I have spent a few months thinking about this post. I've gone back and forth on what to write. There is an expectation, raised by many other good milestone threads, that makes 10k seem like a big deal.
I have had friends ask me if this post would be “epic” or “mind-blowing”. I don't even know how to respond to that. I don't think anything I have ever posted was epic or mind-blowing. It's intimidating that people expect something like that from me. That's an impossible expectation to meet in my opinion.
10,000 posts took six years to accrue. A lot of those 10,000 posts are bad. Some are ok. A few might be really good. A few I wish I never made. You could probably delete 9,000 of my posts, and substantively, my record would not be any worse off and perhaps, much better through improved signal to noise.
However, posting a lot tends to convey authority because humans have a habit of associating size (rather than elegance or brevity) with success. Deserved or not, there are probably a couple-three guys here who think I know what I am talking about, and that what I say is important. There is not much I can do about that now. 10,000 or so posts have been made.
Anyway, enough of the context on where my head is at as I write this.
Before Wickedfire
I got started in IM by accident.
In 2002, I had a pretty good full time job, and a lot of free time because I had no real life outside work. I had this crazy idea, having taught myself basic drafting with CAD, to manufacture some computer case accessories.
This was back in the beige box era. I was a hardware hacking enthusiast hanging out on HardOCP and reading every issue of MaximumPC front to back and front again.
My plan was to design some really cool fan grills and then manufacture them and sell to the big computer mod reseller stores in the US, UK and Canada.
I did not really know what I was getting in to. Looking back, I was terribly ignorant about everything. The grill designs I made, no one wanted to buy. They were awesome, but I gave the resellers too much credit as enthusiasts. They generally weren't. They didn't want to sell cool, unique stuff. They wanted cheaply made Asian goods they could mark up 1000% or 2000%.
At this point, I was pretty committed because I had a bunch of money into it and I wasn't clever enough to stop and re-evaluate what I was trying to do. I still thought my designs were great (they were, totally by accident since I am no artist) and I was too dumb to know what I was getting myself in to. So I got a website built with an e-commerce cart with this plan for me to retail my grills direct.
I decided to use a friend of mine who had a web dev company where he outsourced the programming to Mexico. They were to have the site ready by Dec 1st 2002. After yelling and screaming (if you can imagine it, I was infinitely more high strung back then) we got the store up Dec 3 (2 days late). The project was completely, utterly and totally mismanaged by all of us. We were in over our heads.
The store was horrible. It ran like crap. They used MS Access as the database back-end. It was probably programmed by someone who knew nothing about e-comm. Remember, this is back in the relatively early days of the commercial internet. Almost no-one knew anything about e-comm. The entire conversation in the larger tech sphere at the time was “Will people use their credit cards online?”. People didn't really believe e-comm could work, or be much more than glorified digital mail order.
Anyway, I didn't get my first sale until Dec 23rd. Think about that. I spent a bunch of my savings, worked on this for almost a year, and then we launch and I don't have a way to get traffic. I know nothing about SEO or PPC which are infant industries at the time, and my business was online, but for all intents and purposes, non-existent.
Between Dec 3 and 23, I was a basket case, oscillating between being depressed, angry, frustrated and manic.
Then the first sale came, and in what seems to be my style, I took that one sale as a sign that I should invest the remainder of my savings into adding a lot more product. I started importing stuff from Taiwan with the idea that I can beat everyone else to market, who bought in huge quantities and shipped by ocean freight, by getting a smaller quantity shipped by Fedex International in 3 days.
That idea actually paid off. I had what everyone was looking for, while the big resellers had their stuff on a ship, 6 weeks away. Sure, when they landed their product they would have a lot of it to sell, but by that time I would have already set the market price (there was tons of collusion between the two biggest players to keep prices high) and satisfied the leading edge of demand.
I'd like to say this was all tactical genius, but it was just me lucking into something that worked well. There wasn't a lot of planning or forethought. It just worked out. It seems that in every endeavor, it's good to be lucky just so long as you don't confuse being lucky with being good.
I ran the e-comm thing, at what I think was a decent level until 2006. It had become its own full time job, and with my day job which was 50+ hours a week, I was burning the candle at both ends. I started to wear down physically, and that lead to me wearing down emotionally and mentally. When things get tough, I tend to withdraw and this is what was starting to happen.
Life happens
Around this time my best friend died of a drug overdose. I felt pretty bad about it, because in hindsight, there were times he was reaching out to me and if I had been there, maybe things would have turned out different. But I wasn't there because I had tunnel vision with my work, my business and the effects that declining health have on one's ability to accept more responsibility and opportunity.
The day of his funeral, I got a call in the early AM from my mother on the other side of the country. My step father's heart had stopped for a long time during the night and they had to airlift him to the nearest big city hospital for care. He was in a coma, and I missed my friend's funeral which I really didn't have the courage to attend anyway.
I didn't break down, because I don't break down. I just absorbed it all. All of the loss and all of the anger, and frustration, and helplessness. That's what I have always done. I soak it up and carry it with me.
My family didn't really have the resources to handle my step dad being out of commission and my mother at his side, so I started to liquidate everything, and to push my savings towards my parents and sister who took time off work to be with them. After my dad came out of his coma, he was in bad shape, and I flew across the country to see my folks, and to first hand assess the situation. I will simply say that it was bad and on the way home, I decided I had to shut down my e-comm business because I couldn't run it effectively and still be available at the drop of a hat to help my parents.
My dad got accepted to a special care facility a few months later, and their situation, while super tight financially, didn't require my presence. That's when I started to get interested in AM and SEO.
I don't remember how I got to digitalpoint, but from there, I discovered Syndk8. From Syndk8, YACG. From YACG, BlueHatSEO. From BlueHatSEO, Wickedfire.
In the words of the first Leto Atreides, “J'y suis, j'y reste “, “Here I am, here I remain”.
continued
I have had friends ask me if this post would be “epic” or “mind-blowing”. I don't even know how to respond to that. I don't think anything I have ever posted was epic or mind-blowing. It's intimidating that people expect something like that from me. That's an impossible expectation to meet in my opinion.
10,000 posts took six years to accrue. A lot of those 10,000 posts are bad. Some are ok. A few might be really good. A few I wish I never made. You could probably delete 9,000 of my posts, and substantively, my record would not be any worse off and perhaps, much better through improved signal to noise.
However, posting a lot tends to convey authority because humans have a habit of associating size (rather than elegance or brevity) with success. Deserved or not, there are probably a couple-three guys here who think I know what I am talking about, and that what I say is important. There is not much I can do about that now. 10,000 or so posts have been made.
Anyway, enough of the context on where my head is at as I write this.
Before Wickedfire
I got started in IM by accident.
In 2002, I had a pretty good full time job, and a lot of free time because I had no real life outside work. I had this crazy idea, having taught myself basic drafting with CAD, to manufacture some computer case accessories.
This was back in the beige box era. I was a hardware hacking enthusiast hanging out on HardOCP and reading every issue of MaximumPC front to back and front again.
My plan was to design some really cool fan grills and then manufacture them and sell to the big computer mod reseller stores in the US, UK and Canada.
I did not really know what I was getting in to. Looking back, I was terribly ignorant about everything. The grill designs I made, no one wanted to buy. They were awesome, but I gave the resellers too much credit as enthusiasts. They generally weren't. They didn't want to sell cool, unique stuff. They wanted cheaply made Asian goods they could mark up 1000% or 2000%.
At this point, I was pretty committed because I had a bunch of money into it and I wasn't clever enough to stop and re-evaluate what I was trying to do. I still thought my designs were great (they were, totally by accident since I am no artist) and I was too dumb to know what I was getting myself in to. So I got a website built with an e-commerce cart with this plan for me to retail my grills direct.
I decided to use a friend of mine who had a web dev company where he outsourced the programming to Mexico. They were to have the site ready by Dec 1st 2002. After yelling and screaming (if you can imagine it, I was infinitely more high strung back then) we got the store up Dec 3 (2 days late). The project was completely, utterly and totally mismanaged by all of us. We were in over our heads.
The store was horrible. It ran like crap. They used MS Access as the database back-end. It was probably programmed by someone who knew nothing about e-comm. Remember, this is back in the relatively early days of the commercial internet. Almost no-one knew anything about e-comm. The entire conversation in the larger tech sphere at the time was “Will people use their credit cards online?”. People didn't really believe e-comm could work, or be much more than glorified digital mail order.
Anyway, I didn't get my first sale until Dec 23rd. Think about that. I spent a bunch of my savings, worked on this for almost a year, and then we launch and I don't have a way to get traffic. I know nothing about SEO or PPC which are infant industries at the time, and my business was online, but for all intents and purposes, non-existent.
Between Dec 3 and 23, I was a basket case, oscillating between being depressed, angry, frustrated and manic.
Then the first sale came, and in what seems to be my style, I took that one sale as a sign that I should invest the remainder of my savings into adding a lot more product. I started importing stuff from Taiwan with the idea that I can beat everyone else to market, who bought in huge quantities and shipped by ocean freight, by getting a smaller quantity shipped by Fedex International in 3 days.
That idea actually paid off. I had what everyone was looking for, while the big resellers had their stuff on a ship, 6 weeks away. Sure, when they landed their product they would have a lot of it to sell, but by that time I would have already set the market price (there was tons of collusion between the two biggest players to keep prices high) and satisfied the leading edge of demand.
I'd like to say this was all tactical genius, but it was just me lucking into something that worked well. There wasn't a lot of planning or forethought. It just worked out. It seems that in every endeavor, it's good to be lucky just so long as you don't confuse being lucky with being good.
I ran the e-comm thing, at what I think was a decent level until 2006. It had become its own full time job, and with my day job which was 50+ hours a week, I was burning the candle at both ends. I started to wear down physically, and that lead to me wearing down emotionally and mentally. When things get tough, I tend to withdraw and this is what was starting to happen.
Life happens
Around this time my best friend died of a drug overdose. I felt pretty bad about it, because in hindsight, there were times he was reaching out to me and if I had been there, maybe things would have turned out different. But I wasn't there because I had tunnel vision with my work, my business and the effects that declining health have on one's ability to accept more responsibility and opportunity.
The day of his funeral, I got a call in the early AM from my mother on the other side of the country. My step father's heart had stopped for a long time during the night and they had to airlift him to the nearest big city hospital for care. He was in a coma, and I missed my friend's funeral which I really didn't have the courage to attend anyway.
I didn't break down, because I don't break down. I just absorbed it all. All of the loss and all of the anger, and frustration, and helplessness. That's what I have always done. I soak it up and carry it with me.
My family didn't really have the resources to handle my step dad being out of commission and my mother at his side, so I started to liquidate everything, and to push my savings towards my parents and sister who took time off work to be with them. After my dad came out of his coma, he was in bad shape, and I flew across the country to see my folks, and to first hand assess the situation. I will simply say that it was bad and on the way home, I decided I had to shut down my e-comm business because I couldn't run it effectively and still be available at the drop of a hat to help my parents.
My dad got accepted to a special care facility a few months later, and their situation, while super tight financially, didn't require my presence. That's when I started to get interested in AM and SEO.
I don't remember how I got to digitalpoint, but from there, I discovered Syndk8. From Syndk8, YACG. From YACG, BlueHatSEO. From BlueHatSEO, Wickedfire.
In the words of the first Leto Atreides, “J'y suis, j'y reste “, “Here I am, here I remain”.
continued
