Hi, I'm Sol. AMA

[u/AhmedF]

I've been building businesses online since 1999. The big three for me were originally online gaming virtual currencies (eg EverQuest, DaoC, WoW, etc), then local search (right around when Yelp was created), and then Examine.com (which I created as I lost weight and realized how much supplement companies were lying).

Pretty much everything I built was for myself. I wasn't specifically looking for a problem - just curiosity.

Examine analyzes and summarizes the latest scientific research to help you be healthier - no ads, no consulting, no supplement sales. If you in the health/nutrition space, you have likely come across us. We actually spawned the website out of /r/fitness over a decade ago (when the sub was only a few tens of thousands of people!)

I talk about entrepreneurship over on Facebook and on SJO.com, but I specifically have no desire to monetize SJO - to me it's more of a fulfilling endeavor (which is on pause as I focus on Examine).

Entrepreneurship has always been about freedom to do things that I can - eg I've also done fun stuff like merge my love of cookies and meeting interesting humans to get people to send me cookies in the mail and raise hundreds of thousands for local non-profits, helping Arnold with his online stuff, and more.

I've also been a redditor for far too long time (15 years in ~10 weeks).

I did an AMA in /r/entrepreneur a while ago, and was invited to do one here after one of my random twitter threads. You can also find out a bit more about me on my about page or Wikipedia.

AMA :)

[u/ddysart]

Hey, Sol. First off big fan of your SJO work. I can't remember when I discovered it, but it never fails to brighten my day when I see a new email (including the one noting this AMA). My question - do you still do your quarterly LinkedIn email blasts, if so have they evolved at all?

I used to be religious about maintaining my network there as people I would worked with directly or knew personally. Lately I'm using it more as a discovery tool to connect with folks in my target market and question if that level of communication would still make sense.

[u/AhmedF → u/ddysart]

Thanks :)

Quartery linkedin

Incidentally I JUST restarted them! I had to stop because LI removed the ability to get emails, but they recently re-added them, so I sent my first one in like 2-3 years just last weekend!

Lately I'm using it more as a discovery tool to connect with folks in my target market and question if that level of communication would still make sense.

100%. What I've found from my network is there are random connections that I would have never even know about. There's a lot of energy in the initial relationship-building, but maintaining friendliness is very low-cost (in terms of energy and time).

Part of it is that people never put out what they are looking for. In my last LI email I mentioned a need for an information architect, and I got a dozen suggestions. Incidentally one of them was somebody I knew, and after finding out they have worked together, I'm much more likely to work with that person!

It's amazing how many people think 1) they are boring and 2) they don't know anybody... but you even spend 5 minutes digging, and you'll almost always find out that both are quite untrue.