Throwing down the gauntlet

I used to struggle with blogging

I've dabbled and flirted with blogging for a long time. I have always had a sense that there was something definitely worth doing in opening my journal to the World Wide Web. I was trapped, however, because I felt like I had nothing to say.


I am a religious zealot, sort of.

In my faith, if you actively practice then you basically are a religious zealot, minus the war-like activities. One thing we zealots are encouraged (which is usually treated as "commanded") to do is to journal. So, I have had no lack of internal pressure to keep a personal record.

I've done that (journaling) intermittently on paper and online. I've been fairly miserable at consistency. I started this blog with the idea to track my thoughts, aspirations, and actions for business, specifically the business of acting and film making.

And I won't lie, I hoped that somehow I would generate a little bit of fame and fandom through this internet commodity. But keeping up with this blog was difficult. I had three major hurdles as I saw it (maybe you have some of the same ones?):

1. What I found interesting was such a small niche that I figured not enough people would really even be interested. 
2. What most people would be interested in I had nothing new or really unique to say (I mean, I think I'm incredibly unique, but would anyone else think so? Which, by the way, is the only thing and actor thinks when not currently performing).
3. Would the time and effort be worth it?
• With so little to say, it takes a lot of work to come up with something that's worth anything to other people.
• It takes a long time to build an audience (if you can) and doing so may lead nowhere
• I like money...

What changed to make blogging easier

So, a quick update from my last post: I got a degree in acting. I made a few short films, a couple of web series, and then told myself it wasn't headed in the right direction to apply my time to it. That's not to say that the experience wasn't great, I loved it, but I have a family (there's like a gajillion children at my house - I think they're all mine).

I needed to have a career that could feed my ego (I'm an actor at my core, so my ego is pretty ridiculous) and feed my family. So, I got an MBA! (I'm smart too).

While in that program I studied a lot of biznass stuff. One of my favorite classes was on digital marketing. In that class I revisited a personality I admire, Neil Patel.

He does digital marketing/website stuff. I admit I don't really know what all he does, but I know this: He is a model of what to do to grow a digital brand/footprint. He's also a blogging demon (He has like 4+ blogs that he writes on regularly). I love his stuff.

What really got me was his $100,000/mo challenge where he promised to start an online business that he knew little about and grow it to $100,000/mo in income in 12 months!!! That's insane and awesome.

How I solved my 3 biggest blockades

So, I decided I was going to copy Neil Patel. Even if I got a tenth (that's biblical, zealot) of what he accomplished I would completely eliminate my third objection: Would it be worth the time and effort?

But what about objection one and two? What about my interest being too small niche and about not having enough unique things to say?

I'll tackle objection two first.

Do I have anything unique or interesting to say? Is my voice even worth listening to?

I actually have a ton of unique things to say and unique ways to say them. Furthermore, I'm finally starting to accept the concept of fail fast, fail often (coder nerds, you know what I'm talking about).

But more than that, I have so much more to say now than I did then. While I could have and should have been doing this all along (I would be so far ahead of my own game if I had), I am now at a place where I respect my own voice enough to share it.

I no longer worry about who might hate what I have to say. I don't care what flaws are going to get poked at. More importantly, I believe that most people will either truly benefit from what I have to offer or ignore it - I don't anticipate a lot of negativity. The best part is, that I get to learn, and I'm likely to get a lot of help from people along the way.

Finally, I have a unique set of interests and insights that generate a different product than exists anywhere out there. I really believe that my niche interests are a strength to my voice rather than a hindrance.

And since I've broached the topic, I'll now dash away objection one.

Are my interests too niche? Who would even be interested, besides my mom?

Niche ideas are the best! It's too big a world out there to spend your time trying to be the same as everyone else.

Being niche requires only two things:

1. That you are interested enough to find new and interesting things to say, and 
2. That you find like minded individuals and market to them.

If you can do those two things then you will have an audience that is plenty sizable.

A quick Fermi thought experiment:

I know a guy who is part of a glider club. In fact, I'm supposed to get into his flying tube of death sometime this month. Should be exhilarating.

From the way he talks, there are about 20 people that are in the club in my county. That's just this club. If we assume that there are 10 clubs in the whole county that would mean there are approximately 200 people in a 500,000 person county that enjoy this sport.

300,000,000 (I'm rounding down) people live in the US. Divide 300,000,000 by 500,000 and we get 600 "groups" of 500,000 people in the US. Multiply 200 glider enthusiasts per 500,000 people with the 600 and we get 120,000 glider enthusiast in the US.

120,000 glider enthusiasts is probably incredibly low to the actual figure. But lets say that my friend started a glider blog. If he were able to capture 1% of that group every month that would be 1,200 visitors to his blog.

1,200 glider enthusiasts a month represents 60 times the number of people he is currently associates with! Who cares that the number isn't 100 times larger with a mass audience? This is a group that is more likely to care about what he has to say, more likely to interact, more likely to create mutually beneficial relationship, and more likely to be influenced by his opinion (which also reads, "more likely to buy the stuff that he suggests they should buy").

Lets say that the average purchase from my friend's made up glider attachment widgets is $250 and the margins are $150. If we further assume that he converts 1% of the monthly visitors to buy a widget then he will generate sales of $3,000 and profits of $1800 every month. That's an additional $21,600 per year doing something that he enjoys, a niche.

Niches are often too small for bigger players to go after.

My Grand Plan

If you're like me then you are interested in sooooo many things.

I want to be successful in multiple areas and I have often been told that I need to focus on one thing. There is a lot of wisdom in this, but I just can't do it.

I'm more  of a juggler. I work on this one thing for a bit, then on this other thing, then on that, then I jump back to the first one, and so on...

Here's my list of financial successes that I aspire to:

1. I want to have a successful acting career. 
2. I want to own a successful film studio and be a successful producer. 
3. I want to own a successful real estate investing company.
4. I want to start a holding company and use it to buy up businesses that I can make more efficient or scale.

I have other things I am interested in, but this is strictly a financial or career list. Add to that the ability to see my family everyday, help my kids learn, grow, and select their own passions and career paths, and structure my day however I see fit.

I will be working on these goals somewhat simultaneously. This blog will now chronicle my efforts.

My plan looks like this:

1. Develop a website that provides a unique business offering within the film industry (niche).
2. Leverage that site to make connections and create my own film production studio. 
3. Leverage my studio to forward my acting career.
• Consider starting a website or blog solely on acting.
4.  Start investing in real estate and develop a team to create an investment company.
5. Develop investor relations that can be leveraged to start a company that will buy up inefficient businesses.

I have a full time job. So, on that list should be included the transition from full time to part time to no-time as the income for my goals replace (and hopefully surpass) my full time income.

Also, I'm pretty risk adverse (read "scared") which explains a lot of why it has taken so long for me to really start with this process.

What I will be providing to you

I will be sharing every step, in near-real time, that I take. For instance, this blog post is a step. My next blog post will be a summary of what I have done to date for my goals. The following will detail the frustrating process I am currently going through of setting up my first website to be ready to market. And so on.

Theoretically, you should be able to read post-by-post what I am doing and gain a wealth of insight to how you might be able to do similar things to pursue your goals.

What I am hoping to get from you

Engagement. Help! Corrections. Concerns. Approval. Money. 

Whatever you want to share. I don't know what I'm doing here. I've studied this stuff. I understand how business should be run. I have experience in management, business strategy, and marketing, but if there's one thing I know for sure it's that no one knows what they are doing.

Seriously, everyone out there is basically guessing. Sure, there's a lot of sophisticated tools to increase the probability of guessing correctly, but in the end all of life is guess work. 

I'm going to share what I do know and I'm going to walk into the darkness to show you what I am discovering. Your engagement will only make this better for both of us, so many thanks to you now.

I think this is going to be amazing. I mean, honestly, it's probably going to suck for me, a lot, but in the end I will be exactly what I wanted, some happy diminution of what I imagined, or a textbook definition of the word "failure." Whatever the outcome, I will never say, "if only I had tried."

Join me.

Let me know what you think.