I recently did a talk to The Cincinnati Entrepreneur Meetup Group and I figured I’d post some of the content from that session to the blog. The talk consisted of 12 points, here’s #1:

First, expect lots of naysaying to your business idea. Even the best startup ideas will have many reasons not to pursue them. There is no perfect idea, not even close.

It’s easy to ignore the people you expect little wisdom from—it’s when the smart/hip people start ripping into your idea that you’re going to question yourself. Here are some famous smart/hip (at the time) naysayers and their classic wisdom:

• “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, Chairman, IBM 1943
• “There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olsen, Founder, Digital Equipment Corp. 1977

Everything looks like a big mistake—until something good comes out of it. And know that often times, what appears to be the safe play is the risky one (killing your idea).

When I decided to start my blog, my “inner-naysayer” said some fairly damaging things to me. “You have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said. There are literally a million blogs out there, why add more noise?”

One of the thing I really struggled with was coming up with a good name for my blog. Calling it by it’s domain name is the easy way out, and I tried a dozen taglines that all felt cheesy. “What am I going to do next?” sucked – so boring. I’m a decent marketer, so I needed a better “brand me”.

And that’s when it struck me, when I asked myself “What am I, goddamnit?”

I sometimes tell people I’m a “web developer”, but I feel much more business-oriented than that. And I’m not a programmer/hacker type with little business-sense. Other times I claim “serial entrepreneur” but that really disses my love for web/software development. I’m right in the middle, like many of us.

So today I coin the phrase “webdevelopreneur” and simultaneously create a more interesting name for my blog. Google search returned no results for “webdevelopreneur.”

I spent an hour trying to figure this out, I hope this post ends your search for the same answer. If you’re new to typo (as I was) and are struggling to get Typo contest winning themes to work, try this quick fix (taken from Typo theming guide).

Typo trunk recently broke compatibility with a lot of the Typo Garden themes (according to ticket:817). You will have to replace the following line from layouts/default.rhtml

to get the themes to work with Typo trunk.

Well, I looked high + low for good blogging software—I settled finally on TypePad, considering it has adequate features, and all-in-one hosting/software. My initial requirement was to find a .NET/SQL blog tool, but it’s slim pickings in that area, and then I thought “I really don’t want to have to install/config this stuff.” Give TypePad a shot (free trial) and you’ll see what I mean.

I cannot believe it’s Sept 2005 and I have just now started into the world of blogging… As an early web designer (I started my first web agency in June 1994 sharkBYTES). I had a few blogging “false starts” in the form of business blogs—but never a personal blog… But that’s all changed now. I hope you’ll find me informative, entertaining, and engaging.