In continuing the entrepreneurship topics that I’ve been covering over the past few weeks here, this week we are looking at that first defining moment where you know that your business is going to succeed. In case you missed them, I also talked about getting the confidence to start your own business, as well as taking “bet the farm” risks in business. Check them out if you’ve missed them.

When thinking about that one, first defining moment in Gear Live‘s history, I have one specific moment that I can point to where I knew things were going to be successful. For a bit of a background, Gear Live was started as a hobby where I would publish my thoughts and opinions about technology. In order to get exclusive pieces out there, I had to approach manufacturers about reviewing their products. To make money, I needed to sign up for some bottom-of-the-barrel advertising networks, along with Google Adsense, just to get by.

I knew that I wanted to take the site full-time, but in order to do so, I needed it to be better recognized in the industry, and needed it to earn more money to support myself and my family. After months of phone calls and emails going out, trying to get advertisers and manufacturers on board (while also trying to build readership,) two things happened in the same month. First, I had a manufacturer contact me, rather than me having to contact them. They wanted to know if we wanted to take a look at one of their new products, and if so, they would send me a review unit loaner. That meant that we were finally getting recognized by the companies that we had been writing about and that they were taking the first step to contact us, since they felt that we were important enough to be included in their press strategy.

The other thing that happened, almost simultaneously, was that we had advertisers starting to contact us as well. Rather than scraping by on Adsense on low-paying banner ads (relationships that I had to go out and start,) large advertisers saw value in connecting with our audience.

One those two things happened, I knew right then, that Gear Live was going to be a success. At that point, I could focus completely on making great content.