Sometimes people around me roll their heads in amazement when I get on a journalistic roll. Few things get me more excited than the hunt for a mysterious bad guy causing trouble and hiding behind a disguised identity When I engage in these searches, my adrenaline rises, thinking intensity reaches its peak and I pour my heart and spirit into the project until I solve the puzzle and can write the story.
These interests and values certainly have roots in my earliest years when, at age 10, I started a brief neighbourhood “newspaper” (actually a few thin sheets of paper duplicated with carbon paper). They reached full power when at University academic excellence played second fiddle to initiatives such as discovering the University President’s private phone number and calling him with some embarrassing questions, or obtaining an interview with the Provincial Education Minister and slagging her in a student newspaper article — only to find her staring me down a few months later at a legislature building media scrum, accusing me of evil doings. (My fellow editors said “great, lets print the story.”) Then I put all of these values to work by going to war, well more accurately a country at war, living as a journalist through the 18 months transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe.
While these skills and values are certainly worthy, they are not the stuff of a get-rich-quick (or get-rich-slowly) scheme. Journalistic inquisitiveness and international travel might be wonderful talents and interests, but they don’t correlate so well with operating a business or living in a stable family life. However, over the years, I’ve discovered something interesting and important to this blog: When I allow these passions to express themselves and go after the journalistic hunt, often rather interesting things happen that help me (and my business) to thrive.
In one case, for example, I tracked down a con-artist to South Africa and Vanuatu (even to the point of watching him ‘live” on the Internet on his yacht as he traversed the ocean from Cape Town to Port Vila.) This, indirectly, led me to contracting with a rather interesting person to publish a local construction publication in Maine. The local publisher pulled out all the stops — in fact he pulled out too many stops — and we sold $50,000 in advertising for the first issue.
Alas, we pushed far too hard and didn’t build the necessary relationships for sustainability, so these were one-time purchases. However, equally, at that point, our business had reached a critical stage where immediate downsizing and cutbacks were necessary and without an incredible cash infusion, we would be dead in the water. The $50K gave us just the cash we needed to successfully navigate the rocky shoals and survive as I pulled the business down to the correct size for survival.
More recently, someone tried something which I must be oblique about here (though you can trace the story more completely in earlier postings if you search). I engaged in a mutli-national, two week search to track-down the “enemy”, eventually uncovering him through methods that are still surprising to me. The reward: the ability to continue with a small but increasingly important source of business income and the opportunity to help other publishers and website owners — and a direct connection to helpful human employees at Google in Mountainview, CA.
I realize these traits probably do not match yours unless you are or aspire to journalism as a career. But I’ve learned to respect them. Although my business may be publishing and my primary source of revenue may be selling advertising (with increasing revenue from consulting and book publishing), I’m still an investigative reporter at heart. I can’t do this work every day — that would probably cause burn-out — but at least once a year, a solid journalistic “hunt” keeps my heart and passion alive.
Do you have a similar passion? If so, I would argue you should consider expressing it because you may find it helps your business far more than any textbook solutions to standard problems. When your heart and soul in your work matches your natural talents and abilities, you almost inevitably will succeed. Go for it.