Personal Development

When I think about an entrepreneurial mindset, I envision strength, daring, risk-taking and a relentless fervor to succeed in the mission.  In the world of internet marketing, I think this translates into steadfastly developing fascinating personal blog content and incredible You Tube videos, linking them out into social media like Facebook and Twitter where they are eagerly devoured; creating Twitter posts and Facebook entries like clockwork, to inform, entertain, enthuse and allure the minions of your followers and those you are following; rocking the online world with Pay Per Click campaigns that have keywords dripping off your keyboard and into the laps of hungry–make that starved!–enclaves of thankful consumers clutching their hearts while dialing your number with trembling fingers and abated breath, just waiting to learn MORE about your business opportunity.  This is the entrepreneurial mindset to which I aspire.

This is not the entrepreneurial mindset I enjoyed this week.  I started my week doing my faithful, what I like to call “community service”.  I checked out all the great posts of my blogging friends and post comments and retweets to get myself into the groove.  I immediately learned that on my own blog, my retweets weren’t retweeting and my simple face book plugin was far more complicated than it should have been.  Even my commentluv posts failed to link back to my post because, apparently, my commentluv program had to be updated.  Who would guess?

With my entrepreneurial mindset clutched firmly in my grasp, I bravely contacted my plugin vendors for help, only to find my passwords were wrong (of course I had failed to write them down anywhere since I “knew” I couldn’t possibly ever need them again, or … that my memory is so astounding that I’d certainly recall them when put on notice).  We’ve all lost passwords, though, so I courageously entered my emails and requested permission to reset them.  But my emails weren’t registered.  What?  Registered? Nobody ever… wait, I’m an independent entrepreneur.  I need to think of these things myself.  But come on, register my plugins?  This was insane.  Who ever heard… but I digress.

I put out a distress message to Kimberly Castleberry, my favorite, endlessly giving and always spot on technical expert and… in time, all will be well.

So, turn to my Pay Per Click campaigns instead.  A strong entrepreneurial mindset requires that we roll with the punches, endure the valleys as we relish the peaks… yaddy yaddy yaddah.  So I simply rolled up my sleeves and started putting my Google Adwords campaigns together until I learned that Google didn’t recognize my account information and I had to start a new one.  I can deal with it.

Turns out Google also was aghast at the configuration of my capture pages and I was best advised to create sub domains for their URLs, but… the sub domains would, at best, reduce my quality scores to levels that would keep my brilliant keyword campaigns from ever reaching any of those craving eyeballs.  Off to build a custom domain, except I wasn’t sure how to actually apply that to the technological system I’m utilizing so I had to put out an “Urgent” support ticket for direction on that process.  Three days later, the matter was resolved.

Oh, did I mention… by that time the week was pretty much shot, along with my nerves.  I couldn’t do a single video what with pulling my hair out all week I looked afright, so much that my dog wouldn’t stay in bed with me on those rare occasions when I made it to that forgotten repose.  My computer was still intact, despite my waves of threats to dash it against the sharpest corner of the wall.  But it hardly helped any since in the middle of my most critical webinar of the week, it totally froze.  No reason.  It just froze.

Did I also mention that I have some nice little investment properties.  This week I had to pay a plumber over $200 to unclog a toilet, the oil company over $300 for an emergency heating fuel delivery, some guy I don’t know $150 to install a new doorknob so the tenants could stop climbing in and out of their window and… Oh I didn’t have to pay the electrician.  He still hasn’t showed up after 6 phone calls and the tenant still can’t watch TV in the living room or open his garage door (one of those convenient remote control ones!).

Back to my entrepreneurial mindset, and roll with the punches and never give up and on and on.  I really couldn’t figure out ANYTHING of value that I could offer to my readers this week, in terms of incredible learning or inspiring vignettes.  So this is what you get.

I struggled with which category to put it in… seems to have little to do with internet marketing, social media or blogging per se.  So I put it in the Health category.  I don’t really have one for mental health.