{"id":22592,"date":"2012-11-09T18:42:23","date_gmt":"2012-11-09T18:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/stay-small-or-go-big\/"},"modified":"2012-11-09T18:42:23","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T18:42:23","slug":"stay-small-or-go-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/stay-small-or-go-big\/","title":{"rendered":"Stay small or go big?"},"content":{"rendered":"

jkottke<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Emeril Lagasse made an appearance on Treme on Sunday. I watched a clip<\/a> of his scene a few days ago and have been thinking about it on and off ever since. In the scene written by Anthony Bourdain<\/a>, Emeril takes a fellow chef to the building that used to house Uglesich\u2019s, a small-but-beloved New Orleans restaurant that closed back in 2005. The chef is having misgivings about expanding her business, particularly about all the non-cooking things you have to do, and Emeril explains that the way the owners of Uglesich\u2019s did it was one way forward:<\/p>\n

\n

You see, they kept it small, just one spot, just a few tables. There\u2019d be a line around the corner by 10 am. You see, they made a choice. Anthony and Gail made a choice to stay on Baronne Street and keep their hands on what they were serving. They cooked, everyday they cooked, until they could cook no more.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But there\u2019s also another way to approach your business:<\/p>\n

\n

The other choice is that you can build something big but keep it the way that you wanna keep it. Take those ideas and try to execute them to the highest level. You got a lotta people around you, right? You\u2019re the captain of the ship. Or what I should say is that you\u2019re the ship. And all these people that look up to you and wanna be around you, they\u2019re living in the ship. And they\u2019re saying, \u201cOh, the ship is doing good. Oh, the ship is going to some interesting places. Oh, this ship isn\u2019t going down just like all the other fucking ships I\u2019ve been on.\u201d [\u2026] You\u2019ve got a chance to do your restaurant and to take care of these people. Just do it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

kottke.org has always been a one-person thing. Sure, Aaron<\/a> posts here regularly now and I have guest editors on occasion, but for the most part, I keep my ass in the chair and my hands on what I am serving. I\u2019ve always resisted attempts at expanding the site because, I have reasoned, that would mean that the site wouldn\u2019t be exactly what I wanted it to be. And people come here for exactly what I want it to be. Doing the site with other people involved has always seemed unnatural. It would be selling out\u2026that\u2019s how I\u2019ve thought about it, as opposed to blowing up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Emeril\u2019s \u201cuntil they could cook no more\u201d and \u201cyou\u2019re the ship\u201d\u2026that got to me. I am a ship. I don\u2019t have employees but I have a family that relies on the income from my business and someday, when I am unable to do this work or people stop reading blogs or all online advertising moves to Facebook or Twitter, what happens then? Don\u2019t I owe it to myself and to them to build something that\u2019s going to last beyond my interest and ability to sit in a chair finding interesting things for people to look at? Or is it enough to just work by yourself<\/a> and produce the best work you can?<\/p>\n

Or can you do both? John Gruber\u2019s Daring Fireball<\/a> remains a one-man operation\u2026as far as I know, he\u2019s never even had an intern. I don\u2019t have any inside knowledge of DF\u2019s finances, but from the RSS sponsorship rate<\/a> and the rate for sponsoring Gruber\u2019s podcast<\/a>, my conservative estimate is that DF grosses around $650,000 per year. And with a single employee\/owner and relatively low expenses, a large amount of that is profit. So maybe that route is possible?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have any answers to these questions, but man, it\u2019s got me thinking. Emeril got me thinking\u2026who saw that coming? Bam!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

jkottke: Emeril Lagasse made an appearance on Treme on Sunday. I watched a clip of his scene a few days ago and have been thinking about it on and off ever since. In the scene written by Anthony Bourdain, Emeril takes a fellow chef to the building that used to house Uglesich\u2019s, a small-but-beloved New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-5So","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}