She doesn’t have to worry about money.
He has a successful business.
She’s really popular.

If you believe that, this blog post is about to flip that belief on its head.

I spent hours crying today.

My accountant tells me my company–the one that’s receiving the residuals from my former hosting business–owes the IRS another $13,000 for tax year 2009. I’ve already paid something like $70,000 in the last 6 months to various taxing authorities.

I thought I could afford to buy a house. Then I had to pay taxes. And then I found out that most banks won’t accept dividend income as “proof of income” for a mortgage. Poof–the house I saw, and liked, vanished to another bidder.

Sold my company for $1.1 million, and I don’t even have enough money for a house down payment.

I am angry.

I can’t bring myself to total up July’s income for my blog. I know it’s going to be bad. $2,000, maybe $3,000. If this sounds good to you, remember that my employee expenses right now are about that. Employees who are, of course, building the awesomeness that will be my new company, Whoosh! Traffic. I’m looking forward to it. But right now, it’s a lot of work and absolutely no money. I am drained. I think I’ve made something less than minimum wage for all the hours I’ve put in to this blog, my business, these information products I’ve created so far this year.

Remember all that income I showed you from Profit Instruments? The first check arrived. It’s gone. All to business expenses. Didn’t see a dime from it personally. The second check will arrive in a week or two. It will be enough to hold my business over for the next few months. I probably won’t take any money from it, either. I hate that.

I am frustrated.

Supposedly, I am “living the dream.” Got a blog. It’s pretty popular. Not the biggest blog in the world. But big enough that other bloggers think that I earn a fair amount of income from advertising. I don’t.

I wanted to do a sale on Guest Post Secrets this week. But I couldn’t bring myself to send the email. Every time I send a sales-y type of email to my list, I get some crazy angry response. Of course, I get more sales than angry responses. But this week, I couldn’t stomach the angry craziness that lurks out there.

I am a coward.

I don’t think this is the life you imagine I lead. Somewhere out there, there is someone who believes I live in a palace, immune to financial problems. Everything I touch turns to gold, right?

Wrong.

We (my programmer and I) stopped development on Best Blogs last week. I was so excited about that site. Still am, darn it. But it wasn’t going to immediately generate revenue. Whoosh Traffic will. Whoosh Traffic has the potential to be a 7-figure business. Bigger than my hosting company. And it has the potential to grow fast. Not so with Best Blogs. Oh, we had a monetization plan…a damn good one. But it would take 6 months to a year to really come to fruition. With Whoosh, we can be making money in a month or two at most.

So we shelved Best Blogs.

This is where I get real with you.

Blogging isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s freaking hard. Whatever you do, you’re going to have some crazy people shouting at you about it. It’s kind of like performing publicly on the street. You’re always going to get someone with their own issues taking them out on you. Only with blogging, the whole Internet gets to see you duke it out. Not so pleasant. If you ever wonder why some fairly high-profile bloggers have stopped blogging, it’s because of this incessant mindf**k of crazy people who live out there on the Internet. The crazy people get in your head. You start second-guessing everything you write. And you have to have a super-strong personality to handle it.

I have a super strong personality. But I am not able to handle it 100% of the time. Today was one of those days where I could not handle it. Could not push Send on the email blast, because I didn’t want the blowback.

Instead, I write this. I break down the walls a little bit between you and me. Underneath the steel armor exterior, I am a person. And the words hurt. The refunds hurt. The refunds are the worst part. I take them very personally. If you’ve ever refunded a product you’ve bought from me for more than $100, I’ve cried about it. About you. I’ve wondered what the heck I ever did to hurt you.

One time last year I threw things against the wall after a couple customers banded together to refund a product I created. I am not sure I have ever been so angry, hurt, and upset all at once.

I am not proud of this. But it’s the way it is.

Do not give up hope. Even from this low point, I will keep going. Day by day, I will continue creating amazing content–and selling some of it to you. That’s all any of us can do. We can take it a day at a time. We can keep going. We can tell the haters to shove it, one blog post at a time, one product at a time. We can fight the only fight we have–to continue just showing up.

And one day, after having been beaten down and having many of these days like today, we will again be on top of the world.

But not right now. Right now, it just hurts.

Do entrepreneurs need to attend college?

My answer is totally different: I don’t think college is beneficial for teenagers who already have a good idea of what they want to do with their lives, especially if they want to start a business.

Here’s my story…and some tips on whether college will be right for you:

My Background

My parents both have Master’s degrees. My father runs a law firm and my mom is a former school teacher. She raised me as a stay-at-home mom and then opened a title company when I was in grade school.

My mom was mortified when I slacked off in school, but school bored me. I am an extreme visual/hands-on learner; I have difficulty picking up information when it’s delivered in auditory format. I was often bored in school because I couldn’t pick up the information when someone spoke it to me, but I could read faster than everyone else, so while most people were sounding out words, I was already finishing the book.

I hated authority and constantly challenged my teachers. In first grade, I asked my teacher at lunch, “If the universe contains everything we know, and it’s constantly expanding, what is it expanding into?” She looked at me helplessly and tried her best to explain.

It was around that time that they seriously considered advancing me a grade. Persuaded by my mom, the principal put me in the third-grade reading class. I was testing at an eighth-grade reading level, but my social skills were woefully underdeveloped. I was not well-liked by the other kids.

Mom was constantly searching for other school options. We lived in a rural part of Indiana, with only one high school for the entire county, so my local options were limited. My parents considered sending me off to boarding school.

Attending a Different School

In the meantime, the state of Indiana was using its gifted-and-talented funding to start up a residential high school for juniors and seniors: the Indiana Academy. After touring it, I decided to go.

Living with other kids was a challenge, but I identified with many of them. I found more deep friendships there than I have in any other environment. It was there that I got introduced to computers and networking. (When I first got there, I tried to plug my dial-up modem into the Ethernet jack on the wall–I had never been exposed to networks before!)

I quickly became the de facto female computer geek. I managed 14 computers on the girls’ side of the school. I set up a web hosting company by colocating my old 486 desktop computer at an ISP; one of the teachers paid me to host his personal website. I ran several websites, one of which was a shareware ranking site that received a good deal of publicity.

When summer of my junior year came up, many of my classmates got jobs at local retail stores. I did something different: I went on Yahoo! and found the listings for local web design companies in Cincinnati, Ohio. I sent all of them (I think there were 20 or 30 at the time) an email asking if they needed a web person, and showing them several websites that I had coded myself. I landed two interviews and got a paying summer job at a web design company coding HTML and Perl.

By the time I was ready to graduate high school, I knew three things:

1. I wanted to go to Silicon Valley and seek my fortune.
2. I wanted to run a web hosting company and design/develop websites–the opportunity for “passive” income (I can confirm that’s a myth after 6 years of running one, but I didn’t know that then!) was hugely appealing to me.
3. I wasn’t going to graduate from college.

Of course, I wasn’t afraid to tell everyone who would listen about these three things. I remember most clearly telling the female computer science instructor that I would go to college because my parents wanted me to, but I wouldn’t graduate.

She was devastated. Then she started yelling. “You don’t understand the opportunities you have been given!” she said. “You’re throwing it all away. The women of my generation had to work so hard to even be in college, and you just want to give it up?”

I shrugged. It was pretty normal for teachers to be upset with me.

I mostly didn’t talk about it with my parents. My mom would get angry, which would cause my dad to leave the room. It was not a pleasant experience. I would go to college, and that was that.

No one could really tell me why college would be great for me. They all assumed I had to go. That there wouldn’t be any questions. That it was necessary to “open doors” for my future.

But was it necessary for someone who wanted to start her own business and who didn’t want a job? No one could answer that question.

Applying to College

I applied to only two colleges: San Jose State and Santa Clara University. Santa Clara University required an entrance essay. My dad encouraged me to write an essay that said I would donate to their alumni association when I became a millionaire CEO. (I didn’t quite put it that way, but I dropped some broad hints about how going to SCU would help me become more successful.)

Santa Clara sent me an acceptance letter. So did San Jose State.

My parents were willing to pay for Santa Clara, but I decided I wouldn’t go there because they didn’t let freshmen choose the hours for their classes. I wanted a part-time job while I was there (this was Silicon Valley in 1999, after all!), so I opted for San Jose State. I took a small class load and applied for a job.

Finding A Job

I scored a job without going in for an interview. I cattily left out the fact that I was 18 years old in the phone interviews, and was hired as a part-time Marketing Director for a small web company. When they found out I was 18, had no marketing experience, and was a college student, they were not amused. They fired me.

I found another job “being the helpdesk” and fixing computers for a small company, Cobalt Networks, that later became one of the largest IPOs in history. Sun Microsystems bought us out in 2000 for $2 billion, then killed the product line.

In the meantime, one of my college professors told me I should drop out of school and “seek my fortune” in Silicon Valley. It took me a year to follow his advice, but after 3 semesters of college, I dropped out.

My mom said it was the worst decision I had ever made. My boss at Cobalt, who treated me like one of his kids (his oldest was only a couple years younger than me), said I would regret it.

My boyfriend at the time, a well-paid techie “whiz kid” who was a high school dropout, congratulated me. (Interesting side note: The vast majority of the guys I have dated have not graduated from college. Several were high school dropouts. This wasn’t intentional; it’s just what happened.)

You probably know the rest of my story (if not, you can read it here, where I go into details of how I created a million-dollar business at a young age.)

How Can You Tell Whether You Should Go To College?

Let’s look at some facts:

• I knew what I wanted from a young age. I knew I wanted to start a web hosting company and do Web development. I went out and got summer jobs in that area to gain experience.
• I wasn’t waiting to be taught by classes. I was a self-taught computer whiz; infinitely curious, a voracious reader, and not afraid to ask questions. I didn’t seek permission to take over those 14 computers in my high school; I simply did it.
• School didn’t suit me well. I didn’t learn well from lectures, and I didn’t enjoy school. I did most of my learning from books and the Web. The Web, being 100% visual, was a miracle for me.

When I look at most high school kids, I understand why college is necessary. They don’t know what they want. They have a vague idea of the future, and college helps them clarify what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

I was totally different. I was goal-oriented, and more importantly, I had a goal (starting a business) that didn’t require a degree.

I will concede that I was different from most teenagers, but by no means do I think I am unique. I think there’s a good percentage of teenagers out there who want to start a business but who, like me, are pressured into going to college by their parents and teachers.

And really, what is that pressure but simple fear?

My Mom Concedes

After several years of not speaking to my mom much (but before I sold my business and would be considered a success), I finally called her and told her I was really upset with her. I mentioned the comment she had made about dropping out of college being the worst decision I had ever made.

She started crying, and told me that she was proud of me for taking the path she never had the courage to take. That conversation meant a lot to me, and it helped heal our relationship. And that’s honestly when I should have written this post, but I didn’t have the courage until now.

Going on a different path takes courage, but the rewards can be huge. Whatever you think you don’t have enough of–money, time, college degrees?–to start your own business, let me tell you right now: You have everything you need to succeed.

Was It Worth It?

I started my web hosting company when I was 20 years old. I had no clue what I was doing. I made huge mistakes. I underbilled my customers, overworked my employees, and pissed off a whole lotta people.

But I also made close friends, learned a whole heck of a lot, and oh yeah, made well over a million dollars.

I had the worst day of my life and the best day of my life in my office, with my employees. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

The people who tell you you need to go to college–they want the best for you. They want you to have the best chance of success. But sometimes, the real path to success lies in doing what no one else is doing. While everyone else is in school, you’re out there knocking down doors and closing deals, signing contracts, and trying to figure out who’s screwing you over and who’s investing in your success.

There’s nothing like it. And if you read this post and, like me as a teenager, are a self-starter, motivated to succeed, and ready to start your business, don’t let college stand in your way. Go out there and get your hands dirty. Yep, you’ll probably fail; most businesses do. But it will all be worth it, and you’ll have learned dramatically more in the process than you ever will sitting in a lecture hall waiting for class to end.

Recommended Reading:

• Hiring is Obsolete by Paul Graham. “While I stand by our responsible advice to finish college and then go work for a while before starting a startup, I have to admit it’s one of those things the old tell the young, but don’t expect them to listen to.”
• 15 Successful Entrepreneurs Who Didn’t Need College. Includes Michael Dell, Richard Branson, and Mary Kay Ash.
• One Thing You Don’t Need to Be An Entrepreneur: A College Degree by Fred Wilson (a venture capitalist.) His point of view: “I have learned that where someone went to college (or even if they didn’t go to college) has absolutely no correlation to whether they will be a good entrepreneur or not.”

They’re laughing at you.

I mean, you’re practically doomed from the start. 90% of all businesses don’t make it five years. Even if you have successfully run a business before, you’re probably rusty at that whole “starting” thing.

You probably won’t make it.

Your customers are going to ask for refunds. They’re going to take their lack of success out on you. They’re going to tell you you didn’t perform (regardless of whether you did or not.)

They won’t pay you. Their checks will bounce. Their credit cards will get declined. They’ll promise to pay…every week, for the next month…and never pay. Suddenly, their phone number will get disconnected.

They’ll call you up and attack you personally, spewing venom you never thought you’d hear outside of an R-rated gangsta movie. They will laugh at your feeble attempts to make it right. They’ll threaten to sue you. They will get their local police department to call you.

They will leave anonymous comments on the Internet about how awful your company is, and, by extension, how awful you must be as a person.

They’ll complain that you charge them too much. They will threaten to cancel. They will cancel, and then when your broken billing system decides to bill them again, you won’t be able to refund it quickly enough to spare the hate mail, hate calls, and hate letters.

In short, they’re all going to laugh at you. In fact, they’re probably already laughing at you. I bet you can hear it right now in your head: “You’re so stupid. You’ll never be able to figure this Internet thing out. You don’t have time for this. You’re not young any more. You have mouths to feed! How could you possibly consider quitting your job?”

If you’re thinking I’m about to make it all better, I’m not. What I just listed above (including the part where the police department called me) is all real. It all happened to me in the course of running my business. I once let a customer rant on the phone for just over an hour (I timed it) while I transferred the call to my cell phone, put on my headset, and drove home. I listened to him ranting in my ear about how awful our service was the entire time.

As you’re reading this, some emotions are probably coming to the surface. At least one of them is likely to be a memory of when something like this has happened to you in the past. And maybe it’s scaring the crap out of you. You don’t want to run a business like that, you’re thinking. Who in their right mind would sign up for that?

But some of you…some of you are different. Sure, there are probably fears and doubts in there, and you may even question your own sanity. But somewhere, deep down inside, something is fighting to rise up. Something is saying, not, “It won’t happen to me,” but “I will find some way to handle this.” Because it will happen to you. Don’t kid yourself. You can run a great company, and you’re going to get shit flung at you every single day. It’s just how business works.

This post is for the fighters out there. It’s a reminder that you can do this. It’s a reminder that we all get the crap beat out of us, if not physically, then emotionally. Life isn’t always a cake walk. No matter how big or small a business you run, no matter how much money you have…this world is full of people who will want nothing more than to tear you down and see you fail. Online or in person; customer, employee, best friend or family member…they’re going to want you to fail, for reasons beyond your control.

To be okay with this, you have to first acknowledge it. Only by acknowledging that the hate is out there will you be able to get past the fear that is inside you and take the next step.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather wake up each morning knowing that I’m bringing my absolute best to the table than wake up looking over my shoulder and asking “What if?”

The haters will be there no matter what you choose. Choose something that will make you happy.

Now go out there and change the world!

Recommended Reading:

• Download my free Blog Success Manifesto. Want to start a blog–or do you already run one? This is a must-download; I showcase how I created a successful blog without killing myself in the process. 63 pages; 30 tactical tips…and oh yeah, it’s completely free!

My Past Week

I haven’t had the easiest time of things lately. Several financial irritations hit all at once, causing me to have to dip into my savings account (some call it an “emergency fund”, but I have a distaste for that name.) I was angry not only about having to resort to my savings account, but about the circumstances that caused it. I felt like a failure; worthless. Emotions welled up inside me, and though I’ve had an acupuncture treatment and a massage, I can still feel the emotions causing tension in my body.

Being frustrated about money rolled over into several other areas of my life, and today was yet another rough day, with Richard being frustrated about me not wanting to spend money to hire someone to do handyman chores. This resurfaced the failure feelings in my head and caused a downward spiral.

I was unable to concentrate on my tasks at hand. My intention for today was to create some new videos, but my feelings of failure stopped me. Angry at myself for not being able to overcome my emotions, I finally hopped in the car and started driving.

As I was driving, I remembered something that had calmed me down from bad emotional spots in the past. I’m not sure where I picked this up, but it really works, and it’s darned simple.

The “Gratitude Countdown”

Here it is: Say out loud ten things you are grateful for.

This “gratitude countdown” works best when you are by yourself, so if you live with someone else, I recommend that you go out driving or walking to do this.

At first, you may have trouble thinking of any. You can start out with simple ones: I am grateful to be able to breathe freely. I am grateful I have food. I am grateful to have a place to live. I am grateful for the tree in my back yard that provides shade on hot, sunny days.

Count each one down. (I say the numbers out loud to help me keep track.) At some point (it usually hits me around #4), you’ll start to feel your emotions come out. Let them out! Release them. Get rid of them.

Later in the sequence, after you’ve released some emotions, you can start healing some of the wounds. Today, I posted an ad on craigslist for people to come pick up our old moving boxes. “Bring a truck, SUV, or large car,” I wrote. “Must take ALL the boxes.” Well, who shows up but a young couple in a tiny Ford Focus. They start packing the boxes in, but of course they can only take about half of them. I come outside to find they’ve picked only the best boxes, leaving the rest sitting on the driveway!

I wasn’t happy about it, but there wasn’t much I could do. So, as part of my gratitude countdown, I forgave them. I said I was grateful that I had been able to help them out by giving them free moving boxes, and that they were forgiven for only taking some of the boxes. Now someone else deserving can come pick up the rest, or we can save them for our next move. I don’t need to hold any anger about them. I can just release it and move on.

By the time you get to the end of your gratitude countdown, you will feel completely different. It probably won’t be perfect, but you will feel like you’re on the right track again.

Your Results

Some of the other things I am grateful for today: An Internet marketer who lives here in San Diego recently inviting me to his mastermind group; Erica O’Grady helping to keep me accountable in my own goals with weekly checkups; Ramit Sethi encouraging me to get stuff done; Srini Saripalli, whose conference I recently spoke at and who is now a friend and business partner.

There are lots of good things happening in your life right now. Sometimes, they just tend to get overshadowed by the drama. What are the ten things you are most grateful for? (Feel free to post them here as a comment if you wish.)

Try this now, and then try it again next time you are feeling down. Heck, try it every day for 30 days. Let me know how it works out for you!

Update: I wrote this post on Saturday night. After doing a gratitude countdown, I overcame some mental hurdles and figured out some business issues that had been bugging me for weeks. This really does work!

Recommended Reading:

• Feeling Lonely, Depressed, or Underappreciated? Read This! Another great exercise I did when I was feeling down. This one works really well, too.
• True Visionaries Think Backwards. One of my favorite posts. This one will help you if you’re feeling mopey or sad about the future, or don’t know where you want your life to go.
• How Can You Have That Perfect “Flow State” More Often? You know those amazing feelings you get when you’re in “the flow”? How can you have those more often?

The Beginning

In August, 1999, a few months after I graduated from high school and having just turned 18, I packed my car full of everything I owned and drove to the promised land — California.

I was young and naive. I moved from a small farm town in Indiana to smack in the middle of a huge, 1-million-person-plus city (San Jose) and chose to live in the dorms at San Jose State, where, needless to say, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

I found a job, and got fired in record time when they found out I was 18. (They were not happy they had just unknowingly hired a college freshman as their Marketing Director.)

I found my calling doing desktop support at Cobalt Networks, a young startup company. I made friends, had boyfriends, and watched my beloved employer rocket itself to the 4th-largest IPO in history. I used all my extra money to invest in the Cobalt employee stock purchase plan. The stock doubled; I cashed out and bought a car:

I took part-time classes at San Jose State and failed several of them. I was more interested in working in the computer industry. School bored me. Even in high school, I knew I would probably never finish college. My teachers tried to talk some sense into me…all except one. I’ll never forget what happened.

All business majors were required to take a class called Business 10. It was basically the “Do you really want to be a business major?” class. My teacher took an instant liking to me.

One of our first assignments was to get together with a few others and create a business plan for a fictitious business. Our ragtag group decided to create a plan for a nightclub. I did a website for the nightclub in HTML and presented it to the class. Everyone else was using Powerpoint, but I was more comfortable using HTML.

A Teacher Gives Me Strange Advice

My teacher pulled me aside after class and asked me what the heck I was doing. I said “What do you mean?” I thought he was angry that I had decided against Powerpoint. It turns out he was mystified as to why I was in college.

He said, “This is an unprecedented time. Kids your age are making millions.” He asked me why I had moved to the Valley. I said I wanted to be in computers. He said, “Go. Drop out. Don’t waste your time in college. This is the golden age for people like you.”

I was shocked. I spent days pondering what he had said. A teacher, telling me to drop out! I took his advice under serious consideration because I felt he was being honest and not just pushing a party line.

A year later, I dropped out of college. I was flunking accounting, and the constant push and pull between school and work was aggravating me. I had watched Cobalt IPO, but had missed out on the stock options, as I was a part-time contractor. Many of my friends within the company were now paper millionaires. I was jealous that many of them were just a few years older than me. Oh, how I longed to have been born in 1978 instead of 1981…

Cobalt was acquired by Sun Microsystems and I quickly snagged a full-time job at Sun by virtue of having dropped out of school. My boss at Cobalt, who considered me one of his surrogate kids, told me I had made a decision I would live to regret. My mom started crying when I broke the news; she told me dropping out of college was the worst decision of my life. Somewhere inside me, though, I knew I had made the right decision.

The next day, my parents cut off all of my financial support. I was truly on my own, and I had a lot of bills to pay.

Contract Work to Pay the Bills

I scraped by, working contract jobs as well as full-time at Sun. After a year of being demoralized by working at a big company, I quit. It had been my dream for years to start a web hosting business. By this time, I had moved into a 1-bedroom apartment 35 miles east of San Francisco. It was all I could afford. Soon, my boyfriend at the time would move in with me because I couldn’t pay the rent there by myself.

I found contract web design jobs to pay the bills. It was 2002; Silicon Valley was in a deep recession; I was 21 years old. When I presented invoices to my clients, I got scared. Sometimes I would talk myself out of invoicing them for weeks because I wasn’t brave enough to say they owed me more than $1,000. Often I’d throw in a discount on the invoice to make it under $1,000, because that number just seemed unjustifiably large to me.

Somewhere in there, I had started a small web hosting company, and was slowly gaining customers. I agonized over the website, wrote my own shopping cart, and had my uncle program an invoicing system in PHP. I figured I would be happy if I made enough profit to pay off my cable modem bill.

By the end of 2003, my fledgling web hosting company, Simpli Hosting, was making more than my consulting gigs. The problem was, I was spending 40+ hours a week doing web development, and maybe 5-10 hours a week on hosting. I figured I had nothing to lose. I met with all my consulting clients and arranged transitions. I would be a full-time web hosting company owner in 6 months.

7-21: Intention Becomes Reality

I had one rack of servers at the time; I spotted an empty cage near our servers with four glistening empty metal racks. Each cage had a number; this one was 7-21…the same as my birthday (July 21). I knew it was fate; it was meant to be. We were going to expand into that 4-rack cage. I told my sales rep so. He was amused, but promised to save it for us.

On October 28, 2003, I signed the contract for cage 7-21 and we moved in.

2004 came and went rapidly. I hired my first employee, an eager fresh college grad named Brandon. He was nearly a year older than I was. He wanted to work for free. I told him I’d pay $14/hour.

Brandon came on board and was an amazing worker. I hired so many other amazing people throughout the years; Mooneer, a gifted college student who worked from home in Southern California; Cal, a talented PHP programmer turned COO; Wolf, a fire-eating, spiky-haired, spirited engineer; Russ, a great friend and geek extraordinaire; Ben, an 18-year-old who was Simpli’s first intern; Seth, my best friend and Simpli’s second COO, who helped me break down so many walls; Kolya, Simpli’s first office manager; Sohrab, one of Simpli’s most gifted and treasured employees and the hardest worker I’ve ever seen. There were many other great employees, too, who came and went mostly because there was always too little money and too much work.

Mental Breakdown and Breakthrough

In August, 2006, I reached a mental boiling point and broke down in the middle of a vacation. I decided then and there I would sell my company in a year for over $1 million. There was never any question that I could do it; that I would do it. I never doubted myself in terms of my ability to set goals. But what would happen next shocked me.

It was May 9, 2007. I had just hired a new employee and agreed to pay him a large salary when our datacenter, Market Post Tower, called and said they were locking us out of the datacenter for failing to pay them over $60,000.

In total, we had something like $160,000 in debt for a company that was on target to do a little over $800,000 in revenue for 2007. It was too much. We had maxed out all of our available credit (including all my personal credit cards) already. We had nothing left.

Mortified, I realized that my failing grade in my college accounting class had come back to bite me…hard. I had no concept of the numbers. Neither did anyone else. I called Seth in and had him negotiate with Market Post Tower. We delayed a tax payment to pay them $15,000 right away so they would open our cage again and we could resume business.

I laid off over half my staff that day. It was the worst day of my life. May 9 seemed to stretch on toward infinity. The day just would not end. And my tears would not stop.

With my tears still flowing, I called another one of our upstream providers, to whom we also owed money. Since the owner was a friend, I candidly explained the situation. He made a blunt offer. He said once our customers found out that we were locked out of the datacenter, they would all leave. So he put an all-cash offer on the table; he would buy my company for $250,000 that day, as well as pay off all our debt to Market Post Tower.

I saw his objective. He wanted our equipment and cage space. Whatever customers would stay would be icing on the cake.

I Choose Hell

I chose Hell instead. I told him no. He said my company might die a painful death and someone would scoop it up in bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar. I said I would find a way to make it work.

Market Post Tower refused to hire a lawyer to write a contract for us because they didn’t want to waste the money on someone who wouldn’t pay them back. I got mad. My integrity was being called into question. My “I’m going to prove them wrong” instinct kicked in.

Four months passed like a blur. I can only explain it like this. Let’s say you’re in average shape, and you decide to run a marathon…tomorrow. Actually, now. You just get up and start running. Somehow, the miles pass, and you feel awful, like you’re going to throw up, die, or have congestive heart failure, or possibly all three at once. But still, you look down and your legs are running. Your support team is long gone. It’s just you and one other dude working together to save everything.

Some nights I got no sleep. Sometimes I broke down and cried in the office. I napped on the couch. We sold everything in the office. Whatever wasn’t nailed down went out the door. We doubled, tripled or more all of the rates of our customers — something I had been scared to do for years. I said nothing about our financial problems to our customers. I only said we needed to do this to stay in business. I figured if 50% of them left, at least our upstream provider bills would be cheaper, and we would still have the same revenue coming in.

95% of them stayed.

I was as shocked as anyone. But something changed in me when our customers pledged their continued use of our service. I started to take pride in what I had built. For the first time, I acknowledged myself and my role in building this company. I stopped believing that the web hosting industry was all about price, and I started to believe in myself.

The $100,000 Check

Things turned around. Just four months later, on September 7, 2007, I sold my company for $1.1 million to a competitor.

Before we signed, I wanted a contingency plan, so I called up the guy who had offered me $250,000 cash four months ago. He knew we were paying our bills on time now. We had signed new customers and were cash-flow positive.

I told him about the $1.1 million offer. He said stoically, “Congratulations.”

I asked him if he would match it.

He paused, considering. Then, “If it falls through with the other company, we’ll do it.”

It turns out I had a third web hosting company wanting to pay me $1.1 million, as well. But Bruce, the owner of Silicon Valley Web Hosting, was the winner and made the deal.

That day, I sat with a check for $100,000 (Bruce’s first payment) in my hands. Bruce grinned at me. “How does it feel?”

I just shook my head. What I was feeling was unreal. Unexplainable.

I paid off every penny we owed Market Post Tower. Shortly after sending the final payment, I received an email from Neil, a managing director at Market Post Tower. He wrote:

Erica,

I think I was the most outspoken cynic regarding the Simpli payment plan. My skepticism is the unfortunate result of having been in commercial real estate for more than 20 years, and in colocation management for the past five. The kind of integrity that you’ve shown in making payment is sadly uncommon.

I am at a loss, except to say “thank you.”

Neil

The End — And Now, A New Beginning

Now, I close the book on the final chapter of my life in San Jose. On July 1, Richard and I move in to our new house in Solana Beach, CA. (Of course, we are still renting.) But my move to Southern California means the era of living in fast-paced Silicon Valley and living the dream of building my own tech company is done.

Frankly, I couldn’t be happier. I proved, through sheer stamina if nothing else, that I could build a tech company from scratch and sell it successfully. Now I’m ready to prove I can build a business that doesn’t kill all my employees and that makes me a happier person. And I’m ready for new opportunities that come my way, like new friends, more public speaking opportunities, and more blog posts.

I am grateful to have lived in Silicon Valley through what was possibly one of the craziest times in history, and I am just as grateful to move on. As they say, it is time. It took 9 years and 8 months to write that chapter of my life. Now it’s time to write the next one.

The problem with trying on new attitudes and new ways of doing things is that you invariably run into those you feel should work, but they don’t for you. And, being human, instead of simply saying “This doesn’t work for me” and doing something else, you think “But everyone else is successful with this!” and continue, for months, to beat your head against the wall and try something that clearly doesn’t work.

This, for me, was working at home.

Acknowledging the Problem

For nearly a year I refused to acknowledge what was clearly obvious — that working from home not only wasn’t productive for me, but that it was actually hampering my productivity. I would spend hours upon hours surfing websites, reading books, or watching TV. All good things, but none of them were moving my business forward.

I tried everything I could think of to change this. Richard and I had long conversations with everyone from dooce’s husband Jon to many other successful bloggers and small business owners. Everything centered around “How do you work from home?”

And we got great answers. I implemented several of the solutions. I bought a better desk and hired a personal assistant to do my laundry and organize my clutter. I tried setting hours during which I would only do work. I implemented time management systems. I reduced checking my email to a few times a day.

Some of these things caused a temporary boost in productivity. With a personal assistant, for instance, I was more productive for a few hours a week while she was helping me. But eventually that fell off, too, and I was back to where I was before.

Richard suggested I look for an office. I ignored him until it became unbearable. “I really want to launch my new site,” I finally sobbed at him one night. “What is wrong with me?”

Overcoming Fear

I had a huge fear that, now that I had sold my business, I was in some sort of permanent “I have money now, so why should I work?” state of complacency. I mean, I could laze around and watch TV all day and still have all the money I needed, right? So maybe I was just lazy. That would certainly explain why all those other people could work from home.

Richard reminded me that there was nothing wrong with me. He urged me to go to San Francisco for a day and work out of Citizen Space, a local coworking space. Not knowing what to expect, I hauled my laptop the 60 miles into Citizen Space, checked in, and set up at a table they have for drop-ins.

It was the most productive day I had in months. I got many of the major kinks worked out of the Inspiring Innovators website, so it was finally nearly ready for launch. I drew out a plan (on paper!) for what the site should contain. And then I started making phone calls to lease an office.

Making the Change

Last week, I found an amazing coworking space near my house and moved in. If you are not sure what coworking is, it’s where a group of people get together to lease an office. You typically pay a flat rate per month to rent one desk, or you can choose to drop in for free or a low daily rate. Coworking is very community-centered; you need to get along with the other people in the space. This space is in Campbell, CA (an easy 15-minute drive from my house), and the other tenants are all female entrepreneurs. I pay $500/month flat to rent a desk, and I have access to all common areas and a conference room, as well as Internet access, electricity, water, a refrigerator, microwave, and toaster oven.

Better yet, I didn’t have to invest a ton of money in a desk and a bunch of furniture. (If you’ve never furnished an office before, let me just say, for 4-5 people, $10,000 is a small budget.)

I found this office space on craigslist, but there is also a huge online coworking community where you can find spaces near your house or organize one.

Stop Blaming Yourself

The thing is, we’re human. We want certain things to work. In my case, I’ve watched “working from home” being built up as a panacea. “No commute! Cheaper lunches! Work in your PJ’s!” And while all of the benefits are true, for me, the social isolation wasn’t worth it.

That’s why, when my former company cleared a $35,000 SBA loan, the first thing I did was rent an inexpensive office near the datacenter and put my one local employee and I there. Looking back, I thought that was a bad financial decision. (You’re not supposed to put debt financing toward unproductive overhead such as offices.)

Now, I know better. I was far more productive in that office than I was at home or in the datacenter. It helped us attract more clients and, once we grew, it helped us attract another few employees. Finally, we were able to sublet half the office to another tiny startup that ended up becoming our hosting customer.

What’s Not Working In Your Life?

Is there something that’s not working in your life that you’re refusing to acknowledge? It could be a tiny thing, like your old computer or an appliance that doesn’t work properly. Or it could be a huge thing, like a relationship or an office. Whatever it is — look for the three telltale signs that it isn’t working:

1. You’re beating yourself up for something that isn’t your fault. I was berating myself and calling myself “lazy”, but that wasn’t the case at all. My environment wasn’t working for me. Once I got an office, I became immensely productive again.
2. You’re hesitating because of money or other external conditions. I’ve taken to the adage, “If money is the only thing holding you back, you should live your dream anyway.” It’s true that $6000/year, plus some startup expenses for new computer equipment, is not cheap. But this office will pay itself off in spades from my higher productivity and increased business. If you find yourself thinking, “I’d definitely change this about my life if only I had an extra $x,” make it your top priority to find or create more money so you can live your dreams. Stop discounting what you want just because it costs money.
3. You’re using an excuse of “But it works for so-and-so.” Now that I have a clearer head, I can see some huge differences in those who successfully work from home and my situation. For instance, my boyfriend and I live in a duplex that has less than 1000 square feet, yet it has 3 bedrooms. My home office is in the third bedroom, which is hardly big enough to hold my desk, chair, and filing cabinet. It feels cramped and awful when I work from there. Since neither Richard nor I are neat freaks, our house is often somewhere between “disaster” and “cluttered.” The clutter spreads to my office whether I want it to or not. And even though we have made huge efforts (and spent hours! and hired people!) to get rid of stuff we don’t need, the filing cabinets are full, the closets are full, and the house, with its complete lack of built-in storage, doesn’t lend itself to easy organization.

Is something nagging at you, right now, as you read this entry? Something that’s been bothering you for months, that just isn’t working? If so, I encourage you to take the time right now to acknowledge it. Have the courage to look it in the face and say, “Even though I may not have the money to change you, and even though you work for other people, you aren’t working for me.” Then work out a plan to change it.

If you have the courage to acknowledge what isn’t working for you, you may not waste months of your life dragging your feet like I did!

Recommended Reading:

• Entrepreneurs: Is Extreme Frugality A Waste of Time? How do you figure out what projects are worth it for you to tackle as an entrepreneur?
• The Ten-Minute Budget. My first-ever videblog, posted on Get Rich Slowly, shows exactly how creating a budget saved me thousands of dollars a year…and how you can get started doing the same in just 10 minutes.
• Coworking Wiki. Find a coworking space near you, or get started setting one up, with this wiki and the associated Google group.

I’d like to encapsulate four of the effects of this recession I think we’ll see over our lifetimes. Whether you agree or disagree, please write your own blog post (and link back to this one) or comment here with your own thoughts on how our world will change.

1. America’s birth rate will continue dropping, and will eventually get below the replacement rate. A common statistic is that it takes 2 births per woman to sustain a population. America, so far, has barely managed to stay above this rate. However, with the cost of having children increasing, many parents will opt to have fewer kids. Thus, in the next 40-50 years, we may well face an odd situation: whole towns disappearing, since there won’t be enough people to keep them going.

   Whatever your personal opinion is on this situation, it will certainly make for some interesting political drama.

2. The number of houses needed for the general population will nosedive. This will puzzle and catch off-guard the real estate industry and many pundits.

   Right now, there are many huge houses on the market: 4000sq.ft.+. Their prices are coming down, but they’re still not selling. Why? Maintenance costs! Heating and cooling gigantic houses is extremely expensive. Rather than disappearing, however, I believe multiple families, or multiple generations of a single family, will buy these houses as they become dirt-cheap.

   Multiple generations in the same house is already common in many Asian, Hispanic, and Indian families. This will become a defining trend in the U.S., as minorities are having more children than whites, and whites will eventually figure it out and embrace this trend.

   Since day care may be prohibitively expensive for many lower-income families, this trend will become even more pronounced. I expect to even see homebuilders responding to this trend by creating new types of McMansions to help these multi-generational families with their needs — in 10 years or so, when they recover from the current bust.

   There is a corollary trend that goes along with this. Since it will become commonplace for families to live together, fewer houses will be needed for the general population. This may start out as a small trend — virtually unnoticeable due to birth rates. The good news is that it means that rent prices as well as home prices will drop.

   The trend of rent prices dropping may be most noticeable over the next 2-3 years as foreclosures hit the market, since by some estimates up to 50% of people being foreclosed on are not renting or buying another property, but instead moving in to an existing homestead. It may then get lost for several years as people shrug it off when the economy gets better. However, I think the resiliency of this trend (and its huge cost benefits) will be underestimated by the media, and the trend will continue to gather steam for the next few decades.

3. A backlash against expensive colleges, as well as lack of funding for state schools, may open up new entrepreneurial opportunities in higher education. Throughout the past 20-30 years, student loans were easy to get, so more people went to colleges, so colleges raised their prices, so the government and banks made student loans easier to get…repeat ad infinitum.

   The costs of college have far outpaced inflation for the past century. In the book Going Broke by Degree, economist Richard Vedder writes:

   “In 1958, it took a bit less than 57 days for a typical family to earn enough money to pay for [annual] tuition at Northwestern. As of fall 2003…instead of 57 days, the typical family would have to spend almost 195 days.” This explains the persistent rise in student loans and scholarships.

   You will, of course, see a government push to make loans easier to get, as the banks pull back. This doesn’t help anyone over the long term, however, as it simply inflates real college prices. (The economic details of this scenario are worth a blog entry of their own — one I may do later this month.) The easier government makes it to get college loans, the slower prices will drop. New parents and those planning to have a baby should consider a 529 savings plan for their kids. Saving just $100/month in a 529 (and putting it into the stock market) will turn into $40,000 or more for your cild once he or she is 18!

   If you’re in college now, simply be as frugal as possible and bear it out. Avoid taking on student loans as much as possible.

   Is college worth delaying until later simply because it will be cheaper then? I’d say no. However, if you are considering going to college in the next year or two, get as much education as you can done at a community college. Not only will that save you a lot of money up front, but you may also benefit from enrolling 2-3 years later at a more expensive college, instead of enrolling now.

   There is a prevailing mindset in our society that college is necessary. I’d expect some backlash against that in the next few years, although it will mostly take the form of “Ivy League schools aren’t necessary” and my above recommendation of attending a community college for the first few years.

   Over a longer time frame, I expect to see many college alternatives popping up. In Going Broke by Degree, Vedder cites the for-profit University of Phoenix, as well as tech certification programs, as two valid alternatives to traditional colleges. If state funding disappears and college costs continue to go up, savvy entrepreneurs will fund alternatives, and traditional college enrollment may drop for the first time in our lives.

4. Commercial office space and retail shopping centers may never recover to the square footage used in 2007. This is another one that will catch the pundits off guard. I realize this is an extreme viewpoint, but here’s my reasoning.

   I was here in San Jose in 1999, when companies like Webvan euphorically declared that the need for grocery stores was over. I agree that those companies were overly optimistic, but I also think the continued immersive experience and growth of the Web will kill many retail companies in the long term.

   Stores don’t exactly go out of their way to make the customer experience friendly. Safeway (a local grocery store chain) thought they were geniuses by firing 50% of their staff and forcing everyone to wait 15 minutes in line to check out their groceries. (They didn’t even install self-checkout machines…just closed most of their registers!) They later realized their mistake, but expect to see more asinine decisions like these by retail stores intent on cutting costs instead of building better customer relations.

   Compare this to the experience I believe we’ll see on the Web in the next 5-10 years — a virtual “personal assistant” on the store’s Web site, 24×7, to help you choose something that fits, free shipping both ways (thank Zappos for that!), and easy tools to measure yourself and ensure you are getting the right size and quantity. With people in India or Vietnam who speak excellent English and are willing to work for a few dollars a day, this sort of service will become commonplace.

   If Web 2.0 was about community, Web 3.0 will most certainly be about personalization, simplification, and ease of use. Retail will learn that, to survive, they must personalize and deliver excellent customer service. The Web, where you can hire people for a few dollars a day instead of $10/hour, will be the place to do that.

   Once the Web retailers figure out personalization, and do it right, old-school retail will never recover. It is very likely that my kids will find going to a store antiquated for anything that doesn’t need to arrive right now. And far less needs to arrive right now than you or I believe — the main reason people go to stores is customer service; the human touch. The Web will figure this out, and do it far better than the nose-picking, bored-looking 19-year-olds at Best Buy.

There you have it: four effects that will change our world as a result of the recession. What effects do you think the recession will have on our society? I welcome your comments!

Recommended Reading:

• Making Kids Worthless: Social Security’s Contribution to the Fertility Crisis. Postulates that Social Security programs are the cause of the declining birth rate in many developed countries. Interesting theory — very Malcolm Gladwell-esque.
• Going Broke by Degree. The author recommends specific policy decisions that should be made to decrease the cost of college for everyone. Worth reading if you would like to know more about the economics behind the expense of college.
• Forget Presents; We Want 529 Contributions at Frugal Dad. Giving a young family member the gift of education savings is far more important in the long term than the latest video game or another new pair of jeans.

I’m at the Train the Trainer workshop in Los Angeles, CA. The goal of this 5-day workshop is to train you on how to speak in front of an audience…from specific ways of handling questions to actually getting up there on stage and speaking.

Tonight was “Outrageous Night”, where we had to dress up in costumes and perform a minute-and-a-half song in front of 100 people. We were not allowed to lip-synch or talk.

Before we got up on stage, we were asked to write down some fears and obstacles we would like to overcome in our performance. Dancing is a huge fear of mine, which stems from my fears of not being perfect and of looking silly. And, of course, one of my beliefs is that I have to do everything myself — which was why hiring an assistant was such a huge step for me.

Before we were scheduled to go up, we had an hour and a half break for dinner. I knew my mission was to find a guy and set up a dance routine with him. I was really clear that this was part of what I had to do to overcome my fears.

The song I had picked was Madonna’s “More”, which is from Dick Tracy. (If you don’t know it, click on that link and watch the video.)

I walked downstairs and found a guy about my age sitting at the hotel bar, eating. I introduced myself and explained that I needed a dance partner. His name was Eli, and he agreed! I showed him the video I linked to above on my laptop, and we agreed we’d do the hand-in-hand part you’ll see Madonna perform with Warren Beatty at 0:53 in the video. After that, he spun me off and I was off to sing, “Got my diamonds; got my yacht….got a guy I adore…!” and run across the stage and put my arms around Eli.

The End

This went on for over a minute, and finally I was done. Now, there was a hugely important part at the end. The crowd had to give us a standing ovation. (By the way, this may sound fake to some of you…like it wasn’t real because they “had” to do it, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. We really did want everyone up there to succeed, and it was real for everyone.)

While they were giving you a standing ovation, you had to stand at the front middle of the stage for ten entire seconds with your arms wide open and just accept it. No nodding, no “thank you”, no embarrassed “aw shucks” look. Just stand there, breathe, and watch over 100 people honor you with a standing ovation.

Let me tell you, that first moment, when they erupted in cheers, was one of the most amazing and powerful moments of my entire life. I had my arms out and I had the quick vision of being an Olympic gold medalist when she absolutely 100% knows she freaking nailed it. I knew I had nailed it. I had the voice. I can do Madonna. I sang the crap out of that song. The choreography went great. And as I stood there, back completely straight, proud, with my arms out, and a huge smile on my face, taking in the applause, something really strange happened.

I don’t know how to explain this, except I know that something like this has happened to you, too. One moment stretched out for eternity, and all of a sudden, I saw myself 100 times over again, standing there, in front of the audience, receiving that applause. I absolutely knew, with astonishing clarity, that I am meant to be a performer. I am meant to be on stage. Being on stage and doing motivational speaking is how I’m meant to transform millions of other people’s lives in this lifetime.

The Beginning

I want you to get this, because it’s so powerful. If you have ever had a moment where you knew what you were meant to be doing — if you have ever had that vision with such clarity — it’s time for you to do everything in your power to honor that, and to move toward it. I don’t care what your excuses are. No money? You’ll find it. No time? You’ll find that, too.

But when you move toward that moment of clarity — and set your entire life into motion to achieve the goal showed to you then — there’s nothing that can stop you. The only thing holding you back is that bullshit voice in your head. You know that one…the one that tells you you’re not good enough, or you’re not worthy, or you don’t have this or that. Tell it to stop. That voice isn’t you! It’s just a stupid voice! So tell it to shut the heck up and get on with changing the world…because the world needs you. It needs you to step up and become that vision.

We need you. Not the you that plays it safe and sits at home, but the you who says, “I’m ready to take on challenges, because I know they will only make me stronger. I’m ready to play my game at full strength and honor the good that I have to give to this world. And I’m ready to make sure nothing will stop me in pursuit of my goal to help other people.”

Are you ready? I think you are. I think you are able to achieve much bigger things than you’ve let yourself achieve so far.

It’s time to put it all aside and start anew. Who is that real you? I know you’ve seen it in flashes. Right now, it’s time to step into your new clothes.

I’m ready.

I had come to I Can Do It with my mother that year. I was driven to come to the conference because I had known since I was quite young that I was destined to become a writer. But I struggled to connect with any author at the conference. They were swoopy and syrupy and spiritual, and they had legions of adoring fans who mobbed them for autographs. I was practical, a straight shooter, and a technology freak who owned a web hosting company. I felt uncomfortable and out of place.

The conference had started on Thursday, and on Saturday night, I finally broke down in our hotel room. The tears flowed, and I explained to my mom that I had wanted a sign at this conference as to what I was supposed to do to become a writer, and I hadn’t seen it.

My mom said, “Don’t write this off yet. You have one more day here.”

The only thing I had planned to look forward to on Sunday was a meeting with Steve Pavlina and a group of people from the forums on his website. That morning, I grudgingly got up early and went to meet them. I had no idea what to expect.

Meeting Steve Pavlina

There were about 20 people at Steve’s meetup. Many of us wanted to know how Steve had gotten started, and gradually he relaxed and began to tell his story. He was a techie, who had also run a technology company that didn’t quite fit him. So instead, he started a blog, not knowing where it would go…and ended up reaching millions of people and pushing them to change their lives for the better.

(Picture borrowed from Steve’s website; I’m the one near the middle wearing a patterned brown and tan shirt. Steve is wearing all black and is in the middle; his wife Erin is to his left.)

As I listened to Steve’s story, something clicked in my head. Finally…exactly what I wanted: a clear path to success, articulated by someone I had a lot in common with. Later, as I pored through what Steve had written on his blog, it occurred to me that there was nothing he had done with his blog that I couldn’t do with mine. It was then that I understood what I had the potential to become.

Taking Action on My Decision

I came home and made some big changes. First, I immediately hired another employee at Simpli. Over the next few months, I also got serious about selling my business.

I wrote all about it, of course — on a blog post that you probably haven’t read, since I wasn’t promoting my blog at that time. I called it “What’s Most Important?” It may be one of the most important blog posts I have ever written, because in it, I acknowledged publicly that I was ready to step up and embrace my future. I wrote it right after I came back from the I Can Do It conference, on June 2, 2007.

Here it is, in part:

I must simplify my life, and whittle down what I do to the things that I am absolutely the most passionate about, or else I risk being stuck in mediocrity.

I know that one of my large purposes in this life is to help other people eliminate fear and overcome obstacles…to obtain goals previously thought of as impossible, and to influence people to change in a positive manner and thus leave a lasting impact on the world. Instead of a series of small, relatively unimportant tasks, then, I needed to focus my objectives and only say “yes” to those things that aligned properly with my Big Goals.

A lot of previous things that I had said “Yes” to needed to be turned into a “No” or “Not any more” due to my changing life circumstances. Either the task gets done by someone capable, or it does not get done. In neither case, though, does it rest on my shoulders.

This may sound facetious to some of you. “How can you turn away people who ask for your help — especially if your skills align with their needs?” And the answer is simple — my life involves a call to action to help millions of other people. I can’t spend time doing web design or volunteer work for a small group if I could instead be turning my focus to things that help thousands or millions of others. If that still sounds bad to you, I recommend that you set bigger goals.

There’s no reason you, too, can’t go out there and help millions of other people. But to do it, your life must be keenly focused so that every resource you have is turned toward that goal. Your most valuable resource becomes your time — so much so that you’ll need to hire layers of other people just to help you out. If you succeed, your success will be breathtaking. And if you fail… is there really such a thing as failure if you set out with a goal to help millions of other people, and only succeed in helping hundreds or thousands of others instead? Really? Here’s the worst that could happen — you only improve 1 person’s life: Your own. If you’ve put happiness in your own life, you haven’t failed.

What I must find is time. From having someone clean my house to having a personal assistant who can help me/Simpli do the tasks I don’t have time to do (such as filing papers), I must clear out my time so that I have time to do what matters most to me. Once those repetitive, menial tasks start disappearing from my horizon, I can start achieving bigger goals. As I do this, I expect to write more (after all, that was one of my Big Goals for 2007 — “blog more often.”) I expect to work less. And I expect that I will feel happier and more fulfilled, because instead of energy-draining labor, I will be spending time living my dreams and fulfilling my passions.

I look back on that post, and I remember the energy and passion I had when I was writing it. Fresh from meeting someone who finally explained to me a path I could understand to becoming a successful author, I could finally see what I had to do.

Getting From There to Here

After I sold my business, I bought the domain name erica.biz and migrated all my old blog content to it. Then, I started writing…but this time, I made some changes. Instead of just writing about my day-to-day life, I started writing for you. With every post, I wanted you to think differently about something. And if I didn’t have a post that would engage you to think differently, instead of just churning out a bunch of links or a rehashed post and calling it a day, I simply didn’t post.

Hunter Nuttall asked me recently, “How did you grow your blog to over 1000 subscribers in just 10 months?” It was quite straightforward, actually. I set a goal to write one post a week. That post had to be an ass-kicking, life-changing, no-B.S., get-you-thinking post, or I didn’t publish it. If I couldn’t think of a great post, I’d let the blog sit until I got so irritated with myself that I had to write.

I challenged you — all of you — to reconsider buying a house, and I evangelized cheaper cars. I pushed you to grow your own business and told you to stop letting fears get in your way. I explained that selling a business wasn’t all roses.

As my blog grew, I started to get a steady stream of emails and comments thanking me for knocking loose a few old beliefs. Now I am getting so many comments and emails that it is hard to keep up — but I do my best, to honor you for your time spent here.

Your Turn!

You might be saying, “Yes, but I can’t be like you, Erica.” Challenge that belief. The reason I write is to show you that no matter what the economy looks like or no matter how much you hate your job, you have a better life waiting out there for you. I’m here to push you in the direction of accepting your higher purpose in life.

The first step to success is simply to believe what you want most — your perfect life — is possible. If you wonder how you can become a best-selling author, or how you can make a living full-time on the Internet, I offer my example as one path.

Steve Pavlina recently released his first book, Personal Development for Smart People. I have read it, and I’m impressed by it. More than even the great content, though, Steve’s book shows that it is truly possible to make a living doing what you love — in my case, writing — and that you don’t have to settle for something that sounds like it will pay a lot more. It may take years for your passion to pay your bills, but it will be absolutely worth it. As I held the book, I recognized what it meant to me — it was a beacon, showing me my own way to success.

I’d like to thank you for joining me as I walk down this path toward helping millions of others. It is your emails and your thoughtful comments that keep me writing here. Know that even if I can’t reply to everything you write me, it is all read, honored, and appreciated.

Thank you.

Recommended Reading:

• Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina. If you’ve read Steve’s blog and enjoyed it, or you’re interested in building a foundation to achieve your dreams, you’ll want to read this.

Of course, Pat had no idea who I was, so I sent him an email. I wrote the following:

“I am 26 years old, and recently sold my Internet-based business (a web hosting company) for $1.1 million. I started my web hosting company at age 20, having little or no concept of how to run a business, and very much ‘flew by the seat of my pants’ for a few years!

In a commoditized industry with over 20,000 companies competing in an often cutthroat manner, I grew my business from $0 to over $1 million per year in revenue — without taking on any investors, and while spending less than $25,000 on marketing (most of which was wasted money!)

How did I do it? That’s what I’d like to address by speaking at your seminar.”

That seemed to do the trick, as Pat sent me an email back saying simply, “ok. you’re on.”

I flew out to San Antonio, not knowing quite what to expect. What I got was life-changing–an unbelievable breakthrough.

But let’s get back to the restaurant.

Dateline: Friday, July 25

For dinner on Friday night (the first night of the conference), several of us from the conference went to a local Persian restaurant for dinner. I ordered the shrimp kabob. Our server brought out a salmon kabob instead. I sent it back, since it was obviously an incorrect order, and she graciously apologized and brought out a shrimp kabob a few minutes later.

I assumed all was well until we received the bill, and I didn’t get one. When I asked what was going on, our server said sadly that her manager had forced her to pay for my incorrect order out of her wages. I said that was unacceptable and asked her to bring me the bill. Looking at me with wide eyes, she took my credit card and did so.

I explained to the others at the table what had just happened, and none of us could believe it. Even with close to 20 of us at the restaurant, our average tab per each person was only $12-$15, meaning she would likely only gross a bit over $50 in tips. Putting a $15 dent in that seemed a terrible way to “pay” for an honest mistake she had made.

When our server came back with my credit card, I turned around, looked her in the eyes, and said “I’ll pay you $50 to quit.”

The Moment of Decision

She looked like she hadn’t quite heard me correctly. I pressed on. “No one deserves that treatment. If you stay here, you’re saying it’s okay for you to be treated like that. It’s completely unacceptable.”

She looked around the table to see if this was some sort of practical joke. Seeing nothing but serious faces, she looked back at me. I could tell she was going over the situation in her mind. Finally, she blurted out, “But won’t it be, like, bad karma if I leave?”

“No,” I said.”You’ll be showing respect for yourself. You do not deserve this.” People around the table were nodding in agreement.

“I can’t…” she said, and started to walk away.

“Fine.” I replied. “I’ll up it to $100. And I’ll give you cash, right here. But you have to agree to quit within 24 hours.”

James (another guy at the table) joined in. “I’ll take you out with us if you turn in your notice right now, and buy you drinks tonight.”

“I can’t do that,” she said. Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, “I don’t plan to keep this job much longer anyway.”

I shrugged, left her a $3 tip, and left the restaurant.

The Universe Is Ready To Show You The Way

I relayed this story to several others at the table. As we were walking back to her hotel, Tony Laidig said something I’ll never forget: “I would have paid her $100, too, just to see her take action.”

What’s the takeaway of this story?

You create your reality and circumstances. If you let someone have power over you — especially if that person is abusive and/or making bad decisions — without standing up for yourself, what you are saying to the universe is: “Universe, this abuse is okay with me.” This takes your power away.

When you choose to step up and say “Universe, I’m ready to make my own decisions and not let anyone else control or abuse me,” the Universe sends you everything you need to achieve your goals. In this case, had our server decided to quit, she would have received cash, supportive friends, and most importantly, a feeling of confidence that she had embraced her power.

Taking This Lesson to Heart

The lessons we see that others need to learn are often the ones we need to learn, too. I realized that the core issue I needed to address was to fully embrace my power.

I examined how I could fully embrace my power. I realized that this blog’s header (the paragraph at the top of every page my blog that explains who I am) could use some tweaking. Instead of just saying I am “temporarily retired”, what if I embraced my power and explained that I had sold my business for $1.1 million at age 26? So I changed it.

I then realized that my Twitter profile had the same problem. My profile previously said “opportunity innovation inspiration.” It’s an obscure reference to the names of the new businesses I’m starting, but I realized it was not attracting followers. So I changed it to “Sold my business for $1.1 million. Now I teach you how to make millions — www.erica.biz.”

I gained over 100 new Twitter followers this weekend via UnSeminar5 — but also because I embraced my power and acknowledged who I am.

You are what you acknowledge yourself to be. If you “play it small” and don’t tell anyone your achievements, they will never know what an amazing person you are. They will not be blessed by your presence and energy.

To succeed, you must be ready to show the world what you’ve achieved — and help others up to that level, too. And you must be willing to let go of those who will never acknowledge your power, beauty, passion, and presence.

What can you do today to step up and embrace your power?

Next on my list: Learning how to dance!

Recommended Reading:

• How To Be A Successful, Inspirational Woman
• How To Acknowledge Yourself 101
• The Attractor Factor by Joe Vitale
• Here’s How To Become Rich: Deliver Value. Change The World.