Cameron Olthuis

5ones is a project that first began last July. It all started when I met Chris Bennett from 97th Floor at last year’s SMX Advanced. We quickly hit it off, partly because we both share a deep passion for surfing and other action sports. We talked a lot about how the action sports industry is pretty lame when it comes to the web. For an industry that’s generally pretty forward thinking, it’s amazing how many years behind they are with this online stuff. After the conference we kept talking about projects that we could work together on in this space and eventually we settled on 5ones.

What exactly is it? 5ones is an action sports news and information site covering surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, and other industry happenings. Right now what you see on the site is just a small taste of what’s to come in the future.

Although technically started last July, due to both of our busy schedules it didn’t take long before the site was placed on the back burner, as neither of us could find the time to keep it regularly updated and give the TLC it needed. It’s around this time that I started to realize I was taking on too much client work and I needed to slow down or I’d never have time to focus and build out my empire. So that’s what I did, I started to make the time and refocus on doing this thing proper.

Fast forward to Jan ‘08. I hired a couple writers, gave myself the position of Editor in Chief, and started pumping out regular content again. Although we originally launched the site back in July ‘07, we feel that we didn’t really start the site until the first of this year. Since then we’ve been keeping the site updated regularly. We just finished the redesign and now we’re launching what we call version 1.0. I must say that I am very impressed with the design, which was done by Pat Bennett from Modern Web Design. I would highly recommend using Pat for design work as you can see he did a fabulous job with 5ones. He also did all the custom WP hacks/programming.

One of the questions I get a lot is - what’s the meaning behind the name? To be honest, there isn’t one. As most of you know, finding domain names is pretty damn hard these days, most everything we wanted was taken so we just brainstormed, that name came up, and it stuck. I wish I had a good story about how the name came about but I don’t.

5ones is the first of many projects that I’ll be releasing through Factive over the next year. It’s a joint project in partnership with 97th Floor, who will also be involved in one other Factive property that is expected to launch this summer.

I also want to give a shout out to the wonderful staff of writers we have on the team. I am very pleased with their work and their desire to step it up and progress with the site. We have had tremendous success with traffic and growing our audience in just a few short months and much of that is because of the quality of content our writers have produced.

So, the first of the two exciting redesigns and announcements that I’m rolling out today is Factive Media. Factive itself isn’t necessarily new but I don’t think I’ve ever really mentioned it here on the blog or really told you guys what I was up to with it. The official direction of the company has switched today as well so I’ll talk about that.

When I left ACS last summer, I left because I had an idea, or a vision if you will, and it was just the right time to make the move and go for it. Although ACS was becoming a very successful company, my heart was no longer in building out a large consulting firm. I also felt like it was an opportunity cost and there were much bigger things in store for me.

Two things happened when I left. I was suddenly bombarded with tons of consulting opportunities and I started my startup. The good thing about the consulting opportunities is that I could pick & choose and I could now also command the same rates that ACS, a full service firm, was charging. It’s pretty lucrative when you’re a solo dude charging what big firms do. But again, consulting was not what I wanted for myself so I made sure I didn’t overload myself and would still have time to dedicate to this other thing.

So while Factive started out as my own little consulting gig there has always been something much bigger brewing in the pot. Today I am happy to announce that I am officially changing Factive from being my little consulting shell to an action sports media network.

What you see on the page there is a very small taste of what’s to come. Seeing as I’m completely self-funded it’s not exactly going as quickly as I’d like so I’ll slowly be rolling out sites one-by-one.

So what exactly is my vision? Well duh, I’m building myself a nice little media empire in the action sports industry. Right now there is one site, which I’ll be posting about separately, that has officially launched v1.0. There are quite a few more that are in the works and will be rolled out over the next 12 months. These include everything from content sites to an ad network to community sites and other stuff not yet mentionable.

As many of you know, I’m an avid surfer and skier, so this fits the mold perfectly of doing something I love. I’ve been involved in action sports my whole life and I’m very excited to be building a successful company in this vertical. It’s a great opportunity for me to leverage my expertise and build a large online audience that will be worth a lot 5-10 years down the road.

As for consulting, I’m still doing that as well, but have been cutting back a little to put most of my focus on this. With the projections & numbers I’ve come up with I expect to be consulting for at least another year, unless I take on a small investment which is a small possibility at this point.

Update - So I didn’t get the chance to make my announcement yesterday but it’s coming today, for sure. It just might not come right away. I’m spending the day with my little girls and since it’s such a nice day I want to take full advantage. Not that we have a shortage of nice days down here or anything, but it’s been on a tad on the windy/overcast side all week.

Stabbed - Last night I was stabbed in the arm by a dart. It went in far and it hurt, pretty bad. I bled all over the place. The person who stabbed me is probably reading this post so I just want to say that I do not forgive you and you need to watch your back. I’m coming after you in your sleep Sucker (replace that ‘S’ with an ‘F’ if you want to know what I’m really thinking). Just because I beat your ass in ping-pong is no reason to throw darts at me.

Time Sucks - If you call my cell phone and you can’t leave a message because my mailbox is full, please don’t take it personal. I’m not trying to be a dick. I think I’m just taking the 4-Hour Work Week a little to literal and I’m trying to cut back on my time sucks. I already hate talking on the phone to begin with so naturally its one of my first time sucks to go. If you need to get a hold of me and I don’t answer your call then you can either call back, send me a text, or send me an email. I’ve been thinking of saying that on my voicemail but that might be a little too much. Again, this is nothing personal, just me trying to be more efficient with time. Does this make me a dick? A couple people told me it does.

Twitter - Speaking of time sucks…. Yesterday I got coaxed into signing up for Twitter, which I’ve been purposely avoiding because it’s a huge time suck. So far I’m rolling with it but who knows how long I’ll last on it. If you want, you can follow me on twitter.

time out - coffee refill…

Tennis - I’d never really played tennis in my life until a couple weeks ago. I’m starting to like it a lot though. I have a court here in my neighborhood and I went and bought some rackets and I’ve started playing. Nothing serious yet but I’m enjoying it and it’s a great workout.

Performics - I’m happy to see Google is spinning this chunk of the DoubleClick acq off. It was a huge conflict and it’s nice to see they moved quickly. Lets see if Microsoft does the same. BTW, I saw this survey the other day that said both Microsoft and the USA are the two global brands most in need of a makeover. People must think you have a shitty company if they compare you along USA. I love this country as much as the next guy, but let’s face it, we’re not exactly beacons of popularity with the rest of the world.

Launch Day - Looks like one or two of my sites will be officially ready for launch today. I’m super excited to announce these to you all and let you know what I’ve been up to these last few months. While the sites have been live for months now, and growing, we’re just finishing up some touches on new designs/dev stuff and I feel like they’re finally v1.0 and ready for an official launch.

I have a busy day ahead of me so I’m going to cut this short this morning. Hopefully I’ll be posting a little later on in the day when this stuff is ready.

Not much interesting going on today, perhaps everyone is hungover from all the April Fool’s sillyness.

CEO SEO - Rand Fishkin wrote a really good post about Internet CEOs that ignore SEO. While I didn’t go into nearly the detail that Rand did I also touched on this back in the summer with my SEO is for Idiots post. The basic point here is that you shouldn’t be the CEO of anything if you can’t recognize the value of a good rank. I realize most people who hire CEOs or fund new startups are looking for a certain pedigree, but common sense should probably be the first thing you look for, as in if you don’t have any you shouldn’t be running a company. Read Rand’s post though, it’s very good and goes into detail with some good examples.

Passion - A big part of my little startup is content. As I’ve been hiring contributors to write for me the first and most important quality I look for is passion. If you’re not passionate about what I’m asking you to write about then you have no chance of writing for me. I get all sorts of resumes from people with English degrees, etc, but they don’t have a strong interest in the subject I’m looking for. Immediately these people are disqualified. In my humble little opinion, the one thing you can’t teach someone is passion. On the other hand, I believe grammar/english skills can be taught (I need to be taught myself). I’ve actually hired a couple people that have serious grammar/english problems but they are some of the most passionate individuals I’ve ever met. Their passion comes through in their content and in-turn, that makes for really really good content that others love to read, exactly what I want. I don’t mind taking the extra time to edit and I actually enjoy teaching these individuals how to write good blog posts, etc. I like passion.

I really enjoy writing these posts. I took a break from blogging for awhile because it got to the point where I no longer enjoyed what I was writing about. Things were starting to feel forced and it burned me out. I no longer want to feel like I have to write about SEO or social media or any of that stuff. I just want to have fun and write what’s on my mind - whether that happens to be SEO stuff or just personal stuff. Hope you enjoy this new direction as much as I do.