Two years and 313 blog posts later, I’m proud to say The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur is still alive and kicking. I’ve done the math, and that works out to an average of three blog posts a week. I didn’t know I had it in me.
Seriously! I am a writer, but I’ve never sustained a writing project that was quite this long. I wondered if I’d run out of ideas. However, everyone I knew who was a blogger (and I confess that two years ago it wasn’t that many) told me running out of ideas wasn’t going to be a problem.
Over the past two years I’ve learned a lot about myself, my business and who my customers are. A good part of that learning is a direct result of writing three times per week. Some of these lessons are fairly profound and some are less so. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll share some of what I’ve learned.
Stickiness
First, I learned I can stick to something. You’d think that after four & a half years as an entrepreneur I’d already know that. After all, you can’t stay in business that long without finishing what you start.
However, if you’re been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I am ADD. I really have a tendency to flit from project to project as my attention wavers. Knowing I can stick to something for two whole years was a really important lesson to learn. Particularly for something like blogging which really doesn’t have an end date. There is no point where I can say “I’m done here”.
What’s my business all about
When I made the move to be a full time entrepreneur in the spring of 2005, what I thought my business would be is very different than what I’m doing today. And that change has come about in a very large part because of this blog.
You see, when you sit down and write about business in general and you own business in particular for three to five hours a week, you really start to know yourself. Sure, for the first few posts – even the first few dozen – you can write about what you think you should be doing.
But if you stick at it long enough, you can’t help but write about what really excites you. You can’t help but find your passion. If you don’t, you’ll get bored.
So I started out writing about marketing principals and running a business. Eventually I discovered Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the whole world of social media opened up for me. Then I noticed when I wrote about social media, besides having more fun, I got more traffic to my blog, more comments and more emails. Suddenly I knew my niche. I wasn’t just going to be a marketing generalist. I would teach people about social media.
Yes, I still write a little bit about everything – the ADD hasn’t disappeared – but I write more and more about social media.
But I would never have gone there without the blog.
Technology isn’t that scary
Until I started the blog, I didn’t know a thing about HTML, code and all that other techie stuff. In fact, I had intentionally avoided it all. But suddenly I needed to know at least the basics.
I joined a blogging course to get me started, found some people who know more than I do to answer questions and used Google to help me find out the rest. Two years later I can go into my theme and change the font, alter the appearance and do a bunch of other things I would never have thought possible two years ago.
Statistics can be fun
You’ve heard it before – you can’t improve anything unless you track it. Not your weight, your bank account and your blog traffic. And unlike getting on the scale or trying to balance your chequebook, tracking your blog stats can be fun.
Seeing my traffic go up from month to month is exciting. Looking at what keywords people are using to find me is interesting. Noticing that visitors are coming from all sorts of countries amazes me. I expect to see visitors from Canada and the US, but seeing that people are visiting me from Europe, England, South America, Asia and Australia made me feel very cosmopolitan. I may not have been to all those places (yet) but my words, thoughts and ideas have.
Entrepreneur is a stupid word
I’m not kidding. Every time I have to type that stupid word into a web browser I curse myself. I almost NEVER am able to type it out without making a mistake or at least slowing down and thinking “E … N …T…E no R next …”
And you should see how it fits on my business card. If I’d known how much I’d come to hate that word I would have chosen something different to name my blog.
On the other hand, The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur is distinctive. People can remember the name. I’ve gotten calls from the media as a result of it. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
There are some really amazing people on the web
One of the biggest fears people have about going online is that they’ll run into the crazies: stalkers, loud mouths, critics, meanies and just plain nut jobs.
And while I’m sure there’s more than their fair share of loonies online, overall I can say my experience has been positive.
In the past two years I’ve had the opportunity to virtually “meet” (and in a few cases in real life) many amazing people, most as a direct result of my blog. Whether it’s through visiting websites of people who leave comments, starting email conversations with readers, connecting on social media with readers, interviewing experts for blog posts, podcasts and my book I’ve had the chance to communicate with so many people.
And the people I’ve met have been interesting, talented and incredibly generous. If the people I’ve met as a result of blogging are at all representative of humanity as a whole, in the long term, everything will work out.
The journey is as much fun as the destination
I’ve always been more task oriented than process oriented. In other words, I focus on the end result, not how I get there. I like to make lists and check the items off. I like completion. In fact, I’ve often thought I should have been a bricklayer so I can visually see how much I’ve accomplished each day.
However, the journey is important too. After all, the end of life is death, and I’m in no hurry to get there, so I’d better start paying attention to the journey.
Blogging is a journey. Yes, I can enjoy what I wrote in the past: review my traffic, read comments, check on incoming links. Yes, I can plan for the future: come up with topic ideas, set aside quotes, create a publication plan. But for today, there’s just the blog post I’m writing at the moment. If I’m going to continue for another 313 blog posts, I need to be able to enjoy the process of writing them one at a time.
Thanks for joining me on this journey
While for me blogging is about expressing my thoughts and my ideas, if no one was reading it would sort of be like talking to myself. So I appreciate all of you who have taken the time to read my little blog and comment on what I had to say.
I plan to be back here in another two years reflecting on what four years of blogging has taught me. I hope you’ll plan on coming back as well.
Andrea J. Stenberg
