What's Happening

 

All you need is an art class.  An art class is all you need!

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. - John Lennon

I was chatting with my father-in-law over the weekend, and, as per our typical small talk, the question of "how my business is doing" came up.  I said it was doing well. I'm entering year two on one consulting gig and just added another one.  He followed up with a question about my "own" business, though.  The question was timely, because I've thought about putting this post together in response to that exact query.

I said that I don't currently have any product offerings in the works, but the consulting business, even if that wasn't what I'd originally intended to follow through as a long-term offering, was still a business, so I shouldn't punch a gift horse in the face.  

And it's a little disingenuous for me to claim that I was making other plans, because, as I've mentioned time and time again, I didn't really have a plan starting out other than to choose a very loose concept - use AI to generate a fake website -, document my experiences, and see what comes of it.

But, yeah, from a pipe dream perspective, I would've preferred to offer up a product I own or maintain as my primary source of income, if only because it fulfills the apocryphal goal of self-reliance and passive income.  It's rewarding to go through the cycle of coming up with an idea that people can use, seeing it through to fulfillment, and making some money off it.  

And that's what a lot of businesses do.  But a lot of businesses also copy other models (ahem, Facebook), provide dubious offerings that are little more than disguised pyramid schemes (I will teach you how to make money.  Just give me $100 to reserve a spot at my limited seminar being held at the Holiday Inn off Exit 76), or are extensions of someone else's original idea (buying a business and maintaining or improving it is actually a pretty good idea, but it's not the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps type of story that is this skewed dream many of us are taught to aspire to).

So, if I examine my own little consulting business with fresh eyes, it makes me appreciate that I've had a chance to delve into some interesting and novel areas.  

In one of my gigs, I'm working for a foreign company that - though it has a lot of similarities to the corporations I grew up around - teaches me more about the inner workings of an enterprise when it doesn't have a large US employee contingent.  It's also given me the chance to work on process problems around incident management and post-mortems; technical problems around site availability and resiliency; and a combination of skills when helping to build out and run an entirely new operations department.

In the other gig, I'm helping out a local art gallery with their IT/webpage work.  The site's built using Square's default tool offering, and while the maintenance of the site doesn't stretch my technical chops to the limit, it does compel me to learn the basics of a no-code system and use what's available rather than revert to the standard software developer's credo of "let's rewrite this in another language because I'll claim it has actual business value, but I really just want an excuse to write code."  It also gives me a local community to work with, and one that's appreciative of my efforts because they're artists and are happy to have someone around who knows the basics of maintaining a website.

Participating in both gigs also gives me the ability to hone some of my skills for running a business without getting bogged down by all the details of running a business that would, ironically, take me away from generating or operating a business.  As a business owner, I need to issue invoices, create statements of work, and do business taxes.  It's all fairly mundane work, but there's a little corner inside my mind that says, "You're doing this because you own your business.  It's a skill you didn't possess when you worked for someone else."

And, of course, I'm proud that my business has actually generated revenue.  It hasn't yet generated enough to cover my living expenses, but last year, I took in around $21K.  Whether or not via a combination of luck, networking, experience, or effort, that's revenue I've never generated before in my life.  Of course, I'd like to make it a sustainable business that doesn't draw off my savings, but it's still a great accomplishment.  

I also think it's worth backing off the "Yay, me!" tone for a minute to address real challenges or setbacks that I've faced over the last two-ish years.  The biggest one is that I was effectively fired from another gig as the primary technical consultant/coder because I didn't demonstrate sufficient progress for the owner in the time allowed.  That marks the first time in over 20 years that I've heard something along the lines of "I'm sorry, but it's just not working out."  True, the effective pay was below minimum wage, and it wasn't something that kept me up at night, but rejection in any form is never fun.

I also would've liked my art site, Exhibit Meh, to have generated modest income rather than, well, no income, but I knew that was a risk going in.  I'm fairly certain that if I invested more in marketing - whether by employing an expert or spending more effort to learn the basics, things could've improved somewhat, but I'm still hard-wired not to exceed a certain limit of self-promotion.  However, framing marketing as a skill to learn gives me a door to give the site another shot, because it's not promotion at that point, it's the application of a new concept.  I'm also not averse to leveraging someone's expertise for a price, but if my anticipated revenue is $0, I don't want to pay someone some thousands of dollars simply to multiply that anticipated revenue by, well, any amount.

I've seen my following slide off significantly on this blog and on LinkedIn, though I suspect the numbers here are tied heavily to LinkedIn.  Part of the problem with this blog is that it doesn't have a cohesive subject tailored to a specific audience, but that's ok.  The existence of the blog keeps me disciplined enough to write a post just about every week.  I'm now north of 100 posts at about 1000 words a pop, so I've definitely crafted something as hefty as a novel (even if it's a stream-of-consciousness nightmare with very little editing).   

My problem with LinkedIn, if I can guess, is that I don't post enough or comment enough.  And I certainly don't continue to post ad nauseam on the latest AI topics or other buzzworthy topics that the algorithm craves.  I think about posting more to increase engagement, but there are three issues with that:

• People post more on LinkedIn in order to find better job offers.  I'm not currently in the market for a long-term position.
• I could post to get more interest in consulting gigs.  But right now, I've already got two gigs, so piling on top of that could get exhausting, especially if someone wants me work *gasp* fulltime!
• I could post to get more exposure to my business, but since I don't really have a product that I'm marketing, I'm not sure where I'd be driving all those eyeballs.

Which then leads me back to thinking that what I'm currently doing now on LinkedIn is just fine.  Why concern myself with increasing my engagement if I have no idea what the hell I'd do if I were more engaged?  As with the blog, posting on LinkedIn instills some discipline in me and provides me with a consistent (if small) social media presence.

So, maybe, if I take the steps in my business adventure to date in aggregate, my plans may have gone awry, but the life that's happening is still ok.

Until next time, my human and robot friends.