My good friend Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress for Dummies (where iThemes, my company, is mentioned), myself, and three others of us will be writing a 900-plus-page book called WordPress All-in-One Desk Reference.

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.

I did these short videos this week to highlight some of the core values and philosophies that define us as a team and business.

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!

We just announced today that our team will be traveling to WordCamp Boulder July 10 …. in an RV!

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.

I just gave my talk on Lessons I’ve Learned as an Entrepreneur to WordCamp Chicago this weekend … and got one of the most awesome honors afterward: being pelted with orange stress balls.

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!

You should always take business intensely personal.

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.

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.