8 years building a social network startup. Of course there have been ups and downs

I quit lawyer work in 2007 and decided to embrace the interesting world of social media 16 or hours a day. I had the big prize always fairly and squarely in mind. My own social network. "I`m CEO bitch."
The opposite of a fisherman at sea I was waiting for the perfect storm. Where everything aligned and my skills and knowledge and network were big enough to take action. I have studied hard and by studying I mean doing. Posting, commenting, sharing on dozens of networks. Finding what people do and what they do not. Finding out who your true supporters are.
My wife and I have attended around 10 3 day startup weekends. We have been badly cheated again and again by key business partners and staff. In essence we have done shit that others are not prepared to do. We have a firm, clear goal of finding and promoting startups that will save the planet.
In the meantime I have barely earned a cent. I have trained and taught and run social media accounts for friends and charities and hosted Twitter chats that took 10 hours a week to organize and promote. All pretty much for free. I have paid premium for myriad of tools and paid many virtual assistants to create content and build accounts.
This is not the only way but it has been effective.
Find your goal and never give up. Work harder than you can imagine for 14 hours and then have an hours break and then work 6 more. Sleep and repeat.
When shit happens like business partners cheating you, people writing blog posts calling you a scammer etc etc please ignore it. It was not you. It was them.
Your perfect storm moment will happen. You will see the sun and you will step into your light. if you devote your efforts to learning, working networking and giving.
I watched the Social Network movie again 2 nights ago. What set the Mark Zuckerberg character in the movie was his total self belief. Steve Jobs had this too. You have to believe you are good enough and that you deserve.
A startup can be successful in 3 months but up till now my dream network was not possible as there was no currency and the technology was not available to do many things I wanted to do. I would have waited 10 more years if I had had to. I also found 2 awesome business partners co founders who have my back 110%. This is also probably necessary as by yourself it will be a hard road.
Start something! Keep going. Scare yourself with the size of your dream. have people laugh and scoff at you and laugh back. There is power in all us that we do not even know about.
Michael