WSS #180: The Times They Are A Changin’ … A New Adventure Awaits!

[wsspodcast type="podcast" episode="181" note=""]

Hey Fred, Did You Lose Weight?

You’re looking pretty good after all this time! And it has, indeed, been some time. In fact, it’s been a year and a month almost exactly since our last podcast.

So we jumped back on mic to say hello – and goodbye, but more on that in a moment.

We actually recorded this episode in February but it’s taken us this long to coordinate the release of this last episode with the release of our new podcast… but wait, we’re still not up to that part!

So What The Hell Happened To Ralph And Carol Lynn?

We’ve been asked an embarrassing number of times why it’s been so long since our last podcast, so here’s the short story.

Last March, right after our last episode, our cat died. He was the second of our babies to go – we lost his sister two years ago at almost the same time. And he had been sick for a while, which meant he got a lot of attention and care from us and we spent a whole lot of time with him. We didn’t go out much, because he needed us. In essence, we spent two years of our lives in cat-mode, and when he was gone the house got very, very quiet.

And empty.

And sad.

So we had to deal with that emotionally and it was hard.

In the meantime, we were still growing Rahvalor (our marketing company). And we were working with new business partners on another company, developing a software product. In May, we drove out to Nashville for a trade show where we launched that product. It was a lot of much-needed fun and once we left the sad confines of our house we never wanted to go back.

So we didn’t.

The Adventure

When we returned from Nashville we decided to sell our house and move nowhere. That is, we decided to travel for a bit and see where the world took us.

We planned it meticulously – when we’d get the real estate agent, when we’d put the house on the market, when we’d likely sell and where we'd go next. In the midst of all that we were working on building ANOTHER company, which we’ll talk more about later, so in the midst of planning a move, we were also running three businesses.

And then our meticulous house-selling plans derailed. Instead of following our timeline, we got cash buyers almost immediately and, well, they wanted us out. We had a month to pack up sixteen years of STUFF, get it into storage, figure out where we were going and leave.

So yeah, podcasting was sort of not on the radar.

We missed it. But we missed our sanity, too.

Podcasting While Location-Independent

Since we sold the house and left, we've worked and traveled, traveled and worked. We camped out with family in the Boston area for a bit. Then camped out at the family beach house in Brigantine, New Jersey for a few months while we worked on our businesses. In between we’ve been to Chicago, D.C., Orlando, South Carolina, Georgia, and Franklin, Tennessee.

Running our marketing business along with two startups has been challenging and fun. It's kept us busy, but it's also kept us from podcasting. We've been dying to talk to you again, so we figured out how to do that and be on the road at the same time.

A year later, we’re back, location independent, and recording from our mobile rig. With a little help from friends - well, to be fair, with a lot of help from one specific friend, the amazing Chris Curran of Podcast Engineering School - we bought and set up just the right equipment so we can essentially podcast out of a box.

We don’t have a house and don’t plan to for a while, but that can't stop us now!

Goodbye Web.Search.Social

And now, the grand finale.

But wait! you say. Aren’t you podcasting again?

We sure are. But Web.Search.Social is retiring and we’re moving on.

Why?

Because after 180 episodes we feel like we’ve said all we want to say about web, search and social marketing. And in our last few Web.Search.Social episodes we started to talk more and more about business and entrepreneurship, so we decided to rebrand and take things in more of a business-y direction.

That doesn’t mean we won’t be talking about marketing, but we want to talk about more than that. We want to take on doing business – owning, running, managing, dealing with the good and bad.

And so we’ve rebranded and will be podcasting under the new name.

Welcome To Carbon Based Business Units Episode 181

Yes, that’s the name of the new show, and after much debate, we’re starting at episode 181 instead of episode 1. We disagreed on whether it was a new show or just an evolution of Web.Search.Social, and evolution won.

Ultimately we’ll still be us, and you’ll still be you, Fred, and we’ll still be talking with you about growing your business. We want to share our experiences so they can inspire and help you, too.

If you’re wondering why the new name, it comes from Star Trek, where they refer to people as “carbon based units.” Over the years Ralph has referred to me as his “carbon based wife unit” and we’ve extended that to parents and other people, too.

And it just seemed to fit with our belief that if you’re running a business, you can’t separate “work” and “life”. It’s all part of who you are as a whole human. Sometimes you have to run a business while taking care of a cat with cancer, and there’s no line between them. It’s all part of life.

That’s what we want to talk about – the whole thing. How business informs the personal and personal informs the business and how it’s all intertwined.

Join Us – Our Podcast Is Moving!

If you’re on our email list, you don’t have to do anything. You’ll still get updates when new episodes are published.

However, if you’re subscribed to Web.Search.Social in iTunes or some other podcast app, you will no longer receive episodes of our new podcast after this one. You will need to subscribe to Carbon Based Business Units instead, and you can do that by simply searching for the name in your podcast app.

If you’re too excited to wait another second, you can hop on over to our new website right now!

You’ll find the first episode there along with subscription options.

Thanks for coming along on our journey this far, and we hope to see you on the next leg!