This article will be pretty short, but I think you will find it valuable.
About maybe 20% of the messages I get are about a young kid my age saying : “wow your things are amazing, I was thinking of doing this once I get some experience”
I always tell them: “why not now?”
There is a huge reason for this, because you’ll realize most people who have succeeded in something big, started with a lot of small things.
Mark Zuckerberg coded before he started facebook. As a kid, he developed Zuck-Net for his family to communicate around the house. In college, he developed a lot of software to help his peers in his classes. He practiced his craft until the right thing happened at the right time.
Same with someone like Elon Musk. Started Zip2, sold it. Started X or Paypal, sold it. Then started Space X, and gained majority stakes in Tesla and Solar City.
Sure there are lucky people like I’d say Steve Jobs and the Snapchat dude, but the point being, most people can mitigate their risk if they’ve practiced it.
So now let’s talk about my story. I started an asian food blog called azasianfoodreview.com in Feb 2016 where I had a meetup group called Arizona Asian Community (I’m a fan of the word community instead of group). One of the toughest challenges in the group was to think of new events to do so I just invited everyone to a new restaurant every week.
Over time, I thought “wow these restaurants are amazing, I don’t think these yelp reviews do a restaurant justice”. So I decided to write an in depth article once a week. For one, it would give me events for the meetup, and I can try out delicious Asian food! This also imprinted a philosophy that the key to success is consistency, which has been the best practice I’ve ever implemented for My Food Job Rocks.
After about 30 articles in, a lot more priorities entered my life. Also, I was omitted out of my own Asian meetup group, which means I had to visit these restaurants by myself and I’d feel like a loser. During that time, My Food Job Rocks picked up steam and I just didn’t have the time, money, and bandwidth to work on both projects. My Food Job Rocks took more priority but I do believe I made the right choice,
Yet the amazing part about blogs is that they last forever, And if they’re good, they get noticed.
I was contacted by Patricia Escarcega from the Phoenix New Times. She was a fan of my articles and wanted to interview me to talk about why these Asian restaurants are growing in Phoenix. I dined with her and her husband over pig ears and hand pulled noodles and the interview was absolutely ecstatic! Patricia was super interested in me being a food science and I guess she took a lot of my things at value when she showed me the article yesterday.
Here’s the article: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/restaurants/shaanxi-chinese-restaurant-phoenix-dobson-mesa-dim-sum-10134012
It won’t take long to see that I’m the head honcho in this article.
So the moral of the story, is that the benefits of just starting something, even if it’s to failure, has so many benefits you’d be stupid not to start something. Anything!
Not only do you learn the skills and nuances to create, but if it’s good, then people will find your stuff years later.
This is what Austin Bouck from http://furfarmandfork.com/ has always told me. People will find your stuff if it’s good. It might takes years, but it’s a compound interest effect.
As I watch the news and hear the social media news feed go berserk about gun laws and blaming people about who’s fault it is, it’s sad that this will be a hot topic for about 12 days, then dissipate like nothing ever happened. Then the cycle repeats again and again.
I wish someone would start something and have their mission in their life to constantly remind people of this danger and work on it for a long time. I’m too scared to. But maybe you can be better than me.
