Big Day for The Grumpy Penguin

Not an optical illusion: the sign Sarah made for my "office"

This won't be a long post tonight because I have spent pretty much this entire day creating content (and much of it about myself) and I really am just about out of energy. But I didn't want to miss the chance to mark this very auspicious occasion in my life and the life of the new company known as The Grumpy Penguin. At about 4:30 p.m. today my business website went "live" and I'm pretty jazzed about it, let me tell you. I am expecting an article to come out in the Career section of the Toronto Sun tomorrow and I really wanted to have a visible presence on the web (other than this blog) before that happened. With the help of Paul Chato and his crack staff at Your Web Department, the past few weeks of tinkering and creating and tweaking and worrying became a really fine website within mere minutes of telling them "let's do it". They even set up the web domain for me in that time; it was really very, very impressive indeed. (Even having Paul call the site "The Rusty Ookpik" was a nice touch: it gave me a chance to take a breath and remember that this is supposed to be fun, this "legacy career".)

Sarah at our celebratory dinner tonight

I owe a great deal of thanks to Lisa Taylor at the Challenge Factory (and Karen Siwak for some of the content currently on the site and more still to come). There are a great many friends and family members that have been yelling encouragement all along this path, too many to name here but I hope they know I greatly appreciate their support and good thoughts. But there is one person without whom this endeavour would never have been more than a gleam in my eye: my partner, my love, the incredible Sarah Gledhill. Her beautiful graphics are what brings life to the website; she spent hours lovingly creating my logo and background images, as well as helping to make The Grumpy Penguin to be visually appealing (at least from the early accounts of the first visitors). However things turn out from here for my business it has to be said that it never would have stood a chance without her unconditional love and support. Tonight after the site went online for the first time we took off for a celebratory dinner and actually relaxed over our food for the first time in weeks.


I will wind this post up here as we still have vacation-type things to do with the rest of this week and I don't want to be lagging behind Sarah at the Zoo. But I just want to say, without further ado: Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you The Grumpy Penguin. Please check it out and let me know what you think; I will greatly appreciate any comments whether positive, negative, constructive or just plain "meh". Everything helps at this point.

And thanks for being along for this ride so far. If it wasn't for this blog, there would be no website.

It's Already August?

Addie enjoying some rare fresh air

Even though the heat of this summer has been nearly unbearable for me - and I spend so little of my day outside, but this computer room is crazy hot - it still seems incredible to me that it's going by so fast. It feels like the fireworks of Canada Day just happened! The truly odd thing is that, even though the air in Toronto has been stifling this summer, we've still managed to open the windows for Addie a couple of times each day, which is something we really didn't do last summer even though it was quite a bit cooler. Odder still, though, is the fact that Addie has recently shown signs of staying away from the open windows because it's too hot even for her. Tonight while I was out at a meeting, Sarah took Addie back out on the balcony to get some wind on her fur (Addie's, I mean) and let her walk around on the harness and leash for a while. We call this a "picnic" in homage to a wonderful Whiskas commercial of a year or so ago:

I love that it's a guy in that commercial with his cat; this is not a common theme for advertising and, as you can imagine, I can't get enough of this sort of thing.

The Grumpy Penguin: Almost Ready for Prime Time

My business card with the "old" logo

Many of you already know that I am starting to put together a business as a "content writer for small businesses". As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I have been working with The Challenge Factory and, in particular, Lisa Taylor to identify my "sweet spot" for future career work and it sure feels like we have found it. I did my "Test Drive Day" in May and learned a lot about myself and how I need to progress; the blog piece I wrote about it appeared in the Challenge Factory newsletter. In mid-June I attended a Social Marketing Summit which was presented by Enterprise Toronto; that blog piece was retweeted by some of the presenters of the day. The first piece I wrote about the Jays Care Foundation was retweeted by the Jays Organization and it has nearly 1,000 views at this point. Pretty heady stuff; the feedback I have received for this blog has been remarkable and very encouraging. I have a website close to being ready to go live, I will be starting a Facebook Page for my business and Sarah created some terrific cards for me, which I have started to hand out all over the place. But today something really cool happened which I hope will kick this start-up business into overdrive. (This is the "exciting news" I spoke of yesterday.)

The Social Marketing Summit

As I consider what path my recent work with The Challenge Factory is helping me to find, my career "guru", Lisa Taylor, steered me toward a terrific event that took place yesterday under the joint efforts of Enterprise Toronto and Constant Contact. The Social Marketing Summit, a completely free event which quite understandably was fully booked days in advance, was held in the Council Chambers at the Scarborough Civic Centre and featured several informative and engaging people all speaking to the theme, "Learn How Online Engagement Can Drive Business Opportunities". That fourth word, "Engagement", was the theme of the day, both in the way the speakers worked with the attendees and in the messages they were delivering.

First up, after the opening remarks from Katherine Roos of Enterprise Toronto, was Lisa Kember, Regional Development Director of Constant Contact. The big message from Lisa was that many small businesses are too focused on the "numbers" and not nearly enough on engaging with their clients. A company running a Facebook campaign, for example, is far more successful when a few people "like" or, especially, "share" their posts than when a great many people "fan" their Facebook Page but don't get involved in the discussion in any way. Her most salient point, in my opinion: "When it comes to engagement, small = big." She was very strong on the message that we need to pay attention the "social" aspect of "Social Media" and must take every opportunity to "Wow!" our customers, keep in touch with them and continue to engage with them.

At Long Last, Test Drive Day

Team meeting in the mobile office

"MOTIVATE"

That's the title of the workbook I was using today on my much-anticipated "Test Drive" with Keka DasGupta, President of Precision Marketing Group. The workbook was provided for me by the company that set up this unique opportunity for me, Challenge Factory, who have been helping to motivate me for the past nine months or so. Today was the culmination of my activities of introspection, self-assessment and outright soul-searching under the watchful eyes of Challenge Factory's president, Lisa Taylor, and my Career Coach, Michael Ehling. Well, perhaps "culmination" is not entirely accurate: Test Drive Day has been the target of the months of work but it is by no means the end of the journey.

A Lazy, Hazy, Not-So-Crazy Day of "Summer"

When I said that Victoria Day in Canada and Memorial Day in the USA were the unofficial "first days of summer" I thought I was speaking metaphorically. Right now, though, the temperature in Toronto is 28 degrees (82 south of the border) and climbing, as ridiculous as that may seem. The humidex is 30, which actually seems low to me considering how oppressive the air is out there right now. At 1PM this afternoon, the humidex dipped below 30 for the first time in well over 24 hours (that's as far back as the readings go on the Environment Canada website) including all through last night and the pre-dawn. This morning I could see the humidity in the sky; the air looked grey and thick and filmy even though the sun was shining brilliantly. All the grass in the fields below us has started to turn brown where only a couple of days ago the green was luxurious.

Test Drive Day is Almost Here!

Today I heard from Lisa Taylor of The Challenge Factory that they have confirmed a "Test Drive" for me and all that remains is to work out a specific date! They've created a brand-new test drive just for me (I linked to their "catalogue" in the previous sentence, but what I'm doing isn't in there). I will be working with Keka DasGupta, President of Precision Marketing Group, where we will be comparing, contrasting and discussing (from Lisa's email to me):

· Freelance vs company work
· Cause based writing vs product public relations
· Big campaigns vs small pieces of work
· Writing and techniques that work
· Client management and care

...all in a hands-on work environment. This is a huge step for me and I am tremendously excited about it. Of course I will write all about the day on this blog once it happens; for now all I have to go on is Keka's company's website and this information, passed on to me in the email today: "Keka is an accomplished professional in PR who came out of the large agency world (she worked for one of the world’s largest organizations and led the IKEA account) to start her own business. She will specifically be able to give you the experience you are looking for to test [your] ideas out".

3 Weeks and Counting

I have had this blog up and...well, not "running", exactly....for a year and a half but it was only April 3 of this year that I finally sucked it up and made the decision to post every day for as long as I could. I figure the streak will end while I'm on vacation unless I put a couple of pre-posts "in the can" before I go away.

Anyhow, in honour of yesterday being the 20th consecutive day of my new-found resolve, I decided to make today's post a sort of "Greatest Hits". It will be terrific! I'll link back to my favourite posts and we can laugh and shed a tear and get all nostalgic. Ok? Well, buckle up!

..........

Ok, just kidding. Wouldn't that be just about the worst post ever?