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The Tone and Flavour Of This Blog

By crooky | May 8, 2008

Unbenowst to me until the hate mail started to flow in, my friend Garth at Jigsaw included a link to my review of Jigsaw in his latest customer newsletter which goes out to (according to Garth) 200,000 some-odd people. While the resulting traffic spike is flattering, I thought I should take a moment to address some of the concerns of my newfound readers.

1. This is a non-monetized blog.

I don’t get paid by anyone to write what I write on this blog. That includes any reviews of services like LinkedIn or Jigsaw. They’re unsolicited reviews that I write to help my friends and colleagues get to know these tools better.

Let me make the following point clear to those of you reading my site that are appalled that Jigsaw would “allow” me to write such “garbage”: as much as I like and respect the guys at Jigsaw, they have absolutely no say over what I write. They did not pay me to write the review. Why would they “allow” a glowing, enthusiastic, unsolicited review of their product? Hmmmm… you figure it out, genius.

If you’re not familiar with the way the blogosphere works, this piece of the Internet is mine. As long as I don’t step into the realm of libel, I can say anything I want. My regular readers (all 35 of them) appreciate my tone and the time that I put into writing new content for them 3+ times a week. If you don’t appreciate it, by all means, write your congressman.

2. My Tone

I have made no secret about my non-conformist ways over the years. I am a square peg to your round hole (that sounds bad but you get the idea). The very qualities that made me an unpopular salaried employee make me an excellent consultant. I don’t mince words with my clients. I don’t blow smoke up anyone’s ass. If they were looking for someone to sit around, looking pretty and agreeing with everything they have to say, there are legions of salaried yesmen (sorry… yesPEOPLE) out there to draw upon.

My blog, like my business, is an unabashed look at the world the way it is, not the way we want it to be. I had a meeting with a new client just yesterday who had lost some government funding to do a market assessment for their business. The other consultant they had talked to seemed un-enthusiastic to work with them now that their grant had dried up. I told these clients that they shouldn’t let lack of the grant money stop them from doing market research. I directed them to my blog and the many posts that I’ve written on market research methodologies and suggested that they could bootstrap their research needs.

That’s what my business is about. I’ll do a project for you if you need me but if you don’t need me, I’m happy to give you the information you need to move forward without me. The blog has the same philosophy. You can take what you need from my blog and if at some point, you want to do business with me, great. If not, that’s fine too.

For every negative comment I received yesterday, I received three positive e-mails and comments. I’ve received some invitations to connect via LinkedIn and I hope some of these connections will lead to new business.

So I put the question back to my detractors:

Yes, I use “profanities” sometimes on my blog but as a result, I’ve gotten a huge traffic spike on my site and lots of invitations to connect with new people. Am I crazy or crazy like a fox?

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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3 Responses to “The Tone and Flavour Of This Blog”

  1. Sally Felkai Says:
    May 8th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    Hey Aaron, keep on saying it the way you say it. Back when I was a consultant for a large American corporation, I had clients all over North America. In West Virginia, I got called ‘potty mouth’ for something I muttered under my breath while coding. At my next client in Calgary, the air was blue from all curse words flying around. It’s all context and culture.
    Sally

  2. Aaron Cruikshank Says:
    May 8th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    Thanks Sally. You’re a good friend.

  3. Oyu McWiggin Says:
    May 8th, 2008 at 7:55 pm

    Hi Aaron, in my humblest of opinions, it is the right and privilege of any solo operator to tell it any way they f******* well like! Good for you for keeping it real.

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