DISQUS

Congratulations!

@Ben: Treat it like any form of exercise. Obviously you don't want to overdue it the day before your big meeting. During the few days prior I would recommend a light workout.

In general though, I think sonic training should be part of every entrepreneur's verbal fitness program.

I do speaking exercises prior to presentations. I take a book pert to the subject matter I'll be presenting and read it aloud (that means loud) while walking around my flat. I may do this for an hour or more projecting my voice while using hand movements. Do this until you begin to feel horse. Guy's Kawasaki's "Art of the Start" is particularly good for infusing "enthusiasm", cut-to-the-chase messaging layered over solid entrepreneurial themes. Works like magic!

This new theme has a "Home & Garden" appeal. For example, you could easily replace the gloves with fresh tomatoes and it wouldn't change the look and feel.

While you may have grown tired of the old theme, blues and blacks communicate business. I think it would have been better to rework the theme while maintaining a business color pallet.

@Ben I don't agree with your treatment of failure. It's misleading. Would you consider a day-trader who loses all of his money in the market a failure? One who spent months studying charts and graphs and wrote Ajax software he thought would give him an edge? I'd call that person naive. That's not failure. Now, if that same person tries the same foolishness again, now knowing better, then yeah, that's failure.

In developed economies like the the U.S., in which everything is driven by competing investments seeking profit, you simply can't outsmart the market. Cheating could put you in jail. However, you can find inefficiencies and profit from them. This takes years of practice. Phil is off to a good start. Sounds like his Uncle is leveraging his insider knowledge and relationships with Mailitsafe.com. Perhaps his Uncle worked for a legal firm? Or, maybe he has connections to companies that have sensitive data.

Yes, there are other ways to start companies. They are called long-shots. They do come in. And their stories are favorites of the press and media. Everyone likes to cheer the winners. It sells papers and it drives traffic to blogs. What they don't share is the cemetery. That is the graveyard of companies during the same period with the exact same formula that went bust. Nassim Taleb calls this "survivorship bias." He explains this common fallacy in his excellent books "The Black Swan" and earlier work "Fooled By Randomness."

http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-...

@Phil I know losing 30K certainly stings (sweat equity is heavily discounted and doesn't count for much.) You made mistakes but I don't consider your experience a failure. Repeating the cliché, mistakes are how we learn. It triggers the brain that this information is important and should be stored.

In a way, you probably paid _below_ market rate for the type of accelerated education you received while building MyCarpoolStation.com. Trust me, you won't get that same value from a business school. Also consider that people pay thousands to attend bootcamps and come away with less than a 10th of what you have learned.

When you do attend business school, you'll get more out of it than your fellow students. That's because you have "floating" experience. Floating experience seeks anchor points through instruction. Once coupled with your MBA courses your experience will become knowledge and perspective. (Even more so than you have today as you reflect on what went wrong.) Most of your classmates will receive instruction but have nothing for it to stick to. (Case studies and team projects are poor substitutes.) This highlights the danger of getting an MBA right after an undergrad. Without immediate application ones MBA skills will fade. Phil, I'd say you're on the right track.

Learn to view opportunities in terms of competitive markets and you'll always know where you stand. Best of luck!

Guys (and gals) don't be fooled by the drawing. You should view everything in terms of rate-of-return and markets. That's all the matters. Phil participated in a market (transportation) in which, just like all markets, there are only a finite number of opportunities and return available. The market size and shape are driven by many economic factors outside of one's control. Just like in the stock-market, best returns are achieved when you have some "inside" information. Otherwise, you're basically gambling.

Professional investors hedge their bets. Why should it be any different for the entrepreneur? Entrepreneurs can hedge with information and relationships. You achieve your insider status by working in an industry and making friends. Otherwise you're hoping to get lucky.

Operationally, Phil made mistakes and he'll learn from them. There is a formula to this "entrepreneur" thing and dusting yourself off and trying again is not it. Get a job, learn your industry, and meets lots of people. Then when you recognize a gap where the market is being underserved that's your time to pounce! And if you've done your networking, you'll have plenty of friends ready to support you. After all, you understand their needs the best.

Phil didn't win the lottery this time, nor do millions of other hopefuls who seek their fame and fortune in professional sports or Hollywood. There really is no difference for the entrepreneur. But if one is persistent he/she will find their place in the industry and will succeed - albeit at the average rate of return. Phil didn't fail. He placed a bet on the long-shot and the pony didn't come in. He gambled and he lost. That's not failure. Nothing he could have done would have changed the odds otherwise. That's just how markets and ecosystems work.