And if this is the first time you’ve worked on your own project, I think its even harder to justify spending the time. It’s like you get too worried about whether or not your project will fail, and you get scared to follow through.

I think that good, solvent business ideas develop from the cheap intial ideas. Almost all business plans evolve over time and usually the great business ideas only seem so when looking back at them.

I guess that depends on how you define success, but there are many people who would say that their experience proves you wrong. Much more than hard work, it takes some good ideas, quality content, and Web skills sufficient to convert those things to something your users can access.

Hard work doesn’t always equal success. Sometimes it just turns out some good personal education.

And regarding ideas being cheap… You may be right about ideas being a-dime-a-dozen, but *good*, solvent business ideas are expensive and rare (which is the reason market research and marketing firms exist).

Finally, your comments on time management and initiative were spot-on. Plenty of us out here in Web land have some ideas, but until we put our hand to the plow and start pushing, we’ll never know how solvent they are.

Uh yea, there is definitly a lack of it right about now in my life.

I have been lucky enough to have Paul spread his seed of knowledge upon me in some IM’s about the process of starting too many ventures at one time. Combine that with a baby on the way, a new house, my cpu crashing, my server crashing, and freelance deals on the side, and you can pretty much guarantee that 25th hour is not in the cards.

I have so much I want to do, just no time to do it in.

- Redesign/Reconfiguration of Major Championships.

- Redesign of Juiced Thoughts for CSSReboot

I have definitly been absent from 9rules with MajorChampionships.com for the past couple of weeks and I apologize. That is a combination of time issues but more with the server causing me grief (couldn’t post an entry or comment until last night, geez). I hate MovableType… :)

Good Post Paul.

I think one of the most important points you raise is sticking with it.

I started a business while busy with my master’s, and only 3 years later have we really started to become successful. Why? Because at some stage we realised that constantly coming up with new ideas/products/services wasn’t what was needed. What was needed was the ability to do what we were already doing really well. To sell what we already had.

New ideas are critical, but often you don’t need to look that far to find success.

The Internet is still an infant, simply due to the fact that there has not been enough years that have passed for “everything to be done” yet. But that does not mean that “thinking outside of the box” is enough, you have to work outside of the box too.

Oh, and I got my cash for Gin and Juice.