Like not blogging enough. And not updating my website enough. Hiding after successful launches. Spending oodles on a video series and still not having the finished product in my hands. Intentionally not growing my audience so I wouldn’t have to say “no” so much and so that people didn’t have to wait until 2020 to work with us. Treating my email inbox like it had the plague (I was very attentive to its needs, but with a vague feeling that it was going to kill me). Hiring full-time staff too soon. Not knowing how to properly train or manage my staff. Throwing my own carefully crafted content strategy halfway to the curb out of sheer busy-ness.

So I started to look at the cold, hard truth. What exactly did we accomplish? I was prepared for the worst. But when I looked at the numbers, I discovered something shocking: holy cow, my perspective is completely upside down.

We launched 43 websites last year. 43. Websites. In twelve months. 43 glorious strategy-driven websites to replace 43 sucky ones. And not just any websites. Websites put into the hands of people and organizations who will become influencers in their world. If we did absolutely nothing else, this alone shows me that my self-flagellation is completely unwarranted.

But no, we did way more than that. We launched our first ever gold-digging excursion and filled it to capacity…and did not die from it. We HIRED people when the rest of the world was firing them. We more than doubled our gross receipts.

All of that while things were so completely imperfect. I think I rather like our prospects for 2011.

This is important. And not just for me.

Have you ever heard the phrase “It’s easier to steer a moving ship?” My dad used to say that to me. It’s the law of momentum. John Maxwell calls it “The Law of the Big Mo”. If you don’t have it, it’s hard to get anything accomplished. You’re trying to steer a parked car. If you do have it, you’re steering a car that’s in motion…which is not hard at all.

“Momentum…makes a huge difference in organizations. When you have no momentum, even the simplest tasks can seem like insurmountable problems. But when you’ve got momentum on your side, the future looks bright, obstacles look small, and trouble seems temporary.”
John Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

Momentum. It’s powerful. Sometimes, we think we don’t have it, but we do. Look for it. Hold onto it. Even if you have to look at the numbers to prove to yourself that it’s there.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Sometimes I feel like a lot of my job is to tell people what they’re doing wrong. Subscriber rate terrible? Here’s how to fix it. Can’t tell your brand from the competitor down the street? Let’s take a different approach. Need more sales? Let’s tone the sales pitches down a notch and become an influencer instead.

But honestly, friends? I’m proud of you. I’m proud of every single one of you who sorts through all of the business advice and finds what works for you. I’m proud of you even if you haven’t yet hit six figures in a year — because you’re in the ring. You’re on your way there. Growing slowly is a good way to grow. I’m proud of you in those rare moments where you’re able to ignore everyone around you and just keep building on your small successes.

And I’m proud of me, too. I’m learning to be a better leader. And the more I lead, the more I like leading. I’m actually considering taking on an intern, which three months ago you wouldn’t have caught me dead doing. I’m enjoying the wealth of experience and abilities that having a team brings to the work we do. And I kinda like leading people who are using what they’re learning on the job to start their own things. Maybe part-time (with your own budding empire on the side) is the new full-time.

Raise your glasses, friends. 2011 is for us.

Since I’ve been reading too much crap lately and not enough of the good stuff, I am reading Don Quixote again. It’s the book that made my pre-adolescent brain re-think my pessimistic attitude toward classic literature. If you haven’t read it, it’s like Monty Python before Monty Python was cool. It’s about this 50-year-old guy who reads so many books about knights that he is deluded into thinking he is one. So he goes off in search of adventures. One of my favorite passages comes in the very beginning, when he’s getting together his armor, trusty steed, et al in preparation for his sacred quest.

The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it as best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion [note from Sarah’s dictionary: a morion is a helmet without a visor]. This deficiency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard, which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that, in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a week to do. The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against that danger he set to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied with its strength; and then, not caring to try any more experiments with it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect construction.”
Miguel de Cervantes in “Don Quixote”

I spent quite a bit of time drawing near-genius parallels between pasteboard helmets, websites, and product launches. Sadly, as analysis often does, mine completely ruins it. So I will let you draw your own conclusions there. But you know what makes us laugh at our dear Don Quixote? Because he is us.

If you are part of that group, this is for you. If you’re not part of that group, pretend that you are for the next 2 minutes, and we’ll all be happy. Let’s jump in, shall we?

Monde

The folks on the sneak peek list received the grand tour on Friday, and since then I’ve gotten several “I wish I was Katie Durham!” emails. That’s right, several. As in three. But really, I thought that was pretty amazing. And for the record, I wish I was Katie Durham, too. (Click on the images to see the full-size version.)

Summit

Leah and I collaborated on this one, so I decided to name it after her. She’s a rock-climber — Summit seemed appropriate. Also, Grayce and Christopher are the middle names or Leah’s two youngest siblings, which is kind of adorable. Just like this site.

Verbatim

Does this happy fella look familiar? Go ahead…I’ll give you a minute to put your glasses on. I just couldn’t bear to get rid of him, so he’s hanging out with the new LiteSites to show them the ropes.

Thanks for indulging me

I feel like the grandma who just unleashed her wallet full of baby pictures. Thank you for smiling and nodding appropriately…I’m glowing with pride over here. If you’d like to know more about LiteSites (or get your own), you know where to find me.

And just for you, the very first picture of my littlest one (taken yesterday!):

My favoritey-est thing about using Firefox as my browser is that there are lots of useful add-ons you can enjoy. One of the best is Greasemonkey. Once you install Greasemonkey, you can install these nifty little things called userscripts. (If you’re super-nerdy, you can even build your own.) These little scripts can potentially awesome-ize your web experience in a bunch of cool ways.

For instance, since I’ve grabbed AutoPagerize, I no longer have to deal with clicking “next” a million times to find what I want. I just scroll and scroll and scroll to my heart’s content. The page automatically expands with new content to meet my ever-growing informational appetite. It works on Flickr, on Twitter, and on most other sites that require clicking “next,” “next,” “next next next next next….argggggh.”

Here’s the low-down:

1. Install Greasemonkey
2. Restart Firefox
3. Install AutoPagerize
4. Look for a little monkey head on the verrry bottom right hand corner of your browser
5. Click on the monkey head to activate it if it’s greyed-out
6. Go do a flickr search or look at your Twitter stream to see the script in action

See? You don’t even need to be a super-geek to figure it out. Productivity for all.

I used to be a huge fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, but it turned me into a machine. I was getting things done, alright. I just wasn’t really living. It’s an EXCELLENT tool, but it really worked a little too well for me.

Now, I use the “Notes” function in my mail program (Mac’s Mail app, if you’re wondering.) I jot down ideas as they occur to me and pretty much go with the flow. For the past week I’ve been keeping myself on track with David Seah’s Printable CEO. I like how concrete it is. I get to score myself based on the importance of the things I’ve been giving my time to.

I also use the “To Do” function in my mail program. I give myself three things that I need to do each day, and that’s it. I make sure that they are each important things that are moving me toward my goals. It allows me to accomplish much while giving myself a lot of freedom and flexibility with my day.

But if I were to come up with a “dream” productivity tool, I guess it would be something that automatically reminded me of things I needed to do. Something that didn’t require constant maintenance. Something that I wouldn’t really need to think about much. Actually, I think a personal assistant would do the trick quite nicely.