Adii Rockstar

In recent months – especially since the beginning of the year – I’ve found that the more I align my passions & the things that generally makes me happy in my life, the more I tend to be productive, inspired, motivated & just content. Now this probably seems obvious & trivial, but I’ve learned (about myself at least) that there’s a little bit of a different angle to this if you look closely.

Before I get into it, I need to mention that a lot of this thinking and the tweaking & tinkering in my life is a result of the idealistic goals that I’ve set myself for this year. So on a regular basis, I’ve been referring back to those goals and making sure that I’m making appropriate progress in achieving my aims.

One of the changes that I wanted to implement in my life, was a healthier & more active lifestyle, which means beyond changing to a healthier diet, I’m also training to run a half marathon in April. On most days I would thus go for a 5 – 8km run in the afternoon in preparation for the race. But to get back to how this influences my overall “life happiness” (beyond the obvious result of feeling healthier & more fit than I have ever felt), I now go running for two possible reasons: (more…)

In the extremely agile online world, there seems to be a premium placed on getting to market first with a new feature or product. But I’d like to contest the viability and probably the suitability of that premium, since I don’t believe that it’s crucial to be the first to the market**.

Getting to the market first, gives you the bragging rights and all of the hype / publicity that goes along with that. This is obviously great and I’m sure this is every marketer’s dream, since the marketing angles are pretty easy; it is undoubtedly much harder to hype & market something when it already exists, but when you’re game-changing this is a massive advantage. It is also considerably easier to create & build your own share of the market, when no competitors exist.

So all-in-all it would seem like a great idea to get to the market first. This does however not mean that you need to make this the be-all & end-all of your strategy. (more…)

The title to this post probably sounds a little cynical, considering the well-travelled business mantra that “the customer is always right”, but I’d really like to challenge that point of view in the business environment.

As a company grows, the user- / customer-base normally grows as well and the increased number of people that requires your attention, leads to added strain on your customer service functions. So during this growth period, it is important to streamline one’s policies & activities in such a way to allow you to scale the energy & resources required to service an ever-expanding number of customers.

What I’ve found though, is that some customers are just simply more difficult than others, which is probably an indication of the varying personalities that one encounters in business. This isn’t a problem in itself, since most of the “difficult” customers actually have valid points and they just require a little more attention than average to feel as happy with your company as the “easier” customers. But even though I can objectively say that, I have also encountered the type of customer that is being difficult purely because they want to be difficult. It is also this kind of customer that simply doesn’t trust your company from the get-go, calls of your actions into question and becomes offensive & insulting when they don’t receive an e-mail response within 5 minutes (if this seems like I’m exaggerating; I’m not). (more…)

“If you’re customers (existing or prospective) do not understand what you are telling them; everything you say will purely be marketing speak.”

I wrote that bit down recently as I was contemplating additions & tweaks to WooThemes and realized that as marketers we have an integral part to play in the education process for our products & services. See, I don’t think it’s that easy to sell your products & services to someone that is uneducated about what they are really purchasing and spending money on.

Prime example of this (in our context), would be the addition of ExpressionEngine themes to WooThemes’ collection. Instead of just being able to market them (side-by-side) with our WordPress themes, we’re busy building its own, unique channels, with its own angles. It’d be a lie if I said that it has been easy to introduce our WordPress users to the idea of using EE as an alternative CMS. But why?

Simply put, the only way I ever see a WordPress user switching to ExpressionEngine** is if they are properly educated about the pros & cons of such a decision. So part of our marketing strategy should be to include that educational information and in such a way, interact with our users about those pros & cons. Without that understanding of why they’d potentially make such a decision, all of our EE marketing talk would be limited to sounding like us just pushing something new & shiny at them.

So just something to consider in your marketing efforts: people can’t spend money on something that they don’t understand.

Most entrepreneurs seem to be keen to develop & establish their brands as umbrella’s for a whole business empire, in that they grow the company both horizontally & vertically. Whilst this may not be on every startup’s radar, the more established a business becomes, the bigger the need seems to be for diversification & increased sustainability (whilst you wouldn’t be too surprised if you found that every second entrepreneur was a ruthless, greedy business person).

A great example of what I consider to be an “empire” within the online spaces that I move is Envato. Not being content with only having one content-generating website or one marketplace, I think Collis & co should be lauded for really building a massive business with different, yet related, arms & vehicles.

So whilst this is all great, here’s a bit of a proviso of sorts…

Making it seem like you’re building an empire is relatively easy, when you’re creating projects that definitely seem much cooler than they are actually profitable or viable. So the trick is in ensuring that you continue to fuel the mothership (the main / umbrella brand) [with all these cool projects], whilst obviously blowing the “look at us building an empire over here”-horn.

See, when it comes to publicity, the profitability of individual projects / departments aren’t that important, as they were never destined to be considered as an independent vehicle. Instead they should be geared towards fueling that mothership, as that is the cash cow; not necessarily the shiny new idea that you are implementing.

The main brand also has a longevity that far surpasses the lifespan of an individual project. Whilst some of your newly introduced projects may be great enough to be the next cash cow, their first aim should be to contribute to the building of the brand.

That way they’re also indirectly contributing to the profitability of the business as a whole. It may seem irresponsible to allow one side of your business to operate at a loss, but this is where you need some balls and you need to view the situation from a holistic point-of-view. Don’t let isolated situations impair your judgement. Focus on the mothership, as that is where you will find the greatest value, sustainability and hopefully profits in the longer term.

I’ve been shopping around for bigger office space (since both WooThemes and Radiiate has been growing immensely) in the last couple of days, when I came to a realization that I was trying to be too fancy here.

See, when I started out (with Premium News Themes, which became WooThemes and freelancing before it became Radiiate), I was working out of a student apartment with a crappy broadband connection. Even when Cobus & I moved into our current offices in July 2008, there wasn’t much here beyond our two desks, a couch and a broadband connection. So why the sudden need to upgrade?

At this stage, we have 8 people (comprising of the WooThemes, Radiiate & Rockstar Foundation teams) in our Cape Town office and admittedly we’ve just about maxed out the space. Realistically we could stay here for the foreseeable future or until our needs really change, but I’d still prefer a slightly larger space. The decision to purchase instead of leasing like we do now is purely a financial one, as it makes more sense to spend money on the down payments of my own assets, compared to leasing and helping pay someone else’s asset (with capital growth being the carrot we are after). (more…)

I’ve been enjoying my tumbling content on here ever since I switched to this design (which is built on a standalone install of WordPress) late last year. To be honest though, considering that I was situated alone on my own island, my tumblog content was never gonna have the same traction as it would have in a community like Tumblr.

So I’ve been considering switching this design over to Tumblr and then just keeping my longer written articles on here (eg. all of my Project 52 contributions) and in the past week I actually ported this design over to Tumblr (the design is too awesome to lose imo). But if you’re reading this, then you’re still reading it on WordPress and not Tumblr…

Before I get into the reasons for not switching to Tumblr, I’d just like to tell you why I was even considering switching:

• There’s a community on Tumblr, which makes the sharing & distribution of one’s content much, much easier. The re-blog functionality is especially awesome and it is also something that I can’t replicate on a standalone version of WordPress.
• Even though I’ve replicated most of Tumblr’s posting functionality in my WordPress environment (something that we’ll also be implementing at WooThemes soon), it is still not as easy and quick to update my tumblog as it would be on Tumblr.

So why didn’t I switch then? Basically I found that I was being limited in terms of porting this design over in its current state. Tumblr has some awesome template tags, but they’re not as flexible as WordPress is, which is a shame. For most people considering Tumblr though, this wouldn’t be an issue, because they could design around those apparent limitations. For me, it has meant that I will continue to tumble on my lonely island over here.

I’ve been looking at my life in the wrong way.

Everything I’ve been aiming to implement in terms of my workflow, productivity, emotional well-being, happiness, ambition etc. have been within the average context of the rest of the world.

Why haven’t I gone about this in a more unique way? Simple: it ain’t that easy.

I have however decided that whilst I may not know exactly how to go about this “revolution” in my life, I won’t settle for this constant feeling of unrest & uncertainty. Having also had a generally awesome January thus far (and I’ve been dedicated in hitting most of my goals for 2010), I can’t bash my existing day-to-day life too much, but there is nothing that is not optimized just yet; something that is not quite Adii.

I think I’m past the fact that I need to steer clear of the online world every now and again, need to exercise more and all the other “become a happier you”-stuff (I’m already doing pretty well in achieving all of these). The inherent problem with all of these theories are that they were conceptualized to be generic and once again: average with the context of the rest of the world. On a certain level, this doesn’t relate to personal happiness and instead it just perpetuates this rat-race towards achieving a personal zen of sorts (which is contradictory, since most of the measures should take you away from the rat-race).

Revolution is on its way. In one form or another (TBA).

Last week I was able to write a really long piece on being prepared to work hard. For my 3rd Project 52 post, I’d like to expand my thoughts on the matter of hard work and would like to explain why I don’t necessarily that I’m “working” in the average sense of the word.

We’ve all heard the mantra “When you love your job, you’ll never work again.” and whilst there is incredible truth in that, I don’t think that it fully captures why it is seemingly true. If I could elaborate on that concept (my interpretation thereof), I’d like to believe that you’ll never feel as if you’re really “working” when the following is in place:

• Passion. It all starts with the passion you have for your job and the industry + marketplace + economy that it falls into. Without an almost addictive passion for your job, you will never be able to sustain your happiness or ambition in one job in the longer term.
• Love. For me, the love comes after the passion and the love should be for your actual work. In this sense the work is the actual stuff / tasks that you need to take care of on a daily, weekly & monthly basis, whilst your job is more of a holistic, “catch-all” description of what you do.
• Environment. There’s nothing like hating your job, because everything about it feels like a sucky, 9 – 5 corporate job. Having a workspace which allows you to exercise the above mentioned passion & love, will really take away all of the nitty-gritty involved with doing your job, as the crap stuff associated with it is kinda hidden behind a layer of awesomeness & tranquility around you.

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting alone in our offices on a Saturday morning and I really couldn’t be happier.** Nothing I’ve done this morning has felt like work, as I feel so inspired about everything that is happening in & around WooThemes, Radiiate & The Rockstar Foundation that it’s easy to get lost in my passion, love & the environment in which those two things really catch fire.

If you can’t write a blog post like this about your job, you seriously need to consider changing it. I believe everybody deserves the right to love their job and I also believe that the real value for employers is having employees that truly love what they do. (more…)

I constantly get this feeling that other people tend to think that what I have achieved has been a fluke of some kind and that I have thus been extremely lucky to have gotten as far as I have until now. This is even evident in my own dad’s opinion that I have been extremely blessed and that I should feel very privileged to have these blessings.

In short, I realize that I’ve been very blessed until now and I could seriously not have scripted the growth in my own reputation & following and that of WooThemes (which seems to go hand-in-hand with my own & vice-versa) any more beneficial to myself. I also know (and believe) that the lucky aspect of some people’s opinions are only true if you consider that I was at the right place, at the right time AND I had the guts to pursue my ideas within that opportunity at all costs. So whilst there is an obvious element of “luck” or being blessed, I will never discount my own contributions in pursuing my dreams & ambitions.

The Hard Work

I’m a firm believer in hard work and I can remember my dad telling (when I quit my corporate job to pursue & grow WooThemes) that “there would be no harder boss, than the boss you’ll be to yourself” and I didn’t really understand what he meant. Almost two years down the line now, I can say that I’ve experienced day-in & day-out what he meant with that.

When you work for yourself, you’re on your own and you take responsibility for your own career, income & life. There’s no one that’s gonna give you a pay cheque at the end of the month, if you were a lazy during that month. But this bit of freelancing or being a business owner has been publicized many times over already and I’d prefer to focus on another angle: working hard, because you want to. (more…)