Why I Work on 2.5 Projects Simultaneously

[Metz]

Before I begin, I'll preface that I know working on multiple projects at once is sinful; it's better to do one thing really well than multiple things mediocre. That was my reality for the better part of my 20s and yeah, I was a dumbass for it. But looking back, I've chalked it up as necessary experimentation to find something that works, the blueprints for a system that can (read: will and is already starting to) make me wealthy one day. Yet I still work on two and a half projects simultaneously. The difference between now and then is I've found a way to make this quest of lunacy work. Lemme explain.

So the projects I'm working on are as follows (with links to their respective threads in case you wanted to know more):

• My main job is being a self-employed content strategist. This is my bread-and-butter self-employed job where I've mostly written articles for clients or white-labeled with other content companies but I'm now branching more into overall content strategy in addition to writing and editing.
• My side gig is my e-commerce site where I sell clothing with interesting geometric designs or witty/thought-provoking/funny sayings on them. Some of my writing work dried up during COVID and I reinvested some SBA grant money into courses on writing, e-commerce, and graphic design (I did web design in the past for a few e-commerce people and was like.. "why am I not doing this?").
• My passion project (the 0.5 in this equation) is a website about applying game theory to entrepreneurial thinking and general life success topics. While a lot of this forum seems to decry video games as useless time sinks (which 99% of the time is true and I don't disagree), I personally learned a lot of useful skills from gaming such as time and resource management, organizing projects and tasks, the importance of follow-through, and other lessons.

Neverminding the passion project because I don't interact with that much lately (see the first two points), my main job and side gig (and I suppose, in part, what I've learned over the years working on the passion project) hone one another.

You see, I'm a writer. And while I write a lot of stream-of-conscious stuff here, my process for writing for clients is much more involved. Especially when I have clients that need x amount of articles every week about very similar topics and I'm both writing AND editing my own work, I'll get burnt out, feeling as if I'm saying the same things over and over again. No matter how efficient I am as a writer, if you're working at a relatively fast pace in a single niche, things start blurring together and your writing quality takes a nosedive. Up until recently, I've been doing all of this on my own. So, to adapt, I'd have other things to work on to break up the monotony. Chiefly, the e-commerce site where I can doodle designs, upload them to different product templates, slap them on the site, market them, and see what sticks. Once I start feeling a little worn from cranking out 6-8 new designs over the course of a week or two, I go back to writing.

But trying to create wealth is ideally about creating a system that, at first you work in and then ideally work on once you figure out how to automate it. I knew I had to automate my main gig somehow but was unsure how to do so effectively. Without a mentor or many useful resources on the topic (at least when it came to automating content production for clients) without turning into some low-quality mill, I had to learn by f*cking around and finding out. The e-commerce site was the perfect opportunity to do that. Where I can easily scale the e-commerce site all by myself, the main gig is gonna take a bit more work.

Fundamentally though, the systems operate the same. The key difference is that one is a system of people (delegating tasks to contractors who slowly take over parts of the process you had to do entirely on your own) and the other is a system of technology (inputting things like designs or, from the customer side, orders and outputting products).

Could I potentially have expedited the growth of one system at the expense of the other? In most cases, yeah, I'd say so. But for me and how I function and how I had to learn all of this pretty much on my own, I don't think I would have gotten this far without dabbling. Simply put, between these two projects, it's like one hand washing the other; what I learn doing with one system, I come up with all these ideas to apply to the other system that, by and large, are effective. Let me give you a two main examples:

• My passion project has its own Discord community of roughly 450 people and a lot of it is geared toward entrepreneurial or creative types who also play games. My late best friend and I would often play an hour or so of games together a couple of nights out of the week to share our days -- what went wrong, what went right, and how we could help one another. Those kinds of interactions where we play games and talk shop are increasingly commonplace. By and large, the Discord is increasingly becoming a sandbox where people share their projects and skills and collaborate with one another. It's from this community that I recruited my first three contracted writers as well as got my first sales from my e-commerce venture (both the original site that launched back in August 2020 and now this new iteration in May 2021 with a better brand, platform, and fulfillment center).
  • While I'm still training the writers on the process, they've already saved me a ton of time by drafting articles that I can edit. Having people to talk with and brainstorm, as well as other people's work to edit, has been super motivating. If you're not a writer, I can't explain how much of a pain it is to edit your own stuff.. and most of us specialize either as a writer.. or an editor, very rarely both. That time is now spent on finding new clients to grow the business and other people are volunteering to write for me as well (some of them are actually really friggen good).
  • Some of the guys from that Discord have also been introducing me to different Instagram influencers and Twitch streamers with decent followings (anywhere between a few hundred to a few hundred thousand) interested in helping me sell my merchandise. While not all of the campaigns I've invested in have been successful in converting site visitors to customers, they're yielding a lot of interesting analytics that I'll be testing over the next few weeks. Already, they've improved my site's design and performance while getting more eyes on my brand (after all, just because I didn't get a purchase from someone today doesn't mean they won't come back later on).
• My SEO skills I've learned from my main job have allowed me to write content and better analyze how to get my products for my side gig out there by leveraging search engine algorithms; the A/B testing I've been doing for my side gig, in turn, has given me ideas for micro-marketing (targeting an exceptionally targeted pool of people ranging between 10-20k individuals) once I add more sales funnels to my main job's site.
  • The success of both my passion project's site and my e-commerce site provides a portfolio I can show clients in addition to other client work I've done. It's also established my credibility where people have been coming to me asking for help starting their own sites (which you bet I'll charge them for).
  • Working with Facebook ads, social media influencing, and increasingly Google Adwords are all useful skills for when I'm consulting clients; the three sites I own and work on (an e-commerce site, a business site, and a digital magazine) let me test different strategies for different audiences looking for different things, whether they're products, services, or content.

These are a few of the main examples illustrating the relationships between my projects. "But if this is such a good model to work on things, why aren't you rich af yet, my guy?" you might be rightfully asking. There have been two major barriers that have since been addressed (over the past three months, I've already tripled my monthly income on average compared to the previous six.. and before that, I made even less):

• My crippling depression, self-doubt, and constantly beating up on myself because I believed I didn't deserve any lick of success so I'd self-sabotage like a dumbass.
• Dragging multiple rocks (my projects) up a hill separately; now I found a wheelbarrow to throw them in.

Right now though, "simultaneously" is a bit of a stretch. My main gig takes up about 70-80% of my time and the side gig's at about maybe 10-20%. The other 10% or whatever's left over is spent on actively learning new skills (SEO, sales writing, pitching, lead gen, other stuff I need for marketing myself) on top of working out, going for a walk, hanging out with friends, or maybe a round or two of a game (most of the time, these games are business simulators or require some sort of resource management and they still manage to give me ideas to try out on these projects).

So there you have it: a glimpse of the assorted lunacy that has been my path thus far. Are there more effective ways to go about all this? Yeah, probably. But barring a mentor, I'm doing the best I can in a way that's been effective for my weirdly-wired brain. And it seems to really be working now that I addressed those two barriers.

Anyone else found themselves in similar situations where two of their projects kinda play off one another? Anyone else had to adapt strangely in order to learn in the absence of a mentor? Let me know if'n you'd be so kind. 😀

 

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[BizyDad]

Epzupi imti guapf vjintimwit op tonomes tovaevoupt xjisi vxu ug vjios qsukidvt lopfe qmez ugg upi epuvjis?

Zit. O emtu qsigis vjot. O'n dassipvmz vszoph vu eff vu nz qsukidvt vu edjoiwi hsievis tzpishoit epf tii katv jux nepz qsukidvt O dep kahhmi.

Epzupi imti jef vu efeqv tvsephimz op usfis vu miesp op vji ectipdi ug e nipvus?

Zit. O hipisemmz notvsatv nipvust. Tu O fu vjopht vsoem epf issus. O gopf nz qevj vu ci nusi sixesfoph epf O ipkuz vji kuaspiz nusi vjep og O jef jef e suefneq vu tadditt jepfif vu ni.

Us nezci vjev't katv xjev O vimm nztimg. Iovjis xez, O cimoiwi ov't vsai.

 

[Andy Black]

O sief @CobzFef ’t sitqupti tu xomm siqmz vu vjev.

1) Zit, O jewi namvoqmi qsukidvt up.

• Gostvmz, O jewi FGZ duptamvoph dmoipvt epf iedj ot e tiqesevi qsukidv.
• Vjip O jewi e qeof nincistjoq/duastit xjisi O viedj qiuqmi jux vu FOZ ov.
• Vjip O jewi e qeof pixtmivvis xjisi O fudanipv ni hsuxoph vji ecuwi.

Tu O timm vji texfatv, epf timm vji texfatv dsievif xjomi timmoph vji texfatv.

2) O fup’v jewi nipvust, cav veml ev mietv jemg e fubip vonit e xiil vu catopitt uxpist. Tuni dmoipvt, tuni qsutqidvt, tuni tvafipvt, tuni hsuaqt o miesp op, epf tuni qiist. Xez nusi gap.

 

[Metz]

Vjeplt @CobzFef epf @Epfz Cmedl gus vji siqmoit. Jupitvmz, nelit ni giim e muv civvis. Vjuahj O taqquti O qav vuu nadj inqjetot up gopfoph/xepvoph/piifoph e nipvus. O duptotvipvmz jies vjopht moli "fup'v siopwipv vji xjiim" us "gopf tuniupi xjuti tadditt zua xepv vu inamevi" us vjopht moli vjev cav O taqquti vjev dep ci edjoiwif op foggisipv xezt moli caomfoph e dosdmi ug ipvsiqsipiasoem gsoipft, tuni ejief ug zua up vji qevj, tuni cijopf, epf tuni ev vji teni qmedi.