Hey! Geoff Blake here. Thanks for checking out Ten Ton Books! Listen, I’m going to make a wild assumption. And that assumption is, there’s stuff you wanna learn (maybe web design, maybe Dreamweaver, maybe a few other programs) and while you may feel a sense of excitement about getting into something new, gaining some skills, and possibly taking yourself in a new direction, there’s quite possibly a sense of anxiety or perhaps downright dread at the thought of learning this stuff. I mean, you’ve heard all the phrases, “CSS-driven layout,” “SEO ready,” and “deploying the CMS-backed intranet.” You may nod and smile a bit, but deep down, those pangs of nausea are getting worse, while thoughts race through your head like, “Dammit, I knew I should have been a novelist!”

To me though, this stuff doesn’t have to be that hard. Sure it can get hairy sometimes, but it’s totally learnable. Seems to me there are too many people over-complicating this stuff and not enough people making this stuff understandable. Now I won’t give you a full history (I hate bios…the past doesn’t matter. Just Google it or look me up on LinkedIn), but the short ‘n sweet is, when I first got into teaching back in ‘97, all I saw were trainers and college professors who were more interested in showing off their skills than actually teaching anything…to an audience who couldn’t care less, who was bored to death, who wound up more confused at the end of the day than they were at the beginning. Way ta teach ‘em, killer!

I loved teaching classes, and to my great surprise people really responded my teaching style (I mean, between you and I, there’s no secret formula at play, no strategy. I’m just doin’ my thing, plain and simple). But I could only reach and help between 10 and 30 people at a time. I needed a bigger platform where I could help a lot of people. See, correct me if I’m wrong, but what I see is a large group of people who are willing and even excited to learn, but who can’t find good learning resources…because there aren’t a lot of trainers who are interested in teaching. And you know, that’s why I created Ten Ton Books.

Ten Ton is an opportunity for me to bring together many of the things that I love: teaching in a very casual, non-jargonny style, taking tricky subjects and strippin ‘em down to simple ideas, and my love of cartooning demented droids and psychotic sea monsters at the kitchen table. But most of all it allows me to help a lot of people, and to me that’s really cool. I love talking with people people just like you and building relationships. I love hearing about what you want to learn and where you’re headed.

So listen, if you want to get learning some new skills but you’re unsure which direction you want to go in or where you should be looking, throw me an email at “geoff @ tentonbooks.com” and we’ll brainstorm together and get this worked out for ya. In the meantime, be sure to check out the free content on tentonbooks.com — roll up a chair and get your learning started with the free videos and articles found here. Look forward to hearing from you! -Geoff