Everyone talks about fear as it manifests in our personal lives — how to embrace it so that it can live alongside the rest of our Selves or how to quash the bastard so it doesn’t bother us when we’re trying to heal from past hurts.

Here’s the thing: no one is talking about how fear manifests in the way we run our businesses, as well as how we approach our online spaces. It’s too raw and uncomfortable. It’s too Real.

So I’m going to drop a Wisdom Bomb on you today.

Fear is fucking up your online space and worse, it’s fucking up your biznez.

Everyone tells you that you need to play a bigger game — to go after the Big Clients that scare the hell outta you. You’ve gotta invite in clients (and customers) that respect who you are and how you do biznez. The whole velvet rope routine, right?

Sure, that advice is all well and good once you’ve got your rent paid. But if you’re sitting at your computer all day every day, waiting for success to manifest itself in the form of dollah bills, and only seeing angry emails from clients… baby, that’s not right.

Go and look at your website. Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you.

Now answer these questions. (And do it honestly. This isn’t a gorram Cosmo quiz. You’re not going to be more successful if you cheat or lie. C’mon, we’ve all done it. Who doesn’t want to be mega flirtatious but still be a classy dame? Stupid Cosmo.)

When you look at your site, does it make you:
a) Dance with delight?
b) Want to leap from the balcony of your 21st floor apartment?
c) Yawn?
d) Cringe with shame?

When you think about the process you went through to get your website to that point, do you:
a) Shake your booty with happiness?
b) Cry?
c) Shrug your shoulders?
d) Blush (because you were a royal dickbag to your designer)?

Now think about your ideal online space. If you had your way, it would:
a) Help your clients and customers while looking gorgeous in the process.
b) Make you more money. (Gotta pay rent. And make sure the heat stays on. And omigawd, is that the cell phone bill?!)
c) Get clients and customers off your back. (The old site was atrocious but really, you couldn’t give two shits. There are more important concerns.)
d) Be an investment that actually paid off, instead of it being a waste of money to pay that dillhole designer.

If you answered mostly A’s, your online space is Sexified. You need no further help, my Padawan. Go forth and rock out.

If you answered mostly B’s, your online space is Desperate. Everything from your design to your copy screams that you’ve gotta fill the docket in order to pay bills. Desperation gathers desperation. Go get a hug immediately, sweetness.

If you answered mostly C’s, your online space is Ambivalent. When people look at your site, they’re turned off because it looks like you don’t care about your biz, your site, or (even worse) them.

If you answered mostly D’s, your online space is Aggressive. Your online space has a lot of negativity surrounding it. You use fear-based marketing tactics. Your design uses red, blue, and yellow because that’s what the other websites told you to use. … but you? You’re probably a teddy bear. Time to tone it down, babe.

How’d you do?

I’m assuming that not everyone has a Sexified online space. And hey, that’s totally fine. But instead of breaking out the cyanide tablets, crack open a notebook or open a word processing application on a device or three.

Get ready to be rad.

Desperate, Ambivalent, and Aggressive online spaces are the products of Fear, which leads to trust-issues. It’s hard to loosen the reigns to let somone come in and make your vision a reality. It’s even harder to bust open your wallet and give away that hard-earned money when you could just as easily do it yourself. (Yay WordPress!) But what’s harder still is watching your biznez fail because your online space simply doesn’t reflect you.

You’re driving your Perfect People away with desperation, ambivalence, and aggression.

No one wants to buy product or hire a service provider if the website confuses their senses.

Fear-based marketing tactics turn people off and make them mistrust you right off the bat. Writing yet another apologetic post because you’ve been too busy to create is a surefire way to turn people off. (Everyone’s busy. Get over it.) And if your design and copy are sloppy and rushed, clients are likely to pass you up for someone more polished.

How do you want to be treated in biznez? One would assume that you want to be respected, to be loved, and to get paid. (Word.)

You’ve gotta treat your People with the same kind of love and respect. Everything from your tweets to your Facebook updates to your blog posts and email marketing needs to emanate exactly how you want to feel.

Want the love? Be loving. Make your online space welcoming and joyful by using colour, texture, typography, and gorgeous copy. Retweet generously. Send people love letters.

Want the respect? Be respectful. Treat your service providers like the Kings and Queens they are. Pay ‘em promptly. Lavish them with kind words. Give them ta-das as well as to-dos when providing feedback. Watch it come back to you five-fold from your own clients.

Want the cash? Give it. Hire people to help you. You are not a One Person Army, in spite of what your Fear is telling you. Hire a designer to sexify your visuals. Trust her to bring your vision to life. (Because darling, she will. It’s what we designers do best!)

Want to be trusted? Trust others to bring you to where you need to be. This means handing over the keys to your kingdom from time-to-time, as scary as that can seem.

It starts with one little step in the opposite direction:

• Tell someone about your vision. Your friend, your partner, your mom – whomever you choose, make sure they know how important this is to you.
• Reach out and ask for help. Even if you can’t afford to hire anyone yet, talk to experts and pick their brains a bit. (Don’t be a dick, though. Remember: they’re just as bushed as you are.)
• Acknowledge the Fear… and then tell it to sit in the corner while you take over the world. Success will be stoked to take Fear’s place.

Funny to think of your site as a dichotomous entity, isn’t it? You’d figure that if your website is awesome, it’s all awesome. Or if it’s terrible, it’s all terrible. Thankfully, nothing’s ever that black and white; your website included. I was perusing some of my favourite websites the other day, trying to figure out why they made some of the design decisions they do.

The most interesting discovery was the odd mixture of the intelligent and the (seemingly) whack-a-doodle in their web design decisions.

Even the most radtastic people had some pretty odd things going on. Some of the worst designs I saw had at least one or two redeemable qualities.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve silently audited past client websites. I paid careful attention to my thinking-space and our goals at the time. Some of the sites have stood the test of time and evolved seamlessly alongside the content. Others – usually those sites developed in violetminded’s infancy (otherwise known as The Age of the n00b) – are woefully undone by their stellar content.

Nothing is a complete wash on any of the sites I (re)visited, just as nothing is completely perfect.

Design is an iterative process.

Design on all levels (communication design, biznez design, lifestyle design, game design, etc.) is iterative. Catherine calls it a spiral. The Systems Development Lifecycle used to use a Waterfall. (Well, that’s what they were teaching when I was in school.) I look at things as fucked, unfucked, or in the process of unfucking. (See what I did there? MANY F-BOMBS. What, you were expecting demure? Sorry, love. Wrong site.) These days, most facets of design are Agile.

What the sweet mother of muffins is Agile?

The Agile software methodology came to fruition after software developers got really, really sick of working with the stupid Waterfall. Projects took too long. Sponsors and team members alike had problems buying into the overall goal of the project. Clients got fed up waiting for updates and often got bored between ‘em. Developers didn’t want to be chased by management. Management didn’t want to chase steering committees, developers, sponsors, and a whole host of other issues.

So, a few very special dudes threw their hands up in the air and said, “Why the HELL are we doing it like this?”

No one answered. (Crickets, really.)

I’m sure that no one could think of a good reason to keep going the way they were. Software needed a revolution.

The Agile Manifesto

• Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
• Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
• Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
• Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
• Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
• The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
• Working software is the primary measure of progress.
• Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
• Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
• The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
• At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

This manifesto – somewhat formalized in 2005 – became the spine of many a software shop’s biznez and project management methodology. It was no longer about, “Get it done right the first time.” Instead, software developers and management alike were recognizing the need to release early, often, and adapt along the way. This effectively renders the Big Ass Project With No End in Mind moot.

Okay, I see that your eyes are glazing over. Stay with me here.

Your website is Agile. Hell, your biznez is Agile.

Once you release your website’s new design, copy, and product-line/services, you don’t just let it sit there. It would stagnate. Instead, you (rather subconsciously) follow the Agile Manifesto.

• Make sure your clients are totally stoked with whatever it is you’re offering.
• Ask for feedback. Often.
• Go back to your work, revisit copy and graphics, and release things totally quick-draw. (You heard me, Tex. Shoot from the hip.)
• Talk with your team and make sure everyone’s on the same page.
• When you’re building things for your biznez or your clients, trust your people to do their thing. Hired a web designer? Give her the support she needs to rock it out. A copywriter needs feedback to make sure that the tone is working. Your SEO person needs to understand your biznez intrinsically so make sure she gets it. And so on and so forth.
• Talk with your team using Skype. Forget email for the next ten minutes. Voice conversations go a long way.
• A site that engages and delights is a measure of success. For now.
• Pay attention to things that aren’t working for you (or your people) anymore. Take those findings to your team. Ask your team to give you feedback.
• Pare down to the essential elements. Stop cluttering. Start refining.
• Your people do their Best Work when they’re autonomous. Don’t micromanage. Let ‘em fly, baby. You’ll love the results.
• Check in with your team (and yourself) to see how things are fitting together. Something broken? Adjust course bit by bit until you get where you need to be.
• Rinse and repeat.

I’m a big fan of Agile methodology as a design technique. Just look at violetminded today. There are some things that work. There are a great many things that don’t. There are even some things that are just plain fucked. Thankfully, as I revisit copy and graphics and even the layout (shoot from the hip, remember), I’m mindful of paring down to the essentials and finding ways to make sure that my People are engaged and delighted. (F-BOMBS, YOU SAY?! No no. Not right now.)

Need help with figuring out how all this fits together in your website? I’ve got this great thing called the Creative Insight. As its own entity, it’s in Beta. I’m offering it at a deep, deep discount while I iron out the kinks in the process. Want in? All you gotta do is put your lips together and blow.

Wait. Did you just wolf whistle me?

… I might’ve liked it.

I believe the appropriate metaphor here involves a river of excrement and a Native American water vessel without any means of propulsion. – Sheldon Cooper

We’ve all been there at some point or another: spiraling through what seems like an endless cycle of insanity. But, as Catherine Caine puts it, “Progress in your business isn’t linear.” And as much as I love lines and grids, the second I start viewing things with an expiration date I’m profoundly screwed.

I had a moment two weeks ago, around the time I should’ve been announcing the winner of the Spark Kit (notification sent out, btw!), where I was ready to throw that towel in and say, “To hell with this. I’m done. I’m not taking this abuse anymore.” The abuse wasn’t from clients. It wasn’t from people slagging me online. It wasn’t from my Mister or the ZomBaby.

It was the abuse I was giving myself about not living up to my own (very high) expectations. (Raise your hand if you’ve done this. You know you have. Stop lying to yourself, damn it.)

In the middle of my downwards spiral into uncertainty and despair (and with a bit of prodding from my friends and coaches), the little lightbulb in my head came on. All of these problems — like my low conversion rate or my teeny list or unsubs or whatever — are being tied into what I feel my biznez is worth.

If we sit in a space long enough, we’ll start believing it. Even if it’s total bullshit.

I sat in that space too long. (Two weeks too long, really.) I’m an advocate for sitting with your pain, in short bursts. It’s no good to live there. You start to unlearn how to function in a Real Space.

On Sunday afternoon, I sat down in one of my favourite indoor spaces in Vancouver and created a new Writeboard in BaseCamp. I named it, “Unfucking“. I outlined the things that I needed to consider, to implement, and to brainstorm in the coming weeks and months in order to get my biznez from Pretty Rockin’ (but entirely exhausting) to High Rolla (and entirely nourishing).

Here’s the thing about getting (un)fucked: it’s DIFFICULT.

The only way to stick to goals and actually make headway on them is to be accountable. A surefire way for me to be accountable for, y’know, all the things, is to tell you lovelies about ‘em.

Over the next six months, I will be:

• Focusing my fire on strategy. I don’t have the ability to deliver the love, stellar design, rockin’ code, bitchin’ strategy, and amazing support. I’ve gotta pick what I’m best at. (And so should you.) The proof’s in the (chocolate) pudding, babe: I’m all kinds of rock-star at digging deep into what makes my clients tick, sussing out their visual identity, and coming up with a strategy as to how to implement it all.
• Retooling how I run my biznez. I’ll be bringing more people onto the violetminded team to help out, including a Code Magician and a Design Maven. There’s a lot to be said for people being able to do what they do best.
• Adding resources. I’ve already a few in the works, including Colour You Awesome and Hacked, Damn it. I’ll be releasing a primer on typography later this month. Yeah huh. Better get subscribed if you want dibs.

So here’s the thing: I can’t do this alone. After all, no man is an island. (Thanks Donne, ol’ buddy.) Here’s what I need from you.

What would you like to learn about: DIY Online Spaces, Building Your Biznez, or something else entirely?

Leave me a comment. Post on the Facebook page. Tweet me. Email me. Send me a love note. Anything. Just please, for the love of cupcakes, TELL ME.