Where I am now

I literally had this thought 5 minutes ago when I opened up Google docs to start writing this email: “I have no idea what to write.”

So, I do what I normally do: scroll X till inspiration hits me.

Luckily, I didn’t have to scroll long.

About 1 minute in, I ran across this tweet from my friend Katie:

Crazy!

And exactly what I needed.

Instant inspiration.

So, without further ado, here are my responses to the prompts Katie provided:

Describe where you are in your journey

My current bio:

I am a director of engineering for a defense-based tech company during normal working hours.

During non-normal working hours, I run a ghostwriting agency and do web development freelance work.

And for the non-working hours of my life, I have a family (3 kids) and a music-playing habit.

What I’ve accomplished:

I’m pretty happy with my 9-5 trajectory, but I’m most excited about building and scaling my ghostwriting agency to replace my 9-5 in the short term.

It’s been wild to start an internet-based business from nothing and grow it to 4 full-time clients and a part time employee.

What you're hoping still to do:

In addition to growing my agency, I am building a software platform to make my job as ghostwriter easier.

Eventually I would like to build it into a consumer-facing product and sell it.

What you're working on right now:

Right now, I’m working on stretching and growing my outreach muscle.

This is the only way to grow a sustainable business I’ve found, so I’m working on that not being the bottleneck.

My processes and systems for the fulfillment side are pretty locked down. But I need to get on 1 sales call a day.

Brainstorm the ideas that you have

Here’s my big idea roadmap…

I never shared this with anyone, so this is a bit nerve-wracking for me to share with you, my dear internet friend.

Anyway, here goes:

1. Build a service based agency with the main goal of becoming world-class at sales, marketing, and fulfillment.

2. Leverage the industry-specific knowledge from my niche into a software platform that addresses those pain points.

3. Acquire other software platforms that provide a complementary service to my customers.

4. Move into investing in other businesses that are in varied industries and use my expertise created from operating and building my own businesses to help them grow.

Write down the fears holding you back.

Here’s what I’m afraid of:

Missing out on my kid’s early years while I’m building this out and not realizing my potential to make an impact in the world through entrepreneurship.

Already, I’ve sacrificed quality time to get to where I am.

But I want to minimize this.

No matter what my aspirations are, I don’t want to be an emotionally unattached and/or physically absent father.

So, it’s a balancing act.

But family is priority number 1 here.

So, while it may take me longer to achieve my business goals, that’s ok by me.

And that’s it!

Thanks again to Katie for the prompt.

And if you liked this format, let me know!

Cheers,

Swanagan

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