Feeling lost

[Wozza]

Hi Guys,

I have been a lurker in this forum for quite sometime now. I have read MJ's book along with many other business/self help books and guess what? It seems nothing actually will get me to focus and take directed action.

Im 34 years old, wife, 2 kids (6yrs and 2yrs) and from the UK. 10 years ago I was doing pretty well for myself, I had a small online retail business with a small 'real world' store as well. Business was good, not spectacular but pretty decent.

A few years passed and I closed the retail business (larger companies were killing my margins) to focus more on helping other people setup and design their own online stores/websites. At the time I saw an opportunity to make more money helping other business owners. I studied web design in college and was always good with computers and code from a young age, so I went back to this, took a few more courses and setup shop as a new web designer.

With this I moved my business to a nice office located in our town. Around this time our daughter was born and I noticed a distinct change in my outlook since then. I became more fearful, bit more less 'happy go lucky' and worried constantly about the future. I decided to downsize, sold off one of our cars (on finance) and moved home to a larger family home based just outside of town with room for a home office. I cancelled my lease with current office and switched to working from home full time.

Another year or 2 passes and the web design business is just about steady, but not enough to support my small family. My wife was not working then and was a stay at home mom. I took a gamble on some online retail business ventures involving some new suppliers and both new businesses failed and left me with some debt, disgruntled customers and a real hit to my confidence. The supplier was paid up front for customer orders and were drop shipping the goods to the customer, this worked well for a few months, but when the supplier went bust with around 15K of orders and my pre paid funds to them, I had to close the business and attempt to refund customers out of my own pocket. Some I'm still paying back to this day. I also owe a good chunk of money to my Dad who lent me some funds to start one of the businesses.

During this time I was still operating the web design business and it took off again with some larger projects coming my way, however this little surge was just a temporary boost.

About a year or so later our son was born, the if Im honest, the PANIC really started to hit.

I was worried about everything. The future, our bills, my creditors, past customers of the failed retail ventures, I felt like a failure and even contemplated suicide as I was convinced my family would be better off with the 500K life insurance money than with me. So far at business, I sucked. I had dug a big hole for myself and was terrified of dragging them down with me.

Fast forward to today, still operating the web design business from home, clients are happy and I have good return business and some new web design jobs on the horizon. HOWEVER, its not where I want to be. I seem stuck trading time for money and fear I will be if I dont make a change NOW. Finances are not great, getting by and thats its.

Also, working from home now is getting a little more strained with 2 kids in the house at certain times. My wife got a job, she works shifts and Im working now more at nights and early mornings as I look after the kids while she works.

I feel like I have lost my direction.
Im very frustrated at myself.
I feel like I KNOW what to do, however I dont know where to put my energy.
I dont really have passion for anything at the moment.
I know Im capable and will ing to work hard.
However I cant seem to get traction with any idea.
I had big dreams as a kid, I feel now at 34 I have done nothing special with my life.

This post is a form of mental masturbation as its been a goal of mine to at least admit to the world in some form as to how I feel.

I have ideas for SEO businessess, creating a blog, digital products, kindle books and more. Each gets me excisited, but I fizzle out within about 24hrs as I cant F*cking decide which niche/direction to divert all my energy to.

Im lost on the sea of opportunity, without a rudder.

Thanks for reading..

 

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[cautiouscapy]

Hi @Wozza

I have nothing enlightening to say.
However I wanted you to know that someone has read what you wrote, can identify with how you have been feeling and is not judging where you are.

a goal of mine to at least admit to the world in some form as to how I feel

Admitting to yourself that this is how you feel is a step in the right direction. You have diagnosed your "dis-ease", so you can start to look for ways to treat it.

As you have surely realized, there are people on this forum (thankfully much more articulate than me) who will be able to help you focus on which way to move forward.

 

[randomnumber314]

Hi Guys,

I have been a lurker in this forum for quite sometime now. I have read MJ's book along with many other business/self help books and guess what? It seems nothing actually will get me to focus and take directed action.

Im 34 years old, wife, 2 kids (6yrs and 2yrs) and from the UK. 10 years ago I was doing pretty well for myself, I had a small online retail business with a small 'real world' store as well. Business was good, not spectacular but pretty decent.

A few years passed and I closed the retail business (larger companies were killing my margins) to focus more on helping other people setup and design their own online stores/websites. At the time I saw an opportunity to make more money helping other business owners. I studied web design in college and was always good with computers and code from a young age, so I went back to this, took a few more courses and setup shop as a new web designer.

With this I moved my business to a nice office located in our town. Around this time our daughter was born and I noticed a distinct change in my outlook since then. I became more fearful, bit more less 'happy go lucky' and worried constantly about the future. I decided to downsize, sold off one of our cars (on finance) and moved home to a larger family home based just outside of town with room for a home office. I cancelled my lease with current office and switched to working from home full time.

Another year or 2 passes and the web design business is just about steady, but not enough to support my small family. My wife was not working then and was a stay at home mom. I took a gamble on some online retail business ventures involving some new suppliers and both new businesses failed and left me with some debt, disgruntled customers and a real hit to my confidence. The supplier was paid up front for customer orders and were drop shipping the goods to the customer, this worked well for a few months, but when the supplier went bust with around 15K of orders and my pre paid funds to them, I had to close the business and attempt to refund customers out of my own pocket. Some I'm still paying back to this day. I also owe a good chunk of money to my Dad who lent me some funds to start one of the businesses.

During this time I was still operating the web design business and it took off again with some larger projects coming my way, however this little surge was just a temporary boost.

About a year or so later our son was born, the if Im honest, the PANIC really started to hit.

I was worried about everything. The future, our bills, my creditors, past customers of the failed retail ventures, I felt like a failure and even contemplated suicide as I was convinced my family would be better off with the 500K life insurance money than with me. So far at business, I sucked. I had dug a big hole for myself and was terrified of dragging them down with me.

Fast forward to today, still operating the web design business from home, clients are happy and I have good return business and some new web design jobs on the horizon. HOWEVER, its not where I want to be. I seem stuck trading time for money and fear I will be if I dont make a change NOW. Finances are not great, getting by and thats its.

Also, working from home now is getting a little more strained with 2 kids in the house at certain times. My wife got a job, she works shifts and Im working now more at nights and early mornings as I look after the kids while she works.

I feel like I have lost my direction.
Im very frustrated at myself.
I feel like I KNOW what to do, however I dont know where to put my energy.
I dont really have passion for anything at the moment.
I know Im capable and will ing to work hard.
However I cant seem to get traction with any idea.
I had big dreams as a kid, I feel now at 34 I have done nothing special with my life.

This post is a form of mental masturbation as its been a goal of mine to at least admit to the world in some form as to how I feel.

I have ideas for SEO businessess, creating a blog, digital products, kindle books and more. Each gets me excisited, but I fizzle out within about 24hrs as I cant F*cking decide which niche/direction to divert all my energy to.

Im lost on the sea of opportunity, without a rudder.

Thanks for reading..

You used the term "I" 43 times in your post. Stop thinking about you and start thinking about providing value to others.

Can you:

• Offer other products/services/information to your web design customers?
• Increase existing businesses' revenues through your SEO idea?
• Provide value to others with the blog/digital product/king book ideas?
• Stick with one idea (no matter good or bad) and see it through to success?

This was posted yesterday, watch it all if you can, if you can't watch this one for sure.

 

[Unknown]

You're a good writer. Play to your strengths. There are some excellent threads in the self publishing forum.

 

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[RoadTrip]

Fast forward to today, still operating the web design business from home, clients are happy and I have good return business and some new web design jobs on the horizon. HOWEVER, its not where I want to be. I seem stuck trading time for money and fear I will be if I dont make a change NOW. Finances are not great, getting by and thats its.

Are you able to outsource the designing part? You could start with a smaller project and keep moving bigger projects to lower wage countries. There are many very large successful IT companies which apply this strategy. Why not use it yourself? Of course, customer satisfaction needs to be at the same level as now, and preferable even higher. But you will be able to free up some of your time to spend on other things. Or better even, take your current business to the next level.

And if not, don't lose your motivation! There are several people on this forum with kids who spend a lot of time on their fastlane project. Some have a full-time job, some don't. I'm still struggling myself too but I just try to take action everyday. And we're expecting our first baby in a few weeks. I'm definitely going to enjoy the time ahead, but I will keep working on my fastlane project until I succeed.

 

[Wozza]

Thanks everyone for your replies, all helpful and appreciated.

 

[Wozza]

Aaaaaannndd Im back, I havent moved an inch since my last post. I just thought I would self shame, to motivate my a$$!

 

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[cautiouscapy]

Aaaaaannndd Im back, I havent moved an inch since my last post. I just thought I would self shame, to motivate my a$$!

At least you came back and admitted it

Does that sort of self-shaming motivate you? It doesn't me ;-)

What stopped you from moving forward just an inch?

I don't have great pearls of wisdom (maybe a few small ones), but others will.

 

[Jata]

I'd say I'm well qualified to comment on this as until very recently I felt precisely the same way. I too am 34 and from the UK. I also work as a web developer. A few months back I was considering getting out of development altogether. I felt like I'd lost my passion for it too. I was sick of the ever changing frameworks with people always chasing after the newest shiniest technology. In the past month things have changed. I got moved to a new project in work, which I hated from the start. A lot was expected of me and to begin with I simply wasn't producing. Negative feedback started coming my way in spades. I had a decision to make. Buckle down or get out altogether. I chose the former. Around the same time a friend offered me a side project for some extra cash which I've taken on. I've been working 16 hours days for the past month and strangely enough I'm enjoying it. I'm getting a perverse satisfaction out of working those hours. In retrospect I can see where I was going wrong. That's not to say I have all the answers but I've definitely turned a corner.

Passion - I heard the 'find your passion' thing and totally bought into it. I spent the better part of three years trying to find it and failed. My current belief is that you bring passion to whatever you do. It doesn't sound romantic or appealing does it. It's probably not what you want to hear but I believe it to be true.

Victim Mentality - I realised that I'd taken on a victim mentality. I too went through a bad time a few years ago the details of which I won't bore you with. The upshot was that I was left feeling dazed, bewildered, lost and in pain. That was when I heard the 'find your passion' thing and chased it as a form of salvation. Over time I started to resent my job as I wasn't 'passionate' about it. Then I started to feel like a victim.

Motivation - This ties in closely with the passion thing. I realised I was waiting to feel 'motivated' by something before I could consider starting. My thinking was along the lines of 'I'm not feeling motivated yet so I obviously haven't found the right thing yet. I'll keep looking'. You can't operate like this as you'll never find the right thing. Instead pick something and make it right.

Commitment - I came to the realisation that I hadn't committed to anything in a very long time. I was always 'hedging my bets' on the basis that a better thing might come along. I wasn't committed to software development any more even though I did it every day. You have to commit first. Show up and get invested. Motivation will follow.

Habits - Your habits define you for better or worse. Build good ones, kill bad ones. When I first started putting in long hours I found it hard and exhausting. Now I get home and it feels natural to just carry on working. That change happened in less than a month.

Work Ethic - Following your passion is based on the premise of work not feeling like work. Or put another way avoiding work. Once I saw it for what it was I felt ashamed. I'd become lazy. A quality I'd never identified with. You have to grind it out. If you help enough people get what they want you earn the right to have what you want.

So. What can you do with the above? Hopefully you can identify with some of my points and feel a little better. That's not enough though. It won't get you anywhere. You'll still wake up tomorrow in exactly the same position. So in addition I'll offer some actionable steps that might just help.

Watch this:

Read this:
http://markmanson.net/passion

Read this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Psycho-Cybernetics-Updated-Expanded-Maxwell-Maltz-ebook/dp/B00SI02BW4

Above are three steps which helped push me in the right direction. Ultimately it comes down to how uncomfortable you are with your position. I got to a stage where I wasn't willing to tolerate it any more. It's easy to feel lost. It's a convenient excuse even if it doesn't start out as one. To go back to your original metaphor you say you're lost at sea without a rudder. The thing is a rudder won't work unless you're moving anyway. Take action, get some momentum then adjust course as you go. I wish you the very best of luck.

As a bonus listen to this bloke. He's awesome:
https://soundcloud.com/the-mfceo-project/the-power-of-perspective-with
https://soundcloud.com/the-mfceo-project/kill-it-every-day

 

[gabeb1920]

Hi @Wozza ,

I don't know if this will help much at all and please don't put stock in my comments over the others here. I'm a complete newbie at this whole entrepreneur gig so I don't have a lot of concrete advice but I can offer another perspective.

And that perspective is that you've already done so much! Give yourself a little bit of credit for how far you've come! I'm here just starting out and I'm so nervous about starting an online web designer/developer business and here you are having already made the leap! Not only that but you've been making it work for several years! Think about all the awesome stuff you've learnt and experience you've gained! That's awesome!

Something we all often do to ourselves is that we look at our goals and see how far we have to go but we don't give ourselves credit for how far we've come. Instead I've heard several people mention that we should concentrate on building systems:
http://jamesclear.com/goals-systems

So I'm not suggesting you sit back, rest on your laurels and congratulate yourself. Rather try not to think about how far you have to go but think about the next step, the process you'll undertake everyday and eventually you'll get to where you want to be.

But as I said, don't take my word for it. What do I know? I'm a complete beginner just trying to get started!

I hope you can achieve little things everyday which will turn into big things over time.

Cheers

Gabriel

 

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