Welcome back to WesChyrchel.com
It’s been a while. I’ve built several websites for myself over the years, but none of them have been this complete and checked off all the boxes for me like this one. This website build felt different. I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited to work on my own website before. I guess this time it’s just me. This time there isn’t a new business name I came up with, just me and my past experience on display. I’ve been in the online business for 26 years now and what’s wild is I still love it. I feel like I’ve reached another milestone in my career where I need to share and give back and this is the beginning of that next chapter.
Where have you been?
Up until the beginning of 2016 I was a consultant / contractor / freelancer. I basically started consulting in 1997, all of this is in the book by the way, then worked for a company from 2001 to 2005, then went back to consulting / contracting / freelancing. That was a conscious decision, because my daughter was born in 2005 and when you have a brand new baby, flexibility is really nice to have. This was an incredible time of my career where I grew professionally and perfected my skills. I really enjoyed working for different companies and starting my own. Being there and getting different perspectives was instrumental in growing and learning. At the beginning of 2016 one of my clients offered me a full time position as the Director of Web Development to modernize and grow their eCommerce website. It was a great opportunity to be on that side of the fence. After years of building and handing off eCommerce websites, I would be eating my own dog food, so to speak, to make their website and business a success.
During my eight years at Starfire Direct I moved into a Chief Information Officer role and finally Chief Operating Officer. It was an incredible ride that led to growing revenue year after year, exploding in sales during the pandemic and ultimately selling the business at the end of 2022. What an incredible experience and opportunity it was to be involved with eCommerce during those years. Not only did I learn EVERYTHING about eCommerce, the scale at which the business grew during the pandemic was exponential. It was amazing to be a part of that time in history. I coined a saying at Starfire Direct that we used often, “If you do your job, you will put yourself out of a job.” This referred to how quickly we would promote the high performers who came into the company. This also led to myself moving on from Starfire Direct. I’m proud of what I built at Starfire Direct and I’m excited to see what they do next. Undoubtedly, it will be exponential.
So, you are you going back to consulting?
If there’s anything I’ve learned over the last eight years, it’s that businesses need help. Especially the right kind of help. Another saying I coined at Starfire Direct was, “we outgrow partners.” Time and again we would work with outside companies only to outgrow their services and expertise within six months to a year. Our goal was to keep using their services for as long as possible, but at Starfire we were moving pretty fast. Most of the time we knew more about our vendor's software than they did. The limitations were evident pretty quickly. These companies struggled to grow and staff up, just like any company. To my surprise, there were a lot of them. We quickly learned we were going to have to solve a lot of our problems on our own.
The state of work is changing. We saw this coming a long time ago, but it was amplified during the pandemic. Every modern business today is a tech company. If any one of your employees aren’t tech savvy, your business will suffer. The importance of having a strong and organized foundation is crucial to scaling a business. You cannot fake it. Finally, employees expect more. Most are highly skilled, but they could care less about parties and would prefer an outlined career path, on the job training and to be part of something great. Over-communicating is something every business today should embrace.
Going back to consulting seemed pretty obvious to me. Over the years I was consistently turning away inquiries for project work and more importantly I started to feel this overwhelming yearning to give back. I know it might sound a little corny, but I really think this is what I’m supposed to do. I think consulting is my purpose. Yes, I will always be learning and discovering new technology and processes, but the work I’ve done and the skills I know, businesses need that now. I can fix their issues, organize their business and help them reach their goals. I’m ready.
Why did you write the book, Create Your Own Job?
I’ve gone into a lot more detail in my blog post, Why I wrote Create Your Own Job, but I started writing a book about ten years ago and through many starts, stops and different experiences, it evolved into what it is today. I remember struggling for specific information when I started my business and no one had the exact help I was looking for. I wanted to cut through all of the chatter and get right to the details that entrepreneurs needed most, how to start my new business now. I’m a huge fan of small business and I believe everyone should experience that once in their life. It teaches you what a business means, how to make money and even makes you a better employee. The irony is that right now we seem to be in this trend of layoffs, so I’m hopeful people can read the book and feel comfort knowing that there are many more options for them out there.
What’s next?
I love working with businesses that are genuinely interested in solving a problem. It seems obvious to say that, but a lot of people just want something fixed, but aren’t really concerned about the root cause of the issue. I get it, we all want something fixed and then move on to the next thing and I can definitely do that, but we should at least figure out why there’s an issue in the first place.
I’m excited to help businesses reach their goals. Give them hope where there wasn’t any before and get rid of the interference that plague businesses so they can focus on what they do best and rise to their full potential. Essentially, I want to set them free.