Resilience is Recession-Proof

October 2009

With the consulting interview in Chicago behind me, I decided it was time to grab the reigns and make something happen.  One of my best friends always told me that my greatest strength was that I got things done.  With that in mind, I told myself, “don’t let anything stop you,” and I haven’t looked back since.

However, up until this point I had been stifled by the same great obstacle that had been holding me back for three months: I had no idea how to build a website, and I didn’t know anyone who did.  I had been searching through friends and working every connection I had, and I even tried to meet some web developers at conferences to build my site.  Nothing worked.

Then, on one October day, I posted on Craigslist.  I am not very experienced using craigslist, but I know you can find or do pretty much anything on the site.  I have friends who have found jobs using the site, and I even heard that a friend of a friend had travelled from San Francisco to New York city without spending a cent, simply by using Craigslist.

Anyhow, I figured I would give it a shot, so I posted a job description for $25.00.  To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to get many responses, or at least many qualified responses.  But, after a few days, I had literally hundreds of resumes sitting in my inbox.

For the first time, I actually felt like I had some productive work to do, which believe it or not, got me pretty excited.  I generally don’t like doing work.  If a teacher told me I could either do my homework or not do my homework, chances are I’d choose the latter.  But, for the longest time I wanted nothing but to get this business rolling, and finally I was given the chance.  Since I was so excited about potentially hiring someone, the work ended up actually being pretty fun.

For days, I went through resume after resume, trying to figure out who was the most qualified developer, which is kind of difficult when you have no web development skills whatsoever.  I went through the resumes of a number of very skilled professionals as well as some who weren’t very qualified- in fact, I’m pretty sure someone had “walking the company dog” listed on their resume.

Then, I received one e-mail that changed my entire perspective.  The email asked if I had considered hiring a web development firm to take care of all my needs, and quite frankly, I hadn’t.  However, when I thought about it, this solution made the most sense.  There was no way I would be able to put such a large investment into one person when I do not have the background to evaluate talent, so I figured hiring a web development firm would be the best solution.

Going through all of the resumes, I was able to narrow the field down to eight qualified, talented firms.  I now realize that once I had placed that craigslist ad, there was really no looking back.  I had set the wheels in motion, so I suppose this is really where my story begins.

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27 Days to Launch