Is it Thanksgiving yet? This can’t wait.

Is it Thanksgiving yet? I know it’s May and I know this is perhaps seven months overdue but I have to give some thanks because my business is on the verge of something great thanks to some great people.

In the long, long ago some guy named Albert Churba gave me my first engineering job. My first project was to build a news server, with what were experimental RAID drivers, with hardly supported RAID controllers, with an external hard drive chassis and I learned more than any human needs to know about how news servers work. It was an exciting kind of time for a high school kid, when you could email the engineer at RedHat and ask him for help. I went on to build a lot of servers for Albert over the years but one thing I will never forget is the number of times I made some horrific mistakes and never got thrown out the window. Every time I did something stupid Albert would help me fix it. I would go over to my buddy Pablo’s house after work and we’d hack and play with experimental code until I was too tired to even drive empty I-595 road home. Whenever I hit the wall Pablo was there to help figure it out, something that remains true to this very day. Whenever there was something new going on, Albert would hand it over to me and show me how things really worked. Pablo and Albert really taught me the value that comes from passing knowledge, how doing things right in the long term benefits everyone.

Long story short, I went to college, I started a business, I fell in love with a beautiful girl that didn’t think I was completely insane, I didn’t sleep much for about six years. Then I started to work really hard. This guy named Greg Boyd hooked me up with Microsoft. I traveled up and down and across Florida, supposedly promoting my business, but really being Greg’s sidekick and learning how the software business actually worked. Greg was, and probably still is, the best presenter I have ever seen. Ever. I remember going in for a really big meeting in Miami and stopping by Vero Beach (“Where 102 is young!”) and seeing Greg sell $400 mapping software to an elderly couple and they absolutely loved it! How in the world did he do that? The explanation literally changed my business, changed how I deal with people, changed my outlook on partnerships and changed my overall value proposition.

Then things started to pick up, really, really fast. In 2004 and 2005 I really took to the road and really started to take care of my own back yard. We grew some phenomenal SBS groups in Orlando, worked with nearly every major company around and got to meet Harry Brelsford who made me come out to his big SMB Nation conference. I remember it like it was yesterday, sitting in Celebration talking to my wife (then girlfriend) about all the money we were spending on growing the business, about how afraid I was about how big things are getting, about how I didn’t think I could manage where it was all heading. Katie said something to me that eventually earned her the rock, because she figured me out before I figured out myself: “Don’t worry about the money, just do what you need to and things will fall in their place”

So I let go of my fear, I went to SMB Nation where I filled my notebook cover to cover with ideas that we are still implementing today. Looking back, perhaps the most significant one came from Anne Stanton saying: “You can do a lot more business working with your partners than working against your competitors.” It is something I have been trying to say and do for years, but something I never could put quite so directly. I also got to meet two women that have influenced my day to day life moreso than anyone I’ve met in close to ten years. Susan Bradley, who I really looked up to has opened so many doors for me there is really no way to say thanks. As much as we fight and disagree, she is like a sister I never had. I got to meet Susanne there, who has since become my best friend. Susanne, through whatever magic she does, has always been able to open my eyes to the world at large that I so arrogantly think I know so well. She, like my wife, is perhaps the only other woman on the planet next to my mom and my wife that can bitchslap me into being reasonable. (though I’m sure they will all say it’s impossible)

Susan introduced me to… everyone. She introduced me to Dave Sobel who effectively influenced the process revisions at OWN. She introduced me to Karl Palachuk who has been my personal psychiatrist and corporate counsel at the same time. Karl introduced me to Erick Simpson, who is the perhaps the biggest invisible VP OWN has ever had. Susan saw what I was doing in Florida and dragged me into the SBS community where I met Chris Rue over Windows Media Edition Keyboard. Chris, through probably well over hundred hours, put almost all the SBS Show’s many of you have enjoyed. Who was the driving force to getting me back to giving WWPC another chance, something that’s repaid a million times. The SBS Show and Vladville that had established friendships with some of the most talented and most influential people in the IT business, at levels I had never even imagined I would ever be at. To the SBS-BBC competitions with Tim Barrett who, like Chris, helped me stay focused on providing video content to the people that were starting or growing their businesses.

Just like Albert saw potential in me over ten years ago and went way and beyond to help me learn, just like Pablo is constantly in my corner; Susan, Susanne, Chris and Tim have helped me pay it back and give back without asking what’s in it for me. The payback… has been enormous. And the next month and the next year will be the hardest ones in my company’s history. Hardest because the vision I had ten years ago, the vision I put in serious play over five years ago, the years of lack of sleep and hair-pulling nights of troubleshooting, studying and managing are finally going to make something great. All the things that I’ve been working on, doodling on airplanes and in airports, arranging, rearranging and explaining over and over again are coming together in perhaps the most beautiful, most clear way possible.

And we did it without screwing people over, without stealing, without compromising what I had envisioned years ago. And now, in 2007, it all comes together, built on the success, experience and doing the right thing. I worked very hard for a long time without asking what’s in it for me – and today the payback is bigger than I ever thought possible. I had to walk through a lot of shit, work harder than I ever thought I could, sacrifice… a lot. A year ago, after WWPC, I finally found that missing piece to it all. And oh how it worked out!

Thank you. NOW the hard work really begins but it never would be here had it not been for all the wonderful people in this post. What I’m up to is really not important, what is important is that when you surround yourself with remarkable people and strive to climb up to their level you never have to look down. I just wish you had the kind of friends I have.