How To Start Your Own Architecture Firm: 15 Tips From The Pros (quoted from architizer)

Art Gensler did it. Jeanne Gang did it. Quarterlife architect Courtney Brett did it. So why not you? Maybe you're just starting to consider striking out on your own; maybe you've been at it for a year and you're beginning to wonder if you're cut out for this. Both your grad school mentor AND your therapist think you're brilliant. Your parents are starting to worry. Your friends are encouraging, but you wonder how much they know. "Ninety-nine percent of the challenge isn't how to handle invoices, how to negotiate contracts, how to hire your first person, how to do Revit versus CAD. Those are all issues, but the big issue is, how do you get hired?" says Mark Cavagnero, FAIA, principal of Mark Cavagnero Associates Architects, who started his firm 19 years ago. "How do you actually go off on your own and survive? It's the part no one ever talks about."

On Thursday night, Cavagnero moderated a panel at AIA San Francisco for young architects in just such a situation. He asked Sylvia Kwan, FAIA, of Kwan Henmi Architecture/Planning; Samuel Fajner ofTEECOM; and Cass Calder Smith and Melissa Werner of CCS Architecture to think back on their days as upstarts and share the strategies—and the random bits of luck—that helped them build a client base. Cameras from aecKnowledge were on hand to film the session, which will be available (for a fee) on theaecKnowledge website. Thursday's isn't online yet, but they do have the first "Starting Your Own Firm" panel, which Cavagnero put on for a packed house back in July. Come 2013, he and AIASF will host monthly discussions around the theme of growing a small practice.

The panel at AIASF on Thursday night, from left: Mark Cavagnero, Melissa Werner, Cass Calder Smith, Sylvia Kwan, and Samuel Fajner.

1. Who are you?

Before you start churning out press releases and wooing clients, "the first thing you need to do to define your brand is actually to define what you want to be when you grow up," says Sam Fajner. "You have to believe in what you do and find your passion, because if you don't find your passion, you're not going to be able to communicate that."

2. Socialize with the clients you want

Running your own firm means you're on around the clock. "It's not a separation anymore of work and after-work—it's more that you're living your social life around where you want to be," says Melissa Werner. "Don't think of work as a nine-to-five job. Where are you going to be after work?" Cass Calder Smith says he's found commissions designing houses in the Hamptons by hanging out there. "But you can't be in marketing mode" he says. "You have to be in cool guy mode." Fajner agrees: "It's about being yourself. People will appreciate that. They'll see right through the salesperson."

Sylvia Kwan offers one caveat, though: None of the above applies to public projects for institutional, government, or educational clients. "Nowadays with all these ethics laws and sunshine laws, and everything these public clients have to sign, they're so scared sometimes of even having lunch with you," she says. "So that whole socialization thing comes much, much later."

3. Find out what your city offers to local or minority-owned businesses

In San Francisco, you can register with the city as a Local Business Enterprise (LBE), which gets you a listing on the LBE directory as well as a means of finding out about upcoming city-funded contracts open for bid. Many projects backed by government money are required to contract a certain percentage of the work to businesses in the directory, so this is one (maybe the only!) scenario where you can rationally hope for a cold call. Registering can also open the door to collaborations with established firms. "Partnering with larger firms is a great way to get involved in larger projects," says Fajner.

4. Ask for advice

"Pick up the phone, select five firms that you admire," says Fajner. "Call the CEO and say, 'This is my name, I'm 25 years old, and I want to start my firm. I know that you started your firm 20 years ago; I really would like to have a conversation with you and understand what you went through, what were your struggles, what are the lessons learned, what are the mistakes that you did that you can save me from making?' You'd be surprised at how many people would be receptive to that call."

5. Budget time for marketing and business development

When you're a tiny firm of one or two, "marketing" can sound like a luxurious thing for other people. But no matter your situation, getting the word out about who you are and what you do is essential. "As soon as you can, you need to get publishable work," says Smith. "From a financial standpoint, budget for that: think about where you're going to spend your money. Trying to get a residential remodel published is a lot harder than a ground-up house. Sometimes you don't want to try to do things too hard."

Smith recommends looking at growth as just one more design mandate. "We're all trained to be creative problem solvers," he says. "At the same time, somehow we put bookends on it; I find a lot of us don't use it for ourselves in marketing ways or creative ways. You should slow down every now and then and go, 'I'm a trained creative person. This is what I do: I solve problems. So I'm going to apply that to my marketing situation."

Completed in 1992, Restaurant LuLu in San Francisco helped CCS Architecture secure its reputation as a firm with restaurant and hospitality expertise. Photo courtesy of CCS Architecture

6. Consider pro bono or a low fee—for the right project

If a project has built-in buzz, it can reap rewards for years to come. "I was very lucky because I got to design Restaurant LuLu a long time ago," says Smith. "Restaurants are seen by a lot of people, so if you have a chance to even work for free practically or team up with somebody on a very low fee on a project that you think will get a lot of visibility, and you're young and you can somehow scratch by, I would highly recommend doing that. It made a huge difference for me."

Werner concurs. "If you have the time to do something that's more of a pro bono job or something that's going to be really cool that's going to get a lot of press, a lot of times someone else is going to do the press for you. People have done set designs; we did slow food, the Eat Real Festival—there's a slew of things people can do. We don't have to market that. That has a whole team of people that's going to market it for you, and your name's going to get out there."

7. Enter design competitions

The bar of entry is lower than you think—and a little effort now could pay off later. "There are opportunities where all you need to submit is a couple of renderings," says Fajner. "That will get you some publication, sometimes in Arch Record, sometimes online. You never know who's going to read that. You have a piece that's going to be written for you; you're going have drawings and renderings that are online for people to see. That gives you a body of work. Even though it doesn't get built, and you might not win the competition, you get an opportunity to be seen." (Ed: Speaking of which! The final entry deadline for Architizer's A+ Awards is this Friday, December 21.)

8. Invest in good photography

To get published in print or on the web, you need stellar photos. "Much of the media is driven by having really high-quality photography," says Cavagnero. "Whatever dollars you can muster up, I would put them towards great photography, even the most modest project." Even if you can't afford dozens of photos, you can still make the most of the shots you have. "You might get ten good pictures, but they're so high res that you can crop into one really tight and end up with a number of good detail shots," says Smith. "You can usually make an average project look a lot better."

Find a photographer who understands your vision. "Start developing a relationship with a photographer you really like, whose work really appeals to you and resonates with you," says Cavagnero. "The really good photographers, when you talk to them about your ideas and your passions and what you're trying to convey in the work, they don't just walk out to the building and start shooting. You really want to cultivate what it is you're trying to do."

CCS Architecture's 2009 Aptos Retreat near Santa Cruz, California, comes up whenever anyone Googles the phrase "modern barn." Photo courtesy of CCS Architecture

9. The Internet is your friend

The great shrinking of print media means you'll have a harder time getting published in magazines. But, says Werner, "they all have web editions, and what's best about that is you can send those things out in every avenue you can think of." Werner recommends developing relationships with editors. "Over time, they come to you and they ask you for projects," she says. (Ed: Ahem. Send us your tips atinfo@architizer.com!)

The more you publish online, the more keywords are associated with your name, adds Werner. "A client found us one time just by looking up 'modern barn,' and our project came up, like, a thousand times. They were like, 'We have to talk to this architect!' And it's just because it was on so many different websites."

10. Parlay your small projects into bigger ones

Use any experience you have with a typology to grab more of it—and never, ever downplay your expertise. "Every single project you work on, you own it," says Kwan, who as a junior architect worked on airports and convention centers for Gensler. "I tell people this that I mentor: Even if you just did the toilet details at the airport—which I did!—so? You say, yes, I have airport experience, end of subject. Not, "Oh, but I only did the bathrooms!" Never apologize. You have to be really bold and confident when you start a firm. You're starting with very little, but your body of work, whether it's five years or ten years, you own it all."

Clients, though, always want the expert. How to break in and get on their radar? Smith did a lot of restaurants early in his career, and he began doing restaurants for Hyatt. "A lot of this stuff is really relationship-based," he says. "You do good work and they build up a lot of trust, and these companies start to find that it's easier for them to call you than somebody they might not know. If you're making their job easier, then they start saying, 'You guys are doing pretty good restaurants. Why don't you do this lobby, or why don't you do these rooms?' And now we're doing all that, and as we finish those, we're using that to market to Hyatt's competitors."

11. Partner with bigger firms to get on large projects

As a boutique firm, you won't have the capacity to handle those $50 million commissions—but you can get your name out there to the firms that do. "We let larger firms know that we're interested in working with them," says Werner. "We'll talk to a much larger firm that may specialize in something totally different from us, but it would make sense to bring us in as a restaurant person. That way we can have a small piece of a larger project, which would hopefully lead to bigger projects later on."

Sometimes it's possible to work on a project that's a stretch for you if the design architect is out of town and needs your local expertise, adds Kwan. "If you know this project type, but it's a little bigger than your normal scale, you can team up with a larger firm that has that experience," she says.

Nova House, by Kwan Henmi Architecture/Planning, was featured on the HGTV program Extreme Living. Photo courtesy of Kwan Henmi Architecture/Planning

12. Take oddball opportunities seriously

Kwan is glad she was paying attention to her email several years ago, when she received an announcement from the AIA about a joint venture with HGTV for a program called Extreme Living. "I went, 'Oh, we just did an extreme house!'" Kwan and her partner, Denis Henmi, submitted their Nova House, a desert dwelling perched on a 200-foot cliff in Utah, and got on the show. "Every six months they rerun the series and I get e-mails," says Kwan. "It's as if we designed the house yesterday."

13. Network in the whole industry, not just with architects

If you meet a furniture vendor at a party, don't overlook her just because she's not a designer. Manufacturers and suppliers have valuable information that could help you land some workplace design clients, says Cavagnero. "They're really good at business development and knowing which companies are looking in town—who's expanding, who's relocating, who's out looking for 30,000-foot space." Networking with commercial realtors is a good idea, too. "The relationships you make may very well not be with architects, but they're with other people who are looking at the same kind of work you are, but from a completely different angle," adds Cavagnero.

14. Get published where clients will take notice

Remember that your favorite magazines aren't necessarily the same ones that potential clients read. "Getting published in Arch Record is great," says Fajner. "Your peers are going to see your work. What about your clients?" Look for the influential business and lifestyle publications in your area. Adds Fajner, "It's great to get a pat on the back from your peers, but what you want is to be in the San Francisco Business Times, the Chronicle, where your clients are going to read about it."

15. Hang out with the remodeling crowd

There is a place where no one ever stops talking about remodeling, and it is the playground. Also the barbecue. And the gym. Pretty much anywhere that young parents congregate. "If you have children, they're your best business development tool ever," says Cavagnero. "Single-family-house work is word of mouth, and it comes through the schools and the parents of the children." Even with no prior experience, he says, "once you get to know them and they like you, and it's a modest project, they will hire you."

In conclusion! Launching your own practice demands a lot of effort, energy, and an extremely porous personal life. Cavagnero wraps it up:

"You can't veil or separate your private life. When you think you're ready to go to an event on a Thursday night just because there might be a client, or go to a playground because a friend of yours has a child and there's a little birthday party for seven-year-olds, when you honestly think you're ready to do that—and that doesn't sound goofy or weird or terrible to you, but you say, 'I can do that, that's OK, if that gets me an OK job, that's actually great'—when you're ready to do that, you're really ready to go out on your own. It means you're believing in yourself, you want it, you're willing to put a lot of your personal life into it to make it work. If you're not ready for that, you're probably not ready to go on your own, because people won't just call you to hire you. You're going to have to extend yourself."

10 Ways Your Boss Kills Employee Motivation

10 Ways Your Boss Kills Employee Motivation

20 Reasons to Start Your Own Business by Mike Templeman (quoted from entrepreneur.com)

Credit to the original author for the article below. This re-posting is for my future reference.

If you’re an entrepreneur you have heard the million reasons not to go into business: It’s too risky, you might go into debt, you’ll probably lose sleep, your social life is kaput, and the list goes on. But even with all these uncertainties, people are still attracted to the startup world. There are just as many, if not more reasons to take the leap and go into business for yourself.  Here are just a few:

1. Spare time. This one can take some time.  Initially you’ll work longer hours for less pay.  But if you do it right, you could start to master your schedule and the freedom that being an entrepreneur provides is awesome. 

2. A story to tell. Whenever I tell someone I run my own business, they always want to know what I do, how I do it and how it’s going. I always am able to provide a tale or two, and the best part is that I get to determine the story's chapters. (When working for a corporation, people most likely have less input.)

3. Tax benefits. For entrepreneurs (freelancers included), they have the opportunity to take advantage of some nice tax perks. Many can write off expenses like travel, food, phone bills, portions of car payments, and the list goes on. Also, certain startups qualify for government incentives. Make sure to ask your accountant about what tax benefits you may be eligible for.

4. Pride. When you build something successful, it’s a great feeling. You had a vision, were able to execute it and not can reap the benefits of saying "I did this." On the other hand, it’s tough to be proud of the zillionth request for proposal you fill out for your employer.

5. Your posterity. If you’re a doctor, plumber or bus driver it’s hard to imagine you passing your career on to your loved ones. But if you own your own business, that’s something you can pass on to the next generation. And be proud of it, because you created it.

6. Job security. Have you ever been laid off, downsized, or fired?  If you have, you get this. With entrepreneurship the security lies in the fact you are your own boss. You run the show and don't have to worry about getting let go.

7. Networking. Entrepreneurs are communal creatures.  We love to meet each other, swap stories, and learn from each other’s experiences. Your circle of friends and acquaintances always grows when you become an entrepreneur, as many founders need others to lean on to survive and talk about the challenges only known to them.

8. Doing good. While this isn’t exclusive to entrepreneurs, it’s definitely a perk. You control where your company profits go and if you choose, you can give allocate your financial gains to others. You can sponsor a charity, a non-profit or just personally give back to the community.  This is quite honestly one of the best parts of being an entrepreneur.

9. Novelty. We, as humans, love new experiences but rarely can you experience a host of new things from inside your cubicle. This all changes when you are running the show. Starting your own business will ensure you’ll always be facing new challenge and experiencing something new.

10. Mentorship. Having had mentors and getting to be a mentor have been some of the best experiences of my life.  Learning from the masters and getting to help those less experienced than you gives you such a sense of satisfaction. From my experience (and other's stories) the entrepreneurial community is very willing to give back and lend a helping hand.

11. Becoming an expert. This point goes along with mentorship.  Regardless of what you do as an entrepreneur, if you stick with it, you’ll probably become very good at it. And this gives you a sort of soapbox, so use it. You'll have the chance to be interviewed for your expertise, write about it and get to spread your message.

12. Skills. People ask me how I learned about SEO, social media, pay-per-click, PR and all the other marketing techniques I utilize. I tell them that I was forced to learn them, otherwise I wouldn't survive.  The same way I was forced to learn how to build a spreadsheet, how to balance a budget, how to negotiate leases and countless other skills I picked up because I was the only resource I had. While developing new skills can be tough and takes times, it can pay off in spades.  These skills will be invaluable throughout your life.

13. Determination. Everything I’ve done as an entrepreneur has affected me in my personal life.  I used to be poor at committing to changes. But having been an entrepreneur for over a decade has forced me to become dedicated and determined to causes. (Now I can stick to an exercise plan much easier.)  I’m also better at being a father and husband because of that determination I learned.

14. Recognition. There are literally thousands of local, regional and national awards that recognize entrepreneurs in every field and industry. This shouldn’t be your only reason to start your business, but it certainly is a great feeling when you receive this recognition.

15. Financial independence. Let’s be honest, this is probably the biggest reason people get into business for themselves.  And that’s a good thing!  You should want financial independence.  However you define financial independence – retirement stockpile, unlimited cash potential or having the money to buy what you want --  entrepreneurship can allow you to achieve it. Trust me, money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does make finding happiness much easier.

16. Reinvention. I’ve started and sold several companies over my career.  And every time I sell a company, I’m presented with an opportunity to reinvent myself all over again. On the flip side, if I had received my law degree, I’d be a lawyer (not a lot of room to recreate myself). But as an entrepreneur, I get to be whatever I want to be.

17. Change the world. Everyone jokes that every entrepreneur says they’re going to change the world. It’s difficult to imagine how a cell phone accessory kiosk in the mall is going to change the world.  But there are those that do succeed.  Take a look at Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and the countless other entrepreneurs who really have changed the world in some small (or major) way.

18. Create jobs. There’s nothing like the satisfaction of knowing you’re responsible for the success of your employees.  Your ideas provided them the opportunity to earn a living, provide for their family and fulfill their own dreams.

19. Your brand. Being known for something is awfully enjoyable.  People may start referring to you as the marketing guy, or the retail maven or the software guru.  Whatever it is you’re recognized as, it’s fun to build that brand and earn that recognition.

20. Your reason. I’ve given you a list of why I think you should get into business.  But all that really matters is your reason to start your own business.  So, what is it?  Tweet out this story and add your reason.  Comment below and share with us why you did it.  I know it will be a good one. 

7 Simple Ways a Blog Can Get You More Photography Clients by Ramsay Taplin (quoted from DPS)

Credit to the original author for the article below. This re-posting is for my future reference.

Are you a photographer who dreams of taking your photography business to the next level?

Well, one of the things that creative people (like artists, writers and, yes, photographers) forget is that you grow a business by marketing it – not necessarily by just being good at what you do. There are plenty of good photographers out there.

So what’s the problem?

Not all photography businesses have a huge budget to spend on marketing.

And that’s where a blog comes into it.

In this post I’m going to talk about how you can start a blog (or use an existing one) to get you more clients for your photography business. I don’t run a photography blog but I’ve got a bit of experience with helping small businesses grow using content marketing.

I’ll use a few examples from photographers I know as well as taking some sweet ideas from similar small businesses doing the same thing.

Not all blogs/websites are created equal

For the purposes of this article I thought it would be important to make a few distinctions.

And let’s start by highlighting the fact that a regular “brochure” website is not the same as a blog. Not by a long way.

What’s the difference between a blog and a website?
So what’s the difference? Well, a website is something that generally has static content – pages like About Us, Services, Gallery, Contact and so on. A blog is something that you update regularly with new content. The newest posts usually appear at the top. This comes with a huge set of advantages – some you might never have considered.

Can the two work together?
Absolutely. In fact, that is the ideal situation. The best way to set your photography website up is to make sure it has a blog integrated seamlessly with the rest of the website. Having a blog on a separate domain name is good but not nearly as good as building one under your main brand name. I’ll explain why later.

Where do I get started?
If you don’t have a blog (or a website) and want to learn more I’ve done a video and a full walkthrough on blog hosting that helps you understand how it all works together and how to get started the right way the first time around. You can alsocheck out this Wiki later on for some hosting alternatives.

So how can a blog bring you more photography clients?

Now that we’ve got some of the preliminary stuff out of the way let’s jump into the meat and potatoes of the post.

1. A blog helps to build trust
The first thing to note about a blog is that it helps you build a lot of trust with your potential customers and clients. This is an extremely important part of growing a business these days because a huge amount of your customers will research you before they engage your services. In fact, some people say that one in three people look at the website before engaging the business.

Part of this means having a well designed website that showcases your work and part of it means showing your personality. This is especially important for things like wedding photography where your client will want to have a good relationship with you as it is such an important day for them.

Tasmanian photographer Lisa K does this extremely well by having her blog as the homepage of her photography website. The articles she posts are about her daily life and family but always showcase some stunning photographs that would, no doubt, help to create an initial “buzz” and trust with a potential client.

2. A blog helps to increase your reach
The most important part of marketing a business is reach – you need to get in front of new people as often as possible.

This can be quite a difficult concept to understand because we are usually told that loyalty and repeat customers is the most important. Well, if you have five loyal clients who bring you the majority of your business but one drops off then you’re in trouble. A better scenario is to reach new people regularly and then convert them into loyal customers by providing a quality service. Reach is always more important than loyalty for growth.

So how does a blog help to increase your reach?

Well, it gives people something to share and a platform for you to promote all the cool intricacies of your business. People are very unlikely to share around just a portfolio site (unless it’s incredible!) but if you publish a quirky or unique blog post that’s different to your regular material you might find it makes the rounds on Pinterest or Twitter and brings you some new clients.

For example, let’s say you have some hilarious wedding photos of brides trashing their dresses. They’d look look good in a portfolio but imagine the difference it would make if you combined them into one blog post called 10 Hilarious Photos of Brides Ruining their Expensive Dresses. Much more entertaining and shareable.

3. A blog can get you more exposure locally
Google is now giving a lot of weight to local listings. What this means is that if someone types in “photographer” into a Google search they are going to get result from their local area. Here’s an example:

As you can see, in South Australia I get a Wikipedia result and then the next few are all local South Australian photographers.

Now, a blog can help you take this to the next level in a few ways. The main one is that every blog post you publish will increase your visibility for local terms. For example, if you do a blog post called 25 Beautiful Landscape Photos from Around Sydney you are more likely to rank for terms relating to those photographs to people in Sydney.

Or, you might do a blog post about every photo shoot that you do with local businesses. When people see those photos on those businesses websites or marketing materials and then look it up on Google you’re more likely to appear. So you can piggyback off the success of your client and your quality photos to get more business.

4. A blog gives your website multiple new points of entry
This point strongly relates to the previous one but is worth mentioning on it’s own.

Every time you publish a blog post it (if set up correctly) publishes with it’s own unique web address called a permalink. For example, let’s say you do a post called5 Interesting Photos from New York that post’s permalink would be something like www.yourwebsite.com/5-interesting-photos-from-new-york/

The great thing about this is that Google will index each post like this in the search results separately depending on what people search for, and how authoritative your website is. This is quite a complicated field we’re getting into now so if you’re interested you can read this SEO for blogs article or this list of SEO tips from Darren.

The main point, however, is that for every blog post you publish you’re creating a new set of keywords through which people can enter your blog.

A great real-world example is my mate Tim from SA TECHFLOOR who told me the other night that since he started blogging and posting photos of his flooring jobs he’s getting more and more phone calls every day. As each one has a different set of keywords (carpet, concrete, bamboo, timber, etc.) he’s got a lot of entry points he didn’t previously.

5. A blog can help your website rank higher
Now, one of the cool things about the previous few points is that if you do them all within your own website you can cause that website to rank higher on Google for important terms like “photographer in [your city]“.

Google likes to show results that are both fresh and of the highest quality. So if you have a small five page website with not much changing, Google might not think it’s all that useful.

If, on the other hand, your website has an active blog with lots of new posts, people sharing it on social media and so on, Google is likely to think it’s more useful for their customers (people searching) and thus rank it higher.

A graph of the click through rate of the top search results thanks to Search Engine Watch.

As you can see in the image above, this can lead to an immediate increase in business because the first result in Google gets over 35% of the traffic for that page. Worse still, the first page gets over 95% of clicks so if you aren’t in the first few results you’re getting overlooked.

6. A blog can help you form new collaborations
A good online friend of mine, Jamie Swanson, runs two photography blogs. One of them is embedded in her main business website and acts as a promoter of her main services. Her second blog, however, is called The Modern Tog and it’s all about running a photography business.

I wanted to mention her second site because it is a great example of someone who has set up something slightly out of the box and created a lot of new connections because of it.

For example, Jamie contacted me through Blog Tyrant about a year ago and I put her in touch with the content editor at ProBlogger. This lead to her writing a hugelysuccessful post about Pinterest that, in many ways, has lifted her reputation online as someone who knows about photography and the marketing side of photography.

It wouldn’t have happened without the blog.

7. A blog can help reduce client friction
Client friction is what happens when they visit your site, like your stuff but for some reason don’t make contact. It could be because they don’t like your prices or it might be something a little bit more intangible like not really “feeling the vibe”.

James Field runs one of Adelaide’s best wedding photography businesses and has a great little video on his website that is a cool example of something you can do to get your clients to know you better.

Now, James’s video isn’t on a blog but it’s the perfect kind of cross-platform content that a blog is perfect for. For example, you could do a series of these types of videos showing how the wedding day pans out for your clients. These could then bring you traffic from YouTube as well as reducing client friction on your blog.

Tips for your photography blog

So now you’ve got some reasons as to why you might want to have a blog on your photography businesses website. But once you’ve got the blog what are some things you can do to make sure it succeeds?

• Be personal
  People will love your photos (if you’re good) but they might not like you. Try to figure out who your audience is an, if possible, make sure you are personal and friendly.
• Know your brand
  Know who you are targeting and what keyword they might be looking for on Google. This will help you craft the right content.
• Make sure it loads fast
  People are getting less and less patient when it comes to websites. In fact, a one second delay can affect conversions by up to 7%.
• Find a way to be different
  Don’t just publish the same stuff everyone else is. Take a leaf out ofBuzzFeed’s book and use content we’ve all seen to come up with something fun, shareable and relevant.
• Make your blog your “home base”
  In my guide to social media I talk about the fact that your blog should be your base for all your social media activities. This way, all the Tweets, Pins and Shares that you get go towards growing your blog’s traffic and rankings.

The Universe Doesn't Give A Flying Fuck About You by Johnny B. Truant (quoted from johnnybtruant.com)

Read this a while ago and it hit me straight to my face. I've been searching back for this article and it took me about a year (not to say I spent the whole 365 days looking for it) and tonight, on the first day of a new year, I've found it. It's new year and perhaps it's a good read for anybody to start anew. Gonna share it here and re-post it in my FB for future reference. Good night everyone!

Credit to the original author for the article below. This re-posting is for my future reference.

I’ve been watching this show lately with my 6-year-old son, Austin, who likes learning about space and planets and black holes and stuff. It’s called How the Universe Works.

And man, the universe has one hell of a story to tell.

It all starts with, presumably, the Big Bang, wherein a single point in space barfs forth a hot, violent soup of particles and energy that take a few hundred million years just to cool down enough to begin coalescing into stars. You know… to “cool down” enough to become giant fucking balls of fire.

Stars ignite. Star clusters form, and become galaxies. Rocks in space start running into each other, and a few planets are created.

Eventually, the Earth is born. Hooray!

The Earth sits there for a few more billion years, until, after a lot of back and forth and general bureaucratic indecision, life shows up. Very, very recently, humanity, (which is perfect and unique if you ignore how random it all seems), makes its appearance. Hooray!

That lasts for a little while. Humans thrive. Invent the rotisserie. Build the internet. Watch porn.

After a bit, though (and this part of the story is still unwritten, but definitely coming) the sun sloughs off its outer layers, obliterating all of the inner planets as it dies. Then, as the fusion at the sun’s core that keeps it inflated runs out of raw materials, it collapses into a white dwarf, and the solar system weeps as it loses yet another great player to retirement.

Hooray!

After this, it gets really fun. The astrophysicists who used to think the universe was going to re-contract into the “Big Crunch” now say that the universe’s expansion is actually accelerating. Meaning: After enough time passes, the Earth’s old position (Earth having been blown away aeons ago, of course) will be so distant from anything else that you’d be able to look up into the sky and see absolutely nothing at all.

Quite a story, right?

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
Deep, man.

I don’t know about you, but looking up into the sky on a clear night is enough to give me existential chills.

You’re not just looking up into a curtain of black. You’re looking into the eye of the universe. Stare for a while and you start to realize — on a deep, gut level — that the moon is a giant rock circling us in space. The sun is a violent, fusion-fueled ball of plasma and gas millions of miles away that destroyed the atmospheres of all of the inner planets (including Mars, which is farther away from it than we are) and would do the same to ours if we weren’t lucky enough to have a magnetic field that diverts the solar wind.

The cute little pinpricks of light you see out there are other giant, explosive, incredibly pissed-off balls of gas floating in an infinite void, most of which arefar more impressive than our puny sun. And that smear of milky white through the sky? That’s the center of our own galaxy — a gigantic pinwheel circling a supermassive black hole like floating detritus around the vortex of a flushing toilet.

There’s a lot of crazy shit going on out there.

And in fact, the Earth could bite the dust at any time.

Comets. Asteroids. Apparently, there’s even a star nearby that may eventually go all black hole on us. When it does, it’ll shoot a jet of X-Men style radiation out of its poles, perpendicular to its accretion disc, directly at us. (The good news is that we’d never see it coming. We’d just suddenly be reduced to our constituent atoms.)

Even avoiding all of that, though, just buys us time. The Earth is not permanent. The sun is not permanent. The oldest stars alive today are not permanent. It will all end.

And in the middle of this story (because we’re the ones telling it), is us.

Here on our little blue planet. Here at this exact, tiny, special blink in time. Here, but only “here” in the way a beetle might be “there” on the sidewalk of Times Square during rush hour. Sure, the beetle can survive, but only for as long as it’s not in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nobody’s out to get that beetle… but nobody’s watching where they’re stepping, either.

The city was there long before the beetle, and it’ll be there long after the beetle’s inevitable demise.

The city, always neutral, honestly doesn’t care one way or the other whether the beetle lives, dies, suffers, or thrives.

And you were worried that trying something new might make you look dumb or that your business might not make any money.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

The universe doesn’t care about you.

It can’t. It’s too big, with too much going on.

Maybe there’s a grand conductor, and maybe there’s not. I do happen to believe in God, or the Spirit of Life, or the Force for all I know, but regardless of belief or disbelief, one thing I know for certain is that no matter WHAT or WHO is out there, he or it doesn’t “care” if you define “care” in terms of life and death. Nobody is special. Nobody gets a pass.

Everything dies. Everything. You were born with a terminal disease, just like everything else that has ever existed. You, your lamp, the sun, and the Bee Gees all have that in common.

This, like the universe’s apathy, is neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact.

But this fact — the immutable, inevitable, impossibly obvious fact we will die as surely as we were born — is something we all deny for most of our lives. You’d think we’re never going to die, the way we cower and second-guess and fret over each little action. We act like what we do today will forever alter the flow of creation, of time, of space. Every move is vital. Each little event could upset the delicate balance. Everything is of paramount importance.

We can’t do things differently, because the system, however imperfect, works and is extremely delicate. We might upset it by thinking outside the box.

We have to weigh every decision, because a butterfly flapping its wings in Nova Scotia could cause a hurricane in Guam. Or, as Homer Simpson taught us, if you kill a mosquito in dinosaur times, Ned Flanders might become the unquestioned lord and master of the universe.

We can’t do something that might make us look ridiculous, because first impressions last forever.

We can’t try and fail, because then we’ll be ruined forever.

Think a scar (or a tattoo, for that matter) is permanent? It’s not. Your body was literally formed from stardust and will eventually return there. The duration of a scar doesn’t even register on the big time line. In fact, I heard that God watches jewelry commercials and LOL’s when they say that diamonds are forever. It’s all a big joke up there. There’s a drinking game in Heaven, where angels do a shot every time humans invest “for the long term.”

What are you so fucking worried about?

You are here now. Eventually, you will be gone. You have but a nanosecond on the universal clock to do whatever it is you’re going to do. When that time is gone, it’s gone. Forever.

That means that although what you do doesn’t matter to the universe, it should matter one hell of a lot to YOU.

In fact, it should matter to you more than it currently does. If you knew how small you are and how short a time you have to do what you can, you wouldn’t waste time watching five fucking hours of TV a day. You wouldn’t waste time doing a job you hate. You wouldn’t waste the little time you have dealing with assholes, feeling sorry for yourself, or being timid about the things you’d really like to do.

I’m 35, and it dawned on me just recently that it’s not at all long before I’ll be forty. And forty is FUCKING OLD in the mind of a guy with the mentality and sense of humor of a teenager. I mean, hell, you can make an argument for 30 being young despite the fact that the MTV crowd says different, but forty-something is what your grandmother was.

When I had this epiphany, a succession of uncomfortable and incredibly obvious realizations followed.

If I can turn 40, I can turn 50.

If I can turn 50, I can turn 60.

Once, I was a kid and everyone else was old. The tables will turn. I’ll be the guy that kids look at and see as old. Me. Fucking ME. Me, who was once out cruising on Friday nights, staying up until dawn. Me, who thought I was indestructible, who thought I was forever. Turns out I was wrong. Turns out I was just one in 6.8 billion, and very much subject to the same laws of time and space as everyone else.

One day, if I’m very lucky, I’ll be a shriveled 100-year old guy with a cane. An old man with a kid’s mind, wondering how the hell this could have happened.

Think about this. Now.

Think back five years in time. Remember what you were like. Realize how fast five years can go. Think about who you are today, the place you’re in and the age you are. Then step back into the shoes of your five-years-ago self and look at yourself as you are today.

I have two kids. That’s not possible. People like me don’t have kids. We’re too young. We’re kids ourselves, forever young and irresponsible. It’s ridiculous. I live in a house that I own. I pay bills. It’s crazy.

Think about it.

Realize that time will never stop. NEVER. You will never be younger again. It’s like being on a train with no stops that’s always leading you farther and farther from home… or closer and closer to home, depending on how you look at it. You can never get off that train. You can never board a train going the opposite direction.

If you missed a stop, tough shit.

If there was this great thing even just two miles back that you decided not to do, you can’t change your mind and go do it. That place is gone forever.

A simple example for me is skateboarding. I’d have loved to do that. And sure, adults can learn to skateboard. I’m a huge believer in “it’s never too late for X.” But really… REALLY… if you want to truly skate, that’s something for the young. I know I won’t be taking it up now, shredding through our concrete jungle.

In my past, there’s also an opportunity I could have taken advantage of that I didn’t, and that I wish I had. There’s a thing I got rid of that I really wish I’d kept.

But the train never backs up. Never. I missed those things, and I will never get a second chance.

Do yourself a favor, right now, and realize two things:

1. You will keep getting older, and then you will die.

2. Everything that’s ever entered your experience has lasted and will continue to last for only a brief moment in the life of the universe.

This is game time, champ. You’re in. You’re in, playing, right now, and the clock is ticking.

So stop wondering what it all means and how you’ll possibly ever do X and what people will think, and get on with your life already.

Stop being a pussy and go do something amazing.

Do epic shit.

I’m just now getting around to the end of the newer Battlestar Galacticaseries and something hit me when Dr. Baltar suited up with the troops for the end assault on the Cylon colony.

It’s this: Noble people do noble things.

That’s it. See, throughout the series, Baltar is a selfish asshole. He’s responsible for the annihilation of the human race, he betrays everyone, he forms a cult that rubs his chest and feeds him grapes.

But in the end, he does the right thing. And when I saw that, I realized that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. What matters is what you do.

A whole series’ worth of being ignoble doesn’t stop a truly noble act at the end from being noble. The idea of “nobility” (or “good,” or “bad,” or “worthy,” or “awesome,” or anything else) is defined only by our actions.

You can’t be a bad person who does good things. If you do good things, you’re not bad; you’re good. There is simply no way to manifest badness other than by being bad. Anyone who’d argue that you can be bad while ultimately doing good things is just a douchebag philosophy major looking to get his ass kicked.

So what does this mean to you?

Why… it means everything. It means that in the small amount of time you have to live, you can be whatever you want. It means that even though the universe doesn’t care enough to give you what you want, it doesn’t care enough to stop you from having it, either. So embrace that anarchy, and take those things for yourself.

If you want to be awesome in this life, do awesome things.

If you want to be a leader, do some leading.

If you want to be an expert, do the things an expert does.

A few weeks ago, I talked to Trust Agents co-author Julien Smith, and soon after, he sent me this tweet:

For a moment, I wondered, “How the hell can I be more epic?”

But then I realized something really obvious. To be epic, all I’d need to do is to do epic shit.

So that’s what I’m doing, today and from here on out.

How to level up

Just do it. Claim it. Stop waiting for permission to be epic.

Most people think that they need to be tapped on the shoulder by the Epic Fairy if they ever hope to be epic, or if they’re ever going to have the audacity to do something truly epic. But it’s not true. Want to be epic? Just do epic shit. There’s nothing else to it.

People always say, “I wish I was amazing. I wish I was awesome.”

Fucking hell. Stop whining and just be it already. Be fucking awesome.

Nobody’s going to give you the gift of awesome. Nobody’s going to make you good, or great, or amazing, or epic. Nobody’s going to make you an expert or an authority or a voice anyone should listen to. Nobody’s going to level you up. If you want that next level, take it. Take it for yourself.

Grab it. Become it. Claim it.

Write a treatise. Create an event. Champion a cause. Build something great. Speak your mind. Make the call. Build the business. Author the book. Send the email. Do it. Do it.

If you fail, big deal.

You might write something and nobody might read it. You might build it and nobody might come. You could fail and ruin your life. You could take a chance and end up looking really, really stupid. Boo-fucking-hoo.

It doesn’t matter.

You are very small. We are all staring down the barrel of a gun, and we last only for the tiniest, tiniest moment in time. Your life is a one-way train, and any second you waste is a second lost forever.

You are that beetle on the streets of New York. The universe doesn’t hate you, but it doesn’t love you, either. You’re just an atom in its infinite workings. The universe doesn’t care if you live, die, suffer, or thrive.

Only YOU care.

If your life is to mean something, it’s up to YOU.

You cannot influence the movements of planets. You cannot live forever. You cannot affect the entropy of the universe. All you can do is to make this moment — your moment — better. You can affect the lives of others around you, and you can affect your own life. You can ease some suffering. You can do some epic shit. If you, yourself, only last for a nanosecond, you might expand your influence to a millisecond. And that’s something. Honest, it is.

You don’t matter to the planets and the sun and the stars, but you matter to YOU. You matter to those around you. You matter to those you can reach, and touch, and who you live and die with.

Stop waiting for someone to give you what you want. The universe is too busy to care. It has worlds to create and galaxies to destroy. If you’re worried about death and about your own end, don’t. It’s coming whether you like it or not. You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE.

There is only now. If you have power, it’s now. If you can change anything, you have to do it now. If you want to be or to have that next great thing, be it. Have it. Take it. Own it. Do it. Become it.

Be awesome. Do epic shit.

Do it now. The clock is ticking.