Having just recently started a personal blog at jeremyjaymes.com I have come to realized that sharing my own personal ideas and business experiences in two places would be overkill. So I started brainstorming in an attempt to pin down where viral thinking could fit into all of this. Then I started to think back to how it all started.

What I wanted to create with Viral Thinking was a place that focused on small business ideas, experiences and startups not necessarily of my own creation. A place where people could share and discuss those ideas and experiences as a learning experience.

While I am still not exactly sure how that might look at this point the seed is planted and I am ready to move forward.

Here is a quick breakdown of some thoughts I had, feel free to add your own ideas in the comments.

• Interviews with entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators etc.
• An open platform for people to come together and share ideas. (A community brainstorm perhaps.)
• Twitter integration of some sort???
• Tips

That’s the short version. I would love to hear some thoughts on this, perhaps you would like to be involved somehow? I would definitely be interested in people looking to contribute in the early stages and as it grows (we hope).

I was having a peaceful moment earlier this afternoon, watching a deer graze in the field and I started thinking about the decisions I have made in the past ten years and how I got where I am.

It was interesting to me to remember how many of those decisions have been rather split second. I more or less had a vision of what I wanted to be doing, believed I could do it and went for it. Sure I put thought into what making those decisions would mean and how they would effect my life, but in doing so I realized that we tend to over analyze. We start out having faith in our ability to accomplish something and then go about breaking it down until we talk ourselves out of it and instead pursue the safer, less passionate route.

In doing this we end up hurting ourselves in the long run. We hinder our ability to grow and ultimately end up becoming more fulfilled in our lives, careers, hobbies, whatever the case may be.

Not ever choice you make our opportunity you decide to pursue is going to result in the pot of gold that you envisioned, but if you fail to pursue the chance you can never learn from the hardships, the failures and the mistakes. The things that truly teach you what you are capable of and will ultimately help you to succeed in the long run.

Making the decision to join the military before an inevitable war and choosing to go with a highly deployable unit that often times finds itself in the middle of some of the most dangerous situations could have ended badly. The experience is something that I will never forget and would never trade for anything.

Creating a product in one of the tougher markets out there, dumping a lot of hard earned money into to it and watching it fail miserably can certainly set you back a bit. It is also something that I do not regret, the amount that I learned about business during this time is not something you can pay to learn in school.

Jumping out on my own instead of choosing the safer more secure path of full time employment when I had a child on the way was thought to be stupid and possibly even irrisponsible. I had faith in my ability to succeed and asked that others give me a chance to prove that. I have not taken a look backward.

Sometimes it is extremely hard to talk yourself up instead of down and away. Coming up with the idea is only half the battle, convincing yourself to take action is when it counts. Don’t be afraid to take the leap and pursue your passion, even if it means hardship you will come out ahead in the long run if only you learn from the experience.

The focus ahead or as I see it happening is to be mainly on business and entrepreneurship, just as it always has but with a few new projects and ideas on the way I should have plenty to talk about.

So get ready, fire up those Rss readers and stay tuned for the next installment.

It’s been a busy start to the year to say the least but no excuses. If anything the past few projects that I have had the pleasure to be involved with have been a real eye opener to me. Day in and day out I started to realize the amount of above and beyond time I put into client work when I really start to get excited about it. Emails, ideas, phones calls. Hell you could have a look at any number of emails I have written to clients and start to realize that I write tutorials not emails.

Bottom line is I feel like I share a lot of good ideas and advice with clients, in fact I help put it into action and see the results. The unfortunate part, I don’t often put the practices into action myself. I also don’t share enough with the wider audience, the damn reason I started a blog like this in the first place.

So that’s it time to put some of my advice into practice for myself, back to business!

Feel free to file this under rants!

Yes the New Year holds some excitement for me, but is it really a clean slate? After putting some time and thought into it I decided that we should start to look at each day as if it where the new year. We should carry that same excitement and enthusiasm with us regardless. Each new day should be a clean slate where you strive to be a better you, a smarter you and a more accomplished you. Then perhaps we would start to see the change we were looking for when making those resolutions.

So I ask what is the New Year to you?

When I started what could probably be marked as my second business some four and a half years ago, I never thought that it would lead me to where I am now. As it became clear cut that the business would fail and that I had sunk quite a bit of money into a product that now clutters my storage space, it seemed that the happiness of doing “something I truly enjoyed”, would once again elude me.

I took that 9 to 5 and moved forward, setting the engine on cruise control I need to regroup, but I did not let that failure keep me from focusing on my goals for the future. I knew, without a doubt in my mind that this was not the last time I would venture into the world of entrepreneurship.

Now, this four and a half years later I look back at and I am able to recognize that it was not failure at all. It was a lesson, the learnings of which are applied to each and every part of the way I do business today and the reason I feel I can succeed.

As an entrepreneur, learn to recognize that failure is not the end of the journey it is only a fork in the road, a building block for something better and you will begin to see the bright side of failure.