Thirteen years ago, Joshua Dorkin’s friends teased him about starting a website that seemed to have no future.
“I would get calls from my buddies who would literally call me on my cell phone [and say] ‘Hey Josh, we just walked past a penny on the ground. We were thinking about picking it up and mailing it to you.”
At the time, Dorkin had just launched BiggerPockets, a then-nascent website about real estate investing.
“I was working a full-time job making no money as a teacher,” Dorkin says, “… and then [I] quit that job, reliable income, to blindly create this platform for other people. And I was helping other people get rich, and I was broke.”
Dorkin spent the next 8 years working mostly as a one-man operation as he tried to monetize a fledgling website.
“We were struggling and scraping by on every AdSense check that we could collect,” Dorkin says. “The business really wasn’t making serious money for probably getting close to a decade.”
The story has a happy ending. Today, BiggerPockets has grown to more than 870,000 members. The podcast has almost 250 episodes and the blog features more than 8,100 articles.
In today’s episode, I have a heart-to-heart with BiggerPockets founder Joshua Dorkin about the blood, sweat and tears that’s required to start a successful online business. What lessons did he learn along the way? What regrets does he hold? And what advice would he share with other aspiring online entrepreneurs?
We don’t talk about real estate investing in today’s episode. Instead, Joshua and I focus on the harsh realities of growing an digital empire.
Enjoy!
Resources Mentioned:
- BiggerPockets
- @JRDorkin on Twitter
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Chad Carson
I loved the show Paula and Josh! So many takeaways, both within business and for life in general. I think the main thing that struck me was Josh’s persistence. I think few people would have stuck with a project so long without quitting (which Josh said he thought about multiple times).
Related to that persistence, I am curious about something that Josh sort of hinted at. He said part of what helped him stick with it was feedback that his work was helping people. It seems like this core helpfulness of BP to its users was a strong “why”for Josh that was bigger than making money (because there wasn’t a lot early on). And that helpful culture of BP always seemed to me to be what set the website apart.
Josh, was that mission or bigger purpose of BP a core motivator when it got tough?
In my own online writing/biz, I struggle at times to stay connected to my own purpose. And when I lose it, my motivation wains. But when the bigger purpose or mission is clear, the work and the persistence become much easier and fulfilling. So it seems like an important part to me.