Corey Creed

Last month was a very unusual one for me. 

A good friend of mine (Ryan Courteau) recently had a change in employment and was able to spend a day per week working with me.  He has a sales background, so he’s been acting as a consultant on contract with an eye toward helping us increase sales on our e-commerce business.

Things have been a little slow over here due to the economy, so we decided to spend most of December making a new e-commerce site.  It sells maid carts here.

Ryan and I worked our hearts out on this one.  It really is a lot of work to populate all the data into an e-commerce site.  Jason (my other co-worker) did a lot of the previous ones, so I had not done one in a while.  It’s very time intensive.

All in all, 2009 was a financially tough year for a lot of people.  Thankfully, by decreasing expenses, we were able to break even the last six months of 2009.  Making the new site opens up another potential revenue stream for 2010, even if it was a ton of work.

I just flew home from a wonderful week in Massachusetts with my family.  My wife and I flew out last Wednesday, November 11, 2009 and came back yesterday (the Wednesday after).

The flight up went smooth and although we stayed at my sister’s house, we needed to be very careful to not mention the surprise anniversary party we had planned for her that Saturday.

My nieces, my mother, and others worked very hard to make the party a huge success.  About 100 attended from all over the country and we surprised them pretty good.  My sister and her husband expected to have a dinner with family and friends.  So, they were in for quite a shock.

After a full dinner, we showed a slide show with video that my niece put together showing their 25 years of marriage.  She did a great job with it and I made comments while we showed it.  Then, the band that played at their wedding (25 years ago) played their wedding song again.  It was very nice.  My sister definitely got a little teary-eyed.

During the trip, I got to spend some time with my parents, my nieces, and my sister & her husband.  They are all good people and I’m thankful to have such a close family.

I also got together with my best friend and visited the Patriots Place for an afternoon.  That was fun.  (Even if they did lose by one point the previous Sunday.)

The weather in New England is straight up cold.  I don’t know why it feels so cold there compared to NC.  The temperature is only 10–15 degrees colder, but it always seems to feel a lot colder to me.  The sun goes down about an hour earlier there too.

Lastly, we got stuck on our plane for several hours while they “diagnosed a mechanical problem”.  At first, I had nothing to read & my wife was using the ipod touch.  But, once we finally got off the plane, I ran to buy a book and a Starbucks pumpkin spice latte.  I read about 150 pages by the time we landed.  Much better.  (I don’t do well with boredom.)

I love my family and friends, but it’s good to be home.

What is a hospitalist? 

Hospitalist is the term used for doctors who are specialized in the care of patients in the hospital.

In working with a new client, I’m starting to get to know more about hospitalist jobs.  PrimeDoc offers some very compelling options for hospitalist careers and hospitalist positions.

Their locations are in different places around the southeast.  They all offer hospitalist employment at each hospitalist group location.

If you’re thinking about getting a hospitalist job, check out the various pages that this post links to.

(Hopefully Google will too!)

Corey

I just noticed that my last blog post for my business blog – www.TheJungleMap.com was #501.  I started that blog back in October of 2006 and have been posting to it several times each and every month since.

I don’t think I actually have 500 posts, but I am surprised about how long I’ve been doing this for.

How appropriate that post #501 should be about “How to hire an SEO”.  You’d think I’d have that figured out by now.  HA!

It has been nine months since my last update on my info diet, which I started ten months ago, but I’m glad to say that I’m still on it and it’s working better than ever.

For those of you that know me well, I talk about it all the time, but rarely provide the details.  So here are some specifics…

It all started with reading the “Four Hour Work-week”.  (For the record, I did not like that book because of the premise behind it of doing everything for yourself.  I believe life is more about what you can do for others than what you can get for yourself.)  But the basic time management concepts were interesting.

So I started my diet by un-subscribing to every email newsletter I ever got.  Now I am only down to three:

1.  MarketingVox daily newsletter
2.  SearchCap daily news
3.  Web Marketing Now monthly newsletter

Anything else that comes into my inbox that is automated gets sent directly to a folder I call “noteworthy”, and I check that a couple times per week.  So my inbox is simply for real people who send me real emails.

But that does not mean I don’t stay informed.  When I drive and/or workout, I listen to and watch the below audio and video podcasts time permitting.

1.  This Week in Technology
2.  Ad Age Video
3.  Duct Tape Marketing
4.  NPR 7 AM ET Daily News
5.  TED Talks
6.  Tekzilla Daily
7.  Buzz Out Loud

As for actual physical mail, I get the below magazines/info…

1.  The Net Effect (I read it cover to cover)
2.  Wired Magazine (I don’t read it, I scan it)
3.  Fast Company (I don’t read it, I scan it)
4.  Charlotte Business Journal (I don’t read it, I scan it)

I also rely on several of my local SEO, Social Media, and Marketing colleagues to keep me informed via Twitter (time permitting), e-mail, and most importantly in person at monthly meetups.

Lastly, I do use an RSS reader, but the only blogs it has in it are friends and the various official search engine blogs.  That reader synchronizes to my two desktops, two laptops, my ipod touch, and my cell phone. 

I read them when I am bored.  (Like when my wife watches HGTV and/or House Hunters.)

Overall, this is what I’m down to and it suits me well.  I now work only four days per week and almost never work during evenings or weekends.

In case you have not seen it, make sure you go watch my initial video report on the snow in Davidson on January 20, 2009.  Funny thing is, we actually did get a bunch of snow 15 days later on Wednesday, February 4, 2009.

I’m sorry I did not do a full video journalistic report like the first one.  But here are some pictures of the snow we actually did get.

You can see that it melted off the sidewalk by daybreak.

But there was a couple inches on the grill, etc.

Grass had a couple inches or so.

So did the steps

My car had ice under the snow.
Had to run it for 10 minutes because I don’t have a scraper.

Sandy and I had a snowball fight the night before,
that’s why the the front of the car is cleaned off.

My neighbors houses had snow on the roof.

Nothing on the roads.

Not a big deal.  No danger here.

Here’s Davidson Pointe.  There’s a little ice on the road.

Sandy and I had a wonderful week in a beautiful cabin in Tennessee this week.  I just got back today.

Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are really not our cup of tea.  But it sure was nice to spend so much time together and relax.  I did not realize we would have no Internet until I got there.  But I survived.

Below are my comments I made via TXT messages on Twitter while away.

I’ve been working for about three years toward working 4 or 4 1/2 days per week instead of five.  (Actually, it’s been quite a bit more than five normally.)

So I wake up this morning with big plans to do some things I wanted to do.  But it’s pouring rain.  In fact, the weather says it is going to rain all day.

So I can’t quite do exactly everything I wanted to.  In fact, I have a meeting over in Asheville this afternoon with a client and then with the friends who are renting our house.

But there are some things I can do to get caught up around the house.  And the Boston Celtics are playing in Charlotte tonight. 

I’m sure I can turn this rainy day into something enjoyable after all.

I leave for a week long trip to NY and Massachusetts this week.

As I wrote three weeks ago, I have been working on reading less and eliminating distractions.  I’m calling it my info diet.

I’m trying my best to avoid TV (especially news) at home, but I am much more concerned about my time at work.

So over the last few weeks I have systematically unsubscribed to almost every email newsletter I get.  Here are the only exceptions…

1. SearchCap daily news on search engines
2. MarketingVox daily newsletter
3. Marketing Sherpa weekly research

The process has been very liberating.  It is a strange feeling to come in to work in the morning and only have emails from actual human beings in my inbox.  It’s also strange to walk out of the room for an hour or two and come back in and have no new emails.  It’s wonderful.

The whole reason I’m doing this is to free up time to create more.  The new design for my SEO training site is now up and running.  It’s not perfect yet, but it’s getting where I need it to be.

A new feature of the new design is that I am going to be providing more “resources” for my clients, students, and subscribers.

Thus, I am working hard to spend less time reading and more time writing – at work, at least.