What Are We Doing This For?

Photo Credit: Jim Devitt (in honor of Tony Valente and his 100 mile ride around Crater Lake this weekend

About a month ago I attended the biggest healthcare finance management conference in the United States. I’ve attended this meeting for the past four or five years. Matter of fact, I presented at this same conference last year.

Here’s where it gets interesting. You see, we create a lot of noise about what we do—we reach out to help each other, we post best practices, and we even buy each others books!

For as big as the Indie revolution is, we are actually a small, tight knit group. The reality is, through this blog and others like Indies Unlimited , we've seen dramatic growth in readership over the past year and a half, yet, how big of a group do we really touch?


In addition, for the most part, we’re all on the same page. Yeah, every once in a while, there might be a little controversy about what is being posted, but it is very difficult to gauge how much we are influencing the Indie world. We’re here because we want to be. We’re here because we’ve chosen this path. In some cases, we’re here because we have to be.

My buddy, Tony, is riding around Crater Lake this weekend. Is this going to have an influence on others? Take a look at his blog and you can tell me what you think. His readership may not be huge, but it's growing every week. Most of the time we don't realize the type of influence we have on others.

This takes me back to last month's meeting that had nothing to do with writing. Last year, I met a writer for a healthcare finance publication. He attended my workshop on improving cash flow and he was kind enough to publish some bits from the workshop. He even had me write up something for his publication during the year. I hadn’t talked with him for about nine months.

I ran into him last month. Here’s how the conversation went.

“Jim, you inspired me.”

“Huh?” 

“No, seriously. After spending time with you last year at this meeting, I listened to what you said about indie publishing. Since then, I’ve gotten the rights back on a previously published book and released it as an indie, I’ve written another book that launches next month, hard copy and eBook, and I have another in the final stages of editing to be released before the end of the year.”

*standing with mouth gaping*

Who would have known?

That helped me realize that many people don’t yet know the what, how, where, and why of what we do. Some days we might feel like we’re preaching to the choir. However, someone out there is listening, making decisions based on what we share.

So what does that tell us? We need to write every post as if it might change someone’s life. We need to ask questions that some might think are stupid. We’re not preaching to the choir, we’re shouting from the mountaintop about something we’re passionate about. We must not forget that.

Sometimes … we might even influence someone’s life!


Jim Devitt is the author of the #1 Kindle Bestselling Young Adult novel, The Card. He's also a healthcare consultant specializing in helping healthcare companies and practices develop a social media marketing platform, and maximize cash flow. You can find him posting weekly to Indies Unlimited (a version of this post appeared there recently) and occasionally as a contributor on Yahoo!