The Churn: In corner number one: Create!

Morin' Sally, Can't wait to see you this week! How was your weekend at the lake? Check out my Monday post on The Churn and be sure to read all week . . . things are really picking up and it is getting very exciting! I love you much, Dad The Churn: In corner number one: Create!: "How churnOn.com moved from 'idea' to 'reality' On January 7th I purchased a MacBook Pro and began the process of switching from Micro..."

Fit as a Fiddle Friday - Angels - 24.5

Sally,

I had a fun meeting with my Rudy's 360 boys this morning. One of my life tenets is that we all need to gather with friends on a regular (ritualistic) basis and share about things that really matter. In other words, for dad it is important that I meet my boys at Rudy's every Friday morning and talk a little football, but also talk about our spirituality and our struggles. It just seems to help make the days and weeks better and more rich.

Anyway, we are reading a book called 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper. He is a minister in Houston, who was in a horrific auto accident in 1989 and basically died. Cousin Cindy Fuller recommended the book to me last summer, and your mom and I are both reading it on her new Nook. I wanted to experience reading on a Nook in preparation for the books I plan to publish via epub.

At breakfast, we discussed angels. Do you believe in angels?

Stay fit,

Dad

Colloquial Thursday - Networking - 24.4

Hey Sally,

Having a great day of networking. I met this morning with Jay Watson, a good friend of the Ritchies and a very talented entrepreneur. He has a start-up called Forefront Austin, which is a 'digital media marketing platform' designed to help organizations communicate more effectively through the media (both traditional media and social media.)

A perfect example is Austin ISD, where your mom works. AISD has recently undergone tremendous budget cuts in order to balance their budget for the next year. All of the communication about the cuts has been through the Austin Statesman. According to Jay, the district does not effectively control the communication, but rather they let the Statesman dictate the rhetoric and then the district reacts to the dialog.

Checkout Forefront Austin and let me know what you think. This topic would make an interesting speech or paper in one of your classes.

Interesting stuff,

Dad

Women Power Wednesday - Fine line - 24.3

Sally,

I am walking a fine line with my web and social activation. On one side of the line is: 'dad needs a job in order to pay the bills and put my children through college' and on the other side of the line is: 'could churnOn.com actually become my new career?' Whenever you walk a fine line you are inevitably going to cross over the line in one direction or the other. Someone who might want to hire me, might think, "I like his creative energy and his unique way of getting stuff done, but if I hire him he might spend all of his time on this churnOn stuff?" On the other hand, if I 'hold back' and don't put my creative energy out into the world, how will I ever know where it might take me? 

I am going to continue to walk the line and not hold back. This reminds me of Marianne Williamson's famous 'shine on' quote. "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure . . . Your playing small does not serve the world . . . We are all meant to shine . . ."

Read full quote here.

Women power,


Dad
 

Stay Whole Tuesday - Building on momentum - 24.2

Sally,

I am starting to really gain some momentum on my 'web and social activation strategies'. Yesterday I spent some time getting everything organized and into a visual format that will help me stay on course. I have created stickies on my Mac that are color coded into the following categories: six month goals (i.e. where I want to be by June 30, 2011), favorite known opportunities to pray about, specific strategy for all social media (blogger, facebook, linkedIn, twitter, youTube), specific lists of key contacts for networking, and a schedule of blog posts for 'The Churn' blog. I am also printing these lists out and posting on bulletin board strips at my desk. Both of these visual steps will help me stay focused and working on the highest priority items that will move me towards my goals.

Stay whole,

Dad

Make it a great Monday - Blog and Web Strategy - 24.1

Sally,

I spent time this weekend thinking about my overall strategy for churnOn.com and my blog, 'The Churn'. I thought my friend, Pete Hayes, made some great points about 'social activation language' in the message I shared with you on Friday. I think it is important that you begin thinking about these same things. Everything you put out on the web sends some kind of message to others. The more you can share things that 'help others' or things that make people feel good, the better. Here is my second post in my series: The Four C's that launched churnOn.com. I have tried to write more in a way that someone might say, 'this is helpful and interesting stuff . . . I want to read more.'

Make it great and tfbmd,

Pappa

The Churn: Create, Complete, Connect, and Churn: "The Four C's that launched churnOn.com The Four Capacities: I am a big Stephen Covey fan and also have drawn inspiration through the y..."

Fit as a Fiddle Friday - more churnOn.com - 23.5

Sally,

Yesterday I started the hard launch email campaign for churnOn.com. I sent emails to family, friends, and some professional contacts announcing the site and asking for people to sign up for the blog. I give myself a C- on the email that I drafted as the cover email. I think it was fine for people who know me well, but not great for casual acquaintances. Here is some feedback that I got that I thought was constructive.

Be sure you make your blog something that's useful to others. Your tag line on the site starts to do this. Be sure to demonstrate that in your writing.  Then, I can't tell from the email or when previewing the two sites why I might follow what's going on, or the difference between the sites or what you want me to do having visited them.  It's clear you're in the process of expressing yourself and sharing your life-learnings. It's not clear what your readers are going to get. Certainly, there's an explicit value proposition -- hey, you can learn from me -- but I'd suggest you carefully reshape your voicing in your communications to be "service" oriented rather than "let me tell you about my full life and perspective." My suggestion is to revisit your purpose (end goal) for each site and your social activation writing and perhaps even the tenor of your book. In the end, while it's OK simply to have a place to share your thoughts, I sense you're expecting more productivity or result.

Also, here is a timely blog post from Jonathon Fields, one of the self-branding sites that I have been following. There is a fine line that I am walking in trying to self-brand for the primary purpose of finding a new business opportunity, but also make it interesting enough that 'churnOn' might turn into something unique, marketable and monetize-able.

Check out a few changes that I made to the home page this morning, after thinking about the feedback above. What do you think?

Stay fit,

Dad 

Colloquial Thursday - Today is the day - 23.4

Sally,

churnOn.com is officially declared a launch as of yesterday, and today is the day to let the world know what I have created. How about this for Colloquial Thursday: "Today is the day to stake your claim?" That was originally from Shakespeare, and then used extensively during the gold rush era, meaning today is the day to make your destiny. I like that!

My plans for hard launching the Website are to rollout in a series of emails to over 500 family, friends, and business associates. I will be asking all to visit the site, take a look at what I have created, sign up to receive an 'advance' free copy of my eBook (Releasing the Churn) and sign up to follow my Blog on Blogger. I will also be asking everyone to share the site with anyone whom they know that might be helpful in my 'opportunity' search for my next business venture. I am targeting educational technology and/or small technology companies with a product ready for launch. 

Here is how you could help me. Post something on your Facebook about dad's site and ask your friends to take a look. You could also ask your friends to sign up to follow my Blog, as your generation is much quicker to the punch then my friends will be. I need Blog followers, in order to get other Bloggers and Twitter-people to spread the word that the site and blog are open for churning. Also, for specific friends, it would be great if you would ask them to forward my site url to their parents. For example, I would love it if Alexandra would forward to her folks. I know you have other friends who have parents who are successful in their businesses and have lots of strong connections.

I really appreciate your help on this!

Until Fit as a Fiddle Friday,

Dad

Women Power Wednesday - Unflinchingly - 23.3

Just Sell®... it's all about sales® | the web's resource for sales leaders™

Sally,

I love this website called Just Sell. It is an example of pure 'inspirational product creation' over the Web. I dream of turning churnOn.com into something like 'Just Sell'. In fact, I am going to reach out to the people who created 'Just Sell' in Richmond, VA and see if they want to visit about churnOn.com. Why not?

Today's quote (on Just Sell) is from Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina and it is on the topic of unflinchability. I made that word up.

Be an unflinchable woman,

Dad

P.S. Paragraph spacing (yesterday) worked great in Firefox, but did not work in Chrome or Safari?

Still doing some testing and this post script is part of the test.

Stay Whole Tuesday - Staying whole - 23.2

Sally,
A lot going on for dad as you know. I had a wonderful Valentines dinner with your mom and am looking forward to teaching her how to use her new 'Nook' reader. She loves to read and I think this is going to be wonderful. It will also help us better understand how ePublishing works, so that my upcoming new release of Releasing the Churn will be formatted effectively. And then mom and I plan to begin writing '100 things for girls' as a second ePub project.
I just did my 52nd yoga class is 57 days, and the yoga practice continues to help me create and bring things to completion. I took a one-on-one yesterday and brought a head stand into my practice! Mom gave me two passes to something called 'Austin Hiking Yoga' for v-day and I am excited to maybe get a photo opportunity on the green belt.
Today, I am continuing my steps towards hard-launch of Website, with the social networking ecosystem now in place. I want to make a few simple tweaks to the site (at the Apple store this morning) and then start rolling with emails to over 500 family, friends, and professional contacts throughout the week.
How did the speech turn out? Did you use the story behind the swoosh?
Stay whole,
Dad
P.S. I am experimenting with some paragraph spacing issues in blogger, so forgive me if this post looks a little funky.

Make it a great Monday - churnOn.com - 23.1

Sally,

How was your trip? Sounded great from what mom told me. Things are rockin' and rollin' for me. I will be 'hard launching' churnOn.com this week, with email blast to over 500 friends, family and professional contacts. Check out the post that I just published this morning. On the Website, it says that I published at 3 a.m., but that is a time zone problem inside of goDaddy or MobileMe, the hosting services for my Website. I will figure that out at the Apple store this morning with my new best friends. Take care of yourself this week and know that I love you!

Make it a great,

Dad

The Churn: The Four C's that launched churnOn.com: "Create, Complete, Connect, and Churn Many of my Carolina friends remember Dean Smith's famous 'Four Corners' offense. Before the shot clock ..."

Fit as a Fiddle Friday - Using photos in blogger - 22.5

Dad taking a break at TCEA

I hope your travels were smooth to Memphis and that you have a wonderful weekend with your buddies. Tell them hello for me. The next time Ryan is in Austin, I want to hit a few tennis balls with him and then get a photo, so I can say I hit with Ryan!

Today I am experimenting around with posting photos in Blogger. Some people say that every blog post should have some type of photo or graphic? This photo is me taking a break at TCEA - Texas Computer Education Association and trying to look cool with my MacBook opened.
Do me a favor and post a comment on this blog when you are next at the site. I want to start getting a sense for how comments work.
Stay fit,
Dad

Colloquial Thursday - Rambling on about ChurnOn - 22.4

Sally,

It looks like yesterday's nugget posted in Verdana (I think I called it Veranda by mistake in yesterdays post). That is a standard template font inside of blogger and it is close to Helvetica, which is what I am using on www.churnOn.com. I just have to remember to change the font each morning when I post, from the default (Times Roman) to the preferred Verdana.

I am thinking of churnOn.com as my Web presence or home base for my personal brand. My goal now is to tie the key social networking sites to home base in a way that helps build my brand. The obvious sites would be Blogger, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Before I 'announce' my site to family, friends, and professional contacts I want to have all of this set up in a way that makes it easy for people to connect and follow me on an on-going basis.

So one of my goals today is to find someone who can help me do this quickly and efficiently.

That shall be my intention for today,

Dad

Women Power Wednesday - Font selections - 22.3

Sally,

It's Women Power Wednesday and I am blogging about type faces. You noticed that I changed the background of 'Nuggets from Dad' this week to the 'clouds' and away from the 'books'. That was originally done because I wanted to use the 'books' as the background for 'The Churn' blog; however I later decided to go with the 'Friday Night Lights' theme, as I thought it had a nice 'launching' feel (i.e. 'IT'S FOOTBALL TIME IN TEXAS!') Anyway, I wanted to keep the background different so that I would not get confused when preparing to make a post. I digress.

So what about type faces? In short, I have learned that Times Roman (my usual and longtime typeface choice) is more of a 'business' or 'wall street' or 'formal' look. Times Roman is called a serif typeface, because of the "semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up the letters and symbols." A typeface without the serif is called a sans serif typeface. An example would be Helvetica or Veranda. For my website and blog, I am trying to be consistant and use Helvetica and/or Veranda.

Blogger is a little tricky when it comes to typefaces, as the templates take some getting used to in terms of how to master the fonts in the headings, labels and body of the blog. I am still working through some of this and am using 'Nuggets from Dad' to do some testing. I am writing this in Veranda, but it keeps changing back to Times Roman in my preview?

Allison McDougall is a St. Edwards design student who is helping me better understand all of this from a design standpoint. She is also developing a logo and style sheet for churnOn.com. Check out her Website to see some cool stuff about fonts and design. Mom and I are going to her senior exhibition reception this Friday evening and hopefully taking your sisters. The show is called: 'semiotics' - the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.

Women power,

Dad

Stay Whole Tuesday - churnOn.com go live today - 22.2

Sally,

Thank you so much for the sweet phone call last night about www.churnOn.com. It was wonderful to hear the enthusiasm in your voice. Today I will be doing a little more fine tuning, working on a couple of additional podcast that will be added to the site later this week, releasing my first 'The Churn' blog post, and then heading to the Apple store at 4 p.m. for some time with the geniuses. At that point, the plan is to move the site over to my GoDaddy hosting service. I believe it takes a few hours for everything to work its magic in Internet land and then (if all goes well) the site will be official and the url will work with out the extra stuff that you see now. I will also begin using my new email address: gpage.singletary@churnOn.com later today, once I set it up.

Tomorrow I begin walking the floor of a trade show that is in Austin called TCEA. That is the show that you walked with me last year. My plan is to look for interesting companies (and decision makers) and to introduce myself with my 'churnOn' business card hoping that they will visit churnOn.com in order to get to know me better. I will also soon begin my site rollout by emailing friends, family and professional contacts, letting the world know that I am prayerfully searching for the next 'right-fit' professional opportunity.

Stay tuned . . .

Stay whole,

Dad

Make it a great Monday - churnOn.com - 22.1

Sally,

Today is a special 'Make it a Great Monday' for dad. I am getting very close to launching my self-branding Website: www.churnOn.com. I want to give you a 'sneak peak' today. The primary goal of the site is to help dad find professional opportunities in the educational technology space. The secondary goal of the site is to provide a 'homebase' location for my writing projects, blog, social networking, etc.

There are a few things on the site still under development. Specifically, the 'Blog' section will not go live until later this week, so ignore that text. Also, you will see a few youTube place holders that are not yet live. I will be replacing those with photos until I complete the videos. You should see one video is ready to go, titled 'My favorite quote'. The idea with the videos is to give someone a chance to enjoy my personality and to see how I present and speak. I have several others under development.

The fact that I have been able to do all of this over the past few weeks is a great testament to the Apple brand. I love my MacBook and the geniuses at the Apple store!

I hope you can take a look soon and give me some feedback.

Love,

Dad

Fit as a Fiddle Friday - Toot your horn gracefully - 21.5

Sally,

Kaputa makes a few more key points in the chapter on becoming a little bit famous. For example, she talks about the importance of finding an arena you can dominate. One that is not overcrowded with people trying to do the same thing you want to do. She encourages you to think about where there might be room in the channel for you. For dad, my focus is educational technology and sales leadership. I think that is an area where I can dominate!

Another key point that she makes is the concept of 'tooting your own horn (gracefully).' She stresses the importance of packaging your message with a good name and with sound bites, but in a way that does not appear too self-promoting. Here are the guidelines she suggests:

1. Use a narrative or story format. This keeps the focus off of you, and puts it on the story.
2. Quote other people. When another person sings your praises, it is the opinion of a third party.
3. Put the spotlight elsewhere. Don't focus on yourself. Always make it about something larger than yourself.
4. Bring the audience into the story. Then it is not just about you.

This concludes my study of Katherine Kaputa's book, You are a Brand! I hope you have enjoyed it? You will soon have a chance to see how dad is about to release his personal brand. I look forward to getting your feedback.

Stay fit,

Dad

Colloquial Thursday - Rub shoulders with a celebrity - 21.4

In building my personal brand, I have been thinking about this idea of how to become a little bit famous? One way Kaputa discusses is to rub shoulders with a celebrity. I have collected a few photos that I think can help. I have a great picture presenting an Ohio State Official Ring to two time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffen. I have a picture with Fuzzy Zeller and another (if I can find it) with Martina Navratilova, where she is presenting me with a trophy after winning a tennis tournament in Aspen. She is such a cool lady. I have a picture of Uncle Charlie hanging out with Michael Jordan at Pine Valley Golf Club and a picture of your mom with Shaq at the Final Four in 1991. Just showing these pictures on my Website might help give me a little boost in visibility and credibility. What do you think?

Women Power Wednesday - The Mona Lisa - 21.3

You guessed it! The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world. Being 'top of mind' can be very rewarding. In the case of The Mona Lisa, crowds flock to see her every day. The painting is the only painting that has its own gallery at the Louvre. She has been given leading roles in best-selling books and movies centuries after Leonardo de Vinci painted her. Kaputa asks, "Is The Mona Lisa really the best painting in the world? Who knows? But because it is top of mind, it has achieved icon status. It is truly priceless."

Now that is truly some woman power Wednesday stuff to think about.

Top of mind,

Dad

Stay Whole Tuesday -Top of mind - 21.2

Sally,

Kaputa says, "Despite things we've been told, like 'talent wins out,' the reality is more that 'visibility wins out.'" Talent and ability are certainly important, but if nobody knows who you are then you are not as likely to find the opportunities in life that you will most want to find. She introduces a phrase called 'top of mind awareness' to help you understand this concept. When you think of a product category, perhaps 'soft drinks', what brand first comes to mind? Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, Dr. Pepper? Companies spend millions of dollars to try and position their brand as the 'top of mind' brand.

It is the same with people. A little bit of fame will give you an advantage over others in your industry or profession. Tomorrow we will look at a fun story that she tells to make the point of something being 'top of mind' about the most famous painting in the world. Can you guess the name of the painting?

Stay whole,

Dad