Want to know how to succeed in business? Do the work that others are not willing to do, or simply just are not doing. My wife and I own a couple of properties. As such, we have different contractors for different things: Plumbing/Septic Electrical Lawn mowing Fence building Cleaning once per month Plumbing/Septic At our […]
For two years in my mid 20s I lived in an evangelical Christian hippie commune in a tiny dairy village in Switzerland. That experience changed my life, and taught me a few important things that I think are pertinent to our current day. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m currently a 35 year […]
In early 2012, I was tired. I had been pushing 80+ hour weeks at work for a while. I found myself unable to be civil to clients or my coworkers. My boss at the time asked me “John, do you need a vacation?”
I did. I took 5 days (a “long weekend”) and went to Colorado with one of my good buddies to go to MountainFilm in Telluride. For those five days, I removed my email clients, Twitter, and Facebook from my phone. Instead, I watched interesting movies about outdoors issues I care about, met some intriguing people, drank awesome beer at the Telluride brewery, and spent time in the mountains hiking and rock climbing. Read more about Why I Unplug On Vacation Every Year …
A little over a year ago, I joined HotPads.com as their online marketing manager. I was the first marketer at HotPads in a while, hence the team was me and I was doing everything (though nothing super well). One year later, I have a team of eight marketers (including myself) spanning SEO, email, and content. We’re […]
Have you ever heard someone say “I’m just not an employee” or “After working for myself, I can’t imagine ever working for someone again”. I’ve often felt this way, even though I don’t work for myself (well, there were those two weeks).
When I started my job at HotPads back in October, I told my then-boss “I have to be honest with you – I’m not a good employee”. What I meant by this is that I hate to be managed by others. I want to explore this a bit more, because not everyone who hates to be managed can work for themselves. Sometimes, we must learn how to succeed as we are, where we are. Read more about I’m Not A Good Employee …
In 2011, I created a playlist called “Brooklyn” in Spotify. This was because I had just moved to Brooklyn to join Distilled and songs like “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”, “Brooklyn Bound” by The Black Keys, and “Brooklyn Go Hard” by Jay Z felt like they defined my life. On my first day of work at Distilled, I listened to “Empire State of Mind” as I walked into the building. And yesterday, September 3rd, I created a playlist called “SF”.
You see, I didn’t think I’d be writing this post for quite a while. Since I moved to New York two years ago and joined Distilled, I’ve been very vocal about my love for Distilled, for New York, and for the life that I’ve been able to have here. It’s been an amazing adventure, but at some point all great things come to an end and we realize that it’s time to let some things go in order to embrace the future. Therefore, I have to announce that:
I’m leaving Distilled in New York City at the end of September and have accepted the position of Online Marketing Manager for HotPads, the fully owned rentals subsidiary of Zillow based in San Francisco, California.
This is a big announcement, and let me tell you that no one is more surprised than myself. Let me explain why I’ve made this decision. Read more about Time For Fresh Adventures – I’ve Joined Hotpads in San Francisco …
Before you read this post (which is publishing as I am on the plane to Costa Rica), let me suggest that you read two other posts:
Rand’s post – http://moz.com/rand/there-is-no-worklife-balance/
Jerry Colonna’s post (language not mom-friendly) – http://www.themonsterinyourhead.com/2011/05/05/work-life-balance-is-bullshit/
These words especially resonate:
“I’m scared,” I’d told my Buddhist teacher on Monday. “I find myself doing more and more…the calls and inquires for coaching are so much more than I can handle.” He smiled in that way that says, “I’m not going to say anything. You have to keep going.”
“I’m afraid I’ll lose myself…again. I’ll find myself overweight, sickly, disconnected from my body, my family, and back at the point where the subway tracks seem like the right answer.”
“It is different now,” he said. I waited for more and then realized I wasn’t getting any more.It’s different now, said my teacher, because right livelihood. What I’m working towards now is less about my own ego aggrandizement (although that temptation is always there) and more about helping.
Both of those posts express well the thoughts that come when you are overworking and stressed out.
I live in New York City, the greatest city in the world. And because it’s the greatest city in the world, it’s the place that people of all types flock to. And many of these people are absolutely amazing at what they do, and get snapped up quickly. But guess what? Not only do they get snapped up quickly, but they get recruited heavily as well. And New York recruiters are fierce and devious. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been duped by a recruiter who has posed as someone in my industry and added me on LinkedIn, only to message me right after I accept and try to get me to talk about a job! I’ve also had them call me at work (AT WORK) numerous times and try to have a chat with me. Really? You think I’m going to chat with you while I’m at MY JOB??
You might not be able to pay what the big agencies can pay, and you’re most likely not Apple or Google that pay an INSANE amount of money to their employees (and especially developers). So, you have to beat this big guys at their own game.
How? By making your employees rockstars, whatever that means to them. Read more about Make Your Employees Rockstars …
Do you cringe when someone says “I could have done that”? Whether it is a blog post, a new startup, or a piece of modern art, people say it all the time.
I have come to realize that there are two kinds of people – those who do and those who say they could. Those who win are the doers and those who don’t never move into the realm of the unknown and thus keep saying “I could have done that.”
The point is, you didn’t.
What separates the doers from the could-have-dones? There are a few key characteristics, which funny enough are the same characteristics that I often see being written about as characterisitcs of entrepreneurs. Read more about The Difference Between Winners and Losers …
Can I take a minute to write a personal post on here? This blog is usually all about SEO tactics, but today I’ve been doing some thinking and reflecting.
I come from a family that is really smart and well educated. I mean really smart and really well educated. My father has his PhD in institutional analysis. My mother is working on her second Masters degree, this one as a mathematics specialist. My older brother is in a fully funded MD/PhD program at Baylor College of Medicine, and my younger brother is a genius who will one day be an ambassador or something to a foreign country, helping to keep our country safe.
And I have a Bachelors degree from James Madison University in Virginia (a good state school). I work for the best SEO consultancy in the world, hang out with some awesomely smart people, and am trying to make waves in New York City.
And guess what?
I’m petrified of failure.
I’ve been reading a number of books and blogs recently about business. I recently got sent a copy of Tony Hsieh’s “Delivering Happiness”, thanks to Zappos Service. I’ve also been reading Michael Hyatt’s blog Intentional Leadership, where he shares a lot of tips about productivity and leadership. Both have impacted me in big ways. Let […]
Is SEO a team sport? SEOs are often known individually in the industry, not necessarily for who they work for (though it is great when the company pushes the SEO into the spotlight, and the SEO gives love back to the company). At the beginning of my SEO career, I assumed that everyone had skills […]
*Note – this post contains no SEO tips or tricks or ideas. It’s strictly informational and I am extremely excited about it* It seems that I mention Distilled quite a bit on my blog. I accuse them of stealing my page titles, I recapped their London conference, and today I must mention them again. Why? […]
I’ve been asked a few times what blogs I have been reading to increase my knowledge of SEO. I’ve decided to put together a list here of blogs that I subscribe to via RSS. The Lucky 13 Blogs I Read via RSS SEOmoz: If you don’t know that SEOmoz has an incredible blog with the […]
I’m a search marketer. It’s what I do. I’m also a human being. It’s what I (as the philosophers like to say) be. I write this as both. The meta description, it seems, has long been a way that search engines have figured out what a website is about and they have used is information […]
On Monday, my post entitled “How Distilled Stole My Page Title” went around the Twittersphere. It was interesting to see the feedback and there were a lot of comments from a lot of people I respect. Read the comments here. Now I run into an issue. I’ve never confronted something like this before, and I […]
Do you ever long for the days of 1950’s or 1960’s America, where most Americans lived in small towns, walked to the corner store for groceries, knew their neighbors across the white picket fence, and used word-of-mouth as their gauge for knowing where to eat and who to do business with? I think we’re heading […]