The end of the web design business didn't mean retirement. After all, being self-employed most of my life meant there was no big pension to fall back on. But then I also know that I am not the retiring type. I'll always be building something. So, I sat awhile and pondered; what makes me happy? The answer came back: educating people and designing things.
I decided to take the knowledge I have learned in the last five decades to create courses to help entrepreneurs not make the mistakes that could cost them thousands of dollars - with a lot of it posted for free here on this site. I began with writing 'The Foundation Series' which contains all of the basic information that a small business needs to consider to be successful in the marketplace. While this was an interesting endeavor, giving things away for free doesn't pay the bills, so...
In 2022, I decided to become an on-line course creator narrowing in and expanding on the things that every small business person needs to know to build a solid foundation under their business - giving them a better chance at success. I spent six months taking classes to learn how to create courses, then writing the scripts, filming the scripts, writing the code for a new website to host the classes and working on the marketing.
I called the name of the course 'Protecting My Business', because, well, that is what this course is all about. Protecting your assets, organizing your business, paying less in taxes and increasing your profits.
Now, being the rebel that I am, I did things backwards. You are supposed to test the market first to see if it is anything someone wants to buy, create your email list, become an authority in your space and then build your course. I ended up creating the course first and am working down to testing the market. And that's alright, because my objectives are different than most peoples.
I have found that starting out in the business world we tend to measure success by the amount of profit we make, but I've gotten to the point in life where my definition of success is how many lives I've improved - thus my mission of creating educational media that every entrepreneur needs to know, but nobody wants to learn (which does make it a challenge). Kind of wants to make you give up at times, but us rebels never do.