Last Lecture

The entrepreneurial journey is indeed a "Hero's Journey". I appreciate how this course was designed to have the book by Jeff Sandefer and Reverend Robert Sirico be the capstone of this course experience. This book like the course take you through a discovery process of the key elements that you will need in order to start your own hero's journey. Robert D Hales said "To find gifts we have been given, we must pray and fast...I urge you each to discover your gifts and to seek after those that will bring direction to your life's work and that will further the work of heaven." This course has taught me to infuse the gospel of Christ into my entrepreneurial journey. Starting a business with the focus of using our God given talents to make people's lives better and prosper financial in order to be able to have the financial means to further the work of the Lord is an approach that will not be taught in any other business school.
I have realized the extent in which this journey will continually provide me with different types of trials. This course has provided me with lots of examples of how to preserver and endure those trials by being prepared for them. One of our biggest challenges will be to seek the path of self mastery. Elder Tanner stated "There are two important elements in self-mastery. The first is to determine your course or set the sails, so to speak, of moral standards; the other is the willpower, or the wind in the sails carrying one forward, As I said before, character is determined by the extent to which we can master ourselves toward good ends." By diligently working through the inspired assignments in this course you will be able to think ahead and set moral guidelines to keep you on the correct path.
I have learned just as much about business from the General Authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as I did from the business books and readings. On spiritual notion to keep in mind as you decided to start down a path towards mastery is that there is one out there that doesn't want you to succeed. He has made it his mission to cause you to fail. "Brigham Young also said, "We never began to build [any] temple without the bells of hell beginning to ring"" Don't let him succeed, this course will help you learn how to slay your dragons. 

Rank

It is great to have the amount of tools that are out there to be able to monitor what happens on your site so that you can make informed decisions on changes to the site. Woorank is amazing. And I only tried the free information. It helps you decide where to focus your efforts on enhancing your site. Their site also has lots of great actionable content. Useful information that you can implement to increase the search ability of your site. Part of the ranking process is getting people to link back to your site. This shows google that you have something that people are willing to share and talk about. However, getting these link backs is a difficult task. It requires a plan and a strategy just like an other aspect of your business. Another great tool to see what is happening on your site is Google Analytics. We had used it earlier in the semester but working with the program more in depth really shows it capabilities.

Social Networking

Social media is constantly changing. It can be an overwhelming task to create a Social Media plan for a business if you are completely new to social media. It is normal for those that grew up sharing every detail of their lives on some kind of social platform. There are many social platforms and a few have come and gone. There are even social media monitoring and influence ranking sites. The most famous Klout just called it quits a few months back.
With all of the things that we don't know about Social Media, we need to pick a site or two to learn and develop a plan to share our business on the internet. Social Media takes word of mouth to a whole new level. Any and all businesses should at least be searching the internet to find what people are saying about them, to make sure they are fairly represented. A couple of negative comments on any of the sites can create thousands of impressions than just regular word of mouth.
I think that the hardest thing to do is create social content, the attention span of someone scrolling through a social site must be less than seconds. You literally have a few seconds to capture the attention of potential customers. Pictures need to be of the highest quality, captions need to be within the readable limits - odds are that they will not click on the more button to see what the end of your sentence reads. It will take time but just one semi viral post or picture could bring you more exposure than you ever dreamed.

words not just words

As authors of content we try to express our own voice. As we develop that voice it might evolve with different characteristics but as we write content that will need to be search by a web browser in order to be found we need to keep SEO in mind. Moz has put together a great guideline and detailed example of how best to do that. A few of the key concepts that I knew that I need to change immediatly on my website were first: Keyword- Targeted content. Things as simple as having the keyword in the URL and having the keyword in the first words of the title element. Second: add unique value (this may be a duh) but in the world where everything has already been done at least a couple of times, you need to really think about the unique value you give to the subject. One of the sentences reads "Searchers who visit would be unlikely to go "back" from the page to choose a different result." To keep that in mind, did I provide my visitor with exactly what they were looking for to the point that they stopped looking. Implementing these and many more suggestions that were given in this article will bring my content to a new level.

all uphill

The home stretch seems to be an all uphill kind of adventure. I guess I should be happy that it should be an indication of being on the right path. As I worked through new technology and made sense of new terminology I had to read, step away from it for a few hours and then go back and reread. It usually takes time for my brain to become familiar with new ideas. I am grateful that I learned that early on in my life as a student. I don't recall now exactly where and how I learned it, but it has been useful to know my learning style. Especially with my lack of patience.
It has been interesting to take an Ad campaign in Google Adwords live. I would have never done that at this point in the web building process, I don't feel that the blog is developed enough to make a good impression. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a learning process and it doesn't have to be perfect in order to learn from it. I actually think that because it is not perfect I have learned more from it.
After looking at the numbers that come back for what Google tracks it is interesting to see what works and what doesn't. I can see that I need to make changes to the verbal content of the web landing page. Especially to align it more to the keywords being used in the ads. 

Information overload

It was an interesting process to try to follow directions on how to accomplish something in a software that was recently updated and now none of the directions match. The wonders of quickly advancing technology. In any case Google Analytics is a powerful tool that helps a website owner to quickly learn what is or isn't working on a website. Linking the Analytics to Google Ad Words was the frustrating part since Ad Words is the software that was recently upgraded. It also would have been nice to know that if you want to link the two accounts you should have signed up using the same Google account. Which makes sense, but when I signed up for Ad words I used a newer Google account than the one that I already had that had an established Google Analytics account. Needless to say I was going around in circles. I finally accomplished the task of linking the two accounts after giving up a couple of times. Knowing the data that is available in Analytics I can see the benefit of linking the two accounts. It will give you loads of information to be able to create better marketing strategies.

All uphill

I am pretty sure that I am currently in the space of building a website when I always give up. I haven't. I've thought about it, but keep remembering the inspiration I received at the beginning of the semester "It's about the learning not the perfect grade."
I have had some learning. In the past 6 years I have attempted at least a dozen times to get a newsletter sign up to pop up on a website and I finally did it. Either technology has progressed to the point that even a child can create correct html and placement or I'm getting smarter. My bet is on technology and well written tutorials. I have also finally figured out how to get a good load time on a website that is heavy with images. I've worked with Photoshop almost as long as it has been available (don't calculate me age in your head). This creates a false sense of knowledge. Because the homework was light for this week, I decided to take the time I set aside for this course and I went hunting for knowledge. Some of the processes where frustrating like placing my pop up code into my site code, but I found inspiration in President Eyring's quote "If you are on the right path, It will always be uphill." I haven't reached the top by any means but I have landed on a good clearing to catch my breath and plan the rest.

Practice makes perfect

I was actually dreading creating an Adworks campaign. The first couple of times I used it, I was able to generate what I needed for the assignments but it felt unfamiliar and gave me anxiety having to hunt around looking for stuff. I'm usually pretty good at learning software fast, but for some reason I wasn't getting the layout of the functions and how they related to each other. I'm a big picture kind of person. As I worked through actually creating a campaign it all came together. I could see how all of the puzzle pieces fit. I lack patience, and I'm easily frustrated when things aren't clear. Especially if I know that if someone would have put forth a bit more effort then I would need to be confused.
As I worked through finding key words for the add campaign I realized that we need to be clear about what we are doing, in order to put out a clear searchable message. If we can figure out what people need we can word our message to reach the people we can help.

Don't wait for perfect

My biggest resistance to creating is perfection. I've read book after book by Pressfield and Godin trying to figure out why I can't make my business ideas grow. I have no problems with the ideas or the start up but the publishing is always what gets me. If it were up to me I wouldn't have published the site just yet, but it is due on Saturday and because of other responsibilities all of my homework needs to always be turned in by Thursday night. So I have published ModestEveSewingStudio.com

I had started this course so that I could improve my current website, which I am also doing, but working through the homework assignments in this class I was able to resolve a conflict that I had which was that I did not want a blog on my Business site, but I wanted a blog to be able to help people learn to sew. During the "finding a business" assignment, I realized that they could be separate entities. I also had not ever considered monetizing a site to the extent that I have planned to do with the new site just created. I knew of the income possibilities but I didn't want to mix that with my business brand site. I am excited to say that it feels right and because it feels right, it doesn't have to be perfect. 

On the road again

I have started yet another website, which was the point of this class. Unlike the others, this time I have mapped out a plan, a method to the madness from which I can create an editorial calendar. As I worked on the assignments and read the updated blog post in regards to Site Design, I realized how fast technology can move. Something as simple as a circular photo of you instead of a square one makes a big difference. I hunted for several days for the correct WordPress theme to use and was amazed at the amount of technology already built into the themes, even the free ones. I was able to load a theme upload a photo (only after turning it into a circle in Photoshop) type some text and it was ready to go.
The theme even came with built-in social media icons, all I had to do was fill in the fields with my user information and up came the icons. I remember having to spend hours trying to get the dang HTML right in order to have social media buttons.
I am grateful for the updated technology, it should allow me to spend more time focusing on a business instead of having to learn new technology.

P.S. if you don't know what Grammarly is I suggest you go find out! How have I lived without it?

eeny meeny

This was a week of choosing. Choosing a product, choosing a site builder and choosing a host. I had gone through this process over a decade ago, hey that's how old this blog is. I had also done it a decade before that, when the internet was an infant. A lot has changed in 10 years, and an even whole lot more has changed in almost 20 years.
Working through choosing a product really helps you to think through the entire process. As you contemplate different variations of your dream product and the potential of other products you can get a good sense of what to expect. Using AdWords to find key words search impressions can help you decided how to best spend your time and money.
There are so many inexpensive options for site builders and the tried and true like Dreamweaver are still around. The options can be overwhelming. It helped that the assignment had us choose at least 3 key points to rate each option by so that we were comparing them products based on what we needed and wanted.
Choosing a host, this was even more overwhelming than the site builder. It seems like there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people in business to sell you a piece of the internet. The taught of there being that many dedicated servers out there is mind boggling. The only thing my hippie side could think is that we are depleting our natural resources. hahahaha

too many ideas

I'm sure that to a young person who wants to start a business, idea generating exercises are helpful even fun. My problem has always been too many ideas. I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, I can see that we are gathering information to find the best option for a business. I can also see that as we go through choosing one idea over another and using research tools like google Adwords keyword planner you can get a good idea of the impression potential of a given subject.

It is amazing the amount of content that is out on the web, especially since I though I was already consuming a lot of content. In a somewhat older video the creator mentions freedback.com which sounds like it was an early reddit, he suggest to become the expert there. The URL is a different type of company now. I also looked up feedback.com just incase I had written it down wrong, but that too is not a question site. It is however and idealab which is a whole different type of nut, squirrel....

Any who, that added an idea to my business idea- asksonia.com and just to satisfy my curiosity I posted the gig on fiverr instead. I haven't promoted it yet, but I'm revving up to start writing content again. Especially after researching affiliate marking programs, I might have to stop sewing to make time to write content just for the profit potential in the other gifts and talents that God gave me.

So there you see my problem, too many ideas.

Web Creation Reflection

I've been on one heck of a roller coaster, not sure if it is resistance or menopause, either way not fun. I was excited for the class on web creation, I am ready to have a site with product and payment integration. So when I realized the amount of time I would need to spend on discussion boards I was taken back and ready to quit.

I've never been good at slow and steady which makes a lot of sense as to why I haven't followed through on many things. I didn't quit, and my perfectionist self will figure out what is required of me to get an A and strive for it. If I end up with something less then I'm ok, knowing I did what I could. If I say that a couple of times maybe I'll believe it. I have 110 credits and a 3.9 GPA, I'm still trying to find an honors course that will help me get that .1 back. Yes, I have issues, but I'm sure we all do :)

It's all about the learning and I have learned a few things in these two weeks. I learned I'm more stubborn than I thought! I realized that people actually sit around and say "I want to start a business, what should it be?" and there are websites out there that can help you figure it out. Every business I've ever started has come about because I saw a need that I could fill and thought "I could do that." Every small business owner that I have ever worked for have had the same experience.

In this new digital global economy everything is different. It is interesting to do the research to start a business without a business idea or passion driving you toward an entrepreneurial goal.

With that being said, I also found that the Keyword planner tool in the Adwords google software is a great tool. I had no clue and here I was paying money to people to help me come up with keywords to use in etsy in order to come up on search results. What an ingenious backdoor to an advertising tool.