Today’s Whiteboard Wednesday set a record for the longest ever in the history of earth. I’ve broken it up into four parts.
Today’s WW is largely the backstory of YNAB. How it came to be… how it has evolved. Mistakes I’ve made in the past. This has been requested for a bit and I thought I’d give the brief version. It turned into a 30-minute endeavor :)
After relating the YNAB story I focus on a few key principles for small business owners (and esp. for those aspiring to get something started! Key word there being ‘started’).
Enjoy. I promise brevity going forward. Right.
That was great Jesse. I love hearing how people get started doing things they enjoy. By the way, I too owned a Prism a few years ago. I sold it with 225,000 miles and it was still running. Cheap but sturdy.
@Jeff — yeah, we loved our Prizm. During our move to Dallas we totaled it about 60 miles east of El Paso — ran over something in the road that put a few holes in the engine. I’d probably still be driving it…
“This is another Whiteboard Wednesday (done mostly on Wednesdays).” ha ha! That line made me laugh for some reason.
Thanks for the four part posts Jesse. Found them very interesting. Thanks for sharing and helping others.
Joel
Although it was long its worth it! Great job, I listened to the whole series. My favorite is part 3. Your passion was on fire!
Great information for small business (and aspiring) owners. Thanks. Looking forward to the course.
Great information. There is definitely a market for what you’re offering here. Good luck.
Help – I’d love to hear it, but I can’t get sound. I have the volume turned right up on both the computer and the video box, but there’s obviously somewhere else it needs to be adjusted. I’ve looked at the global settings thingy till I was totally confused (twice) and still can’t see anything that looks like a volume control. Any suggestions?
Thanks for this Jesse! Really appreciate it. I especially loved your advice about starting a business. Having seen your business grow up I trust your advice (still with salt though, of course). The way you do business makes for very loyal customers because we know that you will deliver the goods. Maybe not right now, but as soon as you can. And we don’t mind giving you that money up front. You make great software with a solid theoretical basis. Keep up the great work – and I look forwad to those splits baby!
Hooray, I got it going. Thanks Jesse, some of that advice I’ve heard before, but stepping into my new business it’s great to be reminded. In fact, as I had the lady here yesterday to talk about designing a logo and so on for me, I could hear your advice from the last time running through my head and realised now is not the time to rush into this kind of thing, later when I have some customers will do :-)
That was great Jesse. You advice is very similar to what I hear from Dave Ramsey. I loved hearing of your struggles and fruitless marketing attempts in the beginning. when you were first getting started. Brought back some memories of my own! It is great to see the success you’ve had with this.
I think the biggest mistake I’ve maid over the years is chasing “bright shiny objects”. I get bored with current projects before I see them come to fruition. I think if I could go back 5 years and just FOCUS on one project I’d be in a much better spot.