Early this morning, I had coffee with a fellow entrepreneur, who’s a bit newer to the ‘e-world’ than I am. Coffee talks like this are one of my favorite things, because it’s an amazing opportunity to share stories, encouragement and support with somebody like-minded.
My friend is a bit of an anomaly in his leap into entrepreneurship; transitioning away from the world of full-time ministry toward life as an entrepreneur. In most cases, it seems to be the opposite of that…
Given that we only met a few months ago, I had the opportunity to share with him a few pages from my own journey as an entrepreneur, as well as copies of the three books I’ve published.
One of the key takeaways I provided him with was the metaphor of how life is often like surfing a wave. Some people stay close to the shore in shallow water and never get deep enough to ride a wave to shore, while others venture out deep into the ocean in pursuit of the perfect wave to ride back to shore.
It doesn’t matter if a surfer has decades of experience or they’re brand new to the sport – there’s one thing both amateur and pro have to rely on; balance. While the pro surfer might make it look easy as they’re ripping through curls and racing down a breaker, it’s important to remember that the pro surfer never has a concrete foundation on their board to stand on; it’s still floating over the water.
Entrepreneurship has felt a lot like this wave analogy for many years, in my case. I’ve never quite felt like the ‘board’ under me has firm enough of a foundation to rest comfortably on, and it’s contributed to many years of living in a constant state of uncertainty, paranoia and fear. Time and time again, I’ve been able to ride each wave to shore, and have never really been battered too badly by the waves when I’ve fallen off and need to paddle back out to catch another one.
Also a [former] motorcycle rider, we shared with each other the stories of our favorite rides and the wild feeling of safety we’d experience whenever we turned the bike off at the end of the ride.
“I made it…” is something I’d always exclaim whenever I rode and got home safely. Now, I say the same thing to Atlas whenever we pull the 944 into the garage after a ride with the wind in our hair.
Most days, when I crawl into bed for the night, I have the same feeling of joy and contentment that another day has been checked off, a little more complete than how it started. In my ‘e-world’ I don’t have a tremendous amount of time to waste, as I choose to minimize/pause my work obligations during the time I have with Atlas.
As a result, I often have ultra-sprint periods where I’m fully maxed out.
What’s a ‘stretch’ 2-day period look like for me?
-Website Migration from dev>production
-Implementation of custom javascript to show auto finance calculators
-Troubleshooting and fix deployment of 2 lead forms to push results to client-side CRM
-Final site usability testing
-Updating button urls per client requirements
-Meeting with stakeholders for final edits and approval
-Website Redesign for existing client site
-Design, copywriting and mobile formatting for 7 new pages
-Troubleshooting pagescroll behavior on multi-lead page submission
-Disable scroll behavior by writing and deploying custom javascript code
-Homepage design (final draft) for client
-Copywriting
-Image sourcing
-Presentation of site design to client and stakeholders
-Website migration from existing site>New site
-Copywriting
-Design
-Create 3 custom forms
-Project scoping meeting with new client
-Understand, troubleshoot and present solutions
-Co-write proposal
-Homepage design updates & late-night launch
-Implementation and development of Salesforce customer retention program
-Create automated 9-month customer outreach to re-engage ‘cold’ customers
-Develop custom logic to assign leads to 10+ person sales team
-Create, test and deploy new salesforce objects
-Create sandbox testing environment to ‘dry run’ program before production launch
-Presentation of system to full sales team & managers
1 Logo design – new brand concept
-Presentation to client
2 Logo design – new brand concept
-Presentation and strategy meeting with business partner
3 Logo design – New brand concept
-New website build for client
-Create commercial website for new leg of client business
-Presentation and review with client
-Deployment and design of new website landing page for client
-Presentation to client
-Presentation to referring agency
-Redesign and implement changes
-Mobile optimization and usability testing
-Video element optimization & duplication for mobile/desktop site visitors
-On-site introduction and project scoping with dental client
-Troubleshoot salesforce events/conversions not tracking properly for client
While I’m probably missing a few items, I think that about covers the last 36 hours of my life. I’ve had two full meals, less than 10 hours of sleep in two days, and little more than two hours of ‘free time’ doing something unrelated to the items listed above.
At the end of it all, I can finally put my head down and say:
“I made it.”
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