Still Producing Lemons 14 Years Later

14 years ago I posted this blog post in late August, 2011, announcing my intentions to go all in on my own business:

It’s with a mixture of excitement, nervousness and a dash of whattheheckareyoudoingandthinking-ness, I’m happy to announce that beginning September 6th, I’ll be taking Lemon Productions full time.

Phew. Said it. Now I have to do it.

The calendar reminder always sneaks up on me and then it goes by and I think "oh I should've marked that somehow... oh well. Too late now." So this is me taking a brief moment before I head up to the family cabin to help pull in (take out?) the dock before winter hits.

It's interesting reading that blog post as well as looking back at photos of what was going on in our life at the time. Unless my memory / photo metadata is doing me wrong, that summer we were:

• burying two grandparents (one on either side of our families)
• moving across the city to a new house which we were renovating the kitchen and entrance of before we moved in (pro tip: get the mortgage approved before you quit your stable job!)
• helping my dad set up his new office
• had a 4 year old and a 1.5 year old
• had no idea what we were in for despite being confident in something working

A lot going on for a young family to also throw in who knows where money will come from or if this will even work?

What Does It All Mean? Or Not Mean?

As I read the post, I can see in myself a desire to focus on what I enjoy as much as making sure I don't get roped into doing things I don't enjoy.

Often when a per­son hears that you “build web­sites”, they just assume that since you work on a com­puter you must also love to sup­port them.

Maybe not as common today for "tech" people, but back then if you liked using computers, it also meant you liked fixing computers. And printers. And networking issues. And random Windows software people installed.

Lemon Pro­duc­tions is not an IT sup­port com­pany. There’s plenty of com­pa­nies who will come out and trou­bleshoot your Win­dows Vista net­work con­nec­tion issues or fig­ure out why your email pass­word isn’t work­ing. I can help you find a good one to work with.

14 years ago I predicted TikTok and YouTube Shorts:

I enjoy making small, short videos that help explain your business, app, website or solve a problem you’re having with your employees. Video is a great way to show and tell what you’re trying to get across to someone.

It Wasn't Easy

Looking back at the first few years, I wish I could have made it easier on my family as I flailed around trying to find a way to be enough of a programmer, designer, accountant, sales, and marketer to build up a profitable roster of clients. I wish I could say I learned tons and grew a lot, but if I'm honest with myself, I still struggle with a lot of the same fears about "what am I really doing?" and "is this all going to bottom out next month and I'll have nothing to show for it?"

It Wasn't About Podcasting... Yet

People were podcasting in 2011. I was messing around with podcasting. But Lemon Productions wasn't started with the idea of editing and producing podcasts. I thought I might have my own podcasts and get sponsorship to help supplement client work. I bought a fancy Heil PR40 microphone—as seen in the photo at the top of this post, which I still use to this day—and a 12 channel mixer to gear up for the podcasting revolution that was coming:

One of those projects is SSKTN, a podcast network that I have been slowly building...Through sponsorship and advertising opportunities, I hope to be able to partially support Lemon Productions with podcasting on SSKTN, but more on that at a later date.

SSKTN. Get it? Saskatoon without vowels. It was cool back then to not have vowels in your brand's name. SSKTN is no more. I had a bit of success in podcast sponsorship back when it was the wild west of podcasting and nobody knew what listener stats really meant, but nothing to pay a mortgage with. I eventually found friends via networking online and started the Goodstuff podcast network.

It wasn't until a few years later that Dave Rupert reached out to me about maybe editing ShopTalk Show that I transitioned out of WordPress websites into podcast editing for clients that I found my groove.

There's Always Something New

I can't really be surprised, given that my business was started with the idea of helping people do "stuff" online in tech, that it's going to be an ever changing landscape. And each time I've settled in to what feels like a routine for a few months, it seems like a client decides to stop their podcast, or AI comes along and disrupts everyone's world, or our van breaks down, or the entire global economy crashes and the cost of living rises dramatically.

Woof.

Ok. On a brighter note: I still love that I found a groove I can ride in. Or to use one of Justin Jackson's favourite metaphors, a wave to ride. Sometimes it's an insane giant wave that feels amazing and money is pouring in with awesome clients, sometimes it's crashing on the rocks and having to fix my board before paddling out to try again. But I still love to surf. Metaphorically speaking. I don't actually.. I've tried surfing and it's terrifying. And I don't have a surfers body. But I can see the appeal of how it feels when you catch a wave just right and the momentum pushes you along.

So I'll continue to head out. Try to spot the next wave that lines up with where I think I want to go and see if I can ride it for a while. I think I need to adjust my board aka update my website for the next wave / 10 years.

Now if only I remembered how to design a website. 😆