April 1st, 2024 paycheck

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We’re back from our Portland trip, which I covered a bit in the health and wellness update. But, for this article we’ll focus more on the financial side of things.

We decided to fly to Denver, Colorado and grab a rental car. We stayed with a friend for a couple of nights in Denver. When we landed, I took Becca to my old neighborhood and showed her various things from my childhood. I also took here to where my mom lived for roughly 20 years. The second day there we went Beau Jo’s Pizza for Colorado-style pizza; a friend had a birthday party there when I was a kid, and we met up with more of Becca’s Colorado contingent. Then we drove to Portland, Oregon.

We did two over nights along the way because we left later than planned. We also spent more time in Boise, Idaho than initially planned, but we weren’t rushing.

Agile Open Northwest was the next three days. On the first day, I did a session on The 5 Ps Exercise. Becca did two sessions as well: one entitled Ethical Non-Homogeny (diversity as non-tokenization) and another on formal creative practice and how it relates to agility and software development. This was priming the pump for the next day.

The second day, we did our first session together as The Irreverent Agilists](https://the-irreverent-agilists.com) entitled: No Spikes in the Mosh Pit. The sinuses and introversion weren’t pleased this day, so I don’t go to any other sessions.

The third day was pretty low-key, and I was feeling worse. But, we went to Creo Chocolate with a friend we made at the conference. Later that evening the three of us and two more new friends met up at Haku Sushi and Teriyaki. Then the five of us walked back to the hotel like only aging punks can. We stayed up way too late in the lobby; like you do. (To be more explicit, the friend we went to Creo headed to their room around 2300. The other two weren’t staying in the same hotel as us and peeled off at 2400).

The fourth day, we went and hung out with another one of Becca’s friends and their partner (she’s a networking introvert). We walked around a market and ate at AFURI ramen + dumpling. This is also when Becca started getting hit with some sinus stuff as well. For my part, you know it’s bad if I’m eating soup-like food and downing orange like it’s going out of style.

The next day, we left Portland and headed back to Denver. We had an overnight on the way. Then we stayed with the same friend again. We started late the next day because I was letting Becca have recovery time, and we did laundry.

Two more overnights before getting back to Louisville, Kentucky.

We don’t have the final tally and numbers. But, the rental was around 800 USD. Cancelling the plane tickets was around 1,000 USD. 3 of the overnights were at no additional cost. The conference provided a breakfast and lunch, though it was mainly low-calorie foods. I brought two weeks worth of seeds and protein bars. I didn’t go through a lot of the bars though, the airport security folks decided to investigate my bags because of all the bags and bars.

All that said, my short-term assets are hitting the point where I’m going to need to ramp up on finding steady income streams. That was always part of the plan, but I honestly was hoping to feel like I had more progress there.

This brings me back to using the Internet as a lead generation tool. I’m not good at it, and I don’t seem to be improving, which is fine as far as it goes. And, it also means that the advice of those who it does work for is not suitable.

Understand, this isn’t a sob story. It’s like I’m saying I wish I could play this game. It’s just exploring how to best take advantage of alternatives.

For the record:

  1. I’ve had a website since 1998. I’ve received one inquiry, job interview, and offer. That was in 2001 and it didn’t end well.
  2. When I freelanced full time I took my website down, and wasn’t even active on social media.
  3. In 2010, I started becoming more active on social media, and have not received any leads or much interest in my work.
  4. I’ve presented at two conferences and a gathering, and had one lead that never materialized into a paid gig.

I know it’s a numbers game and the evidence—specific to my experience—over the course of over 20 years is that online isn’t effective for me when it comes to marketing.

So, here we are.

Meanwhile, when I freelanced, I got my first client by accident. My second client because I was in a design school. And from there it was word of mouth and a living until it wasn’t.

So, taking my own advice, I will be continuing to recede from participating online. It’s demonstrated itself to be a less than effective use of my time, and isn’t something I recommend as the go-to strategy for most of my clients. That said, helping other people do things online is still on the table.

I was talking with my tax preparer about my bookkeeping service and possibly partnering on that score. There was some interest and a question on whether I’d like to try tax preparation. So, exploring options with locally owned small businesses.

So, less business to business where the business is my direct client I had to find, and more partnering with service providers and catching their spillover when it happens. I think this might be more sustainable than when I freelanced before, because I felt alone and my mission was to make myself obsolete. If I can partner with providers who do most of the lead generation (the part I suck at), and they’re willing to share spillover, there we go.