At least a few times every year, I like to pause, look back at the past six to twelve months, and reflect. What have you accomplished? Is there anything that you wanted to accomplish, but didn’t? If so, why not? What went wrong during that time period? And most importantly, how can you learn from both the good and the bad to better yourself as a person?
Looking back at the past year or so, woof, what a dumpster fire. The COVID-19 pandemic took away my travel and photography adventures. It exposed major flaws in my business model and tried mightily to take down my business. The fail-safes I put in place to protect the business following a major financial mishap in 2017 were put to the ultimate test, but they held. Then, to put the cherry on top, death threats and threats of political violence forced me out of my home in Arizona. I still have no idea if or how that will get resolved.
Believe It or Not, There Was Plenty of Good in 2020
I’ve never been one to have any tolerance for other people telling me how to go about my daily life. In times like the past 12 or so months, the best thing you can do is take all of that adversity and turn it around into something positive. Having my photography taken away and the flaws in my business model exposed were honestly one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. Yes, I know that sounds crazy, but I’m being completely serious here.
Hear me out. If you’re running a business and your business model has flaws in it, wouldn’t you like to know? Without that knowledge, you’re only holding yourself and you customers back. What good is it if you can’t reach your full potential?
Losing Your Sense of Normalcy Lets You Freely Refocus and Redefine Your Values, Goals, and Dreams
Have you ever heard the saying “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone”? If the COVID-19 pandemic had a slogan, that would be it. When you lose the comforts of normalcy, it’s easy to feel more emboldened, almost like you have less to lose.
Grab hold of that energy and ask yourself a few questions. If you had an unlimited supply of money and nothing tying you down, what would you do? Where would you do it? Why would you do it? When you answer those questions, you’ll discover your true values, goals, and dreams.
Interestingly, you would think that the pandemic’s impact on my business would have the greatest influence on my values, goals, and dreams. I thought that, too. It was actually losing my travel and photography adventures that made the greatest impact.
Shortly after moving to Arizona in 2015, I wanted to expand my awareness and views of the world. As a result, I began making routine trips to Mexico.
Stepping across the border and looking at your home country from the outside is a truly eye-opening experience. Gain a new appreciation for the good things you have. Expose societal and cultural flaws you thought were completely normal. Immersing myself in a new culture and a third language turned me on to the concept of being a global citizen.
Become a Global Citizen to Broaden Your Community at Home
A global citizen is someone who is aware of the world and has a sense of their role in it. They are involved as members of the international community and are committed to building on this community in a meaningful and positive way. Becoming a global citizen will broaden your global perspective and allow you to bring fresh, new views back to your own community. Photography is an incredibly powerful means to engage communities and raise awareness both at home and abroad. You can easily make a similar argument for the maps and data I work with, too.
Shutting down my travel and photography adventures for over a year made me question everything that’s brought me to this point. Witnessing the rapid, extreme, and too often terrifying radicalization of so many people in Arizona has only strengthened my rejection of those extremist views. Having to truly hate someone else’s views on the world is a terrible, awful feeling.
As a result, my drive and desire to raise awareness and share stories through my work in data science, GIS, and photography is stronger than ever. Coupling that work with international travel will make me a better business owner, a better photographer, and a better citizen.
Too many Americans are woefully ignorant about what’s going on outside our borders. The world should be a better place for everyone.
Use Times of Uncertainty to Execute Your Plan to Achieve Your Dreams
The seeds of my life dreams date back to the first time someone asked to purchase my photography. At the time, I was a college student who knew absolutely nothing about running a business, but I really wanted to be able to make money selling my photos online. However, the thought of the freedom that came with being your own boss was so alluring.
Graduating into a barren wasteland of a job market during the darkest days of the Great Recession only made crave that freedom of being your own boss more. After graduating, I used my spare time to learn the basics of how to run a business.
Because I had gone through multiple periods of long-term unemployment, most employers saw me as damaged goods and refused to hire me. At that point, I knew there was no going back. I started working as an independent contractor in 2013, and formally incorporated Matthew Gove Web Development, LLC in 2016.
When you run your own business, you learn to appreciate the good times and the bad. A client skipping out on a $40,000 bill nearly bankrupted me in 2017. After finally digging out of that hole, things finally began to take off in 2019. Then Covid hit. Despite all that, running my own business has been an incredibly rewarding process and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
What Are My Post COVID-19 Business Goals?
After exposing major flaws in my business model, the COVID-19 pandemic made me realize that I took way too much for granted. It’s time to chase those bucket list dreams on both a professional and personal level. If you’re not going to do it now, when are you?
Business Goal #1: Diversify Your Income and Eliminate the “Feast or Famine” Cycle
Matthew Gove Web Development, LLC will be releasing a new line of offerings within the next few weeks. The new lineup will eliminate much of the hassle of writing quotes and negotiating prices, and will allow us to deliver a higher quality product to you in a shorter time frame. In addition, I have automated most of the administrative tasks, freeing up valuable time to focus on your projects.
Business Goal #2: Rebuild to $100k per Year in Gross Revenue. Then Continue to Grow the Business to the Point You Need to Hire Help
Prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns, I had been on track to hit $100,000 per year in gross revenues at some point between 2020 and 2022. While the pandemic took a big bite out of that, I am confident that we’ll be able to reach that having patched the holes in my business model, I can hit benchmark sooner rather than later.
Once you reach that benchmark, why stop there? I’d love to get to $200k per year. Then maybe $400k? Having gone through the misery long-term unemployment after graduating college, I still dream of one day being able to create a job for someone in the same situation. My goal is to be able to do that within the next three to five years.
Business Goal #3: Open a Store to Sell Your Photography
Opening an online store to sell my photography has been on my bucket list for over 15 years. However, it seems like I’ve always lacked either the time, money, or experience to do so. Thankfully, a once-in-a-century pandemic has finally given me an opportunity where I have all three at once, so the Matt Gove Photo store will open within the next three to six weeks. If you can’t wait, you can license a photo today.
Realizing a Dream: We’re Setting Off to Travel the World
Losing the ability to travel and take photos took far more than just a fun activity I enjoy doing. It took away part of voice because I use photography to share stories and raise awareness. I didn’t realize just how much travel meant to me until I lost it to the COVID-19 lockdowns.
After the hellish pandemic year, it’s time to gain some new perspective. To become a better business owner, photographer, and global citizen, I am setting off to travel the world. One of the greatest perks of having my own business is that I can work from anywhere. After COVID-19, it’s a privilege I truly cherish. With all of the craziness going on in the United States right now, I hope to be able to bring some of the global perspective home with me.
What’s on Your Travel Bucket List
While I like to travel to beautiful places for landscape photography, my choice of destination goes far deeper than that. To become a better global citizen, I also want an authentic cultural experience that will allow me to engage communities both at home and abroad. I want to experience new foods, listen to new music, and immerse myself in both foreign language and cultural events.
It will likely still be a while before the world fully reopens, so we’ll be sticking closer to home at least to start. Since we’re based out of the United States, that means North America and the Caribbean.
Travel to All 50 U.S. States
In order to have the richest experience abroad, you should be familiar with the regional and cultural differences within your own country. In a country as vast and diverse as the United States, it’s especially critical. You can’t gain new perspectives abroad if you’re oblivious to what’s going on at home.
Thankfully, I’ve already been to 40 of the 50 states, so getting the last 10 shouldn’t be too difficult. I’d like to visit all of the US territories as well. It’s been close to 20 years since I last set foot in either Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands.
Travel to All 13 Canadian Provinces and All 31 Mexican States
There are a couple trips in Canada I’ve had my eyes on for a while.
- Drive the Trans-Canada Highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific
- Road trip from the Peace Arch in Surrey, British Columbia to Inuvik, Northwest Territories via the Dempster Highway
South of the Border, I want to immerse myself in everything Mexico’s rich culture has to offer. Like the US, Mexico is an incredibly diverse country, and my adventures in Sonora and Baja California haven’t even begun to scratch the surface, yet. In addition, I hope to be able to gain fluency in Spanish and broaden my perspectives of the many issues plaguing the US-Mexico border today.
- Experience Mayan Culture in the Yucatán Peninsula. Swimming in the cenotes has been on my bucket list for a very long time. You can also use the Yucatán as a home base for exploring Central America and the Western Caribbean.
- Photograph the stunning blue waters of Agua Azul and Sumidero Canyon in the State of Chiapas
- Take a tequila tour through the highlands of Mexico’s “Tequila States”: Jalisco, Guanajuato, Nayarit, and Michoacán
- Hike to the breathtaking 250 m (820 ft) waterfall at Cascada de Basaseachi in Chihuahua
- Visit Nuevo Progreso, Tamaulipas – a popular tourist destination on the Texas border that will be an interesting comparison to my adventures in Los Algodones, Baja California
- Learn about the history and story of Chinaco Tequila. Chinaco is a unique tequila that is said to be more complex and rich in flavor than tequila from Jalisco. It’s made from blue agave farmed in fertile, high-mineral soil near the only licensed distillery in the State of Tamaulipas, which sits on the Gulf of Mexico and shares a border with Texas.
- Explore Big Bend National Park in Texas and make the unique border crossing across the Rio Grande to Boquillas del Carmen, Coahuila
National Parks
I would like to visit every National Park in the US and Canada. Making a big loop through the National Parks in western US and Canada has been on my bucket list ever since our Great Southwest Trip in 2012.
Foreign Language Re-Immersion
Immersing yourself in the local language is one of the best ways to maximize your experience in any location. Even if all you can say is “hello”, you’ll form a deeper connection with the locals once you can break through the language barrier.
French Language (Re-)Immersion. Martinique et Guadeloupe, vous m’avez manqué! I’d also love to get back to Québec at some point, as well as visit French Polynesia. However, I studied French language and culture for more than 10 years. The holy grail of French language and cultural immersion lies in the rich diversity of Francophone Africa. I already have plenty of knowledge and tips for visiting countries like Sénégal, Gabon, and the Congo.
Spanish Language Immersion in Mexico. Ever since setting foot in Mexico for the first time, my goal has been to gain fluency in Spanish. Instead of sitting at home endlessly thumbing through textbooks, what better way to gain fluency than the experience of immersing yourself in it?
Beyond North America
My worldwide bucket list goes far beyond anything I can list here, but here are a few to whet your palette.
- Take a food tour through Southeast Asia
- Go on an African Safari
- Drive across the Australian Outback in a 4×4
- Photograph some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in the world in Kyrgyzstan
- See endangered gorillas at Virunga National Park and climb Mt. Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo
- Go hoverboarding on Russia’s Lake Baikal in the winter
Conclusion
After 15 months of isolation and lockdown, we’re all itching to get back out and do the things we love with a semblance of normalcy. I hope the pandemic has given you as much drive to rediscover your passions as it has me.
Rediscovering my true values and purpose has motivated me to engage communities and raise awareness both at home and abroad through photography, as well as my work in data and GIS. In doing so, I hope to be able to gain new perspectives about life in the United States, as well as bring some world culture home.
During previous crises, I have always taken solace in music. As we get set to take back our lives and enjoy our newfound freedom, I wanted to express the mood and excitement of these new beginnings and new opportunities. Kenny Chesney couldn’t have done it better.
“This is our moment. This is our time. We ain’t holdin’ back, we’re laying it all on the line. This is our destiny. It’s our night to shine.” What are you waiting for? Go make your dreams become reality.
Top Photo: Pondering My Thoughts at Lake Thunderbird
Norman, Oklahoma – March, 2014
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