Come on Back…

Sylvester Stallone is the reason why I run two Envato marketplaces and a popular web development blog. Okay…maybe not really. But he did say one thing in an interview years ago which has always stuck with me. In fact, in a round-about way, this piece of advice got me my job with Envato. More on this at the end of the article.

I’ve always been intrigued with the idea of being a writer. Give me a subject that I’m not interested in, and I crash and burn. But if I enjoy the subject matter, and can have a bit of fun with it, I love writing. The act of sitting in a coffee shop – overpriced chocolately beverage in hand – and being creative is far too appealing to me. A couple years ago, I approached a site called Freelance Folder about possibly writing for them. They didn’t offer much compensation – only about $60 per article; but I enjoyed it, and was hoping to get my name out there. As with most blogs like this, I was only able to submit a couple of articles each month.

Because I was eager to write more and more, I contacted the founder of FreelanceFolder, Jon Phillips, often about a full-time writing position with his site. Unfortunately, at the time, no positions were currently available. Politely, I would always speak up and respond with something along the lines of, “Well, please do keep me in mind if something opens up.”

The Dude

One day, to my huge fortune, Jon emailed me. As I understood it, some dude named Cyan was in need of a weekly writer for a new web development blog called Nettuts. Jon is an accomplished developer/writer/musician himself, and was unfortunately unable to take the position. But thanks to my constant – and probably irritating pestering – he must have remembered that I was looking for a steady writing gig, and forwarded the email to me!

The Woman

Well as it turns out, this “Cyan” turned out to be a “she,” and a high-level contact at that (she and Collis founded Envato)! After a couple of polite emails, I was on my way to writing a weekly article for Nettuts+.

My First Three Articles for Nettuts+

1. 15 Resources to get you started with jQuery from Scratch
2. Solving 5 Common CSS Headaches
3. Learn PHP from Scratch: A Training Regimen

Long Story Short

To make a long story short, I just so happened to be in the right place at the right time, and was offered the Editor position of the site a few weeks later, ThemeForest a few months after that, and finally CodeCanyon – which is scheduled to launch sometime late this year.

Now What About Sylvester Stallone

I’ve been a fan of the Rocky series ever since I was a kid. Being the nerd that I am, this meant that it was only appropriate to watch the commentary to Rocky 1. At one point during the muted movie, he made reference to how his script was finally sold. He was actually auditioning for an acting role for a movie. After meeting with the producer/director/whomever, it was decided that he wasn’t really the right fit. As he made his way to the door and was just about to exit the room, he turned around and said, “I don’t know if this means anything…but I do a bit of writing too.” In response to that, the producer said something along the lines of, “Oh really? Let’s schedule a meeting to discuss it.”

As a result of that scheduled meeting, he sold the project, became as buff as I am, the movie was a huge success, and he obviously went on to be a superstar …all because of one last effort. If he had instead chosen to keep his mouth shut as he walked towards the door, it’s quite possible that his career may never have taken off. He says that, to this day, he encourages students to always speak up – because who knows, they might just say, “Come on back!”

Looking back: if I had never come across FreelanceFolder, probably in bed during some sleepless night… If I had never pestered Jon about my desire to write more… who knows what I’d be doing right now. So the moral of this story boys and girls is: speak up! The “squeaky wheel gets the oil” idiom might be a bit cheesy, and undesirable even; but it’s 100% true, nevertheless. How can they say “come on back” if you never speak up?