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“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.“
– Winston Churchill

I write to you all out of ambition and hopefulness. Though I also write this in a time of change and adjustment. Over a period of recent dialogues, ideas, challenges, and even joys – I am announcing today as my last day working with Elias. One might wonder why (what seems to be the sudden) change? It actually isn’t sudden. Quite the opposite, actually. Let me give you a little background on Elias and the decision.

I had the great privilege of connecting with Josh and Eric years ago when their media company produced a mini-documentary on part of my story years ago. And for me, a privilege it was indeed. Years after, I decided that I wanted to be more purposeful in whom I shared my work-life, ideas, ambitions, and desire for integrity, transparency, top-notch quality, and desire to be progressively forward-thinking. The birth of Elias began, while Eric Clark and I decided to try at least one project together. With a fantastic experience on the first project together, we decided to pursue more, specifically with Magento near it’s 0.8 beta phase.

From that point, we worked hard until Josh came about a year later. We’ve grown into a full-force virtual company that exclusively specializes in the eCommerce (specifically the Magento framework). Some time after, we had the unique (and stellar) opportunity to connect with Luke Whitson, and connected so well that we all were in favor of him joining the Elias team with his skill-set and perspective. Since then, the four partners in Elias have extended our breadth of influence on the web into the Drupal, WordPress, and Magento communities (while even having built some of our own apps in the process).

We’ve focused heavily (and endlessly) on simplifying processes, efficient communication, improving the client experience, and nailing down the best way to manage/develop full-scale projects and integrations. I’ve worked in multiple roles (as much of the team has) such as: lead programmer, project manager, client interaction, we all took part in internal strategy, business development, and overall problem-solving.

As the years have gone by, I love the problem-solving, but have acknowledged amidst the years that the combination of coding and working virtually (with my personality) preclude me from leading social initiatives with culture, connecting people together, problem-solving in and outside of code, and remaining mindful of people – which are key for my well-being. My relational side has been somewhat neglected, and so I’m changing the pace, switching the role(s) I’ll be responsible for, and have decided to switch gears with Elias in doing so.

I intend to spend this next season pursuing a few other ideas my wife and I have, working with local partners and business in a consulting role, leadership and community development, and allowing me to become more relational (and less virtual) in these events. I have big dreams, and hope to position myself with more alignment to these aspirations by making this next move.

I can say it has been a privilege working alongside the fine group of Elias Interactive.

I am definitely still a doer, but I am definitely, also, still a dreamer of good and hopeful things. I want to incorporate giving into the next initiative I start up or join. And so I anticipate what is to come in this next season.

Should you ever have a need or simply want to connect, I’m here: doer [at] leetaylordoes [dot] com (skype: leetaylordoes)

Best to you all. It has been a great ride.
Lee Taylor

Rather than trying to invent a “make it big” idea, having good instincts, foresight and putting together a team that can execute has much greater value. If you spend time putting together a group of people that can actually deliver the goods, an idea becomes nothing more than a showcase for your talents. With the ability to execute, ideas become distilled down to their essence. This makes way for knowledge and communication.

– Aviv Hadar @ Think Brilliant

Elias is a small web services firm. Everyday we face questions about constraints. It’s tempting to find client projects that will keep the lights on and then avoid taking risks; or sometimes we get so obsessed with discovering perfectly fulfilling work to the detriment of cash-flow. What client projects should you take on? How much time should you spend on your own products? Which product ideas have the most merit? And these are just the HOW and WHAT questions to a business. WHY you do these things is even more significant.

What Ed Catmull, president of Pixar, had to say about competing constraints:

If I look at the range, you’ve got one [constraint] that is art school – I’m doing this for arts sake. Ratatouille and WALL-E clearly fall more on that side. The other is the purely commercial side where you’ve got a lot of films that are made purely for following a trend. If you go entirely for the art side then eventually you fail economically. If you go purely commercially then I think you fail from a soul point of view. We’ve got these elements pulling on both sides, the art side and the commercial side, and the the trick is not to let one side win. To get the different blogs related to artist and art then click here.

Fundamentally successful companies are unstable. And where we have to operate is in that unstable place. The forces of conservatism, which are very strong, they want to go to a safe place – I want to go to the same place for money, I want to go and be wild and creative or I want to have enough time for this. Each one of those guys are pulling and if any one of them wins, we lose. I just want to stay right there in the middle.

I feel the pull that Ed describes. It’s a battle of priorities.

Ed’s perspective gives me comfort in our situation. He admits that he doesn’t always know what the right answer is. He goes as far as to say that “successful companies are unstable.” That certainly appears to have been the case at Pixar, especially in the early days.

A Pixar Story

Steve Jobs purchased Pixar from Lucasfilm in 1986 for $5 million and then put another $5 million into it. But by 1990 Pixar was running a net operating loss of $8.3 million with its hardware and software products.

It wasn’t until Pixar inked a deal with Disney in 1991 that the future maker of animated videos would uncover a new business model filled with beloved Buzz Lightyear, Nemo, Cars, and 9 hit movies. Pixar’s first film, Toy Story, debuted in November 1995 and raked in $382 million worldwide. Now Pixar is preparing for Toy Story 3 and being praised for its creative culture.

Elias has been in business for over two years now. We don’t have it all figured out. We’re learning everyday and working hard to add value to our clients’ businesses. And we will continue to invest in our team, embrace the tension of competing restraints, and build the culture of creativity & transparency which I believe will lead us to infinity and beyond.