2007 was definitely one of the best years I’ve had. I’m a huge believer in setting goals, and in August 2006 I made the goal to sell my business by the end of 2007. Not only that, but I spent a lot of time visualizing what I wanted to happen after I sold the business — to the business, its employees, its customers, and, of course, me.

I wanted to sell to a business that would keep my employees, especially Sohrab, who deserves huge credit for sticking it out with Simpli even when times were rough. I also wanted to sell to a business who dealt with similar customers — that wasn’t sidetracked with shared hosting, and that wasn’t focused on only very high-end customers. This is actually quite a tough niche to find a buyer in, because most businesses in Simpli’s area are cash-poor.

I started talking with Silicon Valley Web Hosting in March 2007. Initially, I was just interested in getting more colo space at Market Post Tower for lower rates than MPT was charging for new cages. But within a couple months, I realized SVWH and its owner, Bruce, were an ideal fit for Simpli. (more…)

Whew! After 30+ hours of hard CSS, HTML, PHP, and template work, I was finally able to pull erica.biz together and get it looking exactly the way I wanted. Good thing I’m “retired” (for a few months) now and have a lot of free time…

What do I mean, retired? Oh, yeah. I sold Simpli Hosting. 😀 I had run Simpli for over 6 years, and web hosting, though fun, wasn’t what I wanted to continue doing. On September 7, the acquisition closed, and by mid-October, I was frrrreeeee!

So what do I do with my time, and what’s next? (more…)

Last month, as I realized the final quarter of 2007 was approaching, I immersed myself in thinking about what I want to do with myself over the next year. 2007 marked the end of several things for me, and notably, the end of one thing I haven’t said much about yet: my SlashChick online persona.

I realized last month that I want to get into blogging a lot more heavily in 2008, and “SlashChick” just didn’t fit me any more. It marked my time on Slashdot, and I don’t spend time on Slashdot any more. It also had connotations of “slash” fiction (male-on-male sex scenes derived from popular movies), which I wasn’t aware of when I created the persona, and to which I don’t have any desire to be attached. I needed a new online persona — one that I was comfortable promoting, one that I didn’t have to explain, and one that most people could type easily if I said on the phone (people had tons of trouble with “slashchick”.) I put a lot of thought into this, since I felt the domain I picked would stick with me for a long time, and I didn’t want to buy a domain and regret the decision later.

I settled, finally, on erica.biz. (more…)

A while back, I wrote about Forex trading on this blog. That was over 2 years ago, now that I look back on it! A few things happened in the interim, namely that I got really swamped with my business and didn’t have a lot of time to trade. Also, the Forex company I was working with went under and then re-established itself, while one of the top traders there started his own business. Stuck, and not having much time to research what was the best option for me, I let it go.

I took an intro class and talked to several Forex traders, including at least 2 people I know personally who have made over $1M in Forex trading. So, as a client asked me on the phone a while back, “Erica, I read your blog and I just wanted to know…is Forex trading a good way to make money?” My answer is YES…but with some major caveats. (more…)

Since it’s been several months since I first started laser hair removal here in San Jose, California, I figured now would be a good time to update.

I’ve had 7 treatments on my legs and stomach, and I added in underarms and my bikini area a couple months ago for good measure. I’ve so far spent about $1500 for my legs and stomach, plus another few hundred dollars for the first few treatments of my bikini and underarms.

First, I want to answer the question everyone has been asking me: Is laser hair removal worth doing? (more…)