Life After My Day Job… How I Monetized My Passion

This article echoes some of my thoughts as well. It does inspire me to take a few more risks. 

adii:

I loved reading @jschuller’s about his journey from a full-time job to being self-employed. I remember watching with keen interest when he started out in the WordPress community and it’s been a blast seeing the awesome stuff that he has been releasing.

What’s even cooler though, is seeing another individual making a living for themselves based upon their own ideas, freedom & passion. If you read the post, you’ll find Jason’s passion for his “job” evidenced throughout and that is significant success for any individual.

So the question is: Why are you still stuck in your corporate desk job?

Threadsy.com : Unified message box

After reading this post on TechCrunch, I decided to give Threadsy a shot. 

After signing up for a new account, I gave Threadsy access to my Gmail (via Web Authentication), Yahoo, Hotmail (giving them passwords), and Facebook (Via connect).

Once it connected, it showed me messages consolidated from all these accounts, in a single timeline. A second pane opened up, showing me Facebook live feed (It would also show Twitter messages, but I haven’t configured that)

Every message has got quick links to delete, favorite, archive and reply (Reply is for emails only)

It also has a unified chat application powered by Meebo

Things I liked:

- Single mailbox in a unified interface

- You interact with all messages the same way, no matter where they are from

- Search functionality searches across all messages

- Ability to quick reply, without opening up a new window / tab, with a rich editor available

- Chat

- Ability to look at mailboxes individually

Things I would like to see:

- Chat with Yahoo Messenger contacts (Maybe its there, I haven’t looked enough)

- Contact management

I think this would be my default mail application for now. Seems very promising

Give it a try: www.threadsy.com

Passion first!

I am doing some introspection, to figure out what I want to do next. Many ideas raced to my mind. Maybe I’ll be good with mobile applications, maybe enterprise social networking, or write a facebook app for leveraging social data… 

I came up with not 1 or 2 ideas, but more than 10. Turns out, all the ideas were in the domains that I am just good in. (Or I think I am good in). Also, they were not limited to a single domain or expertise area, but are all over the place.

Is that a good thing?

Turns out, its an issue with my approach. I am trying to figure out what to do next, with a clean slate. Obviously, there’s information overload out there, which is overwhelming!

Basically, instead of running behind what I can do (possibilities), or what I should do (market trend), I need to figure out my own passion(s) first, and then figure out the rest. 

The great companies that I’ve been an investor in share a common trait – the founder/CEO is obsessed with the product. Not interested, not aware of, not familiar with, but obsessed. Every discussion trends back toward the product. All of the conversations about customer are really about how the customer uses the product and the value the product brings the customer. The majority of the early teams are focused entirely on the product, including the non-engineering people. Product, product, product.
My Obsession With The Product (via hiten)
The boss drives people; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says ‘I’; the leader says ‘we.’ The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss says ‘go’; the leader says ‘let’s go!’
H. Gordon Selfridge, American-British retail magnate via today’s Real Estate Investment SmartBrief (via mattlehrer) (via mikehudack) (via rafer)

Source: mattlehrer

Top