I have grown up with the concept of business. At 10-years-old, my younger brother and I baked (with some of mom’s help) and sold banana breads (as well as blueberry, pumpkin, and zucchini) door-to-door. We also had a “distributor”, Grandma, who worked at a large office building with many of our subsequently happy customers.

At 16, I began an active pursuit in a growing area of interest, web development. By 18, I had written an article for a local newspaper and landed one of my first web development projects – I barely knew what I was doing and $600 seemed like a lot of money.

I continued my “career” in web development, constantly adding new skillsets and stretching myself from project to project. My maturing talent for writing and my desire to communicate as effectively as possible played a critical role in my success.

Today, at age 24, I have continued in the web development industry – and I am greatly enjoying it. My abilities have increased exponentially, as has my realization that there is so much more to know. The scale of the projects I work on has also increased greatly in size and complexity as well as in influence and impact.

I share all that for a reason. I have been in the business I am now, working with three of my closest friends, for almost four years. We have enjoyed a lot of success, especially by the standards of those on the outside looking in – yet we are keenly aware that its not yet what it could be.

Something hasn’t been what it could be. A lot of the “pieces” have been in place – the talent, the passion, the determination, the sticktoitiveness (its a word) – the components were in place, yet the success seemed to be more of occasional bursts than the desirable (and essential) steady stream.

I’ve had time for reflection these past few weeks. I’ve also taken the time (though I haven’t “had it”) to read. The reflection and reading, combined with a host of leading circumstances, have drawn me to a conclusion that my lack of success to the degree that I know God has given me the capability of has been through no fault but that of my own.

Tonight, that came to a head as I realized that somewhere along the line, I’m not sure where, I had lost sight of the nobility of business. I always knew that business was a part of who I am – yet I often wrestled with it. Being in web development means that I am often working with “intangibles”. You can’t “touch” a website. You can’t pick it up and turn it over in your hand. Consequently, for a time, I had allowed myself to put less of a value on the work that I do and that, in turn, consciously and subconsciously, impacted my ability to sell and deliver on my work.

No longer. Business is a noble profession that, I am realizing increasingly, is under heavy attack. When was the last time you watched a movie where the business man was the good guy? When you think of large, highly successful businesses – do you think of them as honest, full of integrity, and fully deserving of their success? I didn’t, and most people don’t. It wasn’t a conscious idea in my mind – yet it was an idea. That idea, the concept that business is something less than noble is a major inhibitor to success in business.

Think of it. We consider the hard-working American and the labor that he or she produces with his or her own two hands as “noble” – and rightly so! When, though, did that hard-working American become limited to the factories, fields, and mechanic shops? What about the men and women who build the businesses that employ many of these hard-working noblemen? Are the owners any less noble? Without a conscious consideration, I found myself thinking those thoughts and, subsequently, thinking less about the importance and nobility of my own work as a businessman.

That is changing, though. I am realizing that I have not valued the opportunities of business as I should. God has given me two eyes to see, hands to work, ears to listen, a mouth to speak, and a mind to think. He has given me the ability to work with those hands, to work hard and to do work that will bless others and be a blessing to me and my family in return.

The past 3 1/2 years of business have been the best and most challenging years of my life. I’ve undergone a lot of character development and as I have experienced those fires of growth and made choices for good, I have noticed and am continuing to notice a corollary increase in business success.

Business is noble. If you are working, you are in business, and I applaud and encourage you for that decision you made. Now, take a sanctified pride in your work. God has given you the ability to work – Do it with all your might. Put your heart into everything you do and focus on blessing those you work with – be they your drive-through customers, your lawn owners, your consulting clients, your large businesses, your government, your church, whomever – focus on blessing your customers.

I am excited to be in business. I am looking forward to what this year brings as I continue to grow, by God’s grace, in favor with God and man.

Jonathan Wold

P.S. The thrust of these thoughts came after reading the first chapter of Thou Shall Prosper by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. Thanks to Joshua for pointing me in the book’s direction.

Taken this morning by the hospital photographer.

I’m writing as I look across the hospital room at my beautiful wife. She’s fallen asleep for a few moments, our son Jaiden, cradled in her arms. Jaiden Andrew Wold was born yesterday morning at 3:20 AM, weighing 7 pounds, 3 ounces. He is amazing.

I earn a good income as the Marketing Director and partner in a web development company in Jasper, Indiana. On the side, my wife and I have several successful niche projects that bring in regular income as well.

I have debt, though.

You see, in the years proceeding married life I had failed to develop positive habits of money management. I was convicted on it, somewhat, but the conviction rarely led to action. I was making more money than a lot of young people my age and, unfortunately, I wasn’t taking good care of it. For a long time, my sense of budgeting was, “Oh, I’ll just make more money..”. Friends and family tried to encourage me in a better direction but I wouldn’t let it all sink in.

And so, as a young unmarried man with good income, I began acquiring credit card debt like there was no tomorrow. After all, I reasoned, I’d be paying it right off. 3 years later, I am still paying it off and I’ve spent thousands in interest. Not a very wise use of funds.

As a married man, though, I’ve been humbled and, thankfully, begun to realize the great responsibility I have to wisely manage the income I’m blessed with. I’ve also been convicted that I should not be carrying around this high load of debt and have begun working extra hard to remove it from our lives. My dear wife has been very loving and supportive through it all and, bringing no debt to the marriage, has accepted my debt as her own and is working with me to take it off our shoulders.

Early in 2008, thanks to the support of a dear friend, I stopped using credit cards entirely and even gave them into my friend’s safe keeping to ensure that I wouldn’t yield in a moment of weakness.

It was hard..

At one point, in a crisis with no savings in the bank and a wedding in just a few short weeks, I took my car to the bank to apply for a loan. Providence opened the doors shortly thereafter that I didn’t need the loan, but “wow” was that a wake up call. Credit cards had given me so much “safety” and, because of that safety, I’d never really had to feel what it was like to experience financial difficulty.

That brings us to today.

With a family of 5 (2 adults, 1 dog, 1 bird, and a fish) to provide for, my wife and I have decided to turn up the heat on our finances and practice an even tighter level of economy. We’re working hard to cut out all the “extras” in our life and, as a big part of that, we’ve made the difficult decision to “downsize” our home.

Now, we’re looking at a much smaller home (Single bedroom, 1 bath, no garage). We’ve yet to see how it will all work out, but the principles are in place. Dave Ramsey has a quote from his book, The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness (highly recommended), which goes as follows:

“If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.”

So, we’re learning our lessons.

We moved to cash spending and started an envelope budgeting system and, though there have been some challenges, we’ve found it to be a solid step in the right direction for us.

Look forward to more posts on the subject, especially relating to “fighting debt”.

Have a wonderful rest of the day,

Jonathan Wold

I’ve been following some of the principles of more efficient time management for awhile now, but until this morning, they just hadn’t been brought together.

Last weekend I joined several of my close friends and family on the last Sabbath of Indiana family camp. While my wife and I had only been able to make it for one day, several of our friends and family members had been there for the days prior. During those days, they’d each been inspired on the topic of time management and scheduling. As a result, upon their return home, they began putting the principles into practice and working to set themselves and their homes on schedule. Their enthusiasm planted seeds of inspiration in my heart also.

A few months ago, my dear wife had put a lot of thought and energy into a schedule for our family which we then proceeded to follow faithfully for about 2-3 days. A busy school life and the slant towards unpredictability that newlyweds are often prone too was set against us and, though we recognized the definite importance, we let our schedule slide.

How many of you have experienced that before? Why is it that time management seems so difficult?

Several years ago (and a few of you faithful readers may recall this) I put a lot of energy into a “mastery of time management”. I had good intentions and did make apparent progress, but I was lacking a few critical ingredients.

As a Christian I now understand it my God-given responsibility to be a good steward of the time and energy He’s given me. To experience continual success, as a husband and as a businessman, I must be a master of the time God has allotted me and not a servant to it.

It’s quite a challenge. It can and must be done, though.

Here’s an outline of the schedule that I’ve set this morning.

4:00 AM – Arise and shine. Get up and begin my morning prayer and study time.

5:00 AM – Prayer and study ends. Go for a short walk. Return and plan the remainder of the morning.

5:30 AM – For the next 2 hours, my time is spent between answering emails, blogging, and working on side projects. Over the next few weeks, I will continue to focus on improving how this particular block of time is spent.

7:30 AM – Walk with my wife.

8:00 AM – Breakfast and preparation for work. Leave around 8:40.

9:00 AM – After prayer, work begins at our office in Jasper, Indiana.

—

Getting up at 4 AM can be a challenge my friends. Some of you have tried it and, like me, after a good night’s rest, wouldn’t ever think of starting your day another way. Even with good intentions, though, and a recognition of the potential that the early morning offers, it’s not an easy thing.

Each night before going to bed, I pray that God would wake me up the next day and, very importantly, that He would give me the desire to get up. The warmth of bed is inviting when your eyes first open, especially on these cold fall and winter mornings. If I don’t get up immediately, my eyes will close and I will sleep.

God has never let me down. He always seems to know exactly how much sleep I need. Since I began the habit 2 years ago, even on days when I had early morning appointments, I have never had to use an alarm clock. There’s something jarring and unhealthy about the alarm clock suddenly pulling us out of restful sleep into a state of unhappy alertness. In my study of the Scriptures I found testimonies of others that relied on God to wake them up morning by morning (Isaiah 50:4) and I decided to exercise that same faith and rely on God to wake me up. Alarm clock free for all this time, I get much better sleep and no longer dread the early morning hours. Try it and see for yourself.

And with that, I’m off to start on my next morning project. I’ll continue to keep you posted on my progress with scheduling and I look forward to hearing your personal reports as well.

Have a wonderful new day,

Jonathan Wold

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working together to bring consistency to our life. While we continue to be flexible, we tend towards a bedtime of no later than 10:30 and, ideally, closer to 9:30.

With my work as a partner in a development and niche marketing company, several side projects, work in my local church, and a family of my own, finding time for blogging, etc., unless I have control over my time, is impossible.

Here’s how a typical day will go.

I wake up, without an alarm clock, around 5-6 AM. I get up, drink a full glass of water, and then go into our guest room/office and spend time in Bible study, inspirational reading, and prayer. 45 minutes or so later, I close my time in prayer and then begin tackling the day. I’ll divide my time between answering emails, blogging, and working on side projects. This will typically go on until it’s time to eat and get ready for work. Depending on our schedule that morning, I’ll eat breakfast with my sweet wife, spend a bit of time together, and then off I go to work.

On some mornings, I’ll tune in to a message on audioverse.org while washing the dishes or doing some other general cleaning around the house. My wife takes excellent care of our home and helping out every now and then when things get backed up is the least I can do.

So, is it worth it?

Yes! A thousand times over, yes!

That extra time in the morning makes all the difference my friends.

In just the past few weeks, as I’ve had the extra time, I’ve been able to learn more, to move forward on my side projects, and be better prepared for the day’s work.

If you are already an early riser, I encourage you to keep it up. I’d love to hear your personal experiences.

If you’re not yet, how about giving it a try? It’s not an easy thing if you’re unused to it. I know what it’s like to be up till 2 AM and sleep till noon. It’s a hard cycle to break and for some it’s easy to decide that “Well, I’m just not a morning person”. It’s a habit, though, and like any other habit, old ones can be broken and new ones formed.

As I grow older and responsibilities increase the desire to have a mastery of my time and health continues to grow stronger. And as I am learning to control my time and keep priorities straight (God, family, work, ministry, side projects), I’ve been blessed with good health and success in the work that I take on.

I have much to learn and I look forward to more trials and a greater depth of experience.

Have a wonderful new day my friends.

Jonathan Wold

Using the design work of another has been a “no no” in my mind for a long time. Why? Well, why not just do it myself?

And that’s what I’d done.

The previous design of this blog had been put together by yours truly and it had taken me quite some time. I worked hard at it and had some positive feedback.

Design isn’t my strength, though. God has given me talents and abilities in other areas and rather than letting pride hold me back, I’ve stepped forward to make the most of the talents that God has blessed others with. If I had the time, I’d be interesting in learning more and putting the energy into an original design. The time I do have, though, needs to be focused on using the gifts I already have, working to improve and sharpen them.

I finished a book by Ben Carson this morning entitled “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story“. I highly recommend it.

In it, Ben talks about the importance of “THINKing BIG”. He encourages us to begin with determination and the full use of the gifts God has given us, then to go on for training and a sharpening of our skills. Look at the obstacles in life as hurdles, not barriers. Each hurdle conquered prepares us for the next.

In our business, we encourage each other to focus on our talents and work towards mastery. Making the decision to use an existing WordPress theme helped me clear up the block my “old design” was giving me and focus on writing once again. I was reminded to practice what I preach.

Have a wonderful rest of the day,

Jonathan Wold

It’s been some time since my hands have given expression to thought on this humble blog. I’ve contemplated new posts every now and then and, in one case, even began preparing a first draft. I didn’t finish, though, and a busy life provided little opportunity to think about blogging let alone to blog.

An email changed that, though.

I received an email letting me know that a sponsor was willing to pay for a new post on my blog. The sum of money was what I’d originally asked for when joining the service a year or more ago. I’d intentionally set it high as I hadn’t fully decided whether “sponsored reviews” was a direction I wanted to pursue.

That email got me thinking. Initially, I said yes. I’d looked over the site and, contrary to finding anything objectionable, found it interesting enough. With little time on my hands between family, work, and a few side projects, though, I hadn’t actually had time to write the review until this morning, a few days before the deadline.

I took a short walk before sunrise this morning and after asking God for wisdom, I came to my decision. I wouldn’t write the review.

Integrity is crucial. Those who requested the review had, understandably, requested that I not mention it being a paid review. That could easily lead my readers to believe that it was a personal endorsement when, in actuality, had it not been for the offer to be paid, I wouldn’t have written about this particular site.

So, it was a simple decision. The small sum I’d make upfront wasn’t worth the risk of losing your trust.

And, there was an added blessed in all this..

I’m blogging again :).

Have a wonderful rest of the day and look forward to more.

Jonathan Wold

We had a wonderful day and went for a nice 2 mile walk in the snow after lunch. That evening, we spent some time sledding.

This morning, though, it posed a challenge to our plans of going in and pulling an “all day(er)” at the office. We decide to work from home. Nick, who lives just down the road from his parents house (who are kindly housing Joshua and I at the moment), came up to visit and we setup shop on the kitchen table and got back to work.

Here you can see Joshua designing away in the background. He handles all the design work for the company. He works primarily in Illustrator and is also starting to branch off into Photoshop.

To the right you can see Nick programming. Today we’ve been working out some small bugs on Blogster.com. Nick is fixing a challenge with the TinyMCE editor. He works with Zend Studio as his PHP IDE of choice and Navicat for MySQL work. He uses Firebug (on Firefox) for his AJAX/jQuery debug work.

And to the left is my humble little laptop. Today I’ve been answering questions on Blogster and making sure various projects of ours are up-to-date.

Life in our little startup (Sabramedia.com) is wonderful. I’m currently working full-time as a developer, exercising my God-given talents and abilities with CSS and interface development to work with Nick in building our application platform and working together on a number of implementations. My passion is niche marketing and, slowly but surely, opportunities are arising for me to do that full-time within the company. First, though, I will continue to be faithful in the small things and pursue my love of development.

We’ve been blessed with a lot of success and a lot of challenges which, as we’re faithful with each, continue to bring even more success.

Tomorrow we’ll be heading back into the office and going through another fast-paced day of work.

On Friday, I’ll be flying out to Oklahoma to spend a week with my fiancée, Joslyn. Fiancée? That’s right! On May 19th of 2008, I’m getting married! :) – As excited I am about working with the wonderful team of guys and girls that we have at Sabramedia, I’m even more excited about my future with Joslyn. God has been very good to me.

More on life in our little startup later. Once development demands have given us a bit more breathing room, I’m looking forward to sharing more on our experiences and the daily lessons we’ve learned on running a successful startup.

Have a wonderful day!

Jonathan Wold

It’s over 2 months since my last update and as there has been no lack of progress in my life by any stretch of the imagination, I’ve finally been impressed and blessed with the time to sit down, start typing, and share.

The following is an outline and summary of the events of the past 2 months:

• Relocated From Woodburn, IN (Near Fort Wayne) down to Jasper, IN – This included not only a move of nearly all my earthly possessions, but also a relocation of what was once my business office in Woodburn to an entirely new business venture. I made the move along with my dear younger brother, Joshua, who works full time with me and the rest of the team in our Jasper office.
• Started A New Business – As this has occupied the majority of the past 2 months, a paragraph will hardly do it justice, but I will give a brief sense of things and look forward to sharing more details over the next few weeks. Through circumstances that Providence along could arrange, my brother and I met and made the decision to go into business with two bright and God-fearing young men, Nick Johnson and Gunnar Bruun. Nick and myself have both been blessed with several years of experience in web development and, when we met, we were both running successful businesses. Gunnar, Nick’s brother-in-law, was working with him full time as Joshua, my brother, was working with me. God led in our lives and the four of us made the decision to go into business together. The day after our arrival, we started work on one of the biggest projects we’d, individually, ever done. We’ve been blessed with tremendous success as we’ve moved forward and finished project after project and, though some of the days are long and our brains feel like they’ve run a half-marathon, we unanimously agree that we all love our jobs.
• Trained For, Ran, And Completed A Half-Marathon – On Sunday, October 7, the four of us, along with several other members of Nick’s family, ran and completed (in good time) a half-marathon in Evansville, Indiana. Joshua and I, along with Caleb, Nick’s younger brother, had opportunity to train for just over 3 weeks prior to the run. Prior to our training, none of us had spent much time running. We went from having never run more than a few miles at a time to being able to do easily do 8 at a time and, ultimately, the 13.1 miles of the half-marathon. We attribute the success as a blessing from God and a reward for the lifestyle choices we’ve made. All of us are vegetarians and seek to be faithful in caring for the bodies God has given us. I’m looking forward to running again :).
• Baptized – At 21 years old, though expressing a desire to follow Christ and seeking to do so with all my heart, I had never yet been baptized. On September 28, 2007, at just past 11:30 at night, I made the decision to commit my heart and my life fully to Christ and was baptized in a lake by Jeff Johnson, Nick’s father. I’ve never been happier. God has called me and has drawn me closer to Him all throughout my years and has blessed me and given me a happiness beyond expression. The decision to be baptized is a simple following in the footsteps of my Savior, a public expression of my commitment to Him. A few short weeks later, my brother Joshua, 20 years old, also made the decision to be baptized and, on a beautiful Sabbath afternoon, he committed his life fully to Christ.
• Attended Family Campmeeting – Earlier this year, two of my younger brothers, Joshua and Josiah, attended the Oklahoma Family Campmeeting. They were greatly blessed by it and, when it came time for the Indiana Family Campmeeting, Joshua and I, Caleb, Nick, Sabra (Nick’s wife), and Noah (Nick’s son), drove up to Timber Ridge for the 4 day meeting. We were greatly blessed by it and highly recommend it. I was encouraged and inspired by the testimonies and, since campmeeting, God has used the things I’ve been blessed to learn to call me up still higher in my walk with Him.
• Blessed With Ministry – A few months back, after reading Escape to God and being greatly blessed by it, I was impressed to share it, along with The Great Controversy through my personal website. You can read the offer on my list of Books That Have Changed My Life. Over the past few weeks a few requests came in, which I happily sent out. On Monday of this week, though, what began as a tiny trickle of requests began to grow into a bubbling stream. As of this morning, I’ve received over 200 requests for books from all across the United States. I’ve contacted the publisher of Escape to God and, Lord willing, I’ll be buying out their inventory of hardcover copies to fulfill the requests received thus far as well as the requests that continue to pour in. It may, at first, seem like a great expense. But in the light of the way that God has used the books to be a blessing to me and, in the light of eternity, sharing these books with all who will read them, no matter what it costs me, is the very least I can do. Both books have played a pivotal role in my life and have been a powerful influence for good. I am honored to be blessed with such an opportunity.
• And Much More.. – It’s the little things that count most of all. I have been so greatly blessed these past few weeks and months. There have been trials and great challenges, but through them all, as I’ve looked to God for strength, He’s heard my prayers and has helped me through. I can’t see what the future holds, but I trust God to take me through it and, come what may, I will continue to exercise faith in Him, knowing that He will lead me along the very best way.

It’s now time to eat and go to work. I thank each of you for your support and encouragement throughout the times I’ve been blessed to know you. For those I’ve yet to meet, I look forward to meeting you :).

May your days be richly blessed and may you be a blessing to others,

-Jonathan Wold

About a week or so ago, I was working on a WordPress project that called for an above average contact form. It needed to give visitors the ability to upload photos, receive auto responses and notifications, have built in spam blocking, and track submissions in the WordPress database.

After a bit of looking, I found cForms II, a WordPress contact form plugin developed by Oliver.

I began working with the plugin and was very quickly satisfied that I’d found a winner.

Now, in setting up this plugin, I made a mistake and was reminded of an important lesson, which became the inspiration behind this entry.

The contact form for this particular project was being used as an extensive questionnaire. As such, we decided to split it up over multiple pages to encourage people to make it all the way through. I came up with a way to do it, but it wasn’t working quite as nicely as I wanted it too.

So, I went over to the cForms II support forum and posted my challenge to see if anyone had any ideas or suggestions.

Oliver replied, letting me know that my request, though possible, was outside the scope of what cForms was meant to do. He also (and this is where the lesson comes in) pointed out the trend that people, developers especially, who’d been using and benefiting from the cForms plugin, had taken to the habit of removing credit for the work.

..And that’s what I had done.

Without even thinking it through, I had chosen to remove the credit link back to cForms from the client’s site. This seemed natural to me. The option was there; Oliver had been nice enough to provide an easy way to add or remove his credit link, and without stopping to think, I’d taken it off.

Now, sure, it’s all open source, we’re more than entitled to add or remove credits as we see fit, right?

Well, we certainly have that choice.. but is it fair?

In my case, there is no excuse. I’m a full-time web developer. I get paid for the work I do and I benefit directly from the work of guys like Oliver who’ve put their time and energy into developing a solid product. If it weren’t for him and guys like him, I’d have had to go and build the same thing from scratch.

Which brings me to the lesson that this served to remind me of, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” Luke 6:31 As a Christian, no matter what I’m doing, whether it be work or play, I’m to treat others as I would be treated.

Now, being thus convicted, I began to give the situation some thought and was blessed with an idea. In my redesign of JonathanWold.com, I had finished up the work by adding a colophon. Traditionally, colophons were used in print media to provide details about the publication of the book. In the web, we’ve begun using it to provide details about what goes on “behind the scenes” of a website.

I’ve decided to start making the addition of a colophon a habit, in which I’ll provide a list of the resources and technologies used in the architecture and design of a website.

So, a big thanks to Oliver for his work on the cForms II plugin and for being very professional about the entire situation. It was a timely lesson for me to be reminded of and I thank you for it my friend :).

And finally, last but most important, I give full credit for my work, the good work I’ve done, to God. Were it not for Him, my conscience would have never been pricked and my sense of integrity would be non-existant. The things I’ve been blessed to learn and the people I’ve been blessed to meet, have all come as a direct result of His hand in my life. The mistakes I’ve made I take full credit for, but the lessons I’ve learned from them and the victories I’ve gained by applying each lesson learned, all are due to a God who’s been forever patient with me and never given up.

Have a wonderful day my friends. Remember, give the credit where and to whom it’s due.

Until next time,

-Jonathan Wold

P.S. Credit for the awesome illustration up top goes to my brother Joshua, who, in addition to his work with me and the rest of the team, does freelance illustration on the side.