My hair grows rather quickly, and if I don’t visit the salon at least once every three weeks, my hair begins to get a bit unruly. I typically go on Sunday’s or after I get out of work. No appointments for me, I’m way too busy to predict when I can spare 15 minutes of my time. Getting my hair did (I went there) at those times usually puts me at a little hole in the wall called JR’s All Star Hair Cuts. It’s a step above Supercuts and a step below JCPenny.

It’s a nice idea; take care of the hair needs of men in a comfortable environment. They have TV’s at every station to make sure that we have something shiny to look at while the cute girls are trying to clean us up. But the conversation always starts the same way:

Stylist: “Mike, I can take you over here.”

Me: saunters over to the station without saying a word

Stylist: “What are we doing today?”

Me: “Number two along the sides and just longer than a knuckle cut on top”

A stylist is no different than a designer. They are presented with a problem of unkempt hair and must work around the constraints of facial structure, widow’s peaks, balding, cowlicks, and desired upkeep. A stylist should be attending conferences, seminars, and keeping up with style trends to stay current in their craft, just as any web designer should. A stylist should be a trusted adviser, someone that you hire based on their merits and prior works.

So why do I stick my name on a list and wait for the next available stylist?

With Calendar
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Without Calendar
1280x800, 1280x800, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1080, 1920x1200, 2560x1440

The past year at MJ Media has been the biggest year yet. With the departure of Josh from the company, and the amount of work we have been able to put out, it’s going to be tough to top the amount of activity we have enjoyed this year.

I feel that it is important for anybody to set goals, both personally and professionally, each year. You might recall from a sentimental post a while back, that I have already set one goal for MJ Media’s upcoming year, but I wanted to use this moment to expand upon that list.

So here it goes, the updated goal list for 2012!

• Launch an upgraded design and do some organization of the content of our website
• Rebrand our newsletter and improve the content
• Make our webinar series a huge success
• Take on the entire marketing program of a client
• Bring on some regular hired help
• Pick up at least 10 new clients
• Bring in $50,000 at MJ Media

I’d like to thank all of our clients for making 2011 such a great year, and wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2012!

~ Mike

Steve was a great man, and much of what he did during his lifetime has played a role in how I do my work. His passing brought up thoughts of another great man, my dad.

My dad is the same age as Mr. Jobs was. He introduced me to computers with the Macintosh Classic II that he brought home from work. He also introduced me to the internet, where the first site I visited was People.com, the second was not so work friendly (I was twelve).

But more than those things, my father has created me. Not just genetically, but my whole being. He taught me at a young age that the key to success was hard work, and not to expect things to be handed to me. Throughout my life I have pushed and fought to accomplish what I wanted. I’ve worked more 90 hours a week in hard labor in order to buy my first house before I was 20. I helped to start two companies within a year of finishing high school, one of which I sold my share and the other I am now sole-owner.

I feel like I have lost my way, I’ve set the cruse control for the last year to year-and-a-half. My dad would be pissed!

I can’t help but feel that I’ve been letting people down. I’ve let down my wife-to-be, my coworkers, myself, my company, and the whole point of this post… my dad.

So here is what I am going to do to resolve my lazy ways: I will make a pledge.

• I will be a great man.
• I will devote more time to my family.
• I will devote more time to myself.
• I will kick ass on a daily basis.

To know that I am successful with my pledge, I have set up these goals for the next year.

• To take my wife to Ireland on our one year anniversary.
• To get my weight back down to 185 lbs.
• To play at least 5 rounds of golf.
• To bring in $50,000 at MJ Media.

When fans aren’t enough: Developing a successful social media strategy to drive business growth by Paul Warren, ddm Marketing & Communications
Mostly covered tools to use, some interesting ones:

Postling.com
Socialmention.com

Social + Virtual Media Marketing for Small Business by Mark Johnson

Brian Solis – Engage (book)
“We are now part of the community we wish to inform.”
“Engage or die.”
“Uncover the voices that define and steer your markets.”

Clients think in a 3d world.
If they are comfortable writing, they will be a blogger. This is a powerful market.
Invite them to speak about what they do in your booth etc.

Keynote - Shannon Paul, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan

When building your team:

Content Creators & Analytics Readers

One dynamite panel, two digital tactics: Search engine optimization (SEO) & paid ads (SEM)

Erik Granning, Doner
Brian Ambrozy, Delightful Experiences and Icrontic.com
Bobby Mercader, FurnitureCrate.com
Evelyn Chou, Electro-matic

Focus on creating a technically good website.

Get AdWords Certified for $50

Use long-tail keywords to lower CPC

Optimize for conversions.

SEO: The goal now is to increase the amount and quality of incoming keywords.

MAKE SURE YOUR LOCATION PROFILES ARE ACCURATE (foursquare, Google Places, Facebook and Bing)

I decided early this year that I wanted to support to the fest because I feel that this event promotes creativity in the area like no other event. I think that the key to real improvement in this area is a strong creative community.

The amount of time and money we have invested in this event is probably in the $2000 range, which is a big commitment for a very small web design company like MJ Media. We will also be submitting some of our code from this project to the Open Source community to benefit other similar events. I’m so happy with our work thus far.

I am currently out of the office on vacation.

I know I’m supposed to say that I’ll have limited access to email and won’t be able to respond until I return — but that’s not true. My blackberry will be with me and I can respond if I need to. And I recognize that I’ll probably need to interrupt my vacation from time to time to deal with something urgent.

That said, I promised my wife that I am going to try to disconnect, get away and enjoy our vacation as much as possible. So, I’m going to experiment with something new. I’m going to leave the decision in your hands:

• If your email truly is urgent and you need a response while I’m on vacation, please resend it to interruptyourvacation@firstround.com and I’ll try to respond to it promptly.
• If you think someone else at First Round Capital might be able to help you, feel free to email my assistant, Fiona (fiona@firstround.com) and she’ll try to point you in the right direction.

Otherwise, I’ll respond when I return…

Warm regards,
Josh

Now I’ll be putting my fate in your hands, and if you have ever been in a relationship, I think you’ll understand the need to unplug for a little bit. I’m also considering this post as fair warning. I’d get those projects to me soon or you’ll be out of luck.

Have a great day!
Mike

Photo: M.Peinado

Source

Recently, one of our development servers had a very old version of Magento on it, and before we could start development on a new extension for a client, we had to upgrade it.

This is the script that I use whenever I am upgrading Magento:

wget http://www.magentocommerce.com/downloads/assets/1.5.0.1/magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz
cd magento
tar cf - . |(cd ..; tar xvf -)
chmod -R o+w media var
chmod o+w app/etc
rm -rf magento/ magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz

Let’s take a look at what is happening here.

First, we download the next newest version of Magento (click the “Release Archives” tab) and untar it. While theoretically Magento will cleanly upgrade from any old version to any new version, I’ve had the best luck when I don’t skip versions.

wget http://www.magentocommerce.com/downloads/assets/1.5.0.1/magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz

Next, we do my favorite part. First go into the new magento directory, and then use tar to gather all of the files, retaining permissions and ownership information, and untar them into the root directory of the site.

cd magento
tar cf - . |(cd ..; tar xvf -)

Then we just have to set the directories that have to have write access.

chmod -R o+w media var
chmod o+w app/etc

And finally we cleanup the excess Magento directory and tar file.

rm -rf magento/ magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz

After you have run this, visit the home page of the site to allow it to go through the database upgrade process. I’ve received errors while trying to upgrade the database in the past. Usually these can be solved by deleting the file mentioned in the error.

Then, just like shampoo, you’ll want to repeat the process, changing the version numbers on all three lines until your site is at the most current stable version.

I can’t guarantee that this will solve all of your upgrade woe’s, but I can tell you that this has helped me limit my woes to just those caused by deprecated code.

It was late into 2004. Josh Taylor and I had been sitting in our accountants office house signing the papers that would make things official. We were starting a web design company.

On December 15th, 2004 we were notified that MJ Media, LLC was now a registered organization in the great state of Michigan (bonus points if you read that like Mason).

First gigs

Our first few projects came in from family and friends. Eventually, after a quick email to The Bay City Times, we scored a short bio and color photo in the “New Business” section. We quickly picked up 3 or 4 very low budget websites. A few of those brave souls remain with us today.

It wasn’t all lollipops and gumdrops though. There was one early client that ended up disappointed when we were unable to deliver what they expected for the price that we had agreed to. I blame this on their unrealistic expectations combined with our unrealistic confidence. It’s a shame too, because I still think about how cool it would be to really help this company out.

Somewhere in the middle

After those first few gigs, we started meeting the people that would really help to shape and mold our beliefs. Some of the people that were instrumental to our success are Shawn MacDonald of 989 Design, Ron Acker and Chris Gruber of F.P. Horak, Francis Soehnel of Looks Unlimited, and the many other clients we worked with early on. They were passionate people, that enjoyed putting out the best work possible, even when less expensive options exist.

Things were still just puttering along though. Josh and I both had full time jobs, and the company became nothing more than a weekend hobby.

“Hey dad, I quit.”

At the time I was working for my father at Pyramid Paving. I was working very hard, and making pretty good money. I knew that I liked working there, but I felt I needed to give MJ Media the shot it deserved. After a being laid off for the winter, I began seeking higher profile clients. We scored big when Kate Cardinali of IMD brought us in to help with an E-commerce website for Franks Great Outdoors. I estimated it to take the rest of the summer, and decided not to return to Pyramid for the upcoming season.

Things seemed to be going well, until they didn’t. The old site was being bombarded by hackers on a daily basis. We were forced to make emergency patches just to keep it running long enough to develop a replacement. For one reason or another, we also went through a couple of server moves at this time.  One of our moves was interrupted by a tornado that touched down dangerously close to the server building and caused what I seem to remember as a few days’ worth of downtime. Eventually, the old website was so far gone, that we decided to launch the new site, untested and unfinished.

It was a bad idea. Development came down to a punch list, and because our contract was pretty vague, the client had a different punch list than we did. Upon completion of our list, the client declined to pay the final invoice.

I was heartbroken. I didn’t want this project to fail.

Seven months into a five month project, I was broke. And to make matters worse, we were so busy trying to launch this site, that we hadn’t been seeking other work. Things were rough, and my personal credit cards started taking a beating.

It’s not all doom and gloom

Let me make one thing clear; most of our clients are bad-ass! I have met some very interesting small business owners since we started this company, and helped them to begin their foray into the digital world. While I always have a sore spot for the failures of yesterday, I remember most projects as successes.

I still enjoy doing what I do. I feel that we stack up closely with the best in the business. Even more than that, I still enjoy learning what I do not yet know. It’s such a fast paced field to be in, that you are able to see the landscape change before your eyes.

So what’s the point?

There is one, I promise.

Nearly seven years into this magical trip, my partner, Josh Taylor has chosen to leave MJ Media. I’ve heard some of his plans for the future, and I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of him. I’m going to miss him as a partner.

So, it’s with mixed emotions that I wish Josh a fond farewell. Please feel free to wish him good luck in the comments below!

(photo by bengrey)