Looking for some interesting work

So, if you remember from one of my earlier posts I had decided to stop working on mobile applications.  There were a number of things that I learned from the experience, many of which you can read about in that blog post.  But one of the interesting things that I learned was I learned who I am not.

I learned that while I am tremendously entrepreneurial, I am not an Entrepreneur.  Believe me, that was a bitter pill to swallow.  It’s tough to be a risk taker by nature but lacking in either aptitude, connections or some mix of that.  The people who are proper Entrepreneurs are those who can take an idea, get the funding, find the people and bring that idea to market (not necessarily in that order).

I like to build things and I get my satisfaction from having built that “thing”.  Whether it’s writing music, writing software or writing stories, it is the final product from where I most derive my pride.  I can take (and have taken) abstract ideas and either built or communicated them in ways that make it easy for people who are on the other side of the spectrum to understand and work with it.  I have well over 200 posts on this blog and over 60 videos on YouTube that demonstrate this.

Having now “taken 6 months off” it is time for me to start taking the look for employment seriously again.  During that 6 months of “time off” I was working hard building mobile apps and their server-side kin and so I was hardly sitting around drinking Mai Tais.

I’ve done work as a system admin, architect, developer, designer, trainer, training developer, consultant, marketer, evangelist, conference organizer and MC, speaker, author and composer.  Some people are the type who strive to be the best at something.  In other words, finding a niche and becoming the best in that niche.  That is definitely a good way to become successful.  But for myself, I am best at doing things that require me to pull from multiple disciplines.

The kind of work I’m looking for is the antithesis of the job postings in my Deleted Items folder.  I am really not interested in robo-recruiters.  I’m already working with a great one and so I have no interest in cut-and-paste recruitment.  If you are doing cut-and-paste recruitment you can’t afford me.

There aren’t many companies that I am averse to, but my preference will lean towards funded, maturing start ups doing interesting things.  By “interesting”, I mean something for which there is an actual (or potentially actual) market and you aren’t relying on teenager traffic to pretend to make your company valuable.  I truly believe that for most business, even the Internet businesses, value is best determined by whether or not someone is willing to pay for what you’re doing.  A well defined monetization strategy is something I am interested in.  I am happy to talk to larger organizations (and I am doing so) but the regimented environment of a mature business is one that is more difficult for someone such as my self to successfully navigate.

North Dallas is where I call home (for now).  I would consider relocating for the right position, but working remotely with some travel would likely be the best arrangement for me.  I’ve done that for most of my career and it has, for the most part, worked well.

If you are in need of someone who knows PHP better than most, can communicate to techies and suits, can blog, do videos, training and speaking and who can build really good server-side software and the infrastructure to run it, I would love to hear from you.