It’s been a really long time since I’ve typed out a blog for myself. Hopefully it’s like riding a bike…
For the past year I’ve been keeping an eye on job listings and making a list of companies that resonate with me. I’ve loved my career working for myself, but with my first child and a full life the toll of owning a business has become exhausting.
With that in mind I’ve submitted to a few companies. This past week I submitted a resume to a small hosting business I’d not heard of prior, Reclaim Hosting.
They checked all the boxes for the type of company culture that I hope to join. What surprised me though was the haltingly similar origin story. So of course, I tailored my resume and a cover letter and got it sent out. Hoping I would not miss another opportunity (I recently received notice that another resume was enjoyed, but position filled prior to receiving mine, bummer!).
Reclaim’s story, and subsequently Jim’s blog which is linked to in the About section, had so many paths to walk down. My curiosity got the better of me and I spent several hours over the weekend digging in even deeper. By the time I got to Jim Groom’s recent interview with Impressive Hosting I was already a fan, but his early comments in that podcast really drove it home.
… we wanted it to be a space they controlled and took with them.
Jim Groom
And just like that it struck me how important owning a domain of my own was in my life. I’d been on the internet for most of my life before I ever bought a domain.
It was 2010, I was a young adult and off on an adventure. My dog, my best friend, and I had hopped into my car and drove off. We weren’t running away, family and friends knew we’d be leaving, but we had no direction in mind. We’d end up driving for nearly 4 months including the entire west coast highway from San Diego to Portland before returning home.
With the exceptions of stops in San Diego to see a friend being shipped of to Afghanistan and a stop in San Francisco to see the city that birthed the counter-culture, we largely slept in nature.
It was in those quiet moments with nature that I began writing down my thoughts on paper and documenting my life with a camera. After returning home, friends and family asked to see photos of the adventure. I’d taken some college courses in digital communications, and had self-taught myself HTML/CSS years prior, so I thought I’d build a website to share my photos.
I’d heard of a tool called WordPress which allowed you to create your own blog and I thought maybe that was a way to make this website to share my photos. I started poking around and realized that not only could WordPress host my blog, I could download the software, buy hosting and host the whole thing myself. I could own a piece of the web!
Looking back now, I don’t know if I just hadn’t considered how hosting worked or if this “project” was simply the first time I had the opportunity to make something. Regardless, I had a mission. I was going to build a WordPress website and host it myself.
That’s when GaianEye was born. In hindsight, a fairly pretentious and silly name, but I digress.
With my travel partner being an artist, it was a shared blog where we’d both write our stories and share our artwork. For me it became much more. I’d started taking more photos, and as a long time music fan I had an easy time getting a camera into local music shows where friends were playing.
It only took sharing a few sets of local musicians before I started getting a few questions about how someone might hire me to take photos of their band. I was stoked! All I had to do is take photos and I’d make some money? What a dream.
And it was. I spent the next 5 years shooting photos and videos for live music performances. Unfortunately, that took a lot of time away from home and the value of the work is low (there’s a lot of people excited to do that work for free, and good for them!).
What it lacked in financial gain it made up for in connections. Along the way I constantly ran into someone who would ask about my website. Who built it? How hard was it to use?
“I built it.” And that was it, I had gone from being a photographer to being a web designer. In the world I’d been living, finding a photographer was easy. Finding someone who knew the web, that was hard.
By this point, I’d outgrown the original shared blog and I created a new “brand” ReverbSoul. This is when everything really took off. I was doing photo, video, web design, and generally just loving the work. Waking up every day to a dream job.
One thing continually annoyed me though. I’d get a call from a web client complaining about their site not working.
Scared I’d done something wrong, I’d rush to a computer only to realize I couldn’t find the answer. I’d go to my hosting account and type an email… then wait. Sometimes I’d get a relatively fast reply, and other times I’d wait hours. All the while I had a client emailing me asking when it would be fixed.
Inevitably I’d get a customer support person who seemed to not know the technology, and would refuse any bit of accountability. Looking back, I’m sure there were times when the issue was my own. But I also know now that a quick look at some logs and a kind “try this path” type message from support would have gone a long way. Over time I came to realize that many issues that came up were in fact their responsibility but they just weren’t willing to help.
I grew sick of this. By now I was making the majority of my income on web clients. So, I once again spun off a new business. This time my first “real” business! I registered my SuccessfullySmall, LLC.
No longer would my clients go through the headache, and I’d take control of hosting sites. Making updates and security fixes faster than the previous hosting providers, and providing human support that focused on getting to the root of the problem, regardless of who’s “fault” it was. Not being reliant on a third-party also made resolutions faster and solutions easier to implement.
It was modest at first, with hardly any design, but it functioned to sign up clients and enable their services. It used WordPress for the front-end and I taught myself Plesk to provision servers and sell hosting directly to clients.
This work would lead me into a decade long career in customer support and loyalty program management inside the music industry. But that’s a story for another day.
In closing, I want to thank Jim for the interview and inspiration to look back at where I’ve been and how I got here. I want to also thank the Reclaim Hosting team at large for the work they’ve done towards making sure more young adults have opportunities like the journey I’ve experienced.
A domain of one’s own can truly be a gift. A place on the web to call my own changed my life forever. I hope both the vision and product Domain of One’s Own continue to inspire new creators to, as Jim said, “keep the web weird!”
Cheers!
