Crazy Dad Life - Building Online in the Off Hours 472r15

Discover How You Can Use Your Existing Content to Expand Your Audience and Set Your Business up for Growth In this week’s episode of the Crazy Dad Life, I walk through the process I recently went through with wiring a side hustle site up with hip features. You’ll learn… What my mindset was when I decided a hip site would work What software I used for the hip site How you can use existing video content from Instagram to deliver a free product offering for your audience What benefits were realized and how the first couple of days of the hip site performed Why standing up a hip site with a free offering allows you to know if what you are selling would even work Hear some of the struggles of standing up the hip site and the plugin I had to turn off Five Things I Learned (5TIL) Here are the 5 things I learned last week: Gmail’s unsend feature Trace – the app that allows you to send secret messages to your friend, and they have to work to figure out what it is Switch – the Tinder for the job market Slack’s integration with Google Calendar iPhone hacks that include the level feature, locking focus and exposure on the camera, and a trick to charge your phone quicker If you have something for the 5TIL, feel free to hit me on Twitter @JeffDStephens or me directly from the website. The post CDL 049 – Using a hip Site, and Repurposed Instagram Content, to Build Your Online Business appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Why You Need to Share Your Online Journey with Those Around You Last week I talked about digging into the details. I provided 4 reasons you should pay attention to the details when you create and consume content. This week I want to talk about our online journeys. In particular, I want to talk about how we should be sharing our journey with others. (Listen to the audio podcast by clicking on the play button) Your story matters. There is a lot to do when you are building an online platform. The number of tasks on your to-do list seem to only get longer with the ing of each day. How Do You Currently Handle It? Are you constantly digging in and trying to accomplish everything on your to-do list in a vacuum? Are you working away in isolation, hiding away from the world until you have something to show? You need to break out of those habits. It is extremely important for you to involve others in your journey. This is one of the main reasons why Masterminds are so popular, and productive. There is significant value when you engage with others who have a similar interest or ion for doing the work they love. I get it. It’s natural for you to be defensive with your secret sauce. You don’t want other people to know what you are baking. You want to go into the lab and then have the big reveal later. Or, maybe you are slightly embarrassed to it what you are doing. Maybe you are scared people will not understand. Maybe they will laugh at you. Why a Change is Needed I’m going to share with you 8 convincing reasons why you should start to share your online journey with those around you. Let’s dig into it. 1. Inspires Others Perhaps the biggest thing you can do by talking about your journey is to inspire others. Let people know what you are doing and maybe they will be sparked to do something they love. Let your friends and co-workers know what you have going on. Tell them about your side project and explain what it is. You may be surprised at the level of interest and inspiration you may cause. Also, don’t forget about your kids. Let them know what you are working on. Not only will you receive fresh and unfiltered  but you might be inspiring the next internet mogul. 2. Justifies Your Blood, Sweat, and Tears You will work hard as an entrepreneur. There is no doubt about that. Much of that work will go unnoticed by those around you. Even those that are seen as the most successful in the industry are labeled as “lucky”. People don’t understand the amount of work they put in to get to where they are. By talking about your journey, you are letting people know that you are grinding every day trying to achieve something you are ionate about. You are working damn hard, you should recognize and acknowledge it from time to time. 3. Keeps You able Holding yourself able is huge. This is another reason why Masterminds are so popular. If there is no one to report to every week or every month, then there is less motivation to accomplish what is on your to-do list. When you share information about your online journey with others they will expect to see progress the next time you talk. You can not possibly see them again without accomplishing more, right? Also, talking with others also serves as an impromptu status check for yourself. Many times the amount of work you complete goes unrecognized. By speaking to people about it you might just surprise yourself on all that you have done. 4. Teaches others Some people keep their heads down and just work day after day at their current job. They know what they know and are just going along with what they are supposed to be doing. Talking to them about your journey might just break them free from the monotony of their day-to-day schedule. Use your platform to help others awaken their inner creative. Let them know what you are experiencing in the hopes that they may be able to pick up a few skills and do something for themselves. 5. It is Interesting People love stories and crave the opportunity to hear about new things. What you are building is most likely going to be new to them. While blogging and internet business may be commonplace with the folks you interact with on a daily basis online, most people outside the online space have no clue what you are talking about. You have the opportunity to expose someone to something new. Who doesn’t like to be around people that offer new topics and interests? Be that person. Think about it. At parties, people get tired of the same old conversation. Find a way you can sum up your side hustle and drop it on people when you strike up a conversation. Get them to ask you to explain more. For example, if someone asked me what I do for fun I could say, “I help busy parents build online.” That may pique their interest and lead to a series of follow up questions, starting with, “What the hell does that mean?” Whether you know it or not, you are doing interesting work that many people just don’t understand. Embrace it! 6. Invites People love to give opinions and offer their input. When you talk about your side business you will often get some from others that may prove useful in the long run. Not only can you receive official from others, but you might even provide unknowingly to yourself. What does that mean? When I was a coder, there were times when I had an issue with my code and could not solve my problem. When I would call a fellow developer over and I would start to talk about it, many times I would figure out what was wrong on my own. This happened simply by talking about it. The pure exercise of verbalizing something can often serve as a springboard for a solution. 7. Markets Your Brand Talking about your entrepreneurial journey also provides an additional unintentional benefit. It markets your brand. Each time you talk to one person about your side hustle, they may turn around and talk to someone else. Who better to represent your brand than you? Plus, every little bit of PR helps. Take the time to talk to people about your project and hopefully you will gain some new of your community. Even better, you may gain a new customer if they are looking for what you are providing. 8. Represents You Positively When people learn that you are doing all of this cool stuff, they may gain a new appreciation for you. They will look at you in a different light. No longer do they see you as someone that just goes home and sits on the couch all night. They now know that you are crazy enough to try to build a side business while being a parent and holding down a full time job. You will also come to be known as someone that is up on new technology. People will see you as a modern man, a renaissance man. You understand the latest trends and are hip enough to not only know about social media and related industries, but you are actually a direct participant. In Summary The next time you are in a group situation or find yourself around others, don’t be shy. Be proud of the work you are doing behind the scenes. Engage with others and start to reap some of the benefits I’ve laid out above. Don’t be afraid that someone is going to steal your idea. Don’t think that you need to spend hours alone working on your side business for it to be successful. Find time to work with others and to talk about all of the wonderful work you are doing. The post CDL 048 – 8 Reasons Why Your Story Matters appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Do Not Lose Track of the Value of the Details On this week’s podcast, I dig into the importance of details. I share 4 reasons you need to pay attention to details when you create content and 4 reasons when you consume content. As an added bonus, you can the FREE Blog Detail Checklist by clicking on the button below. Click Here to get the Blog Detail Checklist This checklist gives you multiple items you need to check before you hit that publish button. Don’t drive your audience away due to silly mistakes and a lack of attention. Make sure you grab the checklist today! Why You Should Pay Attention to Details When Constructing and Consuming Content Here are 4 key reasons why you need to pay attention to the details prior to publishing. It makes you look more professional Proves that you care The flow of your writing is preserved Shows you value your reader And 4 reasons you should look at the details when consuming content. Value may be hidden in the weeds You never know what you might find ( the Pizza Hut rescue!) You may be doing something wrong You may miss an opportunity 5 Things I Learned (5TIL) In this week’s 5TIL I discuss: Presidential campaign domain trolling – check out CarlyFiorina.org for a laugh. Coolors.co – an amazing color palette tool that you NEED to check out. A record making service – yes, those records that you used to play with a needle! 2 sweet Twitter search tools – Topsy.com and Snapbird.org – and which one wins! A handwriting campaign for the troops that is lacking the emotional connection – damn robots! Again, don’t forget to grab your FREE Blog Detail Checklist by clicking on the big green button below.     Click Here to get the Blog Detail Checklist The post CDL 047 – Why You Need to Pay Attention to the Details in the Content You Create and the Content You Consume appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Strategies to Capitalize on Potential Relationships with Influencers In this week’s episode of the Crazy Dad Life podcast I share 7 ways you can engage with influencers and maybe establish a true relationship going forward. I also share my Michael Jordan story! (yes, he had me shook) 7 Things to Do When an Influencer Hits You Up Here are 7 quick and easy approaches you can take if, and when, that major industry beast just so happens to send you a message. 1. Calm the F*&$ Down It is natural to be a little freaked out and jittery when someone of influence actually realizes you are a live breathing human being. First things first, calm down and realize they put their pants on the same way you do….hopefully. 2. Reach Back Do not try to play the coy role or act like you are back in middle school and trying to be cool by waiting to call back the person interested in you. You need to strike when the iron is hot and reach back as soon as possible. 3. Recognize Their Work Everyone loves an ego stroke. Do the right thing and recognize the work of that particular influencer. Even if it is a competitor you should still recognize the value they bring to your shared market. 4. Ask If They “Know People” People love to be seen as someone that “knows people”. Ask them if there is someone you should know about or if they can connect you with anyone they think might align with your goals and vision. 5. See If You Can Work Together This is obviously the Holy Grail when dealing with an influencer. If you have the ability, or game, to get an influencer to actually work with you…*drops the mic* 6. Create Content About Them One great strategy is to feed their audience to boost yours. What does that mean? Do this, create a blog post about their product/service/brand. Let them know that you created the blog post and share the link with them. You have a pretty good chance that they will share it with their audience. That should result in a nice little bump of visitors to your site and hopefully growth of your overall network. 7. Keep it Going Without Being Annoying Ok, so in the episode I mention that old Looney Tunes cartoon with the big dog and the little dog bouncing all around him. Well, I confused these two guys (Spike and Chester) with this guy (Ralph) So even if I reference Ralph in the episode, I really mean Chester. Do not be Chester. Do not annoy Spike all the time. Try to keep your new budding relationship going without seeming like an overly indulgent annoying desperate fan boy. 5 Things I Learned (5TIL) In this week’s 5TIL I discuss… Mayweather vs Pacquiao Twitter numbers Periscope piracy during the big fight Facebook’s super successful Donate Now button Facebook’s super cool Safety Check feature for loved ones during a catastrophe like the Nepal earthquake Tattoos are causing the Apple Watch some issues  Other Links Mentioned Here are some other links I mentioned on the show. CDL 045 – An Update on One of My Side Hustles CDL 015 – 8 Ways to Get Influential People to Notice You Subscribe and leave a review for the show – CrazyDadLife.com/Love The post CDL 046 – OMG! What Do You Do When an Influencer Reaches Out to You? appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

A Behind The Scenes View Into a New Business Venture In this week’s episode I update you on the latest happenings with one of my side hustles. You’ll hear some of the organizational items we are working through, the status of our audience building efforts, and how we have been hosting live events using the WordPress EventEspresso plugin. You will also hear our next steps and where we are planning on taking the business in the coming months. All of this is to provide a behind the scenes look at a couple of guys standing up a business in our off hours. Hopefully you will learn something in these episodes and it will inspire you to move forward with whatever you have planned. 5 Things I Learned (5TIL) In this week’s 5TIL I cover: A sweet tool for generating your own online explainer video – RawShorts.com A FREE CRM tool to manage your s – Insightly.com NHL’s aggressive move to ban Periscope and Meerkat at their games Twitter’s new Highlights capability Amazon’s new Amazon Destinations feature The post CDL 045 – An Update on One of My Side Hustles appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Make Sure You Still Gain Value When You Can Not Attend a Conference in Person Attending conferences can do wonders for your business and your personal network. But, if you are a busy parent, attending conferences can be costly and sometimes impossible due to schedule conflicts. In the past year I have missed multiple conferences that I wanted to attend, including Podcast Movement, Dad2.0, and most recently New Media Expo. Just because you can not attend a conference does not mean you can not receive value. Here are several ways you can still gain tremendous benefit from live events, even if you are unable to be there in person. You can also listen to this week’s podcast episode (above) where I dig deeper into each topic area. Conference Hashtags Hashtags are the cheat codes for following anything online. Whether it is a major news story or the latest meme, hashtags provide a simple way to stay informed. The same holds true for live events. If you are missing a conference, find the official hashtag associated with the show and start following the news on Twitter. Start to build a small list of hashtags relevant to the given conference and track them when you can. For example, with New Media Expo I was able to follow much of the happenings simply by searching on Twitter for #NMX. Many times conferences will let you know a particular hashtag to use so they can get the most engagement and perhaps gain trending status. Conference Twitter Lists Once you have found information related to a conference hashtag, it is important to organize and collect it in a way that makes it easy to consume. One particularly effective way to do this is to create a Twitter list for the event. For example, create a Twitter list called “New Media Expo 2015″. Once you find people who are using the conference hashtag add them to your new list. This allows you to pull those folks out of your busy Twitter feed and place them in a container where you can follow the conversation easily. Be selective with who you add to this list as many times spammers, trolls, and other internet scum will simply tag-along with the hashtag, providing no value. Here is another hack for the Twitter list approach. Go out to the conference website and look up the speakers. Many times their Twitter handle will be listed. Add the speakers you find interesting to the same Twitter list. Now you will be able to not only follow the conference attendees but you will also see what the speakers are talking about. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of isolating the individuals engaged in the conference discussion is the ability to continue to follow their tweets after the conference ends. You now have a nice little location where you can pull up people who have a common thread related to the conference topic. Virtual Tickets Many conferences will offer online experiences for those that can not attend in person. It will be up to you whether this option works for your particular learning style. I recently had personal conflicts pop up that prevented me from attending New Media Expo. One good thing with conferences related to social media is the fact that they typically will bend over backwards in regard to customer service. Here is what I did when I needed to discuss my options with conference organizers. I reached out via their Twitter asking for a particular email address I could use to discuss my situation They quickly replied with a point of I sent an email letting them know about my situation and how I had already bought the ticket They offered options and I chose to take the virtual ticket to this year’s event It was extremely easy to work with them and to come to a quick and easy resolution. When choosing a Virtual Ticket option you do need to be careful. I have had experiences in the past where some of the speakers’ materials were not available. Many times this is the result of the speaker not providing the information, but it still hurts nonetheless when you pay for the virtual . Follow Up With the Conference Some shows may not offer a Virtual Ticket. In this case, reach out to the conference organizers and ask if they will be posting the materials on the website in the future. It only takes a few minutes to write a polite email asking them if they will offer the materials. Even if they have no plans of doing so, you might get lucky and they may offer to send you the material from a particular session you are interested in. You never know until you ask. Reach Out If you did not attend the virtual session and the conference was not able to fulfill your request for materials, go to the next step. Reach out to the folks on your conference Twitter list and see if they would be willing to share. You could ask them for their on the conference, which sessions they liked, and what they didn’t like about the show. You could also ask if they would be willing to share their notes or maybe even jump on Skype for a quick discussion. Additionally, you can reach out to speakers directly. Many speakers would love to share their materials. Just make sure you do not become a burden for them as their time is probably precious (like us all). Introduce yourself, quickly get to the point, and thank them for their consideration. Again, you will never know unless you ask. Leverage Streaming Services Two live video streaming services available today are perfect for occasions when you can not attend a conference in person. Both Periscope and Meerkat provide options when you want direct access to live happenings. This was the case recently with New Media Expo. One of the things I was looking forward to was Pat Flynn’s keynote. I attended the conference last year and thoroughly enjoyed his magic filled presentation related to moving your casual audience to raving fans. So, I was bummed when I finally made the decision that I could not attend this year. But, I was pleasantly surprised when Caleb Wojcik from DIYVideoGuy.com popped up on my phone. The way Periscope works is that when someone you follow starts broadcasting you will receive an alert. This is exactly what happened. I received the alert that Caleb was at Pat Flynn’s keynote and I immediately jumped in. I pulled up the app and the stream started. Caleb was sitting in the front row. I had direct access to the keynote as it was happening! Even if no one you are following is broadcasting you can still do a quick search on Twitter to find someone in the global community that might be. How do you find them? It is simple. Go to Twitter and search for keywords such as “Periscope Live NMX” or “Live Meerkat NMX”. This will bring up a number of people who may be broadcasting live from the event. I love it! 5 Things I Learned (5TIL) Also, in this week’s podcast I discuss the following 5 things I learned this week. Marijuana delivery services Norway getting rid of FM radio in 2017 Star Wars emojis The new Twitter landing page Shoes that grow with your kid…for 5 years! If you have anything for the 5TIL, feel free to reach out on Twitter or send me an email. The post CDL 044 – Will These Virtual Conference Hacks Change the Way You Approach Live Events? appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

People always talk about taking your offline expertise and applying it in the online space. But, what if you flipped the script? You can use all of the knowledge and skills you have gained building your online platform and apply it to your day job to become a well-rounded, highly respected, and desired employee. In this week’s episode, you will hear how you can apply what you do online to your offline day job, and how it will benefit you personally and professionally. Links Discussed: United Federation of Teachers post related to value of blogging for kids PicMonkey Easel.ly Piktochart.com Prezi Basecamp Screenflow The post CDL 043 – How to Use Your Online Skills to Rock Your Day Job appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Podcasting is easy right? Wrong. I recently celebrated my first year of podcasting on February 24, 2014. Yeah me!! I’ve learned a tremendous amount over that year. Some good things, and some bad. In this week’s episode I recap my year and let you know what to expect in your first year of podcasting. What Should You Expect from Podcasting Here are some things I’ve learned in my first year of podcasting It’s damn hard…true story You get to meet some really awesome people and a sweet little community in the online world Here are some podcasts that I was honored to be a guest The Empowered Podcast with Ellory Wells Starve the Doubts with Jared Easley Co-Host Episode of Starve the Doubts – Interviewing Jaime Tardy of the Eventual Millionaire Beginner Internet Business (BIB) Podcast with Jonathan Taylor The Life of Now with Greg Barth StartupDad HQ with Joel Louis Discover that a lot of people still have no clue what a podcast is It’s a lot of fun! Just like blogging, you have to work to build an audience And the biggest finding…I’m going to keep doing it! (that could be a good thing or bad thing to you) 5 Things I Learned (5TIL) Also, in this week’s episode I discuss the following in the 5TIL How to Sell Snow – really Brilliant marketing where you tell people to go somewhere else Judge Judy is a boss What Twitter is doing about trolls and ongoing abusive behavior A sweet little app for taking pictures of documents and saving it as a PDF (TinyScan) If you have something for the 5TIL, send me an email at [email protected]. The post CDL 042 – What to Expect in Your First Year of Podcasting appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

This Week’s Episode Typically, when I post a new podcast episode I provide enough content that it could be considered a blog post. This week I did it a little different. Earlier today I posted a new blog post called 10 Ways I Suck at Being an Entrepreneur. In this week’s podcast I expand on that content as well as cover the 5TIL and other announcements for the show. 5TIL In this week’s 5 Things I Learned (5TIL) this week I cover: Underground bicycle parking in Japan – Awesome! Conferences may not be for me Facebook’s new Call to Action button on pages Facebook’s new feature (Legacy ) for asg someone to take care of your  after you die Mexican drug smuggling drones – really Other Links Mentioned Subscribe to the show – Crazy Dad Life Podcast Project White Coat My effort to move to Pinterest The post CDL 041 – 10 Ways I Suck at Being an Entrepreneur appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

The Problem with Sitting Too Much You are most likely sitting while you are reading this. Most people are when they are consuming content online. But, do you know the damage it is doing to your body when done for long periods of time? Unfortunately, sitting is slowly killing you. A recent report from the World Health Organization outlined the following risks: Physical inactivity is the 4th leading risk factor for global mortality and causes 6% of all deaths Approximately 3.2 million people die each year because they are not active enough Physical inactivity is the main cause for approximately 21-25% of breast and colon cancer, 27% of diabetes, and 30% of ischaemic heart disease Prolonged sitting for 8-12 hours or more a day increases your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 90% This Week’s Episode As you know, I cover topics across three main tenets of the modern man’s life; his family, his career, and his pursuit of a personal ion. Not every episode will focus on tactical advice and how-to build something online. Sometimes I talk about life in general. This week’s podcast is one of those “life” episodes. In it, you will discover some of the negative health impacts from prolonged periods of sitting and find some ways to combat your bad habits. You are Not Alone As entrepreneurs, online business owners, and folks generally participating in the online space, this is common territory. We often spend long periods of time sitting in our chairs plugging away on our keyboards. I’m particularly guilty of this. In fact, I double down and do it at work all day too. I spend countless hours at work sitting in my chair working on my computer only to head home and do it all over again. I have to do better. In this episode I share a few ways to start getting out of your seat and begin changing your health. This includes: How you can simply stand more often Apps that you can use to help monitor your activity, including the one I’m using New hardware that can be implemented into your daily routine Ways that you can change your daily life to include more activity without going overboard And the importance of instilling these values in your kids (get them away from the video games!) 5 Things I Learned (5TIL) In this week’s 5TIL you’ll hear about… Facebook’s new Lite app A sweet Super Bowl App that only worked IN the stadium Temporary tattoos…from your Instagram feed The demise of Sky Mall The Exploding Kittens Card Game…yes, really As always, if you have something for the 5TIL, just hit me up on Twitter @JeffDStephens.   The post CDL 040 – Sitting is Slowly Killing You appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Are You Struggling to Find Time to Read Content When You Find It? Do you constantly come across stories or articles in your newsfeed that you’d love to read, but just don’t have the time? As busy parents, we are constantly pressed for time. You are running around for your kids, scrambling at work, and trying to catch your breath. Even if you had the time to check your social media s, you probably don’t have the time to fully read what is there. The problem is, you want to read it. The fact is, you need to read it. While there is a lot of junk out there circulating on the internet, and especially on social media, there is also a ton of value. If you are to grow intellectually, and in your career, you need to keep up to date with what’s going on. Every day I find myself coming across articles that I would love to read. Yet, for whatever reason, I simply don’t have the time, at that moment, to check it out. The Broken Approach of Yesterday Think back many years ago. If you are are parent you might even the pre-internet days. Back then, we would gather newspapers and magazines and stack them in the corner, hoping to one day find that article we saved. Or, maybe you were one of those people that ripped articles from magazines at the doctor’s office and took them home to store them somewhere. Then the internet happened. Along with it came more and more content. How did we handle it? We bookmarked our asses off! This resulted in a list of bookmarks in your browser that left you dazed and confused every time you tried to recall something you saved. The model is broken. How to Solve the Problem Today In this week’s episode I share a few tools and strategies you can use to effectively curate the awesome content that you stumble across. These methods are especially helpful for the busy parent on-the-go. If you are able to shift your mindset and leave bookmark death row, new tools and approaches will provide you time savings and mental relief. Native Application Many of the tools you use today to browse content on the internet have embedded capabilities that you might not know exist. For instance, Facebook has a native Save capability. Next time you are perusing through your Facebook newsfeed and come across an article you’d love to read but can’t, save it. Here’s how: First of all, the post must have a link if this is going to work. Check to see if there is a link to an article. Most of the articles you see in your newsfeed will have a link. Look up in the right hand corner of the post and you’ll see an arrow. Click on that to show the menu. Click on Save That’s it! Now go about your busy life knowing you can come back and read the article later When you finally have time to go back and read the article, simply follow these steps: Go to your Facebook home newsfeed and you’ll see menu items on the left side (desktop version) Click on the Saved menu item and you’ll be directed to your saved items where you can read the articles. Easy! Ninja tip: To access your saved content even quicker, simply go to Facebook.com/saved and you’ll go straight to it. Boom! Now, if you want to do the same thing from your mobile phone, all you need to do is go to the bottom right of the Facebook app and select the More option. Again, you’ll see a Saved menu item that you can select. This is a great way to grab those items you like out of your never-ending newsfeed stream and place them somewhere you can revisit later. In the episode I also discuss how you can do something similar with Twitter. Services For Saving Content Ok, so native application is pretty cool, but you probably don’t want to have everything stored in multiple applications. Sort of defeats the purpose of creating a system. Perhaps the best way to curate all of the content you want to read later is to use services. One that is very interesting to me, and will probably become part of my toolkit going forward, is Pocket. Pocket is a very useful FREE application that allows you to save items from over 300 different apps for later reading. There are a number of connectors available including those from major social media networks such as Twitter and capabilities to scrape websites directly from the browser. Having the ability to centrally collect, manage, and read content is a game changer. Add the fact you can automate much of the collection process and you are on your way to optimizing your daily content consumption. Using a tool like IFTTT, you can quickly set up automated methods for gathering meaningful content. To learn more about how Pocket can be leveraged, listen to this week’s episode. To learn more about IFTTT, check out Episode 028 where I break down everything you need to know about that sweet automation tool. In this episode I also touch on a nice little utility available from Evernote, the Evernote Web Clipper. Bottom line, given the amount of information we come across every day, you need to implement a strategy for managing what you want to read and when you want to read it. 5TIL (5 Things I Learned) In this week’s 5TIL I cover the following: Pingroupie The awesomeness of insurance company apps How to find Twitter chats – thanks Jeff Page The value of video in your online marketing efforts The ongoing power of social media and what it meant to a local school district. As always, if you have something you’d like included in the 5TIL, feel free to email me. The post CDL 039 – Bookmarks Are So 1997 – Discover How to Save Content More Effectively appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Give Your Product Ideas the Best Chance for Success It is safe to assume you have had a number of product ideas over the course of your life. It could have been a massive product that would change the world or a simple enhancement to an existing product. At some point all of us have thought about making a product or offering a service. If you identify yourself as an entrepreneur, you probably have these thoughts multiple times in a single day, and have the domain names to prove it. Product ideas bounce randomly through your head at all times of the day, regardless of where you are or what you are doing. In this week’s podcast episode, and in the post below, I share my experience with testing product ideas in an effort to best position your product for success. What Do You Do When Your Product Idea Can No Longer be Ignored? Let’s say the product idea dancing in your head just won’t go away. Let’s say it doesn’t get filed away along with all the other ideas as a “some day” project. Let’s say you really think you have found the “right one”. Now what do you do? There are many things you could do at this point but perhaps the biggest thing you should do is research and get . My Case Study You may think your product idea is the next big thing, but your potential market may ultimately disregard it and set it on a path destined for failure. This recently happened to me with Project White Coat. If you are unfamiliar with Project White Coat, let me quickly explain. I interact with a lot of people online and I am continuously coming across parents that either struggle with finding time to build their online platform or claim they don’t even have time to start. I felt if I could do a brain dump and create a product that would package valuable and consumable content for them to take action, it would ultimately save them time and lead them to something fulfilling. Given parents live a crazy life, I figured we all needed the men in white coats to come take us away at some point. The idea for Project White Coat was born. So, what did I do next? Was there a way I could validate my idea before I spent the next 6 months in the basement building it? How to Test Your Product Idea The good news is it is not that hard to actually test your product idea. But, there needs to be a method to the madness. You must first enter the research phase if you want to have any chance of success. Blindly putting a product into the market because you like it, and think everyone else will, is a recipe for disaster. I had to do the same for Project White Coat. Market Research First you need to determine what the current market looks like. Do searches based on your product idea and determine how many competitors are out there offering the same, or similar, product. Seeing competition is a good thing. That means there is a market. A mistake many people make is assuming an empty market is ripe for business just because there are currently no companies offering the product. While this may be the case, it is a rather unique situation where you discover something that has not already been tried. If you find an empty market, there is probably a reason for it. The demand most likely isn’t there. In my case, there are literally thousands of products out there teaching how to blog, how to “do” social media, and everything else online. Even with the crowded market, I felt my idea was still viable given the fact it would cover more than just a blog and would dive into the mindset, strategy, and general lifestyle to help bring some form of structure to your overall online journey. At least that was my thinking. But, was it enough? So, I have my product idea, I determined there was a market of some sort, and I’m ready to go to the next step. Testing. Determine Who to Test Now that you know there is a market for your product idea, you’ll need to really narrow down the “who”. In particular, the “who” that you will target as your potential customer. Some people refer to this as your Avatar, that one person that represents the perfect consumer of your product. Get as specific as you can to identify this person. This includes attributes such as age, gender, education level, income level, and family status to name a few. This person will not only be used as the baseline for when you actually create your product, but will also be the key person you target during your research phase. My Avatar looked like this: Male in his 40s 2-3 active kids (most likely tweens and teens) full time job wants to start a side business or at least a blog Yes that Avatar is eerily similar to yours truly. I had the “what” and the “who”, but now I needed the “how” and “where”. My “why” was what sparked the idea in the first place and was touched on above when discussing the beginnings of Project White Coat. Let’s get into the “how”. Determine How to Test You have the product idea and now you know who wants it. What’s next? Now you have to find them and ask them about it. The path you choose for how you do this may vary based on the particular subcomponent of your market. Before you reach out to particular segments, you have to identify ways to ask them. Some of the more popular tools available to you include: Email correspondence Online surveys and giveaways Casual questions via social media Pre-sales of the product Webinars introducing the concept Traditional methods (i.e. phone/skype, in person, print ads) – Who does this? How you implement these tools will be driven by the particular medium you are using, your expertise, your budget, your time, and the population you’ve identified for the test. To touch on the strategies associated with each of these would result in a book not a blog post, so I’ll hit on the high level items here. In particular, I’ll talk about what I did for Project White Coat. Set up an Online Survey The main tool I wanted to implement was an online survey. So I turned to Survey Monkey. I didn’t want an intrusive survey with 100 questions, so I created a short 7 question survey that would allow people an easy way to provide insight into my project. Rather than repeating the survey here, it would be easier for you to just see the actual survey. (Yes, that is a shameless plug to get you to go add your input to the project). If you pay attention to the link, another strategy I used was to leverage the Pretty Link plugin so the survey link would be easy to . People I reached out to could simply visit crazydadlife.com/survey to participate. It made it easy for me to post on social media, mention in conversations, and talk about on the podcast. Leverage Social Media Perhaps one of the best environments to query potential customers is via your existing social media channels. Reach out to your followers and friends and ask them for their input. Let them know you have a product idea and you would love their . Most people will be more than happy to help someone out that is simply asking for input. In my particular case, I had a couple of ideas that I was floating out there for review. I truly wanted help in determining what product would provide the best value. You may be surprised by the difference between what you think would be an awesome product and what people really NEED. Your outreach can be in the form of a status update or a simple tweet. If the question is phrased in a way that piques their interest, addresses a pain point, or appeals to their emotion there is a good chance they’ll jump into the conversation or go to your survey. Here is what I sent to my Facebook Community. It was simple, non-disruptive, and easy to consume. I reinforced the fact it was quick and only 7 questions to hopefully quell any fears they had. Another way to grow a groundswell of participation for your survey is to utilize giveaways or contests. There are a number of plugins out there that can assist with this process. If people have an opportunity to win something by taking a few moments to answer your question, it becomes a win for both of you. Just make sure you offer a prize that resonates and means something to your particular audience. Offering something like an iPad may get a lot of responses, but perhaps those people simply want an iPad. I didn’t want to implement a giveaway as I was really looking to garner input organically. That and I was too lazy. Ask Your List You’ve worked hard to build your email list, use it! The people that have signed up to your newsletter have given you direct access into their lives. Regardless of how much they get on social media or visit your website, they always check their email. That is the beauty of email lists and why we all build them in the first place. They provide direct access to those most interested in your message. Reach out to them as they are your tightest community. Just make sure you make it easy to consume, fast, and to the point. People typically don’t have the time to consume a long email just to answer a few questions. I not only solicited from my list but I also followed up with those that signed up for more information with follow up questions. Why did I do this? Wouldn’t the test be considered done once they took the actual survey? No. The survey is just one part. I wanted to have a conversation with the people that took that first step so I could truly understand their pain points so I could make sure it was addressed in the course. Ask Your Friends and Family Of course you can not forget about your friends and family. They are often the ones that will give you the cold hard truth and set you straight before you get too far down the wrong way. With that said, take their advice with a grain of salt. Sometimes they don’t understand, or don’t have the same entrepreneurial mindset that you have. At the end of the day, thank them for their  and add it to your overall analysis. I chose not to do ask my personal friends and family. Why? I don’t know. Maybe I still have some level of fear in me that wants to keep this whole thing truly separate from that part of my life. I think many entrepreneurs struggle with how much they let those closest to them into their personal business pursuits. That subject is for a whole other conversation though so I’ll continue. The True Barometer of Interest You have come up with a product idea, done some research, and even solicited direct market about your product idea. Now what? Now you need to really let the rubber hit the road. This means you have to see if people will truly be interested in the product, maybe even those outside of your direct online community. To do this, I set up a landing page for the product. The best tool to accomplish a beautiful landing page is LeadPages. You can literally stand up a landing page in minutes and have it ready for the world. They integrate with major platform components such as Mailchimp and WordPress so it makes it super easy to stand up. You can check out my landing page here (again, shameless plug if you are interested in being on the list to stay aware of updates on Project White Coat). If you don’t know what a landing page is, it is basically a one page website where people visit to typically receive something or sign up for something. It is not a full blown website per se, but really just a splash of information for the visitor. In my case, I wanted to create a mailing list of those folks that were serious about building their online platform and were willing to sign up. It’s a very simple method to gauge interest. There is limited risk and if the product idea doesn’t hit with your audience, you simply take the page down and try again. Once the landing page was up I was able to tell people to visit the website to learn more. Again, I did this via social media channels. Here is what it looked like on Facebook. The intent of this post was to let people know something was coming. This is a tried and true method of building anticipation in your audience. Think of the movie industry. What do major studios do for their summer blockbusters? They provide substantial previews and marketing, sometimes well in advance of the release date and sometimes before the movie is actually finished. Sound familiar? Take a cue from the entertainment industry and get the word out about your product, even if you are still working on it. Analyze the Results – Go Time? Only you will be able to determine if you’ve reached critical mass to move your product forward. Did you need 5 people to sign up or did you need 1000 people to sign up? At some point you need to take all of the information gathered across your platform, and dig into what it all means. Once you have done this, you should have a much better idea of whether your product will sink or swim. It is at this point where you’ll be able to make a go/no-go decision for your product. Before I close this post (which turned out much longer than intended) I want you to this. The process of researching and analyzing the of your market should never stop. Even if you do the first phase of research and analysis, periodically follow up with your market to make sure you are still on point. Ongoing analysis and adjustment to fit the need of your market will better position your brand for long term success. What Tip Can You Share? If you have a tactic or technique that you use when researching or testing your product, please share with the community in the comments below. The post CDL 038 – How to Test Your Product Ideas – and How I Tested Mine appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

What Social Media Platform Should You Dig Into in the Coming Year? We are all constantly looking for ways to build our audience and drive traffic to our wonderful websites. The question is, where should you drive that traffic from? In this week’s episode I discuss my thinking of how I’m planning on using Pinterest more this year. I’ll wait here as you laugh. “How can you as a ‘Crazy Dad’ have any time to embark on this journey into the nether regions of Pinterest?” Point taken…more on that later. I guess you could call it a New Year’s resolution since we are near that time of year…and it’s questionable how long my commitment will last. But, I’m going to give it a go and see what happens. Here are some of the reasons why I want to explore Pinterest more, why I don’t want to explore it, and how I’m going to set out on this adventure. Why I Should Get Into Pinterest Why in the world would I, or anyone, want to get into Pinterest? Check out some reasons why you should! Growing Driver of Traffic In a recent study conducted by Shareaholic, Pinterest continued to show growth in the amount of traffic it is driving to websites. In fact, it remains the number 2 source of social media driven traffic. At the end of the 3rd quarter 2014, Pinterest was pushing 5.5% of the traffic while third place Twitter was only giving websites .88%! Here is the chart from the Shareaholic study… Untapped Market A recent Forbes article discusses how Buzzfeed has made a conscious effort to leverage Pinterest more in their online marketing. In this episode I talk about the findings and what it means for you. There are a number of bloggers out there, yours truly included, that are not using this growing and powerful platform. Timeline of Your Content is Greater Your content lives longer on Pinterest than it does on other platforms like Twitter. This could be huge for your long term strategy for content sharing Opens New Markets The majority of Pinterest s are women. In fact, according to an article on MariSmith.com 80% of Pinterest s are women! Given the fact I talk “dad stuff” along with online business, this may expose me to a new audience. With that said, I do have quite a large female following (and they are friggin awesome), but this may allow me to reach a new set of folks. Level of Engagement Pinterest s spend time on Pinterest…real time. In the same Mari Smith article this stat stood out to me…”average American Pinterest  spends 1 hour and 17 minutes on the website.” Wow. Shares More Likely According to a Harvard Business School case study on Buzzfeed, removing the Twitter share button and increasing the size of the Pinterest button doubled the shares! Doubled. Why I Might Not Get Into Pinterest Ok, everything seems wonderful right? Well, maybe not. Here’s why. I Don’t Know What the Hell I’m Doing Yes, I have no shame in itting I don’t know something. I find that to be an irable character trait by the way. This is definitely the case with Pinterest. I need to learn more about it in the coming weeks to really see how I can leverage it for my online brand. It Doesn’t Align with My Target Market I touched on the positive aspects of finding new markets on Pinterest, but there’s also the risk that my content won’t resonate with Pinterest s. Time Time continues to mock me every chance it gets. It’s in full blown mock mode at the mere thought of me launching any sort of engagement on another social media platform. If I engage more on Pinterest, something has to pay the price. Maybe I’ll cut back on working out since I don’t do that anyway. How Am I Going to Do This? There has to be a method to the madness…some sort of plan. I Need Help I’m going to dig into tips and trick on the internet and filter through what I should and should not implement. Like anything online, you have to determine what makes the cut and what doesn’t. If you have tips or related to Pinterest, leave a comment below or me with your awesome sauce. Post Effective Content Like any social media channel, your content has to be solid. Hopefully mine will live up to my self professed hype. Be Consistent I think Time is mocking me again. Optimize My Site for Pinterest First and foremost I’m going to fix my stupid Pinterest button on my Digg Digg share bar. It always has the audacity to hover over the neighboring button. Not nice Pinterest button, not nice. Your turn I would love to hear from you. What are you doing today on Pinterest that is working? What do you love about it? What is one thing I should do when I start? Share some of your Pinterest ninja tactics, hacks, and any other overused term below in the comments! The post CDL 037 – The One Social Media Platform I Plan to Use More Than Ever in 2015 appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Organizing Your Goals Can Enable Fantastic Success In this episode, I take the show on the road and talk about goals. While I have only recently become a er of establishing goals in life and business, I find the practice of setting milestones and markers along your journey fulfilling and empowering. There are 3 distinct segments in the episode. Segment 1 – Goals Make You able In segment 1, you’ll hear about goals making you more able. You establish goals in order to serve as incentive. You want to do something and having that goal written down will most likely push you to do it. Merely writing the goal down will serve as incredible motivation going forward. Oh, and make sure you write down where you stored your goals. I have a tendency to forget where I put things. Would hate to have you go through the same. Segment 2 – Establishing Timelines for Your Goals Segment 2 continues with the process of setting up your goals in chunks. Some goals should be set for the near term while other goals can be marked for later. You probably want to focus on the next year only though as things change so fast, especially for busy parents. Think about how you want to distribute what you want to accomplish in the next several weeks and months. Then, think about how these items interrelate and lead into each other. Finally, think about what other life events you may have going on that may cause disruption in accomplishing these goals. Segment 3 – The Mental Side of Goals Segment 3 wraps up the topic of goals with a hard subject for many. What happens if you don’t accomplish what you set out to do? What happens if you revisit that goal and don’t get to check it off? The important thing here is to understand that this is all a process. Even a little bit of progress is still progress. Perhaps you didn’t fully accomplish your defined goal yet you can create a few lower level items that you did do and mark those off. Summary I hope you enjoyed this episode and really started to think about what goals mean to you. Hopefully in the next day or so, you will sit down and write about some of the things you want to accomplish in the time period. Also, I’d love some on what you thought about the episode? Did you like the format? If you liked the show, please subscribe HERE and leave a review. The post CDL 036 – Are Your Goals Out of Control? appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

The list of the most popular baby names of 2014 was just released. Names. Ahhh, how important is the name? What’s in a name? This got me thinking about the process of naming and everything that goes into it. Since I’m always looking at things through a budding entrepreneur’s lens, I couldn’t help but bring this back to something we have all been through…the pain/pleasure of picking the perfect website name. So, I thought it would be a good idea to create a quick guide. “Perfect” is a relative term of course and just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I’m going to share some of the most important considerations you should take when picking your website name. By the way, Jeff was NOT in the top 100 this year. I know, shocking. I did a look up on the full list of baby names and found that “Jeff” is ranked #356 this year. While that doesn’t sound good, it’s actually up from #438 last year. Focus on the positive! “Jeff” peaked at #44 in 1962. Yes, that was many years before I was born. So, let’s get back on track… How do You Start? Sometimes starting is the hardest part. Here are some quick things you can do to spark the fire. Jot down some keywords relative to your industry or niche Think about what your core business will be What value will you be providing to you potential audience? Do some research on others in your industry or niche to see what has been done in the past What are Some Considerations to Take Into Once You Have Some Ideas? Congratulations! You have an idea and you are ready to think of an actual domain name. This may not seem like much, but it is. Don’t take for granted the effort required to come up with a legitimate idea that you are ionate about. The mindset you need as you enter this phase is to always think about one thing. Think about that one person sitting at their keyboard getting ready to type in whatever you have come up with as your domain. Think about how easy, or hard, it would be for that person to type it in. Here are some quick considerations… Easy to pronounce – Make sure it’s easy to pronounce – don’t use complex words or words that are difficult to spell. Make sure it has longevity – you don’t want your domain out of date in a couple of years due to a trendy name selection. Avoid abbreviations if possible – There are some abbreviations you might be able to get away with such as “Dr”. No hidden messages – Make sure there are no hidden words or meanings in the full domain name. Here are a couple of examples, see if you can spot the problem Whorepresents.com Speedofart.com Therapist.com TIP: If you want to limit the risk of this happening this is what you can do. Type out the full domain name in lower case letters and see if you can spot any hidden words or meanings. If you want to be a real ninja, go pull grandma away from the crossword puzzles and word finders and have her throw her skills at it. Keep it simple – Don’t get too cute with it. Avoid made up words – Don’t make up words that people won’t be able to associate with your business. This may work with some businesses but it will take longer to build that brand awareness. Avoid special characters or fancy ways of spelling words. For example – PotzandPanz.com instead of PotsandPans.com Avoid hyphens if at all possible – Think again about that person you are telling your domain to. Do you want to say “hyphen” when telling them the domain name? Try to keep it as short as possible – This is harder to accomplish these days as domains are taken all the time. What Tools Can You Use to Check Availability or Generate Other Ideas? There are a number of free tools out there that allow you to research and even generate domain names. Here are some of the main tools I use. Domain Name Providers – I use GoDaddy for most of my domains. They have a nice easy interface for checking domain availability. There is a simple search bar on the homepage. Type in your proposed name and see what comes back. Even if it isn’t available, there may be other options provided that might work. Network Solutions is another domain name provider you can use to research names. Domain Name Generators – There are quite a few tools out there that will actually generate domain names for you. Some are better than others. Two that I recommend are Wordoid.com and Panabee.com. Both of these services will provide numerous options for you to look into as potential website names. What If It Is Taken? You have the next big thing and you are ready to grab the domain, but there is a problem. Some clown has already beat you to the punch! Here are a few things you can do in the event your wonderful domain choice is not available. But It From Them – Sometimes the current owner will be willing to part with the domain for monetary compensation. Depending on how much you want to spend, this could be an option. Go out to WhoIs.com and you can reach out to the domain owner. Wait For It to Free Up – While you are out on WhoIs.com, take a look and see if it is due to expire soon. If so, mark your calendar and check back after that date. You might be able to scoop it up then. Maybe It Just Costs More – Sometimes it will look like the domain is not available but it is actually available via auction or as a domain. This just means you’re going to pay more for it. Alter Your Domain Name Slightly – This is one of the old tricks in the book. Simply adding “HQ” on the end, or “The” to the front, can make your domain available without losing relevance. It’s Available! What Should You Do? Um…buy it! I have a problem buying domains. Every time I have an idea or think I’ve stumbled upon the next big thing, I buy the domain. Now I have a bunch of half baked domains sitting around. I need therapy. Given the low cost of domains today, go ahead and buy the domain even if your business isn’t fully hashed out. It really isn’t that big of an investment for what could be the start of something incredible. TIP: Since most of us are parents, I have a homework assignment for you. Go grab your kids’ domain name. I bought my daughters domains a few years ago. I highly recommend you go try and grab that domain while you can. If it isn’t available see if a slight variation is there. Someday, when they are borderline famous, they’ll love you for it. Oh, and grab yours too! 5TIL In this week’s 5 Things I Learned, you’ll learn about… Apple’s intriguing patent that reminds of of cats My love for my new iPhone 6 and two hacks that you’ll love More improvements with Facebook Ads “Better Call Saul” Twitter’s new image filter features  Other Links Discussed HowManyofMe.com The post CDL 035 – A Guide to Picking the Perfect Website Name appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Can you maintain your momentum, or even build steam, during your downtime? You are most likely working long hours at the job only to return home to fulfill your responsibilities as a parent. After the stress of the day job, the non-stop commitments of the kids, and dabbling in your side business, a break can be a wonderful thing. If you are headed into a break, such as a holiday or simply spending a few hours away from the daily grind, there are few things you can do to position yourself for success when you pick back up. 3 Ways to Position Yourself for Forward Progress Here are 3 methods you should try the next time you find yourself smack dab in the middle of the ever elusive “downtime”. By following these methods you should easily re-emerge from your break fully motivated and ready to rock and roll. 1. Spend Time Reflecting Lost in your daily chaos are the little victories. You may have a to-do list consisting of 235 items but the fact you knocked even one of those items off the list is something to be celebrated. Too often we neglect to recognize our accomplishments. Too often we worry ourselves about the undone without embracing the done. Take time during your next break to truly reflect on all things that you’ve done, big or small, and realize each movement to the right is one additional step in the direction of where you want to go. Proceeding toward success is much harder when holding onto the negative thoughts of what remains yet to be realized. Reflect on the positive in order to position yourself for what’s next. 2. Spend Time Planning Progressing to the next step can only be done with some level of planning. While downtime should not be spent digging into the details of every operational area of your business, major conceptual goals should at least be considered. Spend a few moments thinking about what is next. Determine what should have the highest priority. Figure out, at a high level, what should be rewarded with your focus and your limited bandwidth. Then, most importantly, think about what will provide maximum value to your audience. That is what should move to the top of your ridiculously long to-do list. 3. Spend Time Listening and Absorbing Just as tasks get lost in the daily shuffle, so does inspiration. During your next period of downtime, look for opportunities to gain fresh perspective. Seek out others that can bring new ways of thinking and unique experiences. If friends and family are around, feast on their viewpoints. Allow them to freely engage with you on any topic imaginable. Take a moment to step out of your niche. Spend an amount of time away from your comfort zone. Remove the blinders from your typical daily interaction with others in the same industry. You will be surprised at the amount of material that may present itself to you when taking a moment and listening to others. 5TIL In this week’s 5 Things I Learned (5TIL) you’ll hear about… The Doorman app that allows flexibility in home deliveries. A new Google security feature which allows you to see information related to access (who, where, and what device). Google’s enhanced search features for the holiday shopping season. Tumblr’s rise to the top of the fastest growing social platforms. Social capabilities added to Canva As usual, if you have something you would like to share on the 5TIL, head over to twitter and drop me a tweet! The post CDL 034 – 3 Ways to Stay Motivated During Downtime appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

You Need Harmony Whether you are just starting out with a side business or have been working on it for years, this episode provides actionable methods to balance your day job and side job. Trying to excel in your career while also pursuing your ion by building your own business can be problematic to say the least. But, it doesn’t have to be so difficult. 6 Ways to Balance Your Day Job and Side Job You’ll hear 6 methods I’ve used over the past several years as I’ve continued to move forward with my career while still creating something personal on the side. 1. Keep Commitment Levels Separate, But Commit to Both While it is important to ensure that you get your work done at your day job, there are moments throughout the work day that you can commit to the side job. Learn to use your time efficiently and effectively, even the time that seems forgotten. (TWEET IT!) 2. While Your Commitment Levels are Separate, It is Imperative that You Still Blend Them Make sure that you take your years of experience in the day job and invest it into your side job. Likewise, make sure you bring all of the fresh and innovative approaches gathered from your side job over to the day job. Both sides will realize benefits. 3. You Can Talk About the “Other” Job While it is ok to mention your side job at your day job, it’s important to realize the sensitivities and the issues that may arise from having both pursuits. Keep your mentions of each at a minimum to limit potential conflicts. 4. Maintain Separate Environments It’s important to maintain separate environments. You may find an ideal setup to be one where you have social media s, email, and even computers dedicated to your side job, while you have an entirely different set of s and devices for your day job. Keeping components separate allows you to logically manage each individually. 5. Don’t Hide From Either Job Embrace the beauty of being diversified in skills and in talent. Never be ashamed of the awesome work you are doing on the side. Also, don’t be afraid to let those in your side job niche know what you do during the daytime. Your ability to succeed at two entirely different pursuits demonstrates your genuine badass-ery. (TWEET IT!) 6. Always Make Time for Your Family This is the golden rule. If you take one thing away from this post, understand that family is always the top priority. Never let your responsibility to your family be driven aside by secondary pursuits of your jobs. (TWEET IT!) 5TIL In this week’s 5 Things I Learned, you will hear about… 1. How to embed your podcast episode in a tweet so that your audience can immediately, and easily, access your content. 2. An interesting way to drive attention to your content/product using a capability called Sniply. 3. Free tools from SimplyMeasured that provide you deep level analytics for some of your most used social s. 4. Shoes that have auto-laces. Yes, just like those fancy kicks in Back to the Future 2. 5. SnapChat’s new money transfer service. Your Turn Now it’s your turn to the conversation. How do you balance the day job with the side job? What is one key tip you would love to share? The post CDL 033 – 6 Foolproof Ways to Balance Your Day Job and Side Job appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

Have you wanted to redesign your website for a long, long time? I have. Do you look at your site and wonder why it looks so terrible? I have. If you were a visitor to your site would you have any clue what your site was all about? I wouldn’t…at least before. This past weekend I did something that has been on my to-do list for quite some time. I finally sat down and redesigned my website to what I always wanted it to be. In this week’s podcast I share my experience to hopefully lessen any pain you may have as you go through the same process. It doesn’t have to be hard either. You can actually do it pretty quick with a little digging around and the help of a nicely designed theme. You’ll hear a brief recap of my experience starting late Friday night and how I worked through some of the changes over the weekend. You’ll also hear probably the most important aspects of the whole process…the why and the benefits. Why Should You Redesign Your Website? Let’s be real for a second. If you want to be considered a legit presence on the internet and stand out from all of the noise, you need to have a website that pops. Something that captures your visitor’s attention in seconds and engages them from page to page. My website was lacking this before. Here is a picture of the “Before” version of my homepage for the Crazy Dad Life site. meh And this is the new version of the homepage. Hopefully you like the new design. I’d love to hear your , even if you don’t particularly like it. Head over to my “ Me” page and shoot me an email. Don’t be shy. In the podcast I talk about various pieces of the original design that drove me nuts. Ok, back to the subject at hand… 8 Benefits of Redeg Your Website Here are 8 key benefits you’ll realize if you go about updating the look and feel of your little corner of the internet. 1. Great Learning Experience There is no doubt you will be challenged when updating your website. Each new theme comes with unique features and configurations that you’ll quickly need to understand. While it can seem daunting and confusing at first, when you do finally figure it out it can be so sweet. 2. Go from Acid Wash to Skinny Jeans Updating your website can be like updating your wardrobe. Ok, you may not be willing to go all the way to the skinny jean look, but you can see where I’m going here. You need to have a site that reflects current trends and popular design, yet separates yourself and defines your vision and your voice. 3. Better for Your Business Increasing the appearance of your site will no doubt increase the perceived value for visitors. Just as anything else in this world, the better it looks the higher opinion people will have of it. Redeg your website should immediately help your business increase relevance and engagement. At least that should be your goal. 4. Mobile Mastery Do you have any idea how many people visit your site on their mobile device? If you don’t, you should. Check your Google Analytics and take a peek. You may be surprised at the high number of folks browsing from their phone to your site. For me, my site was a disaster. It would never render correctly so I simply punted and left it as a full size site that the had to zoom and scroll in order to navigate. Ugly. You have to have a responsive design that allows visitors to easily receive all the awesome content you have to offer. If you don’t, they’ll bounce and most likely won’t return. 5. Take Inventory of What May Have Been Lost and What Needs to Be Lost Going through the redesign you will very likely come across broken links, 404 page errors, and other remnants from all of your hard work online. You will also come across content that probably should be lost forever. The redesign process allows you to truly review your content, and all of the inner workings of your site, to see what works and what doesn’t – what should and what shouldn’t. 6. Reorganize Your Content Your content may be cluttered, confusing, and generally out of control. Redeg your site allows you to step back and better organize how your content is presented to potential visitors. When you are redeg your website it is critical that you do so through the eyes of the visitor. What would I want to see when landing on this website? What value is this site providing me? What am I supposed to do now? Why would I want to come back? Ask yourself those type of questions as you start to reorganize your content and how your site is structured. Make it easy for your visitor. 7. Restructure and Refocus Along with the reorganization, now is the time to refocus. Let that brand new visitor understand what value they are going to get from your site. It’s important to provide a direct and concise description of the value you you are providing. 8. Better Opportunities to Build Your Email List Building your list is crucial to any business online. Implementing fresh and clean design with a new theme allows you to revisit and fix your current opt-in environment. Are there ways you can better present your opt-in? Is there a better looking button you could use? While you are redeg, take a moment to take stock of how you ask your visitors to your community and see if there is a more effective way to accomplish your goals. The Killer Tip Ok, what is one thing you can do to expedite your redesign process and in turn save your sanity (and a few gray hairs)? Get a theme! I’m sure you can find a rather nice free theme but will it provide you all the flexibility you desire? Doubt it. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the Genesis Framework. So, when I started looking for my new theme I started with those based on that framework. I wanted a company I could trust and who provided quality themes so I went with StudioPress. I highly recommend their services and their themes. There is no way I could have done all I did over the weekend without their product. Sure, it costs money. But your time is money too. How much is it worth to not have to spend weeks trying to figure out how to tweak a free theme to do what you want it to do? Your time is more valuable than that. You have bigger things to do than tinker with the intricacies of WordPress all the time. Grab yourself a stunning theme from StudioPress and get cranking with the real work of building your business. 5TIL In this week’s 5 Things I Learned you’ll hear about… The new (and improved) Facebook Ads…especially the Power Editor Instagram introducing the ability to edit your captions A very cool personal robotic assistant-tube thing from Amazon called the Echo The real product What we all wish the real product was like Somewhere you can find free Microsoft Office software for your kids’ computers Repurposing old pay phones in New York with new technology As usual, thanks for all of your . If you’d like to subscribe to the show, head over to CrazyDadLife.com/Love and do just that. And , with your family, your career, and your side hustle stay engaged, stay thirsty, and keep grinding. The post CDL 032 – 8 Benefits of Redeg Your Website and One Killer Tip to Save Your Sanity appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

If you are engaged online, you might find yourself feeling a little overwhelmed. I know I do. If you are trying to build a business, stand up a personal website, or just grow your social media engagement, there is no doubt you will ultimately come across one (if not all) of the 7 deadly doubts of building online. 1. You have no shot You look around and see people with fully built out websites running like well oiled machines. You see beautiful responsive design with functionality you don’t even understand. Then you go back and look at your piddly little blog and naturally feel overwhelmed. How can you ever get anywhere near the others? You have so much work to do. WHAT TO DO Chip away at it. You’re never going to get to the end goal unless you start chipping away a little at a time. Think of a massive tree, it takes time and many chops to knock it down. The good thing is, EVERYONE has a shot. The online world provides low barrier to entry and a level playing field for all. 2. You won’t be heard amongst all of the noise There is no doubt there are probably thousands of people in the same niche you want to pursue. If you need proof, take a look at the business section of iTunes podcasts and you’ll see an over abundance of entrepreneur interview podcasts. The market is saturated. There is a tremendous amount of noise online, and it grows louder every single day. WHAT TO DO This is an easy one. Be yourself! It is really the only differentiator you will find. Many people talk about the same thing. It is the way the message is delivered, and the person behind the message that truly matters. 3. You are way behind everyone else You are always going to feel behind. If you have been online for any period of time, you will come across other people that make you feel like you are way behind. Truth is, you are. WHAT TO DO Deal with it. There is a natural timeline and everyone falls somewhere on that timeline. Some are ahead and some are behind. Just know that you are somewhere on that line and each day you move further along. Just , there are those that are behind you too. That is important. 4. You are moving too slow You see others launching new products, posting new content every day, and interacting on numerous social media channels. They appear to be everywhere, at all times. Yet you struggle to consistently post a single 300-500 word blog post weekly. WHAT TO DO First of all, stop trying to race everyone. As long as you consistently provide value to your audience, everything will be ok. You don’t have to be everywhere at once. Focus on one thing and do it well. Do it at a pace that fits your life and does not cause undue and unhealthy stress. 5.   You are doing it all wrong Contrary to what you might hear, there is no magic formula. You will hear plenty of advice and “expert” tips but there is no particular way you need to do things. You will also hear plenty of success stories that will make you second guess your approach. WHAT TO DO Explore your own style. Figure out what works for you. Figure out what you enjoy and what you can get done given your current workload. Explore different ways to provide value. Are you a writer? Blog more. Are you talkative? Start a podcast. Are you animated and love to act? Go with video. Find your best delivery method, then learn everything about it and dive into it. Figure out how you can make it work for you, then go with it. , if it is something you truly enjoy doing, who cares how you do it! There are a number of people making money online, but there is a vast majority of us grinding away trying to figure it out. Don’t feel like you are not worthy just because you are not raking in cash like a select few. 6. You are inferior You come across all of these amazing people online. It’s natural to feel intimidated and anoint them rock star status. WHAT TO DO , these people are just like you. They put on their pants just like you. They have families, they have worries, and they have struggles too. And, they started out just like you. 7. You are lost What do you do next? You want to create a blog. You want to start a podcast. You want to sell your product, be a coach, and write a book. You want to develop an app. You get the idea. You can quickly become overwhelmed with all of the possibilities. While it is a beautiful thing, it can also be a curse. WHAT TO DO This goes back to taking it one step at a time. You can not do everything at once. Pick something and do it well. Get that one thing up and stable, then move on to the next. It’s important to note that it does not need to be complete. It merely needs to be stable and providing value to others. Everyone feels overwhelmed and lost from time to time. Stay focused on the exact task at hand and try not to get distracted by the periphery. 5TIL Here are the 5 Things I Learned that are also discussed in this week’s episode… 1. Breaking Bad dolls have a place…Toys R Us may not be that place. 2. Buddy Press can help turn your website into a forum/community. Check it out! 3. Prezi is a nice alternative to boring PowerPoint 4. TwitPic finally died Oct 25, 2014. 5. Facebook outages can be EXPENSIVE! What doubts have crept into your mind? What are you struggling with while you balance family, career, and your side hustle? Share your thoughts in the comments below. The post CDL 031 – The 7 Deadly Doubts of Building Online, and How You Will Crush Them appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.

The Twitter Feed Is your Twitter feed a mess? Do you constantly miss important tweets you want to see but they simply scroll by too fast? If you are like me, you probably find Twitter frustrating from time to time. While Twitter can be an amazing resource for interacting with people online and for growing a community, it can also be maddening when you are lost in the never-ending stream of tweets in your feed. In this episode, you’ll learn how to quickly analyze the people and brands you currently follow to better understand who is really bringing value.  You’ll hear about a tool that you can use to analyze those you currently follow. You’ll be able to better understand how they use Twitter to identify those s that are simply filling your feed with garbage. After listening to this episode and going through the steps outlined, you’ll be able to reduce the amount of nonsense in your feed and start to enjoy Twitter again. As a bonus, you’ll most likely rediscover people that have been lost in the shuffle. I know I did. Cleaning up the list of those you follow will reduce the noise in your Twitter feed and ultimately provide more value in your daily interactions. 5TIL In this week’s 5 Things I Learned (5TIL) you’ll hear about… 1.  The growth of Facebook stickers 2.  Noodle Tools and how it can be used to help you, or your kids, with their school projects 3.  Instagram direct messages, who knew? 4.  A disappearing video service from Skype 5.  HBO’s new online-only offering As usual, if you find something of interest that you’d like shared on the 5TIL, just send me an email at [email protected] or hit me on Twitter @CrazyDadLife. Hey, you’ll get free publicity and a shout out on the podcast! Now, I’d love to hear how YOU manage your Twitter madness? Share one tip below that you’ve found useful for cleaning up your Twitter feed. The post CDL 030 – Bring Clarity Back to Your Twitter Feed appeared first on Crazy Dad Life.