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In January, UpBuild had its 8th annual Team Retreat in Orlando, FL. As has become customary to say after every retreat, it was our best one ever!

What is the Team Retreat?

Ruth and Laura have given past recaps for our retreats in 2017 and 2018 so I won’t rehash this in detail. In short, we have a team retreat 1-2 times per year so that we can discuss where UpBuild is currently and where we’re heading, discuss different trends and strategies we may want to implement for our clients, and to get some face time and just have fun together.

Team Retreat 2019: Orlando Edition

This year, the time for our team retreat landed in mid-January. Since the majority of our team lives in cities where winter is an actual thing – I’ve been in south Florida for 5+ years so I know nothing about that – we thought it’d be fun to bring everyone to my neck of the woods for a reprieve from the weather. We hosted the retreat in Orlando, FL: home to Universal Studios, Disney World, and weather that does not include snow.

[Read more…] about UpBuild Team Day 2019: The Team Flies South for Winter

Great SEO requires focus. A highly technical SEO project is best done in chunks of several hours at a time: you need time to get deep into the data, look for patterns, and chase down the roots of any problems you see. A more creative or content-focused SEO project is also going to benefit from a focused effort; you need time to explore possibilities, do your research, plan, and create.

Focus is a core part of how we do what we do at UpBuild, and we’ve gone to great lengths to structure our company in ways that help us defend and use that focus. [Read more…] about Values Spotlight: Focus

I spent the entire month of August in Iceland, and I think some of my clients didn’t even know it. If that’s not the ultimate testament to the practicality of remote work, it’s got to be pretty dang close.

A hill we pulled over to hike on the road to Vík.

Reason #1 I was able to do this was because my incredible wife Alissa was accepted to an artists’ residency program in Iceland, and this particular program allows spouses to tag along. Reason #2 is because my incredible job makes it possible for me to work from Iceland. So please count me a lucky guy for the record, and I guess the story can proceed from there.

[Read more…] about Working from Nowhere Near Home

For years, my morning routine has been an afterthought, a groggy welcome to a new day and a prolonged transition to a wakeful state. Not to mention, remote work makes it incredibly easy to sleep until the very last minute. Waking up at 8:55 am was not unusual for me, and neither was the guilt of wasting so much time. I’ve always been a late riser, but not a proud one. In an attempt at self-improvement, increased productivity and general curiosity, I decided to change one major habit in my life: my alarm time.

[Read more…] about Waking Up Early: An Experiment in Productivity

For the second installment of our series on UpBuild’s company values, let’s talk about Betterment. From our Values page:

“‘Will this make someone’s day better?’ We use this question to make decisions on a daily basis. Will this strategy or recommendation I’m working make a client’s day better? Will getting this website to show up well in Google make a searcher’s day better? Will testing this CTA placement make a website user’s day better? Will giving a team member feedback in this way make their day better? If the answer is no, we have to ask if there’s a better way. Sometimes there’s not, but usually, there is.”

Making the World a Better Place

When you’re a marketer who’s also an idealist, it can be easy to feel disheartened by the very idea of marketing sometimes. After all, the cynical side of us says, isn’t marketing just figuring out how to manipulate people into buying something?

The other side of that coin, though, is that marketing can just as easily be about helping people find the things that they want and need, in ways that feel easy, pleasant, and even delightful. I’ve long said that one of the best things about search engine marketing is that unlike some more broadcast-focused mediums, SEO is all about helping people find things they’re already looking for – it’s selling people things they already want. [Read more…] about Values Spotlight: Betterment