Introduction
Yesterday I had provided a review of the progress of Cape Cod Branding and CCB Buzz for 2008. In addition, I had outlined our new direction and mainly addressed our change in focus for the new year. Today I had planned on discussing our monetization strategy and why we decided to migrate from the WordPress server to our private server (wordpress.org). However, after feedback we had received due to yesterday’s article I would like to interrupt the monetization and migration discussion and pursue this path and return to that topic once this has been addressed.

Concerning Steve Pavlina
In my articled titled Happy New Year! I had referenced the work of Steve Pavlina and how he has been an inspiration for our new direction. Interestingly enough it has come to my attention that Steve has also pursued a new direction for 2009 (click here to see Steve’s new direction), one of which Amy and I were unaware when making this reference. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post I am very new to Steve’s work, but nonetheless it has been instrumental to the success we have had here with our blog as Amy has been a reader for years and had used his website as a resource to get us up and running quickly, mainly for the technical content but has drawn upon the personal development aspect as well. Given Amy’s enthusiasm for his content, which undoubtedly rubbed off on me, I have just recently started to read his articles.

Since Steve’s new direction for 2009 is not necessarily aligned with our personal views or even our direction of our website we had a decision to make concerning this new information and referencing it in our blog. Given that Steve’s new direction is at least a bit controversial, we run the risk of isolating some of our readership as well as reducing the perception of our credibility. In my mind we had three decisions:

1. Remove our reference to Steve’s work and do not reference his future work
2. Leave the reference as it stands and address it as a mistake as we did not have knowledge of the new direction
3. Leave the reference as it stands and continue to use Steve’s work as a resource and continue to reference in the future

Obviously this was not a black and white decision and as I am learning, very little in the world of business is in fact a straightforward decision. Prior to providing you with this answer I would like to discuss an important theme.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Well sort of. Given that CCB Buzz is a relative newcomer we have very little power or influence, however I believe we do have a great responsibility to our readers. The decisions we make now will shape our business, and especially early on, can create great success or harm depending on our readers’ reaction to our blog topics. It is our responsibility to provide responsible and relevant writing that will benefit our readers and not waste their time.

Responsible writing includes referencing credible resources and reporting the truth to our readers. We actually take this a step further at CCB Buzz by offering greater transparency than most, and plan on increasing your visibility into our operations and way of doing business in the future. My view is that this will serve as a greater resource for entrepreneurs, and those interested in personal growth, as hopefully others will relate and take our articles to heart. I am planning on writing an article on the importance of transparency as part of a future post to this blog.

Our writing will be relevant in that it will always have a direct association to your growth as an individual, especially in an entrepreneurial context. As entrepreneurs we face new challenges every day that both stress and strengthen us. Our hope here is to provide you, our readers with information that is directly relevant to your individual situations and life in general and as a result make your experience easier. By providing relevant information, we make the visit to our blog worthwhile, we realize that your time is limited, as is ours, and therefore will offer you value by making you a little smarter each time you visit.

And The Verdict Is…
Admittedly Amy and I struggled a little with this, but in the end it was an easy decision. We realized it wasn’t a mistake referencing Steve Pavlina, and our principles won out. We decided to pursue the third option of leaving the reference as it stands and continue to use Steve’s work as a resource and continue to reference in the future. There are several reasons for this decision but above all I have captured the following statement from Amy when we were batting around ideas on how to address this:

“While Steve Pavlina’s most recent post isn’t in line with our personal beliefs, he makes an intelligent argument, and the idea of free thought and not just following society’s ‘approved’ standards IS in line with what we strive for.”

Although this statement may offend some, I believe it sums up perfectly our sentiment on the topic. Although Steve’s decision may not be popular among traditionalists, after reading Steve’s New Year’s article he does make an intelligent argument and is certainly a free thinker. These are two qualities that I admire and hope to cultivate more in the future both personally and in my professional work. Besides, although I may not have fully realized it at the time, we owe our rapid growth, in large part to Steve’s work and his willingness to share his experiences with his readers. To drop him due to a controversial decision would be in my opinion, just plain wrong.

For closing thoughts I would like to provide a few articles of Steve’s that we had read which greatly assisted us with implementation of our blog, mainly technical content. The first is “How To Make Money From Your Blog”, the second is “Ten Reasons You Should Never Get A Job” and the third is “How To Build A High Traffic Web Site Or Blog”. These are just a sampling of the articles that we have found helpful.

In my limited reading of Steve’s articles (I plan on doing more as we progress), I have found Steve’s writing to be both responsible and relevant. In my experience I have found that intelligent people are very different from the mainstream, and often proud of it. What generally makes smart people interesting is what also makes them the center of controversy – I believe this to be the case with Steve and look forward to reading more of his content, because it is smart, and therefore interesting and intriguing. For an example of another brilliant person who led a non-traditional personal lifestyle, refer to Warren Buffett’s latest biography and New York Time Best Seller, The Snowball.

To Be Continued…
In the next article I will continue with the planned discussion concerning our decisions to monetize and migrate our blog.

Intelligence and controversy are often intertwined!

-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding