You sound almost exactly like me 2 years ago.
1. House in default, to be foreclosed
2. 3 kids under 6, wife was pregnant
3. Years of trying startups and all out of cash
4. Utilities all to be soon cut off
5. Getting any bit of cash to buy food
What I did.
1. As much as I swore never to return to work, I got a contract job (6 months). It stung, I wasn't in a good headspace at that time.
2. Borrowed some money from my family to cover the mortgage.
3. Saved my house from foreclosure by 6 hours using the borrowed money and my salary.
4. Kept the business running in the background and working on it at night.
5. Worked for 12 months, paying back everything, enjoying seeing my family eat good food once again and getting the occasional night out. What a treat to go and see a movie once in a while :) I can tell you going to the bottom gives you an incredible perspective on money and not what you think either.
6. Built up my contacts and pivoted my business. Lots of hard work and 2 years later I have 2 offices and a team of 7 people. (this is obviously a longer story, but for another day)
I recommend you get a job for the short term and get your life back in order. I can tell you that trying to grow a business while you are incredibly stressed about how you are going to eat or keep the lights on will only result in panic decisions and they will be bad.
If you have a passion to change the world, your families life and your own for the better, you will get back to business soon enough. Business owners have a burning passion to succeed at all costs and only consider this a temporary set back.
(Just a side note, some people have a fantasy of working hard (but not really), having lots of fun, getting traction easily, getting investment, get bought for a few billion and live happily ever after. If this is your plan, I would suggest setting up a career path, it will lead to a much happier life than a startup, in which the failure rate is very high and you have to be prepared to fail many times. Not work towards failure, just accept it as part of the journey.)
I do get quite a few requests for examples of contests, creating a video / screencast is high on the agenda. Hopefully I will be able to get one up this week.
The front page is just a design I hacked together where as the dashboard once you get in is a paid theme I got from themeforest.net. I will go and do the same for the public facing site.
Thanks for mentioning the confusing upgrade, I will go and redesign the page to make it clearer, I am obviously not communicating very well.
With regards to the 2 grayed out buttons, that is because they are not available yet. But split tests have shown that with them there the signups increase, because having the more expensive options there (even though still under dev) makes the cheaper ones look more valuable. (it's an interesting psychology lesson learnt a while back.
Thanks again for taking the time to review the site.
They are valid arguments to either side and nothing is conculsive. I think it is best to do your own research from medical journals/studies etc and do what you think is best for your children.
I think that is one thing everyone here has in common, we all want to do what is best for our children.
What I did.
1. As much as I swore never to return to work, I got a contract job (6 months). It stung, I wasn't in a good headspace at that time.
2. Borrowed some money from my family to cover the mortgage.
3. Saved my house from foreclosure by 6 hours using the borrowed money and my salary.
4. Kept the business running in the background and working on it at night.
5. Worked for 12 months, paying back everything, enjoying seeing my family eat good food once again and getting the occasional night out. What a treat to go and see a movie once in a while :) I can tell you going to the bottom gives you an incredible perspective on money and not what you think either.
6. Built up my contacts and pivoted my business. Lots of hard work and 2 years later I have 2 offices and a team of 7 people. (this is obviously a longer story, but for another day)
I recommend you get a job for the short term and get your life back in order. I can tell you that trying to grow a business while you are incredibly stressed about how you are going to eat or keep the lights on will only result in panic decisions and they will be bad.
If you have a passion to change the world, your families life and your own for the better, you will get back to business soon enough. Business owners have a burning passion to succeed at all costs and only consider this a temporary set back.
(Just a side note, some people have a fantasy of working hard (but not really), having lots of fun, getting traction easily, getting investment, get bought for a few billion and live happily ever after. If this is your plan, I would suggest setting up a career path, it will lead to a much happier life than a startup, in which the failure rate is very high and you have to be prepared to fail many times. Not work towards failure, just accept it as part of the journey.)