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Use what you have
Yesterday I bought the domain for the “all in the family” project. Now I need to set up our email for my partner and me.
Last year, I bought additional licenses and force people to use Microsoft Office. I had to write a blog post to help our sales guys connect Outlook to HubSpot. What a waste of time, especially since the product we sold was wrong. 2020, so many hard lessons.
But not in 2021. We use what we have. I will only consider using new software when what we have doesn’t work anymore.
Look, I don’t know if this is the right more, but the restrictions and doing less could reduce the pain of failure. Also, doing less cuts down on my tendency to feel good doing busy work.
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Restriction is your friend.
I’m limiting myself to using only personal messaging apps with the people I’m working with. If we need Slack it means we’re overcomplicating things. Slack is for companies. If we are not making money we’re not a company. So until we’re a company I’m only using Messenger and WhatsApp. Restriction forces you to do less. Doing less is your friend.
Installing WhatsApp on my desktop. -
Bundling Tweets into a blog post
While chipping away at my goal of republishing 208 old blog posts this year I had an idea for a new product.
Many of my nearly three thousand tweet posts were created by Ping.fm. Individual tweets alone don’t have much value. But seeing one month’s worth of tweets in one post paints a good picture of your life.
It took me almost one hour to manually combine a month of tweets into one post. I wish there was a service that could automatically create a post from one month of tweets.
How many people on Twitter maintain a blog. How many people would pay to bundle one week/months worth of tweets into one post?
GOAL: Republished 90 old posts, 118 to go.
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Finding Inspiration from revisiting 3,972 old posts
I unpublished almost all my blog posts years ago. Some posts were only links. Many were broken because they were generated by other apps and services like EyeEm and Pressgram. I didn’t see the value in maintaining a blog so I stopped. Why would anyone want to read my blog? I didn’t realize the value is in thinking things out while writing.
Today I spent two hours creating a process to review, update, and republish the good ones.
9 down, 199 more to go. I got a little emotional looking at all the photos of my first few months in Berlin. I can remember every one of those moments. I was filled with such hope and optimism to start a new life in a new city with a new wife. I’d argue that I would be in a darker place if I stayed in New York.
I found the exercise to be motivating. I’m going to enjoy republishing them. My goal is 208 old posts this year. 9 down, 199 more to go.
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How I plan to write 104 posts
At the time of this post, I have 3,972 draft posts in WordPress. That is where I store ideas and posts that aren’t ready for the world.
I turned a lot of old posts into drafts when I rebooted this blog. Bizzaro Tony will change that. It takes seven steps to create a draft on my iPhone; Open up the WordPress App, Select the Anthony Barba site from my 3 other sites, Tap on the create a new button, Tap on create a blog post, write a headline, and a few notes about what I want to talk about, Then the 3 dots, Then Save as Draft.
This week I started saving post ideas in Apple notes. I liked it. Then I tried doing it with Siri. I love it. All I do is say, ‘Hey Siri, create a note’ and dictate the possible Title.On Tuesday, while walking to the subway station I saved an idea as a title. Then I started dictating the post that turned out to be good enough to post. I cut and paste the notes into WordPress on the subway ride home. Since I am writing as no one reads them I published it while walking to my apartment. The next morning I revisited the live post and made some edits.
I set a goal to write 2 posts a week to gain more clarity, become a better communicator, and make better decisions. Dictating posts into Apple Notes at night and editing them in the morning will help me hit my goal.
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Bizzaro Tony
First, I once again reached out to people who built something like what we are planning to launch next month. This is the opposite of what I would do.
This is the opposite of what I would do. Second, with my family away I have zero plans on celebrating New Year’s eve. Tonight is just another Thursday. This is the opposite of what I would do.
Lastly, For the past week, I’ve been publishing posts, like this one, that I would normally write and keep private. This is the opposite of what I would do.
Am I becoming Bizarro Tony?
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Doubling down on join ’em
Today I located an entrepreneur who just launched a product similar to what the developer I reached out to yesterday built 2 years ago. I believe in the space. So reached out to the entreprenuer with the same offer. I’m doubling down on working with people who are traveling in the direction I’m going.
It feels very strange to put myself out there like this but it’s a muscle that I have to build.
Be the person I wish contacted me.
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Don’t pick up my calls.
Today I reaching out to everyone I worked with on the failed launch of Gvbck to join me in launching All in the Family. I promised to launch in 2 weeks. I asked them to promise to never pick up a call from me if I don’t launch on time. How’s that for accountability?
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Don’t beat ’em. Join ’em?
A question I asked myself today was, why don’t I find people who are building great products and offer my services instead of looking for people to help build my products? This is the complete opposite of what I’ve been doing for the past 10 years. That’s didn’t work so good. If I want a different outcome I can’t continue doing what I’ve been doing.
And that’s exactly what I did today. I contacted someone building a product almost identical to what I want to build. I asked if I can help him grow. Regardless if he calls back and I hope he does it was a good exercise putting myself out there.
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Working on Product Hunt Post first.
Instead of spending the day working on the website and app of the idea, I focused all of my attention on writing the product hunt post. Validating the concept is more important to me than getting the solution right. If the idea is a product people want, I will have no problem building the solution.
