StageofLife.com

My Little Girl and My 39th Birthday

2012-01-21T07:42:00.005-05:00

Amongst the return of our lives getting back into the New Year, post-holiday-Back-to-School routine, I celebrated my 39th birthday last week.

From Facebook well-wishes to calls and emails from family and friends, this week has been an amazing reminder of the support network I have out there. My lovely wife even made me one of my favorite meals: cheeseburgers, onion rings, Caesar salad, and Nutella cake!

(I ate till I felt sick)

However, my favorite part of turning 39 (aside from the knowledge that I'm not 40 yet), was my birthday morning.

I woke up to grab a cup of coffee and start the morning routine of getting my daughters ready for school (see attached note I drew and included in Raina's lunch) before heading up to the StageofLife.com office, when I saw a little square present wrapped up and placed at my spot on our family table.

Looks like a book, I thought.

I opened it.

It was a book called Made With Love for Dad that my wife had bought for my 7-year-old daughter to fill in for me. The book contained little stories on each page about how and why she loves me along with personalized coupons. I slowly opened the book and saw the choppy handwriting of my 1st grader on the front page where she wrote, "daddy makes our home a nice place because he's always doing what he can."

I turned to the next page and the next page and the next. As I read the book by myself in the kitchen with only the low hum of our refrigerator kicking on in the background to keep me company...I started to cry.

Here's what my daughter wrote - each bullet point is a page in the book (and I have not corrected any of her spelling):

"daddy makes our home a nice place because he's always doing what he can. I love daddy and he loves me."
"Some times me and my dad play games and its a lot fun. we play lots of games."
"I love whene daddy gives hugs and thats what I am going too do right now give my dad a hug."
"Makeing memoris in our family is spesile. it's like makeing a tv!
"me and my dad always laf together. it is fun. [laf = laugh]
"I love makeing memories with my dad. I love my dad more than I can tell you.
"I make a lot of things for my dad once I made him a comic book he liked.
"Once I broke something and my dad fixed it. I love my dad.

Clutching the book, I then opened up the coupons she made that had been included in the front cover. They read as follows:

daddy - I will give you a big hug
daddy - I will read a book with you in bed
daddy - I will clean my room
daddy - I will play a game with you
daddy - I will feed the dog and cat
daddy - I will set the table
daddy - I will clear the table
daddy - I will pull the curtains
daddy - I will give you a kiss
daddy - we will spesile things together
daddy - I will go to the atotoryom with you [atotoryom = auditorium / I direct the theater program at Red Lion Area High School when not running my start-up company and marketing agency]
daddy - I will go outside with you
daddy - I will come for dinner
daddy - I will help you work in your office
daddy - I will help make breakfast
daddy - I will play with Story [Story = her little sister]
daddy - I will help make dinner
daddy - I will get ready for school
daddy - I will do my homework
daddy - I will eat my vegtables

I see she saved the hardest for last as I wiped my eyes clear.

So I sat there at our kitchen table, alone, before the sun had risen, waiting for my coffee, with drying tears in my eyes, thinking how lucky I am.

I am a lucky man.

To be loved so purely.

Till tomorrow,

Eric

CEO of StageofLife.com

Here's the book in case you know any Dads that might be touched by it. It's the perfect gift for your Dad. I keep it on my desk in the StageofLife.com office.

Goal Setting - Happy New Year

2012-01-01T10:28:00.007-05:00

Last night our waitress said, "I've been wanting to ask you something...what are those little pieces of paper are for?"

My wife replied, "It's the start of our annual year-in-review and next year's goal setting discussion."

You see, every year, on New Year's Eve (this year it was over a bottle of Malbec wine at The Belvedere Inn in Lancaster, PA), my wife and I talked about our personal and family highlights from 2011. We each had a little list of

our Top 11 Highlights.

Here are mine:

I have a happy and healthy family.
I directed the high school musical, Les Miserables, at Red Lion Area Senior HS in Red Lion, PA
I have a staff of dedicated people working on StageofLife.com.
I got two new suits (it's important to look good when it counts).
I still have my hair (for who knows how long...it is receding!).
I have an awesome relationship with my wife - a woman with whom I just celebrated my 21st New Year's Eve celebration.
I volunteered my time (and writing) as a Community Columnist for my hometown's Sunday paper - York Daily Record Sunday News.
We got some new curtains for our living room and bedroom (little home improvements can go a long way).
I created an iMovie with my daughters called "A Silent Movie - The Christmas Monster."
I accompanied my daughter, Raina, on guitar while she played piano during her 1st recital.
I had a wonderful vacation to North Carolina and Minnesota with my three girls.

We both feel it's important to look back and acknowledge the highlights in our lives...it helps ground us and remind us of why it's important to engage life to its fullest, each and every day.

While we talk about highlights on New Year's Eve, every New Year's Day, we then talk about the future and our goals for the next year. So this morning, like we've done for the last 20 years, my wife and I sat down to talk about our next year's goals over coffee (and waffles). We discussed our health & wellness goals, our financial goals, our education goals, travel goals, home improvement goals, community and philanthropic goals, career goals, family goals, personal goals and of course, long-term goals.

All of this goal setting talk may sound daunting, but we developed a simple, 10-step goal setting worksheet that walks us through the entire process. We've been sharing this goal setting worksheet on StageofLife.com for the last few years, and every January we get messages from people who have used it and shared with us that our goal setting worksheet tool has been tremendously helpful.

Whether you use our Stage of Life goal setting worksheet or come with up with something different, I encourage you to sit down today or sometime this week, by yourself or with a loved one, to talk about both your highlights from the last year and set your goals for the coming year.

Till tomorrow...

Eric

CEO, StageofLife.com

The Christmas Monster - my holiday horror film

2011-12-11T21:09:00.010-05:00

Every Sunday morning, my wife heads out to bask in a 90 minute yoga class to center herself as she prepares for another week of teaching and inspiring high school students in her classroom and acting as VP of Education for our growing educational blogging resource, Stageoflife.com.

If you count her drive time to and from the yoga studio (Evolution Power Yoga in York, PA), that leaves me about 2 hours with my daughters to do...whatever...we...want.

--Once in a while we eat lots of cookies.

--Other days we run around and chase each other through the house.

--Sometimes I find myself working as running a start-up company and loyalty agency means that work really never ends.

But lately, I've been making a point to put my laptop (and cookies) away and instead spend those two hours doing something with my girls. Last week we went to the park. This week, we made a movie.

Yes, a movie. A silent movie.

It happened to be a Christmas-themed silent horror movie in fact. My first grader, Raina, helped me pull it all together, from writing the script to acting in it to serving as 2nd cameraman to playing the score on the piano (yes, that's her little six year old fingers playing the background music).

As for my two-year-old, Story? Well...we cast her as the lead role in this feature...the monster.

It was type casting, yes, but I see a bright future if she decides to pursue acting. :)

Working through this project with my daughters over the course of 90 some minutes was a remarkable experience. In less than two hours, we...

Wrote the script
Plotted out the camera shots
Got the monster into "make-up"
Acted out and filmed all the footage
Loaded it into the computer
Edited it
Packaged in the title slides
Recorded the background music
And uploaded the finished movie to YouTube

When Mommy came home, we sat her down and showed her the film, which we dubbed, "The Christmas Monster." She laughed and smiled and gave her girls big hugs for doing "such a great job."

And then I saw it - a look of complete joy in Raina's eyes. It wasn't pride. It was something more like a creative spark being ignited. My little first grade daughter was with me every step of the way as we put that movie together. She's already talking about our "next movie." I wonder what we'll come up with next time when Mommy is out at yoga.

I encourage every parent to put the laptop away. Put your phone down. Shut off Facebook. And create something with your kids...

And oh...I also attached the note I drew and put in Raina's lunch on Friday. It's Christmas time (obviously) and I'm wishing for a little snow. You can take the man out of Minnesota (my homeland), but you can't take the Minnesota out of the man. Come on, Pennsylvania, send some snow our way...let's make it a White Christmas.

Till tomorrow...

Eric

--CEO, StageofLife.com

35 Proven Business Tips for Entrepreneurs

2011-11-30T23:37:00.005-05:00

As a small business owner running a marketing and loyalty agency AND a start-up blogging website, I sometimes find myself asking, "Is all of this work really worth it? Wouldn't it just be easier if I just went back to working for a large agency?"

Granted, I ask that silent question knowing in my heart that the work is indeed worth it.

There's nothing more satisfying than working with my clients (that I personally found and chose to work with) to help them achieve their goals. There's also something insanely exhilarating about building a start-up website (www.stageoflife.com) from scratch and watching it grow month after month.

However...it does take a lot of work.

And that work does weigh heavy at times.

In fact, it was with reluctance the other week when I attended a half-day seminar held at York College of Pennsylvania called the Entrepreneurship Central PA 2011 Conference (which I found out about from the Central Penn Business Journal). This event was geared towards inspiring entrepreneurs to succeed with their businesses. Before registering, I previewed the agenda, looked over the panel of experts, and read aloud the session titles like, "2012 Economic Forcast by Economist from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia."

Sounded interesting.

But a part of me balked as I thought: I don't have time for something like this. I'm too busy.

--I have clients to help.

--I have a website to run.

I...have...stuff...to...do.

Thankfully, my heart once again spoke up and whispered, "Eric, when will there be a conference of this nature this close to your office?" And my little whispering heart was right. This event was being held less than 10 minutes from my front door.

So I went.

And I'm glad I did.

I took notes during all of the presentations and sessions. There was one session in particular, at the end of the event, during which every time the speakers (who happened to be successful entrepreneurs themselves who now run large companies) gave a nugget of advice, I wrote it down.

The speakers were:

Joseph E. Besecker of Emerald Asset Management Inc.
Wendie DiMatteo Holsinger of ASK Foods
Robert A. Kinsley of Kinsley Construction Inc.

Below you'll find the list of tips I gathered from these three. I emphasize that these tips, recommendations, and pieces of advice below are not mine, but those of the guest speakers.

I call this list: "35 Proven Business Tips for Entrepreneurs."

Here's what the panel had to say:

Have faith in your idea. If you knew how many entrepreneurs quit on their idea when they were actually incredibly close to "making it," it would be depressing.
Share your dream with others.
Define your box. Don't let your competitors define you.
Compel earnestness. Word hard. Be serious about your business.
Don't be afraid to fail.
Be unique. It takes courage to be different.
Be honest with yourself.
Drive with one steering wheel, i.e. have one leader. Do NOT lead by consensus.
Ensure you have a passion for what you do.
People do business with people they like.
You need money. And cash flow.
Make an impression.
Listen.
Give back to your community.
Do your research before every call, pitch, proposal or meeting. Don't you dare walk into a business engagement cold or without prior knowledge of the other party.
Send hand-written notes.
Remember birthdays.
Say thank-you.
Give free stuff.
Don't skimp on your providers.
Don't be afraid to cash-out if the right offer comes along.
Communicate - communicate - communicate.
Take strategic planning seriously. Don't pick too many goals. Stay focused, and incorporate your strategic plans/goals into the everyday business culture of your company.
Create a work/life balance using these three pillars: Family - Work - Community. You need all three. Like a juggler, don't drop one of these three balls.
Passion and success can be contagious.
Don't sweat the small the stuff. Are you living life to the fullest or worrying about the little things?
Lead with integrity. Do the right thing.
Give credit where credit is due.
Be a risk taker.
You can't do it by yourself. Surround yourself with a strong team.
Don't stray away from your core values.
Don't venture into the unknown without understanding.
Watch the company you keep. If you wouldn't want to be seen at dinner with the person, don't take them on as a client, vender, associate, etc.
Be a mentor.
Don't miss conferences that can help your business if they are 10 minutes from your office door.*

*I added this last one.

But it's true. After sitting through the half day conference, networking during breaks, and eating a complimentary chocolate chip cookie (or three) from the snack table, I walked away that afternoon feeling energized. Supported. Confident.

Which is funny when I'm supporting loyalty and membership accounts with some of the nation's largest brands. You wouldn't think I would need more confidence. But like I said at the beginning of this post...it sometimes feels overwhelming when you're building something from the ground up.

But mostly, I felt good because I think I'm on the right track with the majority of those 35 items I listed above. I say "majority." Not all. I still have a lot of work to do as I grow into a wiser business owner, community member, and most importantly, husband and father (taking from Wendie's tip on balancing Work - Community - Family).

Speaking of the last part, I packed my daughters their lunches during the daily breakfast routine this morning. Today's lunch consisted of:

Jif and Grape Smuckers P&J
White corn chips
Swiss Miss Chocolate pudding (for Raina)
A fresh apple
Five marsh mellows for each girl (they're crazy for marsh mellows right now).
Napkin
Water
And of course, my hand-drawn note for Raina to make her laugh (see attached photo).

I wish you all the best in your lives and businesses. I hope the list above gave some of you a little inspiration.

Till tomorrow...

--Eric Thiegs

CEO of Stage of Life LLC and www.stageoflife.com

Fancy Nancy makes her appearance

2011-11-07T21:28:00.006-05:00

Today was "Dress as your favorite character in a book" day at my daughter's elementary school.

Because my wife leaves for work before 7am, it was up to me to help my 1st grader get into her multi-layered get-up as "Fancy Nancy," a uppity-up (but incredibly nice) little girl in a children's book series by Jane O'Connor and illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser who loves fancy things.

My daughter wore TWO tutus, tights, a leotard, two pony tails, a purple shirt (under the leotard), and about a dozen accessories ranging from a big violet flower in her hair to four necklaces and other sundry little girl items that made her look...well...fancy.

My wife had asked me to take a picture and email it to her after I got our daughter dressed, but after making it all come together and brushing out "Fancy Nancy's" hair five times to make her pony tails "perfectly fancy"...I completely forgot to take a picture.

Whoops. Not a fancy move on Daddy's part.

During all of this, my two year old daughter, Story, followed us around and would chirp in with comments like...

"Daddy, brush my hair too."

[okay, baby].

"Daddy, I want more Apple Jacks."

[just wait baby, I have to put this second tutu on your sister].

"Daddy, I want a tutu."

[unfortunately your sister is wearing all of the available tutus in the house, baby].

It was a fun morning. For lunches, I packed the girls...

Jif and Smuckers P&J
Pepperidge Farm Goldfish
Banana for Story and Apple for Raina
Jello Pudding
Stauffer's Animal Crackers
Water
And a crazy note (as usual) for Raina [see attached].

As for StageofLife.com, today we sent out our monthly blogger eNewsletter and issued our national press release via MarketWire on our Teens, Trust and Safety report. I'll be curious to see if the press finds our release or findings interesting.

Feel free to read the press release or the full report on Teens, Trust and Safety.

Till tomorrow...

--Eric

CEO, StageofLife.com

Can't Wait

2011-10-14T06:40:00.007-04:00

At what point do you start to wish your child grows up more slowly?

I remember thinking things like...

"I can't wait for her to talk!"
"I can't wait for her to walk!"
"I can't wait for her to be potty trained!"
"I can't wait for her to butter her own pancakes!"
"I can't wait for her to learn how to swing!"
"I can't wait for her to ride a bike!"
"I can't wait..."

There have been lots of "can't waits" for me as my two daughters have been reaching various milestones over the last six and half years (for the record, they're only six and two years old so we've got a lot MORE "can't wait's" coming up).

When I stop to think about this "can't wait" feeling, it isn't because I am in a hurry to rush their lives, but rather I'm excited about the next phase. For instance, I was excited to have a conversation with them. I was excited to walk hand in hand with Story to the park. I was excited to go bike riding with Raina. And okay, I did want to rush the potty training phase, but for every developmental milestone they made, I was excited about seeing them reach the next.

But this week...this week I felt (for the first time), that I wanted to put aside all of that wishing for the next phase, all of that excitement for the things to come, and instead slow down to focus on where they are at...now.

We're all speeding through life, caught up in the routines of making school lunches (see my hand-drawn note for Raina's lunch today), driving to after-school activities, going to various business and social engagements, and of course trying to squeeze in quality family-time, that we often find ourselves saying, "I can't wait for..." whatever we're wishing for next.

This week, however, I slowed down enough to stop thinking about the next "I can't wait" milestone or experience and instead focused on enjoying the single magical moments occurring before me...

I saw my two-year-old, Story, roll her eyes at something her sister said. Jeez...don't grow up too fast, honey.
I saw my six-year-old, Raina, write a letter to her uncle in which she used "OMG" to describe how excited she was about a large, faux ruby he had given her. I had a flash-forward vision of my six year old in junior high at that moment. Jeez...you ALSO don't grow up too fast, honey.
I had both of my daughters ask me for a "piggy back ride" down the steps at the same time, which resulted in all of us working out a front and back system so I could carry both. They squealed with delight at being carried down together and facing each other over my shoulder whereas I groaned a little bit as my 38-year-old body ported them down the steps. Jeez...don't get too much bigger, girls, or I'll have to carry you one at a time.

Don't get any bigger. That thought hit me.

Up till that moment, I had always thought ahead to those "can't wait" moments - those moment when they were getting bigger and smarter and doing new and exciting things.

Do I want my daughters to grow up? Yes, I do.

However, I now want them to make it painstakingly slow for me. I want to start enjoying every little moment. I know I'll still have the occasional "can't wait" moment (habits are hard to break), but it's being replaced with the deeper realization that my little girls won't be little forever.

Till tomorrow

--Eric

CEO, StageofLife.com

Picture Day

2011-10-13T07:37:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, it was Picture Day at my 2-year-old daughter's pre-school. In preparation for the big photo, my wife helped me get Story's hair ready at 6:45am, complete with a little ponytail, ribbon, and brush technique that made our girl look soooooooo cute.

When I say "help," my wife really did the work.

I just kept thinking....thank goodness my wife is doing her hair today. As the Morning Daddy, I typically run a brush through her hair and call it "good."

With the little one's hair complete and looking beautiful, my wife walked out the front door headed for work, turned over her shoulder, smiled and said devilishly, "Now...keep her hair like that."

OMG.

It was 6:47am. Story's hair was perfect. But I drop her off at pre-school at 8:45am.

I repeat...8:45am.

That's a two hour window for my wild and crazy two year old to completely destroy her gloriously prepared hairdo...and thus potentially turn "Picture Day" into "Bad Hair Day."

Without panicking, I took a deep breath and realized one of two things would happen:

1) Story wouldn't touch her hair and things would turn out perfect

2) Story would touch her hair, pull out pony tails and such, and leave me standing with doing what I do every morning...run a brush through it and call it "good."

Would it make sense to stress about this or follow her around for the next two hours worrying about her hair.

No.

So I rolled the dice and went about the normal morning routine making lunches (see attached lunch note I drew for Raina), going over spelling words, getting everyone dressed, etc. without worrying how my two-year-old's perfectly styled hair would turn out.

And you know what...she didn't touch it once.

I got to her pre-school at 8:45am with hair, pony tail, and ribbon perfectly in place. I was so proud of myself...for having done nothing.

I can't wait to see how the photos turn out. :)

Till tomorrow...

--Eric

Piano practice

2011-10-04T17:04:00.003-04:00

Raina is learning the piano, and she likes to practice some mornings before school.

Today was one of those mornings.

I was pouring my coffee when I heard her jump out of bed, scamper into the guest room still clad in her jammies, and proceed to turn on her keyboard (it's a full-sized Casio I bought used from my best friend, Russ, when I was working on my last folk album).

She turned it on and started to play her practice lesson...and I caught myself stopping the morning routine.

I stopped putting away last night's dishes.

I stopped making breakfast.

I stopped making lunches.

I stopped wiping Story's face off.

I stopped making my StageofLife.com to do lists.

I stopped spontaneous client brainstorming.

I stopped drinking my coffee.

I stopped everything.

I stopped.

And I just listened.

I heard Raina playing with both hands today as she breezed through this week's songs. As a musician who knows enough guitar to write his own songs and enough piano to pick out chords, I marveled at the music spilling down the stairs. My 1st grade daughter was loving her piano. She was loving the act of making music. For a 38-year-old Daddy who always dreamed of being a Rock Star...I was in heaven living through her music.

I could care less about being a Rock Star now.

Just give me my daughter's music and a warm cup of coffee and I'm the happiest guy in the world.

Till tomorrow...

--Eric

P.s. The hand-drawn note I put in Raina's lunch was a direct inspiration from today.

Monday and Our Facebook Fans

2011-10-03T17:52:00.008-04:00

I love hearing my daughters get up in the morning.

At this stage of their lives, they happily bound out of bed (or crib in Story's case) each morning, yell down the steps, "Good morning, Daddy!" and are singing Top 40 Pop Songs within 5 minutes of waking up.

Even on Monday.

That makes me smile.

(Even with the Top 40 songs coming out of their mouths).

As my regular readers know, I'm running a marketing agency and start-up website and have the privilege of being the "Morning Guy" between 6:30am-8:45am, i.e. getting the girls off to school because my wife starts her day at the crack of dawn.

I went about the combing of hair, packing of lunches, and dressing of girls for school with extra bravado today. Part of the reason for the spring in my step was that it's now Q4 (hello October) and other part was this simply...how can you not smile when your two-year-old is singing the new Britney Spears song while eating Apple Jacks?

I mean...come on.

(Okay...so my parenting might need a tune-up - Apple Jacks and B.S. combo concerns even me).

As for lunches, today I packed...

P&J sandwiches (Jif & Grape Smuckers)
Martin's Cheese Curls
Jello Pudding
Fresh seedless red grapes
Water
And my daily, hand-drawn note for my 1st grader, Raina (see attached here).

As for work, I pulled our reporting on Stage of Life's monthly visitor traffic, Facebook Fan activity (we're closing on 1,400 "Likes"), member sign-ups, and Quantcast rank.

All continue to grow.

It's exciting.

I love working on our on Stage of Life concept. Everyday we provide...

A place for people an opportunity to share their lives
A place for teachers to encourage their students to write more as we supply free lessons plans and education resources
A place for students to explore blogging
A place for everyone to enter national writing contests
A place for consumers to save money with relevant coupons tailored to a stage of life
A place for merchants to reach new customers
B2B loyalty marketing services for our clients to succeed in building loyalty with their members using our merchant partnership relationships
and so much more...

It's a good Monday.

Till tomorrow.

--Eric

Hay Rides and Viral free stuff

2011-10-01T14:27:00.009-04:00

As usual, here's the last note I drew and snuck into my daughter's school lunch (yesterday's lunch).

Unlike my previous posts, I won't go into the lunches I packed for the girls this week...in fact...I haven't touched my blog in a few days because something very interesting has happened.

Our free classroom poster for Language Arts high school teachers went viral. And when I say viral...I mean...VIRAL.

We launched our free education resources on StageofLife.com last month as teachers and students were returning to school.

This expanded education section includes free lesson plans, mentor texts of our winning essays, writing prompts, goal setting worksheets, trends on teens, thoughts about digital literacy, and our new 12"x18" free classroom poster for high school and college English teachers/professors which touts our National Student Writing Contest.

Since making the poster available, we've been getting a handful of poster requests in each week, mostly from our loyal teacher followers already using Stage of Life or a few who have heard about us via our Facebook Fan page, but then it happened...

On Thursday...82 poster requests rolled in.
On Friday...55 poster requests rolled in.
Today...I've already received 12.

It turns out a handful of websites came across our free classroom poster and posted it on their forum boards. And then others followed. And now we've got websites in India talking about our free high school classroom poster (sorry, no international shipping at this time, folks!).

My Marketing Coordinator, Megan, looked at me when she left the office on Friday and said,

"Eric, if this keeps up, we'll need an intern...just to keep up with shipping out the posters to high schools."

I immediately started investigating finding a local high school student who might want to intern with us and learn their way around mail merge. :)

Part of me is thrilled about this activity and exposure and new traffic to our global writing initiative at StageofLife.com. It's positive exposure for our free education resources and our mission to get students writing more outside of the classroom by using blogging. In fact, many of the new visitors contacting us to request the poster have had some really great things to say about the content, blogs and concept for StageofLife.com.

For all of that...I'm beyond excited.

But another part of me is terrified.

Is our small grassroots initiative prepared for viral growth that we can't control? Yes, I have a shipping budget, but as a self-funded, privately owned start-up, we don't have unlimited funds to produce, print and mail our four-color, awesome writing contest posters. I've actually started thinking about reaching out to a few organizations and brands that might want to help sponsor our poster outreach effort and/or some of the free educational benefits we offer on the site.

I need to get to that...asap.

So least to say, it was an exciting week. Add that excitement on top of our normal work, servicing our B2B partnership marketing clients, managing our member benefit and perk program accounts, etc. and I was definitely ready for the weekend.

Speaking of which...

Today, my wife and two daughters took a quick drive over to Miller's Plant Farm in York, PA. They kicked off their fall festival and we pigged out on free samples of pumpkin bread, pumpkin pudding, apple cider, gingerbread, and pumpkin pie. We also took a rainy hay ride through the farm and of course ended up buying a lot of fall goodies.

Till tomorrow...

--Eric

Rosemary toast and Board of Advisors

2011-09-27T07:45:00.005-04:00

No matter what the main course is for breakfast each morning, my girls have taken to requesting a piece of thick-cut, toasted Rosemary bread slathered in butter.

They'll finish their oatmeal or their cereal and about 30 minutes later, I'll get the call for a piece of that, "special toast, please, Daddy!"

They're eating their "special toast" right now, as I sit down to grab a moment's reprieve from cleaning up the kitchen, helping Raina brush her hair, getting dressed myself, helping Story go pee on the potty, and packing their school lunches.

Speaking of which...

P&J (Jif and Smuckers like always, no Nutella added today)
Mott's Applesauce
Rold's Gold Pretzels
Jello Cherry and Raspberry jello
Water
And my daily school lunch note for Raina (see attached).

I put this note in Raina's lunch today because as we all know, life is a journey.

My daughter is finishing her first month in first grade this week. It's a lot different than her Kindergarten experience. She has kids in the class that "act out." They have different routines than last year. She's adjusting, but it's definitely a new journey for her.

I feel the same way for my start-up company, Stage of Life LLC.

After over two years in business, my co-founder, Joe, and I are now in the midst of lining up a Board of Advisors. We have some aggressive goals for the company for 2012 and we realize that tapping into additional intellectual and business talent will be crucial as we continue to grow our start-up website, StageofLife.com and partnership marketing agency, Stage of Life LLC.

Personal, mailed invitations started going out last Friday to individuals we've had the pleasure of working with or knowing personally over our professional careers. Our list of potential Advisory Board members is diverse, and we're excited to make a formal announcement of the Board make-up by mid-October.

We don't expect everyone to jump "on board" to serve on our Advisory Board by any means. People's lives are busy...we know. But we're definitely excited to hear the reaction to our letter and invitation.

Till tomorrow...

--Eric

Sleeping In On a Monday

2011-09-26T20:59:00.007-04:00

My daughters and I kicked off the week by sleeping in today. After my wife left for work, we all got up around 6:50am...it was nice to catch a little bit of extra shut-eye!

However, once up, I immediately jumped into the Daddy morning routing:

--Pulling out school dresses for the girls to wear on this warm, humid fall day here in Pennsylvania

--Pouring bowls of cereal (Crunchy Nut and Apple Jacks)

--Combing hair

--Cleaning up the kitchen

--Packing lunches...

P&J&N (Creamy Jif, Grape Smuckers, AND Nutella!)
Mott's Applesauce
Jello Chocolate Pudding
Rold's Gold Pretzels
Water
And of course, my daily, hand-drawn note for my first grader (see attached).

This particular photo is in homage to our cat, Hamlet, who has been catching black crickets from our basement and bringing them upstairs to honor us (minor a leg or two).

It's gross.

Overall, the girls had a wonderful morning. Raina practiced piano and read her chapter book while Story, my two-year-old, watched "Elmo's Potty Time." I'm highly encouraging the watching of this DVD in our household right now as I can't WAIT for potty training to be over (we have a line item in our family budget for "diapers").

If Elmo can help her go on the potty ALL the time, I'll be a happy Daddy.

As for Stage of Life LLC, it was a busy day talking with merchant partners for the various loyalty, reward and member benefit programs we're working on, not to mention the normal activity occurring on StageofLife.com. It was a little quiet in the office itself as Megan, our Marketing Coordinator, was out sick today.

Till tomorrow...

--Eric

Newspaper Comics

2011-09-19T07:48:00.007-04:00

I just experienced one of the biggest smiles I've had in a long time on a MONDAY morning.

We're still of the belief that getting the daily, morning, local newspaper is an important ritual for starting your day. Our copy of the York Daily Record shows up around 5:30am every morning, rain or shine, and I religiously sit down to read it everyday during my coffee an

d toast. I've been doing this for years.

This ritual has now been passed onto my six-year-old daughter (1st grader), Raina, who likes to read the daily comics in the Living section. This morning was no different than most. As the "morning Daddy" (responsible for getting the girls off to school everyday), I was busy with makin

g lunches, pouring bowls of Apple Jacks, buttering toast, and other sundry Daddy-like tasks when suddenly, Raina laughed....loudly.

In fact, it wasn't so much a laugh as it was an unabandened guffaw.

I took a sip of my coffee and asked what was so funny, and she cried out in reply, "Daddy - Marmaduke is hilarious today. He's taking the little boy for a walk instead of the other way around!!"

This happened at 7:10am.

For those that don't know who Marmaduke is - he's a big dog. And so I smiled, in a big way, like big Marmaduke. The start of my week began with the sight of my daughter reading the paper and the sound of her laughing.

As for school lunches, today I packed the usual for both girls:

P&J (Jif and Smuckers)
Chocolate pudding (one got Hunt's and the other Jello brand)
Apples from Brown's Orchard
Rold's Gold pretzels
Napkin
Water
And of course my crazy school lunch note for Raina (which by the way is a reference to a house spider we have living in our kitchen window).

As for work, it's going to be a busy week for StageofLife.com and our B2B Partnership Marketing programs. We're continuing our Language Arts teacher outreach for the free classroom poster campaign and I've got more than a dozen meetings scheduled with merchants for discounts, coupons and member benefit perks for our loyalty and rewards program support.

But right now...I'm still smiling from my daughter's reaction to today's Marmaduke comic.

Till tomorrow,

--Eric

New lunch, wish granted

2011-09-14T16:26:00.006-04:00

I have the privilege of getting my six and two-year-old daughters ready for school every morning.

I take pride in the lunches I pack for them.

However, after hearing from my wife yesterday that my six-year-old daughter, Raina, complained about her lunches being, "boring," I thought I should check directly with the source (not that I doubt my wife, mind you, but rather I was curious what my 1st grader would tell me...since she knows I make her lunch).

So this morning, during a breakfast of toast and yogurt, the following conversation went down:

Me: "Hey, I heard from Mommy that you don't like your lunch anymore. Is that true?"
Raina: "Yeah, Daddy. You pack me the same thing everyday."
Me: "I thought you liked those things."
Raina: "I do, but you only pack me THOSE things. All of the other kids get more stuff in their lunch, like, five or six things to eat. I only get three."
Me: "Four if you count the dark chocolate I've been putting in there lately."
Raina: "That doesn't count, Daddy. It's so small."

Okay...mystery solved.

It's not the quality of the lunch I'm packing, but the QUANTITY.

So today, I up'ed the quantity of items and changed it around a bit. Here's what I put in her school lunch today...

Colby Jack cheese sandwich with butter on a Martin's Potato Roll
Whole apple from Brown's Orchard
Nature's Promise Cheese Snackers
String Cheese
20 (or so) multi-flavored jelly beans
Water
And of course a weird note that I drew (see attached image).

As for my two-year-old, I figured she could use a menu shake-up too so she got...

Quaker Instant Oatmeal - Peaches & Cream
Whole banana
Water

It's coming up to the end of the work day, so I'm still at the office and I haven't seen my girls yet. I'm curious as to what they thought of their "new" lunches.

As for work, we're adding a new page in our Education Resources section on Stage of Life about encouraging digital literacy in the classroom through the use of technology or blogging.

Right up our alley.

Till tomorrow,

--Eric

New lunch, please

2011-09-13T15:47:00.007-04:00

My girls were up and at 'em like little wildcats this morning.

And I mean that in a good way.

From eating our Crunchy O's breakfast cereal together to brushing our hair to getting dressed while having a dance party blasting Brittney Spears (my six year old likes to be the "DJ" and tune in the local pop radio station from my wife's alarm clock), we had some fun before school on this Tuesday morning.

For lunch, it was the usual. I packed the following for their school lunches..

P&J (Jif and Smuckers)
Rold's Gold Pretzels
Red grapes
Dove dark chocolate piece
Water
And the silly school lunch note I always put in Raina's lunch

However, get this, my wife just came home and told me the following...

My wife: "Raina says you pack her the same lunch everyday and she's 'tired' of it."

Me: "I thought Raina loved having the same lunch?!"

My wife: "You thought wrong, I guess." [she said that with a loving smile].

So, it looks like I'll have to be creative tomorrow and whip up something a little different.

As for work...

It's been a full day of partnership marketing - talking to merchants on behalf of my B2B clients and drumming up offers for the various member benefit programs our firm represents in the rewards and loyalty space.

I've gotta start thinking about what to pack the girls tomorrow for lunch.

Till tomorrow!

--Eric

Roller Coaster Week and MarketWatch plug

2011-09-09T06:02:00.008-04:00

Have you ever been thrown out of your routine?

The answer is yes.

Have you ever been thrown out of your routine five days in a row?

The answer is probably yes again...but this occurs in a blue moon, right?

Well, this week was the prime example of my morning daddy routine with the girls gone haywire - for five days in a row. Allow me to share...

Monday: Labor Day. This should have been a fun day to relax with the family but Raina, my 1st grader, was sick with the flu.
Tuesday: Raina was still sick and stay home from school, but I did have to get my two-year-old ready for pre-school and take her in. Raina ended up resting and sleeping in the Stage of Life office all day on the couch in my office as she battled her little fever.
Wednesday: Everyone went to school! It seemed to be a normal day...but then it started raining...hard (leftover effects from Hurricane Lee making its way up through the Mid-Atlantic)...and all three of my girls we're released from school early.
Thursday: Funny thing about that rain...it didn't stop. Everyone, including my wife, Becky (a high school English teacher), stayed home due to the massive rains and flooding we're seeing here in the Susquehanna River basin region. You know you've got a unique weather emergency when the national Weather Channel's field team shows up to run live reports 20 miles from your office and home. Even Megan, our dutiful Marketing Coordinator who rarely misses a day of work, had to call in and work from home as her road was flooded on both ends.
Friday: Everyone is back in school today, although my wife's school is on a two-hour delay and now she's bumping into my morning routine (which is a good thing!).

So between a holiday, sickness, rain, and school closings, getting into the Back to School groove this week with my girls has been...well...a little tricky.

But that's okay.

I share all of this only to illustrate the question, is life ever really "normal?"

Yes, we all have routines. Yes, we all have schedules. But this week reminded me that being able to work outside of those agendas is just as important as maintaining them.

Speaking of routines: Today, I packed the following school lunches for my girls:

P&J (Jif and grape Smuckers)
Martin's Potato Chips
Red grapes
Dove dark chocolate piece
Water
Napkin
And of course, this wacky hand-drawn school lunch note for Raina (I had to ask our dog, Loki, to "sit and stay" while I sketched him quickly).

As for work, the highlight I'll share is that The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch reported on our survey findings from the teen writing contest we sponsored on bullying.

It's exciting to have a media plug from MarketWatch. Kudos go to my team for pulling the survey together, getting over a 1000 students to take the survey and then collecting scores of personal essays about bullying. Our report found that 91% of teens have been bullied. It's a shame, but hopefully our efforts will a encourage teenagers to change their behavior, and combat bullying or stop bullying if they see it.

The weekend is upon us (although that means little when you're running a growing writing initiative and marketing agency).

See you on Monday!

--Eric

CEO, StageofLife.com and Stage of Life LLC

Launch Education Campaign

2011-09-01T06:22:00.008-04:00

It's the first of the month.

So much to do.

Today, at StageofLife.com, we will...

Change over all of the Editor pieces
Change over all of the Writing Contests
Fine tune the new Education Resources section of the website for the launch of our teacher outreach campaign
Launch the teacher campaign! Approximately 200 high school Language Arts teachers will be receiving a personal letter, pen and classroom poster from me touting our national essay contest for high school students, our free lesson plans and writing prompts, etc.
Turn over new coupon offers in our My Life Rewards program
Send out the monthly eNewsletter to our blogger and writer members
Have our monthly team update about the Year End goals (FB Likes, Traffic to the site, Essays Uploaded, Site ranking, etc.)
Service our B2B partnership marketing client accounts
Other stuff that pops up

Yeah...there's a lot to do today.

As a small, self-funded start-up company, I sometimes joke with my team that nobody is allowed to take vacation on the first of the month because of . Well...I kinda joke...part of me is serious actually. But I'm up and at 'em and ready to go (6:33am as I write).

My wife just left for work to prep her classroom for another big day of teaching high school English, and as for my two little girls, they are still sleeping. But soon the morning routine of being the Morning Daddy will kick in and we'll have breakfast to make, faces to wash, hair to comb, bodies to dress, spelling words to review (for Raina), dishes from last night's dishwasher run to put away, garbage to take out, and all of the stuff it takes for me to get two girls off to school/pre-school before I head up to the office to start tackling my checklist.

Oh yeah...I guess I should brush my teeth too.

Today I've packed the following lunches for each of my daughters:

P&J (Jif and Smuckers)
Carrots
Rold's Gold pretzels (for Story)
Martin's Potato Chips (for Raina...our favorite!)
Hunt's pudding pack
Water
Napkins (paper towel actually - I'm too cheap to buy napkins).
And of course, I've enclosed my weird, daily note I draw for my 1st-grader (we've been working on learning how to whistle). Notice her T-Shirt. Who doesn't love pugs?!

Till tomorrow...

--Eric

Summer Ending - our Staycation/Vacation

2011-08-30T06:00:00.006-04:00

I hear my two-year-old stirring upstairs.

I'm holding my breath that she sleeps just a little bit more. It's only 6:15am and I'd love for her to get a bit more rest...she's already started to get a runny nose after just a few days in pre-school.

I'm still on track with my promise to wake up with my wife each morning. 5am. She's suggested I start a morning exercise routine with the extra time. What do I do?

Write.

Oh - and get a headstart on my regular morning routine. For instance, I've got my daughters' lunches packed (which would normally be happing around 8am). It's the usual:

P&J - Jif and Smucker's Concord Grape Jelly, but today I put in a little bit of Nutella!
Hunt's Pudding Packs (Vanilla for Story cause she's messy Chocolate for Raina cause her friends will think it's cool).
Driscoll's Strawberries (for Story)
Nectarine (for Raina)
Rold's Gold pretzels
Water in their thermoses
Crazy weird note that I draw up every morning (see attached).

I sometimes change up the lunch and pack something different, but that's usually met with a "Daddy, my lunch was weird today" remark from Raina after she returns home from school. Granted, one time I did pack her a pickle. What five-year-old wants to open her lunch in front of her Kindergarten friends to find a pickle?

But that was last year. I was just getting my morning routine down with the girls.

This year...I'm perfecting it.

As for work, today I have something of a larger issue on my mind...vacations.

With the end of summer here, I'm already looking ahead to when our next vacation will occur, because sadly, it'll be a while with school back in session now

It's obvious to all of us that vacations are important and exciting adventures that help break up the routines of life. Many would argue that they are critical to creating and maintaining a positive work-life balance too.

For me, vacations are all of that, but also a necessity in my marriage.

I used the topic of summer vacations for my Community Columnist Editorial ran in the York Sunday Paper this last weekend (I write for the local paper as a featured Editorialist once every other month or so). Here's a re-print of the piece - hopefully it'll inspire you to take your favorite person on vacation (or even a "staycation")...

------

York County a great 'staycation' destination

ERIC THIEGS

Early in our marriage, about 11 years ago, my wife, Becky, and I were having a series of ongoing arguments. She told my mother-in-law, Mary Jo, about this one day, and my mother-in-law offered up this solution: "You two should go on vacation."

I scoffed at the idea.

Vacation?

That's not going to solve the problem. We need a marriage counselor, not a tan.

However, it just so happened that around the same time of the arguments, we had a friend's out-of-town wedding to attend. That weekend wedding trip ended up re-centering us, pulled us out of our routines, and reminded us of why we fell in love with each other. Those arguments suddenly didn't seem so important anymore.

Since then, Becky and I have made vacations a priority in our marriage, and expanded our travel mission to accommodate the fact that we're not just a young couple anymore, but parents with two beautiful daughters.

I share this story because two weeks ago our annual vacation that we'd been planning since February was cancelled.

It was my fault the vacation fell through, thanks to a reservation error I made, and I broke the news to my three girls while they were packing their bags. After the explanations, my wife calmly said, "OK, let's make the most of this -- let's have a 'Staycation.'"

A Staycation?

Our "staycation" was a vacation, but we stayed home and scheduled a series of day trips around the region, taking advantage of how close York County is to everything. Our staycation took us to:

--- Downtown York. We walked through The York County Heritage Trust Museum and ate at the Central Market. Kudos to the museum for an amazing visit and to The Busy Bee, MarketHouse Pickle Company, Just Cupcakes, and others for your delicious market fare.

--- Inner Harbor and Port Discovery Children's Museum. My highlight moment on this trip occurred on our drive down to Baltimore. I was cut off by another driver and my 6-year-old asked me, "Daddy, is that car from 'Dumb Town?'" I replied, "No honey, they're from Maryland." I thought it was funny. My wife found it only slightly amusing (her family is all from Maryland).

--- HersheyPark. We rode the Chocolate Tour ride THREE times. Singing cows and free chocolate -- my daughters were in heaven.

--- New Freedom. We enjoyed an entire day at my in-laws' pool, soaking up sun, reading and slathering our fair-skinned daughter in 100 SPF sunscreen.

--- Glenville and Hanover. We dropped our baby off at my parents, shopped at the Reader's Cafe, and then attended our friends' Dani and J.P.'s wedding catered by La Cucina.

We capped the week off with the Dallastown Carnival for rides, kettle-corn, and visiting with people we know and love in our community.

When our "staycation" was finished, I was left with a new perspective: Building vacation memories for my daughters and putting energy into my marriage doesn't require an airplane. It all happened right here, around our home in York County.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink," has this to say about travel and marriage:

"Marriages are buffeted by more important things, like money and sex and children and jobs and in-laws, in constantly changing combinations. Sometimes couples are very happy together. Some days they fight. Sometimes they feel as through they could almost kill each other, but then they go on vacation and come back sounding like newlyweds."

Eleven years ago I would have laughed at this notion. In fact, I did when my mother-in-law suggested the same thing. But it's true. There's nothing more special than having my wife at my side as we travel and reconnect in our relationship outside of daily routines and pressures -- whether that's a romantic trip to Paris as a couple, or a family visit to the Central Market.

And that's all it takes sometimes, a small trip, to remind us how thrilling it is to see and experience something new together -- to make memories that will grow your relationship.

Which reminds me:

I love you, York County, but it's long overdue that I ask Oma and Poppa if they'd be willing to watch the girls for a weekend so Becky and I could get away by ourselves for a night or two. It seems too good to be true to imagine a morning not having to rock-paper-scissors to see who changes the morning diaper. I know Malcolm Gladwell and MaryJo (my mother-in-law) would agree. Our next vacation will be one that leaves us "feeling like newlyweds."

Writer's note: Thanks to everyone regionally, in York County and beyond, who made our Thiegs Family Staycation so truly unique and amazing.

Education Resources - new launch

2011-08-29T05:59:00.011-04:00

I got up at 5am this morning.

For two reasons...

1) It's my wife's first day of school. She's a high school English teacher and classes return from summer break today. I wanted to get

up, make her coffee, and wish her off in person as she starts a new school year.

2) There's still work to be done, but later today, we're going to relaunch our Educational Resources section on StageofLife.com. With teachers (like my wife) and students returning to school, it's the perfect time to showcase the various features and benefits we provide to help educators.

Namely...

Free, national writing contest for high school students
Free lessons plans for Language Arts teachers
Free 12' x 18' classroom poster (we'll mail it directly to the teacher's school) if they Contact Us. [See image of poster]
Introduction to blogging activities
12 months of writing prompts
Mentor texts to model strong essay writing
Writing resources
Student Goal Setting Worksheet
Be the Change activity (to make a positive difference in this world)
And more...

Much of this re-organization of our educational resources stems from teachers contacting us last school year with questions and suggestions as they utilized StageofLife.com in the classroom. When I realized we had such an active user base in this particular audience niche, I pulled my team together to brainstorm how we could better tailor the website to our teacher, educator and homeschool users.

It's hard enough being a teacher or homeschooling your child, and we hope some of our lesson plan additions, tips and curriculum updates will help make the lives of educators everywhere a littler easier, and/or give them some new ideas at least!

The full site change should occur later today or by the latest, tomorrow morning.

As for my morning routine, it's 6:14am and my daughters are still in bed. However, I have packed them the following lunches and included this note in my six-year-old's lunchbox...

My 1st Grader's lunch:

P&J sandwiches (Jif and Smuckers). NOTE: Jif's brand line is, "#1 Choice for Choosey Mom's," but as the "Morning Dad," I would have to say it's also the choice for "Busy Dad's Who Love Penut Butter." Although that tagline doesn't have as nice a ring.
Martin's Kettle Cook'd Potato Chips
Nectorine
Hunt's chocolate pudding
Water in her Littlest Pet Shop thermos

My Pre-Schooler's lunch:

P&J (same as above)
Rold's Gold pretzels (for my youngest)
Banana half
Water in her Hello Kitty thermos

All three of my girls will be in class today. I'll be in my class of sorts too, launching the new Education Resources section on StageofLife.com

For all you teachers, educators and homeschoolers out there, we wish you another great start to your school year and StageofLife.com is excited to help inspire you and your students throughout 2011-2012!

Yours,

--Eric

Work-Life Balance, Teens and Bullying, and another P&J Sandwich

2011-08-26T07:58:00.007-04:00

As I got out of the shower today and started packing my six-year-old's lunch in my towel (here's the silly the daily lunch note I drew for her - look to your right), my 2-year-old, Story, and I had a conversation that went like this...

--Story: "Daddy...did you just take a shower?"

--Me: "Yes, honey."

--Story: "Daddy...go upstairs and get dressed."

I laughed and told her that I would do that, "right away."

While I may be the CEO of Stage of Life and manage staff, freelancers, editors, interns, and others involved in our national writing initiative and marketing agency, I actually have a boss myself...or in reality...THREE bosses: my wife and two daughters.

My wife and I have been having discussions lately about the work/life balance. It's like this:

--I work.

--And then I work some more.

--And then I squeeze in some more work.

Running a start-up website and managing our B2B accounts on the partnership marketing agency side takes a lot of coordination, and lately, I've been lacking on balancing out work with, well, living life.

It's Friday, so my plan this weekend is to look at my schedule and re-prioritize how I manage my schedule. It's not hard to do. I just need to develop some better routines to keep MY bosses happy.

Here's the lunch I packed Raina today:

P&J sandwich (Jif and grape Smuckers)
Nectarine
Rold's Gold pretzels
Nutter Butter cookie (1)

As for my work day...

I need to follow-up with a reporter who called about our MarketWire Teens and Bullying press release (we sent out our Bullying Trends Report last night that recapped the courageous essays and stories that were shared by our student writers via our national writing contest last month)
The everyday calling on partners for our various partnership marketing programs (B2B clients)
A meeting with our digital agency on upgrading the registration process for Stage of Life

Overall, another good day...with an even better weekend ahead. I'm looking forward to putting in some overtime with my bosses.

--Eric

New routines

2011-08-25T09:43:00.009-04:00

I drew this note and put it in my oldest daughter's lunchbox to make her smile when she opened up her lunch today.

Why am I sharing this?

Well, a new school year has started. My daughter kicked off 1st grade and my baby started pre-school. Because my wife is a high school English teacher and I happen to run a start-up website (www.stageoflife.com) and corresponding partnership marketing agency (www.stageoflife.com/corporate), my schedule is a bit more flexible...so...I get the morning routine with the girls.

If you're the "morning parent", you know the drill...

Getting them out of bed
Getting them dressed
Combing hair
Packing lunches
Getting them out the door
Getting them to school

Some of these things (like the hair), are a bit more difficult for me as the Daddy. But I manage okay. Ha. However, starting today, I will be sharing a little bit more on my blog about these morning routines as I balance being the CEO of a growing company and a Daddy too.

I guess it's something of a new "Start-Up Daddy" theme for my blog.

So here we go...

For lunch today, I packed the following for BOTH girls:

P&J sandwiches made with Jiff and Grape Jelly (Smuckers)
Strawberries
Rold's Gold pretzels
And as a treat - Tollhouse cookie bars my wife, Becky, made last night.

As for me, some of my highlights today include...

Following up on a conversation I had with a consultant for a large member organization last night regarding life stage marketing for grandparents
Meeting with clients who hired us to help them with a teen bullying prevention video (which just won an award)
A conference with a member organization that's interested in our Your Life Rewards discount offer program
So much more.

Life is good.

--Eric

New look and feel

2011-08-05T16:13:00.006-04:00

NEWS FLASH...important StageofLife.com updates:

1) New Site:
Tonight at midnight the NEW and improved StageofLife.com site will be live!! The home page will be the same but the interior pages are getting a face-lift. We'll be shutting the site down around 9pm to make the transition. Our site is still using its original beta skin launched on April 2009. This is our first big look and feel overhaul.

2) Glitches:
On that note, after the new site is live, if you find any bugs or glitches please email me and we will have them fixed as soon as possible.

3) Profile Photo:
We've asked our handful or core bloggers (a few hundred out of the thousands that submit stories to the website) to upload a Profile image if they haven't yet. Our Featured Writers are the "face" of StageofLife.com. It makes the writing and stories more personal and the site warmer with everyone's of your happy, smiling faces.

4) Vote:
Finally, I also wanted to encourage everyone to vote for StageofLife.com in the Blogger's Choice Award for 2011. We're nominated in four categories so please vote in each one.

As always, our core efforts are focused on...

hosting national writing contests for bloggers and writers
providing a place for writers and bloggers promote their blogs
giving people a free blog to archive their writing in an interactive writing community
creating free lesson plans for Language Arts to use blogging as a way to get students writing outside of the classroom
helping people save money with our collection of printable coupons and coupon codes

With our new design rolling out at midnight - here's to the on-going growth of StageofLife.com!

My door is always open,

Eric

Social Media Campaigns that work

2011-05-31T20:39:00.008-04:00

Megan, our new PR/Marketing Coordinator, and I sat down about two weeks ago and decided it was about time to get organized with our social media strategy for StageofLife.com.

Here's a little insider scoop...

CAMPAIGN TITLE: "Our Life Calendar"

GOALS: Get organized, tie our social media posts to a hard schedule, get our blogger mem

bers (we have over 3,000 bloggers writing and involved with our global Stage of Life writing project) more engaged, and have a reason/purpose behind what we're posting.

DESCRIPTION of SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN: Our site, StageofLife.com, features 10 different life stages. Our new social media campaign, which is planned out through the end of the year, now highlights one individual life stage on both our Facebook and Twitter accounts each day.

For instance, today was the "Raising a Family" feature day on "Our Life Calendar" so we tweeted a national statistic about families via our Twitter account (According to 46% of #Americans, 2 is the ideal number of #children for a #family www.stageoflife.com) and then plugged one of our blogger stories about Raising a Family on our Facebook page.

Speaking of Facebook, whenever we feature one of our bloggers posts/stories, we now also personally notify the person that their StageofLife essay/story made it into our social media announcement for the day. This increases the opportunity for that blogger/writer to "share" the news of being featured with their network.

With this plan in place, "Our Life Calendar" campaign puts us on a 10-day cycle to rotate through all 10 life stages, with the weekends left for potpourri posts. This gives us an opportunity to share life statistics and feature blogs from each life stage twice a month during the working work and feature misc. posts on the weekends. It also gives us a chance to personally involve 20 of our high profile bloggers/writers each month (240 per year) via highlighting their blog in our social media campaign. And finally, every Tuesday and Thursday, we feature a second Facebook post in the afternoons that calls out one of our special My Life Rewards merchant offers helping people save money no matter what stage of life they may be in.

SUCCESS METRICS: By simply getting organized, syncing our vast website to a hard social media calendar rotation and then involving our members/bloggers in the social media plugs each day, our Facebook insights are off the charts for the last month:

271% increase "Likes"
46% increase in "Active Users"
149% increase in "Post Views"
214% increase in "Post Feedback"

WHAT MADE THE CAMPAIGN UNIQUE: While not flashy or sexy, we used a concept that people understand most:

Time.

We sat down and worked out a six month schedule so that like clockwork, our social media post go out each day (in the morning) and highlight content following the defined "Our Life Calendar." Monday is High School. Tuesday is College. And so on through a 10 day cycle.

Every life stage gets equal coverage this way and we now allow a chance for our super star bloggers to get some extra attention. By simply getting organized and putting our mission into a calendar, "Our Life Calendar" social media effort is proving out wonders for StageofLife.com.

My Interview on BlogTalkRadio.com

2011-05-01T20:54:00.004-04:00

This Saturday, StageofLife.com was featured in a 30-minute interview with the co-hosts of Symphony of Peace, a global humanitarian project, Seph Dietlin and Shairon Beale.

They came across our StageofLife.com blogging project and asked if they could feature us on their Blog Talk Radio series, "Making a Splash."

The "Making a Splash" episodes support a mission to "empower you to “Make A Splash” in the world by “Making A Splash” in yours." What Seph and Shairon are doing is fantastic. They're covering a wide range of topics from the green and sustainability movement, to self empowerment, to the quickly expanding world of heart centered enterprise. I encourage everyone to check out their blog, Symphony of Peace.

We were honored to be contacted and excited that StageofLife.com was highlighted as the subject for this blog radio program.

However...in full self-analysis...after re-listening to this interview, I learned the following things about myself:

I get excited and thus I talk too fast
I am passionate about the idea behind StageofLife.com so I often go off on tangents (a lot) and need to practice simplifying my answers for future interviews

Here's the interview if you'd like to listen:

Listen to internet radio with Symphony Of Peace on Blog Talk Radio

1 (and 2) Year Anniversaries

2011-04-25T14:26:00.007-04:00

We sent out our first "company" press release today to PR Newswire.

This April, it's officially been two years since we quietly launched the beta version of StageofLife.com and a year since the site publicly went live.

While we utilize public relations on a regular basis to generate awareness for StageofLife.com writing contests, information and other content going up on the site, up to this point, we never dedicated an entire press release to just talking about...

Us.

The company.

The concept.

Frankly, we had no idea if this thing would stick. Many people originally told us that we couldn't "build a website about life."

At one point, I almost abandoned the idea.

"Go niche," they said. "Build websites where you can use SEO to drive your traffic. There's no way you'll have an effective SEO strategy when your website deals with...life!"

And guess what...

They're right about the SEO part.

So we decided to do things the hard way...manually. Instead of relying on Google, Yahoo, and Bing to bring us all of our visitors in a niche marketing manner, we "manually"...

...contact people to get involved in the project.
...invite individual, talented bloggers to write for us and promote their blogs.
...build smart partnerships with outside companies, websites, organizations and merchants who have like minded missions to make the world a better place.
...grow awareness through viral marketing techniques

All of this manual work takes a lot of time and energy, but you know what, I wouldn't trade it for the world. We create new relationships everyday and that's why it's exciting to come to work.

So here we are. It's been two years since from the quiet beta launch and a year from the public launch. We have by no means, "arrived" (far from it), but I had a gut feeling that it was about time to champion a little bit of our success and send out a release to the news wire (considering we just had our 2,000 blogger get involved in the project).

All that being said, let me finish this post by saying I'm so proud of my team.

From my wife (Rebecca), to my co-founders (Joe & Lisa), to our interns (past and present), to our editors (all 24 of them), to our Featured Writers (all 150+ of them), and to our now over 2,000 contributing blogger members - everyone has played a part in growing the Stage of Life project.

Here's the press release in case you want to read it. We're excited about where we've been, but more importantly about where we're going.

Thanks, everyone.

Eric

CEO, StageofLife.com

-------------------

Teens and Baby Boomers Blog for a Better World on StageofLife.com

YORK, Pa., April 25, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Since its launch last April, over 2,000 bloggers joined and contributed to StageofLife.com – a free, international writing project that takes submitted stories from bloggers and organizes them by stage of life.

Using a multi-generational approach, the site works with both amateur and professional bloggers/writers across the entire age spectrum, from teenagers in high school to Baby Boomers in retirement, as it aspires to build the world's largest collection of cross-generational stories.

Bloggers submit essays, bits of wisdom, links to articles, stories from their existing blogs and other insights about their lives which are coded and displayed in one of ten life milestones on StageofLife.com. The core mission of the blogger collaboration is to make the world a better place, one story at a time. Over two dozen editors (personally living in the life stages for which they edit) monitor the incoming essay submissions and lead off each life stage in the site with a From the Editor welcome message.

Homeowner editor Amy Mullis says, "Stage of Life® reminds us that even in our differences, we are all alike. We all have fears and failures, hopes and dreams, goals and accomplishments; and we all want someone to share these things with. We're all one big family–and that gives me an endless stream of cousins who have to laugh at my jokes!"

Two key benefits

The two benefits bloggers enjoy most about StageofLife.com are a) it's free to join as a contributing writer-member, and b) StageofLife.com actively encourages its writer network to include a back link to their blogs from their StageofLife.com posts and profile page.

These promotional elements for key for people as they look for credible channels in which to promote their blogs and gain more traffic. Additionally, Stage of Life® drives thousands of visitors to its site each month through its public relations, marketing and advertising channels, all of which bring traffic to the site and an opportunity for bloggers to court new readers.

Wedding Editor Elle Lamboy says, "I wanted a place to showcase my writing but was new to the whole blogging scene. Stage of Life® offered a friendly playground to not only share my writing but also learn from so many talented writers."

Featured Bloggers

If members want to get more involved, they can apply for Featured Blogger status. Stage of Life's Featured Bloggers' essays receive additional placements on the website in exchange for contributing on a more regular basis and writing across several of the life stages on the site.

On My Own Editor, Laura Parson, was a former Featured Blogger who become an Editor. Parson said of the project, "In the age of social media there are an abundance of ways to connect, but Stage of Life® stands out from the crowd because it brings together individuals in the same stage of their life. (It) gives me the opportunity to seek advice, share my struggles, and celebrate triumphs with people who understand the unique nature of my life. Additionally, it allows me to find news and information relevant to my life and needs and sends me deals that I actually want! It is a safe and positive environment that I can trust to meet my unique stage of life needs!"

Interactive community

StageofLife.com readers can comment on, share and follow their favorite posts and bloggers on the site, as each essay submitted is coded to that blogger's profile page, thus forming a public-facing life journal. This fosters an interactive community between the reading public and the blogging members, placing StageofLife.com as a central hub for people to find wisdom from others for their current life stage or gain insights on the transitions into future ones.

College Editor Michelle Pease says, "I am a firm believer that words can change the world; one person's story may be another person's life saver. It is a wonderful mission, and I fell in love."

Save money

As a final perk, StageofLife.com touts My Life Rewards® – a propriety benefit program designed to give bloggers and readers discounts and coupons to relevant national merchants as part of a secondary mission to provide "Rewards for Life's Journey®."

Over 100 national brands participate directly in the program as Stage of Life® groups discounts, coupons and savings by life stage, just as it does its blogs, thus allowing its users and readers to not only gain wisdom through story sharing but also save money throughout their entire lives.

Get involved

There are three ways to get involved in StageofLife.com:

If you're interested in sharing a story to impart wisdom from your life for others to benefit, look for the "Share Your Story" buttons throughout the site.
If you're a blogger looking for ways to get more exposure for your blog, become a StageofLife.com member, add your blog to your public profile page and start sharing essays and stories from your life.
If you're simply looking for some of the best discounts on cruises, shoes and things you need for your everyday life, check out the My Life Rewards® listing of national merchant offers and start saving today.

Stage of Life® celebrated its one year anniversary this month. Site traffic is trending to eclipse last year's visit count by over 195% and each month new bloggers are getting involved to help build the world's largest pool of cross-generational stories.

About Stage of Life®: StageofLife.com is a free, non-partisan, grassroots online community that hosts blogs, information, and resources for teens, Millennials/Gen Y, Gen X, and Baby Boomer generations. Its specialized content allows users to share and archive their life stories. StageofLife.com includes free lesson plans and writing prompts for Language Arts teachers, monthly writing contests for high school students and college students, blogging resources, a platform that helps people promote their blogs, insights into teen trends, custom news feeds for each stage of life, and My Life Rewards, an area dedicated to providing relevant coupons and discounts exclusively geared towards each stage of life.

If you'd like more information about StageofLife.com or an interview with CEO/Founder Eric Thiegs, please call (717) 244-0006, or use the Contact Us form on the website.

SOURCE StageofLife.com

http://www.stageoflife.com

Jan. - March, 2011: Quarterly Report

2011-04-22T07:20:00.006-04:00

Last week, I mailed out a letter to our freelance Editors helping us build the StageofLife.com project.

The letter was a simple thank-you for all of the work they've been doing on the site, along with a 2011 Q1 update on the growth of the company.

The Editors have been an invaluable pool of talent as we build our network of bloggers and writers who are looking for ways to promote their blogs and writing and thus start getting involved in our project by submitting essays to StageofLife.com.

Here are some of the quick facts I shared with the Editors as we came out of Q1 2011...

In 2010, we had just over 47,000 visitors...BUT...just LAST month (March), we had over 11,000 visitors in one month. It's hopefully going to be an exciting growth year for our little StageofLife.com project. Our new goal for yearly visitors is 140,000 (up from 90,000 as anticipated back in December).
Over 4,175 posts/comments/stories have been shared.
We have 875 Facebook Fans (“Likes”)
In addition to the high school and college writing contests, we launched new writing contests in several of the stages of life including wedding writing contest, married without kids writing contest, having a baby writing contest, raising a family writing contest, and grandparenting writing contest. Please tell people about these new contests. They are posted in each stage.
StageofLife.com will be mentioned in the 2012 Writer's Market publication.
One of TIME.com's bloggers mentioned us in February.
The site and some of our teen writers are going to be featured on ABC TV's “Mary Talks Money” program in late May.
Mint.com and Scholastic launched Mint Education and named StageofLife.com as one of its launch partners.
We're supporting KARK's Arkansas Teens Matter. KARK is the NBC TV affiliate in Little Rock Arkansas and they approached us to be the “written” portion of their Arkansas teen issues news series.
Our Editors work on StageofLife.com from homes in NY, NJ, FL, MD, NY, PA, MI, UT, CA, ME, SC, KY, VA, MN, AK, and IL. They represent a mix of life stages and geographic backgrounds.
Key Editorial Staff aside, over 150 bloggers have been flagged as "Featured Bloggers" for the site and in total, over 2,500 bloggers and writers have signed up to submit essays to StageofLife.com.

Our grassroots project has more zest, excitement and personality behind it because of the hard work of our Editors, Featured Bloggers and Regular Blogger Members. We look forward to reading the essays that appear on the site, whether they come from our writing contests about life or just people sharing their wisdom and thoughts.

We're excited to see how the rest of 2011 goes!

--Eric

CEO, StageofLife.com

Why Educational Leaders Should Care About Technology Platforms Like StageofLife.com

2011-03-19T21:34:00.012-04:00

I was contacted by a graduate student this week who is working on her Ph.D in Education.

She asked us if she could feature our blogging portal at StageofLife.com in a Prezi presentation that she was creating to present to her "Technology in the Classroom" class.

I said, "YES!!!!"

(Not to sound over-eager to her request, but our start-up team has known since the beginning that StageofLife.com offers immediate value to schools as a way to extend learning outside of the classroom through our student blogging platform, writing contests, student writing prompts, and exposure to some of the most talented bloggers and writers in the US who are participating in our writing project.).

So I set up time to talk with the future Ph. D. where she could interview me for her assignment. During the conversation, I shared with her the benefits for teachers to use StageofLife.com, some of our recent media mentions, e.g. Time.com blogging about us, etc. She calmly took her notes, nodded her head, and then dropped this question on me...

"Why should educational leaders care about using the technologies of StageofLife.com?"

That's a good question.

Really good.

As part of our agreement, she wanted me to provide a video blog response on one of the questions that she could incorporate into her multi-media presentation. I told her that I wanted to do the video blog response to this particular question.

For two reasons...

a) It's something that I think every home school, public school, private school, charter school, or magnet school official, leader, or parent should ask about the 21st century landscape and how to stay both educationally and technology relevant to students using a limited budget.

b) I needed a little bit of time to put my head around a concise answer to a question that takes the conversation about StageofLife.com to a much higher level. The answer to this question couldn't be nicely summed up in six talking points about the benefits of StageofLife.com. It's an issue framing a much larger context. It's really asking me...why is StageofLife.com relevant in the first place?

I thought about it for a day. Here was my response to the grad student:

For those that want to skip the video because you don't have or may be annoyed by my speaking style, face or fashion sense (BTW - that's a NEW shirt given to me by my wife...hot off the rack from Old Navy), here are some written thoughts tackling the question,

Q: "Why should education leaders care about technologies like StageofLife.com?"

A: Educational leaders should care because...

No budget to stay relevant: Unfortunately, and let's be plain here, schools don't have the resources or budgets to stay technologically relevant. Public schools, in particular, cannot keep up with the rapid speed change in technology. They also don't have the resources, systems or ability to quickly react to teens' (the Millennial generation's) appetite for employing relevant technology in the classroom.

Partnerships that philosophically align with school's mission: Because of this, schools have an opportunity to align with outside partners to deliver 21st century educational tools. When doing so, school leaders should ensure that these technology partners a) align with their philosophical education mission and b) have a minimal impact on their strapped, capped, or reduced budgets.

Let your partners pay, not your school, to stay cutting edge: So rather than building or buying technology resources that will become obsolete in a couple of years (or less), schools that work with entrepreneurial technology partners have an opportunity to keep budgets in balance AND stay cutting edge by keeping pace with technology and the marketplace by allowing their partners to keep up with the technology rat race. When you offer teachers and students resources that are fresh, relevant AND meet their education mission, the richness of the learning environment explodes. Most teens' don't consider their school "cutting edge." But that's because most schools are NOT partnering with start-ups companies or testing free, new technologies to pilot a customized education program.

Be forward thinking: For more forward thinking education leadership, StageofLife.com is one of many technology partners that schools should consider using in a more integrated fashion. On the budget side - we're free. On the mission side - our goal is to help create life-long learners by providing an open, easy and 21st century blogging portal that encourages students to write MORE outside of the classroom. This makes for the perfect opportunity for educational leaders. We will collaborate on special projects for your school or district. And there are others out there like us. And thankfully, our business isn't to sell to schools. We are not a curriculum packet company. All we want to do is give teenagers a place to write. And we'll do it whether school districts utilize us more strategically or not.

Final Words...

Once educational leaders learn that there are thousands of start-ups and partners in the technology, education and curriculum space which can be used for free (or very low cost), the options for educators and tax payers to change the way schools help kids learn without impacting the budget will expand exponentially.

That's why educational leaders should pay attention to a little website project like StageofLife.com.

Thank-you, graduate student...

I'd like to thank Mrs. Ayala, the graduate student, for asking me this question. We knew StageofLife.com helped teachers. I get emails from them. But I never really stopped to think about the larger picture. I hope school district administrators, principals, curriculum planners and other educational leaders start exploring sites like ours. There's a free bounty of resources at your fingers that will make your students brighter and your educational delivery methods more relevant.

Our doors are open.

Eric Thiegs

CEO, StageofLife.com

Email me - Eric

Educators and Parents Using StageofLife.com

2011-03-18T00:31:00.008-04:00

My interns, Michelle and Megan, update their blogs almost daily.

I'm proud of them.

Me on the other hand...well...I haven't been so good at updating my blog. The funny thing is (or the sad thing if you're me) - I'm the guy actually running a company and website that is based on blogging, promotes bloggers, and helps get people blogging (or simply writing), but ends up updating his own personal blog about once every two months.

[*heavy sigh*]

With that bit of guilt out of the way (and refreshing deep breath to center myself), I do have a real post to share about an interesting trend we've been seeing on StageofLife.com.

CEO NEWS FLASH: Teachers, parents, home schoolers and other educators of teens are starting to use our blogging site at StageofLife.com, and in fairly significant numbers.

Significant numbers?

Okay, I'm not talking about gazillions of people, but last month, we tracked over 1,000 visitors to our free lesson plan page. It's a simple one page outline that shares writing prompts and lesson plan ideas for how educators can use blogging in the classroom and in particular, how to specifically use StageofLife.com to then extend learning outside of school and get students writing more...not less (which is incredibly important in an age when mobile texting has become a form of daily communication).

To get a feel for why teachers liked using our site, I decided to ask a few who visit regularly. They all listed various benefits for why they share the site with their students, but here's the crux of their responses...

Six Benefits for Why Teachers Use the Blogging Features on StageofLife.com:

Free: It doesn't cost the teacher or the student a single penny to use the open platform
Unlimited Bandwidth: Registered users (students, teachers, anyone) can upload 1, 10, or 10,000+ essays to the site, and the user's profile page will archive every essay for future reference. Get this...a student could theoretically start blogging in high school and then continue through their entire life, with each essay from each life stage archived in their Stage of Life profile, thus creating an essay anthology of their entire life for the world to read. Now that's cool (and the students/teachers seem to think so too).
Interactive: It's a blog platform so students and teachers can comment and post on each other's essays. Plus, social share features are built into the site so that after an essay/blog is posted, the student can Digg it, Stumble it, Facebook it, etc.
Writing: It's all about the writing. StageofLife.com is not a 140 character Tweet or a three sentence Facebook update. It's an essay...a story. This means the student has to pay attention to structure, content, style, point of view, grammar, spelling, theme and more.
Customized: We're now exploring setting up customized landing pages on StageofLife.com for educators or clients.
Real World: StageofLife.com deals with real world issues, things that concern teenagers and teachers. We have writing prompts and a monthly writing contest for high school students. One of our recent teen writing contest winners' essay from StageofLife.com was featured on TIME.com.

I was inspired by this recent finding that I put together my first "Video Blog" on YouTube about the topic. I may not be the prettiest CEO, but I wanted something visual that we could eventually incorporate into the teacher resources page.

Here it is...

Our mention on TIME.com

2011-02-20T09:44:00.007-05:00

TIME.com's Business and Money blogger, Brad Tuttle, mentioned us last week with a nod to our writing contests for teens and high school students. He quoted our recent essay contest winner, Justina, and her unique take on the personification of money.

The writing contest topic from that last month asked teens about their relationship with money. How do they save? How do they spend? We had a tremendous response from the student community and the essay perspectives were VERY interesting. If you have some time, check out our writing contest summary page (teen white paper).

I don't know how TIME.com came across our little project here at Stage of Life, but it was an exciting mention.

It's another small example about how our grassroots and organic project is growing. We're excited to bring more exposure to our writers and bloggers as we provide a place for everyone from teens to Baby Boomers to share their voice on real world topics and issues.

--Eric

2010 Summary and New Editor Positions

2011-01-16T15:49:00.010-05:00

A few months ago, we started a pilot program of taking a handful of our most active featured writers and bloggers working on the StageofLife.com project, and asked them if they would be interested in taking on an "Editor" role for their life stage within the site.

Amazingly, we had 23 bloggers step up to the challenge, and I'm here to report today that the Editor pilot program is an official success. Outside of submitting a featured piece once every week or two like clockwork for the last several months, they are posting comments, helping find new writing talent for the project and creating a personal, welcoming atmosphere on StageofLife.com that I have yet to experience on any other website out there. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the Founder of the StageofLife.com project.

I consider myself lucky...

We have a wonderful staff of people working on StageofLife.com
We have a dedicated crew of Editors
We have a unique mix of bloggers and personalities submitting stories and materials to the project every day
We have an ever increasing base of traffic coming to the site (see 2010 numbers at the end of this blog)

Because of all of the writers, bloggers and regular folks now getting involved in our project (from across the world), StageofLife.com is realizing its mission of making the world a better place, one story at a time. Our goal to create the world's largest, collective pool of cross-generational stories is fully underway and while it'll be a long road ahead, I'm encouraged by the writer support, flow of submissions and input from everyone involved...whether it's from a new Featured Blogger/Writer that our intern discovered or new sponsors (like Mint.com and KodakGallery.com).

Speaking of our intern, Megan Coyler, we've opened up the door to give her more responsibility recently in the area of blogger outreach for the project.

While the core foundation of StageofLife.com allows anyone to upload a story or essay, regardless of their writing ability, we've tasked Megan to proactively look for the best-of-the-best bloggers that write for our about particular stage of life themes, like going to college, having a baby, raising a family, retirement, etc.

As you can imagine, this process is daunting. She's reviewing and following countless blogs right now, and based on the talent level of the bloggers, she's personally inviting some of them to get involved in the StageofLife.com project and become featured writers.

Don't envy Megan for this task.

She spends HOURS each week looking at hundreds of blogs. Only a small fraction of those she reads get the personal invitation to promote their blogs on StageofLife.com by getting involved as a Featured Writer with the project.

Many don't respond to her. Some are skeptical of what she's asking. But thankfully, there others who take a moment look into StageofLife.com, see what's going on, and get involved as an opportunity to become a larger part of the project, promote their blog or writing and add their voice/personality to the mission.

Thanks for our personalities writing for the project...

StageofLife.com 2010 Summary:

24 Editors writing and monitoring
150+ Featured Writers promoting their blogs, writing, stories, and adding fresh new essays on StageofLife.com
1800+ Regular Blogger Members entering the monthly writing contests, sharing stories, or gaving advice on StageofLife.com
47,700+ Visitors/Readers came to StageofLife.com
147,200+ Total Page Views

StageofLife.com 2011 Goals:

Based on current trends, we will be poised to welcome 100,000 - 200,000 visitors to StageofLife.com by Dec. 31, 2011.

Editor Background:

Here's the background we supplied to the Featured Writers who ended up becoming Editors for StageofLife.com. I felt sharing this may help frame even more about what we're trying to do with the blogging project...

----------------

EDITOR INVITE LETTER

Stage of Life's Mission

To make the world a better place, one story at a time. We do this by encouraging current members and new writers to engaged the site while at the same time providing resources, information and discounts to create a total website experience that gives, "Rewards for Life's Journey."

Stage of Life Editors

Stage is Life creating freelance editor position(s) for each of the ten stages of life. Editors will serve as the active "personality"/host for their home stage. They will have two core tasks (see below) and will be guided by a master editorial calendar that will provide general ideas, themes, etc. from which to work.

Growing

In 2009, in the beta launch of the project, StageofLife.com had just over 18,000 visitors. By the end of 2010, it had close to 50,000 visitors. Goals for 2011 point toward 200,000 visitors. Our goal for 2012 is 500,000 visitors. As a part of that plan, we are ready to engage more Featured Writers and talented editors as part of our growth mission.

First Impressions

The editors of each stage will produce the "above the fold" content for each life stage. This is the "piece" that is first seen and first read. It sets the "stage" for that particular stage of life. It will be the first impression for all national and international readers viewing that stage homepage. It will set "the tone" as the piece will be our "first impression."

Expectations – Your Welcome “Piece”

Because the tone and first impression for each stage will be set by the stage editor(s) via their weekly "piece," Stage of Life expects that the editor...

Produce content that is grammatically and stylistically strong
Discuss topics that are timely and relevant
Write with a voice that has an original point of view
And manage the flow of material to meet weekly/bi-weekly deadlines.

As a part of this, we ask that the editor role frame the formal "piece" without political, religious or other agendas. That is not to say...you can't present points of view in your piece, but if you do, both sides of an argument should be represented fairly. This is a big task, we know.

As you've seen through the StageofLife.com project, we welcome viewpoints from all walks of life. For instance, we have Christian bloggers writing for us. But we also have have secular bloggers. We have straight, gay, black, white, right-wing, and left-wing bloggers writing for us.

But that's what Stage of Life is...a melting pot to spur ideas, engage debate, and exposure new ideas and new points of view through the sharing of cross-generational stories and essays.

To keep with that mission, we want our editors to maintain a neutral stance in the presentation of their formal "piece." That doesn't mean you can't blog or add your own viewpoint to the site as a regular contributor or as your formal role as a "Featured Blogger", but for your weekly "editor piece," we want our editors to provide valuable content, even addressing controversial subjects, but doing so from a neutral/moderator style.

-------------

To everyone getting involved with StageofLife.com, we thank-you!

Eric

How Do I Promote My Blog?

2010-11-27T08:34:00.010-05:00

Some of us write for ourselves. We keep bedside journals and travel notebooks out of a desire to have a safe and private place to chronicle our lives - a place for complete self reflection and memory storage. I have friends who journal privately under a mantra of,

"I will never lose this memory...for good or bad...for there are lessons here I should not forget."

While establishing a physical place to keep these memories, the act of journaling or memoir writing also allows the author to make sense of the world around them. That process of putting pen to paper and unleashing thoughts and experiences is, of itself, a sort of stress reliever. To relate it to today's tech-heavy world, journaling is an emotional reboot. A wellness recharge.

However, for the last ten years or so, more and more people have started moving their private act of journaling into the public act of blogging. They have replaced their diaries with Blogger and ditched scrapbooks for WordPress.

Why?

I talked to a few of our bloggers that write for us at StageofLife.com and they had this to say:

"While writing in my journal 12 years ago was therapeutic for myself, I had a realization that my words and experiences could help others, so I started a blog so my writing would be out in the public and could potentially help someone going
through a similar experience."

"I am, first and foremost, at the heart of things, a mother. I am also a writer. I used to keep a diary but as I started talking with friends, neighbors and even acquaintances about similar and shared story lines in our lives, I found a desire to take some (not all) of my journaling and move it online for easier sharing with others."

Knowing there has been a decade+ long trend of writers transitioning from bedside journals to a public-facing blogs, and then a sub-set of those writers who want to actively promote their blogs to find readers...the next question becomes...

What Sites Will Help Me Promote My Blog?

For those of you that don't know, one of StageofLife.com's core missions to is provide writers and bloggers a free way to promote their blogs or writing on a national stage...to give them a wider, more varied audience, and additional exposure they may not receive otherwise.

We established our blogging platform knowing that more and more writers and bloggers were looking for a way to share their knowledge, love, wisdom, and experiences with the world. It is out of this that our mission statement was born,

"Changing the world, one story at a time."

To achieve this mission, we simply provide the resource, tools, and location for writers looking for more exposure for their blogs (or writing). Here are ten ways that StageofLife.com can help promote your blog or get you more exposure for your memoir-style writing:

Free: Submitting essays to Stage of Life is always free. Bloggers must register before promoting their blog or essays on the site, but it's always free. Beware of sites that require a fee or want you to pay to post your essays or material.
Back Link: All of our writers may include a link back to their blog or personal website in their public-facing StageofLife.com profile page.
Exposure: Based on current traffic levels, in 2011, the site is expected to welcome over 100,000 visitors.
National Press and Marketing: Stage of Life submits a monthly press release via PR Newswire. Our press mentions have run on Forbes.com, CNBC.com, FoxBusiness.com and dozens of other media outlets. StageofLife.com also uses its Facebook and Twitter page to promote and tout its blogger posts, esp. on seasonal and timely topics.
Writing Contests: Stage of Life runs writing contests in three of the ten life stages. The writing contests for high school students, college students and parents will be expanded to include all ten life stages in 2011. These contests are backed by a national brand sponsor and the winners are invited to become Featured Writers on StageofLife.com
Featured Blogger Status: For bloggers who feel personally aligned with our mission of making the world a better place, one story at a time...we can provide greater exposure by making them a part of our core writing team. We hand select these writers based on writing samples they submit and move them to "Featured Writer" or "Featured Blogger" status on the website. These bloggers receive additional placements for their essays, including a spot on the Stage of Life home page, and a monthly email from StageofLife.com CEO, Eric Thiegs, on the growth and status of the website.
Diversity: StageofLife.com works with bloggers and writers from all walks of life and all religious and political backgrounds. Take a look through the collection of essays and blogs on the site. You'll see a diverse range of voices and people involved in our project. The graphic design of the site using our original artwork in each of the mastheads for the ten life stages showcases our commitment to ethnic diversity as well. While many sites narrow in on a particular life-style niche, our hope is that our anti-niche approach offers a wider variety of material and more opportunity for unique view points to be heard.
Life Stage Growth: Our site is designed so its users, readers, writers and bloggers can quite literally grow throughout their lives together...along with the development of site itself. The exciting thing for bloggers looking for more exposure is that their blog posting on Stage of Life will be seen by teenagers, moms, home owners, baby boomers, singles, and everyone in between. It's a chance for writers to share their story with people who may need their advice now...or in the future. We have yet to see another blogger platform like this in the marketplace.
Free Lesson Plans: StageofLife.com is working within the educational community to offer up free lesson plans for Secondary Language Arts teachers to help get their students writing more outside of the classroom through the use of blogging. This collaboration with teachers and blogging provides a fresh set of eyes for the Stage of Life writers and bloggers contributing to the site.
Collection: Like a journal or diary, Stage of Life will archive each and every essay you submit so that readers who like your writing style from reading one of your blog postings or essays can find others that you've posted on Stage of Life. During the submission process, Stage of Life will also ask each blogger/writer to select a category in which his or her essay could do the most good, e.g. ethical dilemmas, relationships, money, family, and more. The archives of your essays and blogs can be found on the Stage of Life profile page for each writer and in the story archives for each stage of life on the site.

We know it's hard for bloggers to find legitimate, trusted sources and websites to help them get more exposure for their writing. We know it's hard for writers who want to find ways to promote their writing. We again talked to some of our bloggers and here's what one of our Featured Writers had this to say about why he uses Stage of Life to promote his writing,

"You need to find the right websites to help you promote your blog. They need to have a good image and real traffic to give your writing exposure. They need to be a good fit for your message, and for me, a place with a positive energy. I find all of these requirements are met by StageofLife.com, which is why I use them to promote my blog and share my essays with the world."

We started Stage of Life as a way to help bloggers reach more people. Since it's beta launch, the website has seen tens of thousands of visitors from all 50 states and over 146 countries / territories. And since StageofLife.com is not controlled by venture capital funds, outside controlling interests, or a large corporation, our writers and bloggers are on the ground floor of an idea that we hope will organically grow in a grassroots manner...with that homegrown feel.

Our writers are the true face and voice of what we're doing at Stage of Life...a blog hub that will give words of wisdom and encouragement for everyone for years to come.

My door is always open for writers and bloggers who want to add their voice to our project. Don't hesitate to contact me and please feel free to share this invitation with friends or family who may be blogging or writing and looking for more exposure.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone!

Eric

President and CEO, co-Founder

StageofLife.com

P.s. I personal responds to bloggers who are interested in getting involved with the project. My hope is that Stage of Life becomes a key promotional tool for its writers and bloggers.

Blog gets newspaper exposure

2010-09-21T20:21:00.008-04:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog for StageofLife.com about my observations surrounding the trend of parents texting and using their phones around their children. The story I shared, while extreme, is unfortunately not uncommon.

I took the blog and streamlined it for the York Daily Record, the regional newspaper here in York, PA, the town where our company headquarters is located. The paper ran the revised version as a featured editorial in the Sunday paper.

Since writing the original blog, I have not sent a single text message while in the presence of my two daughters...and I must admit that it's been a freeing experience. Running a start-up company makes my day and evenings extremely busy, and I vow that my daughters will not grow up with a distracted father...memories filled with visions of him on his phone.

I am not that man, and it starts with putting my phone down when my girls are in the room.

Below is the blog and editorial:

--Eric

Lesson Plans Help Teach Blogging Teenagers...Getting Them Writing More, Not Less

2010-08-14T09:54:00.014-04:00

We have a core mission at StageofLife.com - to provide a place for students to write and share their unique voice with the world.

This mission plays out through our national-reach environment in which students (high school and college) have the opportunity to express their thoughts and observations about life through writing and blogging, all done in a format that encourages them to expand ideas versus constrict them.

Consider this...

We live in a world where many high school and college students update friends and family on important life matters via four sentence snippets (if you're lucky to get that much information from the poster) on Facebook.
We live in a world where young people use Twitter to share moment-by-moment updates on their lives in 140 characters or less.
We live in a world in which texting has become a legitimate form of communication. Did you know that 42% of teens can push key questions, thoughts and life updates in a hyper-abbreviated format using text-speak in 50 characters or less...blindfolded.

TEXT: "J broke up w/ me 2day."

REPLY: "r u OK?"

I call out these constricted writing environments not to demonize them. Far from it. I am a user of all three of the afore mentioned technology tools (heck...I'll even ask you to become a friend of StageofLife.com on Facebook if you bump into me at a ballgame or a birthday party).

The point I'm making is a larger one...

Gone are the days when pen and paper were used to write heart felt letters to friends and family. Gone are the days when nearly every teenager kept a journal to write and chronicle their thoughts and feelings...digging into the marrow of life (this being a sad trend for little brothers across the nation who previously relished grabbing their older sisters' diaries and either reading it for the homegrown Judy Bloom thrill, or more likely, running around the house torturing big sis with the fact he's simply holding it in his hand).

However, while older generations can romanticize past writing tools and sneer while pointing fingers at the new, there are technology alternatives founded on writing that have evolved to replace Pen Pal Letters and Secret Diaries.

That alternative is...blogging.

Blogging is the key part of StageofLife.com. Any person can share their stories, questions and observations about life using our simple "Share a Story Now" feature on the site. Unfortunately, blogging is not a concept with which most students are familiar.

Savvy young writers are in tune with the art of blogging, but the vast majority of teenagers are stuck in Facebook land.

To combat the awareness issue, we've developed a series of free lesson plans for English and Creative Writing teachers. The lesson plans provide writing prompts and simple writing assignments incorporated with the StageofLife.com blogging platform, giving students a place where they can unleash their voice and allowing teachers a free and simple technology tool that will get their students writing more...not less.

This concept seemed to be something noteworthy for our press release announcing the writing lesson plans ran on Forbes.com, CNBC.com, FoxBusiness.com, SocialTimes.com and other media outlets.

Our hope is that maybe we can provide a tool that's missing in the writing world.

Yes, use Facebook.

Yes, send a Tweet.

Yes, text a friend.

But when you have something to say that can't be expressed in four sentences or less, StageofLife.com is the place that both welcomes and provides the opportunity for high school students and college students to...fully...write.

More again soon,

Eric

P.s. If you know of a student that loves to write, ask him or her to check out our writing contest for high school students and college students. That student writing contest is a great place to start with blogging (and it comes with real prizes too).

Creating an authentic website experience for your idea

2010-04-07T16:19:00.018-04:00

We're growing up.

Stage of Life celebrated it's 1st birthday this week. We survived our start-up phase in one of the worst recessions since the early 1980's and we're doing it in an authentic, grassroots manner.

Technically, the site will now be officially moving out of its "beta" launch phase and into a full "go mode" to include a variety of strategic endeavors, but setting that aside for a moment, here's the crux and the heart of my post today...

I am honored to be a part of this "idea."

I could call Stage of Life a lot things:

A website
A company
A job
A way to promote your blog
A place to share stories
A merchant partnership portal
A member benefit site
A place to save money with savings and coupons
A national, student writing contest for high school and college students
A joy
A pain
A 70 hour work week
A "?" when people ask me what I do

But I call it an "idea."

I call it this because when my co-founder, Joe, and I decided to launch Stage of Life, we courted the notion of taking the concept and business plan to angel investors, VC firms, and the like, but instead decided against it for one very big reason...

We wanted to keep complete control over this "idea" and make sure it was delivered with authenticity.

What do I mean by this?

Well, while I want to run a profitable company, what I also want to ensure is that when visitors land on our site for the first time, they feel our...heart, not a flashing ad at the top of the page. I want them to get a sense that this is different. That's it's something larger - an authentic "idea" versus a corporate bottom line.

The authenticity for us comes from the writers and bloggers that are adding their voices, stories, and questions to the site. It's a living, breathing, organic collection of individuals that are pulled together not because they all fit into one particular niche like mommies or Red Sox fans, but because they all possess a common interest to share their life's wisdom, concerns and joys with the rest of us...an opportunity to transcend the niche world of say the mommy blogger and interact across boundaries, niches and well...stages of life.

The stories you'll read on Stage of Life are sometimes funny. And sometimes sad. And sometimes heavy. But it's always real. Authentic.

I had one friend tell me that they felt "overwhelmed" by Stage of Life. That the idea and content was too much for them. But interestingly, what we've found from the last year during our beta launch was the opposite for most people. Out of the 23,000+ visitors and 109,000+ page views, the average amount of time spent on the site was 4:02.

4:02.

This is an exciting number for us (and our advertising sponsors none the less), because when you have tens of thousands of people spending over four minutes on your site on average, engaging your brand, your partner brands, and exploring your idea and content in a deeper manner, we got a little validation that our concept, "our idea," is working.

If I had to pick one attribute that's helping win hearts and minds with viewers as they explore this Stage of Life "idea" is that we've established a unique tone to the site.

Tone?

Most of us think of "tone" as a note of music or the style an author or writer uses in their narrative.

I think creating a website should be approached in the same manner. What is the "tone" this website will resonate? What is the underlying message or feeling it gives the viewer? These are first impression-type attributes to which we purposefully paid a lot of attention during development.

For instance...

We want our users and viewers to feel "at home" and "welcome" on the site. Because of this, we've laid out the site as a suicide mission NOT to make money it seems, e.g. no advertising banners at the top of the page like many other sites. We're losing money on this purposeful oversight to our layout, but we're establishing "tone."
We contracted with an artist to create original artwork versus using stock photography. This drives our brand and creates an “organic”/non-corporate feel. Again...very important for establishing our grassroots vibe.
Across the ten stage of life headers, the artwork was designed to include a variety of races (White, Black, Asian and Hispanic). For instance, start with the Wedding stage and you'll see a black couple getting married. Move into the Married Without Kids stage and you'll find a Hispanic couple sitting on the park bench. Take it two steps further and in the Having a Baby stage you'll see a white couple getting the nursery ready while in the Raising a Family stage it's an Asian family at the beach (and in a little bit of trouble thanks to Mr. Carb). This selection of subjects wasn't haphazard. We wanted it all to be a hugely visual part of our “all walks of life are welcome here” tone.
The design and colors of the site was purposely created to set the following tones: Positive, upbeat, fresh, original, organic, inclusive, community-focused, real and...authentic.

This tone around "authenticity" is a big part of our "idea."

We felt very strongly that the grassroots concept of Stage of Life would take hold much more intuitively with users if they knew and felt that the experience was authentic and meant something more than being tied to some corporate P&L statement. We approached our site as an "idea." Ideas are tied to truth. And nothing is more authentic than truth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hippie who believes that profits should be ignored.

After all, we need to generate income in order to keep the site going, help promote our bloggers and expose our merchant brand partners to new audiences.

But it's doing all of that in the balance of maintaining this "idea" of ours so that at the end of the day, the experience our users come away with from visiting Stage of Life is that they witnessed or participated in a living and breathing grassroots "idea"...one that is real, one that is authentic, and one that is true.

Writing...the American Experiment

2010-03-12T00:13:00.006-05:00

I received a letter from a reader on Stage of Life the other day that made me realize what we're doing with this project is more worthwhile than I had imagined.

The writer explained in her note that she felt our mission of helping people share stories and wisdom across various stages of life was "starting to touch lives at a deeper level than using the platform for simple or mere entertainment (like many blog or writing sites)."

I was honored to receive this comment as we work every day with writers, bloggers, and regular people who have a burning desire to share a piece of their hearts with the world. A big part of that is coaching student writers to use the site to find their voice and provide a soapbox for their budding world views.

We do follow a few key rules. For instance, our editors don't allow the hard use of profanity, purposefully hurtful comments, or anything that might be deemed R-rated. We want Stage of Life to be a safe and positive national venue for people to share their ideas, ask their questions AND most importantly...get feedback from a wide range of readers.

And speaking of the readers, we are working to build a community that is as diverse as the life stages we're working to support. For instance, we think it's important for our site to share the viewpoints of people with a strong Christian faith while at the same time keeping the concept open for others, e.g. a new young Jewish writer that joined the featured blogging team last month.

This mix of viewpoints; however, can cause problems too.

The idealism of what we're trying to do is build that "melting pot" of wisdom across religion, politics, stage of life, etc.. This plays directly to our anti-niche mission, i.e. the site isn't geared towards conservative Jewish teens or liberal atheists homeowners or centrist Christian baby boomers or any other mix of political/religious/life stage combinations.

Instead, we're building an idea in which there are a variety of viewpoints and feedback from a variety of people.

We want all of our users, members, readers, bloggers, and writers to share their world views freely...without fear of editing or censorship from us. And as long as the core rules are being followed (no foul language, no direct/hurtful libel, no R-rated material), we want to encourage and keep all viewpoints flowing on the site.

Because of the diverse range of readers we now have using the site, we are bound to offend, again, because we are an anti-niche venue and our audience is not a homogeneous bunch, but rather a colorful variety.

We have a conservative, Christian writer.
We have a single gay writer.
We have a Jewish teen writer.
We have an agnostic homeowner writer.

All of these people, and hundreds more, are participating in the social phenomenon that is "Stage of Life." We started this company and the concept as a true American experiment...to build a bridge for the public to find a mix of people, a mix of viewpoints, and a mix of exposure to things that can be heart-felt, joyful, useful, funny, or even upsetting.

We love our writers and we welcome new viewpoints everyday.

Eric

P.s. We also designed the site to of course help our members save money through the merchant discounts and coupons.

2010 Goal Setting - Clearing the Path

2010-01-01T07:23:00.007-05:00

Every New Year's Day morning (for the last 15 years), my wife and I sit down to talk about our goals for the coming year.

No matter where we lived, from Minneapolis to Philadelphia to York County, PA, we pick up our coats and run out the door, driving our Saturn to a favorite local diner for a hearty breakfast and an even heartier conversation as we literally and figuratively roll up our sleeves to dig into our omelets and dig even deeper into the dreams and aspirations of a new year.

Our yearly Goal Setting process is not unlike creating New Year's Resolutions...but it's much more than that.

Sure, we talk about the extra few pounds we want to loose or the pesky bad habit we've been meaning to kick (mine usually revolves around pledging to put the dishes in the dishwasher after a meal instead of in the sink...and honey...I promise I'll be better about that in 2010).

But our approach to goal setting transcends the typical New Year's Resolution list...

We talk about goals for our personal lives.
We talk about goals for our family and children.
We talk about goals for our marriage.
We talk about goals around travel and home improvements.
We talk about goals for our careers, our investments, our health care, our business, and the other pieces of our financial picture that keep a roof over our heads.
We talk about goals involving our loved ones - the friends and family in our lives, without whom we would have a much shallower life.
We talk about goals for our larger place in the world, via our involvement in the community or cause-based initiatives.
We talk about where we are spiritually.

We talk about a lot of stuff.

And it's not a hurried process that we hastily push through to "get it done" and then forget about it till next year...

"Okay, we did that, now let's jump in the car, hit the road, and run those errands we have to do!"

Run. Run. Run. Too many of us are running...but where? Becky and I take the opposite approach. We literally stop our lives for a few hours every year to sincerely look back at the year before and discuss the year ahead.

And we love doing it.

We look forward to this goal setting session, in many ways, with just as much anticipation as Christmas morning or watching the Macy's Day Parade the day after Thanksgiving. It's has become a tradition in the Thiegs household.

In fact, this tradition manifests itself in a one page Goal Overview (see last page) that we hang on our frig all year long. For many people, a New Year's Resolution List becomes a nagging, dreaded reminder of things you "should" do. In contrast, our Goal Setting Overview contains only things we "want" to do.

We want to see our goal list.

When we stare eye-to-eye with those goals every day as we open and close our refrigerator, it gives us a feeling of direction, excitement and passion...because we're looking at something that inspires us to move our lives in a particular direction...directions personally selected by us.

On this note, Becky and I went out for a New Year's Eve dinner last night and when we came home, our babysitter, Sara, said to me,

"Mr. Thiegs, I noticed your goal sheet on the refrigerator when I was cleaning up dinner. Wow...that is just...awesome. I want to do that with my family...when I have a family!"

I then thought again about why we do it.

It's not to impress anyone (although we're happy that it inspired Sara), but rather it's the simple notion that "seeing the path" clearly under your feet makes walking the path that much easier. Our yearly Goal Setting session is our chance to "view and clear the path" before we start walking.

Like I said, we stop our lives for a few hours to plan the trip we call "life" for the next year. We can't foresee every road block or illness or detour, but we at least know where we're going once it's time to get back on the path after being sidetracked.

Life is short. And hopefully not too short, but since I don't have a guarantee on when my path will end, I want to spend as much time loving, living, working and traveling the roads that matter most to me and my family...and our yearly Goal Setting is the map (or should I say GPS), that allows that to happen.

We now have two daughters so the days of driving down to the local restaurant for a hearty breakfast while we discuss our yearly Goal Setting session has been replaced by coffee and eggs at our own kitchen table (as our girls buzz about the house).

Well...I've been up since 6am with Story, my 7 month old daughter, and I now I hear my wife and five year old moving around downstairs. It's New Year's morning. I've already got the coffee brewing and I can't wait to kick off our Goal Setting conversation for the new year.

I wish you a Happy New Year - may your life goals be realized in 2010,

Eric Thiegs

P.s. If you're interested in how we approach our goal sessions, we created a Goal Setting Worksheet as part of our Stage of Life site.

You can print out the PDF here.

This worksheet may give you ideas on new opportunities for your life in 2010. And like Becky and I, we encourage people to complete the worksheet with a spouse, a family member or friend. You'll be surprised at the answers you'll reveal to each other. Or...do it alone as you explore personal goals.

Again, we wish you a wonderful life in the coming year and you are welcome to post your thoughts on goal setting on www.stageoflife.com

Yes, we are the anti-niche site

2009-10-14T22:48:00.005-04:00

Spring Hill College Assistant Professor Invites Stage of Life Founders to Give Blogging Webinar

Last week, Joe (my co-founder) and I were invited by Spring Hill College professor Michael Piafsky (Asst. Professor of English/Writing) to conduct a webinar for his class about the challenges of running a blogging site, launching a start-up company, and other aspects of the Stage of Life blogging/writing/company mission.

The 90-minute session was held live via an interactive web demo through which the entire college class was able to view and participate in the discussion.

We received a very nice thank-you note from Prof. Piafsky after the interview and the next day, as I was doing some introspective thinking about the session, I started to think about how I answered a few of the questions.

In particular, there were a couple inquires during which I found myself standing atop my proverbial soapbox, spouting my passionate ideas for how and why and what we were "all about" verses maybe giving some more tactical and practical advice about things like SEO or even urgent lapel grabbing pleas of warning while shouting, "For the love of God, man, stay away from launching a company unless you're ready to question your sanity at least once a week!!"

Let me just say I didn't do that (although I thought about it), but during the interview, I was not shy about sharing our challenges. For instance, one student asked...

"Isn't hard to build a site around 'life'? Wouldn't it have been easier to focus in on a specific stage of life or one core audience?"

Ahhhh...that is the quintessential marketing and branding question for us.

The direct answer to this question is of course, "yes and yes" but it was my response to this particular question that stood out to me that next day as I was thinking back to the webinar. It was this question that I politely asked the class if they wouldn't mind a 10 minute lecture from my soapbox as I geared up to answer the young lady's inquiry.

Several students laughed and I got the "go ahead" from Prof. Piafsky.

This wasn't the first time that this idea about "wouldn't it have been easier to go niche" was asked of or recommended to me. As I paused two seconds to gather my thoughts, this is what I essentially said...

1. Yes, we're the anti-niche site.

But why is niche nice in the first place? Well, for 99.9% of companies, it's marketing 101. There are obvious reasons to focus your website on a niche audience, e.g. increasing SEO, locking in on your core customer, leveraging your key knowledge assets, etc. Those are all incredibly important to successfully launch and run an online company but here is the thought that surfaced every time I thought about launching Stage of Life...

Everyone goes niche. Everyone.

Because of that fact, the competition for niche demographic segments across the Internet is insanely dense, whether it's websites catering to the teen market or resource portals drooling over the baby boomers.

It goes without saying that there are countless websites, organizations, non-profits, for-profits and everyone else in-between that has a solution, advice, blog, website, information or coupon tailored to one niche - some with deep marketing budgets. And all of those niche sites are all out on the web fighting for the same audience. So what does that produce? A lot of noise. A lot of confusion. A lot of uncertainty.

So for about a year, at least once a week, Joe and I would sit up late on the phone like two teenagers (him from his attic office in Minneapolis, MN and me from my attic office in Dallastown, PA) and we'd talk into the night, asking each other questions like...

"Do we join a fight for market share on a limited audience segment...or do we create a new space in which to engage the conversation?"

We choose the latter.

We chose to ignore our Marketing 101 text books from college, throw out the idea of "niche segment" and instead build something that does not have a direct competitor...something that operates outside of the "normal niche construct."

As two guys in their mid-30's who have been around enough to see a few things but young enough to still be aggressive and take chances, we know that our "stage of life" concept may be its Achilles heal but it may also just be the thing that helps us grow in an infinite amount of directions with an infinite amount of partners and users along the way.

2. Why Limit Our Users?

Taking the anti-niche site idea a step further, we wanted to build something that was going to last and keep its relevance with a user for a long time. In fact, our brand line, "Rewards for Life's Journey," was born out of this key concept.

Rather than building a site that might be relevant to someone for less than a year (wedding/pregnancy) or maybe a few years (high school/college), we envisioned a resource that people could quite literally "grow old with." Let me say that again, we want people to grow old with our site...and we built it in a way that they can.

We want to see people sharing stories and wisdom throughout their lives and saving money while they're at it too, throughout their entire lives by tapping into the discounts and coupons we're lining up with our merchant partners.

If we can help one person with this website, and I don't care if it's saving $400 on a cruise or realizing they need to beef up their 401K contributions or maybe considering a doula for their birth, I can guarantee that if the site helps them once, they will come back and participate again during the same stage of life or when they are in a new stage. This becomes even more compelling of a concept for our younger users who, again, if they find the site helpful in some regard at least once, will return when they are living on their own, or thinking about getting married, or starting a family or buying a home, etc.

We are currently structuring Stage of Life to accommodate this unique position within the market through new content, resources, and discounts being added each month across all of the stages. There will always be something new on the site, and if not from us, then from the users themselves who are sharing their life stories and wisdom...all of which adds to the collective voice of the site.

3. Go Viral.

Using the concept of relevance and helpfulness, Joe and I realized early that the Stage of Life idea has an opportunity to spread organically as many different people recommend Stage of Life to family and friends who are living in the same or different stages of life.

If we had launched with a niche site concept or even broken the stage of life idea down into smaller sites - the viral opportunity would become severely limited, and in a world of Facebook posts and Tweet-happy micro-blogs (see my notes later on this topic), having something that's unique and relevant across multiple generations and genders offers up a big opportunity.

For instance, a 59-year-old business woman who is nearing retirement may come across Stage of Life and realize that she wants to share it with her oldest daughter that's engaged to be married, her middle son that's about to buy a home, and her youngest child who is about to have a baby, not to mention her husband who's already started a journal about being a grandparent and is looking for an outlet to share his stories.

Our concept is ready to welcome that entire family into its fold and engage them across the site.

4. Encourage Curiosity.

Want to hear something really interesting? We are finding an amazingly high percentage of users that have identified themselves in one particular stage of life actually visiting the other stages with more frequency than their own "home" stage.

For instance, we have our high school users looking heavily at the College, Wedding and Having a Baby stages. Conversely, our baby boomers in the Grandparent and Empty Nest/Retirement stages are reading the Raising a Family, Married Without Kids, and College/HS sections with a voracious appetite.

What does this tell us?

That people are curious...they want to look ahead to see what life might be like...or they want to reminisce and look back.

We're finding that people are catching on to an integral part of the intrigue with Stage of Life that is not marketed or talked openly about on the site but is ever-present in our mission, and that is the idea that this is a portal through which to glimpse a small piece of the future, or jog that long lost memory from the past. It could also be a place to find out how to relate to someone in your life that you're struggling to understand, i.e. parents of teenagers.

When you're providing connections to life through a site like Stage of Life, the user has the opportunity to truly become emotionally engaged, and it goes without saying that our little project then becomes more than just a "neat" idea. If the user is emotionally invested, we are fulfilling our mission to provide "Rewards for Life's Journey." The "rewards" come in the form of emotional fuel driven via the insights and understanding from people outside of your normal paradigm.

"Rewards" also have a different definition.

If our members are emotionally vested in the mission of the site, then Stage of Life not only becomes an on-going, go-to resource for the users but it also then becomes an amazing opportunity for our merchant partners.

Here is where our economic engine and financial sustainability comes into play.

I can guarantee that if the senior management from BlueNile.com or Ice.com or Zales were to know that we have the opportunity to put their brands in front of men between the ages of 18 and 35 who are "thinking" about asking their girlfriends to marry them (because they just happen to be in our "college" or "on my own" or "home ownership" stages but have recently started to check out the "wedding" stage via Stage of Life due to their budding desire to take that relationship to the next level...well, I imagine those folks fall over backwards and/or scramble to lock-in the category exclusive sponsorship.

At the end of the day, our site is designed to help people learn more about life while also helping both consumers and merchant explore that curiosity with each other. As one of our members asked in the Home Ownership section of our site, "Which is better - Home Depot or Lowes?" If you haven't been a home owner before, you might want some feedback on something like that. Or, this one, "Who makes the best diapers?" Well, whether it's Pampers or Huggies, we can point you toward Diapers.com and give you a coupon code for your first order too. Unlike other sites out there, our users can satisfy some of life's curiosity by looking ahead (or behind).

5. Real Content - Real Life - Multiple Users.

We're living in a world that boils down communication to a 140 character mini-life-update via Twitter. Wow. As a Gen X speech communication major from a Big 10 University (read between the lines on that), I am hoping that there is a rising need for more "meaningful" communication outside of Tweets or the random wall updates on Facebook.

On the flip side, maintaining a full-fledged personal blog (while offering much deeper insights and content), requires a lot of work and time and effort...and are you guaranteed anyone will actually read it?

We realized early in our development that Stage of Life will be a nice middle ground.

Our users are uploading personal essays between 300 and 1000 words. It's real content and it's meaty enough to give the reader meaningful advice/insights. But it's also short enough to digest over coffee while logging in at work or at home from your laptop. Plus, there's hundreds of essays about life to choose from, all uploaded by either our hand-picked writers (Featured Blogs) or by the general users themselves (Questions and Stories section).

Finally, because we are an aggegator of bloggers/writers/users sharing stories, there is a community of members and visitors that far exceeds what individual bloggers may see on their own blogs.

Wrap-Up

So that's what I said to the young lady that asked me about why we went "big" and not "niche." (aside from being a bit crazy I think).

For everyone out there - we look forward to your participation on Stage of Life. Talk to you all soon!

September Email - 10 Life Questions

2009-09-12T20:40:00.005-04:00

We sent out the September email newsletter today.

In it, we asked 10 questions about life that needed feedback.

Help Us Answer Life's Questions...

►High School: What Do You Want Your Teachers To Know?

►College: Your Roommate's Most Annoying Habit?

►On My Own: Best Pick-Up Line?

►Wedding: Best Honeymoon Destinations?

►Marriage: What Made You Fall in Love?

►Home Ownership: How To Make Your Home Cozy?

►Having a Baby: Baby Product You Can't Live Without?

►Family: Will You Vaccinate Against H1N1 Swine Flu?

►Grandparents: Cheap Fall Activities for the Grandkids?

►Empty Nest & Retirement: Dream Vacation Destination?

You can view the email here.

National Writing Contest for College and High School Students

2009-08-17T00:46:00.007-04:00

National Writing Contest for Students

With back to school upon us, Stage of Life has introduced its weekly writing contest for high school and college students. We will be providing a national venue for teens and young adults to submit an essay or blog post for consideration as the featured blog of the week.

There is a weekly theme to help focus the submissions but the overall style and approach each student takes in writing their piece is left wide open to allow freedom in how they voice their point of view on life.

Note - this is not a creative writing contest. It is a non-fiction, memoir, blogging, essay contest for high school and college students.

Rules for the Weekly Student Writing Contest are as follows:

Essay must relate to the weekly theme.
Essay must be your original work.
Essay can be no longer than 500 words.
Essay must be real, that is, non-fiction and follow the form of a diary, journal, blog, memoir, or essay. That is to say...we want real stories about real life...from you.
Once entered, essay will become a part of Stage of Life's public facing content so no foul language or inappropriate material. Those enteries will be removed.
Registration to Stage of Life is required to enter the writing contest (it's free).
Writing submission must come from a current college student or recent June 2009 graduate.

If you know of any young writers looking for a national venue for their work, please tell them about the writing contest.

We are ready to help publish their thoughts and give them a legitimate platform to share their story telling talents.

Break a leg!

Ten Websites You Should Utilize When Launching a Start-Up

2009-08-03T22:48:00.007-04:00

As a young (okay...relatively young) founder of a start-up website, StageofLife.com, I have found that there are ten essential services that every website founder or entrepreneur should become familiar with and utilize as soon as possible for the launch of their business/website.

To save future bright-faced CEO's like me some time (and money), I am proactively sharing my secret list of must-visit websites and resources that start-ups should take advantage of right away.

Why you ask? Easy...because nobody did this for me.

I really wish someone would have shared this information in a more proactive way when I was conducting my research on launching Stage of Life. But unfortunately I didn't have a mentor that did this sort of thing before me...so I slugged my way through solo.

The concept of my idea, Stage of Life, is one in which resources and information are shared freely with those visiting the site. It's under this mantra that I hope my start-up resource list helps someone take their idea and get it off the ground. One good idea combined with a little bit of funding (your own or from others) is what makes this country stronger each and every day (and no, this is not a political statement...just a declaration of support for my fellow entrepreneurs).

To those existing or soon-t0-be entrepreneurs looking to launch a website, I welcome your comments AND additions to this list below. Here's my top 10 list of invaluable services and resources for any start-up company and dream launch of your website.

I call this...

"10 Recommended Resources Every Entrepreneur Should Utilize When Launching a Website."

1) Tracking: For website tracking - use Google Analytics. It's free and the features are amazing.

2) Affiliate Revenue: For generating website revenue via affiliate links, investigate partnerships with the following: linkshare, commission junction, Google Affiliates, Ad Fish, etc. NOTE - these would be banners or offers like you see on Stage of Life but we don't get paid unless one of our members or users actually clicks through and fully shops through the link.

3) Ad Revenue: For on site ad opportunities, contact AdSense or Atlas Solutions. We have personally not put up paid ads yet due to our "beta" launch, i.e. we're still focusing on building traffic.

4) Qualify Your Site: You must qualifying your traffic via a nationally recognized platform if you plan to eventually sell professional ad space to companies like Pampers, etc. (as we hope to someday). For this effort - use Quantcast. It's the only recognized 'free' platform and gives you insights into your site that Google Analytics can't do.

5) Webmaster tools: For key and basic webmaster services, use Google Webmasters.

6) Blog: Rule number #1...you have to have a blog about your website. You have to. You might actually be reading this and you've never even visited my start-up site, Stage of Life.com. That says something about the power of the blog and how it can help drive eyes to your brand or your mission (like how we give back to charity via revenue that comes in from our merchant partnerships). For setting up a blog to write about the passions and cuts/bruises of your start-up adventure - use Blogger or Wordpress.

7) Social Share: You want to make it easy for people to find and share content from your site. For adding some social share features on the site, we use addthis.com. It's also free and let's you know which pages on your site are the most popular for being emailed or shared

8) Build an eNewsletter: When you get a viewer to your site, hopefully he'll or she'll want to stay in touch with you. How? Well...get an eNewsletter list builder added to your site and use it at least monthly. There are a bunch of great providers out there. Make sure you're comparing their core features with what you really need and the cost associated with it. We use MailChimp.com.

9) Domain Name Registration: Securing the intellectual property for your brand is a BIG task. You'll probably want to secure as many domain names to protect your core site as possible. We started by using GoDaddy.com but highly recommend BlueHost.com. It's cheaper and if you plan to use their hosting, it's down right dirt cheap.

10) Website Design: For designing your website, find a great programmer, firm, agency or whoever but make sure they treat you like a partner. This is your baby...your passion. You want the people helping you build the site to have the same level of enthusiasm behind your start-up idea as you do. Plus, I recommend you hire locally if possible so you can visit with the design/web firm in person. We got quotes from India, Minneapolis, etc..but ended up selecting Affinigent, Inc near our home. I've become a friend of the owner...and that says a lot when you get buy-in (not literally), but emotionally from the firm you've hired to bring your start-up idea to life.

Well...if you're like me...you'll be up at midnight writing in your own blog soon enough.

I hope my little list above helps point you in the right direction. This obviously doesn't touch on the top ten things you should consider when looking for a business banking relationship; or securing your intellectual property, trademarks, and legal status; or writing your business plan; or talking to investors; etc...but I'll save those thoughts for another night.

My door is open should you have questions or comments.

Eric Thiegs
CEO/Founder
Stage of Life

P.s . If you found this blog helpful but haven't seen our site, Stage of Life, please check it out and help the world become a better place by sharing some wisdom from your life.

"Rewards for Life's Journey"

I was on Fox News tonight...for Infant Massage

2009-07-16T00:10:00.007-04:00

The local Fox News station (Fox43 in Central PA) ran a piece tonight about Infant Massage and my two daughters and I were featured in the story.

This post doesn't have much to do with the business operations of my company, Stage of Life, but it has everything to do with why I dreamed up this start-up. I passionately want to build connections, bring people closer together, and help and support those that need it. After being live for just over three months, Stage of Life is starting to do that.

And this connection to helping people through the site is a similar feeling to what I've found, on a personal level, when I use infant massage to help with my baby.

When you reach out to emotionally connect with the world, it makes a positive difference. I feel our Stage of Life project is accomplishing this mission and with the help of those that have become writers and bloggers for us, we're making an impact everyday.

Finalist in 2009 Best of the Web Awards

2009-07-11T15:38:00.005-04:00

Some exciting news for our little start-up company...

StageofLife.com was selected as 1 of the 3 finalists for the 2009 Best of the Web Awards by the Central Penn Business Journal in the "Coolest Website of 2009" category.

We're going to be featured at the Internet Summit in Harrisburg, PA on July 27th.

Thanks for everyone that has been sending me ideas, tips, and contributing stories to the site. We've been honored by one of the leading business publications in Pennsylvania...and we're only three months old...thank you for all of your help and PLEASE keep your input coming!

See the below email from the Business Journal...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Colleen Jones
Date: Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 4:54 PM
Subject: Central Penn Business Journal's Best of the Web Awards Information
To: Eric Thiegs

Dear Eric:

The Central Penn Business Journal is pleased to announce that Stage of Life LLC has been selected as a finalist of the 2009 Best of the Web awards. Congratulations! Your Web site was reviewed and scored by an independent panel of judges and ranked among the top three in the Coolest Web Site category for its success as a quality, engaging Web site.

You will be honored at a luncheon as part of the Central Penn Business Journal's Internet Summit on July 27, 2009, at the Radisson Penn Harris & Convention Center in Camp Hill, PA. The summit will feature a morning symposium presented by Internet experts, along with networking opportunities and exhibitors. The morning sessions will be followed by the Best of the Web luncheon, where the winners of each category will be announced and presented with the Best of the Web Award. More information about the day’s agenda and a list of all award finalists is available at www.centralpennbusiness.com/InternetSummit.

As a finalist, we invite you to send two company representatives to the Internet Summit.

Attached to this e-mail is an Information Request Form. Please complete and return it to me by next Wednesday, July 15, as this information will be used for our event day video presentation. In addition, these details will be used to feature you in an online event supplement which will profile the winners and highlight the finalists of the Best of the Web awards. A sample press release is also attached to this e-mail for your use in announcing your award.

Once again, congratulations to you and your company on being named a 2009 Best of the Web awards finalist. We look forward to seeing you on July 27th. If you have any questions about the Internet Summit, the Best of the Web awards, the form attached, tickets or anything else, please contact me

Sincerely,

Colleen

Blogger Update to our Core Writing Team

2009-07-10T00:28:00.010-04:00

I sent out a quick update to our core blogging team today. The crux of the message was to keep them posted on new developments on the site, esp. since they are the most visible voice and face for our company/project. I have to say that I never thought I'd be working with such great talent and people...keeping them happy and "in-the-loop" is key.

Here's what I briefed them on...

1. Site update: We now post two featured bloggers and stories at one time on each home page.
NOTE: More and longer exposure for each of you posting.

2. Site update: We now post your photo next to your blog post in the blog and essay archive for all the previous posts. See an example here for Raising a Family.
NOTE: You can now visit and share your old stories any time.

3. We sent out the July email newsletter this morning. You can view it here

NOTE: We'll be getting hundreds and hundreds of fresh page hits over the next few days because of this so if you have a new story or blog to share, now would be a great time to upload that.

4. We're still working on our goal of having 100 core bloggers working with us.
NOTE: If you have friends or family that like to blog or write and might want to be involved - send them here

5. We've created banners for you to post on your blogs and sites to help promote the site.
NOTE: Go ahead and copy and save one to post on your site to promote your involvement as one of our core writers.

6. If you have any ideas, leads or other suggestions, please feel free to share. The site is growing every day. As of July 1, we're now 3 months old!

STATS

Total Page Hits since 2/1/09: 50,400+
Total Visits since 2/1/09: 6,874

7. If you do any online shopping, help us test out the deals/offers/links in the merchant area too. Hopefully we'll be able to save you some money here and there. NOTE: We've also added a Deal of the Day to the site

Thanks for everything you do.

Your insights on life are what help drive the mission of our site! Talk to you in a couple weeks - enjoy writing!

Eric

July eNewsletter - share your life story!

2009-07-09T07:36:00.004-04:00

We sent out the July eNewsletter to the Stage of Life members today. You can view it here. It's core message is a call for people to submit their life story and/or tips, advice and wisdom about their stage of life.

Deals of the Day

2009-06-23T13:42:00.006-04:00

Outside of blogger and writer out-reach (see below posts), we've also started to fine tune some of the merchant content and user benefits sections of the site.

For instance, last week, we added a "Deals of the Day" page to each of the ten stage of life sections. Right now, the pages are coded to be identical but this will change as the goal will be to customize a new, unique Deal of the Day for each stage of life.

Finding a good deal, esp. if it's a limited time offer, is something most people have a natural curiosity about so we think it'll be a beneficial feature. Our core mission is to continue to build the value-proposition for the end user of this site. Stories. Content. And now "Deals of the Day."

Building member benefits is crucial to the survival of any organization. If you don't give people something to retain their loyalty or ensure a return visit, they will either #1) forget about you or #2) shift loyalty to the next best thing. My goal is to have a full suite of member benefits available to the Stage of Life user and this start with providing a community in which they can share their stories AND receive some great deals from some of the best merchant brands in the marketplace.

What's next you ask? Ah...that would ruin the surprise!

Eric

Our Five Year Goal: To Become the Largest Collection of Life's Stories Across Every Stage of Life

2009-06-22T13:15:00.006-04:00

Our outreach to bloggers, writers, journalists, and everyday people with stage of life stories to tell is fully underway...and we are seeing results.

Blogger and partner sites are starting link to us in an effort to help our mission of becoming the web's largest pool of life stories...for every stage of life.

Obviously, this goal is a huge undertaking.

But it's what we strive to become over the course of our five year business plan.

We have not released the national PR yet to promote this effort as we want to personally vet out conversations in the viral arena first...get feedback...and find a core group of approx. 100 writers to help build content on the site before things start to get big (hopefully...let me not get ahead of ourselves of course).

But I am encouraged. Since launching the site in April 2009, we've witnessed over 40,000 page views from thousands and thousands of unique visitors and that's without a single PR message, advertisement, marketing piece OR "real" SEO work being overlayed into the site design and content.

At the end of the day, I'm excited that the central comment and feedback I am receiving from users and viewers of the site is simply, "This is a great idea."

Let's hope this "great idea" continues to attract writers, bloggers, and everyday people who are willing to share a little bit of their life in an effort to help others around them that might be experiencing the same stage as we work towards building the largest collection of life stories on the web.

Here's an example of one blogger who gave us a great plug after reviewing our site.

Please feel free to send friends and contacts my way if you think they would be willing to write 1-2/times a month for the site. We continue our mission!

Eric

June Email Newsletter - Focus on our Writers

2009-06-04T20:40:00.001-04:00

We sent out the June Email Newsletter today. We focused the content this time on our writers and some of the amazing stories and essays we've been able to feature on the site in the past month.

Bloggers - Helping Build the "Watering Hole"

2009-05-27T07:28:00.000-04:00

Stage of Life has been live for three months and we've lined up just under two dozen of our "Featured Bloggers." These essayist can be found and read on the home page for each of the 10 stages of life at any given time.

This core group of writers/bloggers are a talented bunch and range from a successful Broadway producer/writer in NYC, a starving photographer living in LA, a newspaper journalist in Philadephia, a mother of 11, a father who has a daughter with a hole in her heart, grandmothers...and many more unique individuals. This was our launch team and to them I am eternally grateful!

Now, as we prepare for our national PR launch of the site, it's time for Blogger Phase II. This is to increase our "staff" blogger team to 100 writers (10 per stage). So...I'm out looking for more writing talent this week.

The most difficult part about Stage of Life blogger/writer outreach is...
#1) finding good writers
#2) finding good writers that blog about stage of life themes
#3) finding good writers that blog about stage of life themes and will write for free for a start-up company.

Ha! Who wants my job?

But the promising news is that feedback from the writing team we've assembled to date is positive.

In fact...very positive. One or two have been skeptical at first, i.e. "Who are you and what do you REALLY want?"

"No...I don't want your money," I tell them.

Once that concern is out of the way, the doors for dialogue open. But that's the rare case. Most of the writers I've approached have been completely ready to jump in from the moment they visited Stage of Life. They saw the concept and what we're trying to do and loved it.

What are we trying to do? (I ask myself that every night).

Our goal is to bring a collaborative writing community together based around the stages of life and hopefully help the general readers at large benefit from the wisdom and stories being shared by our essay/writing/blogging "staff." This of course is the content of the project. We've also built in the merchant discounts and coupons but that is secondary to why people will establish one of their online "communities" or "watering holes" around our site.

I say "watering hole" because it is our vision to have the general public eventually see Stage of Life as a place for refreshment...nourishment. A resource that they can pop in for a moment to read the latest story from their favorite stage of life writer and maybe use a discount to save some money.

And yes, the merchant discounts are nice...but that's not enough to keep people and users coming back. The site needs to give something back that will refresh the user. The web is full of stuff that sucks time and life away from us...we want this site to be the opposite. People are looking for words of wisdom, advice, or maybe just a funny (or sad) story that is relevant to their life...their stage. That's the "water" of our site. The piece that will have people coming back and gathering again and again as it'll be something which gives them a new point of view through which to approach their day.

And that's why our mission of engaging good writers is so important. It's just finding this writing talent that makes the outreach project a unique endeavor within itself.

For instance, I've come across blogs about the stages of life of mountain goats to Japanese Anime characters, and everything in between. For every writer/blogger I personally approach via email or their blog, there were 20 before him/her in which I shook my head and moved on (note to self...skip blogs about the stages of life of Dune Elves...no joke).

But really, the best thing is that I'm meeting some great people through our writer invitations and at the end of the day, I want Stage of Life to provide a platform to give our writers exposure they maybe couldn't get access to through their own blogs.

Stage of Life has been live for three months and we've already had tens of thousands of page hits (in our Friends & Family mode too).

Our bloggers are being read. That's what we all want.

My goal to reach 100 "staff" bloggers continues.

If you know talented essayists, writers, or bloggers that want to help others by sharing their stage of life stories and moments...send them my way.

:)

College Interns

2009-05-22T16:24:00.000-04:00

We have kicked off our college intern program with four talented young students: Megan, Kendra, Laura and Brandon.

Each one will be assisting with the development of Stage of Life as we start to move out of the Friends & Family beta stage.

These young people will be playing crucial roles for us as we write new content, design new graphics, shoot new video and release our first PR for the site. Joe and I are excited to be working with these individuals during their summer off as they help get a start-up like ours off the ground! Co college interns!

Email Marketing

2009-05-15T13:35:00.000-04:00

We sent out our first member eNewsletter two days ago.

See a copy of the email here.

The newsletter featured 15 national brand discounts and highlighted our appreciation to the first members of the site. The email went to over 300 people. It's been less than 48 hours since the email was delivered but I'll post results on the first email campaign here in a week or so.

I will give kudos to our email newsletter partner, MailChimp.com. The interface works wells and the tracking components are fantastic.

Viral Marketing

2009-04-21T01:22:00.000-04:00

The Friends & Family launch is fully underway. Everyday we're getting new and exciting feedback from people registering for the site.

One of the key pieces of strategy that developed from this first week of feedback (beside the overall excitement for the merchant offers and general branding of the site) was the idea of getting viral marketing materials into the hands of our new members.

This started with one of our friends, a young woman who happens to be in college, asking if we had a flyer she could copy and post around campus. We thought...no...we don't.

So we created not just one flyer but a dozen, each tailored to how an individual, organization or company might use them to promote the stage of life benefits, resources and discounts we provide. We posted them on a page called "Spread the Word" and will be notifying new users of the site about this viral marketing resource.

Friends and Family Launch - it begins tonight with my Facebook contacts

2009-04-15T21:03:00.001-04:00

Below is the note I crafted and sent to my Facebook Friends and Family about the launch of Stage of Life.

It's said that there is power in social networking. My hope is that my personal connections can help us kick the tires on the site during the BETA stage, get some good content in place and start to fine tune particular areas or any bugs that might occur...all the while saving themselves some money and donating to our partnership charity.

I'm excited to hear what my friends and family have to say...here's what I wrote to them...

----------------------------------------

As one of my Facebook contacts, you are the first to hear our big announcement!

Becky and I have launched a new business and website called Stage of Life [www.stageoflife.com]. It's the first site tailored to help people save money in any stage of life. This is our Friends and Family launch.

And you are a very important piece of our launch. We need your help. But just in case your attention span is dying out tonight...here's the quick version:

--Go to www.stageoflife.com and register (it's free) and let me know what you think--

Okay - for those up to really help with our launch - here's the real deal...as one of our personal contacts, we need your help on FIVE things during the "soft launch" of the site to help test it out during the BETA stage:

1. REGISTER: Go to the site and register (it's free). And no - you don't have to provide sensitive, personal info to join either. :)

2. ADD CONTENT: Help us add content (the site just launched for goodness sake) so please share a story, post a question, or answer an existing question. Heck...if you have an essay or Top 10 list to share (or anything other material) and would like to see it be built into the site - please send it our way! Some of the site is not done, some is still in development and some we just need more material. Feel free to contribute anything - we will give you a byline credit on any material we publish. Send it to me

3. USE MERCHANT OFFERS: If you make a purchase at Target.com soon, please save $5 with our site. Basically, if have something to buy online, save money with us and please use one (or two) of the discounts with the promotional codes and links. We need to test the links to make sure the merchant reporting is working. NOTE - every purchase you make through the site also triggers a donation to the charity partnership we've lined up.

4. TELL OTHERS: Please tell others about the site. Send an email to a few people. Or even better, link to us from your Facebook page. Or keep it simple and plop a note about our site [www.stageoflife.com] on your Wall with a message about how your good 'ol pal Eric just launched a company to help people save money in any stage of life. Whatever you can do to help would be great. This is a "soft launch" meaning our PR campaign to announce the public launch won't be kicking in for a while.

5. FEEDBACK: Do you have ideas on how we can promote the site? Do you have contacts that might be interested in working with us? Or hey...maybe you found some broken links or have some suggestions? We want to hear them!! Send me a note.

Here are some of the cool discounts and coupons we've lined up with merchants for the site...

--Target.com ($5 off exclusive discount link)
--Disney Cruise Line (50% off kids booking)
--Precision Tune Auto Care (10% coupon)
--Papa Johns (Free Cheesesticks code)
--etc.

It turns out that www.stageoflife.com will be first website to provide information, resources and merchant discounts, coupons and sale announcements tailored to all 10 of the key life stages. Not just one or two...but a site that someone can grow with from high school to retirement.

So check it out, register (it's free), add content, use the links/discounts, post a link about us on your blog/Facebook page/website and most importantly - tell us know what you think!!!!!

We send our love...let the wild ride begin!

Eric and Becky

P.s. If you're interested in writing/blogging for the site - let us know! We're reviewing writers now. It can be a low-key as submitting an essay to the site once a month for your stage of life and your Essay/Blog will be featured on the appropriate stage home page.

P.p.s. The public launch with PR, etc. will occur in May/June. More news on that later.

Soft Launch: Friends & Family

2009-04-15T01:37:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, Wednesday, we will officially kick off our "soft launch" via our personal contacts, i.e. Friends and Family.

Quiet Launch - Merchants and Bloggers

2009-03-29T16:51:00.000-04:00

Almost two years ago, I formulated an idea for a website called Stage of Life.

After months and countless hours writing a 50-page business plan, talking with lawyers for the LLC, brainstorming and filing with our trademark attorny to protect our marks, emailing merchant partners, collaborating with our branding/creative guru and more...our site finally went live last month. The funny part, is that while I'm the "CEO" of the company, I am doing this as a labor of love while I work my day job, direct a high school musical, and find time/energy/love to be the best father and husband possible to my girls.

Since StageofLife.com went live last month, Joe (my business and investment partner/lawyer/1st cousin - what a combo, huh!), and I have kept the site in a "quiet launch" mode. We have not submitted the site or code to search engines. We have not sent out PR. We have not even told our immediate friends or social networks yet. Why?

Two reasons...

1) We are still approaching merchants to add to the "My Life Rewards" section of the site. Aside from some Q&A features built into the site, the real "glue and incentive" that will bring people and members back to StageOfLife.com will be the merchant savings, discounts, and rewards. We've had some nice successes so far - about two dozen great brands have signed on with special discounts for our users. Target.com is o n board with a $5 off discount. IZOD and Bass have provided in-store coupons. So has JCPenney Portrait Studio and Precision Tune Auto Center. More are on the way. The merchants we've been talking to love the concept of what we're doing as they see an opportunity to help people living in one of those ten key stages of life, whether it be high school or retirement.

2) While we continue to move forward with those merchant partnership efforts, we now (today in fact!) move forward with our second key piece during this "quiet launch" period - our blogger strategy and invitation.

Today, after dinner, I will officially being to reach out to independent bloggers who are writing on the key stages of life and asking for either 1) their support in promoting the site (if they find it valuable of course) and/or 2) their interest in writing for us as well.

This second option could be as simple as getting permission to re-post a key entry from their own blog on StageOfLife.com in the appropriate stage category or a commitment to submit 1 or 2 original blogs for us each month. I know each blogger conversation will be different...and I look forward to their feedback.

Our goal is to talk with the best of the best bloggers out there, on a one-to-one basis, and invite them into the project. We will be building out a section of StageofLife.com to feature key bloggers as well so hopefully some of our traffic will find their way to our writer partnerships.

Our quest to contact bloggers begins today and our on-going quest to build partnerships with merchants continues!

I am excited to work on these items as we move towards our public launch coming up soon.