Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

Warning: Adult situations and topics ahead.

Have you ever heard these?

   Seize the day.

   Live each day as if it were your last.

   Live life to the fullest.

People like to say these things. But when it comes to doing, they tend to bring up other quotes like: “Oh, I can’t do that, need at least 8 hours of sleep or I can’t function.” or “I just can’t get that done, I have other plans.”

Every now and then I try to picture their conflict of desires and efforts and it looks a little like this:

“So you mean to tell me that if you knew you had 1 day to live you’d first make sure you had a really good night of sleep instead of doing something that would make the life worth living?“

Hi, my name is Vlad, I run marathons.

I am for all practical purposes an obese guy. 6’1”, 205 lb.

Yet every year I tell people that I run marathons and half marathons for fun. This year I did the “Goofy Marathon” at Walt Disney World which is a Half marathon on Saturday followed by a full marathon on Sunday. Over 40 miles including all the walking from the parking lot.

I’ve done marathons and half marathons all over Florida for years now because it’s the time I get to disconnect from my life and business and gain some perspective about how easy it is to give up and just how much nicer it would be to do nothing at all.

Yet, when I talk to people that are in far better shape than I am, I constantly hear one thing: “Oh, I could never do that. I just can’t do long distances. I just can’t do running. Or jogging. Or walking really. I can’t do cardio.”

The words “I did a marathon” don’t imply that I ran 26.2 miles and that it was down to me and a Nigerian who just happened to be a better sprinter in the last quarter mile. I was behind him. Way, way, way behind him. I’m pretty sure that by the time I was half way though my marathon the said Nigerian was already getting his first drink on his flight back home. You get the picture, I jog. For hours.

The Secret To Failing

I am not arrogant enough to tell you that I know a secret to success.

I am however experienced enough to tell you that I know the secret to failing. I’ve failed at stuff more times than I can count and it all comes down to one thing:

I didn’t try hard enough.

Now don’t get me wrong. I had fantastic excuses. Really, really, really good ones.

However… As I’ve gotten older and slightly less foolish I’ve realized that I have a rather limited amount of time around here (life) to do my thing and earn the kind of lifestyle I want.

If you honestly look back at all your failures you can probably track down at least half of them to the lack of effort, care or time you put into seeing them done.

The Reality

The reality is that yes.. you can do a marathon. People that survived horrific diseases make up an unusually large number of marathon participants. Practically crippled and astonishingly old do as well. Anyone can run a marathon. And trust me, you can make it through the day without 8 hours of sleep.

So you’re gonna go register for that marathon today, right? Wake up at 6 AM tomorrow instead of 8 AM? Yeah?

Of course not. Cause what’s in that for you, right? And I don’t mean what’s in it for you like a year down the road or four years later – what’s in it for you right now, immediately?

There is a reason why most people don’t have college degrees. It’s not time, it’s not money, it’s not brains – it’s effort. It takes a heck of a lot of dedication to pursue something that’s four years away for which you’ll be in debt for a decade and benefits won’t be fully realized even longer than that.

Yet, people are able to see beyond that. People are able to walk / run / jog. People are able to go to college. People are able to have kids, sleep 4 hours a night and keep on making things better with each and every day.

Optimism vs. Pessimism vs. Reality

I’ve fired a lot of people who felt their barely-40-hours-a-week were enough for them to keep their job. I’ve passed on a lot of resumes that felt cover sheets were not necessary.

The reality, whether you’re a pessimist or optimist, is that you’ve got to treat everything like it’s your own and your own benefit it on the line. If you’re cynical about that, you’ve already lost.  And that’s what happens – people go into things with the best of intentions but get cynical, tired, exhausted… they give up, slack off and ultimately they are out of work.

The same happens to entrepreneurs. We get excited about projects and potential revenues, we start building a business plan, we fund it, we build it, we market it, we start to really see the results but it’s just not enough right now. We want more. Faster. Different. We lose interest, we let someone else deal with the difficult stuff. We ignore the leadership we need in our business.

So… what now?

Nobody is going to go run a marathon as a result of all this, nor are you going to go get a college diploma or put in any more hours at your job.

The point of this blog post is to understand how things fail.

Do you want more than what you’ve got? Do you want a better life? Well, then you’ve gotta do more than you’re doing now and do it consistently and persistently.

If you need the qualifiers like how much time, for how long and how hard – then don’t bother. Desire for success is an internal quality and work ethic is something you build every day. You’ve either got it or you don’t.

…

So this is a brief introduction to my answer I promised in this post. The first question in trying to determine if you need to continue or quit is in being honest with yourself about your current predicament. Did you get yourself in this position and do you believe that by working harder or longer you actually have a shot. If the answer is yes you’re on the right path.

Something that has been on my mind as of late, and on the minds of OWN senior management, is the level of difficulty required to obtain our services. Here are the polar issues involved:

Our stuff is too difficult to setup!

Problem & Solution: Alrighty then, let’s simplify it and make it easier than Gmail to get into. Design the UI, run it past the retards and see if even they can get through it without impaling themselves on large words.

Effect: Support loads explode because lowering the bar brings in the people that are incapable of reading and solving kindergarten-difficulty puzzles.

We need this advanced feature, now!

Problem & Solution: We expose a more sophisticated control set and a complicated feature.

Effect: Clients complain that it takes too much effort to get something together and that it’s too complex.

The Reality

I spend half my day trying to simplify the things that we do so that we don’t get the same type of negative feedback, but the vendors we work with create impossible hoops and requirements for us to achieve so I get to feel the kind of sentiment my clients get.

But here is the bottom line…

The bar is there for a reason. It’s there to keep people who are not ready for the complex solutions from being able to hurt themselves with it. If you’re complaining, the bar is not the problem: Your inability to get above it is. We all may bitch and moan about the limitations that are put in place on the iPhone, but wast majority of people will not jailbreak their handset to enable advanced functionality.

At the end of the day you have to know your place. And if you’re not happy with it, it’s up to you to step up. Nobody will lower the bar for you.

It’s been a long time since Own Web Now Corp and ExchangeDefender were all about me. We’ve grown tremendously through the years, with a fair amount of pain, that is almost inevitable with success.

With February 1st right around the corner, I am proud to run an organization that has moved forward in a very big way.

Frankly, we’ve delivered what we’ve promised we would.

Now, I have a favor to ask. As we grow at this next level we’ve earned, it’s more important than ever to do things right. Over the next few months you will be receiving calls from people at Own Web Now. It won’t be from me, or even from anyone on my team. In USA, you’ll be talking with Sheila. In UK, you’ll be talking with Susanne.

I am asking you that you give them your time and your opinion as if it was me waiting to speak with you.

We want to know what we’re doing right and wrong, what we’re doing too much or too little of. Basically, we want to deliver the level of service you expect and make sure we keep all of our partners involved and benefiting from things we do here. Many of the programs you’re seeing us roll out right now had my direct involvement in them – and I didn’t create them for the Ferrari California fund, I created them for you because you asked for them.

I understand that along the way we may have lost some people and shaken up some confidence, but day after day I am getting an overwhelmingly, amazingly positive comments and praise about OWN. I want to make sure that we deliver consistently and stay in the leadership role in this business.

Thank you for your time. And if you ever feel you’re running into dead ends, I am very easy to find. It’s still my company. It’s still your feedback that guides it.

This is the question that has been thrown at me time and time again by partners that I’ve talked to in the last week. The euphoria of the new year had passed. The “Windows 7” migrations didn’t materialize. World in January 2010 is the same as the world in November 2009 – new calendar though.

And it’s getting worse: Walmart to lay off 11,000 people with 5,000 let go last month. Everything from Dollar Store to Louis Vuitton is getting downsized, even the jewelry stores and luxury car dealerships are closing doors: And when even the rich tighten the spending you know nothing good is around the corner.

I don’t have a prediction to share, nor some great insight that I haven’t offered before but I would like to offer two personal opinions:

1) We’re still growing. But… we’re growing rapidly across the products and services that the market demands. If your mind is still stuck in the “that’s not what we do” gear, you need to grow out of it and fast. Bottom line, people are still paying for IT services and they are paying well. If that’s not the case for you, either your marketing sucks or you’re selling the wrong thing.

2) It’s never too early or too late to make changes. If January 25th, 2010 is not what you envisioned when you put your plans together, go back to those plans and figure out how the current measurements compare to your estimates and goals. Look:

We all make mistakes and there is no such thing as perfection – and the measure of the man is what he does after he’s made a mistake.

If things aren’t working out, talk to someone that’s doing well and copy them. Or back to the drawing board. But flooring the accelerator in a car that’s driving on the wrong side of the street is just foolish.

Again, bottom line in difficult times is having a solid plan and being responsive to the demands of the market. You’ve got to keep on moving.