Need to get off my a$$ and take action

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Hello, Jello. It is good that you have realized this. It means that you are determined to do something in your life. Some people do not even realize this till they are old enough to retire. So, come up with a plan in your mind and act accordingly.

 

[Jello]

As titled I need to get off my a$$ and take action

So i started today by not going to the gym in the mornings but in the afternoon. The mornings I’ll use to get work done.

Got out of bed at 07:00 had breakfast and start working. First thing first and that means getting my shit together. So I opened up my laptop and started reading on this forum not knowing exactly where to start.

Lot of things I need to get in order but this thread especially turned things in perspective:

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ed-in-not-seeing-any-success-heres-why.54295/

Start to take action immediately. Thanks AndrewNC!

Before I’ll execute something, I mean no use to take real action on something you don’t believe in or not be able to visualize the result you want to have, I have to put some order in the things I’m doing right now and decide to continue with it or do something completely else.

I used to do several things at the same time with almost always the same result, not finishing any of them.

So I’ll start with explaining what I’m doing at the moment.

Currently I own a chat platform or at least the software where operators are talking with client’s who are feeling lonely or simply horny. What can I say sex sells and it will always sell. These day’s everything is going trough the Internet, if it is buying shoes, grocery or whatever you want to get delivered the next day or even within hours, talking with fellow entrepreneurs, dating and yes virtual sexual contact, it’s all on line. We are just at the beginning of a whole new era. Just think what the possibility’s are with VR and AI.

I used to rent a chat platform like this and decided to let someone build the same thing for me to take more profit and even more important to have control. Also I wanted it with more advanced options. I came across some developer with experience in this business, or at least I thought he had experience. Later I learned he had more experience in convincing people he knew what he was doing instead of really knowing what he was doing and delivered a platform with a lot of bugs.

So there I was with shitty software but a team of skilled people, who were, and still are, dedicated to me or at least love to work with me. This is something I still not value enough in my opinion or at least do not get the full extend out of it. But to get back at the software, the system was running with a lot of bugs and it was hard to find a developer who wanted to work with software which he or she did not build themselves, especially when it’s full of bugs. Several times I wanted to throw in the towel but since a lot of people still wanted to continue working with me despise a problematic system I kept going.

In the meanwhile I got in touch with a programmer who actually knew what he was doing and he resolved quite a few bugs in no time. The problem was that I was spending all my money on this bug hunting, and got so tired of all the stress that I suffered a burnout.

I simply didn’t wanted to keep going since I didn’t had the energy anymore. Again I almost quit with everything but this time I got out of my comfort zone and offered someone working at the platform, which I knew she had a chamber of commerce registration needed to run the system combined with the payment processing, to rent it from me. Within 5 minutes she accepted to rent the system while I would keep improve the software. Meaning spending more of my money.

Very fast she made some changes concerning the operators and made more revenue. I get my rent-money and 10% of the revenue she makes. This money I invested back in the software meaning telling a programmer what I want while he fixes it.

At a certain point she had changed everything she has knowhow of meaning how to deal with operators. But she lacked marketing skills and the revenue stagnated. She was renting out chat boxes on the platform to other people in the biz and one of these guy’s was already renting from me when I was still running the platform. This guy got my attention when he first came to me since he has a knack for automatizing processes and is working with lower income programmers in Bangladesh to write small scripts. He is also someone with a entrepreneur mindset. The girl who’s renting the platform accepted to get him aboard and now revenue is getting up again. Conclusion is to get out of my comfort zone and talk to people and know how to use them

To make a long story short I run a platform with somewhat unique software which is almost finished the way I/we wanted and I own the source-code. Also i have a team surrounding me consisting of dedicated people with each of them their own skills, contacts and experience. People who are very dedicated and love to work with me.

Still in my opinion I’m not using this organization consisting of hard working dedicated people to the full extend. This is probably due the fact I still don’t know what I want.

Meanwhile my end goal in life is pretty clear to me, I know what I want and the next five to ten years I’m happy to dedicate myself to work on it.

What I need to get my head wrapped around is what will I do the next five to ten years to get there business wise.

I have to options and those are;

1. continuing with my current business all though I have to invest more money in it.

Pros:

Right now I have a team of people surrounding me that believes in me and are willing to do whatever it takes. Everyone has their own set of skills what I can get to use if I learn more manager skills and have a idea which route to go with the whole system. The software is almost where I want it to be it only needs some more tweaking and adjustments.

CENTS does apply here

Control - as I own the system

Entry - It’s difficult to get in this market as good software costs a lot of money and I’ve seen a lot of people having trouble to keep a team together. Also it takes time to get things running.

Need – well that’s obvious. People (men and some women) will always crave for this kind of attention even knowing it’s just virtual.

Time – I noticed that when I am distancing myself from it it’s still running and the team knows what to do and only needs my guidance. Problem is that I have to learn to give this guidance at the right time and not whenever someone calls me on Skype, WhatsApp, phone, Messenger and so one...

Scale – this is what I need tot get starting right away by renting out the same software to more people also in other languages. This means again get out of my comfort zone and take action now not tomorrow.

Cons: Will have to spend more money at it as it’s pretty complex software build on PHP, SQL and frameworks. As I’m not a programmer I’ll have to pay somebody else to have it done for me. Also I need to make myself first aware if it really is going somewhere. Like I read in unscripted , and is of course completely logical, no use to keep continuing with something what in the end never will work. Drop it and do something else.

Or

2. Drop everything or at least take the rent-money which obviously will diminish very fast if I’m not involving myself anymore, start over fresh and pick something of my list of ideas.

Pros:

Fresh start means a clean start and it’s easier to get my head wrapped around it.

Cons: losing a team of dedicated people and in the end the same difficulties will appear. Who says I’ll not walk away again since I did it so many times including the last time.

If I’ll choose option one I’ll have to make some money besides what I’m earning from the system so I can change things faster and get my investment back sooner instead of taking the small portions every week and invest it back. This has to be no problem since there are a lot of possibility's listed on this forum. One thing I can do is start writing copy as a freelancer for a few months as I’m a pretty good writer, in dutch that is. Again taking action is the key.

Furthermore I have to learn some skills like marketing and Managing and I’m thinking of starting to learning programming, not to build it myself but to have the knowledge which should come in handy when dealing with developers.

If I go with option two I’ll choose from a list of ideas I have.

I don’t know if it’s smart to list my ideas here but as I don’t know if these ideas are doable or just plain stupid I don’t want to pollute the INSIDERS forum with garbage..

Idea 1. As I own some tropical bullfrogs which I feed crickets I know a lot of owners of exotic pets have to deal with escaped crickets in their homes. They always complain about the noise of these little critters.

Problem: Crickets impossible to catch making a noise sometimes for months.

Solution: Invent a powder or gel which attract crickets and kills them without being hazardous to the environment or others animals even those kept in the tanks as crickets tend to hide sometimes in the tank without being able to get catch them. Pretty much scalable I think.

Idea 2. In my country people use wood stoves to heath up there shacks and despite of a pretty good functioning central heating system sometimes even their homes.

Problem: More and more there is proof and complaints that these wood stoves and the wood they are burning in it gives a emission of micro-dust that's health treating Although there are filters on heavy industry level these are not available for the end consumer since they are way to expensive.
Solution: Develop cheaper good function filters for the homeowner market.

Idea3. Building a app in the same chatting industry I have experience in. Let customers speak with operators about sex. I do have the knowledge of the industry but not that much on programming. Have to learn programming / app building first.

Idea 4. Set up a brand of products for men in their midlife crisis. I’m 49 years old, lost almost 30 kilo’s at the gym and noticed suddenly attention from a lot of woman even younger girls in their 20’s I love this and started to pay attention on my looks including skincare products. A lot of men I know around their 50’s are struggling with feelings of getting older despite feeling young at hearth and in current day’s we have the opportunity to get older then our ancestors due medical improvements. 50 is the new 30 or at least 40. Let’s build a brand around it.

Idea 5. A social media platform where spotify, shazaam and features offered by Twitter, Facebook (groups) and instagram are combined. We love music, love to share music and love come together talking about it.

Idea 6. Develop a remote control where the parental control which some channels require is locked/unlocked with a iris scan or fingerprint. (Like on your phone)

Idea 7. I use Twitter for marketing and noticed there are a lot of different apps each with their own features. So for several different things I need to accomplish I need several different apps. Why not build one app with all the features together?

Idea 8. Build a app that’s listing and comparing all the prices from let’s say all the supermarkets in your town or even country. Right now I have three apps of three different supermarkets on my phone. When I like to buy butter I have to open all three apps and lookup the price of butter and choose the best deal (I’m not really doing this but know a lot of people are). Same goes for potatoes and so one. Would it be nice to have one app that instantly gives me the price of butter of potatoes as per supermarket? Same thing one can apply for hardware stores and so one.

Idea 9. I’m from the Netherlands and people around the world as the Dutch self claim that every person in my country speaks fluently English. This is not entirely true though. As it’s true there are a lot of Dutch people who speak English fluently and there are a lot of people that know their way around the English language there are still a lot of people who are not all that good in this language.

The latter two groups is a target market as they also want a Quora or learning platforms like Udacity and so one. Why not build some of these in Dutch?

Idea 10. Is somewhat in the extend of idea 9 and that’s starting a translation service to translate the books who are worth while to get translated to the Dutch language. The same market applies here, namely the Dutch people who are not fluently in English, or even if they are good at it like I somewhat consider myself, they always enjoy to read books in Dutch over reading the same books in English. When I heard of TMF and Unscripted the first thing I did was look at the same store if there was a translated version. These books and others need to get translated and even thought of it to do it myself.

The idea is to pay students who like to earn some money they need for their study and other costs, and translate the books worthwhile. Next to students there are more out of work or simply freelancers who like to do this kind of work. These same people can also work at idea 8.


By no means I have all these ideas giving enough thought to be sure if they will actually work. Most are really rough and need research and along the process of research they are vulnerable to adaption. The three A’s from unscripted will apply.

Just wanted to list some idea’s

To be honest I don’t want to get rid of the team of people I work with as they are really worth while and all of them have enough motivation to keep things going and are eager to make something big out of it. All they need is me to get on track and give them guidance. So I need to get out of my comfort zone, start to work on my manager skills, know how to delegate more and get a clearer picture. Of course I can drop everything once again and start something new, but probably I’ll quit just as easy again.

Some of the ideas I listed I still can do in the future when I combine this team of people and my contacts together with my new learned skills like programming, management and marketing. In my opinion it’s more that I need to change my mindset and get focused more. Also working on my comfort zone and get of my a$$ and start taking action. Maybe I’m still all over the place and have to narrow it down more. Start my learning progress with mindfulness and the right books and threads on this forum. Like the one AndrewNC posted. There are many more I noticed.

You might think why is he writing this down in this post as he more or less already knows what to do. Well the funny thing is that before I wrote this down I didn’t know what to do. Along writing it down I began to see a much clearer picture. Also want to share this with you people and still would like to hear some opinions and thoughts about it.

Please feel free to rip me apart and call me on my obvious flaws, but please be gentle

 

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