My Most Fulfilling Day of 2011 So Far: Teaching My Career To 4 Year Olds

I was as nervous about speaking in front of them as any business meeting or presentation I'd ever been a part of...and they were all four years old.

My son's pre-school class recently sent out a request asking parents to come in & talk to the children about their career. I was immediately intregued by the opportunity, as I wanted to see just how much they'd understand about "making websites". Then I started thinking about it: how do I teach them about html? What would they really ever understand about SEO? There's no way they'd understand why we want to rank highly for "internet marketing" & "hotel website design", or better yet, what "ranking highly" even means. After all, what's a search engine to a four year old? Uh oh.

Fear started to creep in, and a scene from Kindergarten Cop came to mind:

It was apparent I needed to re-prioritize exactly what, or better yet how I was going to teach the children. I had to make it basic. It was important to get them interested in what I had to say before I would ever get them interested in what I do for a living. So, with the help of my wife (a 4th grade teacher & a HUGE help when it came to setting up the lesson plan), we came up with a way to speak their language by first showing them the various websites their parents likely let them explore. Here's a scaled down version of 2 of the 5 websites I started with:

Snapshot

From that point, they were hooked...especially after they saw Mickey & Minnie in the broswer window. They immediately wanted to see more, and it was the perfect segue: "Well, those are websites for kids...my job is to help make websites that grown-ups use to find places to stay when going on a vacation. I make websites for hotels. We also make websites for other places, too". Again, I was speaking their language -- I wasn't about to get into the difference between business and leisure travelers or all of the other types of websites we've created. The rest of career day was great from that point, and when I opened up the floor to questions, every kid raised their hand. Most of them actually commented about where they had stayed at hotels, and there were some funny stories. One boy told me that his Dad was angry at a hotel near Disney World because the power went out. A little girl told me that her Mommy's laptop battery died and they had to pay for a movie on TV instead of watching it on the computer. Listening to each of their little comments was the cutest part of the day, and every single one of them made me smile.

It's all about doing what you love, but when you can convey that love to 4 year olds and get them engaged in what you do, it's a win-win. I hope just one child remembers a brief moment of my presentation and ends up with an interest in technology.

The experience made it my most fulfilling day of 2011 thus far.

Jason Reuter, CTO & Social Guru
L.E.T. Group 

Filed under  //   careers   fun   kids   presentation   teaching  

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L.E.T. Design Inspiration...Stephen Powers

We absolutely love the work of Stephen Powers and his crew. This video tells a little about what Powers is all about, his style, his reasons, body of work, and his love of sign-painting. Design inspiration (yes, even for the web) can come to us in mysterious ways...and this is definitely one of them.

"People read signs. A business without a sign is a sign of no business."
-- Stephen Powers

Can't see what's above? View Flights of Genius by Stephen Powers on Vimeo.

Filed under  //   explorers   inspiration   misc   rework  

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Internet Marketing Tip: How To Create A Facebook Business Page...The RIGHT Way!

We've found many clients (and facebook friends) create their business's presence on Facebook the wrong way -- which could result in account suspension or deletion. We're hoping the "Video FAQ" below helps businesses to:

1) Set their facebook business account up the right way.
and/or
2) Migrate "likes" away from a personal account (incorrectly setup as a business page) to a true facebook business page.

(download)

Feel free to post any follow-up comments or questions below. Thanks for reading and watching!

Filed under  //   facebook   misc   tip   tips-tricks   tutorial  

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Do what makes you happy...we do. Redfern Busker Man

Yet another in the series of excellent user-created videos at Vimeo. "Redfern Busker Man" is about an Aboriginal busker (homeless person) at Redfern Railway Station in Sydney, Australia. You'll quickly get used Clarence's accent and his story through wonderfully thought out video & audio editing as presented by one of the more talented Vimeo producers I've seen: Trixie Barretto.

Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

Jason Reuter, CTO
L.E.T. Group

Filed under  //   explorers   inspiration   misc   rework  

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We're Passionate About What We Do. You Should Still Find a Provider You Love.

We work in an industry where credit is rarely given for a job well done. It is an industry where clients have the rare ability to leave in the middle of the night simply by changing a few domain settings. When this happens, we often find out by clicking through to a website that we should technically still be maintaining. Yet, we're greeted with an entirely new look and feel & credits to a new website provider. It's not a fun thing to find, and until this post, we've never really put it into words. There's still really nothing we can do other be courteous and professional. It's just the way we operate.

It's fine. We have thick skin. 30+ combined years of experience in the industry has taught us that things like this can & do happen. No matter how hard you work to create success for you clients, some of them just don't get it and think "the grass is always greener". What they don't get is that we've spent years refining our process to determine the best hosting environment, the fastest page load times, and the most effective search engine optimization strategies for success. We don't just SAY that we do these things and disappear into the night...we DO them.

Here's a screen shot of our latest system messages, and as you can see, there aren't many days that go by where we're not tweaking our system or offering something great to our clients:

System-messages
In the end, we value working with clients who understand our mission, but if anyone must go, we appreciate being told when & why. We often follow the progress of a client with new providers to find that they've made a poor decision in one aspect of their internet marketing -- effectively killing all of the hard work we put into a website for the past XX # of years.

This opens up myriad of other question that are best left for future blog posts, but to briefly continue on this subject, we often wonder: Do most client really know the amount of time and effort that goes into designing and developing a website and a system like My L.E.T.? The answer is most likely a RESOUNDING "NO"! In summary, our entire development process has transpired over 10 years of countless hours of testing, re-testing and then testing some more to make sure everything goes smoothly. Even after extensive testing, we may still go live with a new feature only to find out that a specific browser (aka...INTERNET EXPLORER...) renders an aspect of our latest and greatest tool incorrectly. So, it's back to the drawing board with our own self-induced stress because one tiny incorrect iteration of code caused a specific page not to load completely. This has a ripple effect that can possibly alter a website's SEO and likely affects page load time. How could we do such a thing, you ask? Well, have you ever heard of product recalls? Even the most skilled automakers have had to tweak their cars after production -- and while we maynot manufacture cars -- we take our mission seriously.

At L.E.T. Group, we're passionate about what we do. You should find an internet marketing provider you love. We hope it's us.

We welcome your comments and feedback.

Jason Reuter, L.E.T. Group's Chief Technology Officer

 

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Excerpt from "A Better Way Of Work" (Jean-Marc Le Tissier's Work Blog)

The number one competitor we have in our business is not Microsoft, Google, or some other startup somewhere. The number one competitor we have is simple things, like email...

People are organizing through email. They’re keeping track of their notes through email. They’re doing all this stuff through email. And email is incredibly simple, basically just a text box that you can send to other people or receive.

We have to be just one step above that. Most software developers in our space think they need to be far, far beyond that. The more complex they can be, the more features they list on the back of the box, the better it’s going to be — without realizing that’s not how most people operate. Most people operate just with email. So if we can just be one step above that, then we’re doing pretty well.

Listen to the audio (via web) | Download (via mp3)

Other than the obvious, what's your businesses' #1 competitor? Please comment.

Jason Reuter, CTO
L.E.T. Group

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Do what makes you happy...we do. "Playing For Pocket Change"

One of our preferred video hosting platforms, Vimeo, showcases an astonishingly wide variety of user-created documentaries. We're often amazed at what we find...

"Playing For Pocket Change is a mini series featuring musicians playing on the streets and in the subways of New York City. Often overlooked and ignored, this vimeo series explores who these people are and what makes them want play in the world's strangest venue."

View more episodes in the series.

What do you do that makes you happy in your job? Please comment.

Jason Reuter, CTO
L.E.T. Group

Filed under  //   explorers   inspiration   misc   rework  

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My L.E.T. Tip! Why is the special/package I just entered not showing up on my website?

This is a commonly asked question with one of two very simple explanations.

1) Your special or package is marked as inactive. Edit your special or package and uncheck the box next to "Check this box to make this special/package temporarily inactive"

2) Your special/package is scheduled to appear on the website at a later date. See the following screen capture (being entered below the 2 Active/Scheduled Specials/Packages). This denotes a special/package end date being entered in the future which will not appear on the website until May 14, 2014. Also note the text highlighted in this screen capture that is a reminder of this in the system as well:

My-let-faq-scheduled-spec

Questions? Please comment.

Jason Reuter, CTO
L.E.T. Group

Filed under  //   my-let   specials-packages   support   tip   tutorial  

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It's customer support...AND customer "care".

Here's a "manifesto" I wanted to bring out of hiding that, until today, was used only internally for our support staff. We hope you enjoy the read whether you're an existing client or if you're considering our services:

As L.E.T.'s support staff, you are the "voice" our customers likely "hear" the most. Put yourself in their shoes & think about their request(s) from their point of view. Remember they are likely someone with not nearly the amount of "tech savvy" you have. Think about their ideas before you immediately counter with your own. Offer compromise. Say please & thank you...yeah, just like Mom & Dad taught you. Take the good with the bad. Go the extra mile to make the complainers happy because everyone can have a bad day.

Even the smallest extra amount of time spent with a request only helps to foster our clients' confidence in our company's overall service. They'll likely share their satisfaction with friends & associates which rewards us in return.

Support is a job we'll all (try to) join in to help with from time-to-time:

From the 37 Signals book, "REWORK":
"The customer support team shouldn't be the only one dealing with customers directly. People working in the 'back-of-house' often get a filtered version of what customers are actually saying. By having everyone involved in customer feedback once in a while, they have a better sense of what needs to be done on their end."

As always, we welcome your comments, ideas & suggestions.

Jason Reuter, CTO
L.E.T. Group

Filed under  //   customer-care   customer-support   mission-statement   support  

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About

L.E.T. Group (Twitter | Facebook | web) is a full service website design and Internet marketing agency with more than a ten-year track record of converting visitors into customers. We deliver customized, results-driven websites that more than exceed our clients expectations.

We design eye-catching, user-friendly websites that also get high search engine rankings. We create websites that generate leads, drive sales, and convert visitors into customers by always designing with SEO in mind.

Find out how our targeted search engine optimization techniques and unique pay-per-click marketing platform translates into increased traffic to your website, better quality leads, and most importantly a return on your investment.

Learning how to measure and interpret data from your website is one of the smartest things a business owner can do. Let L.E.T. show you how to use Google Analytics and other online tracking tools to strengthen marketing initiatives and increase profits.

With our unique content management system you can make real-time changes to your website whenever you want, anywhere in the world. No more waiting around on webmasters or paying through the nose for every little revision. You are in control.

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