Work

Rest. Rehab. Practice. The three steps a professional sports player goes through before returning to their chosen sport. For some injuries, like ruining your knee, it can take awhile to get back to playable shape! Two years ago, I blew out my startup knee at b5media. Nobody’s fault, just one of those things. And I’ve recently finished my recovery steps.

Rest

I spent serious time on Workcation, consulting via netmobs on some really cool projects. Most of this was rest, though. Spent alot of time in the South of the US. Did alot of speaking. But mostly I rested, made new friends, found hobbies and generally rebalanced what was a very out of balance life. I wasn’t ever really sure I’d be able to get back to real startup life, ie: running my own company.

Rehab

As I left b5, I let folk know that with the right opportunity, at the right time, I’d go back to full-time work. I was lucky enough to have Joe Thornley reach out and offer me “something” at Thornley Fallis / 76design. It took til January for me to be ready and confident I could have a positive impact. Also, I really wanted to learn some new skills, so time on the communications side of things was fantastically interesting. That Dave and I became good friends over this period was just a huge bonus.

Practice

Almost a year ago, I joined BNOTIONS as CEO. They were a small, growing firm, that I was able to help along through what are normally very rough patches in a startup’s life (due to cash flow, hiring issues, visibility in the industry, etc). Most service startups in the 5-15 person phase can relate to what BNOTIONS was basically able to ignore. This was an incredible experience. The team, projects and process of (again) taking a startup from a few people to juggernaut stage was awesome. Not to mention that the leadership team of AK, Mark, Logan, etc were inspiring to see in action and the pure cultural drive at BNOTIONS will be more than enough to keep the company growing so I wasn’t worried about leaving.

And, yes, “practice” is tongue in cheek. This was one of the best experiences of my life!

Now

But eventually it was time to dig in and do something where I put everything into a company again. My company. Building something I loved and believed in. Not that I couldn’t have stayed at any of the places listed above, or any of a myriad of other opportunities at awesome companies. But fundamentally, I realize now, I’m at my best when I’m giving 150%, and the best way to motivate myself to do that isn’t with money or profile or power, it’s with it being something I’ve helped create.

My New Portfolio

That said, it was a flat out honour to work, train, grow, learn, screw up and help each of these companies. The honour is entirely mine.

However, it’s time for me to step up and swing for myself without a safety net. My philosophy this time around is a bit different than last time. Yes, I’ll be pouring everything into a new company (announcement on that coming Monday/Tuesday once we’ve signed our first two big clients), but I’ve also realized that I fundamentally need to clone myself. I need to extend, work with others more, and allow things to flourish even if I’m not involved day to day.

Hence, in addition to next week’s startup announcement, I’ve started investing (time and money) into spinning up several side projects. I’ll do full announcements of each of these over the coming weeks, but for now, here’s a brief synopsis:

• 23press: This was born out of a conversation with Aaron Brazell, and realizing that a lot of things in WordPress are simply too hard. I’m Head Human at 23press, while Terry Smith is the man with the muscle, Head Humanizer and general awesomesauce. Our first product, Move That Blog, will basically one-click move your blog from one host to another for $10 (or unlimited moves for $30). Every plugin, every setting, every theme, theme setting, plugin setting… It’s actually kinda magic and saves 2-10 hours work depending on the blog! Our goal is 5 products out by year end. Each solving problems with WordPress specifically and blogging in general to make your life easier!
• Naked Dating: Mel and I kicked this off in earnest a bit more than a year ago, then life got busy and we had to drop it. But we’re back, and working out how to scale this puppy since the need for new school common sense, social media dating tips and teaching guys how to date is pretty severe. Trust us. It’s bad. More on this soon!
• Clients are Evil: Sometime in the summer of last year, I started talking about this. Doing research. Planning stuff. While this isn’t ready for public consumption yet at all, it will be a significant new book (finalizing details with publisher stuff in next 2 weeks), with lots of speaking, webinars, and products associated with it. With any luck the first taste will be at BlogWorld East
• A game, an app, a new approach to agency life, and more…

Next Steps

If you’ve run into me in the last week or two and asked what’s new and I’ve said “whoa, too much for this casual hello, talk soon!” this is why! More details on everything in the next few weeks, but for now I want to thank my BNOTIONS crew, the Thornley Fallis team, my family and especially my friends for all being so awesome over the last 2 years!

Now for the real work!