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.

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 spousal support — Your spouse or significant other needs to understand and believe in the benefits of workcations. You need good communication about expectations on both sides.

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. 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?

I’ve been reading Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

I highly recommend it for most people, but in particular managers, leaders, marketers, programmers, designers … anyone wanting to create or foster the “in the zone” experiences that are commonly associated with sports for their business, products, and overall work (and even leisure time).

It’s a book, based on decades of academic research, about enjoyment and happiness.

As the author says: “The best moments in our lives … are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times — although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

I read a lot because I want to apply and implement practical wisdom in my life and business.

I approached this book for two main reasons …

• To finetune my thoughts as a leader of how we create a work environment at iThemes that allows our team to have ‘optimal experiences’ through their work; and,
• To improve how we build tools and training for our customer community that free them to have optimal experiences with our work

Per Flow, here are the elements of enjoyment:

• A challenging activity that requires skills
• The merging of action and awareness
• Clear goals and feedback
• Concentration on the task at hand
• The paradox of control
• The loss of self-consciousness
• The transformation of time

Examples were given of star athletes, chess players and surgeons — those fully engaged in their task.

You’ve probably had numerous experiences like these elements of enjoyment or flow, where you were so engulfed in what you’re doing that you lost track of time. You felt in control, totally focused, and knew what you were doing was making some sort of impact. And even though it might have exhausted you physically or mentally, you thoroughly enjoyed whatever you were doing. You were in the moment.

As I’ve read deeper and deeper into Flow, I’ve been thinking how we filter these concepts through our work …

My leadership theory has always been that if someone loves what they do, meaning they are passionate and would do it if money didn’t matter and is working for a greater goal, together, as a team, then we will see the ultimate, highest-level, peak performance out of those team members.

I believe if you put good, quality people in an environment that gives them freedom of creativity and are empowered to do things and make decisions and chase ideas (autonomy), allow them to learn and grow (through teaching each other and providing opportunities like buying books or attending events), reward them fairly and publicly (the easiest thing I do is get excited about their projects and give them public credit for it), and continue to reinforce a greater purpose of working toward a common goal (this hasn’t always been easy) … then there’s no limit to what that team can do.

I know that’s the environment I’ve personally always wanted and craved. To chase my ideas. To be rewarded for my passion. To work toward a bigger, higher goal than simply for just myself.

So I set out to create one with and through my business.

OK, so here are some highlight recommendations on reading Flow ….

• The whole chapter 7 on Work as Flow …. this is why I bought the book – to apply it to our business.
• The Waste of Free Time (chapter 7) in particular … this hit home. I’ve always loved using my free time to read and explore and learn and grow, but sadly for most people that’s wasted. There’s a great quote by C.K. Brightbill that says, “The future will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.” How true.
• Chapter 10 on The Making of Meaning … the author and I have drastically different worldviews, but ultimately if you don’t have purpose and meaning and are just seeking “the moment” all the time then you’re going to be left an empty void. Flow can be abused.