Month: January 2016

I bought a car. Here’s what I did wrong.

I’ve taken a lot of pride in not owning a car, as I have intentionally built a lifestyle around transit and walkability over the last several years. It was something that made me happy, something I liked talking about. I sold an inherited 2000 Toyota Camry a year and a half ago and even before then was living without any real reliance on a car.

Then this summer I married SACM, who was using her struggling 2000 Kia Sportage to visit her large and local family. She was ready to replace it, and so we were made our first large purchase as a married couple — since the house we bought together slightly predated our getting married.

We recently bought a pre-owned 2012 Kia Soul with 32,000 miles from a suburban Kia dealership, from which we got extended roadside assistance and warranty coverage to 100,000 miles (from the original 60,000 miles).

She led the research effort and did so thoroughly. I led the on-site negotiation and made some mistakes. Here’s what we learned buying a car from a dealership for the first time in our lives.

Continue reading I bought a car. Here’s what I did wrong.

30×30: 30 things I’m proud I did before I turned 30

I like lists. I find them motivating and easy to understand. It’s a structure to limit and highlight, whether they be daily to-do lists or curated honors or resolutions — both personal and professional. I also like somewhat arbitrary milestones to serve as an opportunity to review my progress to the goals I have. It’s the same reason why I celebrated my 10,000th day alive.

Here’s another. I turn 30 this week and have used that as a reason to feel good about what I’ve done so far.

Continue reading 30×30: 30 things I’m proud I did before I turned 30

We beat $1M in revenue in 2015; small, growing and proud

Let’s start with the obvious: I help run a (very) very small, young business. By very nearly any measure, $1 million in annual revenue shows no great scale.

But for this first-time entrepreneur, slowly bootstrapping a niche news company like Technically Media, it means a lot to me to hit that nice round number in 2015. We have a full-time team of 15 with another half-dozen independent contractors who support the daily production of a news and events product with a strong reputation. We continue to find purpose with Technical.ly and expect our second brand Generocity.org to signal a coming explosion of local social impact conversations like local tech is here now.

I want to share what this means to us.

Continue reading We beat $1M in revenue in 2015; small, growing and proud

On starting to drink coffee

Surely there will be others, but presently, the summer of 2015 was one of the hardest, busiest and most stressful of my life.

In the last few years, I’ve been blessed with a nice calendar rhythm I’ve enjoyed — hectic and busy and big spring, fall and winter, with calmer summers to re-tool and a few weeks of December to get primed for the new year.

2015 was different. In the span of three months I bought a house, got married, rented out my former house, effectively acquired a company, grew our business  staff headcount by a quarter, transitioned out an internal leader, took a road trip near Calgary, spent two weeks in Ecuador and, you know, just did the normal stuff too.

Though I do strive to have -some- work-life balance (here is where SACM and others close to me roll their eyes), this incredibly time-crunch resulted in the inevitable: I slept a whole lot less. I did more successive late nights and early mornings than perhaps ever before. So I started drinking coffee.

Continue reading On starting to drink coffee