Thanks for your article, i’m sure lots of people will get inspired

Give Your Startup a Fighting Chance
1. Test first. Launch your product or service before you have funding. See how people respond to it before you have a PowerPoint and business plan – have something people can use, and go from there.

2. Seek outside feedback. As you start building the product, don’t assume that you know all the answers. Listen to the community and adapt. We had a lot of our own ideas about how the service would evolve. Coming from PayPal and eBay, we saw YouTube as a powerful way to add video to auctions, but we didn’t see anyone using our product that way, so we didn’t add features to support it.

3. Give partners what they want. Approach your business partners with concepts that they can get their heads around, and try to respond to their needs. An interesting example is what we’ve done with the music labels. With Warner and others, we saw an opportunity to protect the labels’ rights and create a new market. Now we can do things like add music to people’s travel videos. It allows users the freedom to create and to do it legally.

See my new blog

a little self reflection and a tough, long look in the mirror is what this post gave me, and it’s something I really needed.

Dawud, thanks for sharing this!

Best-
~Li Evans

And, the other side of it is that one can get too fixated, too tunnelled in, and the creativity can drain out.

That hasn’t happened in a big way at Heart of Business, but I go through cycles of it- I’m at that other end of the spectrum, and I have to give myself permission to explore, change, experiment, or things go dead, too.

Like most of life, the middle way is the more fulfilling.

It has been a challenge for me to stick with stuff in the past once my passion drains out of it. When I’m in, I’m in, but when I’m out, I’m out so fast the doorknob can’t even see my rear-end go by.

And (in my own defense, a little), I think I’m learning more about myself in the process, and how to balance my desires with my responsibilities. The good news is, I’m onto something now that I really enjoy (of course I’d say that… now…), but I have no idea how long it’ll last. Could be a year, or ten. Not a clue.

But how do you live otherwise? How can you give yourself to something fully when/if the steam runs out? (I do like Home Recording’s plan, though, of delegating/farming out…)

The parallels to relationship are obvious here… and although I never dated anyone for more than a year and a half when I was younger, once I met my wife I knew she was the one – and we’ve been married ten years now. (so, I know the capacity to be enduringly solid is within me, at least!)

Great conversation.

Coming to the crux of the problem. I know a few such people, who would rather be called serial entrepreneurs. Two of them, are actually very successful. The strategy that both follow is – when they start getting bored, which they must, being the kind of personalities that they are, they simply delegate to someone that they hire or enter into a partnership with, and get on with whatever appeals to them at the moment. I have seen this work. Why, because, it is not due to lack of commitment, it is due to lack of challenge that one gets bored. Some people simply need to be challenged all the time. They are made that way. Instead of losing a lot of money, I think that the strategy that these two people follow is a better alternative. It also allows them to experiment without it hurting their bank balances too much.

But I have learned to apply those principles in a more ethical fashion in building my personal network. Rather than attempting to create a pyramid, I am creating something more like a spider-web, where new connections can help all of us – some more, some less, but never at the expense of another.

thanks for your reply.
I guess it’s easy for friends to get a bit hung up and unable to see the bigger picture.

When it comes to finding the right message and the right audience, I thinkl it will always be a moving target. Hope you find yours!

What gets in the way for your business to be more successful.

communicatrix,
Sorry, couldn’t resist…you’re such a good story.

It’s not all about money. Yet my own experience – both personally and professionally – is that it’s more about money than most people allow it to be. You’ve gotta want to make a nice living in order to, well, make a nice living. That means you need to be okay making some loot.

What else are you focusing on as part of the success of your business?

You’re right, of course: there’s no kind of success, financial or otherwise, without steady forward (and focused) motion.

On the other hand, I’m getting a little weary of people telling me how much money I’m leaving on the table. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not *against* money, but I’m more *for* certain other things that focusing on a money-making venture would keep me from. It’s a choice I’m content to make for now, and one I’m willing to forgo if circumstances change.

And part of me, I must admit, kind of hopes they do. I’m pursuing this path with laserlike focus because I must, but I miss the money from the more lucrative paths I pursued with laserlike focus before.

Getting clear on your message is pretty vital. I like to think of it as a constant work in progress. It’s never really finished because I can always refine it.

Thoughts?

David,
Failure is easy, so true. It doesn’t even take effort. Often the problem is that either people take the no action or the wrong actions in developing and growing their business.

And I think you’re right, most of us have things to overcome internally before we can be successful. For instance, do we deserve it? So, do we?

@Stephen,
Sounds like you have a good idea of what you’re doing. What’s been the most valuable mistake you’ve made to date?

I am still working for someone else, but my success is based on my own efforts and can lead to a big financial gain. At the same time I am laying the groundwork for making my own business even more successful, and eventually self-supporting.

I have learned some important lessons, and learned from some early mistakes. The next wave of marketing and business growth will be designed to scale, and to succeed.