5 replies to this topic

[Jill]

Amazing that a guy as young as Neil Patel has already founded 9 companies!

Young or not, anyone who's been that involved with starting businesses learns a thing or two here and there. Neil shares 7 business mistakes that nearly made him go broke.

Great advice here!

Over the past 6 years I founded 9 .com companies. Most of the companies failed miserably and lost me a million dollars or so, but luckily a few of them did well enough to cover my loses. The main reason I had a lot of unsuccessful ventures is because I made some really big mistakes. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and not make them.

[torka]

As someone who works in the time and attendance industry, I was especially pleased to see his recommendation to have employees clock in and out every day.

Neil Patel is pretty much the definition of "go getter," from what I can tell.

--Torka

[1dmf]

Over the past 6 years I founded 9 .com companies. Most of the companies failed miserably and lost me a million dollars or so

hmm, over the past ten years i've founded 8 websites / business's , none (so far) have succeeded , some failed and it's cost me a few hundred bucks.

Oh to have a million dollars to loose, chance would be a fine thing!!!! -> 2009 things could be looking up with my latest venture, if the darn credit crunch / travel industry ever recovers!

If any one needs advice on how to make a success of it first time, speak to Randy

[Randy]

Ha! Success the first time right out of the box doesn't happen very often 1dmf. The experience of a few failures does help to avoid some of those mistakes though.

I can definitely identify with three things on Neil's list.

The 1st one about a lot of good opportunities ideas coming your way and the fact that you can't do them all is certainly true. You can spread yourself too thin.

The other two on my personal list I have a bit of a different take on.

The whole employees thing... The first decision to make on this subject IMHO is whether you want to have employees or not. I don't want a lot of employees I then have to spend my time to managing, and if I did I'd have someone else I already trust deal with that part of the equation. The only person I trust enough to do this doesn't want to deal with a slew of employees either, so that particular decision has already been made in my case. Because of this decision I get to skip several of the other things on his list.

What this means for me is that I make sure I don't get married to any site/idea. Or at least not to the point that I won't sell it off to someone else after I've gotten things rolling and let the new owner expand it, hire employees, etc. The thrill for me is in starting site/projects and getting them profitable. For me the thrill is not in making each idea a multi-million dollar entity with 10 or 20 or 1,000 employees I have to manage.

The last one I identify with, but have a different take on is the last one. Don't try to make something perfect out of the box. You can't anyway even if you wanted to because customers are always going to have a little bit different take on things than you might have as the developer. So my personal approach is to get it out there, then make sure I continue to test, analyze and most importantly listen to what customers say. This process of continual improvement is what ends up making the projects more and more successful.

[Jill]

Yep, the employees thing can be very challenging. Especially if you're not really a disciplinarian by nature. Hard enough for me to discipline my kids. I always assumed that grown up adult employees wouldn't need that, but some often do. Hiring is the hardest thing because you really can't tell in a few hours what someone is really like.

[Randy]

I always assumed that grown up adult employees wouldn't need that, but some often do.

Some? Some?!?!

Sorry, I let my old corporate days sneak back in there. My experience from then tells me 98.6% would need at least some close supervision.

I wouldn't be able to handle that. I'd be getting pissed off and firing someone every day. Hence why I don't want any employees, even if it limits me to some degree.