Sacrifices / 04.17.08
Yesterday I wrote an entry at 3by9 called Chances that briefly went over the positives of running your own business. Here I am going to discuss some of the negatives that I have experienced.
I always give a little laugh when people tell me that they wish they were in my shoes. The ability to wake up whenever I want, nobody to report to and keeping all the money you want. That sounds great. The problem? If you don’t wake up and stay on the ball you don’t grow your business. You have nobody to report to so if things go wrong you have nobody to blame, but yourself. You can keep all the money you want if you are bringing any money in.
And don’t forget the critics.
Good that you were able to review the poor choice you made regarding your core brand and are willing to attempt a roll back but you’re going to once again be fighting the hurt feelings of many who have taken their time to participate here.
Perhaps a little less booze when making important decisions might have led to more sound decisions instead of a tanking Alexa rank, falling Pagerank, and a member base that felt used.
On the web you will get that a lot. Your successes and failures get magnified 1000 times when everyone can see what is going on and keep track of it in public. It isn’t fun and trust me the successes are much more enjoyable than the failures. When you come across criticism you will take it personally because your company is you. There isn’t a line between when people talk about your company and when they talk about you personally because you are the one responsible.
The great thing about running your own company is that all the responsibility is on you. The bad thing about running your own company is that all the responsibility is on you. There are many times where you will probably want to quit and throw in the towel. Working for someone else is much easier at times. Having the security of a paycheck every week brings joy to the world. Knowing that as long as you do your tasks you are in the clear means less stress (usually).
Would I ever like to go back to working for someone else? No. If I needed to of course I would. If there were 6 or 7 figures involved I would definitely consider it, but just to change paths just to do it? Never considered that.
The sacrifices are sometimes what make it all worth it in the end.
8 Responses
Tyme // April 17th, 2008
Can’t forget the critics that don’t have enough guts to make a comment using their name and email address. Very weak indeed. IMO, if a person doesn’t have the moral, ethical values and just plain old-fashion guts to stand behind their words (with their identity), STFU.
Marcus // April 23rd, 2008
Perhaps Tyme should consider that some people are in a position that requires them to be anonymous and somewhat opaque. Identity has nothing to do with the validity of an opinion or the furthering of a discussion. “STFU” pretty much rings true for how you’ve related to people in the past though so I’m not surprised. Stay classy!
I am an advisor to an investment group who purchase sizable online properties. You guys took an interesting turn with the release of Ali to grow the site via user generated content but one recurring worry with investors interested in purchasing a site like yours the lack of direction and follow through. Everyone can appreciate the need to regroup and rethink your plan but 9rules has been all over the place. The loss of many ‘high profile’ members only reinforces concerns of instability. You guys tried to laugh off what that meant but it was a big hit.
If I could offer you one piece of unsolicited advice it would be that you start treating 9rules like a business with a definitive goal to either sell for a certain price (ideal) or maintain a sustainable income (difficult). 9rules is your baby and it’s difficult to think about selling your baby but it’s the most logical choice as it would afford you a one time pay out that could far outweigh your income over the short term. There is a reason homeowners flip houses and the same is true for online properties.
Paul Scrivens // April 23rd, 2008
Stating that booze plays any part in what decisions we make is not an opinion, it’s an insult. 9rules has been all over the place? We had members, then we had Notes and Clips. Basically two phases and the loss of many ‘high profile’ members?
As I said before if those were the sites that you saw as high profile then we can’t change your opinion, but there will be more than one surprise next week when we relaunch so we will see what high profile really means.
You are right in that identity has nothing to do with validity. Validity has something to do with validity however. Thanks for the advice, I’ll have to look into this selling sites stuff. Haven’t tried that before.
Also with regards to remaining anonymous publicly, we can completely understand that, but no use of your right email so that we may hold a private discussion? Must you be that anonymous? She had every right to say what she said and you have no clue of how we have treated everyone that has tried to walk all over us. It’s easy for an outsider to claim we mistreat people when people leave and bitch, but do we turn around and say what they did? Do you see us making frequent postings on our blog bitching about members?
We’ve stayed above and beyond classy and have no problem telling our side of things if someone wishes to speak out.
We’ve made a ton of mistakes and have openly admitted when we make them, maybe that is a fault of our’s and we should do a better job of masking such things. Maybe it is a fault of our’s for being so transparent with what happens here at 9rules. Maybe we are foolish to do shows where we have some fun with the people who visit our sites. Maybe we just don’t know a damn thing about what we are doing, but for some reason we are still here.
If you advise an investment group then be sure to tell them they can buy us up and not worry about any stability problems cuz we’ll be out the door and heading to the closest bar to booze up and make some more important decisions like what country to visit on our first 9rules getaway.
Stick around though, maybe our relaunch next week will show we got some business acumen after all.
Marcus // April 23rd, 2008
My ‘booze’ reference only related to the casts where you are clearly drinking but it appears I’ve hurt your feelings and I apologize.
We could go around and around endlessly on many of these topics and never agree so I’ll simply wish you the best of luck with the relaunch.
Marcus…. and yes I must be that anonymous for now.
Paul Scrivens // April 23rd, 2008
You didn’t hurt my feelings and yes we drink in streamcasts, but how you equate that to making important business decisions is beyond me. Thanks for wishing us luck, apparently we need it.
Tyme White // April 24th, 2008
Perhaps you should consider that if you want an ounce of respect from any of us you shouldn’t make anonymous FALSE comments.
Did we realize that there would be branding issues adding social features to 9rules? Yes. Did we think we could overcome them? Yes. Unfortunately, our “blog network” brand was much stronger than anyone realized. At the time we launched Ali we became “the place” to submit a site for exposure, meaning articles left and right were being written as 9rules only being a blog network. We tried to distinguish the brand to include socializing but it was too much. We made a mistake but we don’t have any regrets because we tried something, it didn’t work as expected, we learned something, we moved on to Plan 2.
Although our situation was extremely transparent did it stop others from attempting to do the same thing? No. Look at Fast Company - they tacked on social features. Is it working? No. Could they have learned from our example, since we did it before anyone else? Sure. There are a ton of sites doing it because socializing is “the thing” right now. Are you leaving anonymous snide comments over there too?
As far as high profile members leaving how many times/ways do we have to say that we thought it out WAY in advance, had 90% accuracy on what would happen, and continued to do it?
And let us be clear on what a high profile site is. Guy Kawaski. Gigaom. Those are high profile sites. And we removed them when their site was against our ToS. And guess what? They didn’t get upset, write an entry on how “wrong” we were, or have any hostility what-so-ever. The difference? Being high profile professional site owners they understood it was a business situation, and I’m sure they’ve had to make harder decisions for the direction of their companies.
Now that we have an understanding of high profile, the members that left were not high profile. Known within a small niche community? Yes. Known by mainstream like the two I mentioned above? Absolutely not.
And perhaps seeing the difference between the two reactions and reading my article on Seesmic (that went through something similar), you’ll see that we haven’t been “all over the place”. Every community that starts small and grows goes through the same thing. The originating members want it to stay the way it was. That’s a direct conflict with that the company wants. Either they had to change their minds, leave or I had to remove them. I gave them the vehicle in the form of a participation agreement where they could make the decision on what was right for them and act accordingly which (IMO) was better than me removing them. Now, all members are on the same page. We’ve made it very clear there will be more rounds, made it public when they will be, and it is understood 9rules is going to grow.
Being an investor for large online communities I am surprised that you couldn’t clearly see what was going on. All the signs were there. Perhaps the fact that we didn’t fear members leaving to achieve our goals threw you? Or perhaps that the guys and I love what we do over and above making a quick buck makes our decisions seem odd?
And yes, we drank in the stream and people drank with us. We held a virtual party but you know what? That helps bonds us with our members/users – helps us get to know them. There is absolutely no difference between us having some drinks on a stream and going to their towns and having some drinks. They are all over the place and it would be nice to have a meet-up one day but until then, we use the virtual tools available to us to sit back and chill with our members/users. They are very cool people.
Last thing…instead of making an anonymous trollish comment, perhaps a different approach would be better. Get a gmail account, put your name as Marcus and send an email. If you had posed questions to me I would have answered them. Making anonymous comments does not reflect well on you.
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