Moving On

Five years ago on Thanksgiving weekend Heather and I moved our family from a two bedroom apartment in San Antonio to a three bedroom apartment in Cedar Park (Austin) to start a new job with a dental marketing company called Practice Cafe. Due to a series of unfortunate events I had been laid off from my job in October (2006) and on a whim (errr desperation) decided to extend my job search to the Austin area via Craigslist. Practice Cafe’s job listing actually really intimidated me at the time. I really felt like I had no real chance at getting the job. My thought process was, “what would it hurt to at least try.” So I sent over my resume along with a link to a REALLY bad portfolio website. I had never actually done any real “billable” design work up to that point. My entire website consisted of school projects. I think my confidence was also pretty low since a month or two earlier I had tried to get a job with a local digital creative agency in San Antonio where they told me that they couldn’t hire me because I wasn’t “billable.”

I was pretty shocked when after 1-2 days I was contacted by Practice Cafe and invited to drive to Austin for an interview. I wanted to be memorable so I came up with a quick idea to create a small logo book (that I think Joel still has on his book shelf in his office) and got it printed at Kinkos. The funny thing was that it cost like $12.00 to make the book. This was a lot of money (to us) at the time, and Heather gave me a lot of grief for spending the money to have it printed. She thought it was a silly idea and a waste of money. Regardless, I took my lil’ book of logos, my portfolio of student work, drove up to Cedar Park in north Austin, and had my interview. My mom was actually working near by in Round Rock so I went and visited her after my interview and we both drove back to San Antonio together. I had a really good feeling when I left the interview, and I really felt it went well (read my thoughts on the actual date).

A very grueling three weeks later they finally called just when Heather and I were both losing all hope and on the brink of complete despair. I had been out of work that entire time and we had Hannah who was roughly 18 months old at the time. I was so desperate for a job I went to a USAA job fair to try and get a job as a customer service rep. I stood in a really long line for a few hours in the parking garage. As I finally arrived at the door they told me that the interviews were over with and we’d all need to come back tomorrow. At the end of the next day was when I finally received the phone call from Practice Cafe offering me the position.

I am so grateful that Brian, Angie, and Joel were willing to take a chance on me. I seriously had no real experience or much of anything to really prove to them that I would actually help their business. I have no real clue why they hired me.

When I started working there I was the 7th employee and the company was only a year old as an actual “LLC.” I was so thrilled and excited to be working for Practice Cafe. After only a few months the company hit a really rough transition period and it was looking like there was a pretty good chance the company wouldn’t make it. We all pulled together and pushed our way through it. That experience in the first year helped me feel less like an employee and more like I was actually a part of the company or rather that the company was a family and I was a part of that family.

Now Practice Cafe has 13 employees. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it all. Practice Cafe cultivates a creative work environment which encourages growth. They financially encouraged me to continue learning through the purchase of many books as well as 3 consecutive years of SXSW Interactive badges. I was also in an environment which provided me the freedom to learn, grow, and progress as a designer and a person. I was able to freely share my opinions, beliefs, philosophies, random ramblings. Collectively over the past five years I feel we all worked together to make each other better which resulted in the business as a whole becoming more successful and better. Practice Cafe is now one of the leaders in the dental marketing community. I’m proud to of been a part of it all.

What’s Next

For four years I worked in a sales position as a telemarketer. I spent time doing both in bound and outbound work. I hated my job and constantly dreaded going to work. While I was at work I spent most of my time trying not to stare at the clock. I decided then that as soon as I was through with school I would never have a job where I dreaded/hated going to work. I can honestly say that I have never dreaded going to work for the past 5 years with Practice Cafe. I loved my job and I loved the people I worked with and for. So back in August when I got a random phone call during the day from an 801 phone number. I actually only answered the call because I thought that it might be one of my long lost companions from my mission. Instead it was John Dilworth, he told me he was with Family Search and that they wanted to fly me out to Utah so they could get to know me better and I could also meet all of them. Initially I told him I wasn’t really looking for another job. He assured me that there was no obligation, just that they’d really love for me to come out so I could learn more about the opportunity and they could see if I was a good fit for them.

Well, I took him up on his offer. I flew up and I went through all the intense interviews. I returned home and within a week they had extended an offer to me. Heather and I both spent a good deal of time really pondering over and praying about this opportunity. This was a huge decision for us. We are both from Texas. We both have a great deal of Texas pride. My children are still young and quite frankly I didn’t like the thought of my two youngest children being so young that they would never actually remember anything about Texas. This could potentially make them not Texan. Beyond this we had just recently purchased our first house less than two years ago. The majority of our family lives in Texas. Another personal goal of mine is that I really want my children to grow up actually knowing their cousins, uncles, aunts, and grand parents. That was something I never had growing up and I’ve always wanted. Thus far we’ve actually been able to do a reasonably good job at this. Then there was also the fact that I really loved where I worked and the work I was doing. In fact I still feel as though I am abandoning Practice Cafe and letting each and everyone of the employees down to some degree by leaving.

The interesting aspect of all of this is when I finally stopped being selfish, and I stopped thinking about what I wanted was when it was completely clear what I needed to do. You see if you read the paragraph above all of my hesitations are fairly selfish and are all about what I “want.” So when I stopped focussing on all of that and really listened to my Heavenly Father, I could feel that this was something I needed to do. I still have no real clue why I’m supposed to do this. All I am doing is just trying to put my complete trust in God. They extended the final offer to me on September 9, 2011. The past two months have been a long and bumpy road. We have continued to push ourselves forward and now the day is finally upon us.

Well… Goodbye

Today was my last day of working at Practice Cafe. Friday the movers are coming to pack up all of our things. Monday they are loading everything into a truck. We are piling our three kids into our Mazda 5 and heading out on our 20 hour voyage to the rocky mountains of Utah.

“God gives us hope but we still fear what we don’t know.”

Although I am very sad to leave, I’m also excited for what the future holds. I’m excited to start working for Family Search. I’m excited for the opportunity to be a part of it all. I’m excited to work with all of the smart and amazingly talented folks at Family Search. Not to mention I’m giddy as a school girl to work on a Macbook Air.

Stop following directions and start designing

“Of course it is totally understandable to take the ideas of those that pay our bills as gospel. But we should also be reminded that those same people hired us for our expertise. If they just wanted someone to follow orders, they’d probably have hired someone else.”

Read the entire article.

Good, Great, Greatest

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what goes into being good, great, or greatest at something. So I came up with a few ideas. The tricky part with this is how the words, “good”, “great”, & “greatest” are very relative in their definition. What I mean by that is, the definition of all of these will vary dependent on the person and their given experience with whatever they are applying the word to. You also have to apply the element of opposition, you can only know sweet by also knowing bitter, but then your degree of what you consider sweet will vary dependent on the amount of sweetness you have experienced. So yeah, this is a pretty complicated subject as you can see, but let’s just take this little journey, and feel free to chime in with your comments and we will see if we can come up with something memorable in the end.

GOOD:

To be good at something I feel that you first need to learn the fundamental aspects of that something. As an example let’s use basketball, although this can be applied to almost anything. So to be a good basketball player first you must learn the fundamentals of the game. Once you have a solid comprehension of the fundamentals I feel you are well on your way to being good. The next step is to actually practice, and by practicing you slowly begin to make progress. The more you practice the better you become.

GREAT:

To be considered GREAT, I feel you need to not only have a solid foundation of the fundamental aspects that govern whatever you are striving to be great at, but you also need to have an added degree of focus. This focus involves a higher degree of practice. You also must begin to find people who are already great or even greatest and begin to emulate them. I remember as a kid I began trying to play like my favorite basketball players, as well as my older brother. I would see him (or them) do different moves and then start practicing them. Gatorade didn’t chose to use “I Wanna Be Like Mike” as their marketing campaign for no reason you know? Thats also why people wear “WWJD” wristbands as well. Trying to emulate Jesus is never a bad thing.

Even applying this to web design, I am always looking at the people who I feel are great or even greatest and then I try to emulate them not as people, but as designers.

GREATEST:

I think to get to the greatest category it comes down to your level of commitment, focus, and most importantly the details. The majority of guys you see in professional sports or the Olympics eat, sleep, and drink their sport. Just look at how hard Michael Phelps trains for example:

“Bowman actually started training Michael Phelps when the Phelps was still 11 years old. He pushed Phelps to swim at least 50 miles each week. According to him, kids at that age, is able to increase the size of their hearts and lungs in ways that no longer possible later on. The larger the heart and lungs, the bigger the aerobic engine. Phelps has been training almost 5 hours a day and 7 days a week without any rest day. Bowman admitted that he has trained the star to the extent that Phelps has little time or energy left at the end of the day for anything except to eat, sleep or occasionally watch the television. Phelps has to swim on his birthdays and Christmas too. He probably has missed some of the things he should have enjoyed at his age, but he has probably gained much than what he has missed. By the way, Bowman was a college swimmer before he became coach and he has a degree in child psychology. That helps, I guess.

Click here for the full article

The thing to be worried about when you are looking to be in the greatest category to me, is you really need to think about your priorities in life. In all reality the only things I want to be greatest in are being a father, & a husband. When you chose something like a vocation to be greatest in, you really are sacrificing a lot of other aspects of your life in order to become greatest. Most insanely successful individuals go through countless divorces, and have poor relationships with their children and family. It’s all due to the amount of focus and commitment you have to have to reach the level of greatest.

If your vocation, sport, or hobby is that important to you, then I suppose it is all worth it. To me I would much rather be considered the GREATEST dad, or the GREATEST husband. So to do so, I believe I have to stay focused on what it is that makes a person the greatest dad, or husband.

CLOSING REMARKS

That is why I am more than happy with simply being great at designing websites, or basketball for that matter (if I can even be considered great that is). I am not saying that ALL people who are in this greatest category don’t have great relationships with their families. I’m also just not confident that you can truly be greatest at more than one thing. Perhaps this only applies to me, and my capacities.

I do feel like in regards to web design I am at that stage where I am constantly trying to analyze what makes other web designers great. I have also changed the way I look at the world in general. When I go to the grocery store I am constantly looking at package designs, posters, and displays for different aesthetic aspects, and how effective they are. When I drive down the road I pay close attention to each and every billboard, as I sit in the mall while Hannah is playing I sit and stare at the Dillards logo and get irritated by the poor kerning of the letters. When I watch TV I pay very close attention to most commercials and the little details involved such as the fonts used, colors, music, camera angles, cinematography, and more. Similar things happen to me when I watch a movie, even my basketball watching experience has changed since I now over analyze the graphics on the screen. How they display the score and other statistics throughout the game. I flip through magazines not only to read the articles, but also to enjoy the layout and graphical elements of the magazine in general. I try to figure out what type of grid was used in the design of the magazine. There are countless other ways that my attempts to become a better designer has changed the entire way I see and interact with the world. Like I said, that to me is the only way to become great at it.

I am also constantly looking at web galleries, and almost stalking each and every web designer I feel are some of the best in the world. I visit their blogs on almost a daily basis. I subscribe to different design related magazines and do my best to read them from cover to cover.

I just hope I never allow myself to focus more on design, or basketball than I do my daughter, soon to arrive son, and wife. I think back to my youth, and how I did similar things in regards to basketball. My junior year I began shooting at least 100 three pointers a day, as well as 50 free throws. If I would of known what I know now, I probably would of gone the extreme route of Michael Phelps, because at that time in my life basketball and being successful was almost everything to me. At least I told myself that, I didn’t have the focus and work ethic to quite back it up. I think many times people want to be great so bad, but don’t want to actually put in the work necessary to obtain it. Mostly because they see someone that is already at that level, and don’t pay close enough attention to see what that person actually did to get to that point. They just see their fame, money, & talent and covet it.

What are your thoughts?

Don’t Chase Money

“Don’t go after clients because of the money. Be sure the client fits your culture. Angelo says, (of David&Goliath) “We look at our client partners as an integral part of the brand. They’re as much a part of our place as anyone here.”

words by: Julie Prendiville Roux in an article published in the Communication Arts Interactive Annual 15

I don’t think anyones primary goal in business or in life should be money. When you REALLY think about it, everyones primary goal in life is to be happy, so why not make that your primary goal in business as well. If you are thinking, “money will make me happy.” Well that is a sad and slippery slope to be on, because you will never make enough money for that to REALLY happen.

Proud

When I first got hired on as a designer with the wonderful team over at Practice Cafe I’m not even sure their website showed up in a “Google Search” for anything BUT a search for “Practice Cafe.” Well a little short into a year of working their I was privledged to be able to take on the hefty job of redesigning their website. Well two more redesigns later and it is the beautiful site that I LOVE to inform people that I was a part of producing is now on the infinite abyss we all call the interweb (or is that just me?).

Well it quickly became a business goal to get ourselves ranked as high as possible in Google for a number of relevant searches. The main one being “Dental Marketing.” So we set out a little over a year ago to improve our ranking in “Dental Marketing.” So I dove in head first at researching “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO), and best practices in improving your ranking in Google. I quickly realized this was a very tricky little task. There is no solid formula or solid answer. Infact the more time went on it was almost as if, right when I got to the point where I was saying, “Hey I think I got a handle on this SEO business” I would quickly get a reality check of how much I DIDN’T know.

However with the help of a WONDERFUL team of copywriters in Angie Liddiard & Amanda Fuller, and some helpful hints and tricks from my good friend Noel Datko, we have successfully been able to implement a lot of tender love and care over the months and successfully reached page one in google in a handful of relevant and very competitive searches. In fact our visitors to our site per day has doubled if not tripled since I started working back in November of 2006.

So as you can see from the beautiful screen capture above we are currently residing in the NUMBER 5 out of 9,120,000 in a Google Search for the term “Dental Marketing.”

Click the picture above for an enlarged image, or you can just go ahead and do a quick Google Search yourself right now for “Dental Marketing” and take a VERY short scroll on down to “Practice Cafe” and go ahead and click your way over to Practice Cafe to see how we are VERY capable at handling any and all of your Dental Marketing needs (ZING!)

Although I still feel like an amateur when it comes to SEO, I am also very happy and proud that all of our work over the year has REALLY paid off. So I am anxious to continue to learn, grow, and develop these skills and to continue to improve both Practice Cafe’s website and the websites of all our clients. Each and every year the internet is becoming more and more important when it comes to a marketing budget, and how people want to market their company or business, and search engine optimization will continue to play a HUGE roll in the future of marketing in the world. So we are happy to be a part of this.

Keywords and Terms Practice Cafe ranks well in:

Dental Marketing: Page 1 – #5
Dental Practice Marketing: Page 1 – #10
Dental Marketing Services: Page 1 – #3
Dental Marketing Companies: Page 1 – #2
Dental Marketing for Less: Page 1 – #5
Professional Dental Marketing: Page 1 – #10
Dental Marketing Firms: Page 1 – #5
Dental Marketing Postcards: Page 1 – #5
Custom Dental Marketing: Page 1 – #2
Affordable Dental Marketing: Page 1 – #1
Dental Office Marketing Budget: Page 2 – #5
Dental Marketing Campaign: Page 2 – #1
Dental Logos: Page 2 – #7

A Winter Wonderland!

The lights have been hung with care
All the festive hats are snug on our heads
With a friendly little snowman to bring in good cheer!
It’s a winter wonderland at PracticeCafé.com (snow included).

Welcome To My Life

This is what I go through on almost a daily basis.

JCS Branding Website

I recently designed a website for a friend & business partner of mine. His name is Jake Starr, he owns and operates JCS Branding along with his father. He approached Joel and I a few months ago about redesigning his website for him as a favor. He was nice enough to meet us in San Marcos and buy us lunch as he shared his rough sketches, ideas, and expectations for the redesign. We had to make a few changes to his original plan after evaluating his budget and primary goals as a business.

From that point on until Monday I spent my free nights and weekends at home working away on designing and coding his website. My friend Joel offered up a bit of help and designed some great links of featured areas of the website that run down the left side of the website.

JCS Branding is based in San Antonio, so we tried to translate both the name of the company, and where it is located into the design of the website, to help reinforce the services Jake offers his clients. Practice Cafe does quite a bit of business with Jake, he delivers great products and competitive prices along side top notch customer care and service. Jake is an honest down to earth guy and it shows in the manner in which he conducts his business. He’s constantly helping us find the best products to exceed our expectations and goals for everything from pens, chap stick, coffee mugs, magnets, & more. He helps us know what materials, and merchandise will be best suited for our particular needs. So it was an honor to be able to work on designing a brand new website for him.

Please click your way over to his website by clicking on either one of the images or here. Also if you ever need your name or logo placed on ANYTHING and when I say ANYTHING I literally mean ANYTHING don’t hesitate on contacting Jake Starr.

I hope that the website has exceeded his expectations and will help reinforce the values of his business while also facilitating it and reinforcing his company brand and identity. I also hope that his current customers, as well as future customers will also enjoy his website.

Let me know what you think about the website by leaving me a comment.

Practice Cafe 2008

If you recall in April 2007 I wrote a post mentioning how I had helped redesign the Practice Cafe website. Soon after that site was launched we quickly began to realize that the site had many limitations and flaws. The way the site was designed, was not conducive to a lot of growth and there wasn’t much flexibility. At the time I was still learning how to design webpages and I did the best I could with the knowledge I had. One of the main flaws of the old site was that it was not very accessible as a website should be. not only that but we realized their was a lot of things we as a company wanted our website to do and say that it wasn’t doing, and it was too hard to get it to do those things without redesigning it all together.

So back in July 2007 we decided to start refreshing our site. The last time we tried to do it way too quickly and therefore the site had far too many mistakes. so this time we decided we were going to take it slower and really think it through. After discussing the specific goals we needed the site to achieve I came up with a rough design for the site, shown above (click on the image to view a larger version).

However after further discussion we realized that I wasn’t looking at this opportunity as giving myself a blank canvas. This design was only a slight modification of the old site, and I think I was trying to hold on to too many elements of the old flawed site. Another flaw to this design was that we wanted to have the entire waitress still standing to the side on every page of the website, since she has become one of the ways many people recognize our company. So I decided to start fresh, and I came up with a second idea for the website, shown above (click on the image to view a larger version).

Still this new idea didn’t seem to really accomplish everything we had in mind. So we began to start to make several tweeks. One major problem was that we wanted the waitress to be one of the first things you saw on every page without having to scroll. We also needed her to be standing on the red checkered floor. So we finally came to a solid design which met all of our goals, at least on a graphics level.

So then we had a team meeting during lunch where we came up with a strong sitemap for the site. In the meeting we discussed in detail the goals we had for our site as far as content was concerned. We came to the conclusion that we wanted our website to be more educational, and informative. We wanted the site to be extremely user friendly, and accessible. Another goal was for our site to be better optimized for search engines.

At the end of that meeting we set a goal to launch the new site in April 2008. So 47 pages later I am happy to now say that the new site has been launched and is happily in it’s natural habitat on the world wide interweb here. Please feel free to follow the link and visit the site, and please tell me what you think of the site?

I have to say that this website was very much a collaborative effort, so although most of the design and coding was done by myself, it was only after a lot of brainstorming and other discussions with Joel. Also Angie took on the job of writing and preparing almost all of the copy for the website, and I have to say she did a very beautiful job. She really turned the site into a very educational and informative site. Shara also helped write and prepare the case studies, and all of the partner pages of the website and did an equally fabulous job. Then as a team we all took turns reading, re-reading, and searching the site to catch as many mistakes as we could find and fixing them all the way up until the last moment when I was given the “OK” to set the refreshed site FREE on Thursday April 17, 2008.

Frustration

I HATE Internet Explorer, and Microsoft which specifically means Bill Gates. Seeing as how Microsoft and Bill Gates are the reason that the majority of people use Internet Explorer, not necessarily as a choice but more out of laziness and convenience. You buy your computer and Internet Explorer is already on the computer with your nifty little buggy Windows operating system. You click on the icon and it opens up and appears to work sufficiently. Mean while the web designers in the world are having to spend too many hours trying to get their websites to behave the way they do in EVERY other browser known to man, but for some retarded reason it won’t work in Internet Explorer 5 & 6. I’m not really sure why this should even be a problem since Internet Explorer has already been readily available for free to the world for a couple of years now. Internet Explorer is set to be released sometime this year or in the near future, but for some reason their is a large quantity of people who still use an in adequate browser.

The other question is why every other company that designs browsers has created a browser that reads and interprets code the way the code is written. It is only Internet Explorer that decides to interpret the code differently, and decides to ignore different aspects of code, which forces web designers to come up with all types of tricks and shenanigans to make the browser understand and cooperate.

So this humble message from a young frustrated soul goes out to the vast and infinite abyss of the world wide web, that everyone viewing this post at this time, if you are viewing it with internet explorer please follow this link to enlightenment and together we can eradicate this horrible disease that has been plaguing our computers.

CLICK HERE TO HELP SAVE A WEB DESIGNER TODAY