Wisdom of the Road

Ah so last night I was talking about lessons learned with RideSearch. I told myself I would sell it after all the house fiasco happened so now I am going to concentrate on that. I would only sell it if I got something fair for it. Probably for $150,000 or more. I put alot of time and money into it and that is actually a steal for anyone interested. I accomplished alot and I tended to dwell upon my accomplishments to keep me going. Like the national press exposure and getting people in the country to actually use the site to carpool with. I never knew anyone who was able to do what I had done. Get on national newspapers, syndicated television and actually go all out into an idea. Right now because gas prices are rising it is getting around 15 people signing up a day. RideSearch.com is now up to 11,500 members. I am not even doing anything to maintain the site and it keeps on growing. I am just sitting here and people are signing up. I am sure there is a profit model within it. I just never developed it all the way because I had lost my initial dedication.

The lessons I learned were really internal lessons about myself. I suppose real wisdom is gained through experience. For instance I learned that it is okay to take big risks, but you need to be very critical of what you are doing before you jump into something. You need to really answer the unanswered questions and not just assume everything is going to work out. I learned that passion can be used to keep a person going through tough times, but when you lose hope in your idea, you lose your passion for it and then nothing can save it. I learned owning a business is a lot like having a child. You have to first decide if you want to bring something into this world. Is it worth it to affect your entire life and will it help you and the world? The decision to start a business means automatically you have to sacrifice. You have to sacrifice your time, money and sometimes rather foolishly, your relationships.

I learned to be critical. I learned to not take people at face value. I learned to be critical of myself as well. I came to a point where I had to be honest with who I really was. I was not a CEO. I was a software engineer trying to be a CEO. I've now got the CEO skills but I don't want to use them in a business role. I'd rather use them in a technology role. But during this time I did gain insight into another world. I realized the decisions executives make can affect everyone who look up to them. This other world though, is full of liars. It is sad to say but money is the bottom line, not people. Eventually I got a board of advisors and I realized what kept them going was their personal goals and usually they were selfish. And if anything got in the way of a personal or business goal a real businessman will take action. I learned that selling is lying to people to make them feel good about a product or service. See, my service was free. I had nothing to lie about. During my travels to various shows people always wanted to know what the catch was. There was no catch. But we are so used to being lied to, we now expect it. As for myself I can now see the forest and the trees. I can see peoples motives and am critical of everyone and everything. Sure I am trying to sell RideSearch for $150,000, but to be honest it is only worth it if the person buying it has a passion for business and people and that is a hard combination to have. It probably won't sell, but everything I do to get it to sell will have a purpose, something I missed having along the way.

posted by Brian Alden Bass @ 3/19/2010 01:42:00 PM