RevenBlog
web thinking

I’m sitting by the harbor in Hilton Head, SC, looking at the boats and drinking my morning cup of coffee, hoping my beautiful children don’t wake up quite yet. It’s beautiful here. We come every year. A Broadwater family vacation. My dad has done well in his business and can afford such lavish annual vacations, and it makes me think about my own success in business. I am driven to succeed just by being intrinsically driven to excel. But what is success? Is it lots of money? Well, money is great because money is power and power can be used to do good and to gain freedom (freedom to go where you want and do what you want). But if you spend all of your time trying to get and keep that power, then it doesn’t do you much good to have it because you are sacrificing the freedom that money affords to have the money in the first place (crazy world). One side of me wants to not worry so much about making more and more money and just kick back in the back yard with the kids and the grill. Another side of me wants to give my kids and my wife and myself the power and freedom to go where we want and to get what we want when we want. Plus, there’s college and retirement to think about. It’s a delicate balance… this happiness thing.

thinking,

Jason

Ferns take constant care in the Carolina heat. We have two ferns in hanging baskets outside our door at our Rock Hill office. I have to water them every morning, switch their placement (due to direct sun on one side), and bring them into the shower for a “rain” if it hasn’t rained in a while. This kind of care taking is a good exercise, I believe. I have always had a knack for starting something new and exciting. I’ve had to learn the behavior for maintaining and managing what I have started. RevenFlo is better because of our ferns. (Laura, take good care of them while I am gone!). – Jason

I spoke to Rock Hill City Council at the last council meeting about the importance of marketing Old Town Rock Hill as an asset. WRHI ran it on the radio and now has it archived on their site. LISTEN

Our server went down on Friday morning and came back up on Monday afternoon. This meant all of our websites, NOT our clients’ sites, just our sites (revenflo, the revenblog, revencenter, rockthrill.net, edutoddle, etc.) went down.

It’s funny though. My only concern when it happened was the relevant email accounts and my few clients who are just riding on our server as opposed to having their own independent hosting account. These few clients are family and friends whose sites I’ve built and we have just left them on our server with no cost, riding along side our sites.

I’m proud to say that these two concerns were from the motivation of serving our clients well. The sites being down, of course, and the fact that a client may email me and I would not be able to respond. I’m pleased at myself on how I responded to all of OUR stuff being down. I mean Bob was on the job working with our server provider to fix the issue. So being all stressed out about it would not have achieved anything. So, we implemented a temporary solution to get our emails working, we contacted each affected client (again only a few were affected). Bob stayed on the job. And I went about my day of meetings and proposal creation and telephone calls and so forth.

Our clients couldn’t use our RevenCenter for four days (friday-monday), so that was a bummer. At least two (that I know of) prospects on the hook came to the site and found it down (an experience that will play into their perception of us), that’s a bummer too. I mean, the whole thing is not what we want and what we strive for. But life is about being good to people. The people working on the issue were working hard. The clients and prospects who had an inconvenience are good people. So, everything is OK. Don’t worry. Be Happy.

Jason

We just launched a new website for ProLegal Copies, a premium document services company with 6 locations throughout the South East. The site is great. We had some bumps during launch. We had significant downtime in different geographical areas throughout the day on Friday. We got it worked out, though. It was a learning experience for me. We’ve launched a lot of sites, but the things we had go wrong with this one were mostly new to me. So, now they are on our check list (as uncommon as they will be).

The site consists of 7 interconnected content management systems. There is a unified corporate experience for the visitor, but each location is essentially running its own website and can thus use it differently. Some locations are already publishing on the site, some are pursuing added functionality like increased ability to communicate with individual clients, through client login areas. Each location will be able to integrate the site as a tool into its business as it see fit.

I think about how systems integrate with systems. We’re working currently on ProLegal’s internal system for managing their new tool (their new system). We are looking at having one person over there who is the website point person. They already have their IT point person. Then a person per location. Each person with a role in the system of managing the website (again, a system).

I gotta go to work.

Jason

I’ve been spending a lot of time worrying about growth – that is, how to inspire and manage growth effectively. I’ve been working on systems. Having Clay in the office a few days a week has been nice because we talk about these things. Ronnie and I also discuss systems often – not only the systems we are building for other businesses (i.e., websites), but those systems that we use to work together, our processes and tools… same with me and Bob. Laura and I discuss our administrative and accounting systems. I had a meeting with Brian and Doug from Sturdy Vision yesterday, and we talked about systems too. Wait a minute. Maybe it’s just that I’m always talking about systems, and other people are just being polite.

Tonight FutureMan (of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones fame) is playing in downtown Rock Hill, brought in by Back Home Entertainment. Outdoor music and festivities precede it. Events such as these are nice successes for downtown Rock Hill. I think of RevenFlo projects this way. Of course embarking upon a full-scale build and launch of a program is exciting, but so are the smaller wins… a client calls and needs an issue resolved, we take care of it, the client benefits from the issue being resolved, RevenFlo from the sale of the time to do so. Both sides are better off from the exchange. Tonight musicians will play, food and beverages will be sold, tickets will be sold, food will be served, and everybody will be better off for the experience (hopefully). Creating such successes takes vision and teamwork.

Throughout the course of my business, a short but crash course over the last 5 years (and more specifically the past 2 1/2 years for RevenFlo), I have struggled with help v. control. How much help do I need and how much control do I want? How do I structure the relationships that help me so that I don’t lose too much control. I am less concerned now with control. I understand it differently. The ability to bring about change is not equal to the ability to control. The ability to inspire is much more important, because it leads to groups of people working together with synergy, with each truly adding more than what he or she gives.

Yesterday evening I met with a collection of web developers and marketing folk at McHale’s in downtown Rock Hill, SC. There were six of us. Three of us would call themselves developers, and the other 3 of us would call ourselves marketers (given those as our options). We just met up for the hell of it. It was great. We talked about everything from Hispanic marketing, relationship marketing, pay-per-click, open source, content management systems, PHP, Ruby on Rails plugins for Drupal, and more. We also just talked – told tales of our travels, stories from our childhoods, and funny things we’ve heard and seen. It’s a nice casual friendly way to make friends and connections. Doing this kind of thing is WAY better than doing a Networking “after hours” event (at least in my experience). If you are going to do the after hours events, I think it’s best when you go without any plans to give anyone your card or talk about your business. Instead, just go to have nice conversation with other professionals… the business stuff will come up when and if it’s right. I’ve found that entering a group of professionals with the attitude that I can learn and make new friends is so much more of a powerful experience rather than entering a group hungry for business with cards in hand.

I was in McHale’s last week and the owner was telling me how they are hoping to renovate and open the second floor of the building. I talked to David Williams of Williams and Fudge a while back, and he told me about the web cam for the new huge statue that was being installed in front of the Cotton Factory. I met with a small group to discuss the mission and strategy of the Mainstreets of Old Town Association (serving to better downtown). I sit in on one meeting, and I’m hearing that there are hopes for building a new York County library downtown Rock Hill. I sit in another and we are discussing a budget for marketing Old Town Rock Hill (the larger area in the city center that includes downtown, the textile corridor, Winthrop, York Tech, Glen Cairn, Hagins Fewell, and more). I go to one place and hear that a restaurant in Old Town is closing. I go to another and hear that one is opening. I sit for one presentation about a destination outfitters store celebrating 5 years in downtown, and I sit in on another one about 14 town homes being built in downtown. Then I go to my local watering hole and someone is telling me about a concert series at the newly refinished White Home. Then the next morning I get an email from the Arts Council downtown with the following month’s schedule of events. Then I sit in on a presentation about the coming outdoor movie series for downtown Rock Hill (happening in the newly improved outdoor civic amphitheater in downtown Rock Hill). Every conversation I have with the city is one about something new and exciting happening. This is the great for me. I bring the same energy to my business. There is so much opportunity. It’s just so difficult to choose what to focus your energies on.