Sharpologist 10th Anniversary

Ten years.  It’s ten years this month that Sharpologist has been around.

An Adventure

What an adventure it’s been!  It kind of mirrors my introduction to traditional wet shaving in 2004.  It couldn’t seem more random and unpredictable.

Back in early 2011 I did an interview with Andy Tarnoff for OnMilwaukee.  It was a fun time and Andy and I stayed in touch afterward.  At some point Andy suggested I needed to have a website to complement my shaving videos on Youtube.  But the mechanics of creating and running a real website beyond the little “production notes” page I had on Google Blogger was well out of my wheelhouse.

But the more Andy and I talked about it, the more the idea started to appeal to me.  And when Andy offered the services of his digital media business, I thought maybe this is possible after all.

So over the course of the next few months or so we brainstormed and Andy and his crew taught me the basics of what is involved in running a website while they put together the “back end.”  As I look back at my email archive, July, 2011 was a particularly pivotal month as we started finalizing things like domain hosting and monetization (“you mean I can generate revenue with this??”) plans.

Sharpologist kicked off on October 11, 2011.

Things got off to a slow-but-steady start.  The revenue could only be described as “beer money” but starting in 2013 the site started to find its stride and grow.  In fact the website became more popular than my Youtube videos, so I concentrated on Sharpologist.

The tipping point came in 2015, with the sudden realization that I could make a full-time job out of running Sharpologist and advocating for traditional wet shaving.  I took early retirement from my desk job (which had become quite unsatisfying) and Andy “took off the training wheels” to let me ride on my own (while Andy isn’t in the day-to-day operation anymore, we still keep in frequent touch).

A Celebration

So what is going to happen this month?  A month of celebration!  There will be giveaways, contests, special content, and a few surprises.  Stay tuned!