Seriously. Just do it!

(This article will contain a strong opinion and most people won’t like what I will write. As soon as you don’t like it, I encourage you to leave this website and never look back.)

Over the past 18 months, I completely shifted the way I looked at the world.

I adjusted what I did with my time, I changed the people I hung out with, I did things that were WAY out of my comfort zone, I went to the other side of the world, I gathered the best and brightest people I could find, I had those people invest in my company, I convinced Finn – an awesome go-getter – to join my company. I’m interviewing Richard Branson next week and I’m speaking at an entrepreneurship event to university students in my country tomorrow, while I never even graduated college. And it doesn’t even feel like a big achievement right now. I just did it, but it wasn’t that hard. I just did it.

1. Jokers

Most people within your nearest circle of friends are jokers. They constantly talk about doing something: creating a business, doing that great road trip or even quitting their dead-end job.

But even though they constantly mention it, months later, they are STILL talking about the same idea. You know that they’ll never do it. They always have an excuse.

• “It’s not the right moment”
• “I’m not clever enough”
• “I need to focus on my job”
• “I’ve got some classes to follow”
• “My cat is hungry”
• “I need money to do this”
• or my most favorite: “I don’t have enough time”

I’m amazed by the amount of people who preach and scream that they don’t have enough time to execute their ideas or follow their dreams.

They “don’t have time”. But then the next thing that person starts to ask you is whether or not you also saw *every sitcom or movie* on TV last week, what level your World-of-Warcraft character is, or how many parties you went to last weekend!

Jokers.

2. Execute

Become confident, drop the bullshit, and execute.

It’s all about execution. Nothing else matters.

The difference between successful entrepreneurs and jokers isn’t passion. It isn’t luck. It isn’t money. It isn’t their network. It isn’t knowledge. It’s the fact that they simply DO.

It’s really that simple!

Successful people focus on opportunities and execute.

Jokers focus on obstacles and make up excuses.

3. How I changed

I decreased the amount of time I spent with other jokers. Even when they are your best friends, parents, cousins or classmates, it’s time to pull away. Learn to do stuff, execute, ship, and stop talking to the jokers.

Your character and personality are being defined by the people you spend the most time with.

This is because humans want to be liked by the people in their closest group op friends. And imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Most people are jokers. And because you are surrounded by jokers, you are very likely to become a joker.

Think of all the people in your close circle of friends and family. Try to pinpoint which ones are the worst. Those people who are always complaining about their current situation, but don’t do jack shit to change it. Those people who want to do something, but always end the sentence with “someday”.

I’m definitely not telling you to ditch them. But it might be a good time to start thinking whether or not it is still a good idea to keep listening to their “advice”.

Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.
Thomas J. Watson

What do you want to do? Who do you want to become?

Target all (soon to be) successful people within your network and contact them.

Surround yourself with success. Surround yourself with passion. And most importantly, surround yourself with people who execute. Surround yourself with go-getters.

Learn where they meet, ask if you can join. Tell them about your plans, have them motivate you and push you forward. Become accountable to them. Learn what drives them and try to impress THEM. Impress go-getters. You’ll only impress them by becoming a go-getter, because indeed, imitation is the greatest form of flattery..

Stop listening to the people who love you. They want to protect you and will give you advice that will do just that. Protect you. The downside is that the most “safe” mentality is the joker-mentality. Nothing bad will happen, but nothing great will happen either. You’ll live in the status-quo.

Learn to judge yourself by your actions, not your dreams.
Stop being a joker.

These are the things that will define my life.

I feel that every day, I figure out something that I didn’t completely grasp before. Today, I realized that success comes from identifying the things that truly matter to you.

What matters the most to me, is making my parents proud of what I do.

I’m blessed to have such great parents who do everything they can to get out of my way and hand me all the possible tools to flourish. There are a lot of people in the world who don’t receive as many chances as I do, and I’d feel incredibly bad if I were to waste the opportunities my parents present to me.

I feel that, even though I make radical decisions that aren’t exactly aligned with their vision of my future, my family is extremely proud of what I’m doing, the risks I take and the things I’m trying to achieve. Just now, I realized that the fire burning inside me, that’s constantly pushing me to go harder, faster and stronger, is in fact fueled by a virtuous circle. (Yes, I just quoted Daft Punk)

I will exploit every chance they give me and I will succeed, because I want to make them proud. Making them and myself proud, will again fuel that same fire burning inside me.

I want to be remarkable.

These are the moments that will define my life. Without them, life will lack the meaning that makes it worth living. Some day my life will come to an end, and I want to look back on a life filled with the satisfaction that comes from knowing I’ve exhausted my potential and achieved the dreams that haunted me in my youth.

6 years ago, I was a slacker. A time-waster, a procrastinator. A typical high-school student.
After high-school and after shortly going through the employment system my parents have been in for dozens of years, I discovered my calling.
I noticed that even though it’s immensely difficult to create the discipline required to sustain focus, once I found out about my passion for entrepreneurship, soon enough that focus became a part of my character.

When all your mental and emotional resources are fixed upon your goal, the sleepless nights and the extra hours don’t bother you, they inspire yet more effort. I now understand that this is what has kept others from success and it is what will make success so sweet.

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
-Aristotle

I’m trying to set out boldly, because I know that no one is going to come and hand me my dreams. With the first taste of success, I realized that the possibilities were higher than I first imagined. I reevaluate, reconsider, and my ambitions evolve. The first realization of success becomes the motivating factor for even greater accomplishment.

Old friends begin to look at me differently. I can see it in their eyes, and notice it in the way I feel, the newfound conviction in my mind. I’m doing something most people never get the chance of doing, I’m living life on my terms – and they can see it.

The truth about achieving the things we want isn’t elegant and profound, it’s harsh and it’s ugly. Success comes from a level of effort that slackers are unwilling to entertain and a level of focus that procrastinators are unable to sustain.

I’m going to show my parents how great I am.

It’s true, I’m an asshole! Here’s why:

Recently, one of my blog posts called Why Most People Dream and Only Some Do: The Go-Getter Theory got quite some traffic. A lot of people seemed to like the article and shared it all over the interwebs. It got a lot of attention: 50,000 unique visitors over a few weeks time.

My inbox is now overflowing with emails filled with hatred, flames, tons of negative comments and criticism. Usually, the following quote by Bill Cosby is the rule of thumb, but I’m going to make an exception because I feel I have a humbling message to tell.

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby

I admit that the specific blog post was written in a bit of an egocentric way. I admit that that I was condescending against a friend who has a monotonous job at the assembly line of a car factory. I now understand that this negativity of mine against people who have standard 9-to-5 jobs is powered by jealousy. There, I said it. I’m jealous of the day-to-day, nine-to-five work force.

Many people have an admiration for people like me who just go off on their own, who have a lot of aspiration, who throw caution to the wind and take a lot of risk to follow their dreams. But please understand that I am the one who is jealous of people who don’t have to do that. I am jealous of people who can take the “easy path”. Just go to work, switch off their brain for 8 hours a day, climb their corporate ladder and who are happy with that.

The thing is, I can’t do that.

I am officially unemployable. I’m not able to work for a boss. I am not able to shut my mouth and just do the work people tell me to do.
I will do anything I can think of to keep from having a job. When people try to tell me what to do, I’ll get frustrated. To me, having a normal job feels like hammering nails on my coffin.

I need to be independent, I want to do my own thing until I succeed and I can’t understand that people aren’t like me.

But if you think I’m an asshole. Know that I’m jealous of you.

Yours truly,

A jealous asshole.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I just won the biggest marble from a boy three years younger than me, and my “best buddy” back then was talking to me on how much he liked his new moped. (He wasn’t legally old enough to drive it on the street, yet he did).

He got it from his father who, I believe, up till now still has a bicycle shop.

We used to talk about things we’d like to do. He was going to have his own motor-shop one day, while all I could think about at that time was my new marble. (It was huge!) I wanted to win more marbles, get rich and …

Now let’s fast forward to present tense. My best friend isn’t my friend anymore since we went our separate ways towards different schools and places. Recently, I saw a different classmate from back then and he told me my friend is now working eight to five at the assembly line of a car factory, doing the most repetitive job possible, for no specific reason whatsoever.
Not really what he had hoped for at first.

What differs those who are naturally set to succeed, from others who are not?
Why does one “just do it” and complete a job, while the other never even gets to it, or quits at the first speed bump?

It boggles my mind why some entrepreneurs make it big while others settle for mediocre or close to nothing results!
What differentiates each of them?

Lately, I’ve met a lot of business men and students set to create a startup, and I started noticing a few differences…
It’s not education, skills or talent; It’s passion, drive and motivation. Go-getters are passionate about what they do. They wake up in the morning fired up with enthusiasm coupled with unshakeable belief that they will make life work the way they want.

People who get stuff done strive for “good enough” and go on to the next. Quit being a perfectionist…

I believe that perfectionism is a bad “quality” to have and shouldn’t be in the dictionary of any entrepreneur. If you are a perfectionist, you will try to turn every detail into a Sistine chapel and burn out. Good enough is key in getting things done. If you try to deliver “perfection”, you’ll never reach your goal.

People who do things that are good enough end up accomplishing much more than those who chase after the illusion of perfection.

Coincidentally, most successful entrepreneurs I’ve met so far are the ones who didn’t pass school with flying colours but are the ones who barely or didn’t get through. The ones who had just enough grades to go on to the next year. Why would you want to put in all this effort to obtain an excess of grades that are useless to you? Just get enough and spend the rest of your time on stuff you enjoy.

The Go-Getter is the person who acts now, not tomorrow, and thinks in short-terms.

They are proactive, not reactive. They shape their own destiny and never allow themselves to fall prey to the so-called external circumstances.
Always be asking yourself: “What is the smallest next step”, “What do I need to do now, to get things going”

People who can think of the next actionable task and are able to be specific about it, are the ones who will get to it and deal with it.
They act now and execute specific steps.

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.

Example: Don’t think “I need to market my product to bloggers” but think in multiple specific steps:

1. I need to get 10 names of bloggers relevant to my subject
2. I’m going to get the names at website x
3. What are the top 2 specific key features of my startup?
4. Write 3 custom mails about those features
5. Send it to them TODAY

Achievers hate to let themselves down

I’m not talking about failing. Fail big & fast. Fail forward. Don’t sweat it.

I’m talking about the mental state of those people who’d rather die trying, than give up half way. The main motivation of achievers comes from within and is not nourished from the outside. For most people, it’s easy to give up promises you make to yourself (look at all the failed new year’s resolutions) but for achievers, that’s the hardest thing to do. Walking around with the feeling that they didn’t give it all they’ve got. The feeling of “what if I went all the way”, “what if…”

The Go-Getter loves what he does (and delegates the rest)

Key to getting off your feet and kicking some ass is simply doing what you’re good at and what you love. Dump/outsource/delegate the rest. Be able to set your ego aside and let someone better than you take over the parts you suck at.

It is not education, skills nor talent; It is passion, drive and motivation.

Go-getters are passionate about what they do. They wake up in the morning fired up with enthusiasm coupled with an unshakable belief that they will make life work the way they want.

Are you a go-getter or a star-gazer? Are you going all the way or already preparing a plan B? Are you constantly talking about your idea, your exit strategy or why something just won’t work, or are you the one kicking it and working it out?

Either way, whatever is happening to you, your business, your life or your idea, whether good or bad, most likely…

It’s all your fault.

The past few months, I’ve been working on my latest venture.
It will solve a big problem I have been confronted with since I started RunAddicts.net, and by scratching my itch, I am sure I will also be able to scratch others’. I  believe my business will become the next best thing since the invention of the occupation called: “writer”.

I have been to multiple meetings, events and people in the industry to present my idea and ask for some feedback. Everywhere I went, I received great comments and replies; The overall message is that those individuals and businesses I met, want to become my clients when I launch my project. They all loved it.

Recently, on a nice Sunday afternoon, I read a small tweet addressed to me, about a business that received millions of dollars in funding. This happens everyday, you might say, but what made this single event a dark point in my day, is the fact that this specific business is doing something similar as what I’m developing. Even worse is that I am only 2 weeks away from launching.

I immediately panicked and sent a mail to a person, who I consider to be one of my mentors, asking if I should “quit” working on the project. Discovering that my newborn competition received multiple millions of funding, while I am on a shoe-string budget, was kind of terrifying and it made me shiver down to the back of my spine.

My mentor sent me the following reply. Simple, down to earth and absolute common-sense, which I could have easily thought of myself. However, I didn’t because I panicked, thus this short email meant the world to me. It calmed me down and reassured me that I should stick to what I’m doing:

The world is big enough for two similar services – and yours has a
better name of the two :)  Besides the big world, there are always specific
niches – geographical, linguistic, content-related, etc. – you can go after
and “own” rather profitably regardless of the competition in the big world.

And – last but not least – if they become huge and your service becomes
“just” significant, you can always sell it to them :)  Also not a bad deal.

So, I’d suggest to keep at it

My conclusion of this article is the following: YOU NEED A MENTOR; If I couldn’t send out this panic-bomb to someone, most likely, I would have turned to friends and family, of whom most had said to me to quit. Why? Because people who aren’t entrepreneurs have a different take on the idea of creating a business with absolutely no assurance that it will succeed. It would simply be just another reason for them to tell me to stop.

After some reflection and comparing my project with the “competition”, I discovered that my new business has a lot of key differences which will make it a much better service.

When you’re a young starter in the big world of entrepreneurs, having a mentor will definitely be to your advantage!

If you liked this article, or learnt something from it in any way, let me know. It’s great to hear about your experience.

( Ps: Leo, you rock! )

Yes, you can boost your own skills by coaching others! Here’s how…

At a first glance, you might think that this statement is untrue and even if it was, it may not be applicable to you. You may even say: If I spend my time and energy coaching others, how could that help me? Plus I am not a professional coach so how can I coach anyone?

Well, whether you know it or not, you did! I don’t know who you are but I am so certain that at some point in time you have coached someone. How did I know?

“Coaching is the art and practice of inspiring, energizing, and facilitating the performance, learning and development of the player” Myles Downey

So if you ever inspired, encouraged or educated someone, it means that you have been involved in some form of coaching. The beauty of coaching that it is not about controlling others and that’s why, it always works. When you are coaching others you are not trying to change them. Instead you are offering them many priceless gifts including:

• Giving valuable information, advise and/or insights
• Asking them the right questions.
• Helping them see the cup half full
• Motivating them to reach their full potential
• Enabling them to tap into their inner resources
• Helping them master the art of self-discipline

So far so good but what’s in it for me?
How can coaching others boost my own skills?

Well, here is a real story that clearly explains that paradox. I once attended a seminar about success and friend of mine was planning to go too, but he couldn’t make it. So, he asked me to share with him what I learned. To be honest with you, I felt so discouraged in the beginning since I know that my friend is very detail oriented and will bore me to tears with his endless questions. Still, I couldn’t turn down my friend.

To my surprise, when I started sharing the seminar with him, I discovered many parts that I haven’t paid attention to before and his so-called boring questions inspired me to dig deeper and read between the lines which helped discover even more insights.
Instead of me being a passive recipient of the lecturer information, I engaged with my friend in a stimulating conversation which, in turn, helped me get a deeper sense of the main purpose of the seminar and how I can make the most out of it.

Even better, we decided to break down the main ideas of the seminar into practical steps and committed to accomplish them together. We formed a success team and decided to meet on regular basis in order to discuss what we accomplished.

After this amazing experience, I couldn’t help asking myself one logical “what if” question: What if my friend didn’t ask me to explain the seminar to him? Probably I would have ended up understanding half of it and applying even less of it! (Think of all the workshops/seminars you attended in the past and was fired up with enthusiasm to put them into action but soon all the rush fades away under life’s obligation and you ended up doing nothing). This time, coaching my friend helped me boost my analytical skills on the one hand and gave me a great motivation and call to action on the other hand.

In this case my coaching was educational in nature though I have to say that I learned a lot from my friend’s questions and contributions. So, I guess it is fair to say that I and my friend coached one another with me having only one added advantage – the seminar material.

This is exactly what happens in any form of coaching: you learn from the person you are coaching somehow. It is a two-way process. Plus you will feel ecstatic when you know you have touched someone’s life in a meaningful way. As the saying goes, “a friend in need is a friend indeed”. Are you willing to become “a friend indeed” and boost your own skills along the way?

I can’t wait to find out! Let me know in the comments below!

Recently, I went on a vacation to a beautiful town, Molyvos, on the Lesvos Island in Greece. Travelling is one of my biggest passions not only because it broadens my horizons and opens up mind but also because it allows me to do enjoy many rewarding activities that I tend to put off while at home in Belgium.

On top of the list of my favorite travelling activities comes reading business, self-improvement, entrepreneurial and management books. This time, I brought along 6 books, which I read over a period of 7 days.

Lucky for me, all the books were enjoyable and some were excellent.  Interestingly, two books stood out as they seemed to contradict one another. One of them is called “Why work sucks and how to fix it”. It discusses a very revolutionary concept of replacing the 9-to-5 working system with “Results-Only Work Environment”. The other book, “Delivering happiness”, brags about the author’s success in creating a great 9-to-5 business powered by happy employees through focusing on the company culture.

Why work sucks and how to fix it

(Amazon link)

A quick summary of this book is quite simple: Traditional work sucks.

Why?

Because people (including myself) hate the 9-to-5 lifestyle with its unnecessary meetings, schedules, no freedom, you name it!

The book is based on the simple idea that the worldwide dominant 40-hours, Monday-through-Friday, 9-to-5 working system is outdated! The author believes that people go to work only to waste their time and their companies time in a system based on the wrong assumptions about how work should get done and how a working environment should look like.

This system allows employees to get promoted for putting in more hours but not necessarily because they deserve career advancement, not to mention overstaffed meetings, office politics…etc.

Proposed solution? ROWE

ROWE – Result-Only Work Environment – is a new human resource management strategy which gives employees full control of the working process.

In a ROWE, employees are free to decide when, where, and how long they work, as long as they meet their overall goals. The way employees spend their time is entirely up to them. There are no mandatory meetings or fixed schedules. “Leaving early” or “coming in late” doesn’t exist in this system since you are even allowed not to show up at all for as long as you wish if you manage to get your work done as expected. In other words, work is no longer attached to a “place” you go but to the “results” you achieve.

The beauty of ROWE is that if you managed to efficiently complete a month’s work in 3 weeks, your boss never needs to know that you’ll be spending the remaining week in Thailand! (Compare that to the 9-to-5 system which rewards you for finishing work faster by giving you more work!)

Studies have shown that people tend to have different peak performance times throughout the day which means that some people may be very unproductive during regular working hours for reasons completely out of their hands!

Delivering Happiness

(Amazon link)

This book discusses the management philosophy of Tony Hsieh, the founder of LinkExchange which he sold to Microsoft at 24 for $265 million, explaining how he got to become the CEO of Zappos through creating a business model based on “Happiness”.

This book contradicts the ROWE book but it still offers a revolutionary concept. The author is an advocate of motivating his employees to achieve optimal results by focusing on a company culture that nourishes and creates the most fun 9-to-5 workplace to be.

The conclusion

I am definitely on the ROWE side and I strongly believe it’s very doable when it comes to global internet businesses.

But how about location-based businesses? You might argue with me that even schools could adopt this system through e-learning but the same doesn’t apply to a barber shop for example. What I’m trying to say that the nature of some jobs require that the employees are present at their work location. Imagine what would happen if ROWE was applied in hospitals!

In addition, I do have some considerations about the ROWE / Zappos systems that I hope my readers can help me answer:

• Wouldn’t it be a lot more work to manage the employees, since every month you have to determine/guess the value of your new tasks that need to get done?
• I still think that even though there is a great company culture at Zappos and many of its employees love their job, Zappos’ employees will still be wasting their and their company’s time by playing the “presenters” game, while the ROWE employees would be saving their own time as they will be motivated to work efficiently and finish their work before the preset time.
• The 9-to-5 jobs, with a great culture like Zappos’, seem to work nicely for individuals who lack self-discipline and are unable to independently determine how to meet their jobs objectives?

So, dear reader, I hope to gain your insights on these two ideas and feel free to address any questions or concerns you might have as well.

Either way, please make sure to comment! (*cough* People who comment are much cooler than those who don’t *cough*)

24 days ago, I managed to get myself drafted to Dribbble.

What the hell is Dribbble and why should I care?

Dribbble is an online platform for designers, developers and other creatives which allows members to showcase and publish small screenshots and sneak peaks of their work.

The thing that makes Dribbble great is that the main users of this platform are well-known, respected designers in the community, who fill it with creative and beautiful shots. But here is the catch: the website doesn’t allow users to register and relies on a closed invitation system instead. This way, they try to ensure that only quality designers can upload their screenshots.

Another great reason why Dribbble is a sought after scene to designers worldwide, is that when you publish your own “shots”, you receive constructive feedback and improvement tips from the best of the best in the web design business.

I decided it was time to have my share of Dribbble’s scrumptious pie!

When I truly discovered what it was all about, I had to jump in FAST! But I had to deal with fierce competition. Too many designers worldwide were begging, nagging and screaming to get Dribbble invites all over the internet. So I had to figure out a way to stand out from the screaming crowd, and get Dribbble users seeking me for an invite, instead of the other way around.

In the midst of stressful deadlines, random yet urgent tasks, and my girlfriend screaming for attention, I invented some free time staying up late from 1 to 5 am, sipping coffee like a total maniac!

At this moment of liberation and pure insanity, I bought the domain name pleaseinvitemetodribbble.com and invented the first ever one-page beg-for-an-invite-to-dribbble website! While designing the website, I was having the time of my life, having a blast with many insider designer jokes and finally coming up with a simple, yet effective website.

The results?

• I got into dribbble! Only a few hours after launching the website
• The website got into numerous design blogs, galleries and was instantly retweeted
• By shamelessly plugging this blog and RunAddicts.net, they also received a great amount of click-through hits
• I was congratulated by some of my greatest role models
• My twitter followers tri-folded
• Almost 20.000 pageviews
• 3 Job offers (Sadly all 9-to-5: I kindly declined)
• Inspired other creative designers worldwide to use the same approach

And the best part is that I only invested 4 hours and 30 minutes of precious time on the website.
Ain’t that a great return of investment or what?

This is one of the most impressive plea attempts I have ever seen. A well deserved invite in what looked like less than 24 hours. Nice design too, love the personal touches! Matt Hamilton

So, how did I crack this idea?

Well, it’s not rocket science! The secret lies in two magical words: Positive Thinking.
This is how I put these words into action:

“I will make it happen”

Whenever I aspire to accomplish something, I create an unshakable belief that I will make it happen. The word “impossible” does not exist in my dictionary. The story above is a living example of how this attitude is magical.

It didn’t matter how out of reach it seemed. It didn’t matter that thousands of designers worldwide have been begging for invites.  If I surrendered to the “crowd is right” mentality or “if they can’t do, I can’t do it either” crap, I would have gone nowhere! Instead, I ignored all these “external factors” and focused inwards. My starting point was an insanely confident inner voice screaming: “Davy you will become a Dribbble member!” and the rest is history.

“Ask and you shall receive”

Everyday I’m more and more convinced that this saying is a simple key to success. The problem is that most people don’t know how to ask! Some of them don’t have the faintest idea” what” they want at the first place.

However, the worst trap that most people fall into is that even when they unveil their big dream, they take no action, only because they don’t know “how” to make it happen. Life taught me that you can’t learn how to swim until you put your legs in the water. If you really really really want something, the “how” will reveal itself.

I absolutely wanted to join Dribbble’s “inner circle” and this burning desire ignited some creative and passionate hours, simply because “necessity is the mother of invention”.
Sometimes we are our worst enemies as we create imaginary blocks that hinder the success that we aspire to and deserve.

Not knowing “how” to reach your goal is not your real problem. Not wanting it STRONG enough is!

I have become a proud self-development addict

Not that long ago, but still at an early age I got addicted to self-development books. I devour them passionately and I realise that many untapped treasures lie there. But I don’t settle to reading what others write passively: I put their theories into application and since I started doing that, the results were staggering!

On my quest to become a happier person every day, I discovered that to find real happiness and fulfilment in life, you need to constantly challenge yourself by creating some insanely exciting goals and turning them into a living reality. Only then, you can feel real joy. (Even if the goal is as small as a simple website. What matters the most is how much it excites you!)

Stand out…Break the rules!

Early enough in my life journey, I realized that going with the flow and following the crowd is the shortest recipe to failure! So, when I decided to join Dribbble, I applied the “what if” creative thinking approach and asked myself: “what if I broke the rule and managed to get Dribbble members to reach out for me instead of the opposite?”

As crazy as this question may be, answering it intelligently was my ticket to Dribbble’s glory!

What’s your “positive thinking” version? I can’t wait to read your comments. To our success!

‏I still remember my first online business adventure as if it was yesterday! Good times!
After devouring a good amount of self-development and freelancing books, I was fired up with enthusiasm about my brilliant idea and was almost certain I would join the internet millionaires club in no time.

Back then, slicing services were booming. So, I decided to jump in and grab the opportunity.
Slicing service providers are small companies that specialize in turning graphic designs (using Photoshop for example) into HTML/CSS templates at highly competitive rates.

The Million-Dollar-Idea!

Since the number of slicing companies was growing so rapidly, the competition was fierce. As a result, it was very hard for potential customers to see the trees through the forest. This is where yours truly came into play!
‏My million-dollar-idea provided a clever solution to this problem. I designed a simple, one-page website which enabled companies providing these services to enter all the details and rates of the slicing services they provide.

Customers looking for slicing-agencies could visit my website ‘Slicejobs’, and automatically have the website deliver a list of companies who provide this service, immediately calculating their specific rates. Every slicing-agency could create a basic profile on the site for free, with the option to upgrade to a paid premium account to maximize their visibility and increase their value by displaying testimonials.

When I had the website developed, I created a system that the website would completely support itself. Payments, premium-accounts, price calculation, advertisements, you name it was fully automated. My only job was to enjoy spending the money I received on my PayPal account.
‏On top of that, the website immediately gained a lot of attention because Antonio Lupetti, a great blogger whom I feel so grateful for, published an entire article dedicated to Slicejobs. He was very excited about the idea and his article was the number one reason why I had thousands of visitors to the site from day one.

When I saw that such a great blogger was supporting my idea, it boosted my confidence that I was going to make it big time. As a result, I decided to put some of my hard-earned into the project. I had dollar signs in my eyes which gave me every motive to act fast and get as many agencies as possible to create profiles on the site, and eventually upgrade to premium.

I talked to the guys from Smashing Magazine and made an 800-Euro deal to put advertisements for SliceJobs on their website for the duration of one month. This bold move sent me heaps of traffic.
In addition, “SliceJobs” was featured on a great amount of CSS-galleries all over the internet, also sending a lot of traffic to the website.

Let’s look at the pros so far:

• Clear and simple design
• Excellent promotion
• Huge amount of visitors
• Completely automated (Carefree-life, Seychelles here I come…)
• Taking advantage of a booming service and offering a unique solution to a growing problem

‏By now I can hear you saying: “So far so good Davy. Why on earth did you let it fail?! You had the best start imaginable!”

Well, there was just one important fact that I overlooked!
This project could easily turn into a smashing success if three key points were in place

• ‏The website needed slicing-agencies to create profiles
• Premium accounts and advertisements needed to get sold in order for me to earn back my investment
• The website needed a lot of traffic from potential clients in need of slicing services

Point 1, Check! Great promotion on some high-traffic well-established web design blogs reached a lot of freelancers and agencies. Profiles were being set up every hour and the site was growing. All is well in the world of wonder.

Point 2, Check! Because the website had a nice amount of visitors at start and companies noticed that a lot of profiles were being set up, some made the sound decision to stand out from the crowd and immediately went for the premium option.

Ignoring point 3 was where the trouble started.

I thought my project was working well and I could make loads of cash out of it if I got even more slicing-agencies to create profiles on the site. I set up Google adwords campaigns promoting SliceJobs as a great website where companies could set up a free profile and simply get clients in return.

The premium members’ cash completely blurred my vision and shifted my attention from the simple fact that I should give my premium members a good reason to stick around. In other words, I needed to equally focus on promoting the site to customers who needed slicing done. As a result, 99% of my visitors were agencies providing slicing services and a very small percentage of the visitors were clients who were looking for slicing agencies.

After a while, premium payments stagnated and eventually died out. SliceJobs’ premium users weren’t getting any clients from the website and simply stopped paying for the service. The hype was settling down and my visitor-counts dropped like dead flies.

I was way over budget and had spent every earned dollar back into advertising to the wrong target audience.

Here comes the best tip of all!

Richard Branson taught me to “Never cry over spilled milk” and I’m NOT going to.
The SliceJobs-project was an amazing learning experience and offered me valuable hands-on knowledge that far exceeds years of “theoretical” college studying. It taught me how to effectively communicate with customers, set the RIGHT price for my services, handle PayPal and taxes, outsource parts of the project to external developers, use Google adwords, analytics & a/b testing, and more! It was such a blast I had so much fun!

It also gave me valuable insights on my Must-Dos, Nice-to-Dos, and the big No’s. Looking back at it now, I can honestly say that this project was a 1000-euro investment in my personal career which feels like nothing compared to the priceless knowledge that I gained along the way.

I can’t tell you how eager I am to hear your comments on my first project!
Please do so below, and if you have had a different or similar experience in your career, please share it with me! Let’s learn from each other.

Thank you so much for allowing me to share my failure-leading-to-success story.
I invite you to join my mailing list or sign up for my RSS-feed to keep up with my posts.

Go make it big!

Believe it or not: I had Compelling Reasons!

• For one and half years, I was a creative director at a renowned web development company in Belgium, known as a big player in the governmental websites niche
• Yes, my job title was “CREATIVE director”. As the name implies, you may assume that I was in control, with my creative juices flowing endlessly, blossoming into meaningful and rewarding contributions to my company. Sadly, this wasn’t the case! In a very short period, I tragically went from a driven, motivated and aspiring designer into a helpless design-by-committee pixel-pusher!
• My frustration was growing exponentially inside me due to the unbearable redundancy, utter boredom, monotonous tasks, etc. … Not to mention, the endless meetings along all kinds of corporate nonsense!
• In the meantime, I became a self-improvement books obsessed fanatic. Would you blame me?! It was my only escape. I devoured books like “The Four Hour Work Week”, “The Alchemist”, “ I will teach you to be rich”, “Screw it, Let’s do it”, “Good to Great”, you name it!
• I always knew deep down in heart that I was a free spirit. I love going my way free from all the “do this do that” crippling rules. That’s why, I hated the fact that all my hard work was filling my boss’s pockets!
• My ambition led me to consider starting my online businesses to do ONLY what I love to do and save myself from turning into another 8-to-5 victim!

So, what finally pulled the trigger?

Well, the economic situation was a huge red flag, especially after a lot of banks and companies were going bust! Some of my colleagues were fired lately and I didn’t feel like joining the club. It feels much better when I choose to fire my boss. A feeling of complete independence?

My 8-to-5 vicious circle was standing in my way. So, I had to break free and dedicate my entire time to my online passions.

So far so good! Why college?

• Actually, I hadn’t done that yet
• I love to feel independent and  live on my own (While working, I was living at my parents’ house)
• Now I have more free time on my hands and I plan to use it well
• I enjoy being around other like-minded students in the field of web design
• My best friend was already studying the same course that I was planning to take
• Above all, getting all the references to an upcoming “why you should start up a business in college”-article

The bottom line is, I realized, fortunately at an early age, that I live only once and it’s up to me and only me to shape my destiny and turn my dreams into a living reality. I invite you to do same and break free from social moulds and the live-your-life-this-way bogus. All you need is to get real and know yourself. Then, decide, commit, and succeed.