Elevator Up Blog a web hosting & development company

The difference between cockiness and arrogance can be sliver thin, but it does exist. Cockiness is the star basketball player assured in his responsibility for the buzzer-beater shot. Arrogance is the prancing show pony demanding the shot because he thinks none of his teammates are capable. Keen confidence in oneself underlines cockiness. Acute comparisons and denigrations of others moves the line into arrogant asshole territory.

In our own playing field as a development and hosting company we foster a confident cockiness. We think such an attitude shows we know our stuff, and that people can trust us to get shit done. Monday, we failed to keep the cockiness in check and landed squarely in arrogance territory. We noticed a fellow hosting company experiencing some hiccups and instinctively puffed the feathers out. Several of you called us out and rightly labeled it a dick move.

We’re sorry.

Our website emphasizes that we’re building a kick-ass hosting company. One with rock solid uptime, state of the art fail-over strategies, and just all-around awesomeness. This isn’t to say that some of our competitors aren’t also kick-ass - Engine Yard being a perfect example. They’re a fellow hosting company we look to for inspiration and with respect - even if that wasn’t shown Monday.

One of our internal mottos is to fail fast forward. In hindsight, we certainly failed fast in our promotion attempts. We tried capitalizing on someone else’s hiccups instead of looking after ourselves. Moving forward, we’ll make sure to sell ourselves based on our own ability, not the downfall of others. We want to be a cocky, kick-ass hosting company - not a bunch of arrogant jerks.

In all fairness, this month got away from me and I forgot to touch base with a designer to give him/her enough time to create something. Besides, I was itching to create one anyway. You’ll be glad to know we’re already on track for next month though.

After a long-overdue move back to the West Coast (apparently bringing the snow with me), I found myself working more often than not from home. Such is the contemporary life of knowledge workers, all we need is a steady stream of caffeine and an internet connection. So I was set: a home office provided the base, with regular sojourns to local coffee shops for a change of pace. But I wasn’t completely happy with the arrangement; I wasn’t as productive as I know I can be. And as time went on, cabin fever began to creep in beneath the doorstop.

Thus, I’ve been spending more time than not over the past few weeks at a coworking location in Capitol Hill. Working from an actual office environment once again, I’ve noted a few things - finding several pros/cons that will effect everyone differently.

The first, and perhaps most important fact, is that the term is “coworking”, not “co-working”. Certainly the copy editors and house-style perfectionists will groan in revolt, but there it is. I’m a coworker, not a co-worker (and certainly not a cow-orker). There is no hyphen.

Secondly, while having warm bodies to talk to certainly staves off the cabin fever, one can’t be so… carefree… in most office environments. Obnoxious music, PJs, and crass conversation tend to be frowned upon in public - especially in a public where your office mates are trying to work. That’s not to say we don’t have fun. I can’t speak for every coworking location, but ours is pretty casual. Casual just doesn’t mean “mine own home”.

A large plus to working in a collaborative space is that everyone comes from different backgrounds and is involved with different projects and companies. There’s always room for interesting water cooler chatter and discussion fodder at after work happy hour.

With the office about a mile away from my home, I’m finding that the walk to and from is wonderfully cathartic. The morning walk is a good mental prep for the day, and I often take advantage of the time to check in with the team over the phone. Evenings, the walk is just long enough of a cool down to release some work-day stress and relax before the evening’s activities.

One straightforward con is that people bring germs. During the winter months, quite a number of nasty bugs accompany us all to the office, ready to hop onto new hosts. I’ve been laid low once already this season by such creatures.

But the largest gain for me is an increase in productivity. Better people than I can concentrate for hours on end all by their lonesome - with little distraction. But while in the home office, it’s so easy to take long breaks and wash dishes, vacuum the floors, and correct all the wrong people on the internets. Coffee shops aren’t much better as even fellow laptop toters are more often than not stalking Facebook rather than anything resembling work. But in a coworking situation, there is a strong sense of peer solidarity to get things done. Everyone is there for a variety of businesses and pursuits - but every one is working.

I certainly take full advantage of a home office for those days I’m not feeling so social. And coffee shops provide a wonderful source of get-’em-up during off-hours. But my preference has become the quiet and diverse fraternity that is an office nomad.

(I’ve enjoyed my time at Office Nomads so much, Elevator Up started our very own coworking location. Stop by and stay awhile!)

As a preface, you should know…I’m completely for Outsourcing and I think you should be as well. But keep reading before you begin forming your (possible) rebuttal.

NOTE: For the sake of sanity, I’m going to use the word “outsourcing” to mean in country work (Outsourcing) and out of country work (Offshoring). There’s a lot of discussion around the value of these differences but I’ll leave my thoughts on “Outsourcing vs. Offshoring” for another time.

Here are my thoughts why Outsourcing is valuable, if not crucial, and why a lot of us keep getting it wrong.

What Do You Do?

What is it that you do and why are you doing that? If that question is easy for you to answer, you’re much smarter than I am. For myself and many folks I’ve talked with - it’s a very difficult question to answer.

One reason this is difficult is because many of us, especially small business owners, not only offer our services but are also responsible for all things surrounding/supporting them. Everything from taking care of the finances to taking out the trash. Of course, there’s something to be said about being smart with your money or not letting certain tasks be beneath you but again, it does beg the question - “What exactly do you do?”.

As a small business owner, I find myself doing everything from sales, account management, billings, managing past due accounts, taking out the trash (and sorting out what can be recycled), talking to lawyers, information architecture, front-end coding, some back-end coding, project management, speaking, employee growth plans, interviews, developing marketing plans, company growth strategies, and the list just keeps going on and on.

The constant struggle is balancing the amount of time I spend doing what I do best, my core strengths (what makes us money), against the operation of my company.

Passionate People ask for Help

The past few months I’ve been working on tipping the scales back on the side of my strengths and my passions. The awakening moment for me was after I listened to a short podcast from A.J. Jacobs entitled, “My Outsourced Life”. The summary is: Why should Fortune 500 companies have all the fun? I hired a team in Bangalore, India, to take care of everything in my life-my e-mails, phone calls, shopping, arguments with my wife, to reading bedtime stories to my son..

What impacted me wasn’t the fact that I could get cheap labor to take care of my mundane tasks (well, it did a bit) but the ability to simply ask for help. I’m going to say that again because I think it’s key to everything here - You HAVE to know when to ask for help.

Asking for help isn’t a natural human activity - which is exactly why I think many of us struggle so hard to make forward progress. If you subscribe to the idea that you SHOULDN’T do everything, then start asking yourself “What should I be doing?”. As you begin to answer that question - you can begin to hire the right people. You may even consider outsourcing or offshoring work in order to allow you and/or your company to stay focused. It’s all to easy for some companies to get these lines blurred, and it results in growing too large or broadening services too far.

Getting Started

I have another article coming where I’ll be discussing each of these points in detail, but these have been some of my first steps.

First, keep a notepad next to you and begin writing down all the things that you do. Try to be as detailed as possible but make quick notes. You’re not trying to write an autobiography. Next, start asking others what they think you actually do, and what they think you’re best at. This can be somewhat of an eye-opening experience so brace yourself.

The next thing is to be aware of what other people and companies are offering. Companies like AskSunday.com and GetFriday.com can help with various administrative tasks, Amazon is offering fulfillment services and a scalable workforce. You’d even be surprised to know there are many local companies and individuals talented in helping companies with a variety of tasks.

At Elevator Up, we make a point of capturing various outsourcing possibilities within an internal wiki. This has been a great way for us to keep track of what is out there and remind us down the road when we may need these services.

Just Embrace it

So instead of avoiding the issue of Outsourcing, embrace it. Constantly evaluate what you and your company may have to offer your customers. Don’t try to do everything yourself but do what you do best and work with others that can allow you to continue that.

Innovation is a powerful thing online. I’m finding this out more and more while writing for my own website. When a concept is born, all I can think or talk about is getting the idea off the ground. Everything from defining it further and putting all the pieces together to generating buzz, down to maintaining and growing the idea. Problem is - for every 10 ideas I have only 1/2 of one of them get anywhere.

It’s not that the ideas are bad either, we hear other people talking about or creating buzz about the same things we never finished and then we kick ourselves. So what is it? Is it the idea that we love to have or is it the product? This has to be one of the biggest caveats of owning your own business. You generally have to HAVE the product to sell or create to make money but my passion, and certainly Aaron’s passion is planting the seeds and watching other people grow within our ideas.

There’s a business model out there for this kind of passion but 2009 is going to be the year, both personally and professionally, where we start to take more risks and decide that growing our own ideas into something larger, whether they fail or flourish, is worth it.

First one out the door? A Living Book - look for it at jodimichelle.com. Let there be Buzz!