What I Do
(Digital Marketing) – It’s just easiest to put it all under one category. This way my job title doesn’t change from week to week.
I use the internet, my technological skills, and my marketing skills to help people.
While this may sound broad, I can give you a few specific examples:
I have built, optimized, and designed over a hundred websites. I still do this, but not on a freelance basis. Only for consulting/reoccurring work. It’s where I/my company can provide the most value. [See Elevated Conversions for more info]
Organic and paid search campaigns. From screaming frogs to crawling spiders (industry humor) I’ve spent and overseen more than $3MM in ad spend over the 5 years I’ve been a Digital Marketer.
One of the things that makes me stand out from other Marketers is that I have development skills as well. This enables me to trule be “data-driven” as connecting APIs, for example, is much smarter to tie in source data as opposed to ETL’ing (Extract, Transform, and Load)’ing it within databases, for example. Languages that I use and I encourage every Marketer who wants to be of high value to a company are: SQL, Javascript, Regex, JSON/API development knowledge, and be a ninja with Google Sheets (I’d take this route over Excel now-a-days).
Owning my own agency has taught me to be very multi-dimensional. I pretty much had to learn all aspects of Digital Marketing to first do them. Then I had to do it enough to realize how much I liked it (or didn’t like it). I had to then learn even more to hire people for it. This has really made me a well rounded Digital Marketer and I’m happy to jump in and do what needs to get done as a result of it now-a-days (I truly feel that the best Digital Marketers know what they are good at and when to stop, but they also can jump in and get things done when they need to).
Never-the-less, one of the biggest reasons I do what I do is to help more people and have more options in life. I’m a very big believer in work/life balance.
[I promise to have a fully loaded blog post for other Solo/Entrepreneurs starting out with some value tips and things I wish I would have done right away!]
What It Enables Me to Do
There are so many things to be grateful for in this life. I’m definitely understanding the definition of “gratitude” as I age in life.
The things that have brought me joy up to this point, and as I continue along, are the things that I want to give back in.
To have a sure impact, one can always look to the environment and ways to offset their footprints, to always make a difference.
3 Ways I practice being mindful of our environment
Alternative transportation – 99% of the time that means I ride Gretchen II. Growing up in North Dakota, and living in Denver, almost every day is a beautiful day to ride my bike, year-round. Regardless of how much stuff I have to bring with or bring home from the grocery store (it makes for a better workout…)
Recycling – Not the most convenient for apartment renters, but Denver provides the facilities for it, so the least I can do is take a little extra time to make it there.
Volunteering – This is broad, and I want to do a lot more of it. Anything from trail maintenance to donating my time with my digital skills to help green businesses. I’ve actually done quite a bit of this, and would like to get into more of it in the near future.
To learn more about Denver’s awesome bike community, visit: bikedenver.org
To learn more about recycling in Denver, visit: denvergov.org
To learn more about the businesses I’ve done work for check out a few:
greeneventscolorado.com
oneworldrunning.com
athletesintandem.org
What It’s All For
When it’s all said and done, our relationships are the things that we’ll remember. [Even you, Clarence, you were the best imaginary friend an only child could ask for]
Coming back to doing what I do – working for myself and with the internet…I’m able to spend a lot of time with the people in life that matter the most to me.
I’m choosing more work at the moment, based off of the phase I’m in with growing my business, but it’s a choice, and it sure feels good to never “have” to work, or report to someone else.
This path I’m on is truly a means to an end and I’m very excited about the future of it all. Thanks for connecting with me and reading this, hopefully we can connect in real life soon!
Cheers,
-Ryan