My bride and I are in Branson, Mo., celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary at this beautiful hotel with an attempt to “disconnect” for a couple of days, although we brought our laptops and wifi card.

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.

I’ve been opening my browser for the past two weeks and it’s just filled with tabs for awesome content I’m saving …. so I just decided to make a big list post. The topics are wide ranging … but mostly concerned with marketing, entrepreneurship, work, motivation and the like …

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

Some from our iThemes team is at SXSW.com this week. We started a travel blog where you can follow ou fun adventures at our SXSW iThemes Blog

Several decades, maybe even centuries ago, people had personal connections with the proprietors of the businesses they frequently. They were loyal to those businesses because they knew those people and their stories personally. They would not get a haircut, or buy groceries, from anywhere or anyone else, no matter how cheap the alternative was.

Then mass production, the assembly line, the Industrial Revolution hit.

We became more efficient in our work. We found we could multiply our impact and make more money and have a better standard of living. We made huge technological and innovative advances that made the price of goods and services more affordable and more available.

But the result was …. we became less human to the people who bought from us.

In seeking to become better and to do more, we lost our face-to-face touch.

But in the last couple of months, I’ve been seeing a trend in business … that all kinds of businesses, especially the BIG ones, are seeking to become human again.

To be personalable and put a face on their company again.

Yes, the brands still exist and are powerful, but they also want you to know Sally who works in that big, faceless brand.

We started iThemesTV for this very reason. We wanted our customer community to meet the team behind the products they support with their money. (I repeat often this question: “When was the last time you bought a product and got to meet the people who created it?)

But we’re seeing some innovative uses of social media, in particular, Twitter, at companies, elsewhere.

I instantly think of @ComcastCares … a big huge, faceless company that uses Twitter to be human and respond in a unique, personal way to their customers. (See also: @HostGator and @HomeDepot)

Most of these companies have several people working to engage disgruntled customers, or make suggestions. Since they have several people running it, they initial their tweets. I love that touch. It endears me to them.

We’re doing the same @ithemes.

Here’s some of my thoughts on how we’re seeking to be human with our community and prospective community members ….

• I want them to see the passion in our voice as we talk about our work
• I want to share our expertise and experience in order to empower them in their own work
• I want them to know real people are answering their questions and to get to know them personally
• I want them to see photos of those real people who work hard for them
• I want to hear our customer’s stories …. their problems, frustrations, and celebrate in their successes
• I want to meet more of our customers in person so I can thank them for their support

As with everything, this is a work in progress. We’re not there, but we’re seeking to be more human in every thing we can.

How are you being human in your business?