Actually … we’ve been writing on it for two months now. It’s been hard work but also a blast. And by being a part of this book, I’ll be living out a childhood dream.

Stay tuned! The book is scheduled to be published in early spring 2011.

Read more about the project on Lisa’s site here.

Related posts:

1. Business Validation and Getting Mentioned in ‘For Dummies’ Book
2. 5 Thoughts on Blogging Your Very Own Book
3. Aside: WordPress Theme Design Book

My purpose in these videos is simple: I want you to get to know us and what we’re about at our core.

If you know who we are, then you’ll better understand how and why we do things and ultimately, be happier in our community knowing these things, which makes us happy!

Related posts:

1. 5 of My Core Business Philosophies and Values
2. Business Is Always Intensely Personal
3. On Professionalism and Ever-Shaping Culture

Yes … 6 geeks, 1,500 miles and one RV.

Check out our little promo video below for why we’re going …. and also follow along our excellent advenuture at iThemesRoadtrips.com.

Related posts:

1. The Way to Introduce a New Site: Office Depot’s Redesign
2. A Great Honor: Being Pelted with Stress Balls After a Presentation
3. Fun Times at Dallas WordCamp 2009

At least they didn’t have fruit!

The WordCamp Chicago presentation was not recorded but here’s the recording of the first time I did it for a local web design group in OKC back in February.

And now … the ending!

Related posts:

1. WordCamp Chicago 2009
2. Chicago Day 1 – Photos
3. On Building a Great Team

I certainly do.

I’m a firmer believer that if you dedicate your life – 40-plus hours a week, five days a week – to anything, it oughta be worthwhile – and include both healthy doses of purpose and passion.

You breathe life into your work. You put your signature on it. You invest the bulk of your life in the practice of it.

So it goes to say … anything worthwhile … anything you’re that passionate about and spend that significant amount of your life in … is always personal.

And yes, by the way, you support yourself and your family through it. Your family is actually fed through your work and live under the roof they do because you can pay your monthly mortgage through it.

Let me ask this: What could be more personal than that?

So suffice to say … the people who don’t take business that personal probably don’t care enough about their business or work or what they’re doing.

If not, it’s simply a temp job … a mere stage or season in life.

I think they are probably headed to failure as well, or worse mediocrity.

So yes, I get upset when someone insults our business, team or work by blind criticism that doesn’t help us get better for our community.

Yes, I get angry when other people do things that undermine what we do or leech our hard work for their own selfish gain.

Our team is my extended family. We’re living life together doing work we love and seeking to continually improve what we do (solve problems for our community) so we can continue to do what we love for a long, long time.

If you seek to mess with that in any way, you’re messing with the most personal aspects of my life … but I gotta say … it’s pretty darn good motivation and stokes a fire within us to be and do better for the customers who continue to support us.

Related posts:

1. Don’t Prorate Your Employer
2. On Being Human … Again
3. Getting Personal with My Blog

***

I was reading this article on how to find the job you’ll love … and it’s loaded with great advice, but no. 4 really got me: “Ignore salary.”

As an employer, I want to pay our team well … I want them to be paid comparable to what their skills, commitment and their colleagues make. But we don’t just hand out money or raises or bonuses because they believe they deserve it … they, along with myself, have to earn it.

In general, and not just as an employer and boss, I’ve observed that some people think they are worth more salary-wise than they truly are. Just because you think you could make more money in another job doesn’t mean you’re willing to make the sacrifices and effort necessarily to do so.

The ones in this camp are the ones I’m aiming this post at.

They are the ones who will never make enough to satisfy their need for “more money.” They will generally flame out and leave their jobs. Or worse, get bitter because their unrealistic dreams don’t make their paycheck. They are perpetually unhappy and it has drastic ripple effects on teams and companies.

Yes, you need to make sure you and your family can put food on the table and pay your bills. But I love this post by Penelope Trunk (one of my favorite career advice bloggers) that says you need around $40K a year to be truly happy. (Of course it was written a couple of years ago, but generally, it still resonates.)

Live within your means – I really struggle with people who live in America and can’t make it on very decent or even “average” wages. The root of this is typically a skewed perspective on status. They think they deserve to live a richer lifestyle, and I’ve been guilty of it as well. But some of the happiest times in my marriage have been the times when we made the least … when we had one income, lived in an apartment and were extremely frugal with our money. We simply found some creative ways to enjoy and focus on each other. But even then, we lived a quality of life that millions of people around the globe only dream about.

Focus on quality of life – This is why I love living in Oklahoma. My money and salary go a lot further. Penelope moved to Wisconsin for a similar reason: quality of life. As I’ve traveled I’ve wondered how people in San Francisco or Boston make a living. I believed with enough commitment and work I could climb the latter at different organizations and make a lot of money. But I never wanted to make the sacrifices in my quality of life to get there. Confession: In the last couple of months, I’ve had to really assess my quality of life and ask myself, ‘Am I having fun?’ It’s not worth it if I’m not having fun. Trust me. I want to enjoy my work or else it’s simply a prison.

Find awesome work you’re passionate about – if you hate your work, you better be paid handsomely. But your paycheck is payment for pain and suffering and enduring your work, not enjoying it. If you love your work, you’ll generally be content with your pay and … yes, the money will come. Happy, passionate people are a joy to work with … and they do accomplish more. Everyone wins. Some on our team could be making substantially more than what they are making now. But we’ve tried to create an environment where it doesn’t matter because they love what they do and they cherish the environment we provide …. to me, and maybe I’m biased, that’s priceless. Some have turned down better offers to work here because of it.

Yes, you should be paid fairly – and by this I mean comparable to other colleagues and being reasonable about salary expectations. You have to be realistic. If you really want to earn twice what you’re paid, count the cost of what it’d take to achieve that. I don’t know about you but my happiness is worth more than simply twice my salary. Employers should pay their employees fairly and adequately. One value I treasure and repeat often is … those who invest themselves in our business and team will be rewarded. I don’t know exactly how that shakes out. It’s not always money. Often it’s me buying their lunch … or just a verbal word of encouragement … Or recognizing and giving them credit for their work publicly … or sending them on a fun, productive business trip.

If you aren’t happy, change it – I remember a coworker from one of my first jobs out of college. This coworker was habitually unhappy. No one wanted to be around her. I realized she had been working this job longer than I had been alive. She was stuck. In a rut with nowhere else to go. I vowed from that time forward to always enjoy my work or change it. Go somewhere else. But don’t get bitter. You’ll look at yourself in the mirror … and hate yourself. And when you look around you, no one will be there because no one wants to be around bitter people. If you don’t like what you’re doing, do everybody a favor and CHANGE IT.

Conclusion: More money is never the key to happiness. Just ask any miserable “6 figure salaried” person you thought of when reading this.

OK … just my two pennies worth.

Related posts:

1. Don’t Prorate Your Employer
2. Business Is Always Intensely Personal
3. On Squeaky Wheels

I’ve really loathed the press coverage hysteria around Tiger and the issues that provoked this commercial … he’s an intensely private guy and understandably so. Obviously he has confessed and owned up to his mistakes (despite not needing to give me or others he didn’t hurt one). And one of the most incredibly athletes of our time.

But the message in this ad is truly amazing. It’s the voice of his father, whom I heard had a deep and profound impact on his life, asking what he’s learned through it all.

I can’t imagine the motivation to enact lasting change filling up inside him as he heard his mentor/father asking that question.

This commercial is more than golf or Tiger Woods. It’s about life and learning and growing from your mistakes.

I might have to replay it a couple more times to apply to my own life … so should you.

Related posts:

1. My Testimony
2. The Life Cycle of a Blog Post: NYTimes
3. Two Feet Firmly Planted in the 30s

Piyush Patel of Digital Tutors gave some great advice recently in an entrepreneur’s session I attended. He said (poor paraphrase probably), “If you want to test whether your business can exist without you, go completely off the grid for two weeks.”

After two years and a great rockin’ team now, I still don’t think I could go dark for that long.

Yes, I’ve read the 4 Hour Workweek.

Great advice in it, including taking mini-retirements, but overall the concept of thinking you can simply have a completely automated business with an always-consistent passive income stream is far-fetched. (Not that the book necessarily espouses that.)

But back to this week …. yesterday, my calm, relaxing and care-free time got a rude awakening to some deadline-based projects that I didn’t realize were due this week. It was a cold shower. I had to come back to reality, get plugged in, start talking …

What I realized is that … true unplugged vacations as an online entrepreneur, especially in your startup’s infancy, aren’t a big reality. It’s just not going to happen.

Yes … I need to delegate more.

Yes … I need to empower my team more.

Yes … I need to get my business streamlined so it runs without me.

Yes … I need to recharge my batteries more.

Yes … I need to find solitude and turn off distractions.

But doing all that in two years of just trying to be profitable with good cash flow, recruit the right people, put them in the right places, and keep our customers happy … that’s a pipe dream.

However … continually working on those things are definitely a priority for me.

With all this in mind, here are some thoughts on taking Workcations:

Get spouse support — we’re here celebrating our wedding anniversary. I had to go talk to my wife and ask her for a solid day of work to knock out some projects. She was totally understanding … because she’s awesome, but also because I had spent personal, one-on-one, non-distracted time with her. (I also try to work when she’s napping or doing other things … and yes, chauffering her to the outlet mall helped tremendously!)

Spend quality time with your loved ones – This is a follow up to the last because of its importance and something I’ve had to refocus on in recent weeks: spending good, quality, happy time with your loved ones. My friend Jeremy Stowe gave me some great direction when he told me I was focusing on the good things but maybe not necessarily the right things. I translated that as … if I build a successful business FOR the people I love most … but in the process, leave them in the dust … all this is futile. It was a good word. And I admit, I had my priorities messed up all the while thinking I was doing the best for them.

Turn off unneeded distractions — I do most of my team communication via chat … but I also have a lot of biz contacts on it as well. When I turned on chat, I got barraged and distracted. Love talking with people, but I need more focus with this potential distraction. And my priority is to our team and our customers (yes, in that order).

Prepare for the worst — The crap typically hits the fan the moment you leave. That might not be true, but it sure feels true. Knowing things can and will happen, I try to prepare for that by leaving numbers, putting someone in charge to handle stuff, etc. I know we’re on the right track when I chatted Dustin yesterday and he said, “We’ve got a crazy devoted team to take care of things. Don’t stress too much, man ” Enough said.

Your accessibility determines how much work you do — If you’re “online” then people will find you. I realized the amount of time I made myself accessible really did determine how busy I kept myself focused on work. That was my fault.

Enjoy what you do and it doesn’t matter – I told a friend one time that I needed a hobby. My all-encompassing focus (or maybe obsession) has been working to make our business successful and sustainable. But I love it. I love what I do. Most of the things I don’t love or loathe, I’ve delegated those to better suited people on our team. The books I buy and read are FOR our business … but I’d be reading even if I wasn’t in this position. So my friend asked me why I felt I needed a hobby. I love our business, our team, our community … I just need to make sure and cut out those things that make it like an anchor around my neck. This might have something to do with work-life balance too. Hmm.

Learn to say no — I stack way too much stuff on myself. I see open calendar dates and schedule way too much stuff and commit to things I shouldn’t. Maybe I need to learn how to better say Yes to the right things.

… ok, back to my workcation.

Related posts:

1. Likeability in the Workplace
2. On Building a Great Team
3. Business Is Always Intensely Personal

An email list of targeted people in your niche is invaluable to building a sustainable business online. Trust me on this: The bigger and better the list, the more success you’ll enjoy.

We launched iThemes with an email list of about 200-300 people. That initial list and the email launched propelled us to our next product launch and gave us the momentum to grow and grow. Our list has grown over time, but each and every time we send out an email … we have a great sales day. In fact, I can easily trace the days we send emails out with our sales reports.

New emails about products = new sales

In fact, our email list is likely our most valuable non-human asset in our business.

Customers won’t just come to you. They forget. They move on. Thus, you need to invite them to come back and buy by offering them value in your product or service. And email is still one of the best ways of doing that. 

Yes, Twitter, Facebook and blog feeds are good tools for relationship building (we use them) … but NOT NEARLY as effective as a really good, targeted email list.

Here are some thoughts about cultivating good email lists ….

• MUST be permission-based … don’t spam. The good email solutions like Aweber (I use this) and MailChimp require it.
• With every new brand or large project I start an email list for it … this helps with segmentation and marketing to the right people.
• Cultivate prospective customers interested in your topic (who most likely need your niche product) into a good solid, well-maintained email list.
• For initial launch, grow a big enough list to make an initial ripple and get people buying and talking about it.
• To sustain and expand your business, you need a growing group of people to market your work to as you release new products and features – new product releases via email equal new sales nearly every single time.
• Free content (i.e. blogs, webinars, ebooks, etc) are great opportunities to build and cultivate a great list. <===This is how you build a target list!
• Do surveys with it. Ask them what they want and what problems they have. This is vital for building great products that they will actually buy. When someone signs up for our email newsletter, we ask them to fill out a survey. Now I have over two years of customer data to mine when thinking about new products or features to create. That’s gold.
• Give incentives to sign up. I use free reports, downloads and special discounts to continually build our email lists for our brands.
• I still use text only emails … with links to bigger posts and more polished sales pages. Give people a fast and easy way to just click through if they are interested.
• I guard our email lists. I use it for our products only. I try very hard not to flood and abuse the people who have trusted us with their email address.

Related posts:

1. Using Email Newsletters & Free Offers on Your Business Blog or Website
2. Fruits from Your Labor: Customer Testimonials
3. The Long Tail and Your Product Sales

Here Are the Links to Things I’m Digging ….

• 3 Tips for social Media Community Management
• 31 Ways to Grow a Business
• 10 Questions on Customer Servce & ‘Delivering Happiness’ with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh
• Blue Sky Factory’s Skit page – I like their blog too
• Ribbon Hero – a game developed to help people learn Microsoft Office (see Flow book below)
• Stop Selling Scarcity – I find myself going back and rereading this – it’s deep and impactful for businesses
• 5 Predictions about the Future of Work
• The End of Big Website Builds
• The 3 Greatest Survey Questions Ever
• How Social Media is Changing Travel
• 10 Essential Social Media Tips for B2B Marketers
• Lead Generation in a Social Media World by Chris Brogan
• 8 Ways Great Service Prevents Chargebacks
• 5 Ways to Build a Team that Builds Itself
• Teaching Your Business to Market Itself

Here Are The Books I’m Reading or Recently Read:

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – foundational, awesome, so many applications
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – love taking this back to our team … “Autonomy,” “Mastery,” and “Purpose.”
• Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web
• Honest Seduction: Using Post-Click Marketing to Turn Landing Pages into Game Changers – suggested by a new businesss friend, slow reading

Related posts:

1. Business Web Design 101 Links
2. Businesses: Be Content Producers
3. Business Blogging 101 Links