MinedOfQuestions Challenge on NotePD: 'What were the 10 ...

What were the 10 failures you learned from this past year?

This is in response to a challenge on NotePD. I'm going to switch it a little. I feel like "this past year" includes the Pandemic years.

"Failure" is a strong word. Because if you learn something it isn't quite a failure. But I get what you mean. It's also good (for me) to realize how many failures one can have. Almost every day there are "little" failures but over the course of the past 2 years I've had some big ones that I've learned from.

(note: the image below was generated by the AI engine on NotePD. I fed it the words "failure" and "James Altucher" and I suggested it use the style of "Studio Ghibli" which is the studio that made classic anime movies like, "Spirited Away".

What were the 10 failures you learned from this past year?

Preview

1. Rollup of apps

I had an idea:

- I would rollup apps in the e-learning space. Meaning, I would buy small apps that were profitable and combine them together, making a bigger e-learning company. By combining them I would send traffic back and forth to the different apps (each app advertising on the other apps) and increase profits and then sell the bigger company.

- I used Flippa.com to find companies for sale. An app that maybe had $60K in profits per year would be selling for about $120-150k.

- I bought two apps and then used that to demonstrate to investors that this was a viable idea and I had investor commitments up to $15 million.

- At the time I was getting the backlash from my article on NYC and, for the first time ever, I was feeling more than a big overwhelmed from it. So this was effecting my judgment.

- I bought apps that were too complicated for me technically to figure out. Even though I was a software developer for 15 years earlier in my life I had basically lost my abilities in the mobile age. I can manage developers but not do development.

- Rather than hire someone to help me, I still tried to do it myself and I failed miserably.

- I ended up wasting an enormous amount of money and time. And I told the investors that I wasn't doing it anymore so the whole thing fell through. I still have the apps (I think I still have one app, the other disappeared) and I think the idea is still a great one but I burnt out on the idea.

- Learnings:

a. don't bite off more than you can chew.

b. Don't overestimate your abilities (in this case my technical abilities and also my ability at that single moment to deal with the backlash from my articles)

c. I knew this one already but not sure why I didn't do it here: partner and/or delegate to get a big project done.

It was one of the better ideas I've had over the past few years and it was a failure.