So in this episode I talk about how companies / brands need to listen to opinions (as they need to interact with customers / stakeholders), but that there’s a fine balance between listening and allowing useless opinion to influence the way we run our businesses / brands.

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But ego stroking aside, I started pondering why people were really following me and why there are some other online personas with massive, massive amounts of people following them.

My conclusion? People follow successful and inspirational people. That’s it. If you don’t provide value on either of those two fronts, I doubt that you’re gonna get a large enough following of people to even consider yourself an online celebrity (so that’s a bit of a #egoboostfail).

And then back to me… I guess that WooThemes’ popularity has been absolutely immense in establishing my reputation as a credible entrepreneur. Irrespective of the fact that I’m accessible (in terms of interaction) and probably “fun” to follow – or even irrespective of WooThemes’ perceived success – I think the fact that WooThemes is regarded as a successful company, is just about enough to give my own reputation enough credibility.

So I’d take the gamble and say that WooThemes has added substance to the way I market myself as “Adii Rockstar” and without that substance the marketing efforts just would not have been as successful. What do you think?

Post from: Adii Rockstar

So EP12 is my take on why businesses need leaders and what kind of characteristics those leaders should have.

OH: And I ask you question at the end of the episode, with the first right answer getting a free WooTheme…

BTW… If you’re not digging the 140 character limit imposed on comments, then bare with me here… I’m trying something and we’ll see how the experiment works out.

Post from: Adii Rockstar

In this episode I talk about why I think we’re still using social networks, whilst the way we’re using our personal blogs will probably change significantly over the course of the next year or two (in favour of a more personal, aggregation space).

Post from: Adii Rockstar

In the episode, I use our experiences with the WOO2 marketing campaign to derive some more generic tips, which you can also use in your future campaigns.

I really think that building hype before a product / project launch is a great way of marketing the pending launch, as well as interacting with your targeted users. The WOO2 campaign was really successful and a week after launch, I can honestly say that the reaction has far exceeded our initial expectations.

Post from: Adii Rockstar

First up, let’s look at the reasons we decided to move over to the GPL:

1. It was always something we wanted to do, but wanted to do it at the right time (i.e. when we felt comfortable to do so);
2. We’ve always been passionate about WordPress and have always believed that as a company we were contributing to the greater WP community and influencing a drive to further innovation (when it comes to WP themes); and
3. Finally we wanted to align with the wishes of the WP founders, as we have truckloads of respect for Matt (and his team) and without their initial, GPL work, we wouldn’t have WordPress.

So what does this change?

1. Freedom. So with the GPL, everyone now inherits the same freedoms associated with WordPress. Once someone has thus bought our themes, they are free to do with those themes as they wish.
2. It’s not free. Contrary to popular believe, GPL doesn’t equal free and there’s no free way for anyone to get access to the themes & the associated support resources. You still need to pay for them.
3. Modifications. Being able to modify our themes and then re-distribute (or even re-sell them) may be an enticing option to some. I hope though that people who attempt this, will remember to contribute their code improvements back to the core WooThemes project, as that is demanded by the GPL (as far as I can understand it).
4. Sensibility. A lot has been said about the spirit & ethics associated with the GPL. To an extent I want to say “fuck it!”, because neither your or my subjective interpretation thereof really matters. I do however hope that sensibility will prevail with regards to people redistributing GPL’ed commercial themes (not only WooThemes). Realize that the only way businesses like WooThemes, Press75, StudioPress etc can survive (and continue to release top-notch themes) is if people spend money buying them. So diluting the web with unmodified, out-of-date copies of these themes is not helping anyone (irrespective of whether you believe in the spirit or ethics here).
5. The community doesn’t need a Robin Hood. Continuing from the previous point… I really think that the GPL is a two-ended agreement and that anyone that wants to exercise the freedoms to modify & distribute these themes, need to make sure that they’re adding value. If you’re not adding value, then rather leave it to the pro’s. Simply re-distributing unmodified themes and pretending to be a Robin Hood for the WP community is useless and unwanted.
6. Education is still key. Take the example of businesses who have flocked to WordPress (and in particular the use of a premium theme). These businesses have done so, because they believed that they were buying a product from a credible company. Diluting the pool with a bunch of below-par, cost-cutting clones will only make the decision of the user higher and will ultimately mean that the same user will opt for another CMS all together. It is still our collective responsibility to enable more users to move to WordPress.

I think it should be clear to all, that we really put a lot of thought into our GPL decision; so I’m pretty serious about everything I’ve said above. As an individual and as a company we are extremely excited about the next part of our journey, which now includes the GPL. But somewhere there’s still a mutual responsibility on everyone’s shoulders not to abuse the freedoms that GPL themes present to others, because by abusing this, the community will be the only losers (in the long run).

Just because you’re allowed to own a gun, doesn’t mean you can kill someone with it.

Post from: Adii Rockstar

In this episode, I suggest a few ways how you can minimize the risks involved with launching something online. These are obviously based on the things that we did with WooThemes, but you should find it valuable and interesting nonetheless.

Post from: Adii Rockstar

The conclusion? Well, I’m pretty much torn down the middle of being very excited for WP and being even more scared when faced with the reality of this willy-nilly trusting.

Post from: Adii Rockstar

In this episode I talk about patient development, which in principle is at the exact opposite end of agile development, which is so popular these days. To substantiate my feelings in this regard, I talk about the processes we’ve been through at WooThemes in building WOO2.

Post from: Adii Rockstar

When I quit my corporate job last year, the main reason was because I wanted to pursue my own ventures (the main one being WooThemes as we know it today). But in addition, I quit because I had an open brief (i.e. this was my job description) to develop my own business model and when I pitched the idea of WooThemes to the company, they baulked at it. Irony is that when I set up the projected budgets for the business plan, I estimated an annual turnover which is now less than our actual monthly turnover (my CEO questioned the credibility of my budgets and said “anyone can put figures down on paper”).

So to say that they missed out on a golden investment opportunity, must be a huge understatement…

I’ve said it countless times before, but “hindsight is an exact science” and obviously this investment opportunity has been lost to the company due to a mixture of shortsightedness and doubt (I say this in the most respectful way I can, as I would probably not have invested in Woo as an outsider). And similar to this, you hear so many “what if I had invested in A way back then” stories; all of them filled with regret of course.

So the question probably is “Why do we get ourselves in those situations, where hindsight can kick us when we’re down?”. I certainly don’t have the answer, but I believe it’s here where some balls and backing your gut feel can play a positive role in selecting the right investment opportunities. Then again, maybe I can easily say that, because I haven’t been burned by that approach (yet) before…

What do you think? Ever regretted not pulling the trigger and making that investment? Ever been burned trusting your gut?

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