How exactly i stumbled on this forum and @MJ DeMarco his book, i don't remember since i was rapidly so overwhelmed by the power of the message and even more by the community this forum is representing.
My name is Jan I'm from The Netherlands and been an entrepreneur off and on all my life. Most of my business endeavors did not end very well since i was quickly bored with them and moved on to something else. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it brought me lot of experience and knowledge.
Although I'm dutch almost more than half my life i was always involved with Brazil and lived there for many years. Also i traveled a lot to other country's. I'm fluent in Portuguese and know a lot of Brazilian culture and local laws. Business opportunity? Probably, but not at this moment.
Meanwhile back in The Netherlands i worked hard the last two years in the online chat industry rented a chatbox and had some people, mostly girls, working with me to chat with customers about everything you can imagine that exists in life. Soon i developed my own platform but made some mistakes. One big mistake was hiring the first guy who came along with a good story. In retrospective i know he was full of it, but at the moment i thought let's see where it goes. Big mistake. Costed me a 10.000 Euro and still the platform had a lot of bugs. So i hired another programmer, and again another and again... 20.000 euro, well you get the picture. Finally i had a burnout, lost a lot of money and things were looking pretty bleak in a industry which can make you a lot of money. With a last effort i tried one more programmer and this time it worked out fine with someone who's actually a nice guy and delivers what he promises. At the moment the software runs fine and i'm renting it out to someone who's actually making more revenue then i ever was. And since i'm making a percentage which i'm investing back in the software to optimize it and build in more features i can honestly say it looks like i'm going somewhere with this. Just find more people to rent out the software to
.
So in the end my conclusion is, although i made some mistakes, somehow this time i did something different then i used to do, namely not throwing in the towel but adapted to the situation. Off course it's not the success-story i'm after but still i know something changed in my attitude. One of the things was that this time a lot of people were involved and depending on me and i didn't want to let them down and was pretty surprised how they believed in me, still wanted to work with me and even looked up to me. This made me realizing one important thing about myself as a person and how it reflected into the world of doing business. I was always staying in my comfort zone! Always trying to do everything on my own and, although being someone who has no problem with traveling to the other side of the world with nothing more then some clothes and traveler checks, i had somehow trouble with networking, with connecting to other people in business. Always afraid of letting people down, of not being good enough or even thinking about myself that i was a impostor.
But i have the skills, i have the experience, i have the knowledge. Just need more confidence, knowing how to focus and battle procrastination. That's what i like in this community, everybody is open and honest about these things.
Apart from learning how to deal with these hindrances, this forum and his members also are a treasure of information about entrepreneurship, business idea's, marketing, et cetera that i never had seen before.
That's me in a nutshell, and don't want to put my life story here, although pretty interesting i guess. What i like is to become financially independent in the next ten year or so and i the meanwhile become a contributing member of this community.
Man, never been so open to a group unknown people on or even off the internet in my life
My name is Jan I'm from The Netherlands and been an entrepreneur off and on all my life. Most of my business endeavors did not end very well since i was quickly bored with them and moved on to something else. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it brought me lot of experience and knowledge.
Although I'm dutch almost more than half my life i was always involved with Brazil and lived there for many years. Also i traveled a lot to other country's. I'm fluent in Portuguese and know a lot of Brazilian culture and local laws. Business opportunity? Probably, but not at this moment.
Meanwhile back in The Netherlands i worked hard the last two years in the online chat industry rented a chatbox and had some people, mostly girls, working with me to chat with customers about everything you can imagine that exists in life. Soon i developed my own platform but made some mistakes. One big mistake was hiring the first guy who came along with a good story. In retrospective i know he was full of it, but at the moment i thought let's see where it goes. Big mistake. Costed me a 10.000 Euro and still the platform had a lot of bugs. So i hired another programmer, and again another and again... 20.000 euro, well you get the picture. Finally i had a burnout, lost a lot of money and things were looking pretty bleak in a industry which can make you a lot of money. With a last effort i tried one more programmer and this time it worked out fine with someone who's actually a nice guy and delivers what he promises. At the moment the software runs fine and i'm renting it out to someone who's actually making more revenue then i ever was. And since i'm making a percentage which i'm investing back in the software to optimize it and build in more features i can honestly say it looks like i'm going somewhere with this. Just find more people to rent out the software to
.So in the end my conclusion is, although i made some mistakes, somehow this time i did something different then i used to do, namely not throwing in the towel but adapted to the situation. Off course it's not the success-story i'm after but still i know something changed in my attitude. One of the things was that this time a lot of people were involved and depending on me and i didn't want to let them down and was pretty surprised how they believed in me, still wanted to work with me and even looked up to me. This made me realizing one important thing about myself as a person and how it reflected into the world of doing business. I was always staying in my comfort zone! Always trying to do everything on my own and, although being someone who has no problem with traveling to the other side of the world with nothing more then some clothes and traveler checks, i had somehow trouble with networking, with connecting to other people in business. Always afraid of letting people down, of not being good enough or even thinking about myself that i was a impostor.
But i have the skills, i have the experience, i have the knowledge. Just need more confidence, knowing how to focus and battle procrastination. That's what i like in this community, everybody is open and honest about these things.
Apart from learning how to deal with these hindrances, this forum and his members also are a treasure of information about entrepreneurship, business idea's, marketing, et cetera that i never had seen before.
That's me in a nutshell, and don't want to put my life story here, although pretty interesting i guess. What i like is to become financially independent in the next ten year or so and i the meanwhile become a contributing member of this community.
Man, never been so open to a group unknown people on or even off the internet in my life
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