All Good Things Come to An End

We're breaking up the Beyond Blogging partnership.

Depending on who you are, you'll either be thinking:

1/ "I knew it!"

2/ "OMG! What's the story?" or...

3/ "What's the Beyond Blogging partnership?"

If you fall into category three, maybe check out some of the posts from the sidebar - this won't mean a lot to you.

For the rest of you, here's the story:

The Beginning

Beyond blogging started as a one off joint venture - it was Nathan's idea to write the book and he approached me about it.

It was an amazing experience and put us both on the map, making us some decent money into the bargain, thanks largely to the fantastic support we received from our many friends in the community.

Carrying out the interviews, writing the book, bringing it to launch and seeing it sell every day (and it continues to do so) was an absolute joy. Our big differences in culture, background and age worked in perfect harmony and we really delivered something special.

The Middle

The obvious step, which we took, was to continue our collaboration. We planned an annual book, with the intention of creating a kind of "Who's who" of the blogging world.

We created The Beyond Blogging Corporation as a platform for all our future endeavours in the partnership.

And we devised The Beyond Blogging Project - a way for people to work through their learning aided by us and a team of other mentors. That too was a smash hit, and once again our differences and our different views created just the right blend of tuition and input for our students.

The End

But then those differences began to work against us. And they were exacerbated by the fact that Nathan was still evolving as a blogger, a business man and a person. He's hugely creative, very talented and wants to explore the boundaries in every aspect of what he does. In so many ways he is the embodiment of the title of our book - he has literally moved "Beyond Blogging."

On the other hand, I'm pretty comfortable where I am - the bulk of my income comes from our travel blog, and I enjoy transferring the learning from our success there to this one and to The Beyond Blogging Project to help others do the same.  Effectively, I'm still a blogger and I expect to earn my living through blogging until I finally retire.

Where once we were able to make decisions and agree on strategy almost instantly, we'd reached a place where one of us was continually having to compromise our position to get things done. It wasn't effective for us or the business. And neither of us are the type to say "Hell, we're making money, let's just keep on going."

Something had to give, and Nathan took the decision to leave Beyond Blogging. We worked all this out some time ago, but decided to wait until now before going public with it. He's ready to move on and explore brave new worlds, and he does so with both my blessing and gratitude for the amazing time we've shared together.

The whole thing has been completely amicable - we remain good friends and we're looking forward to meeting each other for the first time at Blog World Expo and to sharing a few beers. I have no doubt that he and his family will be visiting us here in Lanzarote at some point so I can teach him how an old dude can surf the socks off him. And for sure, we'll be supporting and helping each other out in our endeavours and almost certainly working together on other projects.

Just not Beyond Blogging.

The Future

Nathan will be leaving the project, and we won't be collaborating on a new Beyond Blogging book. I'll continue to run the project and I'll be looking to expand it and offer even more value to the people I'm working with there. Jordan will be carrying on his role as community manager - something he does brilliantly.

The corporation will continue, but focus on it's original role as a publishing company -  with the current book, but also with more Beyond Blogging branded books which are planned, initially focused on specific niches.

I'll keep doing what I've been doing and hopefully do it better and better, and Nathan will pursue his ambition to create genuine art and help people to build their own digital empires.

The Epilogue

I've just read Nathan's version of this post, as we agreed to review each other's before they went live.

I can't think of a better way to end this one, than to use his final line:

"Whether you are a fan of me, Mike, or both of us, I hope you continue to follow where this goes, because we're just getting started."