What a wonderful Day! My WA-nniversary

byLabman

79.2K followers

Updated 9 years ago

Today marks the start of my fifth year here at WA..

It's 3:30 in the afternoon and I'm just now getting online. It's been a bit of a busy morning. I rose before dawn and got ready to take Gracie for a training session with my team. Today, we visited the Genesee County Park and Forest. The sky was clear with high puffy clouds, a gentle breeze which turned out to be variable from all kinds of directions. Keeping track of where the wind was coming from was a bit challenging while we were working the dogs. They need to be downwind of the subject to find as they use their nose to zero in on the subject.

Today was warming quickly and the dogs don't do well when it gets too warm so we decided to run short problems and give them a break in between each problem. Several of our dogs are having problems getting away from the handler, they are a bit clingy. So we set up some problems to excite them and allow them to find the subject while they were a distance away from the handler. These worked very well.

At one point I was back in the parking lot waiting for one of the other teams to complete their problem, and I noticed a Monarch butterfly flitting around. She landed on a milkweed then flew away and came back and landed on a separate leaf. When she finally flew off, I took a look at the milkweed plant and noticed that she had laid two fresh eggs. Well, this got me thinking that perhaps there were other eggs in the area. So I began to check some of the milkweed that surrounded the parking lot. The final total after my search was nine eggs and two newly hatched caterpillars.

And so, Monarch season begins.

When I started here at the WA, I had no idea how to start, much less complete a website. I knew nothing about marketing, I was an engineer I spent my days writing code for programmable logic controllers. I spent my days integrating other people's equipment into the elaborate assembly lines at my company built. There was never a dull moment, but I always seem to be playing catch-up to understand the interfaces. The long hours had created a walking zombie.

I tried to juggle working and learning how to create websites and how to market online for about two years. Once I learned about Internet marketing, working for someone else just didn't seem like the right way to go.

In that time, I became somewhat proficient at creating websites. I learned how WordPress works, and I think my engineering expertise helped somewhat in learning the ins and outs of how to program websites. Marketing was another story, copyrighting was yet another skill that I needed to master.

Kyle and Jay have been very instrumental in getting me to the point I'm at now. I believe I've developed some marketable skills as well as some marketable websites.

I was privileged to attend Jay's first live video class. Sadly, this was not recorded for posterity as he was still sorting out the technical issues. The subject was basic HTML skills. I remember commenting something to the effect that my brain was full. So if you're feeling a bit overwhelmed as you start, this is common. As you live, eat and breathe Internet marketing, this feeling will go away. Well, maybe not. What you will find is that there is always more to learn. You just need to learn to ask the right questions.

What I am finding is that you never stop learning. I'm hoping that this continues until I'm on the wrong side of the turf.

Thanks for making this opportunity available, Kyle and Carson. And Jay, thank you for all that you do, you take the training up a notch.

Looking forward to the opportunities that present themselves in the next year and beyond.

Thanks WA..

Craig