Make a living doing what you love (without selling your soul)

Hey, I'm Tom, and through Live Doing Anything I'm trying to make the most important marketing and entrepreneurship concepts clear and accessible, to help you make a great living doing what you love.

I've struggled with this myself and seen many people overwhelmed by the same problems. I strive to be the point of reference you can go back to when things get confusing and overwhelming, that external push that gets you moving in the right direction.

If you need help, would like to collaborate on something cool or simply feel like sharing your story, you can do so by sending an email at hello@tommasomanca.com

Human, focused and accessible

When you think about marketing, you probably think about pushy salesmen, cold calling or spamming uncomfortably on social media, waiting for the numbers to go up.

It doesn't have to be like that. Even better: effective marketing isn't like that. It's not about selfish tricks, but rather about crafting a story (your story), communicating it effectively and providing value through your craft. That's the more "human" kind of marketing taught by Seth Godin, and the kind we talk about here. 

So why should you listen to what I have to say instead of simply referring to the master? Well, I do things a bit differently:

  1. I'm focused on what actually makes a difference for freelancers and creatives - the things he teaches are meant to apply to all kinds of scenarios. Basically, anywhere where you'd want to (as he would put it) make change happen. I aim to make things a bit more relevant, by restricting the use cases. This is for freelancers and creatives. Basically, for people who want to make a living through their craft of choice.
  2. I try to be more practical and bite-sized - another benefit of having a more restricted scope is that I get to be more practical with my advice. Furthermore, being thought for people who'd simply like to work on their craft as much as possible, I try to make it smaller and more digestible, to help you one step at a time. 
  3. It's not just about Seth - although he's undoubtedly my biggest influence, it's also not the only one. I'll be sharing thought-provoking lessons from many other experts. 

Some bite-sized info about me

  • I am obsessively curious about how things work and committed to figure out how to get results quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, I somehow forgot about that in my formal education.
  • I have dropped out of university, co-founded a video games company, coded, composed soundtracks and learned many ways how not to grow a business. 
  • I've worked as a freelance web designer/developer for about 3 years, and slowly became more interested in making the difference for my clients rather than simply building them pretty yet useless websites.
  • I've spent countless hours and thousands of euros in order to help myself and people around me understand how to make a living doing what we love. For quite some time it was simply something I enjoyed doing, but at some point it was clear to me that that's what I found meaningful and wanted to pursue. Live Doing Anything is where I share what I learned (and what I'll learn in the future).

The full story

I was born in Sardinia (Italy), from an artist and a jazz musician. They've taught me the value of art and creativity, and yet somehow I ended up as a marketer.

At the age of 8, I decided video games were awesome and I needed to be able to develop my own: that's how I discovered programming. In the next years, I've developed my first websites and skillfully avoided human interactions.

True to my 8-years-old self, at the end of my formal education, I have co-founded a video games company (The Bad Jokes Studio) with a few talented, great guys that soon became family.

From this experience, I have learned a lot about running a business, especially about what not to do. We've built great games, though.

Driven by the desire to build meaningful things with my own strengths, I started freelancing as a web designer/developer. At first, I focused on learning how to build pretty, learn, well-structured websites but I quickly became more interested in the actual impact of those websites. That's how I started exploring the practice of making things happen: marketing. 

My first approach to marketing has been the classic, more "scientific" one: gathering data, making ads, carefully tweaking numbers to make other numbers go up. I've seen some success with it (applying it to both my business and my father's online teaching business), but at the same time I felt like something was missing. It's only by working with a small group of illustrators, wondering how to build a path tailored to their personalities and desires, that I further explored the more beautiful, creative side to marketing that I had been missing.


It's effective, it doesn't require obsessing over numbers and it's what I'd like to talk about with you, if you'll care enough to listen.


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