Just got hit by another typical Bootstrapping Anti Pattern, I have been writing using “We” and not “I”.

It is such a bad habit for me, but I keep catching myself writing “We …” when I am writing text for my businesses. I am but myself so why should I write “We offer a secure service.”. I have just gone through a little self audit and updated the text I have written on WideWord and found more than a few cases. I hope I’ve removed all of it by now.

Why should you talk about your solo venture as I and not We? People won’t respect me? Bullsh$t. I think people nowadays much more respect the individual voice and not the boring corporate robot speak. It is really hard to wean yourself from this though. Besides it’s dishonest. If you are small, be proud to be small. If you are big be proud to be big (or scared???).

I have written a quick overview of what I have done to make WideWord secure.

5 Steps to Privacy in WideWord

Steve Pavlina has written another great bind twisting piece on changing the way you think about your time outside employment. He says we need stop focusing on our regular hourly rate, but instead focus our attention on those $10,000 hours.

It is really a great way of thinking and it really does make me think. Don’t worry about your time as such, but worry about pursuing those ideas that cause big payoff:

Almost always the $10,000 hour is the result of a great idea. And great ideas can strike at any time. When I get one of those $10,000 candidate ideas, I’ll normally drop everything and implement it right away. If it flops (and usually it does), I’ve lost an hour, but I still learned something. Most of the time it isn’t a total loss. I end up with a lot of $10, $50, and $250 ideas too. But I can afford to endure dozens of those relative flops for the chance to hit just one more $10,000 idea. And when it works, I must say it’s pretty darn nice. How to Earn $10,000 in One Hour

It just makes so much sense. The idea of putting a value on each hour of work is comes from the industrial age and does not make sense with creative types such as entrepreneurs.

Jared wants to incorporate his CommunityWalk business. I have written about this before in Legal structures for bootstrappers which is one of my more popular articles in this blog. I expanded on it a little bit as a comment to Jared’s entry.

It would be great to hear what structure he picks and why. In particularly he is in California who recently started enforcing a requirement to register out of state companies locally. I would be interested to see if that means it is easier to just do a California INC or LLC or if there still are benefits with Delaware and Nevada corporations.

Seth has a fantastic article about Understanding Local Max that should probably be read by all small entrepreneurs.

I is about how you put effort into something and you reach a point where the effort pays off, but eventually starts decreasing. His point is that when you reach what he calls the local max, which is that initial peak and it starts going down hill it really hurts. You should however keep fighting because as points out it will start increasing again and this time by much more. Read the article.

I suppose one way of applying it to someone like myself is that I put the effort in while I had my 9 to 5 after a while there is a limit to what I could do with the amount of effort I had to give so I quit my 9 to 5 and I’m somewhere in the bottom around point C now. Doing something like that is scary for many people, but as Seth points out you have to face C bravely and you will come through.

One point that I think Seth probably meant, but isn’t mentioned specifically is that at some point your Big Max will become the next Local Max and you have to keep at it. Also the Local Max will some times by itself start a downwards trend and you will have to reach for point C.

Famous in recent years Point C’s was Microsofts Internet attack in 1995 (and Live in 2005) and Apple’s (OSX in 2000 and Intel in 2005). Good leaders have to make the often unpopular choice of going to point C.