We get here for the first day in the new office and we are pumped. We moved everything in all night last night and were awaiting AT&T to come and transfer the phones and internet. That would have been the last thing we needed for a seamless transition into our new space for us to be ready to take on the competition. Our first call on my cell phone was AT&T calling to say they were rescheduling for tomorrow.

Yeah, that’s right….a whole day without phone/fax/internet. Thanks AT&T for being so big that you don’t actually have to care about the little guys. You suck.

Quite a few shirts have been ordered on You Design It of late for a video series coming up on YouTube called “Infamous Television”. Here is the MySpace link to the two guys featured in the webisodes. Looks funny and it is posted that they will premier on August 15th. Here is the description of the show:

“Two young guys try to make it in Hollywood but like all wannabe actors, they must hold down day jobs, unlike most actors they make their money as CONTRACT KILLERS. This series follows two young guys trying everything they can to break into the film industry and navigate the Hollywood scene. They treat their day jobs with the same emotionless disregard as other actors would treat waiting tables. Their minds are always focused on becoming famous, while their day jobs require they remain anonymous. A dark comedy in the vein of Swingers meets Pulp Fiction. The webisodes begin this summer…get to know TOM and ANTHONY!!!”

I hope these guys do well.

It’s just around the corner. We have a few days of testing next week and then it is go time. Double knot your shoe laces for this one….

Let me first say that I am hooked to Wikipedia. I can get stuck on that site for hours at a time just following links to completely different subjects than my original reason for being on the site. The other day I landed on Nolan Ryan’s bio page. For those of you that don’t know who he is (apparently you are from Siberia), he is arguably the greatest baseball pitcher in the history of the sport. Now…this post is not to be an argument for or against that notion, but more of an analogy about getting caught up in the moments of failure.

Let me first make the case for why he is definitely one of the greatest pitchers of all time:

• Most no-hitters ever (7)
• Fewest hits allowed per nine innings (6.56)
• Most strikeouts ever (5,714)
• Most seasons played
• First player ever paid $1m/year
• 7th in shutouts pitched (61)
• 13th in wins (324)
• Opposing batters only batted .204 against him
• Number is retired by 3 teams
• Voted to the Hall of Fame in his 1st year with a 98.79% vote (six votes shy of unanimous)
• He whipped Robin Ventura’s ass

Sounds like a bed of roses to me. After all, he is a legend in Houston and loved all across the country. Had he focused on the failures of his career and stayed within those moments we probably wouldn’t even had known his name. Here is a list of his failures:

• 1st all time in walks allowed (2795)
• 1st all time in wild pitches (277)
• 3rd in losses (292)
• Barely won more games than he lost with a .526 winning percentage
• Never won a Cy Young
• Average season win/loss was 13-12
• Only an all-star in 8 of 25 full seasons

How many nights and seasons did Nolan Ryan go home feeling like he should just hang up his cleats and call it quits? How much criticism did he face on a daily basis and go from super highs to super lows? To have the resilience to go out and battle on the mound for 25+ seasons is the biggest feat I believe Nolan Ryan has accomplished.

You know what I’m talking about, you’ve had those days where you want to quit and go home. We have them all the time but things always seem to get better. You just have to remind yourself that it isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. All you can do just walk back out of the dugout on to the mound and stare at the batter…..and ask him to bring it on.

Our monthly ad spend on the search engines is increasingly ramping up at a very quick pace. So far our strategy for success has been to just purchase more clicks and increase the amount we spend per click. This has effectively grown our revenue and given us the opportunity to focus on other things by keeping the campaign management simple. We are now getting big enough and spending enough that we have to outsource our PPC campaigns to increase ROI, lower spend, and ultimately increase conversions.
You Design It initially had a company in charge of its SEO/PPC and they proved their inadequacy real quick by ignoring our core competencies and optimizing/paying for keyphrases that didn’t benefit us at all. This time around we are going to have months of data and pages of metrics to support a foundation. We have relied too heavily on Google’s PPC and we are going to branch further out into Yahoo, Ask, and MSN.

We are searching for a provider that wants the business. A company that is going to make promises and back them up. Does that even exist?