I love challenges (read: if you want to motivate me, challenge me), but I hate it when someone else’s thoughts on a topic challenges the decisions / strategies that I have made. Especially - if that is only recently so.

Also - if I didn’t love Spencer Fry so much, I’d be totally mad right now after reading his latest article on writing. Why? Because it challenges the goals that I set myself a few weeks ago…

The Decision (prior to Spencer’s article)

Whilst I had been enjoying my blogging on here (and it has to be noted, that I do publish longer pieces here, amongst the snippets), I’ve been thinking of ways that I could go back to more “traditional” blogging if we can call that.

I killed my previous (self-hosted, WordPress) blog in favour of moving to Tumblr, because I wanted something that made it easier - and not more difficult - for me to create content on a regular basis. So with regards to that, Tumblr is perfect as it allows me to publish anything of any size anytime that I want.

But Tumblr doesn’t really add “credibility” to me as an author, because the medium seems much less sophisticated (with the perception probably being that it is more a sharing platform, than a publishing one). If you have a look at Paul Graham’s writing for example, you get a sense of authority, credibility and experience. That’s what I wanted.

So the first attempt at moving in that direction was to publish my first book - Rockstar Business. But I couldn’t write a book every week / month, so that wouldn’t enable my passion for writing sufficiently.

I thus decided on a strategy where I will continue to Tumblr here, but also - from time to time - publish a compilation of articles on a specific (niche) topic which would be presented in a separate, unique way (i.e. not here). The plan was also to package those in more convenient formats (PDF, iPad, printed copy?) and sell it accordingly; thus creating another income stream too.

Not a bad idea, right? But then Spencer came along…

The Decision (after Spencer’s article)

My Tumblr now feels insignificant:

I think that in a way blogging is dead. I don’t consider spencerfry.com to be a blog. It’s a collection of essays. Blogging in the traditional sense — snippets of your thoughts on X, Y, and Z — has been replaced by Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. 

I don’t feel that this is your average Tumblr blog, since I do combine longer articles with the snippets that Spencer refers to here. But as mentioned above, it’s almost like the medium (and note: I do love Tumblr) isn’t conducive to the goals mentioned earlier.

Also not overly sure about selling my content anymore…

Information is meant to be consumed. It’s meant to be free. It’s meant to reach as many people as humanly possible, shared, and discussed. A wall around content — paid or otherwise — is destined to crumble. You need look no further than Jason Calacanis who when he really wants to get his voice out there re-posts his newsletter to his blog.

It’s always been a passion of mine to write and I love sharing my opinion in the hope that it sparks someone else’s mind into action. So in that regard, it’s important for me to have a well-trafficed and well-read blog, considering that I also use it as the pillar of my online presence. By thus putting part of my content (arguably my best content, as that would make “business sense”) behind a paywall, I’m not achieving those goals anymore.

Pfff… Which way to go? Wish I was as clever as Spencer Fry.

I spoke about my addiction to running yesterday and here’s the girl that has inspired all of that. Thanks love!

So the local media radar (in South Africa) has been something that I’ve found relatively hard to crack, which has been somewhat surprising considering the success of WooThemes, which I helped to co-found. This is even more surprising if you consider that there aren’t many tech startups originating from South Africa and making a global impression. But hey - maybe your local market is the hardest one to crack after all…

Whilst I’ve been featured in the odd business-focused magazine here (as the representative of WooThemes’ success), nothing overly extravagant or mainstream has come my / our way. Until recently when I was nominated for Men’s Health’s Young Gun of the Year.

Considering how mainstream Men’s Health is, it’s an absolute honour to have been nominated and then also voted for as one of the three finalists for the award.

As anyone with an ambitious & competitive edge, I’d love to win this award (I don’t even know what I’ll win, but the kudo’s would be more than enough) and I‘m thus unashamed to ask you to vote for me. :)

Recently I’ve been pretty addicted to running (which isn’t this type of “business” addiction that I normally exercise) and I can’t get enough it. I completed my second half marathon over the weekend and since I’ve started running at the beginning of this year, I’ve been a much healthier & happier person.

Anyone else experience how such a change just has a knock-on, positive effect on other aspects of one’s life?

I recently stumbled onto the Second Startup Syndrome article by Ben Horowitz and whilst reading it I realized that I was going through exactly the same thought processes, emotions & ideas as was described in the article.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been working on getting my original company - radiiate - out of hibernation, since I didn’t want the brand or the initial TLC that went into the company go to waste. My biggest problem though has been to find the time to devote to what can essentially be called a startup all over again, as WooThemes was still taking up the majority of my time, whilst The Rockstar Foundation was also beginning to demand more and more of my mental energy & ideas.

So during the last 6 months I have taken shortcuts. I didn’t trust the same, bootstrapping advice & strategies that I blog about here and didn’t apply the same thinking as we did when building WooThemes so successfully.

In fact, this only recently changed when I came to the realization that I needed to be less idealistic about what I wanted for the company and almost needed to go back to square one if we wanted it to succeed.

The 6 months also didn’t get wasted, because as a team we learned a hell of a lot during this time and if we only learned one thing, it’s that there are models & ideals that we definitely won’t be exploring in future… :)