Today, Redskins’ great Art Monk is being inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  He played for the ‘Skins from 1980-1993, the “glory years” that created so many great memories of watching football with by dad and brother, including 3 Super Bowl wins. 

He’s been eligible for the past seven years, but was passed over each time.    I’ll resist reciting a bunch of relevant stats, but suffice it to say he belongs in the Hall.  It’s no secret that part of why he took so long to be inducted is that he didn’t lobby for his induction, nor did he ask anyone else to.  He played his retirement the same way he played the game: quietly.

When I was a kid, I learned a lot of lessons from Art Monk.  Work hard.  Never quit.  Stay humble.  Let your play do the talking.  If others want to compliment your accomplishments, accept their praise gracefully, but don’t seek it out.  If people want to talk badly about you, take the high road and ignore them.  It’s always about the team, never the individual. 

These lessons were reinforced by my dad, when he coached me in high school (lacrosse, not football — alas, I’m just a li’l guy).  I carried them on when I coached my lacrosse team in college, a responsibility I’ve often credited with helping prepare me for my job at Viget.

A couple years ago I had a chance to meet Art at a local charity event.  I told him that he was an inspiration to me in sports but more significantly in business.  I told him I try to approach my career the way he seemed to approach his, and that I always appreciated his influence.  I also told him that I looked forward to the day that the Hall of Fame voters would wake up and vote him in.  He reacted as I would have expected him to — he just smiled, thanked me graciously, and shook my hand.

So today, congrats to Art Monk, and kudos to the voters for finally seeing the light.

Historically I’ve posted here after Viget’s quarterly events, and since it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything at all, I thought this might inspire me to get back into the blogging flow (it’s been a busy summer). 

Emily just posted on Viget’s blog some thoughts about what she learned from last week’s Third Third Thursday event.  I admit that I was hesitant at first about the ropes course idea — it just seemed a bit too contrived for me as a team building exercise.  In hindsight, though, I must say … good stuff.  It was fun and exciting (and a lot of hard work) and I felt a real sense of accomplishment finishing what at first seemed downright impossible.  More than just me, the fact that everyone finished — even some folks that had to overcome real fears around heights and giant semi-stable wooden structures — was great to see.

Of course, the highlight of the day was backing up my long-standing claim that I’m still Viget’s Fastest Human.  And since I’m only getting slower these days, even though we’re hiring, fast people need not apply.

I had a blast at TechStars last year, and I’m thrilled that they’re having me back again this summer.  This coming Thursday I’ll be immersed in start-ups in Boulder, teaming up with the guys from Slice of Lime to do a talk on user experience.  From what I can tell they have put together another solid group, and I’m looking forward seeing them.

Because any time in Colorado is never enough, I’m heading out today so I can spend the first half of the week catching up with old friends and hopefully making a few new ones.  It’s no secret that we (Viget) want to reach out west more as the business grows, and I hope this trip sparks a few more.

The week wraps up with my family joining me for some R&R up in the mountains.  I can already tell that it’ll be hard to come back.

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Watching the NBA finals on Father’s Day reminded me of a childhood memory that has stuck with me. My dad was more into football than basketball, but he was a sports fan and would generally watch the big games. When I was 11, we watched some of the ‘87 Lakers-Celtics finals together. My only memory of the whole series was the most boring play in all of basketball: an early-game foul shot.

Magic Johnson was at the line. His free throw bounced on both ends of the rim, and went in. It went in. Count it. Score. But when Magic took the ball, he was clearly disgusted with himself. He was acting like he’d missed.

I remember thinking “what’s he so mad about? It went in.” It had gone in, but it hadn’t gone in the way he wanted it to.

I realized quickly what separates great players in the NBA from all-time great players like Magic: personal standards. The lesson I took away was that your personal standards matter more than everyone else’s expectations of you and even more than the rules that you play by.

At Viget, we talk about having higher standards than our clients, to push ourselves to do great work. I love working with people that are motivated by, above all else, their own personal standards for what they’ll be proud of.

It’s not always about working longer hours or making more money or generally “exceeding expectations.” To continue with the sports analogy, I remember missing lots of shots in lacrosse that I was pleased with, because the mechanics of my shot felt right and I knew it was making me a better player.

The rules of business are even less clear. If you spend your career focused on keeping score the way everyone else does rather than deciding for yourself what qualifies as success (both in daily challenges and as a whole) I predict you’ll ultimately be disappointed. Set your own standards — then always try to exceed them. You’ll be happier and most likely more successful by any standards anyway.

It’s possible that Magic missed the next free throw and smiled because his shot felt right. But I doubt it.

As I mentioned on the Viget blog, I’ll be speaking at the Tech Cocktail Conference in Chicago on May 29th.  Corey, COO at Squidoo, and I will be telling the story of how Squidoo (a Viget client) went from concept to profitability.  There are a couple things about the way they did it that make them a bit unusual compared to a lot of the start-ups you read about:

1. They didn’t take VC.  Granted, it’s easier to self-fund when you‘re already pretty darn successful, but as a philosophy (don’t raise money unless you have to) it’s still important.
2. They don’t charge for anything.  Chicago is home to our friends at 37signals, makers of Basecamp, and advocates of the revolutionary (and for some odd reason controversial) idea of making good software and then charging for it — couldn’t agree more.  Squidoo’s model is different, though, and they’ve made it work to a similar end without needing to charge users a fee.  In fact, you get paid to use Squidoo.  We’ll talk about how & when we think that model can work.

Frank & Eric have put together a great line-up.  If you’ll be in Chicago at the end of the month, come on by …

Today’s the five year anniversary of my dad’s death, which always gets me thinking a bit too much.  It also gets me digging around what I have that was his, trying to learn some things about him or from him.  This time I dug up his old 1972 cruise book from his Navy days when he was stationed off Sicily.

It’s basically — almost exactly, actually – like a high school year book.

It chronicles the life and times of this group of guys as they spent their days going through the ups and downs of Navy life. 

I’ve looked at it before and always suffer the same disappointment: in a book full of photos, there are almost none of my dad.  That’s because he was part of the cruise book staff, so he took most of the photos (he’s the one on the left).

Today, though, I had another thought.  The book itself was something I could cherish and learn from, because it wasn’t a few photos of Pop, it was his work.  He put his time, creativity, skill, and determination into creating this book and making it engaging, funny, and rewarding.  He was motivated to make sure it turned out well because his name was going to be on it, his peers would be experiencing it, and it would be — in some small way — part of his legacy. 

Pop worked on this book before I was born, at about the same age I was when I helped start Viget.  It’s funny to think of us at the same age, working hard on something to make sure we could be proud of the result.   His project at that time in his life happened to be a cruise book as part of his military service, my project happened to be a company (and the many businesses we’ve worked with).

Pop used to say something like “if you’re going to take the time to do something, you might as well make sure you do it right.”

I don’t know that Pop enjoyed being on that cruise, so far from his young family, but the task at hand was to make a good cruise book, so that’s what he helped do.  Had Pop had the opportunity to start his own company then, I would think that mindset — and his creative approach — would have led him to success.

The lesson I’m taking from my dad this year is to do what you do, and do it well.  No matter what you’re doing — whether it’s decorating a cake, playing with your kids, or starting a business– do it your way, the best way you know how.  It might not lead to anything more than a little dusty book full of memories, but at least it will be a book you can be proud of.

We used to get a cake during Free Lunch Friday every time it was someone’s birthday.  Pretty soon, that became every week, and that was just too much cake.  Now, we just get a cake on the first Friday of each month for everyone in that month. 

Laura has a bit of a cake decorating hobby, and she made one for us today.

I, too, like to decorate cakes, so I plan to top her on this effort — but it will be very tough.  That could be one of my favorite cakes of all time!

It’s wild to think that it was almost exactly eight years ago that we got together in Boulder, Colorado and planned out what kind of company we wanted Viget to be.  Last Friday, everyone from both offices got together for an incredible afternoon out of the Lab at the Marriott Ranch.  We broke from tradition a bit and combined our Third Third Thursday event with our annual “Viget’s birthday” dinner.

The afternoon was spent horseback riding, skeet shooting, jeep driving, and generally having fun together outside of work.  We played our annual game of Vigetry (sorry, you’ll have to join us to learn more) and enjoyed a round of toasts that varied from hilarious to sentimental — all great.

As we reflected, I was reminded of all the hard work we’ve put in over the years to get to where we are today.  As I mentioned during the Refresh panel discussion last week, I’ll never be completely satisfied with what we accomplish at Viget — I’ll never say “we’ve made it” – but I will celebrate along the way. 

There were times years ago where you could have easily made the argument that we should have quit.  In fact, looking back, if I were advising me 5 five years ago, I’d probably tell myself to pack it in.  But we just kept working hard then like we still do now, and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish as a team.  We still have a lot of great work to do ahead of us, but I’m glad we have traditions like last Friday to remind us that hard work pays off and sticking is a good thing.

It’s an especially social week for me (having 3 small kids tends to limit your evenings out, assuming you like your kids). 

Tonight, I’ll be joining the panel discussion at Refresh DC’s April event along with Andrew Lee of Publi.us, Sean Greene of LaunchBox Digital, Eddie Frederick of Hungry Machine, and Eric Rupert of Odeo. 

Refresh DC April Meetup: Startups 101
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
3601 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 600
Arlington, Virginia

Jackson’s moderating, and judging by the growing list of attendees, I’m looking forward to a lively discussion.

Tomorrow night is TECH Cocktail. 

Thursday, April 24, 2008
6:30pm - 9pm
MCCXXIII: 1223 Connecticut Avenue, NW - Washington, DC
techcocktaildc2.eventbrite.com

Viget’s one of the sponsors and a bunch of us will be down there.  Hope to see you out at both of these events!

When Mike wrote about James Karl Buck’s use of Twitter this week to alert his friends when he was arrested in Egypt for photographing a demonstration, I wondered if my little hometown paper would pick up the story.  Today, they did, with a good article by Mike Musgrove.  It’s another example of the benefit of being able to make your friends aware of what’s going on in your life right now whenever you want or need to. 

Then again, it also hints to some concerns about documenting your day to day life.  Does your company have a list of keywords it searches for in a Twitter feed before it makes a hiring decision?  If so, do they take things out of context or really try to understand the situation?

One of the things I love about Viget is working with clients who are really making a positive impact on the world, especially when it comes to kids.  Healthy Child Healthy World is one of them. 

Healthy Child Healthy World is a national non-profit dedicated to protecting the health and well-being of children and families through cleaner, greener, and safer lifestyle changes.

Today, CEO Christopher Gavigan released his book Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home on Amazon.  I’m just helping to spread the word.

While I’m in a book promotion kind of mood, I can’t help but join the rest of the universe and plug Gary V’s new book Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines: Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World.  Gary’s not a client.  He’s also not yet our VP of Strategy, despite my best efforts to recruit him.

Nick at Web Designer Wall worked with our designers at Viget to tell the story of how our new blogs came to be.  Great post!

I find two things get me into a rut when it comes to writing blog posts:

1. Under-Consuming - if I’m not reading sites & other blogs, keeping up with twitter, and talking with co-workers about what’s going on, I don’t feel qualified / justified to produce my own posts.
2. Over-Consuming - if, on the other hand, I find myself consuming massive amounts of ideas and input from others, I tend to feel overwhelmed with thoughts and unable to keep up with consumption, much less able to process the ideas and provide appropriate added insights.

Recently, I’ve been doing both.  First, my new baby boy threw me off my normal consumption habits.  Then, at SXSW, I was pummeled with inspiring ideas and communication.  Throughout it all, of course, I’ve been busy as ever at work.  So now I’m inching my way back into a routine as best I can …

Late last year, we had the idea to launch a blog for each of the “Labs” at Viget – strategy, design, development, and marketing.  Early this year, as we sat down to do it, we decided we should relaunch viget.com as well, and put it all on ExpressionEngine.  Last week, we launched it all, just in time for SXSWi (I am writing this from Austin, in fact), and the response so far has been great (thanks, everyone!). 

I wrote a longer post about our blog plan on the redesign FourLabs (i.e., “all about Viget”) blog — I welcome any thoughts or feedback you have on the concept …

Last week, Brad wrote a post about why and how he passes on certain investment opportunities.  I’ve gotten to know Brad a bit over the past couple of years, and occasionally introduce start-ups to him that I think might be of interest.  I can confirm that in every case he’s quick to respond, very professional, and very frank.  He doesn’t just say “no” but also doesn’t pull punches or waste people’s time.

For him to take the time to write a post outlining his evaluation process shows how much he cares about the people he’s connecting with.  It’s invaluable — if not a bit intimidating (appropriately) — to any funds-seekers to understand how he looks at deals, especially because I would expect that it’s not all that unique among the top-tier investors in this space.

A dual post today on two great programs that all early-stage web start-up teams should know about: TechStars and LaunchBox. 

Read the rest of this entry »

My drive-the-other-kids-to-school duties had me out and about this morning, so I was able to swing by Viget to check out the beginning of DC Design Talks and welcome all of our guests to the Lab.  Turnout was great, and what I caught of the early talks by Samantha and Nathan was great too.  Some early photos:

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We all spend a lot of time working to be the best at whatever it is we do, as we well should, but days like yesterday remind me what I never forget when I think about it.  Everything else is small-time compared to being as good of a husband and dad as I can be.

Colin Deane Williams was born yesterday (which you know if you follow me on twitter).  He’s my second son and my third kid.  Most likely, my family is now complete, which is an odd feeling — it’s just making me try to soak up and enjoy every minute that much more.  I’m as proud of my family as a dad can be.

When Andrew and Micah were making fun of each other in Trident last weekend over Twitter, I felt like I was there with my old Startup Weekend pals.  Then, when Andrew revealed that they were talking about VC Wear, a new t-shirt site that sells $100 shirts — to “accredited investors only” — and is already for sale itself for $100k, I threw up in my mouth a bit.  Especially after reading their pitch deck (PDF).

There are some funny ideas, and even though it started as a joke cooked up over a plane ride, the story got press and blog coverage, but didn’t quite make TechCrunch (yet).  My favorite shirt so far:

So are they making money?  At $100 per shirt and enough buzz get it in front of a lot of people, I dare say they’ve covered whatever costs they had (if any?).  I like it because Andrew and Matt had an idea, put it together quickly, and didn’t waste any time getting it out there.  I’m sure they’d love to sell thousands of shirts, but it doesn’t matter — they’re having fun with it.

Speaking of Micah, he wants to be #1 in Google, but not for his name (he already has that … it’s a bit easier than Brian Williams).  For some reason Micah wants to be #1 for the search “douche bag.”  With that little link I’ve now done my part in making his dreams come true.  Good luck!

Aaron spoke last night at a Viget-hosted meeting of DC’s Social Media Club.  He covered a lot of blogging topics, with a focus on how engaging in social media effectively can impact a brand (for a company or an individual).  My favorite line was:

“Authenticity will always garner trust, even if you’re an ogre.”

Brand is “less about perception and more about trust.”  Building trust is what’s important, and that has nothing to do with who you are or what your message actually is — it just matters that you’re direct and transparent about it.  I find that a common concern among companies and individuals is that too much transparency will reveal the “warts” and be a detriment to establishing credibility. 

When the goal is not a perception of perfection, but in fact a real relationship rooted in trust, it changes the game.  The warts become a good thing (because they show it’s real) and a positive pressure is created to not just seem worthy of trust and respect, but to actually be worthy.  Everyone wins.

You can watch Aaron’s entire presentation here.  Thank you again to Aaron for speaking, attendees for attending, and Larissa / Livingston Communications for organizing.