There is Tremendous Value in Managing Complicated but Inexpensive Tasks

I had a bit of an epiphany today that most of the recurring profit (and probably profit of any kind) generated by my company comes from the management of relatively inexpensive services.

So in our case, that’s mostly website hosting but also applies to things like ongoing services for WordPress and even domain name registration.

I just re-read one of my old blog posts and I mentioned how, when presented with the option for even faster hosting, virtually all of my clients have declined. And I found that fascinating.

Over time, I’ve realized that the technical specs of my hosting don’t matter a whole lot to any of my clients.

What they value is that I’m managing everything. They know I’m handling it all, configuring it will, and they inherently trust that what I’m offering is high-quality. Beyond that, they don’t understand and don’t care to understand how it works.

And that’s all great, and something I have already written about.

But today I thought… What other services fit a similar description? I think anything that meets the following criteria would fit the bill for a great opportunity:

  1. More or less a commodity service but with premium options available
  2. Relatively complex behind the scenes and poorly-understood by most
  3. Recurring service with minimal maintenance required once set up properly
  4. Tech or software related and possible to perform entirely online
  5. Ideally a service used by businesses and not just by consumers

Anything that meets all four of these criteria could potentially be a great opportunity for me. In addition to the website hosting and domain name registrations we’re already providing, here are some that I can think of now:

  • Cloud-based email hosting – particularly services that will not be interacting with third-party clients, such as Google Workspace
  • Cloudflare services / DNS hosting
  • Zapier Integrations
  • Managed Google Analytics and similar tools
  • Merchant services accounts/integrations, like with Authorize.net

Of these, the last one interests me the most. I could basically just resell Authorize.net services and get it set up and maintain it, and people would love it because I would handle everything for them. I could just have a form that people sign up on that gets all of the information needed to get set up and do it all for them.

I’m sure there are lots of others, but these were just the ones I thought of now.

I just definitely keep thinking about this and try to find more examples.

A possible 6th category may very well be: “is able to be managed entirely by me without the need for a client account”.

That would be a major drawback of the merchant services stuff, because they wouldn’t see the need for me if they had their own account that would keep working without me. Ideally it would all be behind the scenes.

The value is there regardless, it’s just that if they have their own account, they would be inclined to question the value without understanding the full picture.

 

 

I Could Reach out to Cities and Localities and Offer my Photos in Exchange for Links

I had a great idea recently relating to my fine art photography website, and that is that I could reach out to cities and other localities and offer to let them use my photos in any capacity as long as they provided me with a backlink.

These backlinks would obviously be very valuable, because they would make my photos rank highly for the locations which I’m targeting. Then, people would end up on my site and hopefully buy prints.

It would be a great way to raise the profile of my website, get more traffic, and improve rankings for specific locations.

It may be a bit labor-intensive unless I outsource it. But I think that once I’ve built up a decent library of photos, it will be a great investment of my time to really get the project off the ground.

Nothing is needed now because I’m still working hard to fill it out and finalize some things, but perhaps later in the summer I should really start doing that.

I Need to Adopt a Pragmatic Approach to Everything

This feels very obvious but I don’t think I’ve really been living it: I need to adopt a pragmatic approach to everything.

I’ve posted many times about my idealism in the past and how I tend to think I’m going to be able to just brute-force my way through problems and achieve a level of perfection that will solve all my problems.

And that obviously isn’t a good strategy.

The only viable strategy is pragmatism.

It’s fine to want to improve, work towards goals, and imagine a future where we are better in certain ways.

But in the present, we need to be completely honest and realistic about ourselves, our opportunities, and our weaknesses.

Because none of those things change over night. If I’m weak against something now, I’m likely to continue being weak against it in the future.

The path the leads to success will take into account all pieces of information and make decisions based on that. Because why wouldn’t it?

Idealism simply ignores some data and replaces it with what you wish things were like.

Pragmatism is iterative, too. You can try something based on what you know, and alter your approach based on how that went. As you learn more, you can improve what works.

So here’s a concrete example of this.

I’m currently not drinking at all. Productivity is way up and lots of other things are greatly improved.

This is highly pragmatic. It recognizes that there are downsides to drinking and that it has very real consequences, and also that it’s difficult to just drink a small amount.

The idealistic side of me has always said, “I can limit it to weekends and it won’t affect me in the week” or, “even if I’m low on energy I’ll just power through it and it won’t affect me”.

They are idealistic and unrealistic ideas.

Whether or not I’ll one day be able to find a happy middle ground remains to be seen, but the fact remains that I definitely AM more productive now, and it is highly pragmatic and effective to give up drinking in an effort to be more successful.

But I can think of some other things that this applies to as well. Here are some of the top of my head:

  • I’m not effective on low sleep, and it’s generally better to sleep late than to try to power through the tiredness
  • I’m not motivated to work or be productive at night
  • Looking to others for help in areas where I’m lacking is probably much more beneficial and rapid than trying to do everything myself

I need to simply give up my idealism and focus on being pragmatic in all areas.

Most importantly, this means acknowledging my own weaknesses and consistent failings and altering my approach accordingly.

My goal now is to just be more aware of times when I’m being too idealistic and take a step back to figure out what I should really be doing. And perhaps writing about it there!

Life is What You Make of It

It’s time for a nice, trite post that will hopefully motivate me in the future.

The last week I’ve been sort of just feeling sorry for myself. The people that I know here were busy and for various reasons I wasn’t able to make any plans with them.

And so for the most part, I just stayed in my apartment and didn’t do anything social or really anything to take advantage of where I currently am.

And it was sad. I was also sad specifically about a girl I’m seeing here (or rather: not seeing in this case).

After about a week of that I finally decided: you know what? I’m done with this. I’m not just going to sit around and wait for things to happen or to go home. I’m here, I’m going to make the most of it.

And along with my attitude, things took a 180 overnight. I quickly lined up a bunch of activities which led to seeing people immediately, and I’m even planning now to go to Uruguay tomorrow morning and spend the weekend there.

It was all just a basic mindset shift.

I just needed to actually DO something to make it happen.

And you know what? It was uncomfortable. It would have been much more comfortable to just stay in like always and read or play games or something. But I would have gone home in a couple weeks feeling incredibly disappointed.

Instead, I’m not only doing things that I’ll remember for a long time, but I’m also feeling way more fulfilled and much happier overall.

I need to just remember in the future that I have control over these types of things. If there’s a problem, I can and should fix it myself.

The World is Nothing Like I Think it Is

The thought came to me that really, none of the places I’ve gone to are really anything like what I imagined.

I always have notions of what things are like. What cultures are like, what the people are like, how much people earn, etc.

I think I’ve been guilty of thinking everyone in a certain place would be poor, and then have been surprised to see countless cars driving down the road that I couldn’t come close to affording.

I always thought Buenos Aires was on the ocean and assumed it would have a proper beach. Neither are accurate.

Basically everywhere I’ve gone has led to some great surprises, and my existing beliefs and concepts about what those places would be like are often way off.

Of course it can vary a bit (London, for example, was about what I expected), the fact remains that even if we’re confident in what we think we know, we might still be completely wrong.

And that’s just for the places I’ve been to, which hopefully not I have a more accurate concept of.

I’ve only been to maybe 0.0001% of the cities of the world, and met even fewer of its people. It’s likely that my concept of almost all of them is wrong.

And then there are ideas, concepts, industries, cultures, languages, and more that I am likely just as ignorant about.

With almost all of them, if I dug in deeper, I’m sure I would find that my preconceived notions are way off base.

Which means that I really don’t know anything about anything. I’m almost completely ignorant about the world.

And I think this applies to everyone.

The world is a huge place and we don’t live very long. You can spend an entire lifetime learning and still barely crack the surface.

I’m not sure there’s much of an actionable lesson from this, just that I shouldn’t be confident that I know just about anything. I need to always be open to new ideas because the ones I have probably aren’t the best.

The Experiences I Have with Others Account for the Majority of my Opinion of a Place

I had a lot of fun with some new friends here yesterday, and I realized just how much that colors my opinion of a place.

Independently of just about anything else, the people I meet and the time I spend with them accounts for nearly my entire opinion of a place.

This may apply mostly to cities, vs. going around scenic landscapes. I may have enjoyed Ireland more with a travel companion or if I had met more people, but going alone was still fun.

But I thought about it because for the last few weeks here, for a number of reasons I won’t go into today; I have mostly been alone. And it’s been a little bit sadder as a result.

Everything is still inexpensive, the weather is nice, and people are friendly and there is theoretically plenty to do. But the fact that I wasn’t enjoying my time with others did minimize my enjoyment greatly and, with it, my opinion shifted.

It just makes you think a bit… It’s easy to think that your opinions and judgements of a location are fairly objective but they aren’t at all. Even if you’re in a wonderful place, if you’re there alone or with the wrong people you might hate it.

Likewise, if you’re in a terrible place, you might still have a great time with the right company.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I really need to prioritize frequent social activities when I’m traveling (and probably even when I’m not). Life is a whole lot more fulfilling that way.

Any Anxiety Makes me feel Insecure and Tends to Snowball

I realized today as I was procrastinating and feeling a little insecure about women that even small increases in general anxiety tend to make me feel insecure about unrelated things, procrastinate, and then cause additional problems that lead to more anxiety.

It’s a vicious cycle.

What was I anxious about today?

I had a large to-do list that was way behind schedule due to a morning that didn’t go as I had planned. Time was passing and the prospect of completing my to-do list became less and less appealing to me.

And when that happens, I start getting anxious. And that starts to cause more problems. I procrastinate more and then just don’t get anything done.

I’ve generally been good about totally resetting each morning in that case, so it doesn’t get too out-of-hand. I restart my whole to-do and go from there, leaving the lost day in the past.

But there’s still that lost day.

In the past, I think after one of these days I would start to be super primed for a night of letting loose and drinking. This is, after all, a situation in which alcohol shines. It allows you to easily forget about your current problems and anxiety for a while and enjoy the moment.

Of course everything comes back worse once you’re sober again, but in the meantime it can be quite appealing.

But I’m not drinking now. So you know what I did instead?

I buckled down and powered through (almost) all of the to-do. And I feel much better now and can relax without that specter hanging over me.

I’d argue it’s because I’ve been sober for a while. I can much more easily control these situations and recover them without having big ups and downs.

It’s a Friday evening and I’ll now be able to relax and enjoy myself without drinking, which is nice.

I think the lessons from this are twofold: first, that not drinking leads to greatly improved productivity, resilience, and stability. And the second is that I need to always be aware of how I’m feeling and what’s going on, and if I start slipping off-track and doing things that will lead to greater anxiety, I need to make a conscious effort to get back on-track.

Failure of Empathy

One of the most puzzling parts of learning a language is the intense feeling that if you can understand somebody, so can everybody else.

So if I’m with a friend that doesn’t speak English, and somebody speaks to me in Spanish and I understand them without any trouble, it feels like the person with me should also be able to understand it.

You start to rationalize this belief, too. You think things like, “well, the vocab this person used was pretty basic so anyone who took one Spanish class would understand” or “those are common words so I’ll bet the understand”.

When you think about it, you realize it’s obviously not true. There’s no way somebody without any Spanish training is understanding as well as me, someone who has spent thousands of hours with the language.

And yet it requires conscious effort to internalize the fact that they cannot understand as well as you can. Or probably at all.

And it sort of just feels like a total failure of empathy.

If I used empathy more in this situation, I should be able to understand, on all levels, that this person cannot understand even though I can.

The experiences, abilities, and understanding of every other person on the planet are completely different than my own, and I think it’s easy to lose track of that.

But it makes me think: in similar situations, but where you can more reasonably rationalize your sentiment, wouldn’t you genuinely believe that the other person should have an experience much more similar to your own?

I find that in my work, I’m often impatient with clients who struggle to understand something related to their website that to me, is clear as day.

It’s easy for me to rationalize. “This doesn’t require any special skills,” or “there aren’t very many steps and it isn’t complicated”.

But at the same time, it’s something that’s easy to me because I’ve spent a long time doing it.

I think there are situations like this almost everywhere, and I’m confident that I’m not the only one experiencing this.

I can certainly think of countless times where a family member or friend was really impatient with me in some task where they couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing it as well as them. Despite, often, it being a task that I was brand new to or had some other obvious disadvantage.

I think we develop ideas of the world around us and as we interact with it, we come to an understanding about how things are.

It’s easy to believe that this understanding is universal and that it applies to everyone. But it’s not. How we perceive the world and understand it may, indeed, be relevant to our own lives and selves, but it may be the complete opposite for someone else.

I think this comes up all the time when you look at groups that are often discriminated against.

If you aren’t in one of those groups, it’s so easy to dismiss their grievances and assume that they aren’t a big deal. Even if you acknowledge some of the specific forms of discrimination they face, you still cannot possibly understand what it feels like to face it day after day.

You can try, but you’ll never truly understand.

I think there are instances of this type of thing everywhere, and I know that I do it all the time.

I find myself unintentionally judging others for their choices and do not spend enough time reflecting on that and using empathy to understand that their values, experiences, and understand of the world vary wildly from my own.

They probably judge most of my choices.

The solution, I think, is to develop more empathy and really put it to work. Hopefully I can keep that in mind and do it much more going forward.

I Should Really Market Occasionally to my Existing Clients

Anyone who’s in marketing would say “duh” to this… But I’m starting to think I really do need to do it.

I hate doing most traditional forms of marketing, and email-newsletters are certainly on that list.

But I realized today that, for many of my newer clients (especially via acquisition), they have no idea what my business stands for, what we’re about, or even that we’re looking to grow.

I think sending a couple emails per year would probably be quite beneficial. If nothing else, I could share news about myself and the company and they would feel closer and more connected with me, which would improve retention.

It would also make them more comfortable to reach out to me for anything they need.

And then, one of the most important parts, would be that it might increase organic growth via referrals. If they are happy with my services and know that I’m looking to grow, they will refer their friends and family to me and potentially ask to sign up their other projects as well.

You could argue that this is very low-hanging fruit. I already have a huge list of clients that are mostly pleased with my services and would be happy to share my name with some if I were top-of-mind.

I’ve added it to my list for next week to be my marketing project. Hopefully by next Friday, I’ll send out my first email in years.

General Plan for Photos Site

It’s time I finally made progress on my fine art photos site.

Today, I reviewed it and tried to see if there were any search results for the one photo I have uploaded to this point.

I was disappointed to find that I’m an idiot and had been discouraging search engines from indexing it all this time. Great.

So I fixed that and got Google Analytics 4 added, so I’ll be able to track it better and get some traffic to it.

I’m not really pleased with how it looks and, at some point, I think I’ll need to fix that.

However, there’s really no point if it’s not getting traffic yet.

So here’s a general outline of what I’d like to do with it in the coming future:

  • Start uploading my best photos with an emphasis on going deep with each one, optimizing the page, content, and description
  • Develop a regular schedule of uploading – perhaps one photo each day
  • Put together a schedule for developing content on the home page and an “About” page
  • Develop a strategy for occasional blog posts and articles discussing my photography
  • Figure out a strategy to get some backlinks

Once I feel like all of these things are in line, I’d like to simply wait and see if I start getting search engine traffic. Based on that traffic, I can decide how to start proceeding.

Without search engine traffic, the plan doesn’t work. I need it in order to actually make sales and have my plan work.

Let’s do it.