What I Have Been Learning In School:
Web Development Technologies is the name of my program. It consists of basically the entire array of what it takes to run a web development business. We cover website design (html, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, & flash), programming (php & logic), database management (MYSQL), networking, marketing, and leadership (project management &customer relations).

So far I have learned more about CSS and PHP. I have been CIW certified in Internet Business and Web Development. I am working on my Dreamweaver & Flash certifications from Adobe. I just learned how to set up a local host and am working with PhpMyAdmin more and setting up a mysql database. I am also learning a lot about WordPress and all of its features. I have learned how to use Google Chrome in a developer mind state and have made it very efficient and customized to help me work faster and easier. I learned about “site scooping” which was the biggest killer of the relationship I had with the gentleman I spoke about earlier. Basically it means that you expand on the project (usually done by the marketer) and not taking into mind about the extra time, money, and effort it would take. I didnt even know it existed and was a victim of it haha..

Im pretty sure that everything I have learned this year I have used and it has made me so much better at what I do. I just started the second semester and I am super stoked to see what all I can learn and apply to my business! I guess you can say I have been saved by the bell. BE EASY

Lately business has been BOOMING! Honestly I didn’t think I would be this busy this fast. I hooked up with a buddy of mine that I met from the Idaho Web Marketing Meetups and he is throwing constant work at me, not to mention I’m getting plenty of clients from my website and craigslist posts.

Its great but at the same time its a big stress trying to keep on top of every project (13 to be exact) and keep everyone happy and treat them all equally. I don’t do most of the work ( I outsource it) but the managing is still enough to keep me busy all day everyday. My mind set on work kinda changed a little throughout this and work was becoming less fun with every passing second. I guess the main reason is because I haven’t had a work load like this yet, so I’m adjusting and trying to get comfortable with all this stuff on my plate. I’m getting better now, and I’m able to handle it all but at first (which would have been a little over a month ago) I was breaking out with zits from stress and wasn’t sleeping or eating right.

Ok enough with complaining, now for the goods…

I have been hiking every Sunday with my pal Jon Waraas and it has been a blast!! Probably the biggest stress reliever ever! I loving the outdoors and I got a new camera so I have been taking millions of pics to save for memories. I have seen a ton of animals while hiking but my favorite for sure was the mountain goat I saw two days ago. Here is a pic so you can see why… He is WAAAY up there!!

I was making a big mistake with the way I was running my business. That mistake would be getting too caught up in client work and not spending enough time networking myself and selling my business. I just one reason I have yet to do that, is my lack of self confidence. For some reason I always feel like I need to learn more or get more clients in my portfolio. SO I choose not to pursue any local business around town.

This creates two problems within itself. For one I was not getting enough work to sustain myself and also save money; so I guess you could say I was in idle. Another conflict it created was making me dislike my job. I’m not one for repetitiousness and busy work. I love designing and thinking about campaigns I can create for myself and my clients, but thats about it.

Another thing I am doing wrong is, as I said, not having the confidence I need to actually make a big time sale. For some reason I feel guilty when I try to push a big project on a business so I tend to short myself. Plus I need to remember that no one knows how much I actually know about my industry but me. And I actually know quite a bit about web design, development, and marketing. But for some reason I always doubt myself. So I plan on building up the confidence to start connecting with local businesses and selling them a stupendous web package that will help their business dramatically.

So those are the two areas of my business that I am going to really focus on and improve on… Hopefully some of you out there like me will benefit from this post:)

Lately business has been going great and my stress levels have dropped dramatically… haha. Right now I have a total of 5 clients with hopes of a 6th. Usually I would panic in this tyepe of situation but I’ve been taking it in nicely for some weird reason.

This very second I am optimizing a few of my own sites, a little more, using a WP plugin “all in one seo pack“. It works very nicely might I add, I jumped a few ranks just by adding it and its easy to manage and edit if you decide to change or add terms.

I’m finally getting back into my athletic stage, which I haven’t been in since high school. I was feeling like a caged dog, always at my computer not doing anything. When I exercise it takes away my rage/depression and makes the days go by a lot more smooth. Plus I feel a thousand times better both physically and mentally.

Hmmmm what else?..

I’m trying to get my cousin into graphic design and what not, so I can outsource some projects to him. So he has my laptop right now (ima bout to die without my music!). I am also about to change my host over to blue host from resellerzoom, they SUCK!!! Heads up don’t host with hosting zoom, they are slow and have a lack in customer service an satisfaction. Now, I don’t usually do that but they really got on my nervz!

With LeeWai, I’m really trying to come up with some great interaction ideas. I am ranking nicely but still lacking the results I want and know I an get. So I am upping my facebook game, and also having a few friends lend a helping hand (cause three heads are better than one:). I have been doing a lot of research and decided that I need to do a few small design edits to the site and then I think she’ll be right there. I just wish it would hurry up haha! too impatient.

Be easy!!

So I am now trying to create a more interactive interface for LeeWai, so that I can connect with my clients and my programmers better. It seems like something is always going wrong at the worst time, and it is very frustrating to me. So for starters, I created a form that I will send to every client after I have created the first mock up of their site/project. Along with the form are a set of very particular instructions on what it is that I need and a timeline of when I need it. Hopefully this will allow for my clients to be more descriptive and more detailed in their edits.

This is the problem I am running into right now that lead me to create this form…
I ask my clients to give feedback on the design, and make edits (quickly). So they take their sweet time getting back to me, and usually don’t give me it all at once. It comes in little bits and pieces, so of coarse it is going to make the entire process take longer. Well they don’t seem to understand this fact and demand their finished project only days after they finally got ALL of the edits to me. This is not a good way of doing business because when I tell my clients that it is going to take more time, they become irritated and when I tell my programmers to hustle they also get angry with me. So here I am stuck in the middle drowning in sorrow. Haha okay maybe not that intense but it is still very stressful and it can be avoided if I can set up more interactive applications to my site.

I also want to create a back end on my site that will allow for direct client to programmer contact without the need of my middle-manning. But since I outsource all my work, I have to do it in a way that will allow all info of both parties to be subtracted, so that I don’t not have any problems and more or less, don’t get ripped off.

So thats what I’m up to for now. Figuring out how I can make the customers’ process very easy and very efficient. Because a wise man once told me that efficiency is what makes the money.

Spending time with family and away from work gave me a lot of time to think. About life mostly, like what am I doing, am I happy, what can I change, if I were to pass today how would I feel about my journey.

I came to a few conclusions, first of all I am very satisfied with what I have done and where I am going. Although I am doing nothing but working my life away at the present, I am okay with it. I know that everyone has to do things that they don’t want to do at some point in their life, and I would rather that time be now rather than later. Besides its not like I HATE what I am doing it is just boring sometimes and has its days. But this is true for any job I would get, no matter what it is.

As for what can I change, I can change a lot of things. Starting with making sure that I am not rushing things and am able to stay open minded so I don’t miss anything. I am very excited for the new year so I can give myself a few more goals to meet. I find pleasure in accomplishing personal tasks. I also need to keep my cool more often and think about things more before any action is taken. Overall I need to make sure that I am happy with every decision I make and have no regrets in life. As it stands now I have no regrets about anything in my past, and I like that.

This post is more of just a ramble of mine but thats okay with me, haha….

Wow its crazy how a close death makes you think about everything completely different, I mean we are not guaranteed anything in life, not even another waking breathe.

We hiked for about three hours, nothing to long or hard but it was great non the less. And it was well needed, I’ve been working tons lately and needed a break. Now I feel great, and am craving another hike here soon before winter settles in over Idaho.

The scenery was unlike any hike I have ever been on. It changes dramatically in such little distance. One minute its a marshy swamp, then we are crossing a fast flowing river. Then we are up on a cliff looking at a wall of jagged mountain ranges. Then into dense forest and back to the river once again. There was so much going on and the weather couldn’t have been better. Not hot but just warm enough to stay warn while we were walking. The best part is that there wasn’t any steep grades of trail that we had to endure. It was mellow for the most part, and very peaceful.

Its amazing how soothing nature can be if you let it. I didn’t have a worry in the world while I was out there. I was set on having a good time and unwinding. Plus I enjoyed the exercise, I need to start walking more. All around it was just a great trip. Oh haha except for the part where my dog almost fell into the river, and couldn’t get back up the cliff. So I had to rush down there and rescue him. That part sucked but the rest, AWESOME!!!

Check out my pics on facebook.

What I mean by this is that he doesn’t have to interact in order to make sales. He has it set up, so that clients/customers and connect directly with his employees, or with his support team. The system includes a customer login and then a portal that holds all the info that each party inserts. He has administrative power of coarse to keep things in line and make sure it runs as smooth as possible. ALl the orders that are made are automatically sent to a specific employee and the orders are completed.

On the other part of his business, he sales products online by way of drop shipping. This is also on full automation. He has crons that send out the list of purchases made each day. It is sent in the form of and excel file. The drop shippers then in return send back and excel file that states which orders have been shipped. The customers can login into his site and view the status of their order and also track the order once it is shipped.

I have been working a lot lately on LeeWai, and I’m getting pretty burned out trying to juggle doing all the work and also trying to expand the business. I think that if I were to make it so that my clients can talk to my designers and coders directly through my site that I could focus my attention on other areas of the business. This could in turn make me more money. Plus it just isn’t as fun when you are a slave to it as it is when you can perform the tasks at your leisure.

The only conflict I am running into is how to actually go about making this work. I am on a tight budget, and cannot do the code myself, so I need to think basic. Something I can use for every service that I offer, and is also very easy for my clients.

Please help!! haha if you know of how I might be able to go about this, for cheap, I would love to hear some feed back.

I have also been working on expanding my portfolio. So I have been making mock up logos to show all the styles I can cover. I must say that some of them are pretty clever and look really good. Feel free to check it out for yourself http://www.leewaimedia.com/logo-work/ tell me what you think and if you would like some logo work I am offering a bunch of discounts and specials right now.

Lets see, besides that I have decided to add a free website audit option on leewai, I figure I need to add as much interaction as possible. I will give advice and help with SEO ideas, site layout help, and even marketing tips and techniques. I feel that I can help out a lot of people by offering this so I am going to test it out and see how it does.

I have also been doing a lot of work with my buddy Robbie, we are working on some affiliate stuff and it is going pretty well. We just had a contract wrote up and are at the brink of making money with our first project. From there it will only get better and easier. I just need to get a system down so that I am as efficient s possible.

Thats all for now, be easy

Recently my blog URL expired and I had no idea because it was purchased on a friends account and they never sent me any notice. Haha it was a depressing moment in time when I sat down to blog and had no live site. I went into panic trying to figure out how to get it back ASAP. After a few hours of frustration I remembered that Jon had purchase the domain name, so I gave him a jingle and it was a quick fix.

I have also been working on LeeWai, I finally got the new design done. Now I am just adding some more sub pages and a few unique applications. Hopefully my conversions will increase after all this hard work. Also I am also going to be investing in another round of SEO for a few of my sites that I have been letting sit and do nothing (not a wise idea).

But as of right now, today, I have dedicated to writing. I have a compare and contrast paper due tonight in English. So I figured to get warmed up for this task I would write a blog post (to kinda get the juices flowing). The subject of my paper is going to be comparing Motto Cross, to BMX or Bicycle Motto Cross. My reason for choosing this topic is because I have had excessive experience with BMX. I raced for roughly ten years, before I was forced to retire due to my bike getting stolen. Just to clarify, the bike was worth about $2,500, which is why I didn’t just hop up and purchase another one. The only conflict I am running into is the fact that I don’t know jack about Motto Cross really, I have watched it on TV but thats about it. I do need a source however, so I will make sure it is a source that is familiar with Motto Cross. I’m going to focus on the differences as apposed to the similarities. The reason is because I have always been mistaken as a motorcycle rider when I tell people I race BMX I guess it got to the point of irritation so I would always tell people how different and better BMX is then MX.