Now onto the news…

Why Freelancing?

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of owning my own business. In it I see opportunity to do things the way I think they should be done, I have much more freedom than I would have anywhere else, and I can hone in on exactly what it is I do best and utilize those talents to their fullest.

There’s been much speculation on the changes younger generations bring to the workplace. Those changes come from ideologies that younger people hold to tightly. A few of those, I think, are quality time with family & friends, transparency, and quality work.

I want all of those things. I want the freedom to have the time to deepen relationships with the people that mean the most to me and I’ll have more time to do that now. I want to be transparent about who I am and who my company is. I’d rather be completely open and honest and lose some potential customers than paint a picture of perfection and pretend that my company is all things to all people. It’s appalling to me to watch the number of companies I’ve seen sell their services for an arm & a leg and produce crappy work. It almost seems as if it’s the standard to produce crappy work and every once in a while come across something good. I guess this is the product of the American dream — everyone thinking that they need to take their shot, even if they aren’t qualified. Boy, that statement could really come back to bite to me!

What I love about working with other people is finding strengths in others. It was really neat to see how a handful of people made up the company at Lead Maverick and each excelled at what they did. Knowing this, I also know that I’m not a jack of all trades. I’m good at a few things and it’s those things I want to focus on and make even better. My job now is to take what I know, apply it, and get better at it all the time so that I can assure clients (and myself!) that I really can produce something really great.

Leaving Lead Maverick

I left Lead Maverick last week and it was harder to do than I thought I would it be. I made great relationships there and exciting things are happening for them. For those of you not in the loop yet, Lead Maverick is a search engine marketing company in Dallas, TX. I was the web designer among other things.

I left an environment of security. Having a consistent paycheck sure is nice, and what’s even greater is that someone had to be trusting enough to offer me a salary. In one hand I was comforted by the fact that someone was giving me money to survive on, and on the other hand I was comforted by the idea that I was trusted enough to be privileged with that money. It really is a neat thing to think about.

Friendship is much more easily grown in close proximity, something I’ll miss now that I’ll be working alone all day. Sure I’ll have the phone, meetings, and now I can work from a coffee shop if I want to. It’s quite different to work alongside your friends though. I’ll miss that part.

Where to Begin?

Well, I’m open for business. I’m praying for guidance throughout this process. I’m only a man and I can fall easily. All the support you can give is grealy appreciated. That’s where I’ll begin.

Welcome to Develop Daly.

Website: Lead Maverick

Platform: Ecordia

I really enjoyed getting to improve on the look and feel of the company. I felt really held down by the impression left with others when they would visit the old design. Now, I’ll be much more quick to send people to the site, rather than try to explain everything myself. I’m excited to see what our current customers’ reactions are!

What I Do: Front-end web design/development for Lead Maverick

What Lead Maverick Does: Search Engine Optimization for small to mid-size businesses without changing their websites

As a plug, yet an non-sponsored advertisement, let me tell you what Lead Maverick can do for you.

In April the company was incorporated and the product released in summer 2007. The product being a directory that aggregates, optimizes, localizes, and organizes your content to make it more search-engine friendly. Basically customers use our tool to put content into our application and we spit that content back out into a directory where it all the magic takes place. Its really amazing how well it works too. We see results in less than 24 hours sometimes. Results being: search terms finding our content in number 1 rankings or at least top ten.

Right now my job is to redesign everything. Starting with the primary domain – you know, the home page and main company information and such – the marketing stuff. Very very soon we’ll be launching this and all that we do will make much more sense than the current website does. Following that the focuses of everyone will be on re-working the directory and the application. I’m really excited about this because its where we get to be innovative and bar-setting.

In addition to this, I’ve picked up lots of great SEO goodies. I’ll be sprinkling them about my blog every once in a while. Thanks for your subscription!