Behind every successful Internet mogul

Interesting that both ShoeMoney and John Chow recently ascribed their success to support from their wives.

Certainly the very least that a married would-be-entrepreneur needs is permission from his partner to spend the time needed to build anything of import on the web. When I started building my successful site I was single. My girlfriend then fiancee then wife didn’t really understand all the time I spent “playing on the computer”. In part that’s because I was awfully shy about talking about it. It was a project that seemed pretty trivial and while I hoped it would someday make money I wasn’t planning on it becoming huge.

It did become huge however and when it serendipitously become our sole source of income my wife began to understand that not only was it something important to me it was something that could bring financial security.

Now don’t get me wrong. My wife didn’t come to accept my pursuits simply because they were making money. She’s long supported me doing the things that interest me. More interesting is her support now when I don’t have a successful project going and don’t have a lot of clear direction. It’s her belief in me that keeps me going much of the time. It’d be easy for her to demand I pursue a more traditional employment but she won’t unless it becomes clear that such a move would really be best for me.

Beyond that she’s brought me quite an interesting project. It’s working with someone who has some great ideas and materials about parents helping their kid’s education. She has very little knowledge of how to use the web for her business (just a simple brochure site at the moment) and I’m hoping to help her build out that site into an important part of her business. I’ll keep the blog updated as the project progresses.

She also wants to develop a project for mom’s who’ve left the professional world to stay at home to raise their kids. It’s an idea that we’ve both tossed around for a while and my wife is ever the networker and we hope to drive it forward in the near future.