Life has been a little crazy lately, not that I have to tell you that. I remember a few years ago thinking that if I could just get X taken care of, and get Y underway, then life would slow down. Wow, that was stupid. I’ve realized this year in particular, that this is just the speed I live life at…that we all do. This year I did all sorts of crazy things, but so did you, and I am betting that YOU managed to get a post up in the past four months. #mefail

I could go on and on with all the things that have kept me busy  but I am thinking you probably don’t care. They say the first post after a long break is the hardest, and wow are “they” right. I have been thinking for weeks “I should blog about that” and then talk myself out of it because it’s not a good enough topic to break such a long streak of bloggers block with. I’ve watched hundreds of great personal posts wander through the stream, and I keep thinking — “just get on there and write something you fool!”  And here I am, writing fluffery just to write.

So back to the craziness…how are you all doing out there? Are you all freaking out like me these days? Wake up, coffee, work, meeting, conference, launch, cancer, meeting, work, new responsibilities, homesick, coffee, new startup idea, ugh, work, geesh really, site down, wanderlust strikes, competitor launch, big meeting, funding, no funding, coffee, marathon, new role, new side gig, another new side gig, omg insomnia, conference, work, childish drama, coffee, panic, wine, sleep. That bring’s us to October. What the hell happened to this year?

Anyway, there is still two and a half months to this year and I am hoping to salvage it a bit on the blogging front. I head to London this weekend for SearchLove, Distilled’s London conference. I’ll be speaking on Social Media and Competitive Analysis — a topic that has been front of mine lately as we dance into some new territories around the office. A few days after that I speak in Barcelona, Spain at MozCation (sidenote: I don’t speak Spanish…like at all, geeezzz). I’ll be speaking on Retargeting and how SEO’s can leverage it to uncover hidden opportunities. Somewhere in those ten days of travel I’ll be writing up and practicing my two PubCon Vegas presentations – one on Landing Page Optimization and one on Retargeting – A New Kind of Display Advertising.

I’ve got PowerPoint on my mind. I don’t know how my boss – Rand Fishkin does this all year. Just thinking about all those titles, subtitles, and images makes me tired. Wine anyone?

Okay so this is now officially a ramble, but sometimes you need to have a public ramble to remind you that all of this isn’t THAT big of a deal. Not every word has to be the word. You know? Kind of makes you wonder how much of this craziness is self-inflicted?

With that said…damn life has been crazy lately. Hope you are all hanging on tight these days. I am hoping to get up some search marketing related posts soon enough. With the organic search query debacle of yesterday, and the new Google Analytics features coming our way, I am feeling a search marketing revival brewing in my fingertips…

In the meantime…keep on, keeping on fellow crazy friends. #love

Lately I’ve realized I’m a lot quieter than I used to be. I know some of you are thinking—”but you never shut up!” Okay well maybe just my office mates are thinking that, but I don’t mean that I say less; I mean that I’m quieter. Sure I tweet, I blog, I email, I update, I give interviews, presentations, feedback. I do all of this communication, but I don’t hear as much of me in it anymore.

I’m not sure what it is really. I’ve spent the last two weeks or so freaking out about it. I’ve been having one of those annoying late-twenties dialogues with myself where I ask myself things like,

“Am I doing what I should be doing?”
“Am I spending my time on the right things?”
“Am I being true to myself and the dreams I once dreamt?”

Yeah, yeah I know. It all seems like silly huge stuff you could easily get lost in. But it’s been rough. All of this existential stuff can really wear you out to be honest. Over the past couple weeks I’ve started running more just to be away from the computer at night, just to revisit something that I consider to be a great escape from it all. And during the many miles of rainy Seattle weather I have ran, I had a few different thoughts as to, “Why do I seem quieter? Why do I seem less me than before?”

Some of the answers:
(1) leaving my entrepreneurial life behind (not constantly defining yourself by one project, that I owned and lived for, can be quite a growth experience, especially after having let it define you for two years)
(2) changing my physical location (as most of you know I’ve had a hard time leaving LA for Seattle, even though Seattle is amazing, part of me does seem a bit lost up here)
(3) moving in-house for such a well known brand (I think coming in to something that is so well-defined can sometimes make it easy to lose yourself in)
(4) this industry is expanding in every possible direction, all at the same time (I find myself constantly communicating, but not necessarily any of my original thoughts)

I honestly think this last one is the one that resonates. I actually think our industry specifically exudes this nature of consumption. If you aren’t careful, it can easily consume you– your time, your thoughts, your voice. Don’t go getting all defensive friends, I don’t mean the people, and I don’t mean the projects, or the evolution of it, or the amazing energy that surrounds it. I mean the fact that this industry truly is so large, and continually growing.

This industry we all love so much is a never-ending opportunity. Daily I read your tweets. We are all getting offered jobs, getting told about new gadgets, repeatedly reminded we are in the middle of a revolution, and we are told time and time again–the sky is the limit.  I find this to be the strangest paradox of all. Our industry is founded on passionate workaholics, and we have now built something that demands the utmost passion, and let’s be honest– no one lazy makes it. Thankfully, in my opinion. We are reading stories that remind us anyone who works hard can accomplish anything. I love this. I love that that in our industry if you are willing to give it everything you have, the dream will return the favor.

On the flip side– uhm whoa. Seriously. Read it again: Anyone who works hard enough can accomplish anything. That’s a consuming reality.

That wasn’t always the case (as my dad likes to remind me), we are in a new era of unlimited opportunity, and the excitement, and the options, and the resources, and the advice, and the tools are all dancing around us—begging to be utilized for our own benefit—whatever benefit means to you.

I think this is a huge reason I’ve become somewhat muted, and frankly it kind of pisses me off. This is not some post where I am going to swear off Twitter or the web, but I did feel propelled tonight to bring up this idea of saturation.  I find myself so excited about everything that everyone is saying that I can’t stay focused, and I constantly feel inadequate. It’s a new age of exhausting potential—something we have all dreamt of and helped build. Now that it’s here, I find myself a bit scared and too blinded by it all to really enjoy it sometimes.

So what now? Well I’m not so sure this post was started with a real conclusion in mind.  However, I did have a discussion tonight with a close friend that reminded me how important it is to let things go. Normally I only use that phrase when I talk to girlfriends about their horrible ex-boyfriends, ha. But I’m beginning to see another use of it… I need to learn to let things go. This isn’t because they were bad, or malicious, but simply because there is so much more staring at me, and those things are better worth my time.

Call it growing pains but I’ve never been that good at letting go. I’ve always been proudly defined as someone who never lets go, who always works that much harder at making it work, who is willing to go the extra 100 miles, screw one mile. Instead, I think it’s time to rethink that. Learning to rethink the way you’ve always approached work and life is certainly going to be a challenge.

I’m kind of up for it though. If it means at the end of this, I will rediscover the me that loved to give opinions, and felt comfortable in where they originated, I think I’d do pretty much anything to get back there.

Anyway, my breakdown for the year is all yours to contemplate. I wonder if we will see more and more of this as the plugged-in culture grows? I wonder if more and more of them will find it challenging to make any noise when surrounded by so much of it?

I suspect this will be the case. My advice, and my personal goal? To stop allowing so much noise to surround me. I’ll be letting some of it go in an attempt to distinguish my own voice in it all. This should be interesting, wish me luck…

{Enter BlueGlassLA.}

This past week I have been in Los Angeles (huge thank you to Rand—my boss for allowing me to work from coffee shops and enjoy the Southern California sunshine), for the first ever BlueGlassLA conference. For those of you (clearly living under a rock) and not sure what BlueGlass is, you can read all about the merger here, and quickly understand why I was excited for this one.

After tweeting out I was attending a few weeks back I got a DM from someone—who I will not publically embarrass at this time—and it said, “seriously what could possibly be special about this one, it will be the same old stuff.” My reply was, “just you watch, this one will be special.”

{Pats self on back for being right}.

BlueGlassLA didn’t just attract a top-notch speaker lineup, but it filled the room with people that are making waves in our industry. I was literally shocked to see all of those faces in one room, and even more shocked to see them all meeting each other, hitting it off, trading biz cards, clinking glasses. I mean wow…just…wow.

Okay this post isn’t meant to make you feel bad about missing BlueGlassLA (although it may not have been your best decision ever) instead I wanted to highlight something original that BlueGlassLA reminded me of…

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

What the hell am I talking about? BlueGlassLA set out to change up the conference agenda. You can tell by scoping out the schedule they wanted to capture the full cycle of Internet marketing, from the very beginning (seeking out investment) to the middle chaos (trying to build a community and harness attention) to the end challenges (increasing traffic, making money, optimizing the pieces).

While I have always been aware that you needed each piece to perform for success, I think somewhere along the way I forgot that it’s not about having each piece do well, it’s about having them intersect and do AMAZINGLY well.

The BlueGlassLA speakers each spoke to their successes, their failures, and everything in between but perhaps even more importantly, in my opinion, is that they all alluded to this idea of reaching out to your network for help in the areas you don’t know. In doing this, you are able to make sure that no piece is overlooked, or half-assed.

Even the moderators and BlueGlass employees themselves touched on this as they complimented each other (in typical sarcastic, smart-ass ways) on how well they each know their piece of the Internet marketing pie. By surrounding yourself with people that are the best at what they do, you start to see a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I felt like this whole damn conference exuded this tenet, and I was privileged to sit in the audience. I think in many ways the conference audience became an extension of the knowledge on stage…again demonstrating the power of smart people eager to learn more.

Too often at conferences there are “tracks” of topics, and I go about my paid search, SEO, and social panels. While I get to see friends, and hear about a new site or tool to check out, I rarely walk away thinking “Jesus that just blew my mind.”

By tearing down the walls between the different parts of Internet marketing and filling in some, too often overlooked, holes, I think this conference reminded me just how little I know. For those of you who know me well, you know that I value few things more than “knowledge” and “exposure to new ideas.” They keep us humble, and stretching, and motivated.

While I could have written about my experience at BlueGlassLA in a few different ways, I felt the need to really reiterate—what I believe—to be BlueGlassLA’s biggest achievement—the way in which they took a bunch of really smart Internet marketers and reminded us just how much more we have to learn.

For that I think the audience walked away from the conference a little more excited to “get after it,” and that is freaking priceless.

Did you mess up by not attending? Yeah. You. Did.

Luckily for you, and for me, it looks like they are going to be putting on another one later this year in New York. See you there? I’ll be up front eating my piece of humble pie.

First off—the new gig. I have officially been working at SEOmoz for a full month now. For those that missed the announcement…don’t worry there was no announcement.  The transition was a quiet one.  A lot of people asked me if the move to Seattle was for SEOmoz, and the answer to that is no. I actually moved to Seattle for a change in scenery and a change in pace. As I mentioned back at the end of ’09 I really wanted to find some more balance in my life. I wanted less “go go go” and more “sustainable momentum.” My move to Seattle was a huge first step toward that.

The move in-house was a second huge step toward that. I have been consulting for a little while now and although I love it, it has been challenging to keep up with YourJobStop while working as a consultant. I believe most consultants would agree that while the flexibility of working for yourself is amazing the lack in stability can be difficult at times. I found that the consulting was overflowing into my weekends and into the early am hours. I have always enjoyed the #latenightshift but I also realized this isn’t sustainable.

Over Christmas of this past year I began to consider moving in-house again. While I never officially went looking for a job, I did come across some amazing opportunities. One of which was SEOmoz. After meeting the team, sharing lots of coffee with Rand and hearing the upcoming plans for this remarkable start-up I couldn’t help but jump on board. Luckily they were hiring for a position that I felt I was a strong fit for.

I am the new Director of Customer Acquisition and Engagement which will enable me to focus on analytics, PPC, content, and social media while trying my hand as some affiliate fun. To say I am excited about this new opportunity is an understatement. The brainpower packed into the SEOmoz team is seriously amazing, and the SEO software industry is booming right now. It’s an exciting place to be…great stuff to come for sure.

So what about YourJobStop? I am actually humbled by the number of you that reacted by asking me about the future of YourJobStop. It reminds me that while it has been a long year we have done some great things with this little job search engine. I will still be working on YourJobStop. We actually just launched new and updated job search widgets that anyone can customize and place on their site as an added functionality for readers. My business partner and I are still pushing forward with YJS, and as usual we thank all of you for your awesomeness and support.

So I miss you. I have taken a break from conferences over the past few months as I settled into Seattle and SEOmoz. I have missed the conferences and meet-ups. The break was much needed and I feel like it has left me renewed and…missing you I will be speaking at a few different conferences coming up:

PubCon, Dallas (April 13^th-15^th) Social Media & Competitive Analysis
SearchExchange, Charlotte (May 17^th- 19^th) Social Media Tools & Landing Page Optimization

I will also be attending SMX Advanced in June for two reasons, first off its one of the best conferences all year and secondly it is literally in my backyard this year. Short commute FTW!

Well that is about it for now. I promise to step it up the next few weeks and push out some posts with actual insights (hopefully) as well as reconvene the excitement over at YourJobStop. In the meantime if anyone is looking to learn more about this really great SEO software I know…hit me up, I know a site you should check out…

Today Sloane Berrent DM’d me a link to check out. She is a finalist in the Myspace Journal competition, an online media event in which Myspace has partnered with the Wall Street Journal to send one lucky winner to the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters . By attending this prestigious event the winner chosen will be able to bring attention to a cause of their choice. Right now 5 lucky ladies have made it to the final round, with Sloane being one of them.

Okay so here is the real reason I decided to sit down in the middle of the day and write a personal blog post—today I signed into my Myspace account.

Yup it happened. I broke my streak—a little over two years of NOT logging into Myspace. Why am I proud of this number? I don’t know. I am though. I think its like a big F-U to Myspace for letting the glitter cat banners take precedent over my search for awesome music. Maybe it was because it took me months to finally spam out all of the notifications they managed to send. Although it is because of those notifications I now know exactly when all 2000 of my closest fake friends have birthdays. Ugh.

All I know is for the past two years I –like many of you—have enjoyed the side jokes regarding Myspace. In fact just the other night, Kristy, Shannon, and myself spent 6 minutes of our evening trying to figure out what the public notification was called on the Myspace interface, only to triumphantly scream BULLETIN. That sums up the personal relationship I have had with Myspace for the past two years. I took pride in ignoring her.

Then today the DM. First thought was “I’ll support Sloane in this for sure” after all this lady has traveled the world saving lives, rebuilding towns, reminding us all that we have an ability to make the world better. She has recently relocated to New Orleans with a desire to help this city rebuilt into the gem it once was, and brings with her a team of global supporters. One of which I consider myself to be.

So as I click the link and find myself as a Myspace Log-in page, I literally panicked. Uhmm is she serious? Myspace. What the &%^$? So I pushed forward and tried to remember my password. Yeah that was a huge #passwordfail. So I actually went and reset the password enabling me to log-in and vote for Sloane.

While a bit of my pride may have been lost I can’t help but think if ever there was a worthy time to break the streak this was it. So why write a post about it? Well I’m a geek. I know that most of you still have Myspace accounts (us Internet-ers rarely DELETE an online presence…) and I’m willing to bet that when you admit that you still have an account you quickly follow it with “but I haven’t signed in for years.” Right? Well what if I told you that signing in and voting for Sloane Berrent could help save a city? What if I said bitch slapping that chip off your shoulder actually did something good for the world outside your cubicle?

I think that would make for a pretty good Tuesday. #justsayin

So how about it? Once we all get in there we can send each other dirty messages, and post glittery postcards on each others’ wall. Is it called a wall? Ugh here I go again.

Vote for Sloane Here. Many thanks folks. Much glittery, sparkly, happy love.

Now don’t go clapping or anything, I have after all been contracting out PPC for longer than that, but last year was the year my business partner and I left our old jobs and pushed forward with YourJobStop.com full steam ahead. We took an idea over a cup of coffee we had two years ago and finally saw it through in 2009. We created a solid site with strong functionality and a real purpose for today’s job seekers. Whew…I don’t know about you guys but seriously…this year flew by.

So what did I learn? I thought I would compile a quick list of the Top 5 Entrepreneurial Lessons 2009 Taught Me, if only because I think a lot of the lessons I’ve learned in business this year are some of the most important ones I’ve learned my entire life. So here we go (and yes these are in order of awesomeness)…

5. Great Ideas Aren’t Static
Growing up I was always pretty good with change. I’ve picked up and moved across the country, backpacked unknown countries, jumped from college to grad school to the real world to entrepreneurship, and so on and so forth. I’ve always loved change. Then I started a business, and this business had a very pretty concise business plan. Little did I know that business plan would change.  As this year passed, truths that were evident when we launched our company have evolved, and my partner & I have had to push forward with completely different initiatives.

I panicked like no other. I chugged some coffee (a.k.a. wine) and realized that “great ideas aren’t static.” If your business idea is the same it was three years ago, and you have failed to push into new audiences, areas, and opportunities…well you are not just failing your customers, but your business as a whole is suffering. Movement is a crucial component of momentum…and momentum is key for success.

4. You Can’t Control Other People’s Work Ethics
I tweeted this out not too long ago and—whoa—did you guys agree. It appears I was one of the last to learn this lesson. I blame too many years in academia where you are forced to work in teams and groups and committees. I took this classroom-project approach and thought business would be similar. Nope. I was so wrong, my friends. I spent the first half of this year trying to compensate for others not “quite on my time line” and losing my mind in the interim.

Then one day I just realized…I can’t make people move faster, and I can’t make them work harder BUT as an entrepreneur I choose who I work with. I can fire people. That’s a hard lesson to learn after a year of being told I am supposed to “play nice” with everyone else. So my fellow business owners just remember—if you are continuously bitching about the people you “work with” you have no one to blame but yourself. Suck it up, make some changes, and get on with it.

3. Asking For Help Isn’t A Sign of Weakness, It’s a Sign of Strength
I love challenging myself with new goals. This year I ended up learning so many new aspects of our industry. I dabbled in biz dev, client relationships, billing, editing, and affiliate partnerships. NONE of which was on my resume before starting YourJobStop. The first half of the year was rough as I tried to consume every word out there on these different skill sets, and teach myself the ins and outs. Then a friend of mine in the industry and I were chatting it up and they were like “you know you could just ask one of the 20 people you know that do that for a living.” {big gulp}.

Asking for help before seemed like a great way to announce my inferiority in something. Well guess what…here is a little secret for you…I don’t know everything. Neither do you. So start asking for help, start reaching out to the experts you have met along the road, and be thankful for the advice they have to give you. Trust me…there will be a day you will get to pay them back. It’s the cycle of entrepreneurship.

2. Get to Know Yourself, Others Expect It
I love to dabble. Hell I even love the word “dabble.” I’ve always been the girl that was just above average at a lot of things, but never really AMAZING at one certain thing. I think this trend lends itself to researching lots of new things, but never quite taking a stance on a particular angle. In sports, politics, and conversation this makes you a fair-weathered person. You tend to like what is likable right now, and you talk about it, and get excited…knowing you will move on when everyone does. Well there is no such thing as a fair-weathered entrepreneur.

You need to have opinions, you need to stand strong on certain initiatives and goals and fight for them. Others expect this from you. The more you waiver, the more faith that is loss in you. Not the company, but in you. This year has taught me that all though I may not know everything, I am certainly more willing to stand up for what I believe in. My voice is louder, my stance is stronger, and I’m not afraid to be wrong. That’s a place you have to be if you want to succeed.

1. It’s Just a Job
I just felt all of your eyes roll at once. It’s okay. There is this notion that if you start your own company you have to LIVE THE COMPANY. You have to breathe it in, and breathe it out, everyday, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You all know me well enough to know I love the craziness that comes with getting excited about an idea. I love coffee, I hate sleep, I love talking with you guys and getting all crazy at 2 in the morning on Skype, IM, Twitter, etc. But this year has taught me that all of this…is just a job. Contradictory, I know.

I watched a lot of you this year tweet out pictures of new homes, of your weddings, of your new baby girls and boys. I read your blogs on the travels you took, and the awesome weekend adventures you tackled. 2009 has taught me that perhaps I want more of that in my life, and a little less of being an entrepreneur. It’s a strange place to find when you are one year deep into a new company, but I also believe that if you work hard enough and smart enough, you can find the balance in life. Todd Mintz once reminded me that not sleeping is actually a bad thing. I’m not 100% sold on this idea, but 2010 is certainly going to be my year to explore that idea This year I am going to go after my goals, but remembering…that I am more than my job.

Okay that was a lot of writing for a top 5 list, but hey I’m a rambler. I hope you all found a little something in there you could relate with. I also hope you all had an amazing 2009. So many of you changed jobs, changed locations…it was crazy! I loved it. You are all such an inspiration to keep pushing forward until we are all loving our days and nights, and sharing it with each other. I think there will be a whole lot of that in 2010 my friends, I really do. Happy Holidays.

My New Seattle Office Set-Up

However, something just felt right. I had only visited Seattle once prior to the decision, but that one visit called me back like an old friend from college. It’s as though I knew there were stories to hear, new fun moments to embrace, and a warm world of energy that I could truly feel home around. That was what Seattle had promised to me when I first met her only a few months ago. The rain, the traffic, the noise of this city seemed to be nothing more than a few hiccups in a beautiful song.

All I could think of was putting on a cute pea coat in the morning, some warm fuzzy boots and wandering around Belltown in hopes of the perfect latte. Seattle is a city of coffee lovers, of newspaper readers, of tech geeks. I wanted to be part of that world. I wanted to let it surround me and nothing was stopping me from trying something new.

It’s been a few weeks now, and although the rain has visited frequently, there is no doubt this city is the place my feet were meant to land. For now it is the perfect balance between a new adventure and an old memory I can’t wait to recall someday…

Check back in a few. Much love.