As I mentioned in my last post I had a second failed joint venture during the time I was throwing everything I had at my Fast Web Formula affiliate pounce.

Again this failure had positives.

The Partnership
The JV was about an inspirational women’s networking group. Something not about building business but about creating connection.

I helped develop the idea that began with someone else through a synergy that was happening.

She was ready to give up at the end of the year but I could see how it could be monetized. I could see how we could make it into a much bigger and better forum for women using our ideas and internet marketing.

So I built a website. I added a forum. I made a membership site so we could place paid forum access, full interviews and recordings of events. We had agreed on this and a timeframe I could do it!

Overly Ambitious
It was my first site in Thesis, my first membership and my first forum. Nothing like biting off as much as you can possibly chew. I was going to say more but I did it! Not easily, not without struggle and not without a lot of effort and challenge but again I got through it within the deadline I had set.

We set up paypal payments to ensure people paid up front to overcome my partner’s experience in the previous year of people going to come, not showing up and never having paid but costing us money!

I learnt so much and again proved to myself what I was capable of doing. Luckily I had access to James’ paid coaching forum to ask advice on how to do some of these things.

Giving Everything Away
The other person in question was reworking her business at that point. It and this were supposed to work cooperatively and together but over time it appeared that her decision was that her business was going to be exactly what we were doing.

This was difficult. Again I saw signs but I chose to ignore them. She no longer emailed her list about our joint stuff just directing them to her own. She almost accused me of promoting her stuff on the joint site because I wanted to grab profits when actually it was just a piece of free promotion and backlinks for her without obligation.

It was a funny time and things dissipated slowly and then split suddenly.

Compounding Failure
It wasn’t the project that upset me. It wasn’t even the effort I put in it was the cumulative effects of my Fast Web failure and this that nearly killed me. To achieve both I had been working 7 days a week and often all day every day and some of the night.

A lot of this stuff was brand new to me and the first time I do something it sometimes takes time!

The Lesson
While I was concentrating solely on these joint efforts the people around me were keeping their own business going. In fact in this JV it caused me some resentment that while I was working on the joint and helping her with her own she was working solely on her own.

Guess what happened I learned I was not doing anything for myself.

Hence some of the huge stuff that came up for me. Why was I so committed to making things work for others over making them work for myself? It is a big question and with it came up a lot of old stuff.

The great thing was that in each case without the pressure to make things work either because I had no choice but to deliver, or because I personally needed to live up to a deadline – I proved to myself I could do things I otherwise may not have done. Each time I did one more thing that I thought would be beyond me!

I had so much work to do between then and now and that was just to get out of that failure programming I was feeling.

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