Last year I spent an inordinate amount of time creating stuff. Content, podcasts, ebooks, guest posts, etc. It was awesome and a great experience.
But the problem was that I forgot that I needed to make money. Which, as you can imagine, posed a little bit of a problem.
Towards the end of 2013, I got a handle on things and have since been doing a little better with my priorities. But I have been thinking a lot about all those resources I created and what I could do with them. I’ve been thinking how I could leverage them with my web design clients and if it was a waste in the sense of not being my target audience, or if they could help provide more value to the services I offer as a designer.
My conclusion is that I can use them to help my brand as a web designer. It wasn’t a waste, though I definitely should have handled it all differently. The podcast I created was about branding. The ebooks were branding and small business tips. And the guest posts were about everything from branding to fear to blogging and marketing. All that very appropriately fits into my brand as I have it today.
So I would encourage you to look back at what you’ve done. Don’t think that your time was a complete waste even if you royally screwed up. It’s likely that you added a lot of value to your brand without even knowing it. And also likely that you accomplished more than you realize.