My Failure Resume: A walk through 40+ failed blogs and biz ideas

Updated

September 15, 2017

Why did I publish these?

First, to boost my own confidence.

You read that right. While some of these are quite embarrassing (sharing failures usually is)…I’m actually happy and honored to present these.

After this, I have nothing to hide from the Do You Even Tribe. Now you know where I come from!

Second, to boost your confidence.

We all fear failure, and hopefully, by laying out my worst entrepreneurial failures, it will give you hope in your own projects 🙂

Last, it’s entertaining.

I mean, come one…who thought funblee.com was an awesome business name?? Or that millions would flock to my first blog dailyantidepressant.blogspot.com??

🙂

Here’s a list of *most* of the failures (definitely missing 5-10):

Some fun pictures

Most of these projects are no longer findable on the internet (thank goodness)

The Daily Anti-Depressant was my first blog, and lasted almost a year! lol

Note the killer Matrix background. So awesome.

Actually, you can go to iTunes and listen to Sports Chop Shop today 🙂 🙂

You won’t hear me because I sucked so badly in the 1st 5 episodes…they assigned me to “producer” only.

Leanbacker never took off because it was a horrendous idea noone wanted to be a part of 🙂

Even WITH Noah Kagan’s advice.

The idea behind funblee was simple enough…

Collect $1 a month from 1,000,000 different people
Donate all profits to cool non-profits and organizations that need it.

Turns out people want to know where their money was going. Who woulda thought.

RIP The Smarter Dollar…you taught me much

Ah The Smarter Dollar.

The personal finance blog that led to where I am today.

I still believe with a little more experience and patience, I might still be running TSD to this day. I really do enjoy talking about money, and still have warm feelings for the personal finance community.

But it wasn’t meant to be…

I was impatient, losing interest and thus focus. I quit just BEFORE I found my top post ranking #2 in Google for “passive income.” That post alone brought in 200-350 views and a few dozen email subscribers every day of the week.

After I quit >_<

Blogpilot! was so much fun to create and market. Turns out I didn’t enjoy doing the work people paid me for.

I still think someone could make a great living running Blogpilot…especially the “blog flight plan” part.

(For those who didn’t listen, it was pretty much a document I sent to people w/ 3-5 content ideas for their own blog…as well as various headlines, images, resources, links, summaries, etc….everything they needed to write killer blog posts…every month).

It was fun 🙂

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The biggest lessons learned from these failures

There are a few:

1 – Patience is mandatory for entrepreneurship

We all get “shiny objective syndrome” every now and then, but I suffered from this more than most.

I would work SUPER hard during the first few weeks of a project, only to fizzle out when I saw no one was interested (I never gave them a chance!)

Blogging (and starting any business I think) takes patience and focus.

2 – The more you fail, the more you learn

All of us have heard something like this before…but how often do we practice it?

How often do we try risky things that MIGHT fail? How often are we afraid of failure?

Constantly.

The truth is this: I HATED the exact moments when I realized something I did was a complete failure. Hated it.

Those times make me depressed and even angry.

But I did learn things. Valuable lessons.

I learned:

the importance of a pre-marketing build up
the importance of persistence (especially in the first 12 months)
how to pitch people for things
how to write 10x quicker
how to use 100+ different software/tools
who I’m supposed to be in life
who my Tribe is
what I’m good at,
and what I’m not.

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None of these lessons would’ve been learned if I hadn’t failed.

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It may have taken me 5+ years to realize HOW I learned from some of these failures, but it doesn’t matter. It’s shaped who I am today.

The blogger. The entrepreneur. The man.

Thoughts? Did I embarrass myself?

Please drop me a line in the comments below. Did you laugh? Cry? Make fun of me?

I’d love to hear your thoughts 🙂