Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

One topic that Susan and I don’t write or talk about in public is the perks (or doom) of blogging fame. I don’t like to talk about it because I hate listening when people bitch and moan about being successful (hint: you do this to yourself) so I am offering this to those of you that are considering blogging professionally either as an outlet or a marketing move.

First of all, if you have any recognizable skill whatsoever and have a unique point of view and delivery, people will read what you write. Don’t get me wrong, just because you put up a blog doesn’t mean people are going to read it — If your writing skills and delivery are equivalent to those of the 11 year old begging vendors for stuff and free conference passes you’ll be reduced to a misguided Google search audience and people that never removed you from Bloglines / Google Reader when they abandoned those accounts.

But let’s assume you have something to say. Let’s assume that its something thats on the minds of your customers, partners, vendors. Let’s assume your opinion is genuine, that you can defend your point and argue it when people comment on it. Let’s assume all that. Sooner or later your blog, your opinion, your writing and everything else that you seem to do are going to attract attention and you’ll become famous. Congratulations, thank you for everything you do.

But, now you’re screwed.

Now that people know you have somewhat of an influence and an opinion people respect, you’re a marketable commodity.

Expect people to call you and ask you for your opinion. Those opinions used by press are often twisted around and used much later out of context which is the reason I always refuse those calls.

Expect people to offer you book deals. Lots and lots of book deals. You can blog, ergo you can write, ergo it can be edited and marketed to sell books. Plus you’re likely to drive demand for it through your blog so the publisher has little risk.

Expect people to invite you to speak at events. Conferences are the most difficult invites because you actually have to know your stuff. User groups, regional conferences, vendor events and gettogethers are the easiest but also come with $0 pay.

So far so good. Now on to the screwed part:

Expect people to get mad at you when you tell them you have a real job and don’t want to go across the country to speak in front of 6 people for free.

Expect people to be mean to you when you don’t blog for a day or god forbid don’t answer a question they sent you via the blog. After all, what are they not paying you for!

Expect people to not understand why you aren’t press and aren’t willing to be at every event on earth. Even if by some mirracle the ticket to the conference is free the time away from business, plane, food, hotel tend to pile up.

Expect people not to treat you like a business owner but press – “Oh, we can’t talk about that or you’ll blog it” or “What do you mean you want to go to sleep, its just 1 AM”

Expect people to want to cut alliances, strategic focus groups, partnerships and sadly exclusion groups.

Finally, expect people to expect you to work for free. Expect to sit in conference calls, webcasts, podcasts, conference rooms, focus groups and all the other good stuff and make nothing out of  it. Some are pitched as a priviledge, some are pitched as exclusivity, some are pitched as a part of what you do… but expect not to be compensated for your time and skill.

This isn’t a whine or complaint by any means, I love what I do which is why I continue to do it, but you ought to be aware of end game and the need for a very thick skin. It ain’t for everybody, there are many rewards but there is a dark side to it as well.

I just wanted to make it official and say that this is the last post ever on the subject of popularity and stats because I think that by now only I am amused by what this little Vladville has become:

cat vladville.com | grep “Vladcast10.mp3” | wc -l
8257

In less than 10 hours I got over 8,000 listeners to what is essentially just just my soapbox. Thank you. The popularity of everything I do never ceases to amaze me. I understand that reading everything on vladville.com may at times be very hard to swallow, especially if you percieve the article to be written about you or putting your case on the spot, but I want you to know that numbers above are what keeps me honest. It may burn bridges, it may hurt feelings, it may damage personal / business reputation but I hope that one day when all is said and done by me on this plant nobody feels like I mislead them or didn’t give them the benefit of all that I’ve (or in business sense, OWN has) got to offer.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for supporting me/us or at the very least thank you for paying attention.

Warning: DO NOT watch the video if you are easilly offended.

Ok folks, I am about to let you in on a deep personal secret of how far I will go to make something unfunny. Vince Tinnirello was telling my wife how he is probably one of the few folks that gets my embedded jokes because we grew up in the same area. So, here it goes Vince, you’re among friends:  In 2005 or 2006 I was watching a seminar presented by Jim Harrison on how ISA handled rate limiting. His precise words that obviously stuck with me were in describing multiple layers of firewalls: “I don’t care what you use, Pix, Foundry, Monkeys in Buckets.”

Fast forward to 2007, we’re walking around WWPC after talking to Clint from Zenith Infotech about their new products and the sentiment was basically: “I am not so sure I want to leave my clients government regulatory compliance in hands of indians in buckets.” Later that day, www.indianinabucket.com was born.

Now, fast forward further to last months Orlando ITPRO meeting where the topic was managed services tools. We talked about the Zenith Infotech in particular and I suppose someone remembered my indianinabucket.com joke and brought it up. Seems like everyone loved it. A little too much.

Last Friday I get an email from a partner asking for my mailing address. Since we don’t take checks my first assumption was that this had to be a pipe bomb. Oh well, 8131 yada yada. Earlier today I get an email from the Partner:

I understand your new employee was delivered today.

I had my wife ship it and I think she put her company as a return by mistake. If I managed to offend anyone in the process REMEMBER it was from me personally, not my wifes company, nor ____… ;).. There, the disclaimer’s out of the way.

Let me know how he works out, I hope he’s highly productive for you.

What ensued is highly offensive, I do not recommend you watch it under any circumstances. However, I gotta say, this is the best gift I got in quite some time, I enjoyed it. Warning: offensive but not explicit.

Warning: DO NOT watch the video if you are easilly offended.

Click here to watch the video: File Attachment: indianinabucket.wmv (12678 KB)

Due to the popularity of Vlad’s Lexicon and the internal grumbling over it, I proudly present Vlad’s Grading Scale:

Best thing ever. (also known as “you rock”) Used when something goes way beyond my expectations.

Complete waste. (also known as “you suck”) Used when something goes below my expectations.

And to be fair, the pendulum between the two ought to swing, constantly. Yes, in perfect scenario everyone would be consistent, there would be 0 change and we’d all move along like happy automatons, but thats just not the way things go. Things change, circumstances change and what rocks today is going to suck tomorrow and vice versa. When things rock, it takes very little for them to fall apart, when things suck it takes even more to make them spectacular again. The same thing can rock and suck at the same time (read: Microsoft) and organizational consistency is harder to accomplish the larger the set of management points becomes.

I hope you noticed that Vlad’s grading scale does not include normal / ok / status quo / as it should be, etc. Why? Well, in life you get rewarded for beating expectations and beaten down when you don’t meet them. You don’t get an applause for doing your job, thats why you see a paycheck every two weeks.

“Customers are bitching that there is too much SPAM” – right, its our job to kill it.

“Customers are bitching that there are too many false positives” – right, it’s our job to let ham through.

“Customers never say thank you when everything works perfectly” – wrong, every 1st of the month they bow down with their AMEX and sacrifice many presidents for the glory that is this company.

This goes back to the conversation that Dave Sobel and I often have about why most people are not cut out to be entrepreneurs, they need constant reassurance and praise for what they are supposed to do in the first place and fall apart at the first sign of criticism. In words of Chris Rock: Whatcha want, a cookie? You lowexpectationmo@%#@%!