decision making

One thing i’ve always been good at is decision making.

Any big decision i’ve made in life thus far, i haven’t regretted and i think that’s how you can judge whether a decision has been good or not.

Continuing to work whilst doing the leaving cert (4th, 5th, 6th year) was one decision i made. I was constantly warned not to do that and that it would impact on my results, it was short sighted etc… Never bothered me, sure it was pressure, it was a tight schedule but i managed it. Got the roughly the points i wanted and also bought myself a ferrari, car and surround sound system along the way… the ferrari of course was where this blog and indeed all of my sites, including BeerChief have been conceived.

No regrets there whatsoever despite going against many people’s wishes.

Taking a year out from school / college. Straight after the leaving cert i took i year out. To gain cash no.1, but also to try my hand at web development and seeing if the IT industry was really for me. Again, another excellent decision… rather than rush in to college like most people do, i thought i’d sit back, work full time and do a bit of web development research on the side. It confirmed to me what i thought i knew - i wanted to work in IT, more specifically web development. Next year i’m in college doing an IT course, watching 50% of the year drop out for NOT making the decision i made 12 months prior to take a year out and test the waters before you dive in.

Definitely no regrets there, even though at the time i thought i may regret it.

Saying the driving test was too easy before i took it - definitely asking for trouble on that one… could easily have backfired spectacularly on me… but it didn’t. Why? Because i was right. It was too easy but nobody has the balls to say it before a test. Why is this a big decision? Because i blogged publicly about something which most people wouldn’t do for fear of it backfiring… but i had enough belief in myself to cope with the pressure i’d added upon myself

Quitting work - ah, probably the big one… i’ve been asked many times do i regret giving up work in retail. Well for starters if you asked me do i miss my old job, i’d laugh at you If you asked me if i missed the cash, it’s a different issue.

I’m much happier now than i was 12 months ago, put it that way… even though i’ve less cash (well, less liquidity!). That’s beacuse i’m now doing something i love, something in which i have unlimited income potential and i think that’s a major factor.

It means i’m working for myself, not for other people… rather than do what i’m told, i’m doing what i’m telling myself + more. So i’m working harder, thinking harder… Work = Money and that’s what it boils down to. I do have to play catch up in the money sense, but i certainly don’t regret giving up my job and hopefully BeerChief will confirm that also.

On BeerChief, we then move on to more decisions…

• Do i regret selling JPEGr to fund BeerChief- No.
• Do i regret getting a partner to work on BeerChief with me - No.
• Do i regret outsourcing it to a company? No.
• Do i regret putting myself under pressure by calling it ‘world class’ - No.
• Do i regret not launching it earlier - Incredibly, no as i believe the long delay has been a blessing in disguise!

These are all things which could easily have been mistakes… i may have sold JPEGr and seen it explode in to life with millions of members and tonnes of revenue - but i didn’t, or hasn’t yet anyway… good decision by me so, sell while things are static and put the cash in to something that can only go up.

I could also have regretted getting a partner… he may have been a con artist, not passionate, not interested, not willing to go halves on anything… but that didn’t happen again because the right decisions were made.

Outsourcing BeerChief a lot of things could have gone wrong… the contracts may not have been fully read, the company may have been fraudsters etc… again it’s work out grand thus far as the right decisions were made.
These are all things which shape bigger things. If BeerChief goes belly up, i’ll have made poor decisions somewhere along the way which undo my good work thus far, so it’s important every single decision is the right one…

Ironically the only way you get good at making decisions is making bad ones or watching other people make bad ones! That’s why blogs and forums can be so useful because you learn from people’s mistakes…

You guys will learn from me, hopefully good things, good decisions!! But even if i make stupid or rash decisions they’re still of benefit to you as you’ll know not to repeat them. But at 21, i ain’t seen nuthin’ yet and talking about big decisions is naieve - i know that. But THUS FAR any big decision made hasn’t been regretted and i plan on keeping it that way

Note: sorry about the ugliness of this post, no pictures or anything to break up the masses of text… i really should start cleaning up my posts a bit

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