Dropping Keys

Posts tagged career

It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that I used to be a pretty hardcore Star Wars (and Star Trek, if you can be both) fan.

Of course I watched the movies over and over, but I also read many of the Star Wars books that you see when you walk past the sci-fi rack of your local bookstore.

Many of the novels are written by the author Kevin J. Anderson, and this post is not about my hatred of midi-chlorians or where Darmok and Jalad were (at Tanagra, of course), but about a blog post he did entitled Olympics and Writing.

It turns out that bestselling authors get people coming up to them all the time with this:

I’ve had many people tell me, “Oh, writing is easy. Anybody can do it if they just sit down and put their minds to it.” Here’s how the conversation goes: Somebody at a book-signing: “I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I could write a novel.”
Me: “Oh? Why haven’t you?”
Person: “I just don’t have the time.”

How many times have you heard people at the office saying that they wish they could do XYZ “if only they had the time”? I know I certainly have said it.

As with most things that are worth doing, it all comes down to hustle. If you are really committed and passionate about doing something, no matter what it is, you will make the time. Otherwise, talk is all it will ever be.

Me: “Hmm. Nobody gives me the time, either. I have to make the time, set priorities, discipline myself to get my writing done each day, no matter how tired I am. I worked a full-time regular job while I wrote my first novels, scraping out an hour here or there in evenings and weekends. That’s how I’ve become a successful author.”

What are you doing to make time for your passion?

You know how the usual story goes. Overpaid, spoiled professional athletes play for a while, then retire and either go sit on a beach, start a Chevy dealership, or end up broke and sleeping in their car under the overpass.

Or there’s the other version that we hear all the time: NFL player retires and then becomes a Wordpress theme designer.

Wait, what?

I’m always interested in stories of people who change paths in the middle of their career and go off to do something completely different.

The story doesn’t get much better than The last 3 years by Drew Strojny, formerly of the St. Louis Rams and now founder of The Theme Foundry.

During my football career technology and design were my hobbies. I even designed my first theme in 2006, it was called Mint Chocolate Chip. OK, you can stop laughing now. I did it under my full name, Andrew Strojny, to keep it separate from my football life.

There is so much I love about this story I don’t even know where to start, but here are a few personal highlights:

It’s hard to give up what defines you

When you are known as “the guy” in a certain area, it’s hard both for other people to see you differently, and it’s hard to lose such a big piece of yourself.

There is a “now what?” feeling that many people struggle with.

Making a conscious choice where to live

Drew and his wife could have just stayed wherever they were when his football career ended, but they specifically chose a place to live that matched the lifestyle that they wanted first, and worried about income second.

I love this and am a big believer in it (despite the fact that I am living in one of the most expensive cities in the world housing-wise…).

Asking customers “Is there anything else you need?”

I once worked for a company that got its start because the founders asked one of their existing customers “is there anything else you need?”. It turns out this customer was having a problem in a specific financial area, and the founders saw it as an opportunity and built a business.

Drew did the same by listening to his table-top ad customers when they were asking about websites.

Giving the customers what they need, not going for quick money

As a web designer, I am sure it was tempting to steer his clients away from using a Content Management System. After all, then they wouldn’t need to pay him for most future updates.

Instead, he put their needs first and set them up with Wordpress. I am sure he got a lot of repeat customers and referrals out of that move.

Doubling down on what is winning

I am sure the table-top ad business was fine, but when he saw the web stuff taking off, he doubled down on it and phased out the old business. Smart move.

Passion + scale = win

When Drew found himself loving the theme business more than the web design business, that was a pretty big sign which way he should lean.

The fact that creating themes is infinitely more scaleable than project-based web design is an even bigger sign.

The combination of the two is a no-brainer, although I am sure it didn’t seem that way at the time.

Experimenting with new pricing and memberships

Instead of setting prices and forgetting it, the company did quite a bit of experimenting with different packages, pricing, etc. Even though some of the changes were risky, they did it anyways to see what would happen.

Not screwing existing customers

When Theme Foundry changed their packages, they made sure that existing users were grandfathered instead of looking for some loophole or focussing only on getting new business.

So, as you can tell, Drew’s story is an inspiring one to me. I hope everything works out well with the Theme Foundry. It’ll be interesting to watch how it develops.

Photo: Duke Yearlook

For whatever reason, I’ve never been a fan of U2.

I know they’re the biggest band in the world, and I like a few songs, and sure they have a good album here and there (War springs to mind), but I just have never gotten into them.

Back in the early 90’s in my band-tshirt phase, I saw a hilarious (not really, but it seemed funny at the time) anti-U2 shirt at Lyle’s Place in Victoria and decided I had to have it.

One fateful night, I wore it to a Sloan show at the historic but now sadly defunct Harpo’s Cabaret.

All was going well until an angry young woman stormed up to me. Our conversation went something like this:

Her: “Why are you wearing that shirt?”
Me: “I don’t know. I just don’t like U2”
Her: “What do you have against Bono?”
Me: “Nothing, I’m just not a fan.”
Her: (glaring)  “Jealousy will get you nowhere!” (storms off)

My friends, particularly Kimli, have been getting comedy mileage out of that night ever since.

I tell this story not only to give an example of how spectacularly bad my record of talking to girls at bars is, but because I’ve come to find throughout my career that the young Chris Murphy-groupie-wannabe that night may have been wise beyond her years.

Smoke And Mirrors

How many times have you admired a person or an organization, and later found out that it was all smoke and mirrors?

Alexis Neely said it really well in her LIFT Manifesto:

You KNOW these businesses. These are the ones who have a great online or social media presence and appear to be helping a lot of people, but in reality they are foundering along, not really making any money and at risk of crumbling at the first sign of trouble

I personally have been guilty of this so many times. I’ve looked at people or organizations with borderline jealousy, and then found that things were not quite what they seemed. Here’s a few examples.

(By the way, by using these examples I am in no way trying to make light of their troubles. Giving it a try and failing is a lot better than sitting around not doing anything.)

The Java Shop With No One To Serve It To

When I was in school, most development companies in town worked with Microsoft technologies. One night on the local news, I saw a story about a Vancouver company that was working with Java. The reporter gushed at the cutting edge technology the company worked with, their beautiful office with the expensive barista-style espresso machine, and all the awards that the company was winning.

I decided I was only going to get a job as a Java developer, and worked like crazy and talked my way into a job at the company that I had seen on the news.

The problem? This company had a product that didn’t really work, no real customers, and some borderline shady stock stuff going on.

The whole house of cards crashed down 9 months after I started.

Oh, those “Best Product” awards? They were all industry and trade show awards that were bought and paid for.

The Social Media Superstars

There was a company that was all over the local tech scene. They had a cool innovative business with cutting edge technologies (I thought), and I dreamt it would be so cool to be involved with them. It didn’t seem like they could do any wrong.

It turns out that the whole thing was a financial mess with poor business processes, lack of planning, and mismanagement, and is completely gone now.

The Financiers With Limited Finances

A local startup incubator was highly admired in the city, and hosted (and continues to host) a number of events.

How cool would it be to be involved with a startup incubator?

Not very cool for the companies that had to be kicked out of the program when a funding crunch came, and the way that the founders publicly responded was as criticized as the funding issues itself.

Ask Questions. Lots of Questions.

There are lots more examples, but you get the point. As I said before, my goal is not to pile on to the examples I gave here, but to recommend that whenever you think the grass is greener, just make sure it isn’t GrassBGreen.

I personally now ask a lot of questions about whatever situation I am thinking about going into, and always consider the motivations of the people who are answering.

Also, I worry about what I am doing, and not what other people are up to. If we’re meant to work together we will, and if not, that’s cool too.

Do you have your own “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” story? I’d love to hear it.

(Photo: minifig)