Well, I feel like I failed in leading this project, the project Inspiration for Success. Or at least I failed in leadership as i was not able to induce my followers to do some work on the website, even though they may have done some external optimization like like link building, but I doubt that.

So often when I feel like things are not going right, like I don’t achieve my goals or my plans don’t work out as intended I go back to the book Think and Grow Rich, which is, yes, it is, always near me. So I just started reading the chapter Organized Planning as that is about leadership and that is where I need to improve. So I was reading and evaluating myself, but as one of the backgrounds of this site is achieving success in public I decided to make a post about what is going on. And to be honest, part of the reason for this post is to get some sympathy or something from my team members. Or not really sympathy as if I’m the leader I just need to make it work. But maybe sharing what’s happening to me might help me, the project and my team members to make progress.

So there are some things in my mind:

1. I kind of don’t want the project to be about money, about ‘earning from other peoples misery’, but in the end the project is somehow about money as I do want to be rich, yes filthy rich. That’s somehow still partly the background of the whole project and this site and maybe I have denied that to myself somehow.
2. I was brought to that conclusion by being hit hard by someone, no not physically but mentally. He kind of put the question what this project, this site is all about, and in the end it’s just about business, about earning, even though I still kind of deny that.
3. So because of my denial the project in the end about business, about earning or at least to find money to pay the people doing the work putting up this site and bringing the project further, the project is in jeopardy and not moving. And that’s not good for anyone, not me, not the team and not the clients or customers or users of the site.
4. So yes, the project is about money, and preferably a lot of money, but the last can wait. For now just money for the team members to be able to put time and effort and maybe buy a design and stuff.

So what I’m basically stating above I guess is that we need a clear decision if the project is indeed a business or not. And if not, what it is then. Something like charity?

So for today’s meeting I think the first thing is to recheck the mission and goal and stuff and decide on whether to go for ‘business’ or ‘volunteer’ or ‘charity’ or something. Because that would also be the basis of what the team, including me, would and can expect.

The next thing would be a good plan related to the goals and that would indeed need to include money. Or time if we don’t want to get money from somewhere external as i think neither of the team members has the funds to pay people to do the work.

So going back to my personal issue of leadership and what I was reading about that. And what actually made me start to write this post as i just wanted to publish my evaluation on my leadership skills based on what I found in the chapter Organized Planning in Think and Grow Rich:

1. Unwavering courage: I think I could improve here quite a bit like telling my team members how it is, which I did today in an e-mail. I think often I’m too weak in this. But I’m improving!
2. Self control: self control is one of my biggest weaknesses, but also here I’m learning. Not the main issue in this project I think.
3. Keen sense of justice: I think I go wrong here also, similar to (1). Regardless basically this is my project, I am doing an unreasonable part of the work. If we want to make real progress I need to convince or tell my team members they need to put more effort.
4. Definiteness of decision: not my strongest point in this project I think. Main issue again, related to (3) is that I just need to kick out team members who don’t perform, who don’t do anything at all.
5. Definiteness of plans: this may be the main issue of the project and it goes back to the definiteness of the goals and the desire behind. We need a better plan and we need it soon, or this project will linger on forever and never reach maturity like being the top inspiration site on the internet.
6. The habit of doing more than paid for: no problem for me, except that I think I do too much, which doesn’t gain me respect.
7. A pleasing personality: I have some issues with people, but I don’t think that’s really an issue in this project.
8. Sympathy and understanding:I need to be in sympathy with my followers and understand them and their problems. Related to this i think my issue with (understanding) people might be some issue in the project. The main thing I’m struggling with is that i do understand some of the problems my team members have, but I don’t understand what makes them use that as an excuse for not performing in the project Inspiration for Success.
9. Mastery of detail:
10. Willingness to assume full responsibility: this is a hard one. I know I am responsible for the project, but I’m not sure how that translates to the team and the team effort. Somehow this is my biggest weakness, but I think I was never in a position to be a good follower.
11. Cooperation: I guess my biggest weakness and the reason why I’m not rich and actually the background of my process of Think and Grow Rich.

And I see it’s past seven pm, the start of the meeting and actually 7.15pm, the suggested time of the start of the actual meeting to allow fifteen minutes of work.

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Well, today was all or mostly WordPress, even though I started with doing some changes on a site of one of my customers. So not really sure what’s inspiring or how to write an inspiring post. Or maybe I do, because I think I am quite on the way now with my simple e-mail plugin for WordPress as I think it can be used now by anybody even though there are still some issues to fix and improve.

And again, I know these things take time, a lot of time to figure it out, like a child learning to ride a bicycle. And I was actually amazed there are not many people publishing plugins on the WordPress site, but I’m starting to understand now as it takes quite some knowledge and some persistence to make it work, to publish according to the rules and make it all work. And I won’t bother you with the details as most is technical, but you do need to know quite a bit of ‘everything programming’ to make it work, to publish a plugin on the WordPress site, like first you need to know how to write code. Then you need to think how the code for your own site, like in this case the code I wrote to send the daily quote, could also be usable for someone else. Then you need to pass the quite strict rules of publishing on the WordPress site and then you need to figure out how the version system works and how it all ends up properly in the plugins page.

Anyhow, I kind of made it and you can see the result on the page simple e-mail plugin for WordPress and as far as I know now you can just download it, install it in your WordPress site and it should work. It did not before though as there were still some errors I didn’t encounter locally.

Next to this I was trying to help a friend with two WordPress installations: Maladaw and Mama Rosa. Not sure where it goes, but I’ll do my best to help her to get where she wants with those sites.

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