Business with Friends

I tripped across this video complaining the client was very late and expected to be seen anyway, even though technically the business was closed. I didn't pay close attention and I'm a little confused because the business closed at 2pm and it's after 3 and why is she still there? 

And I don't understand why this is on YouTube. Is it fictional? Staged? It seems to me like if this is real, it's a good way to cut your own throat professionally and damage the business.

I don't know where I'm going with this project. It currently doesn't have information asking you to support my Patreon like most of my sites have because hypothetically if I actually start marketing myself, then I would want to charge for my services and then that doesn't seem appropriate to also ask you to support my Patreon or leave a PayPal tip.

So the backstory here is that I realized a local business is relatively new -- newer than I initially thought -- and is a small business with a local owner and doesn't yet have a website. 

It's an eatery and I have terrible eyesight and I can't read the menu from afar and I thought I would look it up online and I found a website for a similar business with what seems to be the same name as this establishment, but its prices are in British pounds. So I'm fairly confident that is not the website for this business, even though that website doesn't give you it's location AT ALL.

I have baggage... No, I have BAGGAGE from trying to do little websites for local businesses in a small town far from here and getting seriously burned in part because of local corruption and the Executive Director of the local Main Street America program wanting to promote his buddy's local website business.

I'm not currently trying to do that and I wasn't trying to sell this guy anything, so I waited for the place to be empty and asked him a couple of questions. I did so after looking stuff up, realizing he's new and doesn't have a website I can find, even though local (mostly pay walled) articles say he was in tech before starting this business. 

So I haven't previously mentioned him here -- and I'm not naming the business -- because I don't know where I want to go with this and I'm aware that talking about that brief conversation could nuke any hope I have of making local business contacts, which is why I wonder what's really going on when I see YouTube clips like the one at the start of this post.

I briefly told him I had negative experiences elsewhere and I was just curious about what he's planning given that he's tech savvy, yet he currently only has a Facebook page like a LOT of small businesses. 

And I meant THAT. That's not a BS cover story to con him into talking. I just thought I would ask in hopes of helping me get insight that might help me put some personal baggage to rest.

And he told me a little bit about his plans and assured me it was NOTHING like my experiences elsewhere, but also told me the designer he intends to have create his website is basically a friend, someone he socializes with.

Probably he's overpaying in the name of friendship and "buy local" ethos and it's probably exactly the problem I had before where locals were cronies and that was a large factor in who got work in town. Maybe with less "These people are demon spawn! And I wish they would be washed out to sea and eaten by sharks!" than the small town where I was actively done dirty, but POLITELY not hiring me because they want to hire friends still doesn't pay my bills.

As things stand currently, this site is still me sorting my thoughts and feelings and personal baggage about trying to establish myself as a freelancer elsewhere. 

Contrary to the blurbs promoting website platforms, a website doesn't make it a real business. And, no, I'm not trying to drag them.

I have long thought you have a real business when you have two things:

1. Something of value people want.

2. Paying customers. 

The first without the second is a hobby or slave labor. The second without the first is a con job.

That's from a blog of mine about business ideas and how they are the foundations beneath a business. There's a lot that has to happen after conceiving of a business idea before you can deliver on it.

I didn't know how to explain to people in said small town "Your local guy doesn't know what he's doing. He has trouble repointing a URL and he's never HEARD of Hacker News, so I know he has no idea WHAT he's doing."

People who are not tech savvy won't know that a webmaster who has NEVER heard of Hacker News is like a local actor and star of the local theater who doesn't know what Hollywood is. I worked with him briefly, enough to know he wasn't competent, and then I had this conversation with him about Hacker News that told me he's not talking to tech people online, he's not looking stuff up online, he's not part of that culture where you can live anywhere geographically and get hooked up because you hang out in the right virtual spaces.

I'm talking about Signifying, about finding ways to give critical information in brief in a compelling format to the target audience in order to get the sale, get the promotion or get the assignment. That's on a website about how men seem to learn that -- even socially awkward introverts like my ex -- and women seem to NOT.

I think I had a good idea. I think it was more sound than I knew.

And I think it failed in part because it was a better idea than anyone was likely to believe. It sounded too good to be true.