As you can see, the series on what makes a Great Team Website is on permanent hiatus. While the content was informative, I never felt like I was adding anything to the equation with it. What I was suggesting was obvious, and in fact many people are implementing it, but they just weren’t doing it well, and doing it well is more important than just doing it. Until such time as I can craft a useful series on the differences between going through the motions and providing real value to fans and sponsors, the Great Team Website series is defunct.

Secondly, you may have noticed a few changes around the site, including a change from sports business to small business. While I still enjoy working in sports and will always have a few projects going, my coaching, consulting, and advice is needed farther and wider than sports. This means I’ll likely pepper the blog with more posts on more topics, but happily will then likely do so more frequently.

Finally, I’m off to Europe! Not permanently, but will be there to do my work with European Cycling Camp Velo Veneto. I’ll be in Italy from 25 June until at least 6 August. Just prior to and after that period, I’ll be in Paris. If you know of any small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMB) in Paris that can use any of my marketing services, let me know! My mobile won’t work in Europe (though I will have a euro mobile in Italy), but my office phone will ring over there.

In the meantime, I thank you for your support, and wish you tailwinds, smooth ice, and oil-slick free beaches!

-Jason

You see, over the holidays, things got hectic chez Cardillo. There was a trip back to O-H-I-O (cold!), roomates moving out (surprise!), my own move (double surprise!), and of course client projects (no surprise there!). All of this meant I got behind on writing these posts, and couldn’t even keep up with my normal weekly schedule. Not even one post per week – weak!

It’s not that I didn’t have ideas for posts. It’s not really even that I got too busy. No, the real reason is that I didn’t execute the part of my plan that involved creating a quiver. A quiver, for a writer, is a set of posts that are pre-created and require little-to-no additional work to post. The kind of content that’s in there ready to go when you only have 5 minutes before you board your flight, or you’re laying sick in bed and can’t summon your creative juices. They are best when they are time-independent thoughts on your topic. Above all, they are useful.

They are not posts that you wrote and didn’t like. They are not posts that you never finished and need to wrap up and edit extensively. They are not time-sensitive topics you never got around to (my gut reaction to Tiger’s “indiscretions” is not a post in the quiver for May 2010). They are definitely not topics that you haven’t written about, but can put together a half-assed post on in 5 minutes.

So, I drained my quiver and never filled it back up. Instead of researching for inspiration in free time and knocking out some posts, I kicked back with a few beers instead of one. I went for a 4 hour ride when only 2.5 was in the works. I tried to find the partners to the single socks that appear after I do laundry. Anything but doing my bloody job.

So, dear reader, I’m back on it. Even though it’s a hectic time of year, I’m only having one beer, keeping the rides short, and leaving those single socks lonely – all to make sure there’s a full quiver of lessons from my mistakes. If I do it right, you’ll never know when I’m too busy to write.

BIG thanks to Paul Rangel (logo design) and Skye Kraft (editing support) for their help. If it weren’t for them, this website would be that much suckier!