In the next couple of weeks, WhyGoSolo (and Tickets with a Twist) will both come offline. I’m not entirely sure when the end came…however, I do know it was before now; it just took me this long to admit it and come to terms with it.

I feel just as strongly and passionately about the concept/premise of WhyGoSolo and Tickets with a Twist as I did two years ago, but I currently don’t have the resources to pull it off; the most important resources being the money, drive and energy to revive it.  I made some attempts that all lead nowhere.

Two years ago, we were in pace with and in some respect ahead with development – now, we’re behind.  No matter what, the sites would have to come offline for a full facelift and I don’t have the developers or money for developers to revive the technology or to go mobile.

Two years ago I was in the buzz and part of creating buzz…now, I don’t really care.  I’m not done “playing” online by any stretch of the imagination, but my involvement will be different. The echo chamber got old real fast and I got hung up on things that really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

I’m coming out of the last two years with baggage: exhaustion, guilt from letting people down, knowledge of mistakes I shouldn’t have made and a mountain of debt I’m still trying to pay off. I’m also still angry at some things that happened and things that didn’t pan out.

I can’t even begin to honestly describe how shitty having to write this post about pulling the plug on a dream and vision is like.  People who don’t dream big will never know what killing a dream feels like. This is my second time doing it and it’s much worst this time. I’m thoroughly humbled and awaken compared to where I used to be.

Now that the end is here, I want to close this chapter by acknowledging and sending thanks to all the people who at some point or another got involved in WhyGoSolo, all the developers, WhyGoSolo members, bloggers, DC Tech community, Pownce crew and all others who supported me and our efforts.

Above all, I want to acknowledge and thank Darcy Laycock and Michael Busselli who both really stuck through till the end – literally till the end; they will be the ones pulling the plug and purging the databases.

I wanted success for WhyGoSolo for Darcy and Michael more than I wanted it for myself – I was not able to deliver the grand vision they joined the team to realize and that is the HARDEST part of closing the sites down.

What’s Next?!?! (Four weeks later)

I was still extremely hurt and angry at the thought and need to shut down the sites, a month ago, when I wrote the first half of this post.  I still needed more time to accept what was inevitable.  Now, I’m in a much better place. I’m finally in a place where I can take what I’ve learned and apply it to something new under Yut Media Inc.  Although,   this time I’m going to avoid fighting the uphill battles that have always kicked my ass:

1. Entering a field/area that I have no background or contacts in
2. Being heavily reliant on technology and development to get started
3. Needing investors to succeed – Success makes getting investors a much simpler process
4. Stressing myself with unrealistic expectations and pressures
5. Starting a business that I think will eventually be fun. I’m starting something that will be enjoyable and fun from day one.

I’m in a good place with my life.  I don’t remember ever being this happy or satisfied with my present and the outlooks for the future.

I’m more relaxed, balanced, in-tuned, grateful and knowledgeable/cognitive of what needs to be done to meet my dreams than ever before.  I’m not pressuring myself and I feel I have already had a huge win in my life; realizing what happiness truly is and what it means to live life.

I have a wonderful life NOW. Turns out I didn’t need to realize my dreams to have a wonderful life; it was mine to have all along.  Having a wonderful life does not take away my burning desires to realize my potential/ambitions and build an empire to call my own.  However, now I get to do it and enjoy it a lot more.

Life is a journey, it really is. Life will show you everything you need to know about yourself and the keys to happiness, inner peace and being absolutely content.

You have to grow, act and change your thinking and circumstances for life to bring you the opportunities you’re looking for.  I left DC and moved to New Orleans.  I changed the way I did many things once I arrived to New Orleans – different behaviors and actions have brought me different results and outcomes!! I’m taking that new mindset into business along with everything else I’ve learned – lets see where that will lead me.

I had planned on starting 2009 in a relationship. As you know from past posts, that didn’t happen and although I moved on; I’ve discovered it’s been weighing on my subconscious quite a bit. Since I haven’t been willing to deal with it in a wakeful state; it started hunting my dreams. For the most part, I also avoided dealing with my dreams until one of the dream/nightmare had a face to it…the face of the man who broke my heart.

I’m a strong, intelligent, and confident woman. I understand people more than I should and I have a distinct ability to get people to open up to me which allows me to know their vulnerabilities. I uncover things about people but very rarely show my vulnerabilities. I quickly become a confidante, supporter and “cheerleader” for people…especially men.

It took a few years of struggling for me to open up and be comfortable being vulnerable but the last few months, actually since getting my heart broken I’ve retreated back to my place of power and strength. The place where I am in control, the strong one, knowledgeable one and untouchable one. The place where I can’t get hurt.

It’s not a good place. It’s a destructive place. It’s a place where I become extremely competitive and aggressive. This is a place where I don’t share with others who I am. A place where I push people to do more, for them to push themselves as much as I push myself. A place where I use my keen senses to know what people are hiding and holding back to make them face it. I push, push and push everyone. The more I make people look at themselves in the mirror the more I avoid looking at my own behavior.

I become cool, calm and collected. Emotionally unavailable, all business and nothing gets to me. Everything rolls off my shoulders. I lived my life like that for years and I somehow defaulted back to it in order to protect myself.

I actually don’t know what to do about this. How am I going to allow myself to allow someone in again? How am I going to allow myself to be vulnerable again? How?

For all fairness, it wasn’t just the heartbreak. Quite a few people hurt me and betrayed my trust last year. I ran away from it and came to New Orleans. I’ve been submerged in life in ‘Nawlins’ and continued to avoid things. The last couple of weeks things have slowed down and my consciousness has had time to catch up to my subconsciousness.

I’ve made changes in my life, while at the same time I’ve fallen back into old patterns that I thought I’d overcame. We are such animals of habits.

At least one thing I do remember from my years of struggling is that this isn’t something I can deal with alone. It’s a concern I need to pray on and ask God to bring me the answers. I don’t want to be an emotionally unavailable, mechanical, ruthless and competitive being. Instead, I want to be a strong, assertive, driven, ambitious and vulnerable being.

In August of 2007, I wrote a blog post called “Who is Your Front Man”. At the time I wrote the post, I was getting really involved in the web, or rather developing a web presence, since I imagined it would eventually pay off in assisting WhyGoSolo get off the ground.

Although I was enjoying being part of various communities; I wasn’t a fan of the popularity contests, and the small, yet loud echo chamber. Then somewhere down the road, I got into “social media” – I mean, you spend enough time online and learning the technology, plus attending events that it becomes second nature to understand how the web operates, reacts, grows and can be leveraged so I wanted to talk about that too. But how relevant was that to what I was initially trying to accomplish?

What I’ve just realized is that I’m actually a big fool that let herself get derailed. I started out wanting to develop and grow a web startup around a concept I strongly believe in and ended up…well, not entirely sure where I ended up. What I do know for sure now is that I don’t need to be known as a big shot social media guru. (Don’t get me wrong – I know my shit when it comes to social media strategizing but I don’t need to prove that to anyone) I also don’t care who in the social media sphere knows me or doesn’t…I frankly don’t like most of the self-horn-tooting-fools who are now calling themselves social media experts these days.

I was wrong about that post “Who is Your Front Man” because the truth is most of the CEOs of tech startups stay under the radar until their startup gets skylined. They network and conduct business with the players that are important to the success of their startup.

I feel like a dumbass for not realizing this sooner, it took taking part of a social media maketing plan brain storming session at SXSW and Dave Shaw telling me “You should do this for a living” to make me think “No, actually I don’t want to do this for a living. I want to develop and grow a business.”

I’m not going to beat myself up about it or the time invested and lost. I also won’t rush figuring out what to do with the Yut Media site and blog, but it will be changed at some point down the road…so will my follow list on Twitter.

That’s another point about being involved in social media…it takes critical time away from the business development (particularly in my case since I need to network with venues offline). My time online needs to be dedicated to doing research and finding the specific people I need to network with.

The social media sphere brought me a lot of aggravation and frustrations, it really should have dawn on me sooner that it just wasn’t the place for me. I’m fascinated with tech and I need to look at the web with those set of eyes.

I’m going to slap myself in the forehead a few more times before going to bed and start a fresh new beginning tomorrow morning with the title Web Startup Entrepreneur; the real brand I want to develop and reach success in.

I will continue to blog here and back on the WhyGoSolo Plug-in blog…where I need to attract new members.

SkinBintin replied: @AnnBernard – what were the valuable, and costly, lessons learnt?

I replied to SkinBintin after giving some thoughts on my preparedness to really speak about the lessons that I learned last night:

@SkinBintin Debating doing a blog post but I normally wait to share lessons till I’ve found a better implementation based on the lessons

@SkinBintin A lesson is worthless, unless it leads to a future success

To which PenguinSix replied @AnnBernard Read the Steve Jobs Stanford Speech (calligraphy/fonts). You never really know though when a lesson might lead to a success.

PenguinSix got me further thinking about lessons.

Fear of Repeats

I take lessons I learn in all aspects of my life extremely seriously because if there’s one thing I know, it’s this – Whatever you don’t learn is doomed to be repeated.

It’s one predictable thing about life. You either learn or you do a repeat. The repeat is normally more “severe”. Be it more costly (dollars and/or time), more painful and more drastic. That’s because if we don’t learn the first time; we need a larger dose and grandeur demonstration to teach us.

So what I do with each lesson I learn is take careful notes literally, mentally and figuratively to embed the lesson into my DNA.

Immediate Use Lessons

The easiest lessons to avoid repeating are the “Immediate Use Lessons.” The immediate use lessons are the obvious “Wow, I’m not going to do this again.” And the things that happen that leave you saying: “I really could have done this better” – “Not sure that was good, worth it or the best.”

“Immediate Use Lessons” require some thinking and stewing on them to find better options and solutions. Options and solutions that can be immediately applied if and when the situation arises again.

Apply Later Lessons

The real tough lessons are the “Apply Later Lessons.” That’s because those lessons are tied to, embed in and connect to default behaviors, natural tendencies, automatic reactions and well, the core of who you are.

“Apply Later Lessons” require learning new behaviors, actions and tendencies. They require a reprogramming of who you are to be effective (put into action). If you can’t make the change after the lesson is learn that will modify the cause (and effect) than you will act and be the same way – therefore, recreate the same outcome if the same situation arises again.

It’s important to spend serious time on the “Apply Later Lessons” so they are truly learned. Keep them fresh in your mind so that if a lot of time elapses (could be years) you can recall the lesson, the change you made, when put into a similar situation.

I personally thoroughly log and journal my “Apply Later Lessons” and talk through them with a good friend.

Yesterday’s lessons were a mix of “Immediate Use and Apply Later Lessons.” Since I haven’t journaled them yet – I’m going to go do that now.