What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Mine is simple...

All of us in the board room having been told on a Friday prior to a long weekend that the check had not been sent for the previous weeks traffic by High Society

But that it would be fedexed overnight on Tuesday and in our hands Weds , latest.

Making the call to continue to buy "in" the traffic for onward sale and not advise all affiliates to stop sending us traffic immediately.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Put all my eggs in the Dmoz/AOL box and to compound that - taking about 3 months off when it started going south.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

And here I thought the answer was, "What's grey and black, grey and black, grey and black - and comes from Columbia?"

http://oprano.com/msgboard/images/smilies/happy45.gif

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

I think the dumbest thing I ever did in this business was during my first incarnation, back in the day, when I *didn't* ask questions, for advice, or in general totally pick the brains of the people around me and follow their advice. I don't know why I didn't, honestly. Maybe I'll never know.

The absolutely wonderful Defiant (while multi-tasking, no less) took some time in ICQ and pounded a *lot* of money making information into my head because I asked a question about one of the things he was doing. I didn't say "teach me everything you know and basically do shit for me," either. I asked a question to the right person, and he was off and running. :okthumb:

I couldn't possibly list the things that Red has done for me and taught me. :waving:

This year's list is long. :) I don't want to list any more people for fear of forgetting someone.

One of the things that makes this a very special kind of dumb is that one of my jobs back then was to run around madly and tell *other people* to ask for advice. Those who can't do...teach.... :(

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

He really didn't cost me much money....in comparison.

And he was meat's mistake...I just inherited him. ;-)

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!

Remember conference calls along the lines of...

"Are you all fucking crazy!!! Build a fucking site , submit it to fucking AC/ etc etc and never fucking look at it again"

"Love zoo!!!?? Course its fucking legal and it converts like a son of a bitch"

3 weeks later.

"I've built 350 plus , how many have you got?"
silence....
silence....
Mr. "X" - "I have 6 under construction total , but I'm not really happy with them , I'll prolly just..

(SIGH)

You had me on the phone for hours and hours in the 90s!!

You just didn't fucking listen!!!!


;-))

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Now, I believe if you read what I posted, Satan, I *said* I fucked up. I stood up and answered that fucking question...and it's not like I had to.

Yes, you drove yourself nearly batshit trying to teach me how to make money in this business. (This is true, folks. He did. He talked, he screamed, he did everything he could to make me stop being whatever the hell it was I was and start being somebody else...a rich person.)

This was not a good time in my life and it was *my* fault, not Nicks.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Let's go ahead and blame Nick any way :) I'm blaming him for my Dmoz/AOL/vacation faux pas :okthumb:

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

I was a dmoz editor and milked the crap out it for about 2 mths :)

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Sorry Morgan.

I launched into a rant...lol

there was just so many when in the Condom days and then with Netpond that I and others tried to help.

This is why I became disenchanted with running or helping newbs..

I have lent money to over 10 webmasters.

Not one EVER paid me back.
Some gave me crap content which I never used. but not one paid me back...cept Anthony actually.
I spent hours on phonecalls with newbie webmasters giving them advice.
Very few listened. (tat2jr however went off and learnt html in a weekend and did very well. Smart guy)

Sorry....I'm in full "WTF!!!" rant mode...lol

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

The dumbest thing that I ever did was do a verbal deal and then get fucked. I got fucked for about 10k give or take a little. That 10k lesson though, has gone a long way.

Theres a great saying I believe in..
Fuck me once - fuck you, fuck me twice - fuck me.

test:nm

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

All is well.
It's just business, never personal.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Why stop there ?

We could also blame Nick for global warming, third world debt, oh, and letting guests post on Oprano..

He he

my last word on that, I *promise*, just could not resist

;-)

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

i blame nick for being so damn charming.
hes more charming than the lucky rabbit on the cereal boxes.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

My biggest fuck up was going into partnership with a couple of guys because of who they knew and what I thought I could learn by that association.

I learnt for sure, but I learnt by fucking up along the way. NOT because anyone particularly helped me - and I say me, because my 2 partners were too busy getting in at 11am, doing YumCha at 12pm and then fucking off at 2pm.

Being given steps 1,2,6,8,10 leaves a LOT of learning in the middle.

I don't begrudge ANY of that though, I wouldn't be giving away the keys to the farm either, and I probably got a lot more than most others.

But I did learn an awful lot of the attitude and acumen by osmosis as well.

So when is a fuck up and fuck up ?

When you do NOT learn from it and do the same stupid shit again.

;-)

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

First person btw that offered to bail me out over my fuck up was Scottpb.

Good guy.

I turned him down. Didn't want to borrow money from Scotty LOL ;-)

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Easy.. not giving a fuck about my business at all for a VERY long time after my wife and I split up. Cost me a lot as I had a bunch of stuff in the pipeline I was working on and then all my plans went to shit.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Moving to Canada the Second time!












I should have stayed the first time!

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Partnering up with a company of certifiable idiots. Even did an LLC. My company kept up our end. They couldn't do a fucking thing right or make a fucking schedule to save their fucking lives. A supposed three-month project and then the money would come rolling in (it literally would have!), and 21 months later they still were saying they were working on it. I said you're fucking kidding? We gave up on you so long ago, forgot you still existed.

Cost me enough money in development to buy a helluva expensive car or even a house. Because it was such a sure-fire concept, I let all the other projects, sites wither on the vine so when it all went wrong, all the other stuff was left in multiple stages of collapse. Today, there's hundreds of those sites out there now, the kind we were going to do. At the time, we would have had a nine-month jump on everyone and been the very first!

Massive waste of money, time, resources. I could fucking spit acid. Two of the bastards them I'd love to kill -- slowly. The other I'd just mame and let bleed a lot. Ok, maybe a little bludgeoning too.

Hey, but fortunately that's all under the bridge now and I hold no anger, no resentment, nor any regets now at all. http://oprano.com/msgboard/images/smilies/smile.gif

... Yeah, fucking right!!

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Ha ha ha ha

Greg has certainly learned that the hard way.

;-)

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Harry, anyone I know? :)

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

That would be telling. http://oprano.com/msgboard/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Eh precisely! :p

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

I foolishly believed and trusted...Nah, forget it. it's too fresh to look back on objectively.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Do I know something about this ? :blink:



.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Diversify. First thing I was doing was going gangbusters, should've just milked it.

But I still ain't hurtin'. :okthumb:

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Woot! I paid!

With blood, sweat, and tears, damnit!

Oh, and sexual favors. Shit, forgot about those.

Do blowjobs really go for a quarter in Canada? I've never asked.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Yes....

Yes they do....

And you now owe me 50,000 more through breech of the confidentiality agreement.

SWEET!!!! :)

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

too many to fucking list, I'm the king of idiots

But .......

Not studying new market economies and thinking the $ would always be rolling in at that rate

Taking too long to get rid of partners

Not allocating more resources for additional advertising (especially when I lost one of the sweetest and most profitable ad deals ever)

Riding the high horse instead of making more millions and retiring and saying fuck you if you don't like what ..... um ...... my former company did

While many pissed $$$ away on hookers, dope, crazy parties I pissed away money on vacations (up to 6 a year), clothes, crazy home furnishings and who can remember what

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

ahhh yes ..the mythical "fuck you" money...

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

I shoulda grabbed more domains in the early 90's back before most of yall had even heard of the internet.

I kick myself in the ass at least weekly over that still.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Easy, being a total moron and literally just giving up on the business that made me so fucking wealthy I didn't know what to do (except increase the net revenues of Las Vegs by 2% annually). If i could go back to the day everyone industry wide realized that 50-60% trial conversion rates were here to stay and redo everything.. I would still be very very very well off.

As they say hindsight is 20/20 - and wow I can see so many fuck ups I made, good thing is hopefully I have all of them out of the way now and this time around I don't make the same idiotic moves :)

5 years from now I will be saying "Hindsight is 20/20" about mistakes I am making every day. I try to think about what I could be looking back on as a mistake in 5 years on every project I get involved in now. And I am only making one mistake atm, which I am starting to change my ways on..

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Hindsight is 20/20, and if I could change the past, I'd be a Billionaire!! ;)

Like most of the "old-timers" in this business, I made more than my share of stupid mistakes and bad decisions. A big one was getting too big, too quickly! In 1999, I had a payroll of just over a million a year, and extremely high overhead. If I knew then what I know know, 80% of the people would never have been, overhead would have been much lower, and I would have still had the same revenues!

Thank God I was smart enough to invest and put lots away.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

[quote=DannyCox]
Like most of the "old-timers" in this business, I made more than my share of stupid mistakes and bad decisions. A big one was getting too big, too quickly! In 1999, I had a payroll of just over a million a year, and extremely high overhead. If I knew then what I know know, 80% of the people would never have been, overhead would have been much lower, and I would have still had the same revenues!

[quote]

Amen to that!!! lol

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Always fascinates me to watch people's response when they're asked to be self critical. One group contains people who accept responsibility for their actions, and the better ones even learn from it. The other inevitably contains the "victims". Unfortunately those folks usually never learn from their mistakes and often go thru life blaming their failures on things like bad luck when there's no one else to blame.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

You are so right.

We live firmly in the middle of the me generation.

Hate fuckers who will not take responsibility for their own actions.

2c

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

Uh-huh.


I started to write a very long missive just in case I'm one of the alleged victims you're referring to, HP.

Just deleted it. Let me say this instead ... While you might be generally correct that people need to be responsible for their own actions and need to learn, specifically in my case and in the case of others, it is possible to be fucked, fucked good and not see it coming.

So in specific cases, don't armchair quarterback about things you have zero knowledge about. If you've never been fucked, good for you HP, but don't get a high and mighty attitude about it. Cause if you do, there's always Kharma.

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

moving out to LA... and not getting out of the biz sooner

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

some will know what I mean when I say "GoAmatuers"...
well, I think I shared in the dumbness...I wasn't the sole proprietor of dumb...

Re: What is the dumbest thing you have ever done in this business?
 

or ... we teach others what we most need to learn for ourselves.