Facing My Shabby Report Card

I already knew how to read the report card. The SEO report card, that is. I could see how many websites were funneling traffic into mine, yet like someone who had completely forgotten, it never occurred to me to actually look at that report card. Of course, I checked metrics through GA and the like, but that was a very narrow kind of status check. If I had to put it into words: a health checkup that only I ever see? By contrast, the report card measured against the entire world was like a national mock exam ranking. And I realized just how shabby I was, and how inadequately I had been promoting my company.

I have always been quite clumsy at promotion or at drawing attention. And I never paid it much mind. Rather, whenever I tried to do something to attract attention, something deep inside me would block it, always saying: "The foundation is too unstable." It was true. The foundation was too unstable. That was an existential problem, but at the same time it was a problem I had been avoiding. For that reason, I had to solve two problems simultaneously. The first was to build a foundation solid enough to satisfy myself, and the second was to find a compromise that would let me promote it without incurring too much cost. And throughout this process, I had to continuously make trade-offs—wisely allocating or automating limited resources (time, capital, manpower, energy, and so on). Automating everything was difficult, and some automation actually generated more cost. It was, truly, a complicated situation. And all the while, time kept flowing.

And that wasn't all. To cover the burn rate going out every month, I needed fixed income. But I had no fixed income—everything was variable income. So my problem had to take on three broad directions:

1. A means of fixed income, or variable income highly likely to exceed it
2. System stability, appeal, and value growth
3. Promotion strategy, marketing, and exposure strategy

These three might seem like separate agendas, but in truth they also converged into a single direction. To break through, I deliberated over various directions and went through a process of PoCs. The products I have built and promoted so far could all be called part of that PoC process. But every PoC failed, and the world was astonishingly indifferent—it looked at them coldly, the way one looks at dirt on the roadside, at a pebble. In a way, that was because of something I had overlooked: the fundamental way human beings work. I understood products and markets, but I had little interest in people's emotions and how they operate. Even though business—enterprise, commerce, trade—is at its core the work of winning people's hearts, I didn't know how to win them, so I can proudly call myself an utter fool.

Afterward, I thought long and hard about how to win people's hearts and about the three problems I faced and had to solve, and I spent several weeks in tremendous pain. No answer was in sight, and no motivation arose. I could keep working mechanically—reinforcing the system's foundation, shipping steady updates, never missing the things I had to do. But while those were among the things that needed doing, they were not the answer to "Is this what truly needs to be done?" What truly needed to be done was solving the burn rate problem, and to that question, at least, I had no answer at all.

There were plenty of paths that looked easy. Taking on contract work again to bring in cash, or filming lecture courses. Or generating revenue as an influencer or YouTuber on some particular topic. But I could not bring myself to want any of it. My heart would not stir even an inch, as if something enormous had built a wall, telling me not to take that road. And I remembered the beginning. Why I had started this business. What exactly the life I wanted to live was. And what I realized was that I had never wanted to be a celebrity, nor did I want comments and likes from countless people. I simply wanted to build products, and I wanted those products to be loved. That was all. There was no "me" there—only the "product."

And so I believed that, however difficult, I had to succeed through the product, and I chose only the path of earning revenue by leveraging or advancing it.

The vast Parallax ecosystem I built was at once a collection of PoCs and a path toward raising the score on that report card. But I had to elevate the appeal of an insufficient business model, and at the same time win people's hearts—all while sending hundreds of cold calls, managing multiple media channels, and developing, over and over. And then, among all of this, I found the right breakthrough—and that is precisely why I built OOO. I don't want to reveal its name. If the day comes when it becomes wings on my feet, then I'll be able to reveal it, but until then I want to raise it in secret.

I still live with the heart of a farmer buried in mounds of earth, tilling vast soil. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. With that faith.