Restarting Small and Staying Small
Recently, I told you about how I've been working towards making my client work smaller in order to return to writing.
You see, over the past twenty-five years, I made most of my living through writing, publishing, and online teaching.
I created books, courses, subscription programs, online and print newsletters, audio and video training, and certification programs.
That work was certainly worthwhile.
It supported me, reached many people, and allowed me to spend years writing and teaching about subjects that mattered to me.
But it also became a large operation with many parts that had to keep moving.
That's because a course is not only its lessons.
It requires a working delivery system, registration and payment pages, technical support, updated instructions, answers to student questions, and decisions about how long the program will remain available.
A certification program adds assessment, standards, records, and ongoing duties to support the training and those participating in it.
A print newsletter comes with tight deadlines, subscription management, coordinating with print and mail vendors, monitoring delivery problems, and the constant need for new written content.
Over time, this machinery around the work became louder than the work itself.
It eventually became so loud that I had to step away for several years to take time to recharge.
Earlier this year, I finally felt like I was ready to return to writing and teaching, so I made room in my client work for that to happen.
Now it would have been easy to crank up the machine again and reopen an old course or two ... or twenty.
That would have been simple. The material already exists. Some former students remain interested. Much of the teaching still matters to me.
But reopening these programs would restore the obligations along with the material.
I didn't want all of that anymore.
Plus over the last few years, I'd had time to grow, mature, and reflect on things. I realized I had new things to say. So I wanted to focus on what's important to me in my life right now, not on the life I used to live.
I wanted to share my present instead of recreating my past.
So the question I kept asking myself was ...
How can I keep creating and sharing useful things without rebuilding all the machinery that eventually grew around my older work?
To do that, I realized that the new projects would need to look very different from the old ones.
Yes, they would involve writing, publishing, and teaching.
But they would need to be smaller and quieter.
And I quickly found that smaller and quieter comes more from choosing what not to build.
It's about making decisions to say no to anything that doesn't support a smaller, quieter path.
This time around, I am saying no to large, complex websites - and yes to small, focused ones.
I am saying no to covering broad subjects exhaustively - and yes to focusing on the subjects that matter most to me.
I am saying no to complicated programs and courses - and yes to shorter articles and small guides that get to the heart of a subject.
I am also saying no to fixed publishing schedules. I publish when I have something useful to say.
In this way, I am treating the sites more like small libraries.
And by focusing on small, useful information, the library remains valuable at its current size while growing slowly over time.
I currently have three small sites, each focused on a different part of my experience:
- My current site on Tai Chi, Qigong, walking, and easy strength training is Smaller Practice.
- My site of small, practical acts for ordinary life is Quiet Acts.
- And my site on modest income, smaller work, and purposeful days is the one you are on right now - Quiet Independence.
You may have noticed, these new sites aren't just smaller and quieter. They are also about being smaller and quieter in the areas they cover.
But despite the common theme, the three current sites do not need to become one tightly integrated business like my older sites were.
They have some natural overlap. They share my voice, and all three are concerned in different ways with creating more room in life.
But they serve different purposes and different audiences.
I could build a system intended to move readers from one site to another, coordinate every email and product, and make each project support the same business plan.
But that would open the door to the kind of operation I'm trying to avoid.
Instead, each site can become more fully itself.
There can be a connection when it is natural, but each project does not have to justify itself by feeding the others.
That avoids turning the relationship among the sites into another job that has to be managed.
None of the sites needs a steady stream of new guides either.
Quiet Independence and Quiet Acts already have guides. I may create others when a subject genuinely calls for a longer treatment.
But I do not need a product calendar.
A guide creates work beyond the writing itself.
It needs editing, layout, a sales page, a sample, payment and delivery pages, emails, ongoing technical maintenance, and customer support.
Those tasks are manageable when I choose a particular guide because it is worth making.
They become a different kind of obligation if every site is expected to keep producing something new to sell.
The absence of a new product does not mean a project is being neglected.
Audience development needs the same kind of restraint.
If the sites are going to reach people and eventually produce modest income, I cannot use smallness as a reason to avoid helping readers find them.
But I also do not need to build an entire marketing system at once.
I can begin with one modest experiment outside my current audience.
I can see what I learn from it before adding a social media routine, a guest-posting schedule, a large search strategy, paid advertising, or a continuing program of outreach.
Any one of those approaches might eventually be useful.
Taking them all on now would create a marketing job before the projects need one.
None of this means the quiet projects must remain tiny.
I would like them to reach more readers.
I would like some of the work to produce income.
I may eventually decide that a regular schedule, another guide, or a broader audience-development effort is worth the work it creates.
The point is not to refuse growth.
It is to stop treating growth as the automatic next step.
Before I add something, I want to notice the work surrounding it:
- What will need to be maintained?
- What will readers reasonably expect from me?
- What new support or administrative work will begin?
- Will this create another recurring deadline?
- What part of my life will have to become smaller to make room for it?
These questions are not meant to discourage growth.
But they help make the real size of the decision visible.
For now, I want to write useful essays, create an occasional guide when the subject warrants it, and try modest ways of helping the right readers find the work.
That is enough structure to keep the projects active. It does not require the machinery that would turn them into another large job.
I am not trying to avoid work.
I am trying to create useful work that can remain part of a wider life.
From time to time, I write about modest income, simpler work, and small ways to create more room in ordinary life.
If you'd like, you can receive new essays by email.
If this idea resonates, you may also be interested in this guide to one kind of small income asset: Building a Small, Steady Content Site.