Hi Erica am new to your site but you already helped me so much with this post.

My Bio and story are similar to yours, i had a successful online business back in 2000 – 2003 and purchased my first home (i was about 22 and my parents couldn’t believe i actually made $ online…), i sold it (since i was young and it was eating so much of my time, energy and sadly my relationship) , retired for a while to be with my wife, my first born and finish college

I took a job about a year after and didn’t felt happy… so i realised i wanted to get back online so bad with many new ideas. Am a net geek at heart

ok, here comes your post idea!

in 2006 – 2007 i spent nearly a YEAR building and programming a website for a new local biz i had in mind, i wanted it to be perfect (i also thought i had the perfect idea…) After 12 months i got the “damned” thing out finally but to my surprise, competition had become fierced in my niche and there was little room for the new commer in this market + the crisis thingie was just starting to kick in

i felt like a failure and was depressed for a while only thinking: “if i had launched 8 months before i would had a better chance”

I realized how quick the net moves and how inexperienced i was at the “marketing thing”.

now am into a new project again and won’t make the same mistakes ! i fell off the bike but am up

am 1 month into the project and won’t let a 12 , 6 or even 4 months pass by this time. In a month or 2 i should be “ready and lauched” even if it’s not as perfect as i envisioned it (but should get there in time ^^)!!

I must also thank the Linux community (specially ubuntu) for showing me a great example that this is indeed possible like you said. Ubuntu is a software project that has become so popular even if it’s still far from perfect, but every 6 months they get better and thousands of new users.

you must already know everything about linux since you were in the server biz

Also Mark Shuttleworth the “Internet Billionaire” has been an inspiration to me. You might want to interview him some time

Your readers also offer excellent advice and I, too, will try to think in terms of “Progress, not perfection”, and “Done is better than perfect”. Unfortunately, my ‘version’ of perfectionism can sometimes paralyze me from even beginning a project because I know I won’t be happy with the result when finished, e.g., the inability to organize things around the house just the way I want them leaves a disorganized mess for everyone to see :-/

I think that’s exactly what would be seen if one could look inside my HEAD

Such a useful post… Thanks,

Debi

No, I don’t really think that’s the case. I mean, there may be that rare dude who says “Man, I HATED that website design 6 months ago when they first started, so I will never use it,” but there are so many more people in this world that it’s really not even worth thinking about the couple who will remember. People’s attention spans are really short. I thought I knew a lot of people when I ran my hosting company, but I bet maybe 5% or fewer of my current blog subscribers knew me then. So don’t sweat it. Just get something out there and keep making it better!

-Erica

Too many. Good ideas come in floods, tsunamis. Overwhelming.

Execute right now!

Speed of Implementation — key to success!

When to quit? Caffeine poisoning. Sleeplessness. Everything you always hated working for the man… realizing you’re the worst boss you ever had!

Peter Drucker mastered the opportunity cost: ignore “closure,” an emotional weakness. Know when to walk away. Just walk away. Leave it hanging.

Ok, back to the salt mine.

-d

ps: Great post! Really resonated with me.

I think the response you got back from the business women may have also been the fact that they might not be your market for InspiringInnovators. Their needs are different. For me, InspiringInnovators is something I would want to buy in on on a per-interview basis, but maybe not monthly. (I would love to see the Steve Pavlina interview.) As far as Be The Authority – that is *awesome*. I don’t care about more instruction on using Twitter & Facebook, but I would love the SEO tricks portion.

Ultimately, no matter what you do, I know you’ll come out on top. You are amazing!

I decided to do it my way anyway, for two reasons. One, I realized that every person wants to do things their way, to mold you into them, and that’s just not going to happen. And two, I had asked the wrong people. Only two of those people ended up subscribing to my newsletter, which means that, apparently, the content I was writing wasn’t for them in the first place.

Your initial idea was and is sound, but the women you approached wouldn’t have been your audience, which is sad. I’m glad you’re back on track, and now I know what’s going on, since I just wrote something on your initial post from last February.

By the way, I think it’s interesting that your anti-spam question only allows one word, as I tried to write “yes I am”.

Oh, and I agree with membership content: if it’s really want the audience wants, without having to wade through a bunch of ads, etc., they’ll tell you with their purchases of same.