Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

Curtis McHale has the three step process for marketing your business. Blog, podcast and meet people.

The primary thing you need to do is blog. Write for your own site at least weekly. You write because when people have issues, what do they do? An internet search. And search engines index your writing. People will land on your site and start to get to know you. Getting to know you is the start of the sales process.

— A 3-step marketing plan for your business by Curtis McHale

The one thing I think I couldn't do is podcast. I could write all day if I had the chance. Meeting people certainly isn't an issue, but I think putting your voice out there is something that will take me a while to do.

Share Your OPML?

Dave Winer may be kick-starting an old service. Share Your OPML.

In 2006 I had a web service called Share Your OPML. It was fun. It was a way to see what other people were subscribed to, for news and podcasts. But we hit scaling walls, and the project fell into disuse, and eventually I took it down.

Now we know how to scale much better than we did then, and the community is growing more slowly. So I thought it would be interesting to try it again and see what happens.

So here's the question -- if I put up a web app that asked for your OPML would you upload it?

— Would you share your OPML, again? by Dave Winer

I'd love to see this happen.

Leo Babauta at Zen Habits has the lowdown on how to write every day. And it all starts with a reason.

Most important: Have a great reason. The rest of this doesn’t matter if you skip this step. Answer this question: Why do you want to write every day? If it’s because it sounds fun, sounds cool, sounds nice … you’ll abandon it when you face discomfort. If you want to do it to help someone else, to make the world a better place, to lift someone’s spirits, to reduce your pain, to find a way to express your deeper self … then you can call on this deeper reason when things get difficult.

— How to Write Every Day by Zen Habits

I've been rebooting a few habits and processes over the last few weeks and one emerging trend from all this is that I'm going back to basics.

Instead of putting my tasks in Todoist, I'm capturing them in a pocket notebook. I don't need a another task manager app. I can capture the task in my notebook just fine.

Instead of using a 3rd party calendar app on macOS I'm using Calendar. I don't need another calendar app. I can outline my day in the macOS Calendar app just fine.

Instead of writing everything in Ulysses, I'm writing this post straight into the Ghost editor. I don't need another editor to write it in. I can write it in the Ghost editor just fine.

When you see the tools that are available to you, it can be easy to make yourself jump through hoops to justify the use of these surplus tools. All we're doing though is adding extra layers to get one thing done. When you remove those layers, it can be surprisingly simple to do just that one thing. And that's just fine.

The Weekend Report #5

Working on Friday right down the to wire again and then a quick turn around to get ready to go out for dinner and celebrate my Dad's birthday. Caffe Royale was tonight's choice and it didn't disappoint. Italian theme restaurant with a great selection of food. Highly recommended.

We've been looking at purchasing a "nearly new" second car for quite some time, but nothing has shown up that matches our price point. A car showed up on the web through the week, but no pictures meant we had to go down to the showroom to get a closer look. Glad we did. Found ourselves a great little runaround car within our price point. Later on, went to church with Ethan and then headed home for dinner and few hours in front of the television catching up with the golf.

The weather on Sundays has been terrible over the last few weeks. Ethan did have a medal scheduled for Sunday but he's been loaded with the cold. He wasn't up for a full round so I took him out for nine holes just to get out the house for a while. He's playing well with his new Ping clubs and I'm sure by the start of the season next year he'll be ready to slash his handicap down.

Rounded up the weekend by finishing my sketchnotes for the Ryder Cup and then watching the final matches come in. Europe didn't play their best and the USA did. You can't argue with a simple point like that, but hats off to each of the European players for a good effort. It's not always going to work out on the day and it didn't for some of the European players but that's just the way golf is.

The ultimate fail. A web design company with a web address but no website.