Our Next Chapter

A lot of folks have been asking me "what's next?" Did I retire? Am I joining a new startup? In some ways the answer is a bit more complicated than that, but in reality it is pretty simple. In any case, I need to get better at explaining what's next so here goes: I believe that I am finished with being an employee, and Julie and I have started a business that will focus on providing (and selling) digital products online. More on the business in a bit.

I left WebMD earlier this month after spending just over five years there leading the technology team for WebMD Health Services. I worked with a fantastic team there and am happy to say that I've made several friends for life during my stay. But with one son in college out east and another headed that direction, Julie and I want the flexibility to travel more and split time living in some different places (such as Keuka Lake this coming summer).

Also, I grew weary of the daily commute, the business trips, the routine. I needed something to re-ignite my passion for work and production. Initially I thought some time off would do the trick and that I would eventually grow bored enough that new opportunities would look interesting. The closer we got to my resignation date, however, the more Julie and I got excited about a few different business ideas that could be very portable (location independent), leverage a good mix of our combined skills, and most importantly be fun to work on. Note: a shout out to some key influencers is due here, notably Smart Passive Income, Flipped Lifestyle, and Screw the 9 to 5. We stumbled onto these via two football coaching blogs and podcasts that I've been following for some time. Thanks Shane and Joe.

Julie and I have a wide range of subject areas we could potentially cover, but initially it makes sense to focus on a topic where one of us already has something nearly ready to publish. For us this is a book focused on installing and running the Wing-T football offense for youth football. I've been working on this for several years, and over the past year have been focused on incorporating extensive video content showing drills and plays. For the past month Julie and I have been diligently working on a web site, email marketing engine, and of course content. I bring you Wing-T Coach.com.

We have two key objectives with the launch of this site:

1. Build and engage with an audience of youth football coaches that are either running or want to run the Wing-T offense. I'll be writing posts at least weekly, running free online web clinics, and engaging folks through email via my weekly newsletter. I'll be putting the Wing-T book up for sale in January 2015 through both the Apple iBooks store and through my own site (for the PDF version). I have at least three more book ideas in the works and hope to publish #2 by late spring.
2. Build a framework (both technology and business process) for repeating this engagement and selling model across new topic areas. My hope is that Julie and I are able to flip between content expert /support role on these different ideas. We've had so much fun working together over the past few months. While I've been writing the book, producing videos, and writing content for the blog Julie has been setting up our email marketing tools, doing graphic design work, and playing the role of editor and proof reader.

I will check in here from time to time and give updates on how things are going. So excited to start this new chapter.