300,000 Years’ Experience?
Um. OK. Parts of this post are meant to be kind of ‘sarcastic’ in nature. You’ll understand.
Several days ago, I received an email from, whom I believe was just a ‘competitor’, or someone trying to ‘belittle’ me? Not sure. Their IP is located in Queensland, but I haven’t bothered looking into it. BUT, it led me to think about writing about the seriousness of ‘con-artists’ trying to tell people that they should be ‘THE’ go-to for WordPress assistance.
I’m not going to publish the email, the persons ‘name’, or provide their Outlook email address. It’s probably fake anyway.
In the email, I was asked about my ’10 + Years’ working with WordPress. It went on to say, that there are businesses out there that have dozens of years’ of experience, then questioned my rate, saying that (business name provided) charges a ‘LOT’ less than I do.
For full disclosure, I actually say quite a lot here, on this website and elsewhere, that I’m not cheap.
I don’t particularly care what other people charge. My rate is my rate. I get so much work, that I actually outsource two thirds of it (and earn 25% of the work passively, btw), to other WordPress Professionals. Even after posting a couple of months ago, that I was winding down for 6 months, the requests keep coming, and I’m still doing 6-8 hours per night – 6 to 7 days per week.
If you are the owner of a business that provides professional WordPress services, and are the person that sent the email I discussed above, just contact me directly and if you’re genuine, and can handle some more work, I’ll pass some on to you.
I’m still trying to get my head around the ‘motive’ of the email. Childish behavior comes to mind. I mean, if you want to make me feel bad (or try to) go to a very busy city, get on your soap box and tell people how bad and expensive I am. Actually, I’ll join you and talk about the ridiculous ‘idea’ that you somehow have dozens of years in collective experience.
This is the purpose of the Post – 300,000 years’ experience.
I’ve never come to the ‘understanding’ that a business has x-multiple-amount of years’ experience. I can understand if you learnt an old traditional way of doing something – for example, lopping trees in a way that was done 200 years ago.
Imagine this. Bunnings, the hardware shop, has hundreds of warehouses scattered around Australia, and employs more than 30,000 people. For the sake of this exercise, lets round it down to 30,000.
Again, for the sake of this exercise, imagine if each employee has worked in hardware for 10 years. Does this then mean that Bunnings has 300,000 years’ of experience? No. Because there were no retail shops, or hardware to sell. I mean, the wheel was only invented around 5,500 years ago. You will never see Bunnings or any other business making such claims.
OK, another example. iPhone X, came out November 2017, but for arguments sake, we’ll say 2 years to round it up. I have no idea how many people worked on the development, but lets say 1000. Would Apple then suggest that there was 2,000 years’ of experience put into the iPhone X? Bloody hell, no.
Right, back to WordPress. WordPress was released in 2003. So, Nobody can claim to have more than 16 years experience with it. No matter how many people work for a business, the years’ of experience can NEVER be greater than its’ creation date.
Me? I became involved in WordPress late – roughly 3 years after it was initially released. I have followed its’ development closely ever since, and need no gimmicks to sell myself to clients.
Bottom line, is that I have 13 years’ experience to date. Even if I was to include those of whom I collaborate with, my experience will still be 13 years. If we all had 13 years experience, I would not be running around saying that my business has 39 years of experience. It’s wrong. It’s misleading, and with all honesty, it does you no favors by saying it.
My sister has traced our family back to somewhere around the year 1200. Should I add up all of my ancestors, and start saying something like ‘I have 40,000 years’ experience breathing’?
Today’s topic was meant to be a little relaxed.
Question or comment on today’s Post? You know what to do. I’d appreciate a share or three, using the links below – that would be great.
