Johnny Depp, playing infamous bank robber John Dillinger, delivers the line
“We’re having too good a time today. We ain’t thinking about tomorrow.”
John Dillinger knows one day he’ll be caught, the fun will stop the good times will stop rolling. But he’s not looking to get out right now, he’s enjoying the ride. Nothing is broke, so why fix it? In this economy everyone is struggling and I know plenty of talented people searching for work. Why? They didn’t market themselves 6-24 months ago. These people got comfortable grinding out work and making money. For these people today was good, today they were making money and who doesn’t love making money? It’s easy to get caught up in the cycle. The grind will cause you to forget. You should never stop marketing yourself.
You should be blogging, contributing to open source projects, tweeting, talking to others and attending conferences. These actions have a long tail marketing effect. Do you think Steve and I write these tasty blog posts for fun? No I write them cause you monsters love them and retweet the link which brings new people to our apps. Going forward spend 20% of your week marketing yourself. One day you’ll lose those clients, the tide will change, you will be left high and dry. Put yourself out there, being awesome is long tail.
If you wanted it to build a product you’d find a way to get time to work on it. If you really wanted to start that new hobby you’d sacrifice something to find the time and money to do it.
I'll define a "Wannabe Entrepreneur" as someone who has never made money from their businesses. Here are the different types of wannabes.
In the past few years I've built go-carts, built a 200+ sq ft workshop, written several eBooks. How do I create a life where I have time to work on side projects?