How shipping saved my life

by ahoyhere • 16 years ago

78 45 16 years ago

davidw2• 16 years ago

> And I don't mean saved my life in a hand-wavy, metaphysical way, like "Punk rock saved my life" or "Martha Stewart Every Day Living saved my life".

Being the literal-minded computer sort I am, I was waiting for the punch line, and it's kind of disappointing:

> Shipping my own projects saved my creative life.

Which is a bit annoying, because the rest of it seems like good enough advice.

ibsulon3• 16 years ago

I was waiting to hear that she got lost and if a poor soul hadn't heard of her because of a webapp she had created, they wouldn't have brought her in when her car broke down, saving her from death by exposure.

ahoyhere14• 16 years ago

I took out the vivid descriptions of personal misery because I thought they were too much of a downer.

No little-matchgirl snow, though.

The point is, it's like having an entirely new life. Was that unclear?

tom_ilsinszki• 16 years ago

"When you do your own thing, you give others inspiration and permission to do their own thing." - I once read in a psychology book, that a lot of us don't get permission from our parents to do specific things. Giving a person permission to do something they desire can indeed be life changing, so in a way (although not literally), shipping did save her life...

100k3• 16 years ago

Shipping is awesome, and if you don't ship you've got nothing.

But to think your first product/site/whatever is going to give you creative freedom...I think that's selection bias. I've shipped a lot of mini-sites (mostly for my own amusement) and the traffic is very low and has not brought me any sort of fame.

Sure, maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I would say 9 out of 10 projects you create are not going to become popular or get you renowned.

That doesn't make it not worth doing. I've learned something new from every new project I've built and every person I've worked with. But it also hasn't benefited me financially.

ahoyhere14• 16 years ago

Twistori didn't give me creative freedom and, as I said, it earned me no money directly. (Despite the fact that, nearly 3 years after launch, in the last 90 days people spent an accumulated 57 years on the site.)

I describe what it really did for me, which LED to the creative freedom.

If you want your projects to do something for you financially, and they're not, then you should tackle that as a project in and of itself.

100k3• 16 years ago

"I describe what it really did for me, which LED to the creative freedom."

That is, selection bias.

I think you're understating the amount of work it took you to get to the point where you could launch Twistori and have it be a success. You put in years of effort as a blogger, speaker, and "thought leader".

I really admire how you've built and audience and leveraged it to build a viable lifestyle, but you can't teach that in a 12 week class.

aw3c2• 16 years ago

Super bad to read thanks to letter-spacing: -1px;

Oh why...

slater• 16 years ago

That's where you bust out the Firebug and fix bad design decisions on-the-fly.

araneae3• 16 years ago

I think her design problems are pervasive...

This is what twistori looks like for me: http://imgur.com/D920M.png

ahoyhere14• 16 years ago

I'm sorry that you browse on a screen smaller than 620x480.

petercooper• 16 years ago

Yeah, it doesn't look very good on my Netscape Navigator 4 either or my WebTV. You'd think people would know how to design Web sites by now, eh?

jimbokun• 16 years ago

"For the 12-week course, workbooks & other printables, teleconfs and support, you'll pay only $500."

I don't know whether the specific course she is selling is any good or not, but I'm fascinated by the possibility that little courses like this could eventually be the future of higher education.

I'm taking the Dave Ramsey financial course right now, and the experience compares favorably to university style instruction. People local to you congregate in one place each week to watch a video of Dave presenting a topic, break into groups after words to discuss the topic of the video, and then there's homework to do before the next class meets, along with a book and other materials, and more content on his web site. All for about a hundred bucks.

When I see people from the class outside the classroom, suddenly it's easy to talk about money, something that would otherwise be socially inappropriate.

Anyhow, is picking and choosing from courses like this a viable way to educate yourself? Are there subjects for which it wouldn't work? What does a university really add over these kinds of courses?

100k3• 16 years ago

University adds:

* it forces you to take classes that are good for you but you probably wouldn't take on your own

* social connections

* space to experiment on who you are as a person

* chance to get laid

pchristensen• 16 years ago

* a useful credential for getting jobs

ajam• 16 years ago

I was socially anxious in school so I didn't really experience that much of the last three.

regarding the first one, it's almost a tautology that you are being habituated into doing things you are ambivalent about for reasons you may not fully understand. perfect practice for the day job you get after graduating, really.

on the other hand, my self-actualized programmer friend - who never went to school and works on his own projects - occasionally has a tinge of insecurity because he never took a compiler class.

ahoyhere14• 16 years ago

IMO, other than the "you're young and finally out of your parents' house, yippee!" aspect, most college experiences seem to come down to external validation.

In theory, if you're lucky, you'll be exposed to a whole new world of intellectual possibilities and meet many wonderful people who'll join you on your journey to maturity, transforming into friendships for life, but that seems to be more the exception than the rule.

I've paid maybe $4,000 over the past year for "professional development" courses (writing, business, marketing, etc.) and every single one was totally worth it.

I wish I could say the same about the thousands I sunk into college classes before I dropped out.

wallflower2• 16 years ago

$4K is a significant investment. Assuming they were not part of a conference, which courses on writing, specifically did you take?

teej• 16 years ago

Hats off to Amy Hoy for getting me to read a sales letter from top to bottom and enjoying it. Year of hustle indeed.

ahoyhere14• 16 years ago

Thank you, sir!

I believe that the best sales material is educational and practically stands alone. Hasn't steered me wrong yet.

queensnake• 16 years ago

I liked it too, but it was still bait-and-switch. Boo to you.

Estragon• 16 years ago

After reading the top page of yearofhustle.com, I am still far too uncertain about what you're offering to commit $500 to it. I think you need to make the course description more precise.

ahoyhere14• 16 years ago

Thanks for the feedback.

The actual sales part is really tailored to the audience I already have, many of whom have seen the educational stuff I create (the book, the cheat sheets, the blog posts). I figure the course will be at least 85%+ made up of them. I've already sold 25/50 seats.

If you have any specific info I could provide that would clarify it for your fresh pair of eyes, I'd appreciate it!

callmeed• 16 years ago

"I spent a single day getting over my mopey co-dependence on clients"

The end result, as best I can tell, is simply more consulting work. So, "shipping" is simply a break from clients with the side-effect of bringing more in.

If I was a potential client, that line above would really turn me off.

ahoyhere14• 16 years ago

You missed the part where I announced that I quit consulting and am living off the money made from:

1x SaaS web app, 1x self-published ebook, 2x 1-day in-person training workshops, 1x 2-day in-person training workshop (corporate training - yeehaw!

Plus, of course, this course, which is part of a plan. I have three other web apps in various states of completion, as well as the plans for another technical info product.

And I worked with a friend to ship a Mac app, although it's not making either of us any money. The other stuff has made a lot.

I also earned money with a 3-hour teleconference on the lessons I've learned from my "year of hustle"

That, my friend, is why it was called Year of Hustle.

PS -- even if I were still doing client work, that'd be a good thing. Being co-dependent sucks for BOTH parties to a relationship. Everybody wants to date the driven person who does for themselves - and wants to hire them, too.

noonespecial• 16 years ago

To those who think "saved my life" was overly dramatic, try to remember that you were reading a sales flier, not a deep introspective blog post. The fact that it came across very much as such a blog post (because it partly was) is part of the brilliance, but also means that you might take the life saving part a little more literally than the "the best cola ever" advertising vibe that it maybe should have had.

That was a top shelf ad/promotion/infomercial Amy. Hats off.

ahoyhere14• 16 years ago

Thank you.

I still feel like my life was saved. :)

If you'd met me before, you would have seen what I meant. I was utterly miserable, in the way that you can only be when you are trapped by your own great success and therefore don't even think escape is a rational option. Plus I always believed I was too much of a lazy asshole to ever be able to work for myself, really.

Making my own thing was absolutely a life-saving event for me.

Poiesis• 16 years ago

Title could potentially be improved to "How shipping a product saved my life". I figured he was getting a liver or pacemaker on a container ship from China.

awa2• 16 years ago

Ok, I stumbled upon this gem on twistify.com: http://www.wefeelfine.org/wefeelfine_pc.html

Takes a few seconds to load (Java applet).

How shipping saved my life

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