It’s the little things that make me thankful for my team

Diet mountain dew and obsessive attention to detail can be a blessing and a wonderful combination. I recall chatting with someone a few years ago about plans and goals on MSN Messenger a few years ago and talking about how I wanted to get married and start a family and a whole bunch of other stuff. Some came true, some not so much, other stuff way above what I could have expected.

Which brings me to todays topic: You gotta have a plan.

Not too long ago this was one of the most hectic weeks in my life. I had to coordinate and micromanage every little minute of it and often ended up with 20+ hour days. No, I didn’t have to – someone else designed and produced the collateral, managed the schedule, lined things up – but I was involved in every little tiny detail of it all. Not because I didn’t trust my staff, but because I had a plan and I wanted to make sure we did exactly what I wanted to. I rewrote the marketing copy (a few times), I tried to track people down for meetings to get feedback on what we were doing, I for some dumb reason even worried about the booth..

In 2013, this week is just another week. I’ll be doing my actual job as a CEO with an hour or two of showing my face during the ConnectWise reception and the party on the last day. The rest of it will be handled by my team, much like it is done every other day of the year.

I’m not gloating here, nor will I be sitting on a beach sipping a mojito out of a watermellon, all I’m trying to say is that all this didn’t happen by accident. This was planned, took tons of excruciatingly long workdays and unwillingness to give up through a lot of failure. I didn’t find any magic products, I had no amazing epiphanies along the way, I didn’t invent anything. It was just hard work and not drifting too far away from the plan.

And I’ll highlight this because I think it’s important:

One of the most disappointing things about this industry is the lack of respect for hard work.

I love this industry. I think we’re among the smartest folks out there. My criticism towards it’s less than reputable (or outright criminal members) makes some people think I’m a dick – and fuck them, they are entitled to their opinion. But I have not and never will have any respect for people expecting a shortcut or a handout.

If you’re stupid enough to think peering up, copying bad ideas from people who are no longer in business, attending events that are only designed to sell you junk you don’t need, are always on the lookout for the next big thing while refusing to grind it out for the opportunity that is right in front of you… then you deserve nothing but to be robbed by the people telling you that you don’t need to work.

Everyone in the IT chain knows what needs to be done, they know what the clients ask for and are both smart and creative enough to make it happen. Few of them make millions of dollars while the remainder of the crowd makes millions of excuses for why certain things don’t fit their model, don’t have enough margins, don’t have enough time and make no sense. So they troll through life, barely making a single digit percent worth of success year over year, still “working on it” while fawning over the bullshit mill and the few successful people that say the same thing – it’s all about effort.

To those of you that are in Orlando this week – welcome. I hope I bump into you. Carpe Diem – you won’t find anything new today that will drastically change your fortunes, the good thing is you already have everything you need all you need to do is stick with the plan. Good things happen.