Paramore, Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana music played in the background as we both worked all day on refining the site designs and identifying the blogs and forums we needed to be on and grow reputations point on. We also learned how to use digg, technorati and stumble upon and the overall philosophy behind their web technologies.

This type of “work” felt different. Although I felt tired from time to time, and had to take a break for dinner, we were pretty on point for most of the 12 hours we were drumming away. A couple of things became clear to me now that I am sitting in front of my computer at 2 in the morning that I want to share with you as you learn from my journey.

1. Having a partner who shares your vision and values is great. You may argue about small things, design issues, maybe an ego clash here and there. But the overarching goal of freedom and independence has more importance than anything else on both of our priority lists. As such, I realized that in order to achieve this goal, we were often aligning together based on interests, while also overlapping on the same business operations values like trust, timing, collaboration, and a passion for the artform of pickup.

2. This doesn’t feel like “work”. The more effort we put into it, the more returns we shall receive. What we receive in rewards (both monetary and emotional) are dictated by the flow of the world and the markets, and not by some pompous manager who is solely concerned about his or her career. It is up to you, the business owner. There is a direct and exponential correlation to effort and reward, that IS within you control, and this feels great. The light at the end of the tunnel is evident, and I am glad I saw a shimmer today as I gazed into the future.

3. This is perhaps a dark side of mine, but my dis-taste for the status-quo as well as the corporate life of servitude propels me to advance, and while there are negative feelings associated with this, I also find positive feelings in recognizing that at my core, I am an individual, a leader. This is who I am, and not someone I had manufactured or grown into. It is time to step up to my shoes as a leader. To really have the power, eventually, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years from now, to say, “Fuck you. You fucked me. Now I declare war on you” and to be able to have the power and resources to follow through with my promise to demolish my enemies.

Sun Tzu said the best wars are won before they have even begun and no lives are lost. I do believe this, and my desire for power is only derived from a necessity to guard against those with power who wishes their wills upon me. When you have no power, and you “stray” and step “out of line”, others with power and authority will make you feel pain, fear, a sense of insecurity. Some even take this opportunity depending on the weakness of your reactions and resources to advance their own interests. Counter-wise: when one has power and occasionally “strays” or “does the wrong thing”, they are politely reminded not to, and sometimes, even gets away with it. No feelings of remorse are forced upon him or her, rather, the feelings of doing something wrong and learning from it purely comes within the control of the person with power of who he chooses to have a relationship with.

4. We really had fun today. There was no drama. No one was thinking about his career – it was just about making the site the best that it could possibly be. No ulterior motives. I hope that one day, when the money starts coming in, that we both remember this passion and the real reasons behind why we started launching these collection of sites and hold true to our values.

A lot of work went into this site as it was content driven: 300+ definitions of the PUA community in an effort to bring clarity to aspiring PUAs out there. I was lucky enough to have a great partner in this endeavor, as my partner Casual has the specific skill sets that I clearly lacked. Mainly, fast web development, SEO optimization and programming chops. This left me to do the writing, design, and strategic structure of the site and the business model around it. This is my sweet spot. “Working” on this, though tiring at times, doesn’t really feel like work. A couple of key lessons I learned during this whole process:

1. Exemplify your passions to your social circles, and those that you need will come to you. An entrepreneur by nature is not someone who knows everything – he is one who is able to bring the required resources together: land, capital, labor and enterprise – to achieve a goal. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world lacked technical skills, but succeeded due to their ability to assimilate the needed resources to achieve a goal. Steve Jobs in an entrepreneur. Barrack Obama. Larry Ellison. Jeff Bezos. Casual and I worked great together on this site, and by focusing on our passions, our workload, though high, felt much easier than it actually was.
2. Just do it – we have been talking about this for months, and in reality, the whole site took us close to 3 months to design and implement. Our investment was less than $300 in domain names and server space. Once things get going, it will become more exciting.
3. Partnership agreements – make sure the legals and business agreements are in place, to protect all parties. Beyond this, however, find a partner that you can be honest with and genuinely trust.
4. Learning new technologies is fun! We really got to specialize on this one. Casual probably learned a ton of Google products using them himself as well as a little from me. Also on SEO optimization on his own merit, and I am sure with the blogging platforms. WordPress rocks! (Sorry blogger). I was able to dive more into HTML, linking, referral programs, AdSense, Google Webmaster Tools, Custom Search Engine, Amazon Associates, and all these cool technologies that are totally useful to future projects as well. In the beginning, you feel like you have a lot to learn, but in taking them one step at a time, it began to become fun once you succeed at one product, then another, and then another.
5. Design – this is where Casual and I perhaps differ on – design and branding. I feel very strongly about this and I do believe that SEO work is important. However, so is a very distinct sense of style and branding. That is not to say that my style or styles are better, but they we should try different color schemas, navigation structures, and logos to find the best mix. I am partially influence by many of Google’s simplistic yet powerful navigation and design paradigms, and I believe we can do this same.
6. Seduction – we thought we knew all the PUA lingo out there, but we were mistaken. There are a lot of words! And so many more will develop in the future. The community is thriving, and the art of seduction, now leveraging the online worldwide platform, will continue to develop.
7. Additional effort = additional reward. This is perhaps the most important mindset of anyone who has ever done anything worthwhile in life. In business, as an employee, your rewards are capped by the system of the business for the “employee”. As an owner, your efforts relate directly to reward. The more you work, the more payoff there is. This is a difficult feeling to describe with words, on a blog. It is the feeling of freedom, of controlling your own freaking life. Of the beginning glimpses of breaking away from a life of corporate servitude.
8. Enjoy the journey – life is fun, and when you start sensing that you are becoming more skilled and more networked so that success is imminent in the future, there are moments of clarity that creep in, despite the workload or hours you are spending getting content to make sense, or the code to work. This is all part of the process.

That is about it for now. I am sure there’s more to come. Thanks for reading and be sure to tell us what you think about your new site here!

An example of the Carousal widget from Amazon Associates featuring landmark seduction community products: