Adii Pienaar

Ever since WooThemes established itself to such an extent that I could earn enough money from it to make a living thereof, I (Magnus & Mark made similar decisions with regards to their freelance activities) decided to call it a day for doing client work (which is why more than a year later, radiiate - a boutique web design agency before - is only making a comeback now).

As a result, we have a pretty strict “no custom design or development work” policy at WooThemes, since we choose to rather focus our attention on internal projects / ventures / activities that furthers & growths the business / brand. Yet, we still get a bucketload of e-mails from people (I’d assumed they’re fans of our work) requesting a custom quote for a designing / developing a site with X, Y & Z specifications. The answer is always the same however: “Sorry, but we don’t do custom design & development work.”

Considering the sheer amount of requests we get for client work though, has lead me to at least re-think our approach & more important our mindset in this regard. I mean - are we just ignoring the cash that is being put on the table right in front of us?

So I’ve gone back and forth about how we could potentially handle this situation (which is an obvious contradiction to our decision of not doing client work) and maybe maximize the potential profit or value from the opportunities that are presented. I’ve also decided that I need to take emotion out of it and I can’t thus justify my decision (not to engage client work) on the fact that I don’t like to work with clients, since that is completely subjective and based on bad experiences (neither of which makes for a good basis in making the *right* business decision).

In the end (i.e. after this epic conversation I had in my own head), I decided that this quote by David Heinemeier Hansson (from this video) summed up how I felt:

“If you’re not working on your best idea right now, you’re doing it wrong.”

What I’m saying is WooThemes’ best “idea” at this stage is to ignore the short term benefits (profits) of doing client work, as it is more profitable & sustainable to focus on building great products which would pave the way for the company in the longer term. I’m also 99,9% sure that if I actually did an extended financial analysis of this, it’d show that the ROI that client work would deliver in the short term is far outweighed by the magnitude of continuing to build our products and brand.

So that’s our decision in this regard. I’m not suggesting that it’s impossible to actually make this model work whereby internal projects / products are used for marketing (more on this in a future post) and to thus generate leads for client work. I am however saying that this is not a road that WooThemes are exploring at the moment…

When you’re within an ambitious startup, you want to tackle so many different things at the same time, but due to the size of your team it is simply not possible. This leaves you with two choices: 1) invest further and increase the size of your team; or 2) be content to prioritize everything you tackle.

The first option is generally too risky for me and the second is largely frustrating i.e. I’m between a rock & a hard place.

Every time I get to sign off on an e-mail using ‘Adii’, I value that as an exercise of personal branding. The more prominent I can make my own brand and the wider the audience that gets exposed to the brand / word ‘Adii’, the more valuable my personal brand becomes.

Not trying to be narcissistic, but to an extent my personal brand is the most sustainable business plan I have at this stage.

With last week’s reboot of Project 52 - which I had been participating in (by publishing at least one blog post per week since 1 January 2010) - I wanted to have a look book at the ideals that I set myself at the beginning of the year.

Here’s a bit of a summary of the things I think that I’ve been making the most progress on…

Writing, Blogging & Rockstar Business. It was important for me to start writing again, as I experienced somewhat of a writer’s block in the 2nd part of 2009. So I’m happy to say that I’m doing quite a bit of actual writing i.e. on pen & paper, I’ve been blogging one significant blog post at least once a week since the beginning of the year and I’ve also finished the draft of my upcoming book, Rockstar Business, which is with my editor at the moment.

Photography. I purchased a shiny new Canon 7D DSLR for my birthday in January and I’ve been using it quite a bit and I’m also learning more and more about both my camera & photography in general. My Flickr profile is proof of this.

Personal Health & Excercise. This has probably been my biggest achievement to date, as I’ve lost 11kg’s since the beginning of the year and I’m also just about ready to participate in my first half marathon next weekend. I feel great and the improvements in my weight & fitness is really a massive personal victory for me.

Everything WooThemes. It would be an understatement to say that WooThemes is firmly on its way to hit all of the goals that we set out to achieve this year. On average, the business has great momentum and I’m confident & certain that we’ll exceed our own expectations for 2010.

And a few goals that could definitely do with some attention (i.e. these are the things that I need to improve on in the next couple of months):

• I set out to read at least one new book a month and whilst I started out well, this has come to a grinding halt. So I definitely need to start reading again, even though I find it really difficult when I’ve been in front of the computer all day.
• I’m not spending enough time away from the office yet. I set myself the goal of getting out of the office more and working remotely either from home or from coffee shops. At least it seems that I’m hitting my target of spending at least one weekend away from home every month.
• Both Radiiate & The Rockstar Foundation has slowly been making progress, but neither of them have sustainable models just yet, which means I need to spend more time to firmly establish those projects as well.
• I still haven’t gotten back into video blogging and I’m not sure whether this is realistic / viable at this stage.

So that’s a bit of a check-in from my side. How are you progressing with your goals?

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:

1. If I had a great day at the office, my afternoon run is a perfect way to almost celebrate that day; and
2. If I had a shitty day up until that point, the run is a great way to clear my head and just feel refreshed by removing myself from that shittiness.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but even though I thus go running for two very different reasons, it has exactly the same result: I feel much better afterwards. In a similar vein, when I’ve had a great day I get to celebrate it with Jeanne (with whom I got engaged last Friday), but when it hasn’t been the best of days, I can talk to her about it, which allows me to get it off my chest / mind (family & friends can do exactly the same thing).

What I’m trying to say here, is that the different spheres of our lives all has an influence on each other; so if you’re not happy at home, you’re more than likely not gonna be happy at work. And if you’re being challenged & stimulated at work, you’re more likely to feel refreshed & happy when socializing with friends & family or pursuing personal hobbies.

So there’s most definitely a case for making sure that all of these things are aligned. Consider that the energy (and good vibes) generated in one sphere automatically gets transferred to the next sphere as you move between the different spaces in your life; to an extent it should thus be obvious that you need to setup those spheres in such a way as to where they can fuel each other.