My wife has always made fun of me for being an engineering geek. And she is right. I am one. I spent years designing integrated circuits before I ever wrote a blog post or recorded a podcast episode. But what I have learned over 16 years of building Late Night Internet Marketing is that my engineering background turned out to be one of my biggest advantages as an entrepreneur.
The Engineer's Perspective
There is an old joke about engineers. To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
That joke actually captures something real about how engineers think. We look at problems in terms of efficiency, systems, and optimization. We want to understand how things work, and then we want to make them work better.
When I started building websites and online businesses, I brought that same mindset. Instead of just throwing content at the wall and hoping something stuck, I approached it systematically. What keywords have search volume? What content format converts best? Where are the bottlenecks in my publishing process? How can I measure results and iterate?
Why Technical Thinking Helps Entrepreneurs
Engineers build systems. One of the most important lessons I teach is to systematize your business so it can run without you. That concept came naturally to me because systematization is what engineers do. We create processes, document them, test them, and refine them.
Engineers solve problems methodically. When something breaks in your online business, a traffic drop, a conversion decline, a technical failure, the engineering mindset is invaluable. You do not panic. You diagnose. You test hypotheses. You fix the root cause, not the symptom.
Engineers are comfortable with complexity. Running an online business involves dozens of interconnected systems: hosting, email marketing, content management, analytics, payment processing, SEO. If you can design a circuit board, you can certainly manage a WordPress site and an email funnel.
The Flip Side
Being an engineer is not all upside for entrepreneurship. There is another joke: normal people believe that if it is not broken, do not fix it. Engineers believe that if it is not broken, it does not have enough features yet. That tendency toward over-engineering and perfectionism can absolutely hold you back in business.
I have spent entire evenings tweaking website code when I should have been writing content. I have delayed product launches because the technology was not perfect. I have built elaborate systems for problems that did not actually need solving yet.
The lesson I eventually learned is that in business, done beats perfect every time. Ship the product. Publish the post. Send the email. You can optimize later. Your inner engineer wants everything to be flawless before it goes live, but your inner entrepreneur needs to accept that good enough is the starting point, not the end point.
Embrace What Makes You Different
Whatever your background, whether you are an engineer, a teacher, a nurse, a designer, or anything else, you bring a unique perspective to your business. That perspective is not a liability. It is your differentiator. The things that make you different from every other person in your niche are exactly the things that will make your audience connect with you.
So yes, I am an engineer. I am also a podcaster, a blogger, and an entrepreneur. All of those things work together, and I would not change a single one of them.
I love it when you tease your engineering/brainiac self! It’s too funny – if I got you together with my brother, David, or my dad – who are both geniuses…I’d just have to hang my head and leave the room. I’d be more lost than lost. LOL
Oh yeah, and my feelings are most definitely hurt. Heh.
(I frequently want to blog emails I get, but, yeah – that attribution thing stops my wimpy butt from doing it…usually…)
I am happy to give someone credit for these awful jokes if anyone is brave enough to claim it.
Darn you and hurting people’s feelings!
The glass is twice as big as it needs to be… hmm. Interesting one.
Being trained at CAD and pretty damn good at mechanical drawings if I do say so myself I guess that makes me an assistant to the building of the weapons ~ Mechanicanerds FTW! w00t! 🙂
LOL — gotta have weapons. Peace through strength.
As a fellow engineer, I enjoyed hearing those old chestnuts again. Reminds me of my favorite story of the difference between an engineer and a scientist:
Two men, an engineer and a scientist, are brought into a room and stood against one wall. Standing by the opposite wall is an incredibly beautiful woman. The men are told that they can advance toward the woman, but the one restriction is that they can only move forward half the remaining distance with each move. The first one to reach the woman gets to go on a date with her.
The scientist begins crying with sadness. When asked why, he says “If I can only advance half the remaining distance each time, I will never actually reach the woman.”
The engineer says “Close enough.”
I love this old Zeno’s Paradox joke. Forgot all about it. Thanks!
I am an engineer as well, in fact my online business is an engineering and technical training site, and I haven’t quit the day job, so I guess I am a member of your main audience.
As far as engineers not being “social” I always say engineers can get along great with non-engineers, and with engineers as well, that makes engineers socially superior to the normal person! Many of my engineering friends also are into the social media stuff, I think more than non-engineers actually, probably because they are more comfortable with it.
Maybe you can do a few articles or podcast aimed at the engineer starting an internet business.
That is a neat idea, David. I will think about that. Engineers are “special” — so that could be a really interesting idea.
That would be great idea Mark. You always hear about how to do this or that for the non-techies. But what about the techies?!? I can build a web server… hell a whole farm of servers, globally load balanced through multiple data centers … but the marketing.. yeah that’s a new game.
Its coming along slowly though!
🙂
OHH!! I have an old one.. this one isn’t engineering.. but more network related… I hope you don’t mind
Networking according to Dr. Suess.
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of Gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
‘Cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
Then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to Ram your Rom.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom!