Regrets in your life: What are they?

My biggest regret is not listening to other people's advice, thinking I could make a living "flying by the seat of my pants" and not paying attention to the balance sheets and bank statements. Bravado and stubbornness are great when you're flying a fighter jet, but don't do you much good in the business world.

Ed

 

I only have two regrets, both busienss-related:

1. In 1995, I was a nerdy little high school kid who liked to collect coins and play with his computer. I discovered this thing called the "world wide web", and had an idea to setup a website to auction my and other peoples' coins. I actually built a prototype of the site, and started taking registrations...I got hundreds and hundreds of people signing up to sell their stuff within a few weeks -- I had the first specialty auction site on the Internet.

So what did I do? What most high school kids do....got involved in dealing with college applications, school work, crushes on girls, etc. and totally forgot about the auction site.

Of course, literally a few months after I started my site, a fellow named Pierre Omidyar starts a very similar website (a little place called eBay) to sell his wife's Beanie Babies. The only difference is that he followed through.

2. The following year, showing typical teenage enthusiasm mixed with apathy, I decided to start a computer-building business. This was at a time when any decent PC cost $1500 - $3000, and I decided I would find components to get the cost down to $995. I went through all the motions, even sold one to a friend (who'd have never bought a computer had it not been that cheap) and then got bored and gave up. Three years later, every pundit in the world proclaims that "companies that introduce a sub-$1000 PC are positioned to acheive major-market dominance". Folllow through.......


Luckily, I've learned heavily from both of these things -- trust my instincts and follow-the-heck-through with my ideas!! Doing both of them as we speak...

 

Jordan, your story is pretty impressive, to have overcome that and still developed musical talent is quite an achievement. I cant hear that great, sensitivity-wise, and I'm somewhat tone deaf, but I just play sloppy punk-rock on the guitar, so it doesn't matter too much

Not to trivialize this and other people's regrets, but my regret was not drinking a Litre (0.264 Gallons) of water after the bar last night....

 

I wish I went to University before taking that "year off". I'm now 22 with a few courses that I'm no longer in need of and working 7 days a week. June of 2005 will be the month I become a man or a total loser. I'll keep plugging away though. O yeah, Nicole, Amy, Jill, Erin and Erin.
In racing, nice guys are called back markers.