Adii Pienaar

Reading through Ben's post, from which I've extracted the above quote, I found myself nodding in agreement to most of what he said. The quote above made me stop reading though and I found myself unsure of whether I actually believed that.

Why did I consider myself an entrepreneur? Did I start a business to make money?

Regardless of my definition of success, I'd have to agree with that; I definitely didn't start a business not to make money. I know that I've never been able to motivate myself with the potential lure of money and that's not why I come to work every morning. But it would be an outright lie if I said I didn't believe that I would profit financially from starting my own business.

I think this borders on my opinion that the execution of any ideas includes the actual monetization thereof. I would definitely consider myself a failure had a I started a business - even if it was for non-financial reasons - and then I failed to profit from it.

More importantly though, I believe I'm an entrepreneur because I want to be involved with building sustainable businesses. There's obviously an element of "money" involved in that and to be sustainable one needs to be profitable, but the initial aim of creating a sustainable business versus making money sits more comfortably with me.

And once you have created something sustainable, the other "nice things" that Ben mentions (having fun, changing the world, disrupting an industry, creating jobs) comes into play: having a sustainable platform to explore, where money isn't the only consideration.

I'm the business guy over at WooThemes and a big part of my "job" is making sure that our marketing is firing on all cylinders. Taking care of the marketing for such a big business takes it toll, especially when you consider the amount of time it takes to interact with customers on a one-on-one basis (as most of you would agree that these interactions often provide the most value).

It is with that in mind, that I believe that marketing within a startup should be the whole team's responsibility, both as individuals and as a team. Here's a couple of ways in which I think the individuals on a team can contribute to the marketing effort of the mothership:

1. Blogging. If you have a company / team blog, get the whole team to blog and add their voice / opinion to the mix. I know there are many people that hate blogging and they should probably not be forced. But getting the odd blog post out of a team member is really valuable!
2. Interactions across social channels. Every member on your team obviously has their own following of friends, contacts and other interested parties. Having them tweet a link or publish a Facebook status about the company helps spread the marketing message to audiences to which you - as a company - would not necessarily have access.
3. Interacting with your community. I think there's a lot of value in having the whole team interacting with users via the comments on your blog, your forum or any other support structure. Having the team visible to your users increases their perception of how in touch your team is with user problems. Massive marketing win here.
4. Expert Profiles. In a way that almost combines the above three points, I truly believe that individuals should continue to build their individual social profiles, CV's and reputations online. They should be regarded as experts, which holds a significant advantage for your company. Users love to work with experts! So encourage team members to keep up their own graphic portfolio's or maintain a profile on GitHub if they're a developer. Don't try to own them; you employed every team member as an individual.

I really try to spend my time - as much as possible - doing the stuff I love. At work that means taking responsibility for the things that I'm passionate about, whilst I'm always on the look out to get involved in awesome, new projects.

This recently lead me to create an investor profile over at AngelList (to potentially become an investor / advisor in startups), as well as publicizing my availability as a startup consultant. Both of these have been in the hope that I can expose myself to new projects that would excite, stimulate & challenge me.

Since the startup space is pretty hot right now, I've had quote a bit of interest on both these channels. There's two interesting recent experiences that I'd like to share from these interacting through AngelList and with potential consulting clients.

1. An entrepreneur that I know, found my profile on AngelList and contacted me to find out whether I'd endorse their business or even consider investing in it. The business however was not something that I necessarily believed in and I just had no interest in that space at all. So I declined an endorsement or investment.

2. Another entrepreneur recently contacted me to figure out whether I'd potentially be keen to help them out with their business as a consultant. The startup was involved with the creation & syndication of content, which just isn't something that I have any experience in. Neither do I really have a passion for it. So whilst I would've love to help out, I just couldn't justify it knowing that my contribution would be below-par considering my lack of experience / passion for that industry.

In both cases, I would've probably gotten involved (if I had) not because I would've loved it, but for other reasons (financial reasons seem the most obvious). While I was contemplating the opportunities, I just realized that I do my best work when I apply my time & energy to stuff I really love; when I'm being forced to do certain things, my contribution is below-par AND I'm unhappy.

Before any other consideration, I'm picking the opportunities that I love. That's my first filter; everything else (like monetization & execution) comes in play after.

I woke up this morning thinking about how blessed I am to actually love my job. That thought process led me to think about success and how I - in the context of being an entrepreneur - define success for myself.

From the top of my head, I guess success could be defined as any (or a combination of) the following:

• Profitability or the more precisely, the extend thereof (I drive a Porsche, so I'm successful).
• The freedom of working for yourself and doing a job that you love / find challenging.
• (Alarmingly) mainstream tech media sometimes seem to believe that raising funding equals success.

Faced with the challenge of defining success for myself, I'm reminded of a quote (unattributed as far as I know) that my wife once shared with me:

The true definition of success is when you stop making excuses for yourself.

For me this has always been one of the most difficult things, because we are wired to measure things relative to each other. And that's how we measure our personal success, or are at least tempted to do so.

John Wooden gave this fascinating talk about success at TED back in 2001 and he basically says that success is only relative to yourself & whether you gave your best (paraphrasing massively there). In my mind, this thinking gets me closer to what my own definition of success may  be. 

Towards the end of last year, Chris Brogan published an article "That Sense of Overnight Success" which included this striking paragraph (as his definition of success):

Success, you see, isn’t a mansion and a yacht. Success is living the life you want and doing the work you’re best at doing with the people you know will help you reach the next level. Success means working on projects that you know will fulfill a deep felt passion within you, and yet, will feed your family. Success is knowing that you’ve built a thriving network of people who all work hard to grow each other’s capabilities. Success means finding a next angle and vectoring your efforts towards growing that out. Success means having the means and capability to make better decisions. Success means getting home in time for dinner. Success means leaving the house when I want to, and staying home with the kids when I want to, all while making a future for my family.

I  specifically bolded one line in that paragraph about coming home for dinner, because that really resonates with me. I really, really love my job (it has never felt like one) and I'm a passionate entrepreneur, always on the look out for the next big growth spurt or adventurous marketing campaign. One of my favourite things though, is coming home to my wife and an amazing home-cooked dinner.

My peers would probably / generally regard me as being successful and they'd probably base that perception on the reputed size of WooThemes, the house that I live, the holidays I take and perhaps the fact that I get to work for myself. My definition of success is slightly different though.

Success for me is having the opportunity to work on something I love and be allowed to build a business around that. There's a little bit of success in the knowledge that every decision I have to make isn't influenced by money as the determining factor. More so, money can't buy time and success to me means I have the freedom to spend my time on the important things in my life (home, my wife, family, friends). Success is the opportunity to shape my life to find the best fit for my natural personality. Success is making my own rules (for myself & the things over which I exert control) and not making excuses for those decisions. Success is the opportunity just to be me and feel content about that. (I guess too that this will soon change with a baby on the way...)

What is your definition of success?

Before going to bed last night, I noticed quite a bit of chatter & linking to this beautifully crafted landing page (also pictured above). Most of the chatter centered around what this could be, yet that seemingly quickly faded in favour of how sexy the design (erm, lady) was. This reminded me of another little project called Hipster that got 10k+ user signups in 2 days without revealing what it actually does.

Everyone hates spam and sensitivity about online privacy is probably at an all-time high, so if you are given a company your personal details (even if it is just your e-mail address), I can only assume that you are afraid to miss out. That in my opinion draws similarities with how sheep blindly follow each other, without question the validity of the group's decision.

In both these cases, I think their marketing campaigns are superbly executed and they've managed to generate loads of hype without revealing what they do. I don't have a problem with this at all. This does however give us a bit on insight on how we interact online and how we'd rather follow like sheep in fear of missing out.

Am I being harsh in my opinion? Have you given your personal details away like this before?