Investments in You

Wow! What a year!

For me, my family, and this business, 2016 was quite the year to remember. Let’s dig into the year in reverse topic order.

Petersen Media Group in 2016

Back in May I wrote about how I almost destroyed the business with a series of decisions and some health issues in 2015. The TL;DR version is that I neglected my self-promotion, growth, and family in 2015 with a partnership that, executed better, would have accomplished each of those much better.

Pretty early in the year, I started a video course for here, which I need to get cracking on the final 2/3 of. Man, the rest of the year really did fly by.

In July I got a series of projects that got the snowball rolling for the rest of the year with new relationships and skills. Right now, I have more ideas and projects to get moving on than I can shake a stick at, so I’m mentoring a padawan learner to work closely with me this summer to tackle a good portion of the coding and getting him real-world experience to decide what to do with the start of his career.

In the final closing moments of WordCamp Tampa 2016, I launched my first premium product into the WordPress space at my GenesisThe.me shop. I worked feverishly all weekend to squash bugs in my Genesis framework starter child theme for developers, which I cleverly named GenesisThe.me Developer Starter. See? I told you it was creative. That weekend, I also began work on a plugin for the shop and planned on launching a second theme in December, which is starting to look a lot like January now.

Family in 2016

Just a few days into the year, we were supposed to be saying goodbye to our newborn foster baby. Then a series of events happened that sat me on the couch late at night creating a “Surprise Adoption” site to raise emergency funds to secure our status with the adoption agency as no longer foster parents but adoptive parents. 11 months later, we found ourselves in the courtroom being sworn in to affirm our second son as a forever Petersen. We’re forever grateful to the over 140 people who donated on the site… and the approximately 50-60% of them who were WordPress-related. This community rocks!

Over the summer, my wife became a US citizen after moving here as a toddler… and then she got to vote in her very first presidential election. Great timing!

Before the election, we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary and our sons’ 7th and 1st birthdays. It’s been pretty much non-stop planning and partying since September in our house. If you follow me on Instagram (it’s a private account), you have seen the pics.

Personal

So the end of 2015 ended with me in the ER’s Trauma Room 1 with my heart racing out of control and a few days in the hospital while they sorted things out. The day we were getting adoption papers on our phones was the morning we were sitting in pre-op for a heart catheterization to permanently solve my racing heart issue. Yeah, that’s how we started out the year.

Over the course of the year being a dad of two boys and husband to a wife taking care of two boys while I tried to spend as much time at my desk as possible, I learned a few things about myself, which will be detailed in the following post with my 2017 goals.

On a final note that you won’t find in many year-end posts, with the help of some family seeing there was an issue (though they didn’t know what it was – more like, “figure it out”), I stopped taking prescription opiates for my headaches cold turkey two days after Thanksgiving. Something had been “off” with my personality for a year, which is how long we’d had big changes (see above), but also when I switched from short-acting to long-acting pain meds. So I quit them.

Stay tuned for more

That’s it for last year. Next up: 2017 goals

Talking about impostor syndrome (IP) became a hot topic in 2015. Did you see it happen? Many posts popped up, as well as several WordCamp and Ruby conference talks.

Most everyone has it, even the egomaniacs in the room, but probably not the meglomaniacs. They take care of that self-image thing way better. I know I have IP and have for well over two decades, until I reach a point of boredom in a position because there is little or nothing else to learn, let alone master. That’s about the time I’d move on to another job. Challenges are fun, so maybe it’s a case of yearning for IP? That’s a discussion for my mental health professional.

For those who are late to the game, IP is the underlying (or more self-aware) sense within yourself that others know more than you do about what you’re doing and you aren’t worthy of your position at your company or in your circle of friends. It’s only a matter of time before they find out you’re a fraud and exile you to live out the rest of your days on Dagobah with Yoda. It prevents you from asking for help (or at least feel ashamed when you do) and tapping the resources of your team or network.

but it doesn’t have to be that way

I’ve been working on a project since October that has been my plan to productize when I got it working. One delay led to another, which led to another, but it’s finally done. Now that it’s done I realized I don’t have the toolset to convert it to a product. There are several gaps in my programming abilities. I’ve also not yet sold a commercial plugin. Stealth Login Page has over 70,000 downloads and 20,000 active installs, but it’s free and just sits in the WP repo for download.

One attitude to have is to look at everyone who knows how to do such a level of programming, but that is focusing on the wrong thing. Those people have spent the time and energy to learn some additional skills that allow such wonderful packages of code.

Someone could also be defeated and give up on a great idea. That’d be a terrible state for me, because ideas come pretty easily for me and have to spend time sorting out which ones are worth pursuing. If that was my default, I’d have only done one Treehouse course, not three… and also would have skipped Modern WordPress Workflow because when that idea happened, 50% or more of it was something I was learning and mastering as we went.

my favorite option

Collaborate. While I don’t believe partnerships are a good idea for something with two people, with one person as the idea/code/IP rights, they can work out commission or profit-sharing to those who help bring it to fruition and/or keep it going. Harness your weaknesses by accessing them in the form of others’ strengths.

Just like joining a team increases the abilities of the individuals nearly exponentially, combining forces for single item projects is a great way to quickly bring something to market… like Andy Wilkerson and I did for Customizer Remove All Parts in 2015. We had that ready in less than a week based on some lines of code I uncovered to do what I wanted to do, and he put them into a plugin and we started marketing it as our free collaboration.

So what’s holding you back? What do you need help with?

Sometimes life moves at a crazy pace for the better, though that sort of activity can be detrimental to your life and health if you don’t have a plan. Thankfully, I have a plan! Ever since we made the decision to team up with Mason James’ team at The WP Valet, I’ve been forced to make plans.

• What work will I be doing for PMG now?
• What work will I be doing for WPV?
• How will we structure compensation?
• What does the future look like?

For too long, I’ve been working IN my business instead of working ON my business. Sure, I have days or weekends – like every WordCamp – that makes me think outside of my very limiting box. But then life gets back into stride when the next week begins (or the week after that because of the funk of data-induced paralysis). I’ll implement a new service, remove a batch of clients, or change some major tool. But unless I did work, work didn’t get done. Money didn’t come in. I owned my job.

When I started having CEO lunches with Mason, I still remember his personal shift about 3 lunches in. He started to think about strategy, writing posts, and delegate more duties. There I was, a proud solopreneur sitting on the other side of the booth thinking to myself, “that part of having a team sure must be nice… time to think while others work.” I wondered what I could do for my business if I wasn’t wearing 30 hats.

What if my work was ONLY what I was great at?

What is work?

Since that lunch, I’ve ruminated on that and formed a new view of work and business. It’s confession time, but you’re used to that by now with me. I’m not the best developer. I’m not even close to being the best developer for Genesis. What I do do with extreme passion and ability is to pick a client who wants to work with a professional-grade business to get what they need, especially when what they want isn’t what they need.

Most people want someone to tell them when their idea sucks. Gently. You can tweet that if you want.

More and more, with the scope of my projects, I’ve been gathering an advanced developer or two to do tricky parts going into a plan to avoid a freak-out.

Enter: team skills. Oh. My. Wow!

What happens when you have a good plan, a solid foundation, and then bring in another expert or two to do all of the coding? You become a project manager and strategist. I have no issue in giving mad props to someone who comes up beside me and does what they do better than I can. That’s THEIR specialty. I have become a developer by necessity the same way you become a landlord when you own two houses because your job got transferred.

Once I started to tap dedicated coders, I had to figure out what I was going to do with my days. I wasn’t coding. It took about an hour to realize some changes to make to future-proof things and some new areas to start throwing spaghetti at to see what stuck.

Now I’m busier than ever again.

Remember: Know Thyself

Look at my WordCamp Slide 001 – if you don’t know yourself, you don’t really know anything. I know that I stand for integrity and quality. My grandpa lived by that for over 80 years and I aim to keep that legacy going.

I don’t have to code to provide that. I now have a close network of people who do that 5x better than I ever will, so I am shifting my focus to the skills that my friends don’t have.

I expect that means I’ll be pasting code into Gists for hints about where I went wrong a LOT less now.

And that’s a good thing. For everyone.

So ask yourself today: am I working IN my business or ON my business?

I have done a pretty good job keeping this site all professional and not personal, but when I was thinking about where to post this for today, I realized that most of my professional posts are personal anyway. My business is an extension of my life: my values, my ethics, and my relationships.

Well, this is my BIG relationship. Most of you probably don’t know the Mrs. behind Petersen Media Group, but I can assure you that I married way up. When we met, I was full of potential, but a quick label indicating me to be a less ambitious man based on my status at the time would have been warranted. Shoot, a lot of people still had their doubts as they were eating our wedding cake, I’m sure.

Thinking back on eight years, I simultaneously can’t believe we’ve done all we’ve done in less than a decade and also feel like we’ve hardly begun to grow old together yet. Maybe another 18 foster kids will change that feeling but I’m not ready for a walker quite yet. Maybe a one-story ranch, but not a walker.

While I was a guest at Treehouse filming my course for Genesis Framework Foundations, I took a few moments to write a script and loaded it into the teleprompter and asked my producer and audio tech if we could film something really fast. They gladly obliged and handed this over to me, so Babe, this has been waiting for over a month. I hope you like it.

The funny reality of out business is that Kristin is the one with the business and marketing degree. I’ve got the professional writing degree – the grammar nazi. She’s the organized one; I freak out when my white board has 4 projects and a couple are lingering after I start a new one. She’s the financial whiz; Kristin balances the books while we figure out running a business together. She’s the hobby blogger and I’m the theme developer and site consultant.

Just last week, I went to her completely overreacting about something out of my control and did my best Hulk impression and she calmly smiled and said what she’d do. “I’VE ALREADY DONE THAT! RAAWWWRRRR!!!!” I took a Xanax and went back to work. She’s awesome.

A month ago, we had just come off a 2-month special needs fostering a newborn and I’d just wrapped up about 3 weeks straight with only 3 hours of sleep per night and client work was really getting behind… and so was our income. It was a super happy ending: he was adopted, and I said, “calm down, watch what I’m going to do.” We’ve been sick the last week and all is good because we met our needs about a week and a half ago because she let me ignore the little things and just work.

We balance each other out and my clients are the big benefactors of her input and conversations at dinner and in the car.

It’s more than fair to say that we wouldn’t be where we are today without her input into our business on a regular basis, even though she doesn’t know how to write code or price out a project.

It’s been made pretty clear recently that the constants in our lives have a lot of control. We all have the same number of minutes in each day and one brain that can only control so much at once. A lot of us have families that need our attention, sometimes throughout the day. It’s these constants that forced me to look at what I’m doing and ask “can I do this better?”

I scheduled a call with a very successful startup expert and I listened for 30 minutes to ideas and tips until we struck on something.

stretched thin

“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
-Bilbo Baggins The Lord of the Ring

Too many obligations to trade time for money and producing something every month have created a couple of nasty unintended consequences that are unacceptable in my eyes. First, I’ve let a couple of people down with my work or my communication or both. Second, I feel torn separating myself from my family for so much of the day and for so many first time events.

This current model is tied directly with getting time at my desk and being insanely productive, all the while keeping up with my network, my inbox, and just trying to keep up with my writing. (Remember that book I started last January?)

In this situation, I’m often put in a position to choose to help someone new or a loyal long-time (or loyal and infrequent) client. Notes are scattered over my desk after giving up trying to track these things in Evernote. I was sending apologies after someone would e-mail after eight days asking what the status was and I’d completely forgotten about something. That’s not okay!

it is time for a change

It’s time for quality over quantity. My partial dedication to that is clear on my site. Rather than doing a crappy portfolio thrown together or a lot of 900-word posts that no one reads and has room to comment on, I respond to requests for my work and my 50 posts have over 600 comments. This mindset needs to pour over into my workflow with development and my project calendar.

A couple of weeks ago, I pushed <ESC> on Twitter and invited a few long-term clients who could really dig into what I’m aiming for. Now it’s time to write more about it and offer it here. The TL;DR version is: rather than being the last to find out about a client’s plans with their business and site, only to often waste time and money, to partner with me to be an integral part of their support network and take their business to another level through their site.

limited availability

This sort of partnering can’t be done large-scale, so I created the Exclusive Service Club (<ESC>) for just 10 clients if I’m going to get involved to the tune of about 10 hours per month. It is a move to trade new client projects for reserved time with my best clients who want to use my years of experience with WordPress more than building something with WordPress.

who is this for?

One client, from before I was even thinking about starting a WordPress business, is preparing to publish a book. We are going over his site with a fine-toothed comb and ensuring it is up to 2014 snuff, features him in a good light for the book, and putting some new tricks I’ve learned about SEO and mobile design into his 9-month old theme.

Another client has built his site from nothing to several thousand visitors per day, but he’s very meticulous about his SEO and making sure each post looks good. He’s getting some new Schema.org markup on his older theme and we will slowly plan out a new mobile design instead of banging it out and moving on to the next project.

If either of these things sound like things your site could use, let’s talk about it. I’ve created a form at the bottom of this page just for you.

February 2nd marked our 5th year in business. What started as moonlighting while working a full-time job and going to night school for my BA turned into a business on Groundhog’s Day in 2009.

That month was kicked off by friends who had businesses and were waiting for me to have enough time to create a nicer WordPress site for them, and I suddenly had all the time in the world to work on sites.

There have been high times and low times. This is actually a low time for us so it felt awkward to write this, BUT IT’S A MILESTONE, and I have faith it will work out. We are doing what we are meant to do, both as individuals and as a family.

Times I conceded I’d get a job if a project didn’t come in by X day and times my wife was insisting she needed to go back to work. Neither of those things came to fruition because the work always came in time.

It’s these times that make me look back at epiphanies like I had a few months ago about where we are now compared to where we thought we could be by now, 5 years ago.

Where were you FIVE YEARS ago? THREE YEARS? Are you more or less where you wanted to be “someday?” For me, I’m well beyond where I would be by now. I hit that just TWO YEARS into business when my wife quit her job. I’m actually living well into my fantasyland from five years ago.

Lessons

I’ve learned a few lessons along the way that are important to remember. Remember where you came from and don’t abandon those people – and don’t get too busy to help the people who first believed in you when you were a risk. It’s a very good idea to give to the community and don’t charge for everything, but don’t go hungry because you helped a friend – business is business. Obey the Golden Rule – everyday. Believe in yourself and surround yourself with those who believe in you. Have trustworthy people you can bounce ideas off of or ask questions before making a major decision – wisdom in the counsel of many if the counselors are wise.

Stats & facts

I spent a little time and compiled some stats and facts from our first 5 years in business and in 2013:

• 228 clients in total since 2009
• 1,300 invoices since 2009
• 313 invoices for site development since 2009
• $342,000 in gross revenue since 2009
• 4 hosts and 5 servers used since 2009
• 4 WordCamps attended since 2009
• 8 desk moves since 2009, including not having one
• 4 desk moves in 2013
• 2 WordCamps attended in 2013
• 75 clients served in 2013
• 24 full sites launched in 2013
• 260 invoices in 2013 (1 per weekday)
• 27 sites migrated to WP Engine in 2013
• 1,654,905 visitors to all of my hosted sites LAST MONTH

Thank you all for the opportunity to serve you and serve with you. I can’t imagine doing anything else right now.