What twenty years of scattered focus actually built
A few weeks ago, I wrote about needing to steward what was already in my hands rather than chasing the next idea. I had just announced Site Nitro, a productized managed WordPress service I’ve been wanting to build, and then almost immediately hit pause on it.
That probably seemed strange to anyone following along. Why announce something and then step back from it?
This post is about what happened in between. The conversations I had, the patterns I finally saw clearly, and why I’m back to building Site Nitro now, but differently than before.
The Pattern I Couldn’t See
I’ve been running multiple businesses for a long time. Hill Media Group, my agency. YouTube channels in the tech and photography space. Online courses. Photography work. At various points, each of these has carried the others. When wedding photography dried up during the 2008 financial collapse, I leaned into the agency. When agency work plateaued, YouTube revenue kept me afloat. When one stream dipped, another picked up the slack.
I told myself this was smart. Diversified income. Multiple streams. Safety.
But through some brutally honest conversations recently, including processing my thoughts with AI, which I’ll get to, I realized what I was actually doing: hedging.
I wasn’t building multiple businesses. I was avoiding the risk of committing fully to one. Every time something got hard or slow, I had an escape route. I could pivot my attention to something else that felt more promising. I could stay in motion without ever having to sit in the discomfort of a thing not working yet.
The result? Twenty years of experience spread across a dozen things, none of them as strong as they could have been if I’d truly committed.
What Thinking Looks Like When You’re Hedging
Here’s the thing about hedging: it doesn’t feel like avoidance. It feels like strategy.
When I announced Site Nitro, I was genuinely excited. It’s a productized version of the managed WordPress services I already provide my agency clients: hosting, updates, security, and simple page edits. It’s the kind of business that can scale without requiring me to trade hours for dollars forever.
But almost immediately, my brain started doing what it always does. What about Hill Media Group? What about the YouTube channels? What about the courses? If I focus on Site Nitro, what happens to everything else?
And then the real pattern emerged: I started thinking about how Site Nitro could sponsor my YouTube videos. How my channels could drive traffic to it. How I could build it in public and create content about the process. How everything could work together.
That sounds reasonable. Integrated. Strategic.
But what I was actually doing was making sure I didn’t have to choose. I was already building the scaffolding for another hedge, a way to keep all the plates spinning so I’d never have to commit fully to any of them.
The Conversation That Changed Things
I’ve been using AI to process my thoughts and strategize. It’s been genuinely helpful to have something that can hold the full context of a messy situation and reflect it back.
But I also learned something important: AI can latch onto a single insight and filter everything through it.
In my case, the insight was “you hedge instead of committing.” True. Useful. But then every idea I brought up got pushed back on as another form of hedging. Building Site Nitro? Hedging. Creating content about it? Hedging. Even trying to do cold outreach for my agency got reframed as avoiding the “real work.”
At one point, I pushed back hard. I told the AI that if all it could do was identify one pattern and run me into a wall with it, I’d rather stop using it for this purpose.
That friction was actually valuable. It forced me to articulate what I knew to be true versus what was being projected onto me. Not every new initiative is avoidance. Not every idea is a hedge. Sometimes you’re actually just… building something.
The key distinction I landed on: Am I starting something new to escape the discomfort of what I’m currently doing? Or am I building something that uses my existing strengths and assets toward a focused outcome?
Site Nitro is the latter. It’s not a pivot away from what I’ve built. It’s a consolidation of it.
What I Did With the Pause
When I stepped back from Site Nitro, I didn’t stop working. I used the time to think through what I already had and what I actually wanted to do with it.
Hill Media Group: About half my revenue is ongoing managed services, relatively automated, predictable, scalable. The other half is project work, trading hours for dollars. The managed services side is what I want to grow. That’s what Site Nitro productizes.
YouTube channels: I’ve been making product-focused content for years. Reviews, comparisons, what’s new. And honestly? I don’t care about that stuff anymore. The tech and camera landscape doesn’t excite me like it used to. I don’t want to own the latest gear. I don’t want to chase review units. The videos that feel meaningful are the ones where I share my actual perspective, not what’s new, but what matters.
Photography: My photography business is exactly where I want it. A few jobs here and there, nothing I need to chase. That one’s fine.
Writing: I’ve been writing more this year than ever before. It’s become a creative outlet that genuinely helps me grow. Not everything I write gets much engagement, but the process matters more than the response.
What emerged from this thinking: Site Nitro isn’t a distraction from what I’ve built. It’s the thing that ties together twenty years of experience in web development, online marketing, and content creation into something that can actually scale.
Why I’m Back to Building
I’m building Site Nitro now. The website is live at sitenitro.com. It’s not ready to accept signups yet, but there’s information there and an early access form.
Here’s what’s different this time:
I’m not abandoning everything else. Hill Media Group continues. The YouTube channels continue, though the content is shifting toward what I actually want to say rather than what the algorithm wants me to make. The writing continues. Site Nitro isn’t a replacement; it’s a focus.
I’m building in public. Weekly updates on what I’m learning, what’s working, what isn’t. No polished content, just real documentation from someone who struggles to focus on one thing and is trying to do it anyway.
I’m using my existing assets. The 130,000 subscribers on my tech channel. The 95,000 on my photography channel. The content skills I’ve developed over fifteen years of making videos. The analytical approach I use with my agency clients. All of it feeds Site Nitro without requiring me to start from zero.
I’m not waiting for permission. I spent weeks trying cold outreach, sending personalized videos to local businesses, following up, refining my pitch. It wasn’t the wrong strategy necessarily, but it wasn’t my strategy. I’m better at creating content that attracts people than I am at chasing them down. So that’s what I’m doing.
The Unfair Advantage I Almost Missed
When I think about where Hill Media Group could be if I’d been 100% focused on it, I wonder if it would be two or three times bigger. Maybe. But the cost of not experiencing everything else might mean I’d be two or three times less capable of thinking differently.
I’ve built YouTube channels to over 100,000 subscribers. I’ve created videos that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in product sales. I’ve written content that helped people make decisions. I’ve run an agency through economic downturns. I’ve shot weddings, built websites, consulted on marketing strategy, taught online courses.
None of that is wasted. It’s all experience that compounds into a perspective most people in my space don’t have.
I’ve been treating my scattered history as a liability. Maybe it’s actually my unfair advantage.
What’s Next
November is almost over. I originally wanted 50 new customers on Site Nitro before the end of the year. That’s probably not happening unless I migrate existing Hill Media Group clients over, which I might do eventually, but not yet.
For now, I’m building. Documenting weekly. Showing up even when there’s not much progress to report.
Thanksgiving is here. My family and I are spending time together. I’m taking a few days to read, journal, and be present. All client work is wrapped up, scheduled, and handled.
When I come back, I’ll keep building. Not because I have it all figured out, but because I’ve finally stopped treating everything I do as separate things competing for my attention.
They’ve all worked together to build the experience I have. Now it’s time to use that experience as the foundation for something focused.
If you want to follow along, I’ll be sharing updates here and on YouTube. You can also see what else I’m working on and reading at jeradhill.com/now.
This is the messy middle. I’ll let you know what happens next.
