Decker Marketing

I've Joined the Board of Monetate: Testing, Targeting and Personalization

I've been in digital marketing and ecommerce my entire career. As such, I recognize that online marketing is about balancing the creative with the analytical. In the case of my Dell career (managing Dell.com) it was heavily analytical. That's what I love about online direct marketing, you can justify investment and grow a business through learning what works and what doesn't.

Here's the problem though. The cycle of learning what works, of failing fast, of cycling through tests to optimize online return is too slow. Some of this is cultural, but it is also because tools are clumsy. Until now. 

A few months ago I saw a demo of Monetate. I was blown away, and I've been in this business a long time. I pursued the board and CEO of Monetate to get involved, because I am truly excited about what they have and where they're going. I think they're a hidden secret in ecommerce, and the smartest marketers I know are using them at QVC and Urban Outfitters. Sorry Alex and Dmitri to let your secret out!

Here's what they do in a nutshell. First, here's what you have to do. Put one line of javascript code on your site (much like you've already done with Coremetrics or Google Analytics). That's it. What they do is everything else. You can literally change or rewrite any part of any page. Image overlays, ratings, functionality, banners, pricing, etc. They provide expertise to run different tests and segmentations. You want to change a banner on your site based on people experiencing sunny weather right now? You want to add functionality that IT is taking too long to implement? You want to trial 10 of the features you plan for your site redesign? Done, Done, Done.

As you can see, I'm excited about this company. I'm joining their board and hoping to see the ecommerce world beat a path to their door. As CMOs and VPs of ecommerce struggle for resources and attention in a multi-channel world, I truly believe an elegant capability like Monetate to test, target, segment, personalize and merchandise, and analyze is the key to online growth and culture change. In essence, it turns web site managers, content manager, web producers, and merchandisers into "margin makers", democratizing the P&L impact any individual can make.

Check them out: www.monetate.com

Here's the release:

Monetate Welcomes Dell Veteran and Bazaarvoice CMO Sam Decker to Board of Directors

Seasoned eCommerce expert brings enormous digital marketing and company growth expertise to testing, targeting, and personalization leader

Philadelphia, PA / September 22, 2010 – Monetate, the leading independent provider of testing, targeting, and personalization for websites, today announced it has appointed Sam Decker, Chief Marketing Officer of Bazaarvoice and former Dell marketing executive, to the company’s Board of Directors. Sam brings more than 17 years of industry leadership in digital marketing, social commerce, and start-up growth experience to Monetate, including an unparalleled ability to precisely identify the evolving needs of marketers and innovate measurable, high-impact solutions to emerging challenges.

“We are delighted to gain the expertise and guidance of a visionary eCommerce expert of Sam’s stature,” said David Brussin, Founder and CEO of Monetate (www.monetate.com).

Added Brussin, “Sam brings enormous experience in building companies that have become market leaders, most recently playing a key role in Bazaarvoice’s spectacular growth to over 950 clients worldwide. He also stands apart for having a unique vision and platform, as a blogger, an author and the architect of categories like social commerce that have come to dominate the online landscape. His expertise will be invaluable to Monetate as we expand to serve our rapidly growing customer base.”

Sam Decker is a recognized expert in eCommerce, word of mouth marketing, and direct marketing. As founding Chief Marketing Officer at Bazaarvoice, Sam helped build the core platform of Bazaarvoice products and led the company’s marketing efforts resulting in them becoming the category leader in Social Commerce.

Before joining Bazaarvoice, Sam spent seven years of leadership at Dell, Inc. in marketing, eBusiness, CRM, and customer-centricity. From 1999-2003, he led Dell’s consumer website, building Dell.com into the largest consumer eCommerce site at $3.5B in annual sales, and established global best practices in merchandising, analytics, product management, and operations. Later he directed marketing for Dell’s $1B+ installed-based marketing division, responsible for eBusiness, marketing communications and brand management.

Sam is a frequent speaker at marketing and eCommerce events and author of an award-winning marketing blog (www.deckermarketing.com) and a bi-weekly ClickZ column on social commerce (http://bit.ly/SDClickZ). Sam has authored two books on word-of-mouth and guerrilla marketing. He serves on the board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) and the board of advisors for the Web Analytics Association.

“Monetate has had an extraordinary amount of success for a young company, with clients such as QVC and Urban Outfitters.” said Decker. “They are one of the most exciting companies in eCommerce and digital marketing right now, with a full service solution that creates indisputable results for their clients. I am very excited to join the team as they reinvent testing, targeting and personalization that revolves entirely around the customer and their needs.”

About Monetate

Monetate is the leading independent provider of testing, targeting, and personalization for websites. Every day, major retailers like QVC and Urban Outfitters use Monetate to make the most of their online marketing dollars and optimize their website investments. Monetate helps marketers test product pitches and eCommerce site features, then accurately target messaging and personalized offers to specific audience segments, anywhere on the site, without using any internal IT resources. Based in Philadelphia and serving a growing list of Internet Retailer Top 500 companies, Monetate is a Coremetrics Partner, an eTail Preferred Solution Provider, and a member of Shop.org.

Media Contacts: Stephen Cobb
Marketing Evangelist
Email scobb at cobb dot com

Source: Monetate, Inc.
100 Four Falls Corporate Center, Suite 407
Conshohocken, PA 19428
Phone: 484-323-6313
Fax: 484-323-6311

Web: http://www.monetate.com
Blog: http://www.monetate.com/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/monetate

Announcing my departure from Bazaarvoice...and search for my CMO successor!

This is a post about change. Winston Churchill said, “There is nothing wrong with change, as long as it is in the right direction.” 

After 4.5 years at Bazaarvoice, I’m announcing a smooth and amicable departure from the company in order to pursue my next challenge and opportunity. (I announced this to our company last week at our quarterly all hands.)

This is not your typical resignation. You could call this a ‘planned’ or ‘friendly’ departure. During this time I plan to remain on as Bazaarvoice CMO while I help recruit for my successor (one of the reasons for this post), and upon my departure I will be on the Bazaarvoice Board of Advisors to help the company’s continued growth.

“Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown.” George Shinn

There are three reasons I’m making this announcement proactively:

1. To stop speculation or assumptions about this move – before it begins. We are an open & transparent culture and such is the spirit of this transition. Frankly, more companies should do it this way.
2. To announce the beginning of my journey to explore what’s next, and be able to have open discussions outside of Bazaarvoice.
3. To publicize and market that one of the best CMO positions in the country is now open!

To start off, I love this company. I’ve been there since we launched the company in January 2006. Brett and Brant (co-founders) have graciously referred to me as a third co-founder, and I’ve felt that way. It’s what has made this decision so hard. 

“Change starts when someone sees the next step.” William Drayton

My interest when we launched Bazaarvoice was to help invent where marketing was going. My objectives were to build the products, platform and brand that would be recognized as the leader in helping companies realize a new paradigm of high-ROI social marketing (i.e. social commerce). It’s been satisfying to consult directly with clients, helping them change the way they market, merchandise, improve products and change their culture.  Along the way we defined a new market, build a great team, developed a great culture, and created an authentic brand in non-traditional ways. By all measures my expectations are far exceeded and I’m proud of how far our company has come in such a short time. Bazaarvoice now has offices in 8 countries and employs 550 people worldwide. I’m incredibly passionate about the customer-centric transformation we’ve had on 850 brands globally. These are the best people I’ve worked with on one of the most exciting missions in one of the most dynamic industries.

“Things do not change; we change.” Henry David Thoreau

My decision to move on is difficult and complex, from the head and the heart. It took time to get here. The short story is I’m interested in building another great company, and I shared my “itch” with Brett (our CEO). We’ve had open discussions for nearly six months about exploring new challenges and taking the next steps in my career. With full support from Brett and the board, we agreed we could make a smooth and positive transition that’s good for both the company and for my future.

“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” Karen Kaiser Clark

As for the company, Bazaarvoice couldn’t be in a better position…which (as an investor) makes me comfortable about moving on. This is a fantastic time to find the next CMO. We’re an established market leader still growing at a blistering pace with new products serving new industries in new markets. Though I say this with some bias, the next CMO is coming into the best marketing team in the industry and has an opportunity to make a real difference.  We regularly have marketers reach out to us about joining our team, and I openly welcome the candidate who is going to take this company and team to the next phase of growth. If that’s you, or you know someone great, I hope you’re reading this! Send me an email, tweet or message through LinkedIn. 

In the meantime, I remain as Bazaarvoice CMO, pushing us forward as the leader in Social Commerce. Upon my departure (TBD), as I explore opportunities and ideas, I will be connected to Bazaarvoice as an advisor and consultant, and I may also consult to retailers, brands and other SaaS companies. I’m excited to uncover what’s next for me, and will share updates here or on Twitter/Facebook. I look forward to discussing new ideas, meeting new people, and exploring all sorts of change!

“When you're finished changing, you're finished.” Benjamin Franklin

And They're Off! Austin Entrepreneurs begin Capital Factory 2010

We started second annual Capital Factory program which I co-founded with Joshua Baer and Bryan Menell last year. I'm excited about this year's companies, some are further along than others, but I'm most impressed with the entrepreneurs themselves. 

Here are the companies:

• Hurricane Party (Austin, TX) – a location-based social networking application that helps users create, manage and discover events that are relevant to them.
• Simpz (Boston, MA) - helps event organizers reach critical mass and sell unused spots through word-of-mouth marketing via Twitter, Facebook, and other existing social networks. 
• Smackages (Dallas, TX) – a beauty community that connects members with cosmetics brands and helps them make more valuable cosmetics purchases by allowing them to try products before they buy them online. 
• RecycleMatch (Houston, TX) – an online marketplace that transforms waste into value by connecting companies that have waste with companies that can use the materials.
• Corkshare (Cleveland, OH) – a simple, visual way to share and discuss collections of web content like photos, videos, links, and more through virtual CorkBoards.

We had the welcome kickoff a few weeks ago and a couple meetings since. Already some of the ideas are evolving, which is expected. 70% of startups end up doing something different than what they first ventured. 

There are 20 mentors as part of this program, with heavy experience in fundraising, SEO, engineering, branding, and industry connections. I spend my time with the entrepreneurs discussing product direction and design, business model and marketing. I also make introductions to folks in the industry who can help them.

Capital Factory is an accelerator, not necessarily an incubator. Our job is not to 'nest' the startup until it's ready to jump out...it's to accelerate them to their next point. They should solidify the product direction, business model solid, and accelerate distribution or revenue. 

I'm proud of what Capital Factory is doing. It's a piece of a larger puzzle to make Austin even greater than it is today (Kiplinger named Austin #1 city of the decade!). And for me, along the way, I'm enjoying the collaboration with entrepreneurs, and learning from other entrepreneurs and mentors. It's community, enjoyment and professional development...trifecta!

If you're a developer/engineer thinking about an idea and applying next year, feel free to drop me a note at blog [at] deckermarketing.com

It's been one year since my last blog post...

 Today marks exactly one year from my last post on Deckermarketing. I started blogging in September 2003, and have written many posts on eBusiness, marketing, leadership and life…until May 4, 2009. After that day, I didn’t write another blog post until now. 

This wasn’t by design. Things just "slipped away". One month turned into two months, and that turned into a year. This must happen to others, right? Even John Porcaro -- an exec previously at Microsoft who inspired me to blog in 2003 when I was at Dell -- has not blogged in nearly a year, and he’s now a social media consultant! 

I thought this one year anniversary of “no posts” is a good opportunity to give a summary of how or why I orphaned my blog for so long.

First, Bazaarvoice has been more than a full time job as we’ve grown from 6 of us in January 2006 to over 550 employees, 9 products, serving 800 brands. In terms of writing (which takes a lot of time) I’ve felt more obligated to blog on Bazaarblog, write articles (such as my ClickZ column), and helping my team produce videos. And then I had other commitments taking time, such as co-founding Capital Factory, launching a web-based chore application, serving on boards, and spending as much time as I can with my family! 

A big factor is my Twitter activity took away from blogging. If I had an idea, I tried to put it in 140 characters and tried to live by a “less is more” mantra. And if the idea deserved more writing, and it was about marketing or social commerce, I ended up putting it on Bazaarblog.

Despite the lapse in content, Deckermarketing blog traffic hasn’t gone down. I still get 100 to 200 visits a day, largely from Google search results. I didn’t expect that.

 

Now what? I’m still super busy, however I don’t want to let the investment in this blog go to waste. I'm going to start to post again, at least once a month in depth, and more frequently with a simple post of a paragraph or less. But with so many outlets, it's hard to focus on one. What do you think? Is the same thing happening to you?

I realized how big we've gotten at our Bazaarvoice holiday party.

 

Posted via email from samdecker's posterous

How an 8-Year Old Became Co-CMO

I have to share this story…it’s about how my son got offered the job of Co-CMO for Bazaarvoice.

Last week we had kids-at-work day. I brought in my 8-year-old son Kyle and 11-year-old daughter Haley in for half a day to experience my work. They were very excited, however, I had a number of meetings and conference calls. During these meetings my daughter colored, read, and ate ice cream. My son, on the other hand, walked the halls and started offering advice to our employees.

Soon, our Partnerships Director suggested he interview for a job. So, Kyle typed up an introductory letter and started interviewing with our recruiter and several Bazaarvoice managers. I still have no idea this is going on.

Soon Kyle gets into Brett’s office (our CEO). Brett interviews him and soon realizes that his skills of giving “tips, advice and opinions” on things like pricing and how to sell products align well with marketing. So he offers him the Co-CMO position -- actually senior to me -- paying $50/mo and 100 shares!

In the video below I compiled some clips that I and others collected that day, showing his interview with Brett and examples of the advice that he was giving me and our VP of Business Development, Brant Barton. None of this is staged for video, we just captured what was happening. He came up with all of this himself.

It doesn’t stop there. He collected 15 business cards and since Wednesday he’s been emailing my employees offering tips and advice ever since. He’s already given feedback on taglines, where we should have our summit next year, and how to approach partnership relationships. He also gave us some tagline ideas are:

• Bringing more customers and costumers to companies
• The ratings and reviews aggressiveness is sometimes how they make the company better.
• Get ratings and reviews from home or on the move
• Bazaarvoice builds other businesses way beyond wow by just doing ratings and reviews.

As a project, I suggested that he should read our web site and learn our products. His first job was to present back how he should market our products better. Here’s what he came up with, unedited:

8-yr old Summarizes Bazaarvoice Products

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

We'll see where it goes from here, but I'm proud to be working for him! :-)

How to LIVE RICH

A good friend and ex-Dell colleague passed away on Friday, April 25, 2008, after a courageous and inspiring battle with brain cancer. I want to celebrate and share the piece of his life I knew, and the words of wisdom he left for all of us. 

Two months after I joined Dell in March 1999, a curly-haired Harvard grad moved into the cube next door. Over the next seven years Rich and I worked together to help build Dell’s consumer eBusiness to a $3.5B business, and then on Dell’s CRM and segmentation strategy (he worked on corporate strategy while I worked in Consumer division). But what he worked on is not as important as HOW he accomplished his goals.

Rich exemplified leadership. In fact, he had the rare quality of being a Level 5 Leader, as outlined by Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great. He excelled through confident humility amidst a (typical) corporate environment of politics, ego and alpha aggression. He always put decision in terms of what was right for the business, and helped others grow in the process. Everyone loved to work with Rich or for him.

So many of us were awestruck at Rich’s knowledge and wisdom. Rich often put up ‘observations’ on his small whiteboard in his cube. One time he made the observation that time and quality of mission statement are inversely related – graphed on the board, the more time spent on the mission statement the less it resonates. So true. And so funny.

Rich was a devoted father and husband. He excelled in this role as much as he excelled at work. We often played basketball together before work, but for a lot of the year, he also found time to teach children’s Bible study. Rich always left at 6pm to get home in time for dinner with his wife and growing family (now three children: David, Josh and James). Here you see pictures of him at my 30th birthday holding our new sons.

Occasionally we would joke in Spanish to each other, and I gave him the (inside joke) nickname of “El Bueno”, because in every way he was good. He was bound for greatness, and achieved it quickly at Dell accelerating his career to be Director for Global CRM and Customer Experience, reporting to Dell’s CMO.

Two months after I left Dell in early 2006 Rich called to seek advice about his decision to leave. He was interviewing to be President of Peruvian Connection in Kansas City. His Dell career was skyrocketing, and Rich could get a senior exec job at any other large company, but we agreed leading this growing multi-channel retailer (with much better margin than computers!) was his dream job.

In February the recruiter responded to my endorsement of Rich:

Thanks for your endorsement of Rich Lloyd.  We had him tested, and the management testing center said he's brilliant.  Rich seems to be a rare combination of raw intellect and leadership capability.  Off the charts in both categories.

They saw what I didn’t have to tell them. He got the job, and on March 28 he sent this email:

This is my final week here at Dell and I want to say thank you to all of the mentors, leaders, and colleagues, and truly, friends, that have meant a great deal to me in my nearly seven years here.  I am moving on to become President of Peruvian Connection, a private, direct-sales luxury apparel company based in the Kansas City area.

I came to Dell in 1999 seeking the world's best post-graduate business education -- and I got that, and then some. Along the way I met some truly remarkable people and was given some incredibly rewarding and enriching assignments.  I want to thank all of you for a great experience, and in particular, four great bosses/mentors in Mike George, Tom Vogl, Bobbi Dangerfield and Kurt Kirsch, who believed in me and in my potential...  People who were great business leaders, but even better people.

Many people would say the same good things about Rich; he was a great boss and mentor to many people I know. He impacted many others through the example he set at work and home.

Rich and I kept in touch sporadically as he thrived at Peruvian. I saw him at a couple conferences and he was in great spirits. He was very happy in Kansas City and at his job, making a bigger impact on a smaller scale. I had to bottle some of his wisdom, and interviewed him on my blog here.

In August 2007 Rich was diagnosed with Brain Cancer. He moved back to Utah with his family to seek treatment, and kept everyone who knew him up to date through his CaringBridge journal. Like hundreds of others, I read every alert. Over the last 8 months he shared his ups and downs, but ALWAYS with a sense of hope, optimism, strength and gratitude. I never read or sensed despair from Rich or Marianne (his wife). He inspired hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people through his battle. Even up to --  especially up to – the very end.

Rich is in a better place now, and he left us something that can put us in a better place on earth. In the midst of his battle with Cancer, Rich and his family came up with a phrase that captured Rich’s outlook on life. They called it “LIVE RICH”, yet it has nothing to do with money. As you’ll see, it has everything to do with living RICHLY. A week before he passed, Rich recorded his words on what it means to LIVE RICH (Thanks to Rob Sorensen for sharing). I will be thinking about Rich and the example he set for the rest of my life. I hope you (and everyone you pass this along to) do as well. Life is short. Live Rich.

Below are Rich’s own words from his recording…

1. SEIZE THE DAY: Every day is a precious gift from God

“You’ve got one life.  You’ve got a limited amount of it.  You don’t know how long it’s gonna be.”
 
2. LIFE IS ABOUT PEOPLE NOT THINGS: make memories with the people you love

“Living rich to me is like I always say life is about people and not about things.  And so living rich consists of spending time with family, friends and all the people you love.  Cause you never know how finite that time is.  Even more so, that’s what makes life rich.  It’s about people.  It’s about relationships.  It’s about loved ones.  It’s about friends. Make a memory.  Life is about people.  People get caught up with day to day errands and shopping and things that you won’t even remember them.  It won’t even register on your radar screen.  But if you set up an activity with your kids, or you take advantage of some vacation opportunity, you just make some sort of memory, you’ll never regret it.”

3. LIVE WELL ROUNDED: learn continuously and always challenge yourself

“It means trying to do things that really are enriching, where you’re learning, you’re growing, you’re challenging yourself. You know in my case it’s keeping up with old skills, like making sure I keep my piano up, making sure that I stay writing and doing the things that I love to do.  So when I Live Rich I don’t give up.  It means I still try to learn stuff, and I richly tackle new challenges and problems.”

4. MAKE CHOICES THAT ENABLE LIVING RICHLY: make good choices every single day no matter how hard

“I remember the old poem “two roads diverged in the yellow wood” – the Robert Frost poem – “and I chose the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference”.  And it goes without saying, no matter who you are or what stage you are in life, if you’re a teenage, or if you’re an 8 year old like my son, or a cancer-stricken 35 year old, you have choices every day…every single day.  And those choices will lead to other choices…they lead to some bad ends if they’re poor choices.  And to me I always think, “what’s it gonna mean down the road?”  If I decide to do XYZ what’s that gonna mean for ABC decisions?  The answers do mean a lot."

“And so I just think about every day we have to make choices, and their outcome might seem small but the significance of making that choice might seem teeny, it might be I go to my son’s soccer game or I drag myself out when I’m cold and tired go see my sister speak in church and all these choices get harder when you have a trial or this adversity like we’re experiencing.  But just because they’re hard doesn’t mean they’re not worth making. So just remember that your choices lead to other choices, and they need to be good choices. “
LIVE RICH. Live Richly.

---------

More...

• Hear Rich’s own words on How to LIVE RICH
• Read his inspiration journal of his battle with cancer on CaringBridge
• Read Rich's Obituary
• Donate to the Lloyd Children Missionary and Education Fund through any Wells Fargo Bank

My 1997 Home Page & Resume...still alive!

Maybe with the new baby I'm in a nostalgic mood to share this with you...

I was going through some old files on my computer tonight and found a local version of my personal home page I built in 1995 and abandoned in 1997. I clicked on one of the links and it went live! It's still at http://users.aol.com/samdecker. I have no idea why this is still live...I lost my free "SamDecker" AOL account in 2000.

My home page simply featured my online resume and list of links live, but it's an interesting trip back in history, with an animated gif and .gif photo of myself (everything was .gif back then!). You can see some early Internet links, many of which are not live anymore. I don't call out some of those college accomplishments on my resume any more, but you can see my entrepreneurial roots!

Also, as an aside, you can see my first corporate web site I built (with the technical skills of Raines Cohen). Here you can see the 1996 version of the User Group Connection web site.

And if you want to see what I looked like with hair in 1995, here you go:

Before:

And after...

If anyone tries to sell you something with these before and after pictures, don't buy it (as if I have to tell you)!

Announcing Jack Tyler Decker

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

MANAGEMENT SHAKEUP AT DECKER HOUSEHOLD
Jack Tyler Decker Appointed New CEO

AUSTIN, TX (MARCH 6, 2008) -- The Decker Household announced today the arrival of its new CEO, Jack Tyler Decker. A 9-month veteran of fast-growth environments, Jack took control of the family startup on Thursday, March 6 at 5:42PM CT.

In a management shakeup, the 21 inch, 8 lb. 11 oz tycoon appointed Shannon Decker to report directly to him as President of The Household. Shannon's promotion came after hard labor disputes for a few hours just prior to his appointment. Sam Decker, who had worked many years to gain peer status to the new President, has been demoted to special assistant to Shannon and her supporting staff, Kyle and Haley Decker.

Jack had started his 9 month rise to control since June 7…or maybe June 8 or 9, 2007-- analysts cannot confirm the date. Jack had an inside track to the position ever since.

The new CEO is expected to work around the clock. His duties will consist of sleeping, eating 8 meals a day, and making many daily deposits into plastic envelopes. Shannon and Sam, in their new roles, will act quickly on directions from their new boss to achieve his desired career growth. On the day of his arrival, the CEO wasted no time crying out instructions to her new staff, and was already making small deposits.

Jack Decker, with a simple coo and finger suck, immediately got his team to swing into action to support his growth. This hard-working CEO hopes to crawl, eat solid foods, and hold his head up within a few months. Shannon, President of The Decker Household, states, "It will be hard work adapting to the work schedule the boss will give us, but we’re ready. Failure is not an option. We were trained to do this.” Even Kasey, the black fur, four-legged floor cleaner, is expected to "kiss up" to the new boss with a few licks.

###

 

It's Been a While. A Few Updates...

Wow...am I overdue for writing on my blog or what!?. It's been busy since the last post. Lots of traveling, tradeshows, etc.

We raised $8.8M at Bazaarvoice, after becoming a profitable company several months ago and launching in the UK. We launched several new capabilities and have been hiring (interviewing) like crazy. Some other things keep me busy such as leading Austin Texchange, the Board of WOMMA, contributing magazine columns, and being an advisor to a few companies. My first blog priority has been to our company blog at www.bazaarblog.com (around social commerce and word of mouth). My 4-year old Decker Marketing blog has suffered. But now, after completing our biggest tradeshow of the year and an overdue vacation, I'm feeling a bit refreshed...

Rarely do I share a "personal update", but this is a big one...we're expecting our third child! In March we will have a 10 year old, 8 year old, and a newborn. It will be like starting over! My wife and I talked about it for two years and talked to a lot of families who had a big birth separation with no regrets. My friend, Thom Singer, is the youngest in a family of 8 kids (I think). He said it was a great growing up with older brothers and sisters, and reminded me that our older kids are built-in baby sitters. My wife and I were anxious at first (we'd lose our newly-gained freedom from baby care), but now we know what we're doing and we're excited. Family and kids is what brings the most happiness to us, and it's worth the sacrifice and hard work.

We'll see what happens in March, but for now I'll try to keep up on some blog postings here.