22
Aug

Vacation

Chris and I are heading to Rome tonight where we’ll be meeting up with 20 friends and heading on our “friendymoon” cruise (like a honeymoon, but with friends).

Which brings me to the topic of Vacation.

You absolutely positively MUST take vacation. It is a requirement. It is not optional.

At Fab I have gone so far as to literally require every manager to take a vacation between the months of August and October so that everyone is rested and ready for the holiday push. My message to Fab’s managers is clear: If you don’t take vacation during this period, you’re fired. Seriously.

I take one vacation every quarter. During my vacations I try to get my mind off of work but in reality I’m constantly thinking about how Fab needs to evolve. My quarterly vacations help me get out of the daily grind and think up where we need to go and what we need to do to get there. Some of my best ideas and insights have come while on vacation. It’s critical. In addition to my personal vacations with Chris, Bradford (Fab’s other founder) and I have a regular practice of taking days off together to brainstorm Fab’s future while in a relaxed setting or while visiting some new foreign city. It’s critical.  Major shifts in Fab’s business and new initiatives and projects were hatched while on vacation. It’s critical.

At Fab, we have 400+ team members who work passionately and tirelessly to help people better their lives with design. As CEO, a critical part of my job is to set the right tone and pace and make sure we don’t burn people out along the way. 

Smile, you’re designed to take a break every now and again.

p.s. Anyone who says, “I’m too busy to take vacation,” is too busy doing the wrong things.

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About

Betashop is the website of Jason Goldberg,
Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Fab.

Jason founded Fab in 2011 with Bradford Shellhammer (Chief Design Officer) and Nishith Shah (Chief Technology Officer).

Fab is everyday design.

Fab’s mission is to help people better their lives with design. Millions of people around the world use Fab to discover everyday design products at great prices, to connect with the world’s most exciting designers, and to share their favorite design inspirations. Smile, you're designed to.

Some have called Fab "the fastest growing E-commerce company on the planet." We like to say we're just doing our best to serve up great design that makes people smile.

Fab now serves more than 11 million members across 26 countries. Fab grew sales by more than 500% in 2012, one-third of which comes from users of the Fab mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. In February 2013 Fab was named the #5 most innovative company in the World by Fast Company. Fab won the award for Best E-Commerce Company of The Year at The Crunchies in both 2012 and 2011. It's all very humbling and inspiring. The truth is we celebrate our challenges more than our successes at Fab and we're really still just getting started.

Fab is the fourth company Jason founded. Jason previously founded fabulis, socialmedian, and Jobster. In 2009, following the sale of socialmedian to XING AG, Jason was Chief Product Officer at XING, based in Hamburg, Germany. Before starting Jobster in 2004, Jason led product and business initiatives at both T-Mobile USA and AOL Time Warner. In a prior life, Jason spent 6 years working 100 hours a week for Bill Clinton in the White House.

Jason is also an investor in and Board Member at RJ Metrics. He is also an investor in BlackJet and Twitter. Notable prior investments: TweetDeck.

Jason is a product guy. He loves to blog, loves transparency, and loves trying to make people smile. Jason shares everything about Fab on his blog, betashop, at http://betashop.com.

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