Vlad Mazek

I’m starting to lose count of just how long ago I started this business but one of my biggest pet peeves are the late night infomercials where people pitch their “be your own boss” schemes. More like be your own slave. It’s even more hilarious to hear stories from my developer friends, who don’t put an hour worth of honest work in a single week, talk about how they could make six figures on their own. Riiight, it’s that easy.

One thing that has made me successful and transitively, that has made OWN successful has been my discipline. My mentor called this worth ethic, my mother calls it hardheadedness, I’m sure my competitors and folks that hate going against me have some choice words for it as well. And while it is the one thing thats lead to great success, it’s also one thing that is easy to slack off on when you actually are successful.

I’ve written at length about my planned year of development at OWN and just where the company is heading and what its doing. The details are very much privvy to the partners but I’m sure you can gather the idea of what we’re doing from my public comments. In that light I have cancelled all my speaking engagements, all my conference plans, all my “distractions” in order to take my game to the next step. The final part is DFWV Friday’s.

DFWV Friday’s stands for Don’t Fuck With Vlad Friday’s and as the name implies, will be a complete blackhole in my calendar. No appointments, no phone calls, no conference calls, no meetings, no lunches, no evacuations for hurricanes, etc.

The point is, many things happen over the course of the week. Many distractions, many unwanted events, many time wasters. It is the leading cause of why things slip, why they are forgotten, undocumented or allowed to slip through the cracks. Friday, for me, will be a day to look at that big project board with spunge in one hand and marker in the other, and see what needs to be taken care of. I have a clear and strict weekly agenda – What was scheduled for the week and isn’t done on a Friday afternoon becomes weekend homework. That’s right, we’re throwing it back to the third grade!  

I might be alone at this but I am really looking forward to the next year of business. I think it will completely transform how and what we do. Very exciting.