There is a tendency for us automotive digital marketers to allow others the ability to dictate and demand our time. I’m not talking so much about our bosses or co-workers. I’m talking about our vendors and potential partners.

The phone rings all day, your inbox looks like a twitter stream. I get it. It sucks.

So, how are you ever going to get anything done if you’re just running to the next meeting our joining the next webex?

Well, its simple really. You need to create some breathing room.

It isn’t hard and not only are you going to feel more liberated. I’ve found that our current partners appreciate the productive meetings we have as well as the potential partners get a chance to have their voice heard.

I know many folks who just brush off these potential partners. But I would argue there is a lot we can learn from the people we haven’t talked to yet.

So what I do is this.

For our current partners and vendors I keep a standing monthly meeting. Typically the 2nd or 3rd friday of the month. I like Friday’s because it allows me time over the weekend to think about the things we’ve discussed and if it’s something I want to do I can start on it when I am back Monday.

I always ask our vendors the same 3 questions and ask them to have this prepared before arriving for our meeting.

Question 1 — What’s Working?

Ive noticed that a lot of times the things that are working get discussed way less than the things that are working. Not only is it a downer to only talk about the things that suck. It also sets the tone for the rest of the conversation. So if you start of by talking about the positives then the rest of your meeting can keep that up beat tone.

Question 2 — What’s Not Working?

I set the expectation clearly up front that if something isn’t working. Lets either decide that it just isn’t a good fit for our business or it needs some adjusting to get it back working to where we think it should be. Not all products are for everyone. I know many vendors hate talking about this but they know I do this our of respect for them and their product. Both I and they would rather drop a feature or something added vs. dropping the vendor all together.

Question 3 — What small thing can we tweak that will have a measurable impact?

If you aren’t turning the dials you aren’t engaged with the product. If you are going to pay for something you need to always test its boundaries. Otherwise everything you ever do with anyone is going to be nothing but mediocre. This also gives your rep the opportunity to bring you the newest thing they saw someone else doing that is easy ti implement. Doesn’t cost any money and when your boss asks you how things are going with X. You are able to show that you are actively involved in managing the product and making it better to suite your store.

These 3 simple questions really do help keep meetings short, concise and engaging on both ends. It’s a simple standard that i had to create for myself to keep my insanity and make sure that my meetings were staying productive.

Maybe it’s because of the whole Raiders moving to Las Vegas thing that got me started thinking about ways to geo target fans or attendees of an event with a sweet brand message or and image that would have the potential of garnering some earned media attention.

So, as any good Digital Marketer would do, I went to Starbucks, got my favorite drink (Starbucks Double Shot W/ Cream instead of milk) and began to run through some ideas in my head.

With Football season in high gear, I wanted to look into doing something with our local UNLV team but not have to create a partnership or some contractual thing. I basically wanted to make it look like we partnered or something but not actually do it.

I also,wanted to have something that was targeted to the people at the games on game day, but not so much outside of the field itself or the timeframe.

I had heard and seen people using these interesting custom Geofilters for Snapchat, so I wanted to take a look at how they work and what it takes to actually get one going.

Because you can design and not only filter, but also the geofence in which they will show as well as the timeframe down to the hour, this was the perfect solution for what I am wanting to do.

And for that reason I wanted to share it here. It’s almost too valuable to keep to myself.

I hope you find the tutorial helpful.

Geofilters

Geofilters are fun overlays that you can add to your Snap! Swipe on a Snap you have taken to see what Community or On-Demand Geofilters are in your area 👻.

Community Geofilters are unique overlays that share a location, such as a: city, university, or local landmark. Community Geofilter submissions are free. Snapchat does its best to select Community Geofilters we feel are visually compelling and represent the location.

Businesses and individuals alike can purchase On-Demand Geofilters for an event, business, or a specific location. Whether it’s for a house party or wedding, a coffee shop or campus-wide event, Geofilters make it easy for Snapchatters who are there to send your message to friends.

About Community Geofilters

Artists and designers are encouraged to create and submit a free Community Geofilter for their city, university, a local landmark, or another public location. If your Geofilter is approved by the Snapchat team, Snapchatters nearby will be able to use it to say where they are!
 

On-Demand Geofilters

Businesses and individuals alike can purchase On-Demand Geofilters. Whether it’s for a house party or wedding, a coffee shop or campus-wide event, Geofilters make it easy for Snapchatters who are there to send your message to friends. Brand logos and trademarks are permitted, unlike with free Community Geofilters, which are meant for public places like parks, landmarks, and cities.

Go here to create an On-Demand Geofilter!

What's the difference between a Personal and Business On-Demand Geofilter?

A Personal Geofilter promotes a personal event/location and are great for weddings, reunions, birthdays, or graduations!. A Personal Geofilters can also be used for private locations (like your home) over a longer period of time (max 30 days). Snapchatters on the scene can add your message to their Snaps, then send them to friends 👻  Please Note: Personal Geofilters cannot include marks, logos, or branding for businesses.

A Business Geofilter is one that promotes a business or a brand and are great for an upcoming sale at your store, an ad over a space like a coffee shop ☕️  or an awesome event! Think of them as your digital street team.  Please Note: A Business Geofilter must meet the logo guidelines set forth in our  Submission Guidelines.
 

How to Create an On-Demand Geofilter?

Interested in making a personalized On-Demand Geofilter, but the thought of using Photoshop has you running for the hills 🏃🏻? Just head over to our online Geofilter creation tool, which you can use to design a Geofilter for a variety of events like birthdays, weddings, and more — customized with your personal touch 💅🏽

So, here’s how it works:

Log in with your Snapchat username and password here.

Select the ‘Design’ or ‘Upload” tab.

I used Canva to create a custom design as you can see below. The size is 1080x1920 and once i exported the .png I went and removed the background making it transparent. That way when you are taking a selfie, you can put your head inside the helmet.

Anytime you can show your kid off, you take it... 

Once you’ve uploaded your file you’ll be asked to choose the start and end dates and start and end times. This works out great for me because I can choose the dates of the home games, select the time the game is schedule for which limits the amount of money it's going to cost to run this filter.

Now we have our dates and times in place we’ll move on to selecting the Geo Fence.
I zoomed in the the football stadium and basically drew a box around it.

Once you’ve done that and hit NEXT all you have to do is hand over your CC info and boom you’ve just created a sweet custom On-Demand Snapchat Geofilter.
 

I first have to give a shout out to my buddy Jason Stum who helped me identify a leak in our adwords budget.

Once I started to dig in a bit more, I was able to uncover and recover a pretty hefty refund from our agency partner.

 

In this post I am going to show you how I built some customized reports in Google Analytics that drill down in to device types, regions, user domains and why it’s important to look at this stuff.

You first want to start by loggin into your Google Anaytics account and make sure you are looking at the main homepage there.

Then, you will click CUSTOMIZATION in the top nav. This is where we can build all types of custom reports that drill down data in ways you just cant do using the standard Analytics reports.

Next, you’ll want to click on NEW CUSTOM REPORT.

This is the dashboard we will use to create our report and set up the data in way that is kind of like a data tree. So, if you are able to think ahead of time how you want the spread to look. You’ll save a lot of time. More on that later.

Now that we have a blank custom report canvas, we can begin by giving this report a name and making sure that the report type is EXPLORER.

METRIC GROUPS:
This is the basic metric or number of what you want to see. For this exmaple, we are looking for SESSIONS. So click on ADD METRIC and search for SESSIONS. Once you find it go ahead and add it to the report.

DIMENSION DRILLDOWNS:
This is the really fun part. As I mentioned above this is where we get to choose how we want the data ordered and displayed.

To give you some context of what I was looking for when I built this report. I was looking for

• Paid traffic
• Either Mobile or Desktop
• Regions outside of mine
• Network Domain (this tells us if someone was on wifi or cell)

Putting yourself through a quick excersize like this will save you a ton of time.

Q: What number am I looking for
A: Sessions

Q: What kind of Sessions?
A: Paid Traffic Sessions

Q: Paid Traffic from Mobile or Desktop
A: Both

Q: What Now?
A: Show me their region

Q: Now What?
A: Show me what network domain they were connected to

FILTERS
One of things I mentioned I wanted to do was look at the data above but outside of my region. So by building this into the report from the get go I wouldn’t be wasting my secondary drilldown to exlude region.
So in here you will want to

EXLUDE > REGION > EXACT > STATE NAME

Awesome! Now here is the really cool thing. Especially if you have a bunch of GA accounts. Instead of rebuilding this report for each of them you can simply click on the VIEWS option and select all the other accts you want to have this report.

Now click save and boom! Thats it…You should be redirected to the report you just built and can now start to drill down into all the various data points you’ve created.

So lets drill down a bit.

I want to see PAID TRAFFIC

What kind of Paid Traffic?

Desktop Paid Traffic..

What?! Why do I have PAID TRAFFIC coming in from Indiana when I am in Nevada? They aren’t even close.

Lets add a secondary dimension and see what KEYWORD these people are coming in on.

At this point, you can give your agency or whoever you might be having manage your adwords budget a call and find out why they are showing ads to people who live half way across the country…

There are many reasons why this is bad. Mainly because you probably dont sell cars to people across the country for one. 

Hope that helps some folks out there and below i’ve added a quick link that you can use to add the report to your custom reports tab if you are too lazy to build it yourself.

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=GvyEvnDBTj-xd0Nl6J3muQ

Priorities are like arms: If you think have more than a couple.

You're either lying or crazy... 

~ Merlin Mann

Productivity isn't something we seem to talk about very much on DS and is why I want to start talking more about the things we do to get more done everyday. Since having my baby boy last year I quickly realized how valuable my time is. With that in mind I need to make sure every minute counts as well as making sure that I am constantly moving forward in reaching whatever goal I am trying to hit. 

Here are a few apps that I use everyday to get more work done and be better at "adulting" 

Slack
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slack-team-communication/id618783545?mt=8
Built for teams we use it internally as a communication tool. I've also been able to wrangle in many of my vendors into their own private slack channels. This allows us to have open a free dialog outside of email in addtion to keeping a log of all conversations

Wunderlist
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wunderlist-to-do-list-tasks/id406644151?mt=8
Wunderllist is an amazing productivity tool that I use to manage my projects and tasks. The integration into Slack allows me to easily add things to my todo list and have them show up in a specific slack channel that any one can glance at and see what types of things I am working on at any point and time. 

Yelp for Business Owners
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yelp-for-business-owners/id936983378?mt=8
I am not the biggest Yelp! fan but hey, what are you gonna do. This app makes it super easy to reply to new reviews from anywhere. Since I manage multiple stores I would rather get a response in as quick as possible so I dont have to add it to my todo list. This app allows me to do everything that I would normally be able to do from the desktop site and I like that. 

Google my business 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-my-business-update/id853371601?mt=8
A lot of what I wrote about the Biz Yelp app applies to this app as well. Being able to be mobile and reply to reviews from anywhere is awesome. 

Facebook pages
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook-pages-manager/id514643583?mt=8
The pages app keeps getting batter and better in my opinion. With the addition of live streaming it's nice to be able to access any of our company facebook pages without having to be at a monitor. 

Instagram
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instagram/id389801252?mt=8
Managing multiple Instagram was a real pain in the you know what up until recently. A few months ago Instagram enabled the ability to log in to 5 different accts on the same mobile device. With the the ability to quick swap which account your in makes this app an amazing tool to capture both images and videos around our dealerships and post them. For an additional kicker you can link your instagram account to your dlvr.it account and have your pics shared amongst your other social channels as well. 

YouTube capture
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/youtube-capture/id576941441?mt=8
This app is amazing to quickly do walkarounds of vehicles to include in your follow up emails. in addition you can quickly grow your youtube catalog with this easy to use and light weight app 

Feedly
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/feedly-your-work-newsfeed/id396069556?mt=8
When google reader went away I was stuck out in the rain looking for a new RSS reader. Thats about the same time feedly came on the scene and saved me from my news woes. With feedly you can hook up RSS feeds, Topics, blogs etc. and basically have a plethora of news and information in your own personal little cubby everyday. I use Feedly for content curation for our dealership as well as my personal stuff. It's really easy to hook up your instapaper acct and save it for later or link it to your buffer account and schedule it across your personal social channels in a single push of the screen. The app makes things easier to read and save for later which makes life better. 

instapaper
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instapaper/id288545208?mt=8
There are many like it out there in the world but Instapaper has been a staple of mine since its launch. I usually will cruise through my feedly feeds and if something catches my fancy I will then share it to my instapaper acct. Here I will read more in depth into the thing I thought was cool and then decide if I want to get rid of it, share it out through buffer or something or write a blog post about it. This is an amazing tool to have in your pocket and makes combing through the web that much easier on a daily basis. 

Simplenote
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simplenote/id289429962?mt=8
I know there are tons of note taking apps out there. Ones even better than simplenote I am sure. But If you are a Mac user this app is fan freakin tastic. I take a lot of notes and write in markdown first of all. I also use a lot of text files, hashtags and like to be able to query my device in an easy manner. On my Mac I always write and take notes in an app called NVALT. The awesome thing is that NValt links to simplenote through dropbox. Which means I have all my notes, posts etc with me at anytime. No matter the device I am on I can access my stuff via the web, iphone app, ipad app etc. So if you are a person who likes to always have your stuff with you this is a must. 

What are some productivity apps that you use to stay on track and to keep on keepin on? 
Share them in the comments below. 
 

Even though it was literally right down the street from my office I didnt make it to NADA 2016. No problem though because I was able to imagine what it was probably like. 

Am I too far off? 

WUBBA LUBBA DUB DUB!

Everyone has a plumbus in their home. It's hard to imagine life without one. And we all know how a regular old plumbus is made. You can get 'em by the case at the local big box store. 

That's why at ThinkGeek we carry only artisan plumbuses. Rest assured that these are not your 6 1/2 brapple black-market plumbuses. We use extra-virgin schleem, never before pressed into the dinglepop, which is organic. And we do not force the dinglepop through the grumbo; it proceeds naturally in its own time. Our fleeb is picked at the peak of perfection for the freshest juice. All our Schlamis are board certified before their first rubbing. We use only locally-sourced chumbles (well, local to Earth, Dimension C-137). Finally, the ploobus and gromble are sustainably harvested and given to a local soup kitchen.

It takes a little extra time, but we think it's worth it. And we think you'll agree.

Product Specifications 

• Artisan Plumbus
• What does it do? WHAT DOESN'T IT DO?
• Materials: Schleem, dinglepop, fleeb juice, spit, and chumbles
• Dimensions: 13" tall x 6" wide x 7" deep 
• Weight: 1 lb.
• Ages 12+
• Note: Because all our plumbuses are handmade, yours may vary slightly from the picture as a result of natural variation.

Instagram Ads for Car Dealerships

A Step by Step How-To Guide

Check It Out on MarketPunch

Every time I attend a conference I like to think about the things I learned that day. Today I attended a particular conference and kept asking myself this same question with no great answer, 

"What did I learn today?"

there wasn't anything coming to mind right away so after the conference  I headed to the gym hoping that maybe a little something would emerge mid WOD but nope.

The only thing that kept rolling around  were a few annoying things from throughout the day that stuck with me. I originally had about 5 or so of these. But have whittled it down to the top 4.

I will state it now that these things are totally observational and personally subjective. These are my opinions. The reason that I am sharing is in hopes that others keep these things in mind while we head into next round of conferences.

Mocking Sales People

Mocking our staff is mocking us as a dealership and as a business. You are saying that we aren't aware of this issue and are doing nothing to improve it. When you say things that mock sales people you are perpetually promoting a negative stereotype that we are working hard to fix.

Look, when you stand on stage mocking (even hypothetically) our staff it's disrespectful. You might as well come over to my house, sit on my couch and make fun of my fat dog. I don't even know you, yet you feel confident enough to insult me and my team along with everyone else's in the room. We do not operate a dealership of cavemen.

If your point is built on a framework riddled with insults. I'll pass.

Not Really Knowing What You're Talking About

Being a public speaker is not an easy job.. Being a public speaker and a great story teller is even harder. The majority of speakers I hear are neither of those things.

I don't say that to be mean. But unless you are running a company by day and moonlighting as the head of your local toastmasters club, the total number of presentations you give in a year is probably equal to that of your staff meetings.

I'll assume you know what I mean.

Half of your presentation should not be about the history of the iPhone.

You are on stage with an audience and you are wasting your words on common knowledge. Or, you waste your time trying to make points by sharing your version of some fairly well known articles. But as mentioned before you're an awful story teller and either leave out massive chunks or talk so much that you never relate it back to your topic.

Lastly, how many times does it need to be said.. Please do not read every word of every line of every slide. You have a very small window of time for me to judge how valuable i find your content.

Stick to your points, the things you know inside and out and can argue anyone up and down the block on. Let your passion come through your message and let me decide how to interpret it.

Dont assume i'm dumb and don't assume that you need to be educator of the digital landscape over the past 15 years to a room full of you people you won't ever see again in about 45 minutes.

Just get on with it…

Sourcing Your Data as Confidential

I Can't Even.. I mean.. Really...

If you were presenting data parsed from internal information talking about the results of internal studies and it was being shared in a public type setting then fine.

But when you stand on stage and present data in a fashion to show people the why's and how's they should do something.

You should 100% matter of fact, without a doubt, show your work, Source your slides.

Because literally I could stand up in the middle of the room and say

"Excuse me my good man, But, I can't disagree with you more. I think that number should be 67."

and then you would say "Based on what?"

and then  I would say "Reasons."

That would be the end of of our conversation. Because, according to your data source you are not allowed to share the sauce that created those colorful charts therefor you can not argue against the validity of my ridiculous claim with your so called fact.

You are up a creek, sans paddle.

When you source your data as "Confidential" you might as well say..

"Here's some numbers I just made up because how else could I get those charts to look like rainbow stairs?"

Yeah, it's that ridiculous.

Final Thoughts:

Being a presenter doesn't have to be hard. Talk to what you know about and don't talk to the slides.

Share with us your knowledge not your ability to recite techcrunch articles from a decade ago.

Lastly, can well just stop stereotyping salespeople as cavemen.

Let's just get on with it already.

It's easy to get drawn into the grasp of a sexy new vendor presentation. Huddling over slide decks and looking at all the pretty charts, graphs and colors. It is usually followed by illusions of Increasing Gross revenue or Selling More Units. However when feet are held to the fire no one is interested in standing next to those coals. Which is why i've put together this small list of tools that I use everyday to save our dealership money.

We all use various tools and vendors for various things. Some of them may fall into a Costs bucket while others fall into a Services bucket.

However you choose to identity them. There is one thing that is constant. They both fall into the expense category. In a lot of cases we pay for an entire product or service only to take advantage of a small piece of it.

So i'm always looking at ways to increase Net Profit because that's the reality we all operate in. If we live in a world of gross revenue then we operate in a world of net profit. One is reality and one is what we wished reality was.

decreasing expenses can be just as sexy as increasing profits as long as the margins between those lines keeps getting wider.

Which is why I put this list of

7 Tools I Use Everyday to Save Our Dealership Money.

Tawk.to

https://www.tawk.to

Cost: Free

tawk.to is a free messaging app that lets you monitor and chat with

visitors on your website or from a free customizable page

We used to pay anywhere from $399 to $500 per store for chat software. We now pay a grand total of $0 dollars for chat and have a much more robust tool in most cases.

What you can do with tawk.to

•      Monitor website visitors in real time
•       Answer chats from your Mobile Device
•       Proactively engage visitors with Triggers
•       Customize your Visitor Widget to suit your site
•       Localize greetings and messages in your Language
•       Respond quickly with Predefined Shortcuts
•       Integrate with Wordpress and any website provider

    Check out the full feature set here:

    https://www.tawk.to/features/

Canva

https://canva.com

Cost: Free

Design shouldn't be hard but somewhere along the way we became bogged down with expensive, complicated software that put design out of reach for most people. Canva is here to change that, with a tool that makes design simple for everyone.

Canva gives you everything you need to easily turn ideas into stunning designs. Create designs for Web or print: blog graphics, presentations, Facebook covers, flyers, posters, invitations and so much more.

It’s online and free to use

Simply search for the best graphics, photos, and fonts, or upload your own, then use Canva’s drag and drop tool to create a design.

Carcode SMS

https://carcodesms.com

Cost: Free

The value in the tool lives in the TCPA compliance. This is the law that requires business interactions to be a 2 step opt-in process. Their platform takes care of that for you and supplies you with an easy script to add to your site so customers can text you if they wish.

Carcode SMS gives dealerships a phone number for mobile shoppers to text and provides the dealership with an app that allows staff to respond and manage conversations in a compliant environment.

Youtube Capture

https://www.youtube.com/capture

Cost: Free

YouTube Capture was launched to simplify the process of recording and uploading video to YouTube by putting all the tools to do so in a single app. Once a user has finished recording a video, it lets them add captions, tags and other metadata, and the app instantly uploads the file directly to his or her YouTube channel, or it can be saved as a private video if they’re shy about sharing with the world.

For those who want to make minor edits to their videos, the app even includes color correction, auto stabilization, trimming, and music options. And it uploads video in the background when the app is closed, so users don’t have to worry about keeping it open while they move on with their lives.

Some companies provide a slideshow they stitch together and throw up on your youtube channel but what fun is that. If you want people to get involved in the process then make them part of the process. Our campaigns include a simple walkaround video that our BDC teams record every morning. It's the simple things like this that get our teams involved in creating the process that lead to better overall results of our email campaigns.

Wordpress

Hosted - https://wordpress.com

Non Hosted - https://wordpress.org/

Cost: Free

When it comes to wordpress you have 2 options. You can either have wordpress host your site which gives you the URL of “Sitename.wordpress.com” or you can host your own blog as its own domain or as a subdomain for you current domain.

Either way you choose to go the important thing is that you get used to having a blog presence. This one is really hard for a lot of folks to understand because it seems like it’s hard. The reality is that it is as only as hard you make it. You could have the best blog in the world but if the content sucks or there is no content there at all. Well, you get the idea.

As with everything else in life mastery comes from doing something over and over again. If you aren’t dipping your whole body in this arena you really just need to go ahead and do a cannonball off the high dive already and face those fears head on.

Edmunds API Widgets

http://developer.edmunds.com/

Cost: Free

There are not very many companies in the automotive space that are willing to open up their API to developers. I understand the idea of proprietary technology and all of that but in a lot of cases tools like those edmunds have for anyone to use and build off of are what separates them from everyone else in my book.

You can create widgets to use on your site or your blog that allow people to play around with shopping tools that you would have to pay money for elsewhere.

I don’t know about you guys but as I mentioned at the beginning of this article. I am looking for ways to keep money in our dealership.

Final Thoughts:

With new technology, software and minds being directed at the automotive market. It makes sense now more than ever to re-evaluate the tools that you are using every day. Figure out exactly what you are trying to accomplish with those tools and ask yourself what you are paying for and if there is a free tool that does the same thing.

The internet is a very large place with lots of smart people and great ideas. Not everything needs to be directed solely at our segment in order for us to use it.

If there are any other tools you’d like to highlight please share in the comments below.

DO IT….

Based in Las Vegas, NV. Chris K Leslie mainly writes about Automotive, Marketing, Fitness and the Internet. He heads up Digital Marketing for the Heinrich Automotive Group in Las Vegas, NV

http://chriskleslie.com / http://heroautogroup.com

The great thing about life in my opinion is our ability to choose. We don't always get to choose what happens to us. But, we do get to choose how we respond to it. I find this ability to choose one of the most valuable things we have as human beings. It allows us to take control of our lives and respond to the world with conviction. 

If you don't already know. My wife Charlotte and I are expecting our first baby boy (Aspen) in November. I don't know much about life with a new baby in the house but I do know that it is demanding and can require lots of discipline to not lose your s#$%.

It can also lead many men to become stressed out, eat like crap and lose a lot of sleep. All of this has massively negative effect on a mans Cortisol levels leading to unhealthy weight gains and all other types of scary stuff which I learned about from reading Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha: A Real World Guide to an Unreal Life: Build More Muscle. Burn More Fat. Have More Sex

Being a Digital Marketer means that I am sitting behind a desk pretty much every day. Now combine that with the stresses of a new baby, not eating well and terrible sleep meant that I was slowly merging into the fast lane of Fat Dad.

There are many adjectives in the world that I can and have been described as and I wasn't about to let "Fad Dad" work its way on this personally groomed and defining list.

In my line of work it's easy to fall into the trap of working all the time too. With much of my off time working on other types of projects that are in the same realm of what you do for a living.

So when I am not sitting behind a screen I spend my free time sitting behind a screen. Sounds pretty lame I know but screw you I like it. haha For the last year though, I've felt that i've been missing something. An outlet of sorts. Charlotte had suggested  I look into a Crossfit gym. 

I was doing a little bit of this a few years ago and loved it. I still smoked and drank at that time so I never got the full benefits from working out like that. But, I did remember how much I liked the various workouts and how it seemed to change all the time. Being cig and booze free for a couple of years now meant that I could probably get way better results this time around. Lucky for me she doesn't get discouraged easily and kept on me about checking out some of our local Las Vegas Boxes.

Not wanting to be Fat Dad, needing an outlet of some kind and having a lovely wife gently push me all came to head when about a month ago i stood on the scale, looked down and wept like a little girl on her first day of school.  But, only on the inside of course. This is the day that I chose to make a change.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy but, I knew it wasn't going to hard either.

This ongoing series is going to be dedicated to sharing my crossfit journey from keyboards to whiteboards. Discussing all of the cool things i'm learning about becoming a better Team Member, Better Husband,  and best of all #FitDad    

Originall Post: http://chriskleslie.com/keyboards-to-whiteboards-my-crossfit-journey/