The following 2 sentences are taken from my personal journal on March 2nd:
It’s tough sometimes to be art director, production artist, author, copywriter, editor, and marketing guy. I find it difficult to make decisions, especially when trying to final-ok something.
Man, is that true.
When you’re working for yourself, you have no one to bounce ideas off of and no one to keep you in check. You have no real deadlines to meet because you created them. If you miss a deadline, you can justify it and push it back.
I guess I’ve been struggling a bit to figure out what to do now that Guitar Chord Kick-Start is out there. I spend some time each day still working on it — looking for more affiliates, playing with the marketing, and answering questions, but none of this takes up any real amount of time. I have plans for scaling up Guitar Chord Kick-Start, but I’m not ready to do that for a few reasons.
- I want to build a bigger customer base and learn exactly what they’re looking for before expanding.
- I want to explore some of the other things I always planned to do and come back to GCKS with a fresh perspective.
I’m definitely not “over” Guitar Chord Kick-Start. In fact, I had record sales yesterday and that is super exciting. It’s just that it was the ONLY thing I focused on for 8-ish months and I want to play with some other ideas. The beauty of working for yourself and being an entrepreneur is that you can (and should) have your hands in a lot of different baskets.
I think I lost this perspective while I was creating GCKS. I never planned or wanted to have ONE thing that I was doing and made a living from, but I was just working so hard on learning how to build that type of business and then actually building it, that it became hard to think about or see anything else. But, GCKS is just the first of many things I am going to do, and now I just need to figure out exactly what those other things are going to be.
I do feel like I need a little change of pace, though, to get back on track. You see, a couple weeks ago was the immediate post-launch excitement where I was staring at traffic and looking at numbers all day. Then, last week, I was all gung-ho to jump into doing some new things. The problem was, though, that Meag was home sick with the flu and, even though I wasn’t sick, it was way too easy to look at her asleep on the couch and think, “Well, I can goof off a little today, too…”
I am in no way blaming her for my lack of productivity last week. It’s certainly my fault, but — in my defense — you try getting any real work done when someone is asleep in your office all day!
I just didn’t hit the ground running last week like I planned because my routine (which I was feeling really good about for a while there) was disrupted and now I’m having a hard time finding my way back.
Additionally, I find that I totally lose productivity when my surroundings feel stale. Since I’ve been working for myself, I’ve changed where I work every couple/few weeks. So, for a few weeks I’ll work in my office, then I’ll move to the couch and/or dining room area, and back and forth and back and forth.
The last six+ weeks or so, however, I’ve been working in the living room and haven’t travelled back to my office. I really want to get back in there but we’re trying to redesign it so I’ve been putting it off and putting it off. I think it’ll be really good for me to get a new, well-thought-out setup in there and start using that space again.
I should also start going and working in coffee shops more, but I always just end up talking myself into drinking free coffee at home (and hanging out with Walter)…
Regardless, I think a change of pace or a change in scenery is in order for me. Judging by the scattered-ness in this post, I imagine you’ll probably agree. I just need to mix it up a little bit and get back on track.
Thanks for letting me ramble in this post.