While the general consensus is now very conciliatory toward Jobs’ privacy, the knee-jerk reaction from many was, “What about my stocks/next-gen toys/updated version of Mac OS?” A bit selfish, to be sure, but with Jobs’ position and highly-lauded innovation talents, I can understand this. However, this sentiment didn’t decline with time, along with the level of interest in what was happening to Jobs. As Jobs himself says,

“Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well…In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.”

Fact is, guys, a solid and successful company does not rely on one person. This holds true whether the company is made up of 35,000 or three. For those of you who are part of a small team, you’re probably used to wearing a lot of different hats. A broad set of skills is a must for finding success in the small business market–but when one member falls out of the picture for whatever reason, what then?

Take the time to seriously consider this, from your perspective and the rest of the team: if you suddenly found yourself stranded on an island with no method of communication, what would be the impact to current projects, future endeavors, and internal processes? Your answers will help show you the areas lacking team talent overlap. For areas that wouldn’t be affected much by your absence, this is a sign that you need to focus on getting a handle on them–for what if it wasn’t you who were stranded, but the teammate most skilled in that area? Conversely, if you find that the company would be seriously set back on a project because you’re the only one the client has spoken with since day one, this should be a prime indicator that your company’s internal communications needs some work.

Key aspects to think about:

• What methods would your teammates have to access project-relevant files?
• Could communications with a client be picked up by another teammate fairly easily?
• Does your network consist of people who share the specializations you have (graphic design, coding, etc) who teammates could tap into during the interim?
• How would your responsibilities be shared or distributed among the other teammates?

Most important of all, does everyone on your team know the answers to these questions?

While Steve Jobs is Apple’s genius, he is most certainly not the only brick in the foundation that keeps the company steady. For small companies, we must strive to make our foundations solid as well, by strengthening the load we can carry.

This year for the holidays, we’ve sent some of our recent clients a small package with a season’s greeting as a reminder that we’re always happy to continue working with them! We feel it’s a small gesture that can go a long way in keeping Tridea in the forefront of our clients’ minds while they catch up with their families and friends, and mention the progress they’ve made in their endeavors and the exciting process of coupling a new website and design with their projects.

Water Bottle and Card

From the Tridea team to all of you who we have worked with in the past and are working with presently, enjoy your holiday with your nearest and dearest, and have a happy new year!

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

It’s a community building endeavor in which all sorts of web and business folk come together to use their talents, work together, and make something cool.

They happen all around the country. In the past there has been one in New York, Atlanta, Boulder, Portland, Houston, Austin, London, and Los Angeles, to name a few. This weekend it will be in Ann Arbor!

John, myself, and the other attendees use our precious weekend hours to bust our tails and come up with fresh new ideas for the web and bring them to reality. It’ll also be a great opportunity to meet other like-minded web folks from around the area.

From a Tridea perspective, it will give us a chance to scout people we might partner up with down the road as well as size up competitors…although, the web is such a big place we rarely think about “competition” with other companies.

Should be a lot of fun, check back here for a recap when it’s over!

With Tridea being a young company, it’s nice to see how other successful entrepreneurs got to where they are. One quote that really stuck out while reading the article was…

Do your homework and know your business better than anyone. Otherwise, someone who knows more and works harder will kick your ass

Knowing that others are out in the world working as hard as you should be more than a motivating factor to work as hard as possible. Everyone wants to come out on top and be a winner, but that doesn’t happen without hard work.

So I’d highly recommend reading the Success and Motivation series, and hopefully it will inspire you like it inspired me.

One thing that has really stuck out in our first year is setting goals, whether that be per project, or for Tridea as a whole. Setting goals really helps us to stay focused, and accomplish things however we need to. As we get ready to take on a new year of projects, we will be setting our goals a little bit higher than we did this year, just push ourselves that much more.

Since December is normally a slow work month, we will be working on some internal projects to help touch up our branding, which includes a redesign of our website that we look to launch in early 08. We also want to refocus our marketing efforts, because thus far we’ve gotten most of our work through referrals. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however, we are looking to expand our business and marketing will be essential.

We very much look forward to starting a brand new year, taking on new challenges, and setting our goals higher than this year. In other words…..we love this stuff.

A dual-work focus? What is that?

Allow me to explain…

Many people with web skills often are called on by friends and family to help them with web projects. Some help maintain small business sites doing small tasks like image optimization to larger content updates, even to complete site designs. Others help maintain their loved ones blogs from back-end work to template customization. This work, usually free, is done as an aside from our daily 9-5 web job and gets done whenever we have the time, energy, or feel like lending a helping hand to the code-illiterate.

However, for many of us, our dual-work focus is more serious. Some of us are such gluttons for code/design/work that we not only earn our money from 9-5, but work freelance in our spare time and pursue second income outside of normal business hours.

Often times, this work is starkly different from the work we do at our “real” job. Often times, we take on projects that we wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to work on in our corporate setting. Perhaps not unlike a factory worker working a double-shift, these web designers clock more hours, code more lines, and advance their skills even further.

So why do we do it? Why choose to work more than you have to?

For some, it is purely economical: the 9-5 job isn’t paying the bills. For others, it’s for more creative freedom: they can pick what projects to work on and how to build them. And still for others, they are looking to establish themselves and perhaps move to a point where they can one day work for themselves and their friends like the blueflavors and 37signals‘ of this world.

Of course, not everyone does this. Not everyone has the energy, drive, and commitment to pursue two jobs with equal enthusiasm. But to those who do, we at Tridea salute you and hope your work is fun, rewarding, and helping you grow…as ours surely is!

Yes, many people have dreamt of being their own boss, but few have successfully seen it through. Well, dear reader, I am writing to tell you that I am going to try and join the successful bunch. If entrepreneurship interests you, read on.

Here’s a taste of the back story…

This all started about 3 months ago. Actually, the idea has been percolating for longer, but my friend and co-dreamer John Phillips finally stepped up and said “Let’s do this.” It’s definitely an exciting feeling, the snowballing of two people’s will dream into one unified goal. What’s better than two people? Three! Yes, John Phillips and I knew that we would need another, and our choice was Tyler Smeltekop. We’d all taken classes in the same program (Professional Writing at MSU) and had kept up via the magic that is the Internet. First John Phillips graduated, then I earned my diploma, and in a year or so, Tyler will to.

We all share a desire to forge career paths that touch both creativity and technology every day. We all share a desire to work hard on projects we love for clients we genuinely care about. And we all dream of being our own boss and having the ability to take on the projects that we want and not ones handed to us by some managerial figure who knows little of designing.

This blog will allow us to document the process and write about what’s going through our heads and how we are progressing towards that ultimate goal of running a successful business. We hope you are able to take away pearls of wisdom (don’t worry, they’re coming!) and feel free to comment on our thoughts and processes!