What would your business look like if you were to start it again today? What were your biggest mistakes and what have you learned?
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Your lack-of-emotion and reasons were clear; I apologize that my compliment to your comment must not have been.

And what an interesting group IttyBiz attracts — !

The lack of emotion is because I have no regrets and I see no failure in my mistakes. I only see learning experiences that have helped me and my business grow. There’s nothing to be emotional about, unless it’s to be thankful I lived those situations.

As lone-gunmen, hourly-or-project billing machines (ha!), and chief-cook-and-bottle-washers, we often confuse the two: success and growth. Because we probably didn’t set up a metric for measuring either ‘maintainable success’ or ’sustainable growth’ before we started.

(An aside to Selene and Tei: you only have one chance to ruin a first impression; waiting is stalling, but preparing-that-takes-time is doing.)

So if Naomi’s earliest definition of success, other than ‘put food on table’, were to ‘get rich quick’ — as soon as her growth exploded she could have achieved that by uber-upping her fees to reduce the work load/client list to ‘managable’ and get more ROI — but in achieving that “rich” goal, she’d have failed her core clientèle: ittyBizs that can’t afford a 10xhigher fee. That would’ve been the opposite of success.

Instead, she smartly (instinctively?) choose GROWTH (in her desired direction) as the measure of success she wanted, and after some tough weeks or re-organization, etc., she got a handle on the surprise growth explosion by delivering what she had promised promised — real world/like minded small business marketing experience — her stories about how tough it was became exactly the lessons we needed to push through our own trials.

This has earned her business/blog a smarter and louder and more loyal client/reader base than any high-paying multi-week-project satisfied-client’s testimonial every could have: KILLER WORD OF MOUTH. (Or, word of keyboard, I guess.)

I couldn’t just say ‘good post’ huh? Please excuse the extra education I get by parsing out the terrific lessons Naomi wraps in caustic wit and layered examples.

And all of those mistakes James/MWP had listed, I have lived through as well; it’s nice to see them somehow neutered of emotion in his list, instead of the bullying regrets they’d seemed in my own list. Until now.

Thanks for raising the subject, Naomi.

Here’s the thing, when you’ve just started off, and you have no website or business cards or pretty stationary or local phone number (that last is sadly true; my cell still runs on a CA area code), you feel like calling everyone you know up and begging them for work.

Except you don’t. Because you have pride. And pride will KILL you.

Call EVERYONE. Call your grandmother. Call people from college you barely knew. Send out a massive email. Contact your alumni list and your parent’s contacts and your parent’s friends contacts and tell them all to refer you to other people. Forget throwing a rock in the pond for the ripples. Throw a driveway’s worth of gravel in there.

This is my new plan. Here goes.

@ Selene — I think that happens all the time! We worry and wait and worry and wait and then when we finally get around to it, we wonder what we were waiting for. Great advice!

@ James — We had the 24/7 issue too, and the “We can do that”? Yeah, that’s a little bit of a problem around here too.

@ Tony — Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I could never hire anybody other than maybe an intern. I have a hard enough time delegating a database to my husband — a database, I should mention, that I couldn’t do with a gun to my head.

1 – Not working on my project full time, but then I don’t really have a choice, a girl’s gotta eat…
2 – Being afraid of success. Yes, it seems crazy, but I realize that it’s true.
3 – Being afraid of things getting out of hand
4 – So that ends up in being reluctant too take the next step (getting bigger, asking for a loan…).
5 – Having to do everything by myself, but then again, no real choice here.
6 – Not billing my time : I can’t yet, that’s why I need to work on the side.

Seriously. Yes, I do.

1 – Enjoying control a little too much: I have trouble delegating trust.
2 – I prepared for growth – I did not prepare for sudden celebrity stardom.
3 – Being too friendly with people who work for me: I get burned easily from trusting too much.

(Yes, 3 and 1 conflict. I trust people too much but can’t trust they’ll do a great job. It’s a quandry.)

4 – Not billing enough for my time. Or not billing for my time at all.
5 – My favorite words are, “We can do that.” Unfortunately, I have yet to learn the words, “We’re booked until Christmas. Please take a number.”
6 – The inability to resist attraction to bright, shiny things that ultimately suck away my time and leave me scrambling to catch my ass.
7 – Having my business open nearly 24/7.