Business mistakes

[Adam G.]

I was thinking about mistakes we have made from a business point of view.

I'll go first, as a freelancer I need to keep my skills upto date, so I pay for my own training. Last autumn I paid almost €5000 to do both Infomart courses. I can't fault the courses as they were spot on the mark and accomplished the knowledge transfer I was interested in. The problem is the return has been zilch and from a business point of view a disaster.

What have you experienced?

Pavel

[Steve]

I wasted a weekend writing an article for the second edition of The Wire magazine   

[cavagnaro]

:'(that was not a waste...hold on and that number will go out

[victor]

Pavel,
Cav,

I do not think what you have described is business mistake. I think it is just lack of clearly identified objectives and goals, which, if I am not mistaken, is one of the reasons why you, Pavel, decided to take consultancy road and you Cav, decided to write more articles. You have chosen your careers with focus on being satisfied with what you do. And probably, if you did have a strict plan to follow, chances are neither of you were still doing what you are doing now.

We enjoy our work and I think that monetary side of the equation for Pavel is more than compensated by the liberty and lack of long-term liabilities many of us are stuck with. You don't know how good you got!

As for Cav: well, he is Brazilian...so what do you expect

[tony]

I was sort of unclear on the question posed by Pavel - "business mistakes" (I think) implies personal career...?  Unless you are an employee, in which case it might be the mistakes your business partners have made (as opposed to IT)...

Still a bit confused, to be honest...

T