Plans, Plans, Plans

The past week and really the bulk of my inbound mail activity since the first V… newsletter has concerned one topic: planning for the new year.

I have tried my best to respond to all of those messages (by the way, if you want to email me I’m at vlad@vladville.com and actually do enjoy the feedback) because most of them seemed both cautious about the economy and curious as to where I’m thinking.

Let me start off by saying that at OWN we operate on business plans. And when it comes to business plans, we look at the very least a commitment of 24 months. This takes into account the time to plan, build, deliver, support and think of the next stage of the product. Some stuff makes it, some doesn’t. But each has a clear agenda: 1) Make money 2) Build audience for future projects and business plans. One feeds the other.

Now business plans are what you make of them. And you can execute multiple business plans at the same time. As a matter of fact, you better have more than one. In the IT space, where careers disappear on a dime, being a one trick pony is a recipe for disaster. It also makes failure easier to deal with and ultimately survivable.

So what is going to work in 2009? 😉 Yeah, sure….

For us, the entire Q1 of 2009 is all about firming up what we are doing. Just about everything we’re currently involved in is firing on all cylinders and I’m really not looking forward to doing anything “new” at all. Not everyone has received their marching orders but we’re basically revisiting all our ducks and making sure all the bugs and kinks are worked out. Most of the Q1 is going to be about the doom and gloom of 2008, then about the new administration and finally towards some clarity about what the markets are thinking about the financial stimulus. I think the next quarter really clears up a lot of the holding pattern games we’ve seen.

Once that’s done, I want to be ready to fire on all cylinders.