Confessions of a Newbie Entrepreneur

Newbie entrepreneur

I am not experienced as an entrepreneur. I started as a blogger and freelancer and only in couple of years I accumulated some budget solid enough to start a new project of my own.

That happened about 6 months ago and I still haven’t earned a penny from the project. But for now money doesn’t matter.

What really matters is the huge experience I am getting. This is the experience I am going to share in my posts over here. And I hope this will result in some effective knowledge exchange: I hope to learn more from the gurus here and I hope my newbie’s experience will turn useful for Noobpreneur’s readers.

This is meant to be an introductory post. My name as Ann Smarty. If you know me, this is most probably due to my daily posts at SearchEngineJournal.com. My specialty is SEO and social monitoring and I blog on actionable SEO tips and tools.

My very first independent project is My Blog Guest which is the forum meant to connect guest bloggers to blog owners (expect a post on guest blogging soon!). What I’ve learned starting and promoting the project is my most valuable acquisition and I am eager to share this knowledge.

So here are 2 basic things I have learned so far:

Entrepreneur’s Passion

Like I said, I haven’t earned a penny (unlike my plenty of freelancing jobs and my “day” job at SEJ), so what has kept me going for 6 months?

The feeling of owning and nurturing my own project.

I’ve never thought that starting something from scratch and developing it to something bigger feels so awesome.

You are full of inspiration, most of the time you can’t sleep, you invent something really genius every single day – something that would have never occurred to you otherwise.

• You have plenty of ideas but no time to implement most of them;
• No matter how much you work, you feel you could have done more;
• No matter how successfully your project performs, you think it could have done better.

You are restless and full of inspiration – this feels great to be an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur’s Weaknesses

Image: the rules

What accompanies your passion is your entrepreneur’s weaknesses:

• You are too sensitive to negative feedback: Yes, you can’t please everyone. I’ve been working full-time online for over two years before starting MyBlogGuest – I did have enough time to grow thick skin and I am not easily offended… Unless that is anything related to my project. I swear I can’t sleep at nigh if someone is too harsh expressing his opinion on the site… On the other hand, this is what has been pushed me forward and given me even more inspiration.
• You are too sensitive to stupid mistakes: When starting anything from scratch, you can’t escape mistakes. This is inevitable. Most of the time, those mistakes will ultimately turn out to be your most valuable lessons. They will make you a smarter marketer and will account for your project success. I’ve known that for ages. But that’s when I became an entrepreneur when I stopped treating my own mistakes with common sense.

Do entrepreneurs here feel the same way as me or am being too excited (as any newbie is)? Please share your thoughts!