Cross Blog Converstation: Kelly McCausey

I have to be honest, when Kelly McCausey asked me to have a CBC on Twitter last night, I didn’t know what she was talking about. But, after asking Kelly (yeah, I felt a bit unplugged) and reading a bit on Kelly’s blog, WAHM 2.0 at SparkPlugging, I figured it out and I was so glad she asked. Be sure to follow Kelly on Twitter, she may just ask you to have a CBC!

For those of you who don’t know what a Cross Blog Conversation is, just click the link, Kelly has a great post on her WahmTalkRadio blog that explains it very well. Basically, Kelly and I are going to have a conversation and you will need to go to each of our respective blogs to follow it. She started it today with her post about How long it takes to be a Success on the Internet.

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Oh Kelly, you would have to ask the two hardest questions for me to answer, ‘How do we define Success?’ and ‘How often has your definition of success been changed?’.

I started on the internet about ten years ago. I was so proud that I had taught myself FrontPage97 that I just had to show-off my skills and do a website for my daughter’s cheerleading team. That blossomed into a web design business I did for a couple of years. I made about $30k a year from that but it didn’t satisfy me, I was still working for other people selling my time by the hour. That business model just didn’t work for me.

Next I started selling stuffed animals to gift basket companies. I opened it as a division of a company Brent and I already had for, at that time, five years. That was a mistake because my little internet company became very popular doing over $600k a year in sales. However, the other company was going belly-up and dragged my gift basket company down with it.

So Kelly, I feel like both those ventures could be defined as successful because at that time they helped support my family. However, I’m not quite sure they would fulfill my definition of success today, as they gave me the money I needed but didn’t give me a complete sense of happiness.

You see, today my definition of success includes not only earning the amount of money I’ve defined as my goal, but the day-to-day work must also give me a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, and achievement, along with flexibility and freedom. I currently have a day job that fulfills the monetary and achievement portion of the formula, but flexibility and freedom is missing and that’s why I’m so desperately trying to make my online business work.

This morning I read a report by Dr. Mani called “How Long Does Success Take?“. In that report Dr. Mani talks about how it took him eight years online before he was able to consider his online work a success. He also talks about planning for success, having inspirations, making the choice to succeed, how your dreams will be tested, using mentors, and learning from success. One thing he said really resonated with me when I reflect over the last five years of trying to succeed with an online business:

Imagine driving in a car to a place you want to go, and the road gets
bumpy. What do you do?

You could stop, get out of the car, and curse your bad luck.

You could turn your car around and go back to the smooth, quiet road to
nowhere.

Or…

You could keep going on, determined to get where you’re going –
and knowing things will get better when you reach there.

Not just keep going, but actually ENJOY the ride. And even be thankful
that you’ve got a car, and that you know the way!

I know what I’ve done. I’ve either gotten out of the car and cursed, or more often, turned around and took the smooth highway. And if I’m honest with myself, that’s why I have a day job…the cushy paycheck every two weeks, four weeks of vaca, 401k, heath bennies, a close commute, and a really nice boss.

But the real question is, “Am I truly happy?”

Well you could probably ask Brent when I’m walking out the door at 8:00 a.m. after being up till 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. after a trip to watch our daughter play college volleyball (she’s 3 hours away, we go anyway, even on work nights). I really want my flexibility. I don’t want to be accountable to anyone but myself and until I have that, I cannot consider myself successful again.

So, here I stand again, at a cross roads with this fairly new website wondering if it will really ever make any money. Should I just give it up and take the smooth highway, continuing to work my cushy job hoping to eventually work my way up the ladder a little bit higher, or should I stay on the bumpy road and keep doing what I know I’ve gotta do to make this online gig a success, even if it takes eight years?

All I can say is, I’m so tired of that damn smooth highway! I need a little bumps to keep me young!

Kelly, you’ve known me for a long time and you’ve seen me flip flop from thing to thing. Let me ask you, ‘How long does it take to become successful online?‘ and ‘What’s it going to take to get there?‘

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