The long version (you were warned…)
Lance Brown, a.k.a. Freelance Lance, a.k.a. The Internet Sherpa, first got on the Internet when he was 10 or 11, and first started giving himself nicknames when he was 12 or 13. And he stopped referring to himself in the third person right now, in this sentence.
Hi! I’m Lance. When I first started using the Internet, via phone-in BBSs (bulletin board systems) and Compuserve, there was no such thing as the World Wide Web. There were no hyperlinks, no streaming video or music, and the closest thing to “social media” was…BBSs and Compuserve. (And a scary universe of email lists called Usenet.)
That was in 1982-3, on a Commodore 64 computer, with a 300 baud modem. (Here’s a formula for converting “baud” to our modern measures: “300 baud” = “indescribably slow”.)
Fast-forward to 1995 or so. I get a ~$3000 payment for a car accident settlement, and dump most of that money into my first Windows “PC”, beginning the entrepreneurial journey that has led us here to this page together.
It started with desktop publishing (as “The Future – Media Solutions”), and quickly grew into a dream of starting a non-profit that would change the world (as “Future Solutions”). Studying marketing and web-related technologies became my constant pursuit. Deep immersion in web discussion forums (specifically, Salon TableTalk) ended up spawning an opportunity, when a fellow forum-er proposed starting a web discussion business together.
That was in late 1997, and by 1998, I was CEO of a web discussion company called PeoplesForum.com. Over the course of several years, “PF” grew into a very active (though relatively small) discussion community centered around the organizing principles of complete freedom of expression and maximum control for site members.
At its peak, the community had millions of page views a month, but I never managed to find a way to “monetize” that traffic without compromising the community. Eventually, my original investor and partners moved on, and I kept the site going as a passion project for a few years, based on donations from members. But to make a very long story short, after 9 years, PeoplesForum.com closed its virtual doors in 2007.
I became aware that I couldn’t count on PF for my income a couple years earlier, and in late 2005, I officially embarked on the “freelance web guy” path that I’m still on today. You see, running PeoplesForum.com wasn’t the only thing I was doing during those years. (My former partners probably wish it was, but that’s a discussion for another time.)
I never quite managed to shelve that early desire to change the world, and once I finally gave in and started really learning how to build and design websites, I put a lot of time into trying to use the web to further causes I was passionate about. The first of those was my presidential campaign (yeah, you heard me right), which we don’t really need to talk about, except maybe for the fact that it spawned the first presidential campaign blog in U.S. history. I also launched a couple other issue-based website campaigns (PNAC.info and StopCarnivore.org), both of which gained a considerable audience around the world and definitely helped to move the momentum of their causes in notable ways. (Like generating international press, and, in the case of StopCarnivore.org, bringing in crazy amounts of visitors from government agencies and even the White House.)
Meanwhile, back on land, I was deploying my growing skill set in my local area, as Chair of a local political party (in Nevada County, CA). More websites were spawned! Newsletters were generated! Desktop publishing abounded! Press releases! Coalition-building! And let’s throw in some training at the local radio station and then the local community TV station, and appearances on both of those, and co-hosting a radio show…
Suffice it to say, when I turned my eye toward becoming a freelance web guy for small business people circa 2005, it turned out I had, to use the industry term, a boatload of skills that could be well applied to helping small business folk and “solopreneurs” make the best use of the web for their purposes.
And conveniently enough, I had–to use the industry term–totally burned out from overextending myself in my peak activity years of 2003-4, and had backed away from almost every hare-brained project I had going. (As well as the regular-brained ones.) So I had plenty of time to devote to my newest professional incarnation, “Freelance Lance”.
And as is my wont, that is just about all I’ve done in the time since. (Aside from walking with my dogs, and writing far less than I’d like to.)
The byproduct, more than 7 years, 50 clients, and 100 websites later, is that I recently realized that I could theoretically sit on a panel and speak with some authority on things like the “social web”, open source software, WordPress, blogging, Internet marketing, and more. And that I had developed actual business practices and a unique approach to what I do over the years. And that I was good at training people…
In other words, I realized I had grown out of being just “Freelance Lance”. My efforts had grown into something more serious. And since it’s totally lame to call yourself a “guru”, I decided to call myself a sherpa instead. ;-) More specifically, the sherpa. The Internet Sherpa. (Because that’s way less pretentious than “guru”…right? Right?)
If you got this far, you’re probably a little interested. Let’s have a talk! No charge. Go ahead and get in touch.