Posts from the ‘Personal’ Category
Every day I am proud to be an America. Some days more than others…
Today is the 10-year anniversary of 9-11. I remember the day clearly, and the impact it had on my life and business. Before sharing that with you though I would like to give thanks.
Thank you. Thank you to all of the emergency services people that responded in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. Thank you for your selfless sacrifice, coming to the aid of those that desperately needed it. Words cannot express the gratitude I feel as I remember your actions.
Thank you. Thank you those that provided support and assistance after the tragic events, be it with your labor or finances. Thank you to all those that are helping to rebuild one of the greatest cities the world has ever seen. And thank you to my fellow Americans for never forgetting the lessons learned that fateful day.
Thank you. Thank you to all of our armed forces personnel who are protecting our wonderful country and sacrifice so much in the call of duty. Thank you to all that have laid down their lives in the name of our freedom and security. Thank you to their families.
I Remember That Day Clearly
I was sitting in a computer certifications course in Alexandria, Virginia – 20 minutes from downtown D.C., when my instructor came in and said that he heard a plane ran into one of the Twin Towers. We all thought it a horrible freak accident rather than an act of terrorism. We couldn’t get the news up on the television so we went about our work.
The skies became eerily silent. And then we heard the fighter jets.
Being 10 minutes away from Reagan National airport with the continuous sound of airplanes overhead, it struck us as odd.
At lunch time we managed to get the television working. It was then we found the U.S. had been attacked and that the planes were purposefully steered into the Towers. It was a sickening feeling.
We also found out that a short distance away the Pentagon had been attacked as well. That was frightening. I knew people that worked at the Pentagon, and I drove by it regularly on my way downtown. I had friends that were knocked clear across the room during the attack; thankfully they came out with minor harm. Many others were not as fortunate.
Later the sacrifice of those in Pennsylvania was discovered. That plane was headed for my town of Washington, DC. I had a lot of friends there at the time.
This was not an event that struck close to home, it hit home.
Everything Changed; My World Changed
At the time I had my first business – an IT business. Everything became frozen.
Small business spending dried up. People were afraid. Unless you had a military clearance you couldn’t get a job.
I remember driving by the Pentagon and seeing armored humvees at the ready with surface to air missiles. A surreal scene to say the least.
All around D.C. government buildings had barricades erected to stop any trucks or other vehicles that might try to run into a building. They stopped tours at the White House.
Thankfully at the time I was doing a lot of subcontract work and was able to maintain some level of business. But ultimately it didn’t last.
In the October following 9-11 Kookkai and I got married. Shortly after we moved from our apartment in Capital Hill – a 5 minute walk to the Capital Building – to Florida where I found a job.
America went to war.
And the rest as they say is history.
Anger And Sadness
10 years later I am unable to watch replays of the planes and the Twin Towers. A great anger wells up inside of me. I can only imagine how it is for those that lost loved ones.
During a business trip a few years ago Kookkai and I took our daughter to Ground Zero. A far cry from the days when I was younger and my parents took me to New York and we dined at Windows On The World, a restaurant in the North Tower. I recall clearly the huge amethyst that sat atop a pedestal, welcoming all who were about to eat. I’ll hold on to that memory as long as I can.
I see the pictures of people jumping from the towers and frankly want to cry. No one should have to make that choice. It’s unfathomable.
Acknowledgement And Acceptance
The world of today is very different than it may have been. But with acknowledgement comes acceptance – things are as they are. And we continue to move forward.
And as we move forward at a very rapid pace, we must not forget what happened before. And we must not live in the days past.
Let us learn the lessons of the tragic events, and remember the selflessness of so many after, the selflessness of many today.
I will never forget.
Thank you.
In celebration of Labor Day in the United States, my home country, I invite you to post a link to a picture of your workspace with an inventory of the goodies therein.
I’ll start!
This is the desk I am now spending many hours at:
And from another angle…
So what is all that stuff? Here’s the rundown from left to right:
- A picture of my daughter with a tiger cub
- A picture of my daughter and me riding an elephant. The frame is made from elephant poo. And no, it doesn’t smell, thankfully.
- A plate from the Chiangmai Zoo with a picture of me holding my daughter
- 2 postcards waiting to be sent out
- Mobile phone (cheapy)
- iPhone
- Large coffee cup, good for hot and cold coffee
- Two external hard drives
- My Mac Book Pro, external keyboard, and wireless mouse with mousepad
- Fast Company Magazine
- Fortune Magazine (underneath)
- Internet connection: DSL modem, wireless router
- Book Shelf: Amazon Kindle, Outrageous Advertising (Bill Glazer), Inside The Mind Of The Millionaire Maker (Dan Kennedy)
- Two older iPhones, now loaded with games for my daughter
Now it’s your turn so…
Show Me Your Desk!
Here’s how this goes:
- Take a picture of your desk
- Upload it somewhere online, and grab the URL to the picture
- Put that URL in a comment below
- Tell us what’s in the picture
Now if you can’t embed the image using an image tag like so: “<img src=”Link to your image” />” then I’ll grab it and embed it in the comment.
So let’s see them!
My family and I just got back from Laos yesterday. Every 3 months we need to spend a day there to extend our visas. When we come back to Thailand we stay in Mukdahan, a city across the Mekong River from Laos. The city is fantastic with a lot of shopping and food. I love Thai food. But that’s another personal post.
Today we went to two places I wanted to share with you. The first is a temple built into and on top of a mountain. There are 17 monks living there, and they climb 300 stairs all day every day to go around the temple grounds. At the top is a large pagoda dedicated to a famous monk that lived there.
Here are a few pics taken with my iPhone.
Click on any of them to see a larger version.
With my family at the temple in the mountain
One of the monk houses on the mountain
Palamee on some of the more than 300 stairs at the temple. She's a trooper.
Pagoda at the top of the mountain
The pagoda from another angle
The second stop of the day was the largest, most ornate and beautiful pagoda I have ever seen in my life. Frankly it’s one of the most beautiful and ornate buildings I’ve ever seen, and that includes Vienna (sorry Austria I still love you).
The entire pagoda complex is surrounded by a 3 kilometer long brick walkway that looked more like a Thai version of the great wall of China. The views too were spectacular, and my iPhone pics can’t do them justice.
Here are some of the pics from the pagoda:
Outer wall of the pagoda complex
Doorway in the outer wall
One of the many nagas guarding the doors to the outside
Inner courtyard of the pagoda
First floor inside the pagoda
Close up of the ceiling
Staircase on the second floor
Stain glass window near the top of the pagoda
My wife Kookkai on the surrounding outer wall
Now if those don’t make you want to come here, I don’t know what will!
My web development firm Atlantic Dominion Solutions is no longer taking clients.
This has been some time in the coming, and rather than publish this post on the company blog, I wanted to post it here, and hear your thoughts and experiences on this.
And as one door closes another opens wide.
The Door That Just Closed
I went full-time with my web development firm in 2007, a year after I started building it. I was a self-taught programmer, and later finished my computer science degree. I had been told by a friend about a hot new thing called Ruby on Rails. And though it took me a few weeks to look into it, when I did, I knew immediately that I had to learn this.
This was going to be the next big thing, and I was right in front of it.
Ride The Wave
Long story short I caught that wave and using multiple online strategies built up the company very quickly. At first I contracted all the work and did some myself, but then business started to pour in and I hired my first full-time employee, and quit my full-time job.
Within a year the company was grossing over $500K, and I had 6 employees. A few months later I had 3 more – 2 of which were in my computer science program.
Rob Gets Educated
I got my computer science degree and in January of 2008 started my MBA. I remember that first day well as I was sitting in my first class a few hours after my daughter was born. That was one hell of a fantastic day.
Shortly after starting my MBA I came to a crossroads – I could either get better at business, or better at software development – I chose business.
Things Go Beyond Hectic
During the next two years was ensued was nothing short of madness. I:
- Met Anthony Richardson, an independent marketing consultant that, while he and I were working together, made me realize that marketing is where it’s at (more on that shortly)
- Held the first Ruby on Rails conference in the south, for two years in a row
- Sponsored numerous developer conferences
- Got into Agile software development and got a number of certifications
- Did some Agile consulting for a few companies in Orlando
- Spoke at a number of Agile conferences in Europe (pure awesome)
- Spoke at developer conferences in the US
- Attended class every weekend
- Launched numerous web apps, one of which I sold, many of which I killed off
- Bought a new car
- And more I can’t even remember
It was a great two years
The Door Shuts
As of yesterday, we are no longer taking on any clients.
I spoke with my last contractor yesterday and we’re starting to wind down the final remaining projects of the company. Our largest client has about a year left on the contract, and the smaller clients we have are almost set with the work they need done. Once that work is complete Atlantic Dominion Solutions will no longer function as a web development firm.
It has been a great 5 years, we made a ton of fantastic applications – some public and many internal, had many purely awesome clients, I had some great employees, and I got to meet a lot of fantastic people along the way.
Another Door Opens
When I first started working with Anthony Richardson I didn’t know too much about marketing, but I knew that without it I wouldn’t be getting any business. PPC had been working quite well for me for a few years, and some of my organic rankings were front-page. But I wanted to use other means to get customers to find me, and had to ramp it up – competition was increasing.
It was then that I started learning as much as I possibly could about marketing strategy.
I took a months-long foray into Internet Marketing, and ran into all the gurus at the time – Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, later Andy Jenkins, and many others. I learned a lot, and I learned that I didn’t agree with many of the sales tactics being used to sell products.
For the past year I have been transitioning to being a full-time marketer, btoeh helping clients bring in more customers using online methods, and building and launching niche sites.
Fast forward a year and here I am today. I have 12 niche sites online, covering Internet Marketing (where you are now), freelancing, electronics, software, and the mega niche – health & wellness. I’m taking what I’ve learned over the past 5 years and applying it on all of my sites.
And I’m doing the same for customers, both directly and as a subcontractor.
So while the door closes on my web development firm, the door for my marketing services is just beginning. It’s time to take the lessons of the past, combine that with today’s knowledge, and begin some serious asskickery!
The Lesson In All Of This
It annoys my wife to no end when I use what I’m doing as an example in the advice I give her. I do the same thing to my clients. And I tell you all of this not to brag about my past accomplishments or to lessen my past failures, but to give you more insight into who is writing everything you read here, and why I take the approach that I do.
Last week I told you what being a recovered alcoholic has taught me about people. Today I hope to impart some nuggets of wisdom that I’ve gotten from the past 5 years in business.
The 10 Nuggets
The lessons I’ve learned in the past are numerous, but I can distill them into 10 core nuggets:
- Know how much money is going out and how much is coming in, at all times
- There really is no such thing as failure, just learning experiences. Some lessons cost much more than others.
- Turn everything into systems. The more you repeat what you do, the more it costs you.
- Talk with as many people as possible, and listen to what they have to say. You could hear that one thing that leads to a million dollar idea. Then it’s a matter of taking action on it.
- Education is invaluable. The more you learn the more options you realize you have. Always be learning.
- Keep a sharp eye on priorities. Time is one thing, but if you’re spending time on worthless activities, that is truly time wasted. Know and understand what your top priorities are, and work on those first.
- The time available for work is endless; the time available for family is finite. See #6.
- Don’t go it alone. While some people may be unreliable not everyone is. Don’t let one bad experience dissuade you from trying again. If you can find people to team up with, you can go much further than being on your own. Aggressively seek those people out.
- Travel as much as you can. Nothing expands your mind more than going into another culture and seeing the world from their viewpoint. The more you can put yourself into the shoes of others, not only do you become more empathetic, it allows you to approach everything you do from multiple angles. Tunnel vision might be great for horses, but not for humans.
- Give unselfishly – karma is a bitch. A paradox of life is that the more you give the more you get. I like to see this as a balance in nature. And you truly get what you put in. But give because you want to not because you want something in return – that will get you very little. Become a giver, but give wisely.
Where I’m Going From Here
If you’re reading this I really do appreciate it. Let me wrap up.
100% of my time is devoted to the Itinerant Entrepreneur – to my clients, to my niche sites, and to you my reader.
I have a few things going on at The Itinerant Entrepreneur, all of it coming down to Internet marketing strategies. I have a number of SEO and AdWords reports for purchase, along with consulting focused on getting you more visitors to your website, getting more leads, and making more sales. I’m happy to say that my client work is starting to seriously ramp up.
I’m also getting ready to launch my Niche Site Strategy course. This will be a very hands-on me working with you in the trenches kind of thing – no handing off a product hoping you use what I teach – it’s going to be hardcore, and limited to 15 people.
Your Turn
Thank you very much for reading this. Now, I want to know more about you, your experiences, and what you’ve learned in the past that you apply today.
Please leave a comment below, or write a post on your blog and leave a comment here linking to it (no affiliate stuff – that gets deleted).
I look forward to hearing more about you.
See you in the comments.
Hello, my name is Robert Dempsey, and I’m a recovered alcoholic.
No this is not an April fools joke, that would make this a very different blog post.
I’ve had this post in draft for sometime, thinking about how to approach this, and it’s odd that on April fools I was inspired to write what I hope you will take a few minutes of your Friday to read.
I’ve been sober for 12 years this month, and have no shame in saying that I’m a recovered alcoholic. It’s given me an interesting perspective on life, if not an odd sense of humor. The folks I’m on Skype with can attest to that.
I’ve been studying marketing for years due to my various businesses, and after working for the better part of a year to shift from web development to marketing, it is starting to take hold and I am building a base of excellent clients.
The relationships that I’ve made over the past 11 years of self-employment, with one person introducing me to the next, that leading to a new relationship, and so on and so on, seems to me like nothing short of divine providence. I’m not going to get all religious on you so not to worry.
As they say in AA, “you can’t get to where I am from where I’ve been.”
I’m fairly active in social media, and as I’m currently living in Thailand, I rely heavily on the Internet for my ability to reach an entire world of people. We are lucky to be living in the time we are, and I’m very excited for the future.
It’s taken me a bit to realize what someone I respect – Chris Brogan – means by “humanizing business.” It has really started to sink in over the past months as I have learned to put people first in all of the marketing that I do, from keyword research to surveys to advertising and copy.
It is truly about the people.
In his new book, The Thank You Economy, Gary Vaynerchuk says that business is going back to how it used to be – highly personal. I was talking about this today with Sharel Omer, the co-founder of Commun.it, a social CRM application I am currently using to help connect with the people in my social networks.
It’s this that I learned during my recovery from alcoholism, and it’s these lessons that I apply in my life and to the marketing that I do, and are, in my opinion, highly relevant in our current time. The lessons are these:
- You have to give to get; but if you give for the express purpose of getting, you won’t get anything at all
- Life is about relationships, business is a part of life, much business is done based on relationships. You lose nothing by being personal, but what you gain is priceless
- The people that stick with you through thick and thin deserve more than respect, they deserve all the help you can give
- Never give up on people. Even when they seem practically beyond redemption, you could say the one sentence that could cause the spark inside them and bring them back
- It is all about the person on the other end. The more you know about him or her, the better you can connect with them, the more likely you are to be able to help them with your products and services
- Cast a wide net, but be sure your net is the right size for the right fish. You want the right fish, not all the fish.
Sitting at my desk here in Thailand I do not have the ability to sit beside you at a cafe and have a cup of coffee while discussing the latest email marketing strategies or Twitter app. Thankfully for the geek in me, there are tools that help me to connect with you before I get to meet you.
I typically have affiliate links to everything I’m signed up for, but I’m going to forego them in this post. Something tells me that in this instance I should leave them out.
These are the tools that I currently use to help me make those important connections that I’m talking about:
- HitSniffer: real-time analytics and much more
- Commun.it: community management software (social CRM)
- Buffer: the most awesome tweet scheduling app I’ve seen yet
- HootSuite: because I love web-based tools
- Triberr: from my homie Dino Dogan, this is my every widening net
The combination of these five combined with experience and Skype, helps keep me connected to a world of awesome friends, next customers, and new customers. And they help me to learn more about a person so that when I do get to meet them, it’s very different than just a “hi, how are you.”
It is said that all politics is local. I say that all business is personal.
Putting people first doesn’t mean getting soft or mushy, it means putting ego aside and finding out how best to create a win/win situation between your products and their needs. If you can make that connection, speak in their language, show that you truly understand them and are going for that win/win, you’ll have customers for life.
