Dragos Roua’s Next Steps

It’s time to make some announcements here regarding the future of Dragos Roua’s blog, and also the author’s – Dragos Roua, by his name – medium term intentions. First and foremost, I have to tell you that I’ve finished the exit from the company I founded 10 years ago, Mirabilis Media. The company was one of the players in the web publishing industry in Romania, owning several niche portals (automotive and gastronomy, mainly). I was the founder and the only shareholder, and I started the negotiations for the sale more than a year ago. The exit was a real success, both in terms of financial compensation and transaction structure (basically, I negotiated my own exit terms with the buyer). I feel relieved.

To be honest, in the last year, the company felt more like a burden than a fulfillment for me. Although I was disciplined enough to make it work better and better – thanks to all the productivity posts here 😉 – I didn’t felt any specific joy or exhilaration by working there. Don’t get me wrong, the company was one of the best in its field, and I had to chose from 7 potential investors, with whom I had negotiations for more than 14 months. It was a real asset, and the conversion into money of this asset was a real concern to me. But the everyday feeling was not as strong as it was in the beginning.

So, it had to be sold. It had to become something else for me, in order to free me and let me continue my chosen path. In DragosRoua’s terminology, this company sale situation was one of the crossroads I hunted, in order to become more me, to come closer to a much vivid life experience. I spent 10 years of my life in this business, and it was the moment to acknowledge that all the goals I’ve set in the past were reached. Is so easy to get stuck with your own patterns. Especially when those patterns are creating a comfort zone around you. Getting out of the comfort zone is what really scares you. And perhaps that fear prevented me to do this business exit even earlier.

Whatever was in the past, is done now, anyway.

Second, I have to tell you that the hand-over process is not done yet. Is not that easy to take over a company in two weeks, even if the company was pretty much on auto-pilot. So, my contractual terms requires a buffer period of three months in which I have to provide assistance to the new owner. I will gladly do that, knowing that after this period both parts will receive what they initially agreed: the buyer, a stable and profitable business, and the seller – that would be me, DragosRoua.com’s author – the much wanted freedom to start something else.

And that something else is this very blog. That would be the third thing, I guess, if I still know how to count. I intend to spend more and more time on DragosRoua.com. I have an immense urge to write about my experiences, about my intentions and my very own perception of the world, and I fell like blogging would be the best thing to do for me now. I do not intend to transform DragosRoua.com into another web publishing business, although I do intend to make some money out of it. What I would really want to do here would be to witness as close as I can my personal development process. And that’s something I am really excited about.

I will start a new path these days. Not only virtually speaking, but in a very real sense of the word: I intend to move from my country, Romania, to New Zealand. This is another thing that has been on my mind in the last year. I’ve been talking a lot with Diana, my wife, about this step, and we both think is the best thing to do now. It will really freshen up the perspective, so to speak, and it will surely raise some adaptation problems. So, don’t be surprised if you’ll find some very new and uncommon posts here, like how to pack if you want to travel over Pacific, or how to adapt your diet to another country.

All in all, I’m so happy that my road is still having crossroads, and at each crossroad I can choose my personal path.