Welcome to 2009! Ok, so doom and gloom up front: It’s going to be a tough year. We’ll still move forward, we’ll still make a lot of money, it’s just going to be tougher all around.

In this podcast I describe the practice I’ve put myself through during the past 4 months since coming back to work @ OWN full time. It runs about 17 minutes and really good stuff starts at 5:20 mark.

But is that such a bad thing? No. It’s when we are tried the hardest that we perform at our very best. It’s also the judgement time for those who spent their more fortunate times without regard for how to design a business that performs. I have been talking to people all over the world and the response is unanimous: It’s getting tougher but we’re doing well.

I believe we’re very lucky. Yes, lucky. This is the time to take a hard look at ourselves, punishing look at those that are no longer with us, and gain some strength from the whole affair. What can we do today to be stronger tomorrow so we can rock out in 2010 and beyond? Opportunity knocks every day.

Play VladCast:

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Listen to my attempt. For some reason, people love this format. As Susan likes to remind me: I love your sensual voice Vlad! I’m going to say what’s on my mind, and much like V… I hope you talk back and give me ideas. I would love to be fortunate enough to have enough time to talk and argue with each and every one of you. No such time, for any of us, I’m afraid. But hey, shoot back from your office chair and let’s see if we all can’t help one another out.

I’m taking the first step. Hear it out, tell me what’s next: vlad@vladville.com

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One of my most critical failures of 2008 has been my role in the perpetual growing pain that is Own Web Now. The moment we had enough servers, we were again over capacity. The second we finally finished training the new staff, the new stack of resumes showed up. The moment everything worked just remarkably we added more hardware or added new features that caused new issues.

Thats life, thats business.

But it takes a toll on a man. So about two months ago I decided not to allow my business to run me an my agenda. There are weeks of my life in 2008 where I can honestly say I did absolutely nothing but keep the machine up and running, or as we say around the office: “I have been holding Internet together all day and my arms are tired.” When I did get the little meandering tasks in check I was so disoriented or had so little time before the next meeting that I never even got back to my agenda. So I made a lot of changes and the productivity went up. Took about two months to perfect it but now I’m ready to talk about it.

Tune in (really, it’s a podcast baby!) tomorrow on vladville.com and hear all about it.

P.S. Going to come back to the Mic in 2009 Most of my close friends have told me that I don’t come off as great on the blog as I do in person so let’s see if I can throw in some extra entertainment value your way.

Happy New Year, may all you’ve wished for come true.

If you want it, today is the first day to work on it. None of that “Oh, I’m tired” or “It’s a holiday” or “I’ll start it tomorrow, strong!” lazy talk. Success takes hard work and near compulsive dedication to it. It doesn’t matter what day or time it is, or what other plans you had.

Instead of beer during today’s SEC humiliation of some other team grab a Netbook and crank out some plans during commercials.