences
    8. Guest blog post
    9. Turn off distractions
    10. Listen to your intuition (hunches)
    11. Focus on the product
    12. Focus on a niche
    13. Focus on the customer
    14. Just start. You’ll never feel ready.
    15. Don’t listen to the naysayers.
    16. Don’t watch TV.
    17. No doesn’t always mean no.
    18. Help others first.
    19. Mindset matters.
    20. Clear the emotional blockages.
    21. Be thankful.
    22. Have an attitude of gratitude.
    23. Define what makes you happy.
    24. Work hard.
    25. Passion is important, but it should be for solving a problem, not a passion for the product.
    26. People buy products not markets.
    27. Build an audience then sell them something.
    28. PR can help, but PR agents aren’t always helpful.
    29. Celebrities can help.
    30. Backup your hard drive.
    31. Begin with the end in mind.
    32. Envision your future.
    33. Self affirmations.
    34. Use vision boards.
    35. Vehicle for goal. Make sure it matches.
    36. Multiple streams of income.
    37. Multiple sources of traffic.
    38. Figure out how many things it takes and work backwards.
    39. “Dollarization” of a problem.
    40. Don’t compare yourself to others.
    41. Success takes 9 months (to 5 years). There are no overnight successes.
    42. Double your price.
    43. If you get a no, ask why.
    44. All of your ideas are wrong.
    45. Start.
    46. Progress, not perfection
    47. Create systems and procedures.
    48. Know your avatar, or target market.
    49. Email marketing works.
    50. Podcasting works.

    Books most mentioned:

    Updates:

    Comment on Hacker News:

    a3voices commented:

    > Success takes 9 months (to 5 years). There are no overnight successes.

    From what starting point? The decision to try to be successful, when you come up with an idea, or when you start implementing it?

    To which I replied:

    Every person’s starting point is really the culmination of everything in their past so every starting point is different, but this statement is born from two trends I noticed while listening:

    1. “The Baby Effect” – a term coined by John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire, a 7-day a week business podcast that interviews entrepreneurs, which evolved from John Lee noticing that successful launches tended to take 9 months from first action to the point of sustainability. He called it that because it usually coincided with the founder finding out they had a baby coming, but it also worked that way for BeardBrand, for example.
    2. Most of the “successful” interviewees on podcasts state they started back in 2009, so 5 years later is now (2014). 5 years seems to be the point at which entrepreneurs have been steady long enough that they start to either a) look for the next thing or b) start sharing with other people what they know. It’s also a sign that the ‘wave’ that they were currently riding (their business model) may have crested and they are in search of the next thing, hoping for a second win(d).

  • 10,000 Hours

    Have you ever heard that it takes “10,000 hours” to become good at something or that you should “follow your passion” and “do what you love”? If you’re still wondering What Color is Your Parachute? and you still don’t know what you want to be when you grow up, it may be time to take stock of your current skillsets and strengths to see how close you are to being an expert and whether or not that field is a vehicle that can economically provide a reliable income into your future.

    In 2013, Cal Newport wrote Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort, where he talked about how becoming an expert in something makes you passionate about it, not the other way around. But what if you could have both? In 2001, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton wrote a book called Now, Discover Your Strengths and developed a test called the Clifton Strengths Finder to help you identify your strengths. What if there was a way to test for your “10,000 hours”?

    Becoming an expert at something doesn’t mean it’s the only thing you’ve worked on for the last 5-10 years. The accumulation of all of your experiences has led you to the position you’re in today. There is no one else who has had the exact same experience as you. No one else has the exact same perspective as you. There is already something you are an expert in that you can do better than anyone else in your area, if not the world. This experience is your “10,000 hours.”

    What do you do that's better than anyone else?
    What do you do that’s better than anyone else?

    Andy Johns, who was on the user growth team for Facebook, Twitter and Quora, recently wrote about Finding Your Career Economy, in which he says, “Everyone has their inherent strengths and weaknesses. I’m of the camp that believes that people should focus most on playing to their strengths and to align their strengths with a role that requires them to use their strengths regularly.” Shortly thereafter he spoke on Eric Siu’s Growth Everywhere podcast something similar:

    When I thought about my career, the mental model I used was an economics one. Where I thought that, “If I go and try and learn be a developer at this point and try and write code just as good as some of the Facebook developers,” like – just a huge fail, it just wasn’t going to happen. And frankly I just wasn’t interested in that. I didn’t think that’s where my heart was, nor was it where my sort of intrinsic abilities were.

    Instead I was like, “Well I’ve got to find this thing that I’m interested in that aligns with my strengths, but that also has an economy around it in the sense that someday there is going to be tremendous demand for this skillset – with very little real supply of that – and I wanna own that supply. That’s a position of leverage.

    For me the thing that I settled on – the position of leverage that made the most sense for my future potential – was “How can I be one of the best people on the planet in terms of understanding end-to-end, comprehensively from either one million to a billion users, ‘How do you grow something?’” – team building, analytics, experimentation, organization…the whole thing.

    That seemed like a tremendously powerful thing because the thesis or the hypothesis I had was that: more consumer Internet companies needed to have growth teams and no one was stepping up to the plate to do that. That’s what I wanted to do…and that’s been my sole objective since then – since I made up my mind about that in 2009.

    One thing I’ve noticed from listening to over 600 hours of business podcasts is that a lot of the people who are successful now started in 2009. It took them about 5 years to get from “go” to “grow” to “show”. Coincidentally, people work about 2000 hours a year so 5 years is about 10,000 hours. I read the same business books these guys listened to. I started blogs the same time they did, but somehow the result was different? Why was my 10,000 hours different than theirs? Because the vehicle I chose was different.

    The choices we make in life matter. Life is a game and not everybody wins, but everyone who can keep moving forward is capable of learning from their mistakes and doing better the next time. This is what startup culture calls “failing forward” and what normal people call “persistence” or “grit”. Those who are able to leverage their experience, focus on their strengths, and continue to improve will see return on their investments provided they select an economic vehicle capable of sustaining that activity.

     

  • Social Media Dashboards

    Are you still using a spreadsheet to collect your social media data? Me too. Here is how I’m trying to automate marketing analytics.

    Every morning I manually calculate metrics like the number of Shopify orders, the number of Facebook likes, and the number of Twitter followers (to name a few). I started to wonder, “How can I view all of my social media stats in one place automatically?” I wondered if there was a program or web site that would provide me the information I was looking for automatically, something like a “social media dashboard”?

    Sprout Social

    Sprout Social

    After hearing a lot of business marketing podcast guests talk about Sprout Social, I decided to check it out. It boasts, “Unlimited reporting & exporting across all of your accounts. Profile, group and roll-up reports for high or low level performance data,” in short, “Integrated analytics across all of your social properties.” While Sprout Social has the social media dashboard functionality I was looking for, at plans that start at $39 a month, I wondered if I could get that functionality elsewhere? Enter Ducksboard and Geckoboard.

    Ducksboard Dashboard

    Ducksboard

    Ducksboards are “Real time Dashboards” to “Visually monitor all your metrics at a glance.” I tested it out by loading in Google Analytics for one site, a Facebook Page, my Trello account, and my Twitter account data. The process was relatively easy and while the displayed data was slightly different than the data I was manually collecting, it did a good job of showing me a real-time “snapshot” view of what was going on. One neat feature of Duckboard dashboards is their “TV mode” feature where the data is meant to be displayed on a flat panel in your office or waiting room. Starting at $16 a month, if all you want is social dashboarding, it’s a nice alternative to Sprout Social.

    geckoboard

    Geckoboard

    Geckoboard is “Your Key Data, In One Place. Stop spending time checking services and start monitoring your business in real-time.” After using Ducksboard, Geckoboard seemed much more granular. It asked many more questions when setting up a “widget” than Ducksboard did. If you want to be more specific, use Geckoboard. Similarly, Geckoboard lets you control how big each widget is displayed, whereas Ducksboard did not. So if you’re anal retentive, use Geckoboard. As far as the dashboard view, I found Geckoboard less appealing and one of the widgets just didn’t work. Pricing is very similar to Ducksboard: it starts at $17 a month, making it a another dashboard alternative to Sprout Social.

    Summary

    One thing both Ducksboard and Geckoboard have in common is a public link to your dashboard so that you can share the information with someone without an account. This makes it easy to share with say, a client. I manage a lot of different client’s marketing campaigns as well as my own sites, so a single dashboard view wouldn’t necessarily work for me, but setting one up for each client might work. It could be a nice upsell that could potentially benefit the client, but like all information, the data is only as good as what you do with it. If you’re looking for a more detailed review, GetApp has a nice Geckoboard vs. Ducksboard review page.

    Update

    I just got an email from Matt at Geckoboard that shows how they can be used on a TV just like Duckboard:

    Hey Erich,

    It’s great to see that you’ve been adding some widgets to your Geckoboard. Now if you haven’t done so already, you should really think about getting your dashboard displayed on a big screen TV for all to see.

    2 in 3 of our customers do this and they tell us that having Geckoboard up on their wall has meant that everyone has access to this important data. It also starts conversations about data – what they’re seeing and why that might be!

    The screen is best placed where people regularly come together (we have one of our own above the water machine) and just focus on the metrics that really matter – you don’t need to display everything.

    Since you’re just starting out, you might want to get creative and add in a few fun widgets – this encourages more people to stop and look at it and as they say, nothing draws a crowd like a crowd. If you’re stuck for how get your dashboard on to a screen, then consider the following options that we blogged about recently.

    As ever, if you have any problems or questions then let me know.

    Thanks,

    Matt at Geckoboard

  • The Best Times of Your Life

    In the last episode of The Office, Andy Bernard says, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good ole’ days before you’ve actually left them.”

    The Best Times of Your Life

    Have you ever wondered if the best times of your life are behind you? How do you know when you’re in the best times of your life? How do you know if there are still good times to come?

    I remember sitting with my best friend, eating pizza, and watching TV while laying back in our recliners. My friend turned to me and asked, “What if this is the best time of our lives and it’s all downhill from here?” The year was 2001 and shortly after we each lost our jobs, moved apart, and September 11th happened. Things change.

    What if there isn’t one best time in your life, but “episodes of greatness” – pockets of time in different times of your life that can be considered the best times of that era?

    While there are many years I cannot consider the best times of my life, I’ve had many periods I consider the best parts of my life. Those episodes always include the following factors:

    • Actively spending time with people I love
    • Basic needs are met (ie. secure job and location)
    • Working on a project or something bigger than myself

    If you’re wondering if your best times are behind you, look at what made those times great and vehemently seek out those same conditions in the future. If your friends or family don’t have time for you, first make time for them, but seek out new experiences. Get out of your comfort zone. Eventually the new zone will become comfortable too.

    If your basic needs aren’t being met, first make sure you are safe and that you have reliable housing and income. That’s easy to say and sometimes very hard to do. I understand. But realize that things do get better through incremental progress, even if it’s slow. Make one change a month and you’ll be a completely different person in a year.

    If you aren’t working towards any big goals or are aren’t part of a team working on something bigger than yourself, it’s hard to feel fulfilled in life. Not everyone can find their purpose in life, but you can make an effort to work purposefully, and through that work, feel fulfilled and happy. It could be one of the best times of your life.

  • 2013 in Review

    A Time for Everything

    Entrance - Begin Your Journey

    There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. – Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

    2013 was a time of contraction. It was a time to uproot, tear down, gather stones, give up, throw away, and be silent. I was going to take a step back and reflect.

    Consolidation

    In January I quit going to all of the meetups I was a part of, quit BNI, and quit Rainmakers. I started consolidating my websites and on January 1, 2013 I publicly announced I was closing my web design and IT business and came up with 10 new business ideas. Despite all of those ideas, I decided I would not start any new businesses in 2013. Instead I devoted my time to helping two other organizations (1,2) start new businesses while working full-time doing IT work (1,2). This was very hard for me to do and it had some unfortunate side effects that I wasn’t expecting:

    • Identity – I started operating as “Erich Stauffer” instead of as “Watershawl” and I went through an identity crisis. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I threw away all of my business cards, but never bought any new ones for “Erich Stauffer”. When people asked me for my business card, I told them I didn’t have one and most of the time they just sort of shrugged and looked away. I consolidated all of my web content down into one site and began to steadily make improvements. Eventually I paid a Kentucky graphic designer to help me design something more professional.
    • Longing – I really missed the lifestyle I had in 2012. When I look back at my Dropbox Camera Upload folder and see how much time I spent with my family and all the different experiences I had outside of a normal work environment, I really missed it. When I say I had a good time, it was probably the best year of my life. I went to conferences, hung out at coffee shops, met a ton of new people, and did a lot of great work. It was fun. I truly liked my life. That said, 2013 turned out okay and I got happier.
    • Confidence – I lost a lot of confidence by not having my own “business” identity. Even though I was still officially in business as “Erich Stauffer” it didn’t feel that way. And when the majority of my income was coming from one client, my full-time employer, it was hard to say that I was anything other than an “IT guy”. When I would introduce myself to people at meetings and social events, I would struggle with what to say. My struggle with identity was overflowing into my impressions of myself.
    • Branding – I didn’t realize the value of the Watershawl brand that I ‘threw away’. Everything I had been building up as Watershawl/Telablue for the last 5 Years (since October of 2007) was thrown out. While I continued to operate as “Erich Stauffer”, the person responsible for doing the work most of that time, there was a loss of something greater than myself. There was also a loss of professionalism that I didn’t expect – from both sides. I acted different and clients treated me different. SEE Stop Freelancing.

    Asah Shamah

    In January, my church started a series called “asah shamah” which means “we will do, then we will understand”. The pastor said that this would be a year of bounty. I wrote a blog post called How to Work a Life of Purpose in February, the month I started working full-time. Since then I’ve made more money than I’ve ever made in my life. God has truly blessed me, but I wasn’t thankful. I had achieved what I had started seeking back in 2009, but I wasn’t happy. So I started practicing an attitude of gratitude. I started thanking God for what I had. I started appreciating my children more. I started enjoying the weather more. I started to be more happy.

    Before and After 4 Hour Body

    Diet and Physical Health

    In 2012 despite exercising and watching calories I reached a high of 275 pounds. Despite Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Body coming out in February of 2011 and in August of 2012, my friend, Jason, starting the slow-carb diet, it wasn’t until April of 2013 that I started eating differently. The moment I began this diet I began losing weight and since then I have lost over 40 pounds with little to no exercise. I began to go on long walks and one day after walking in an old pair of dress shoes, I hurt my right knee. I threw the shoes away, but it still took me several months to fully recover. My next door neighbor had a garage sale and I bought a used bike for $30 that I began riding around town and to parks.

    Erich Stauffer Daughter

    My Newest Daughter

    In May, my newest daughter was born. She is our fifth child, the third girl. She weighed 8lbs 9ozs. She was our biggest baby by weight and she’s been the tallest baby as she’s grown (she’s in the 97th percentile for height for her age). Around four months she started a 6-month trait which is to smile at you to see if you’ll smile back. That’s fun. In October she started to blow ‘pop’ kisses, whose sound surprised her at first, but she quickly learned to enjoy and deploy to other’s pleasure. In November she started to be able to sit up on her own and just started to act like she might want me to hold her. I December her first word was “dada.”

    Erich in Chicago

    Education and Learning

    In June I took a “man-cation” to Chicago and Wisconsin. During this trip I discovered the usefulness of podcasts. I have had an iPhone for over five years, but never listened to one podcast. The moment I realized it was just like the radio, but without ads – and it was only about the topics I cared about – I was hooked. I started listening to podcasts on web analytics, business consulting, and ecommerce. I would listen to them on the way to work and on the way home. I started learning Ruby on Rails and joined Treehouse. This was one way I extracted value from my long commute (~50 minutes one-way) to Indianapolis everyday. I listened the equivalent of 15 credit hours of college.

    Working Smart

    Jobs as Biggest Clients

    When I worked at First Merchants Bank from 2008 to 2011 I started thinking of my primary employer as my biggest customer. This was a mindset change for me that I struggled to continue thinking in 2013 even after having two of my biggest clients hire me full time. This was partly because my mindset was shifting back to that of an employee from being an entrepreneur. I was losing confidence daily, which affected my ability to sell, and my lack of brand made it hard to self-identify and market myself. I decided that something needed to change before I completely lost my confidence so I decided to start looking for a different job. In August of 2013 I was offered a job doing IT work at Worksmart, where my boss encouraged me to continue working on my entrepreneurial pursuits. He believed that my IT/web consultant work helped me to be a more valuable employee because the skills I was developing were useful in my day job. This began boosting my confidence and I started to begin thinking of myself as an entrepreneur again.

    Skinny and Company

    The Perfect Day

    In August we launched SkinnyCoconutOil.com and when our “community development” guy began working on our About page, he asked a series of questions to help write the staff bios. One of the questions was, “Describe your ‘perfect’ day?” This is what I wrote on September 5, 2013:

    Wake up naturally around 8 AM. Eat breakfast with my family, and then head off to a coffee shop to write. I’d take a walk on the Monon, catch lunch with a friend, and then head home for an afternoon nap. Just before dinner I’d work in my woodshop until dinner. Afterwards I’d go check on the garden and play board games with the kids before grabbing a glass of wine and having a fireside chat with my wife before bed.

    On August 31, 2013 we had our first sale online, 5 days after launch, and on October 5 I got a shout out from Andrew Youderian and got my first paycheck on the same day. It was a good day.

    A Happier Life

    A Happier Life

    In September I was listening to a Smart Passive Income podcast with Noah Kagan where Noah said, “A big realization I’ve had lately is that when people are unhappy, it’s because they’re not doing what they really want or they’re distracting themselves with other activities. And honestly, I think I’m at the happiest point in my life now in this moment, and that’s really because I’m talking with you and I was very nervous and I was excited to talk to you and share this with your listeners. And I’m working on something like this How to Make Your First Dollar, I love it. I love seeing people get their businesses that they want. The relationships with people I have, it’s exactly what I want, it’s with the people I want. I’ve cut out the people I don’t want and it’s really put me in a happier life.” And that’s what I started to do.

    Killing the Cash Cow

    Guy Kawasaki and Richard Bliss often talk about Clayton Christensen’s original idea of “Killing the Cash Cow”, which involves stopping the most profitable part of your business in order to support and grow a less profitable part that has more future potential. It’s long-term thinking versus short-term thinking and it’s very scary to a lot of managers. On paper, it doesn’t always make sense, but take just one of the most often cited examples: if Apple hadn’t devoted energy to the Macintosh, they’d still be selling AppleIIs and they’d be out of business.

    On October 15, 2013, exactly 6 years since I incorporated Watershawl, Inc., I told my biggest client that I wanted to help them replace me. Why? I wasn’t providing them the value they needed at the time and in order to put the client’s needs above my own I proposed switching vendors so that I wasn’t the one holding their company back. The other side of the coin is that I was spending more time building something that would provide more income and working for that client was actually hindering me from my higher future earning potential. I killed the cash cow.

    Indiana-Zhejiang Seminar 10-29-2013

    The Han Institute

    In January I started meeting with one of my clients about an idea she had to start a chain of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) clinics around the United States. This idea became the basis of The Han Institute, an organization comprised of a clinic, a research institute, and educational materials centered around utilizing TCM in Western medicine. On October 29 I attended the Indiana-Zhejiang Trade Seminar to network with Indiana and Zhejiang government officials and businesses.

    Lecrae at Act Like Men Conference

    Act Like Men Conference

    The Philippines Super Typhoon Haiyan landed on November 8, 2013, the same day the Act Like Men Conference started in Indianapolis. I waited too long to sign up for a ticket and it sold out. However, I was able to volunteer as an usher and was still able to attend. On November 1 I had hired my first VA (virtual assistant), who happened to live in the Philippines. She emailed to say that a typhoon was coming and she might not be able to get to the work that day. We told her not to worry about it, to stay safe, and that we’d be praying for her. She ended up okay, but 10,000 of her countrymen did not. On that Saturday, Lacrae played a concert, which I got to attend with my friend, Jason.

    Looking Forward to 2014

    In 2013 I started out wanting to start an e-commerce company, learn Ruby on Rails, and do less IT consulting as a service. My goals in 2013 were to move towards a location-independent income, to future-protect my career by learning more programming, to continually seek ways to add value and help people, to spend more time with friends and family, and to attend conferences/events as a form of community. I learned that “conservation” was one of my core values. It’s the reason I value trees, productivity, recycling, and electric cars. Overall, 2014 was about fine-tuning my attitude about work.

    The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

    On Christmas of 2013, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty came out in theaters. To me, the movie was about breaking out of the life you’re in now and turning your life into an adventure. That spirit is the same struggle I’ve been in for the last 3 years and is similar to the vision I have for Outure.  In 2014 I’d like to keep working on developing Seektivity (my activities/events web app), Outure (my outdoor adventure ecommerce company), and Content Motors/Content Market Fit/AB Insights (a SEO/Content Marketing/Web Analytics company). I’d also like to attend more conferences, run the Glory Trail, and continue to help my existing clients.

    This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God. They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart. – Ecclesiastes 5:18-20