I’ve been on a vacation for a month and while a ton of ideas have been swirling around my brain… for the most part I’ve been driving around and having a time of my life. So here is what’s on my mind and how it relates to running a business.

Ducati vs. Harley Davidson

So the obvious answer is Why not just take them both? Unfortunately, in business and in personal life you really can’t have it all any more than you could ride two bikes at the same time.

Harley Davidson V-Rod Nightster is a Porsche-designed 1200+ cc beast that is part cruiser, part leather couch, part rocket. It is by far the most comfortable bike I’ve ever been on and even after a 100 mile field trip I barely felt like I even got out of bed. That, and you look like a badass no matter what you’re doing:

You simply have the sense that those that see you think you’re cool.

Then there is the Ducati. Engineered for the stop watch, designed for the track. It’s actually their tagline. The most award winning GP motorcycle company in the world. From the moment you twist that throttle and dry clutch clunks get closer and closer together, the bike pulls and doesn’t stop pulling. It’s as simple as riding a rocket while having the feeling that the only thing keeping you are your knees. The entire ride is a long pushup, you look like you have a death wish and after an hour you’re ready for a nap – still smiling though!

What you should do…

When it comes to a Harley, do you really care what a bunch of strangers think of you? After all, this is about your happiness. But do you really need one that is built and designed for the track, that will overheat in city traffic no matter the fun?

If you want a comfortable ride, go for the Harley. If you want pure performance and exhilaration, go with the Ducati.

But you really should get both. I did

This is the quagmire that most business owners have. On one hand, you really have only one purpose and everything that gets in a way of it be damned. But you also have to worry about how what you do is being perceived and interpreted – no, people don’t hear the same words that you think are coming out of your mouth.

When you try to “balance” these obviously opposite qualities, folks tend to see right through your fake personality. We all know and hate those folks, who are seemingly your best friend when they are right in front of you but their attitude and message changes depending on who they are talking to. They move forward and up while they dwell in relative anonymity, but plummet once they are exposed.

So how do you balance it? I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s similar to driving two bikes at the same time – face on the pavement and ass on the sidewalk.

The point is that while you might want it all, you have to settle for what makes you happy and what you can be consistent at. Hopefully, over time that builds into a solid track record and respect. No shortcuts. And you can sleep at night. There you go, the secret to a long term sustainable business and leadership model.

This is not a post about religion or politics. If you disagree with my opinion please keep it to yourself, I will delete any comment relating to a flame war that typically comes out of anything that touches someone’s religious or political view.

I have been misfortunate enough to be born in a country that was ruled by a combination of religious corruption and political corruption for centuries. From the days of romans, to the Ottoman empire and Islam, to the communisim and the void of religion but full of dictatorship and corruption to the eventual relapse to Christianity which lead to ethnic and religious genocide and more. I have vowed never to return to that country and typically excuse myself from conversations that talk about “the good ol’ times” or how awesome that place is – so awesome that it has one of the worst employment levels in EU, lowest standard of living and the only folks who think highly of it don’t happen to actually live there.

I now live in United States and am immensely proud of this country and what it stands for. We got all sorts of freaks here and yet we manage to not kill each other most of the time.

Some of the folks that didn’t pay attention to history classes in high school or got their history lessons from their pastors stick to the mistaken notion that USA is a “christian nation”. It’s not. As a matter of fact, one of our founding fathers wrote an edited version of the Bible free of all the supernatural stuff that scares people into organized ignorance. I have nothing against Jesus, I was born and raised in the Christian household… but one of the things I am most proud of when it comes to America is that we’ve left Jesus behind and embraced the age of personal responsibility and embraced what it truly means to be an American:

Right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

America has successfully transformed everything that was religious about holidays and attached it to commercial principles that make America great. You’re free to practice any religion you wish but Christmas is about the presents and the tree. Easter is about the chocolate bunnies and colored eggs.

This is Walmart, unapologetically one of America’s greatest companies and as much as folks may hate it, the true spirit of America. It’s cheap. It outsources to China mercilessly in pursuit of the lowest price. Oh, and one more thing:

Vlad: Hi, what are your hours today?

Walmart: We never close.

America is not about Jesus, or god, or Allah. America is about us. Americans. About what we want, about what is important to us – without judgment of others.

And believe me, Walmart was packed. Chick-fil-A was closed today as it is on every Sunday. And it works for them. But Walmart was open. And everyone at Walmart that was working (and that I thanked for working today) was happy to be there and in a good mood. Happy to be working. Happy to be making money because when the times got hard we got back to what really matters in life: happiness.

Don’t get me wrong – there are many religious, political and special interest groups that would love for us to live according to their rules, their god, worship their way of life and their religious law. It works in Israel. It works in middle eastern Sharia-law countries. It works in Vatican. It works in Utah. It works at the cost of other religions: where if you’re not worshiping the right god you’re subject to prosecution, genocide or social alienation. It does not work in America.

Money is not the root of all evil. Money can and does buy you happiness – or nobody would work. Ever. In this country, regardless of our religion or upbringing or political affiliation – we work and we work hard. To earn the way of life we want and live it freely as we wish.

That is what makes us great.

Apparently I have cost a lot of people some money with my vacation: Apparently there was a bet out there that my vacation wouldn’t last a week with a lower payout if it didn’t last two weeks. Sorry folks

I haven’t stepped foot into the office since March 31st and I don’t intend to either. My staff has handled everything in my absence: promotions, marketing, dealing with system maintenance, new hardware and software rollouts, fantastic progress on the ExchangeDefender 7 and Shockey Monkey, getting rid of a toxic employee, training, collateral – really, everything has gone flawlessly so far.

Or they have just been great about not sharing the stories of carnage with me.

Look, I’ve worked pretty much non-stop for a decade to build Own Web Now and make it what it is today. I was dead serious about taking a month off to relax, refocus and reenergize.

How I Do It

My wife knows me best and she correctly characterized me as a binger. Like Charlie Sheen I only have one gear: Go! It partially explains how we’ve been so successful through the years: Not only do I work hard but I also beat the shit out of everyone around me to get their absolute best. That type of schedule and intensity doesn’t allow for relaxing vacations because I’m always thinking about what’s next.

For the fellow bingers and workaholics who don’t buy into the life balance bull, here is how I did it, step by step:

1. Before I went on my vacation I made sure to wrap up all my outstanding projects and reassign anything that I did not finish.

2. I delegated my mailbox management to a VP on my team. They have full access to my mailbox and delegate issues as neccessary.

3. My management team discussed every possible weird scenario that could happen that is not in the blueprint. For example, what do we do if the agents show up and put a big lock on our door.

4. I made sure that our core partner base knew that I was away and was going to stay away no matter the emergency.

5. I committed to no strategy discussions during my leave. This means any HR decisions, any product decisions, any marketing decisions, anything else that had to get done would get done by my team without penalty.

6. The hardest part: I was not to work on my computers. I was locked out of my work desktop. I was locked out of our beta environment. I was locked out of our test servers. Even if I had a brilliant idea, I could not call people up and try to make them work.

It has worked for the past 18 days. I had a few phone calls with quick questions, a few text messages and some IMs, nothing drastic.

Why? When I come back I am not coming back to the same role I’ve had for the past 13 years as the CEO of Own Web Now. Sure, the title will be the same but I will not be doing what I’ve been doing so far. There is something new called Project Blueprint, I hope to fill you in on the details over the summer. If you look at the “Final Vladville Post” there are some hints in there about the future of our industry not being similar to the past. No, it won’t happen overnight, but it’s going in a new direction and that’s the key to a successful business: you change with the times.

I needed to take time off so I could adjust myself so I can lead us through the next decade.

Some of you that work closely with my team have heard that we have a beta of ExchangeDefender hooked up with SBS 2011 Essentials (server formerly known as Aurora). In effect, the software is designed to give microbusiness clients a way to centrally manage all their accounts – Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010, ExchangeDefender and have the modifications applied to their SBS 2011 Essentials server.

We’re currently seeking a second wave of beta users. To apply, send email to: beta@exchangedefender.com

Requirements:

Active ExchangeDefender Service Provider

Active ExchangeDefender Exchange 2010 mailbox

Functional, physical, SBS 2011 deployment (no virtual machines)

System requirements exceeding Microsoft’s minimum hardware requirements for SBS 2011 Essentials.

Ability to provide admin access to our dev team for deployment and troubleshooting purposes.

If you meet all of the above requirements, we’d love to get the integration rolled out for you. There is no fee, no minimum number of users or a commitment / contract.

The overall experience will integrate the way users already manage their ExchangeDefender services (Exchange, SharePoint, ExchangeDefender) and unify the account signon and credentials across the systems.

Overall Strategy

Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010 is our dominant product – and SBS 2011 Aurora is yet another brick that helps small businesses climb to the cloud for services that they don’t want to manage but keep their important data and backups local. By bridging the two we can reduce the amount of maintenance and double-management happening between the cloud service and the on-premise file server.

If you’re wondering how this fits our overall strategy – in 2011 you will see announcements from us, Dell and Microsoft that unify HaaS (Hardware As A Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service) and go towards eliminating a lot of the cost and a lot of the concerns businesses have with storing data on systems that are not under their physical control.

Of course, that’s just the tip of it. If you’ve been in tune with the messaging out of OWN as of late you know that we’re extending our amazingly successful platform in more and more areas.

It’s like having your cake and eating it too

Over the past few weeks my phone has been blowing up with txt and email inquiries about the ExchangeDefender 7 and the future of the product. Let me ease your mind – over the last few weeks we’ve been buying up a lot of hardware and a lot of space for the 7 release – We’re bumping up network capacity by additional 100% and bumping up the hardware capacity by 30%.

Our Dell team is very happy. And kudos to them for being able to fill such a large order so quickly.

On Wednesday at 1 PM EST (https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/120736520) we will be officially launching ExchangeDefender 7 beta and it should be in everyone’s hands within the week – most folks by Friday depending on demand.

Now on to the rumors, changes, general fear – folks, if this wasn’t going to kick so much booty, I wouldn’t be spending so much $ adding capacity. Those of you that have worked with us through the years remember the rough spot we ran into with the billing system change in 2009 and growth pains where there were some delays in delivery at times – things sure have changed through the years.

This is the biggest change to the product since it’s launch.

Naturally, there are going to be rumors when you make a statement like that. One area that confuses a lot of folks is the mentions of Shockey Monkey and what that means for those of you using Autotask and Connectwise, etc. First of all, the integrations with the two are only going to get better the more solid their API’s get and the more functionality they extend and introduce in their product.

Second, and most important in my opinion, is what we have learned with Shockey Monkey. For your sake, what have we learned from it that we can deploy within ExchangeDefender to make you more successful? Shockey Monkey launched in August of last year with less than a thousand “legacy” portals and by the time Shockey Monkey turns 1 year old we’re on pace to be bigger than Autotask and ConnectWise, combined.

You might want to go back and read that paragraph again. Then think, what could you learn from that experience to make your revenues and profits grow like Own Web Now’s have since last year? In the first 5 months of 2011 we would have attended 0 trade shows, launched 0 new products yet our growth has already beat all of 2010.

The dynamics of the software business are changing rapidly and if you’re depending on software solutions and their maintenance to grow your revenue, you have to change along with it. Today the big news that nobody cares about is that Epsion got hacked and to make a long story short: your clients will be getting a lot more SPAM. But is that the future of email? The mob business model, where the product is nearly free but the “protection” is gonna cost you? No, it’s not.

The main message I hope to make in the beta launch on Wednesday is that people hate to work with the mob. But they love to buy stuff.