You know what’s really cool? When your worlds collide in a way that reinforces you’re impacting the world.

I got some good news about datayze.com, and couldn’t resist sharing on facebook. A friend I hadn’t chatted with in years sent me a private message. She had been relying datayze for months and hadn’t realize it was my site. (Not surprising, my name is only on the about page. I try to keep it more professional and less personal.) Small world.

This is actually the second time my social world has collided with my solo business adventure. A few years back, before datayze’s launch, when I was still hosting the tools on my resume website, another friend was googling labor statistics and found my Labor Probability Calculator. Of course she instantly recognized my site since it was personally branded.

One of the things I loved most about working for Google or Microsoft was that my work literally impacted millions of people. The drawback, though, I never got to hear from the users directly. The level of impact was always measured through experiments. With datayze I impact fewer people, but the impact is greater and I get to hear from those who use my tools directly.

I have always been a feedback junky. I save (and respond to) each an every email I get from my users. I follow my back links and smile with the glowing reviews (and make adjustments based off of the criticisms.) I monitor my stats closely, so I know how the tools are growing in popularity, but it’s always cool to learn they’re helping another person I know personally.

I love having that kind of impact I have now, and having yet another face to associate that with just reinforces that this was the right path for me.

Posted in Work Life | Tags: Sarahsoft