rivals

Feeling attacked on all sides?

June 8, 2011 By Dan Thornton

Since leaving employement to start my own businesses, I’ve had to come to terms with a constant worry which I wanted to share in case the way I’ve changed my outlook can help someone else.

The worry:

Basically, I’m working on busineses in three areas. There’s freelance marketing, web design and development, and lastly a small media network as a side project/spare time project. Although it might seem like I’m juggling too many disparate ideas, there’s actually a lot of overlap between all three, so it seems to be working pretty well.

But keeping on top of industry trends and changes in technology means monitoring various sources, and along with the useful information came a source of constant worry. Every day comes with proclamations that social media as a specialism is dead (It’s one of my main strengths in marketing), or the news a large firm has launched a specialist division purely for social media. Or claims that freelancers and small digital agencies are destined to die out soon. Or that a firm in the same market has received lots of funding. Or that there’s yet another media company starting a site in the same area as one of mine.

I could keep piling up the worries, but essentially it felt like as a one, two, or three man operation that the forces of the world were aligning against everything I was working towards.

The Solution:

But eventually I came to a startingly realisation that has stopped my worries in their tracks and allowed me to focus on what’s important.

I don’t actually give a f**k.

(Pardon the language, but few other words can convey the appropriate force needed for the strength of my conviction here).

The logic:

There are a few reasons this makes sense for me, and allows me to still read the same information, but focus on whether there’s anything actually useful I can learn or utilise, rather than focusing on the threats.

1. I need to concentrate on what I’m doing above all else. Most of my business comes from referrals and that will continue as long as I do a good job. I’d guess that very few existing or prospective clients will be reading everything that appears in the social network echo chamber, or value that more than a solid example and explanation from their contacts of why they may wish to hire me. If I’m paralysed with worry and screwing up anything regarding their account – that’s the absolute biggest threat and mistake I’ll ever make.

2. I’m not competing with the largest agencies on a global scale – yet. And I may never get there, but that’s OK. Starting a business comes with the mythic expectation that success resembles a Branson or Zuckerberg level of achievement. But actually, success can look a lot different, and in my case, my first 9 months has been a huge success for a couple of reasons:

I’m earning at least as much as I was when employed, which means bills are covered, the family is provided for, and this is sustainable for the foreseeable future.
I’m working as hard as ever, but I’m able to be more flexible with my time, which means I have more opportunities to be with my family, or grab time for personal projects. No unnecessary commuting, meetings, browsing places for lunch etc. Counting up my output, I’ve produced more measurable stuff in the last few weeks than I probably ever achieved, yet I’ve had more time to relax, recharge and invest in myself and my family.
There’s a huge untapped market out there: Sure, there are a lot of companies already doing a good job of digital marketing, and a lot of competitors looking for new business. But that still leaves a hell of a lot more people to speak to, and it’s a market big enough to last a fair while.
And finally, if it does turn out that digital marketing is completely doomed in 3 months, or noone is bothering to read my websites, then that’s OK, because as a tiny company, I/We can change in an instant. There are plenty of new and interesting opportunities out there which I’ve thought about but decided not to pursue at the moment. And there will be more coming. Regardless of how flexible larger companies will try and be, it’s always going to be easier for a small group to change practically overnight. And that’s fun!

There’s probably a load of stuff I’ve missed, but the essential lesson that I’m constantly relearning at the moment is not to worry about the things we cannot change, and focus on the ones we can. There’s more than enough to worry about in running any freelance or small business, and when I get big enough for them to be a legitimate problem, I’ll have more than enough resource to be able to tackle them head on.

The final thing that has also helped has been revisiting my immediate, 3 and 5 year plans. I don’t believe in having a 3 or 5 year strategy, as that always becomes too rigid, so I’ve taken a leaf from 37 Signals and created a 3 or 5 year idea, which is always subject to evolution. And when planning goes into years, one or two lines in more than enough to convey the gist of what I’m aiming for. It’s the weekly, monthly, and 3-6 month plan that has the detail and the importance attached – anything beyond that is approaching fortune telling.

So did anyone else feel the same about their freelancing or small businesses? How did/do you cope? And have I helped you at all?

Age is no barrier to success…

April 2, 2009 By Dan Thornton

One of the blogs I subscribe to, The Blog Herald, recently carried a fairly standard story about an company acquisition. In this case, it caught my eye, because it’s Teens in Tech acquiring The Youth Bloggers Network.

The CEO of Teens in Tech is 16-year-old Daniel Brusilovsky, while 15-year-old Patrick DeVivo runs the Youth Bloggers Network. And they’re offering ad revenue split between publishers and host, custom domains, pro accounts, increased storage space etc.

It suddenly reminded of a quote (Thanks to @andjdavies, @neilperkin and @Rtyrie for reminded me of the source where Google failed).

It’s from the recently published and much discussed ‘Newspapers and thinking the unthinkable‘ by Mr Clay Shirky.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.”

The point isn’t that 14, 15 and 16 year olds are doing these things, which would suggest it’s solely the preserve of the young – the point is that there is no reason why the very young or old can’t become CEO of their own business. I talked with someone recently whose salesforce is way above the age you’d associate with internet businesses, but who is incredibly effective at what he does. It’s about the attitude, rather than skills, and the reason it’s more prevalent amongst the young is due to the access to technology, and changes in culture, which are more familiar, and not challenged by legacy practices.

Which means you’re not just going to face young rivals, but old rivals, middle-aged rivals, experienced rivals, inexperienced rivals, and your existing competitors.

And, as Mark would say, expert predictions aren’t very reliable, so the only real defence is to have a clear vision and aim on how you’re going to best use new and existing technologies and techniques, and start making yourself different right now.

Digg update and alternatives….

September 9, 2008 By Dan Thornton

In an update to my last post on Digg, the good news is my colleagues and I are now unbanned from Digg, following several emails. It’s good that the ban was lifted, as not only would it have left some of my colleagues unmotivated about social media, but I’m also quite determined to see if there’s a way to be successful at driving traffic on Digg without gaming the system – and to do that requires legitmate access rather than cheating and going through proxies, or using autoscripts etc. There’s quite an interesting profile of the top Digg user, MrBabyMan on ReadWriteWeb, and whilst our own Digg saga was developing, there was a rash of stories regarding whether or not he uses a script to autosubmit content.

But whatever happens, during my last post, I referneced quite a few sites which provide a major developing threat to Digg, as it continues to inhabit a world between the massive traffic of Yahoo Buzz, and the smaller focus of sites like Sphinn on the same technology premise.

RSS sharing: Personally, I use two web based RSS readers – Google Reader is my main reader, but I keep an account at Feedeachother because I got to know the sole person behind it, Udi Falkson, it’s got a lot of features which are as good as Google Reader, and it’s good to have a place for feeds which I read for pleasure and aren’t work related, stopping my main reader becoming incredibly overwhelmed. What both sites offer – and what almost every RSS reader contains now – is the ability to easily share stories with friends and fans via the sites themselves or emails etc. As user networks grow, this provides one major method for content of interest to appear in front of me.

Social news aggregators: In Web 1.0, this meant Digg. Now, however, it tends to mean sites like Twine and Socialmedian. These services combine uploading discovered content with methods to follow ‘friends’ who submit quality news, and to comment around it, re-share it, and discover more via recommendations. Numbers at the moment are small as Twine is still in private beta, and Socialmedian has recently emerged, but they’re growing:

Social networks/microblogging/lifestreaming: Lumping together everything from Facebook to Twitter to Friendfeed basically revoles around one thing. Recommendations from friends. I build networks on these sites from people I know or discover who share interests with me, and therefore, their recommendations carry a certain weight with them. Can I say the same about 800 random Digg users or Amazon reviewers? I know which of my friends can recommend video cameras, mobile phones, or good hiphop. And I’ve already built up this information in getting to know them and adding them. Do I want to have to start researching each Digg user, particularly when the top Diggers tend to submit and rate so much it’s seemingly random – one of the flaws of the Shout system and blind digging the content your friends send for reciprocal links.

Niche ranking sites: It doesn’t take much to create a ranking system – probably less work than getting an article on the front page of Digg! Hence sites like Sphinn, which concentrate on Marketing news and discussion. And bearing in mind that the ‘Digg Effect‘ is infamous for traffic which may have a high Bounce Rate, and low loyalty, the smaller niche sites have a benefit for attracting and interacting with likeminded individuals. Plus you need far less popularity to get to the front!

The majors: I’ve already mentioned Yahoo Buzz and the huge amounts of traffic it can bring. As major newspaper and media sites evolve towards becoming more digital, they’ll increasingly be seeking ways to aggregate and curate online content. They’ve got sizeable audiences, and a wider perceived range of interests than the ‘Digg Crowd’. If you’re not looking for technology specifically, would you browse Digg, or an aggregator run by the New York Times or the Guardian?

Something completely different – human search: I’ll be honest and admit I didn’t see a use for the likes of Mahalo when I first encountered it. Why search within a far smaller sea than Google can trawl, and rely on weak-minded humans rather than our robot overlords? But I always like to use something for a while before making a judgement, and I’m glad I did, because the Mahalo homepage and the plugin for Firefox have become really useful for seeing popular stories and sources of information (the plugin also improves Google search with a handy summary information box!). Now I get an overview of recent stories, which have had an element of human filtering. And it’s showing pretty good growth:

All of this information is coming to me without needing to visit the Digg homepage on a regular basis, or research the small group of Digg users who can effectively make or break a story. I could subscribe to sections by RSS, but given the churn of stories, and the fact I’m not interested in every car or internet news story, it becomes problematic. Instead, I can rely on friends and family who know me to be able to show me things they think are a) Cool, and b) Things I’d really like by their own self-selecting mechanism and no real effort on my part.

I’m intrigued to see how other people feel, especially after some of the great comments to my last post on Digg. At the moment, I can’t see an easy solution for Kevin Rose and the team, but I’ll try and outline some possibilities in my next post.