I think maybe I’m unemployable.

Your Daily Lex.

I left Amazon nearly four years ago to launch Lex Friedman Consulting, and it’s been going well.

The biggest perks of running my own consultancy are, number one, with a bullet, I can choose exactly what kind of work I do and with whom I work.

I love picking people I work with because I don’t work with jerks.

If I don’t feel like it’s a good vibe, I won’t work with you.

It’s that simple.

That’s been great.

So I get to work on a lot of diverse kinds of projects and with cool groups of people and with companies that I like.

And I don’t have to lose any sleep, meaning if they don’t listen when I have to say, that’s okay.

I’m a consultant.

It’s not my company.

I often have potential clients, prospects who say like, Hey, instead of paying you your rate, can we give you equity in the business?

And I always say no.

And they say, Well, don’t you believe in your advice?

And I say, Of course I do.

I just don’t know if you’re going to listen to it.

Now, that’s not to say that I would never talk about equity.

If I’ve been working with a company for a while and it was going well, then sure, I’d be open to a conversation where I said to them, Look, I’m doing well for you.

You’re doing well by listening to me, so let’s take some equity.

But in general, I just get paid.

Great.

No problem.

But more than once, I’ve had clients who are like, Hey, we really like how you do your consulting work with us.

Would you come work for us full time?

And I always say, Nope.

I don’t want a full-time job.

I mean, my work is full time, but I choose what it is and I choose how and when I do it, and I like that.

One of my first consulting clients when I started up was like, Hey, after several months of working for them, we’d love to hire you as a chief revenue officer.

And I was like, I don’t want that job.

And they’re like, Is there any chance you would take it?

And I said, There is a 1% chance I would take that job.

And they said, Okay, we’ll pay you to apply for it, which they did.

And they offered me the job, and I said, Yeah, I can’t do it.

The biggest struggle was they offered five weeks paid vacation.

It’s a European company.

And I was like, That’s very tempting, because right now I get zero weeks paid vacation if I don’t work, I don’t get paid.

But I talked about it with Lauren, and she was like, Look, you’ve never been happier.

Your work-life balance is good.

Your quality of life is good.

I don’t think you should do it.

And I was like, That’s exactly what I was thinking.

So I didn’t take it.

Shocking.

And, yeah, no regrets.

Then I helped them think about who they should hire as a CRO.

And then eventually, a long time later, they said, Hey, we think we want you to be our fractional CRO.

Would you do that?

I’m like, That I can definitely do.

Now you’re a consulting client again.

So I am, in fact, a fractional CRO for that company right now, and it’s going great for everybody.

So good stuff.

But I don’t think I can take a full-time job.

And just today, another colleague, I don’t know, not exactly a client, but a partner, reached out and was like, Hey, I think that we should hire you.

And I said, I told them all this.

I was like, Look, it’s not that company tried to.

I said, No, I don’t think you should hire me.

I don’t think I’m hireable.

I like doing just what I do and nothing more.

Because really what it’s about is I don’t want a boss.

I like working for myself and choosing all those things.

And I think it’s just been too long of doing exactly that.

I think I’m past the point of being able to work for somebody.

So maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe it’s short-sighted.

I certainly could, you know, at least get an insurance that was less expensive if I worked for somebody else.

But you know what’s more fun?

Not working for somebody else.

So there you have it.

I posted a couple days ago that I’m open to advertisers on Lexon Tech, and I’ve already locked in who the first one was.

In fact, that person locked in before I posted about the fact that you could advertise on Lexon Tech.

So I’ll start running ads in a week or two, and I’m going to do it the way that most of these Apple tech sites do it, where, you know, it’s one advertiser for a week and it’s not obnoxious and you think and whatever else.

And that’s exciting.

The fact that people want to advertise on the site is fun.

And then I started thinking, I guess if I’m going to do that, I should probably also do some outreach instead of just waiting for nice people like my first advertiser to reach out to me and say, Hey, I want to advertise on your site.

So I’ve just started some outreach today.

But anyway, if you happen to have a product or service that you want to advertise on my site, you let me know.

It’s fun because I also tell people to write to me if they want me to just write about their stuff, which I will also do.

One doesn’t require the other.

You know what I’m trying to say.

I didn’t say it very well, but you get the point.

Nobody has to pay me to be on Lexon Tech, but the only way to get guaranteed coverage, of course, is to pay me if you run an ad.

But editorial side is just up to me.

My inbox is stuffed with people who have apps that they would love me to talk about.

And right now my philosophy is if it’s an app that I don’t like or that doesn’t make sense to me, I’m not going to write about it, because I’d rather not say anything than write about an app and say, Hey, here’s an app that sucks.

So you won’t see too many Here’s an app that sucks articles from me.

I keep wondering, when will Apple invite me to an event?

The answer is never.

The answer might not be never, but it’s probably never, given that I keep complaining about Apple on my site.

Anyway, I’m not complaining about you because you are wonderful, dear listener.

So thank you so much.

Happy October 15th.

Happy Thursday.

More soon.

Lex.