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).

So upgrading isn’t an overly radical idea; in theory at least. But when I put those “wants” into the context of where I had come from, I realized that I don’t really “need” to upgrade at this stage or move offices at all. Hell, I’ve bootstrapped everything we’ve done until now, so why now suddenly heap bucketloads of overheads to our monthly bill?

The decision is a straightforward one in terms of pure financial considerations: upgrade away, as both revenue & profits allow for it (unlike Twitter who has no revenue stream to justify their fancy new offices). But that still doesn’t necessarily mean I should, because we don’t *need* to do so just yet.

Screw the fancy. I’ll keep my money in my pocket and bootstrap for a little while longer.

DISCLAIMER: I may still purchase office space if I can pick it up at the right price, because it is a great investment vehicle. But I will only do that when it makes much more sense than it does now.

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.

** I could be doing many other things that would make me happier. I try not work on weekends on a regular basis (especially not on beautiful Saturday mornings), but I lost some work-time in the week due personal situations, which means I need to make a few sacrifices in order to catch up.