People love deals. That’s why sites like Groupon, Livingsocial, etc. attract so many customers. And when it comes to the medical spa business, that’s no different. Before I go any further, you might be thinking.. “I dislike Groupon, it brings me the worst clients”. Many of you have tried it and have had negative experiences with the type of people it brings in. ( Don’t worry we don’t like it either 😉 ) But let’s not confuse bad targeting with promotional offers.

The reality is everyone loves deals and we all want one, both the wealthy and not-so-wealthy alike. We feel good when we get one and it makes us feel like we came out on top. The problem with Groupon is not so much that it offers deals, but that it attracts the wrong type of people. So the issue isn’t the deal itself, but the targeting. Let’s keep that mind. 😃

Why do you need to have a promotional offer?

Have you been to the mall lately? Maybe you’ve noticed how each brand store has an ad on their window with:

• 25% OFF Entire Purchase
• 50% OFF Selected Items
• Buy 1 Get 1 FREE
• Etc…

They do this because they’re all competing for your business and they know that if you purchase with them once it’s highly likely that you’ll be loyal and you’ll continue to buy from them if you liked their product. Therefore, the promotions and special offers are factored into the cost of acquisition for the new customer and the returns are then calculated in the customer’s lifetime value.

The same principle holds true in the medical spa business. You’re talking about a $3 Billion industry with over 2,100 med spas in the U.S. alone. In order for your med spa to compete, you need to have a compelling offer and continuously build value with your clients.

Soon we’ll talk about how we can build value without discounting our services but for today’s purpose, here are the top 3 promotions our clients and other spas have used to rapidly gain new business.

1 - Free Trial or Service

Many places offer special prices on their services, though we’d go as far to say that you should offer something for free to get people through the door.

When someone is introduced to a medical spa, they’re typically hesitant to invest. They don’t know who the director or aestheticians are, what the spa style is, and whether or not it’s somewhere they’ll feel comfortable. That’s why a Free Microderm or Mini Facial, etc is huge for attracting new customers.

One of our clients offers a Free Microderm as a way to get people in and upsells them once they visit. Keep in mind that it’s important to have a system in place for in which making an upsell or cross-sell is seamless. If not, implementing a strategy like this is pointless.

Want to make upsells and cross-sells a seamless process? Selling someone on a service they didn’t visit for can be difficult. You don’t want to be too pushy or make them feel uncomfortable, and you may not know where to start. But what if you could easily cross-sell a first-time visitor by getting them to tell you exactly what they want? Use this questionnaire as a way to learn about the issues and challenges your visitor has and easily present services that solves those issues! Download the interest form.

2 - Gift Certificates

When consumers see a gift certificate for a specific service it creates motivation. This type of promotion works great for consumers who are thinking about doing a treatment but don’t have it top of mind at the moment and are just waiting for the right time to take action.

A gift certificate campaign has worked wonders for our CoolSculpting clients.

Bonus:

When you combine a gift certificate offer like this with a perfectly positioned Facebook advertising campaign, magic happens. See how and what this combination got a medical spa as part of their CoolSculpting marketing strategy… (260 leads in 4 weeks, $22,000 in additional revenue)

3 - Free Consultations

You might already do free consultations, you might not. Don’t take them for granted. Our highest lead generation campaign EVER for a client was using a Free Consultation ad. We were able to generate 450 leads in 4 weeks with a ridiculous low ad spend!

Free consultation offers are great in specific markets and it’s definitely worth a shot giving it a try.

Read about our results here: How this Med Spa got 126 CoolSculpting Leads in 7 days

What other offers and promotions do you know of that have seen a huge success for their fitness marketing efforts? Let us know below!

At Create the Bridge, we help medical spas and weight loss clinics grow and get new CoolSculpting customers on a consistent basis. So when we see a doctor that is as committed to their clients as Dr. Jarom Ipson is at San Tan Natural Medicine, we can’t help but recognize him.

AN INSIDE LOOK AT SAN TAN

San Tan Natural Medicine is an alternative medicine practice in Gilbert, Arizona that offers it’s clients a journey to better health through supplements, safe procedures, and better lifestyle habits.

As you might know, since Zeltiq hit the market with CoolSculpting, many doctors around the globe have been jumping on the opportunity of offering the hottest alternative to surgical fat reduction technology that is safe and effective. Dr. Jarom bought into the opportunity and throughout the months had been struggling to generate a consistent flow of CoolSculpting leads and business.

Zeltiq does a great job of advertising to consumers in some markets and that helps many vendors, but how do you distinguish yourself from the competition and drive more customers your way instead of the competition? And what happens when Zeltiq stops advertising?

Dr. Jarom knew he had to be different and started to develop his own marketing funnels, but soon realized he needed help. He heard about our results with our Cool FACTOR program and decided to contact us.

SAN TAN & CREATE THE BRIDGE WORKING TOGETHER

Dr. Jarom and the Create the Bridge marketing team planned a Facebook advertising campaign that would appeal to San Tan’s target main audience of women. We included images of the practice and staff so that people could see a glimpse of who they’d be speaking with before signing up.

We also used a fantastic offer of a $500 OFF CoolSculpting Gift Certificate to give to anyone in the market who was thinking about CoolSculpting but need a little push to take the plunge and try CoolSculpting.

Here’s the ad we ran with this campaign for Dr. Jarom:

The ad routed people to a landing page where they filled out a form with their name, email and phone number to claim San Tan’s offer. This page also contained the unique benefits CoolSculpting had to offer.

By the end of the first week, the Cool FACTOR program brought in 53 leads for Dr. Jarom at a cost per lead of $4.70.

DR. JAROM’S UNIQUE MARKETING PROCESS

Since Dr. Jarom had already created some really great educational videos on CoolSculpting, we decided to include these as part of our email automation process.

• Within 24 hours: The lead would receive an email with an offer, but also included the first video of a 3 part series created by Dr. Jarom talking about the benefits of CoolSculpting.
• Within 48 hours: The lead would then receive another email with the second video.
• Within 72 hours: A follow-up email with the third video.
• Within 96 hours: At this point we sent another email mentioning it was the last day to schedule a consultation before the gift certificate expires.

This follow-up sequence is unique because most CoolSculpting practices don’t take the time to educate their audience. They don’t understand the process a cold prospect goes through before even considering CoolSculpting as an option.

You already know that once someone hears about CooSculpting, they’ll most likely spend a few hours researching the technology. Why not engineer the process by giving them what they want?--education. Dr. Jarom understood this and therefore got some amazing results.

THE RESULTS

In just 1 week we were able to generate 53 leads which in turn generated 900% return onSan Tan Natural Medicine’s investment. If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.

It’s been awesome to see and be a part of the success that Dr. Jarom has had in helping people find and reach their health goals. We’re super excited with his results so far, and we can’t wait to see how his practice continues to grow.

Here’s what he has to say about working with us:

If you're a medical practice that needs a consistent flow of leads and new business, you need Cool FACTOR. Reach out to us at 866.244.9221 and schedule a consultation or Click here to Learn more about our Cool FACTOR program.

Lead generation is what every local business thrives on. And when we say leads, we don’t mean likes, clicks, or shares. We mean actual form submissions, phone calls, texts, etc from people who are interested in your service!

So when leads are a little slow… so is the business. But when it’s reversed and a company gets 240 leads in 4 weeks and generates $22,000 from only $2,000 in ad spend - more than 11x what they’re used to - you know something good is happening.

And that’s exactly what we did for one of our clients, a weight loss and medical spa in Rochester, New York.

We used our Cool FACTOR program to get a ton of leads in the first 4 weeks. But since this process is our unique framework, we’ll reveal as much as we can without giving everything away.

Here’s a breakdown of what the customers sees as they go through the Cool FACTOR campaign (which stands for Facebook Ads, Audience, Capture, Traffic, Offer, Retargeting):

Facebook ad with our client’s offer > Click the ad > Taken to a landing page > They redeem > Taken to a thank you page> Sent an automatic confirmation email > Retargeted to on Facebook.

Now let’s dive in!

The Offer

Our clients wanted to offer new customers a $500 OFF CoolSculpting Gift Certificate.

We ran this offer through a marketing campaign for their location - Rochester, New York. In the first 7 days total they got 42 leads and made $12,200 in gross sales.

Let’s break down the process.

1 - Facebook Campaign

So our client had an amazing offer that we wanted to get seen by more of the right people. We built a couple of campaigns highlighting the staff within the spa and the offer. Here’s a peek of the images for the ad:

One reason this campaign did so well was because the targeting was super niche.

• Location - specific mile radius around targeted neighborhoods
• Age of our client’s target audience
• Gender specific
• Unique interests
• And more!

2 - Video

Since Zeltiq has a massive array of amazing videos, we used the video that features the doctor’s comments on CoolSculpting. One of CoolSculpting’s unique selling points - as you already know - is that it’s backed by board certified doctors, so a video where physicians are backing the technology works wonders in establishing credibility.

3 - Landing Page

As mentioned, the video was placed on the landing page. We build a simple form to fill out to redeem the offer. Then once our local visitor did that, we took them to a thank you page that had more information about the medical spa and some unique triggers to get them to call in to schedule their free consultation.

Once the offer was filled out by the customer, they were entered into our CRM where a tag was applied to them based on the offer they opted into. This triggered a drip email campaign which leads us to…

4 - Email

The leads received a confirmation email right away that included the gift certificate and more information about the details of the offer.

The header of the email read as “Here’s our gift to you” Once the customer they saw this:

So in this email we included the (1) customer’s personal name (2) the initial gift certificate offer (3) an awesome how-to video (4) additional information about the free consultation.

5 - Retargeting

So once someone clicked our client’s Facebook ad and either opted into the offer or decided it wasn’t what they wanted… we wanted to be sure that it didn’t end there. That’s why we used retargeting so that our client’s ads followed their leads on Facebook and 1 other outlets.

Here's what the client had to say:

There you have it. A quick process of how we were able to generate these results. If you’re a CoolSculpting Med Spa interested in gaining more members, you need Cool FACTOR.

Learn more about our program here: Cool FACTOR Program

120 leads in 7 days – that’s the kind of marketing campaign that’s a game changer for business. And that’s exactly what we did for this CoolSculpting Med Spa through our Cool FACTOR program…

First and foremost, let’s break down what we mean by “leads.” This includes actual form submissions, phone calls, and texts that are all unique (as in over 126 people individually made contact with the med spa and opted in to their offer - we’ll talk about “the offer” below).

Now, let’s talk about the process and how we managed to kill it for our client!

Within 24 hours of launching this med spa's marketing campaign, they got 20 leads.

This was pretty good for the first day, considering the med spa would only get between 7 - 13 leads a week, so both the Create the Bridge team and our client were pretty happy. Here’s a breakdown of how we got those 20 leads in 1st day.

But what’s even more exciting is that the success didn’t stop there. Each day continuously brought in an insane amount of prospects. And before we knew it, our client had over 126 opportunities knocking at their door because of Cool FACTOR, which relies heavily on Facebook advertising. And this is just one reason so many businesses now choose to advertise through Facebook rather than any other outlet… like Google Ads or SEO. Take a look at 4 other reasons your med spa should do the same:

And finally… let’s break down the entire process that took our client to the next level. Introducing Cool FACTOR:

Cool FACTOR

We love working with med spas because we know how to create effective campaigns for them. Our program, Cool FACTOR, caters to med spas who want to double or triple their business and bring in tons of new CoolSculpting appointments.

• Facebook ads
• Audience
• Capture
• Traffic
• Offer
• Retargeting

All 6 of these strategies were used to generate the 120 leads in 7 days for our client. The Facebook ads highlighted the med spa’s promotion at the time. Our client wanted to showcase 2 offers: 1 free CoolSculpting consultation or an $500 OFF 2 treatment gift certificate. Both are great deals. So with super niche Facebook targeting through their audience settings, an awesome image, and great text, the ads were total clickbait. From there, the user clicked on the Facebook ad and was taken to a landing page where they filled out their name, email, and phone number to redeem the offer. Here’s a sneak peek of the page – but just a glimpse:

On the landing page was also a video of our CoolSculpting promotion and targeted the challenges the audience faced, getting rid of stubborn fat, for example. This allowed people to build trust by knowing we understood their problem.

So once someone opted in, they were taken to a thank you page and placed into our emailing list (MailChimp) that triggered the automation process. To confirm that the form submission was received, each consumer got an instant email with the promotion certificate – either the free CoolSculpting consultation or the $500 OFF 2 treatments. We were also sent emails of these leads so we could see the success, too.

The last part of the campaign was the retargeting. We wanted to make sure that whoever clicked our client’s Facebook ad saw that offer again in their newsfeed later on. So if someone clicked the ad and decided they weren’t ready to sign up for the CoolSculpting consultation or the $500 OFF 2 treatments on the landing page, that offer would follow them elsewhere online. And since users who are retargeted to are 70% more likely to convert, this was a huge part of the process.

So before we dig into the numbers of our client’s campaign, check out our free demo to see an in-depth video of how the Cool FACTOR process was done specifically for this med spa.

THE NUMBERS

One week, one CoolSculpting Med Spa, one effective campaign… And it all resulted in this:

• 126 leads in 7 days
• $0.63 Cost Per Click (CPC)
• 548 total clicks to their Facebook ads
• $2.77 cost per lead

Not only did Cool FACTOR get our client more leads than they’ve ever received in any other week, but it gave more consumers exactly what they wanted – access to a great deal that provided high quality value, a simple process, and tons of personality. If you’re a CoolSculpting Med Spa interested in gaining more members, you need Cool FACTOR.

Here's what the client had to say:

If you’re an entrepreneur or a busy professional and you’re working 12-16 hours a day, it may be difficult to find the time to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee accompanied by a good book or article. When was the last time you had the time to sit down for hours on end and read?

For me it's a matter of efficiency and productivity, which is why I stopped reading as much after I graduated from college. But, I realized there are many times during the day in which you're performing a mundane task and instead of listening to white noise, you could be "productive" and learn about new topics and ideas by listening to an audio book or podcast! I'm talking about when you're driving, cleaning, waiting for something, even when you're at your desk working on tasks that don’t require too much cognitive overhead.

I'm actively looking for podcasts on specific topics to listen to. Just name anything and you'll find a podcast on the subject. Business, marketing, entrepreneurship, faith, philosophy, etc!

Since I’m a lover of podcasts, I recommend you subscribe to a few of my favorites. These are some of the best on various topics ranked high on iTunes. Give them a listen and feel free to comment below with some recommendations if you have any.

The List

1. Perpetual Traffic by Digital Marketer Perpetual Traffic is run by two of the leading agencies in the direct response digital advertising space. Frank and Keith from Dominate Web Media and Molly from Digital Marketer crush it every week on the latest strategies and tactics on digital marketing. One of my objectives this year is to become a better direct-response marketer and this is my weekly go to. I don't miss an episode.

2. The Art of Charm Podcast As a business person, it is crucial to develop both hard and soft skills. How you communicate, your body language, and how you interact with individuals around you matter almost as much as what you are trying to communicate. The Art of Charm is the leading podcast that dives deep into these topics. The AOC also cover topics on attraction and relationships.

3. The EntreLeadership Podcast This podcast is a product of Dave Ramsey's leadership course. It features leaders and CEOs of large companies to speak on the areas of business and leadership. I don't listen to this one often, but whenever a famous leader or episode seems interesting, I check it out.

4. Ask Science Mike This podcast is on faith and religion. Some of the episodes are a little out there if you're more of a conservative Christian, but what I like about this podcast is that Mike is authentic in his answers and takes on challenging questions submitted by listeners from his scientific and Christian world-view background.

5. The Storybrand Podcast I've been a fan of Donald Miller ever since his first book, Blue Like Jazz. Though one might think this podcast is on writing and literature, it's actually based on marketing. Donald tells us a compelling story about how he discovered the challenges businesses face in effectively communicating with their audience and labels a framework into how to overcome the communication barrier. Great content here.

6. The Startup Chat The Startup Chat is produced by two famous Silicon Valley startup founders, Steli Efti and Ethan Shah from Close.io and KissMetrics. This podcast includes rants and answers questions about the everyday startup founder. Challenges faced and courses of action to take. If you're into tech startups or want to start one… subscribe to this one.

7. Morgan Page Music plays an important role in your mood. I subscribe to Morgan Page's podcast mix when I want to get 'in the zone' and crush some serious work or a workout :wink: He drops of killer beats that'll get you moving.

Alright folks, that's my list of my top 7 podcasts you need to subscribe to if you want to be a well rounded individual.

I went to graduate school what can I say??

Planning, strategy, new ideas are important to stay relevant in a fast-paced business world, but too much of it can hurt you.

What do I mean?

Have you ever spent a whole day brainstorming about an idea? Maybe it was a business idea. Maybe it was about your future. Maybe it was about your relationships. Maybe it was about your job. All of these things are great to ponder, but what good are these things if we don’t plan to put them in practice?

In business, time is a valuable commodity. Every hour that passes by is an opportunity to push the business forward. You have to use your time wisely.

Recently, I’ve been tasked to iterate some of our processes. I’ve been tasked to do a few things: grow a team, make them succeed, test new methods, document outcomes, tap a new market, among many other things.

I take my job very seriously so I spent days brainstorming, thinking, writing, talking, debating with myself to the point that I was thinking more than doing… but I didn’t realize how bad it was until a friend asked me what I’ve been up to: I said "thinking."

My friend immediately said: “Stop thinking already- make it happen.”

It hit me right in the face.

I didn’t realize I was over-thinking. How could I? Thinking consumes you. It’s work… but in business and in start-up life you have to balance thinking AND doing simultaneously.

Don’t get carried away with thinking too much and forgetting to do what you have to do.

I’ve learned my lesson.

Yes, I said it — pain.

In early stage start-ups there are no “rules” per se. Things like IF x THEN Y. Repeat. Ha, I wish things were that easy.

I lead the customer development efforts at our start-up and every day brings a new challenge.

For example, one day you crush one vertical with one approach only to find out that approach doesn’t work with another vertical. You find out that mornings work better for one group of people, but late nights work best for other groups. Everyday brings a certain level of headache.

You didn’t think start-up life would be easy, did you?

Despite challenges and obstacles you have to decide that you want to overcome. You have to choose to win. You have to feel that loosing is not an option.

Here’s how to accomplish that: push, then push harder, harder, harder, harder, HARDER.

When you want to grow except a certain level of discomfort. It could be a mix of emotional and intellectual pain. It’s the feeling of figuring out why you can’t figure it out. It’s those nights where you can’t sleep because you want to do things faster and more effective. Start-up life ain’t no joke.

So why am I saying all of this?

I’m writing to let you know that if you’re serious about growth this year expect a little pain and discomfort.

Growing pains are part of start-up life…and life in general.

Don’t be scared. Toughen up. It’s OK to feel a bit overwhelmed. It’s means your doing something right.

The latter part of 2014 wasn't so great for me, but it did give me the motivation to pursue something that I always wanted to do. In hindsight, quitting my job and dropping out of college to dedicate myself to web development seems crazy and risky - and it admittedly was - but it was one of the smartest moves I've ever made. January of 2015 I sent out some e-mails to some web design companies in my area, a few days later I met with Create the Bridge, and a week after that I started my internship.

That was a year ago now, and I've since moved up the ranks from intern, to paid intern, to getting hired as a full-time full-stack junior developer. To say that I've learned a lot in a short amount of time is an understatement. I am writing this with the intent of sharing some things I've learned along the way, that will hopefully help out other green developers.

1. Get comfortable with failing

You know that thing you call an ego? Get rid of it. You're probably not going to be good at writing code from the get go, and that's ok. Ain't no shame in your Google game. You'll still be using Google and StackOverflow at the senior level, so don't beat yourself up over constantly having to do a Google search to solve something. Chances are you're not the first person to have the problem you're stuck on, and chances are someone else has already found a better way of solving it. Study (not copy) their code and learn from their problem solving. Think better.

Adapt.

A month into my internship I thought I was doing such a horrible job that I decided to quit before I got fired. I was so afraid to fail that I wanted to beat them to the punch. Imagine my surprise when I got pulled into a meeting and was told that I was actually doing really well and encouraged to keep at it. If you're the type of person who is drawn to development, you're probably also the type of person who likes to solve things and doesn't like the feeling of being bad at something. That's ok. But don't get in your own way.

I had no way of gauging my performance, and I had a huge case of imposter syndrome. Check in with others more experienced than you - ask them how they think you're doing. Not just in your first month, but whenever you start to doubt yourself and your abilities. You might be surprised to hear that you're doing a lot better than you convinced yourself of. And if you're not, then ask for constructive criticism and work on being more efficient. I cannot stress enough how important it is to drop your ego and just focus on being better and more efficient.

2. Define your problem before attempting to solve it.

A well defined problem is most of the way solved

A huge pitfall for me at the beginning was attempting to solve something that I hadn't thought through all way yet. I'll use an example that I heard on a podcast and funnily enough, was actually a problem I had already stumbled upon about a month before listening to this particular episode.

Say you are trying to validate e-mails against a regex. So then the goal is: I need to come up with the correct regex to validate an e-mail. However, if you take a step back and get to the root of what you're trying to accomplish, your goal then is: I want to prevent someone from signing up with a fake e-mail address. Once looking at your ultimate goal from this perspective, a more efficient way of solving this problem would be to send an e-mail to that person, and having them click a validation link.

Don't overcomplicate what you're trying to solve. Get to the root of what you want to do and figure it out from there. A good way to help you get to the root of your problem is to articulate it to someone else. Even if they don't have the answer, usually defining your problem to someone else will help you better understand it and ultimately solve it.

3. Documenation. Documentation. Documentation.

Documentation was written for a reason. Read it. There are times when you'll come across some poorly written documentation, but honestly, that is rare. I've only come across that once in an entire year.

4. Don't stress yourself out.

Take inventory and get organized

Knowing everything you have to get done on a project can be stressful if you look at it as a whole. Break up all those tasks into smaller tasks and start there. We use Trello to stay organized throughout the lifecycle of a project. Add a card to the board per task. It makes a difference when you can visually track your progress and know that you're crossing things off the list.

Treat each day as a fresh start

Didn't crush it yesterday? That's ok - there's always tomorrow. It can be really discouraging if you're behind on a project and it's all you can think about. While it's good to ask yourself what you can improve on and try to diagnose where you lost time - don't dwell on it. It can linger in your mind and really hinder your productivity. Just trust that you'll do better tomorrow.

5. Take breaks.

This one seems simple and maybe obvious, but it's a lot easier said than done. If you're hacking away at something for 12 hours with little to no breaks, chances are you could've gotten the same amount of work done in 8 hours if you would've just taken more breaks and let yourself recharge a bit.

It's happened to me several times - I'll be stuck on a problem for a while, finally just give up, and as I am walking away from my desk I solve it. Or I'll literally have a dream about the problem and solve it in my sleep. If you're burnt out all the time, then you're not going to be very productive. If your mind is focused on something else, you're also not going to be very productive. It may seem counterproductive to take a break instead of putting more hours into solving something, but just trust the process.

Get meta with your productivity

I am a data nerd. Numbers, data, stats - these things don't lie! I've recently started tracking my progress when working on tasks. I'll record the complexity of the task, and a start and end time. Some questions I ask myself after: Why did this take longer than expected? Did I have anything else other than work on my mind? Did I get distracted or waste time at any point? What was my mood/energy level during this time of day and during the task? Once you look back at the data, you'll usually notice patterns and be able to adjust. I found out that I was least productive after taking a long lunch, and when there was a lot going on in the office (Skype calls with clients, loud phone conversations, etc.). So I adjusted by taking shorter lunches so I wouldn't completely lose focus, and if need be, step out to lunch somewhere quiet where I could recharge in silence. Now I've noticed that I actually get more work done in a shorter amount of time. Adjust. Adapt. Profit!

You don't have to get really anal about tracking and recording your work habits, but at least take a step back and try to see any patterns in your productivity.

6. Start a passion project.

If you have time, build something on your own time and revisit it every few weeks or months. Refactor your code and see what you've improved on or picked up in the past week(s).

7. Follow other developers on social media

Join the conversation - see what other developers are writing/talking/reading. Learn from them. Ask better questions. Two podcasts I enjoy listening to are Shop Talk and Developer Tea.

Some people I recommend following on Twitter:

• Eric Meyer
• Brad Frost
• Trent Walton
• Paul Irish
• Jeffrey Zeldman
• Chris Coyier
• Dave Rupert
• Ethan Marcotte

8. Share what you know.

One thing that I love about the industry is that it is built on a foundation of sharing knowledge and resources. If you're just starting out, you are (hopefully) literally learning something new every day. Document this, no matter how small you may think it is. Explaining what you learned will only help you understand it more yourself and might even help out others. It's a win-win for all. (I am actually really bad at this one, but one of my new year resolutions is to write more blogs and be more active on social media.)

9. Have fun!

Kinda cheesy, but also true. You get to sit at a desk, put on headphones, and solve problems using code. How cool is that? It still blows my mind that I get paid to do this, when truthfully I'd be doing it for free anyway (just don't tell my employers that). And it definitely doesn't hurt that I'm part of a team that creates some really amazing work.

My team and I are on the hunt to fill several key positions at our company.People are walking in and out of the office inquiring about positions, interviewing, and showcasing their talent. It would be an understatement to say that the optimism around the office is overwhelming.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I love this energy!

In early start-up life there are a few things that founding members and employees get excited about: revenue, profit, and momentum. Sure, money is great. Who doesn’t need money? You can pay your bills on time and continue to pay employees. And of course, when the company turns a profit everybody wins. Momentum is the next best thing.

Momentum is the electrifying feeling and knowledge that growth is happening right before your eyes.It’s the little things like making a run to Office Depot to buy more desks and chairs. It’s buying tools to mount white boards and other objects onto your bare walls. Most importantly, it’s on-boarding new team members to the team.

Building a company from scratch is a difficult endeavor. Seeing it grow and prosper is a blessing.

I love being able to send a quick message and be heard by potentially thousands of people in a matter of minutes. That’s huge! The amount of information we consume on a daily basis is truly amazing. But I wonder: how much am I actually learning and growing based on the type of information I consume?

As a young professional working at an early stage startup, I don’t have the luxury of being mentored by a more experienced industry leader. I have to push myself to grow and learn by consuming the right type of information.

I am at a point right now where I need to start investing in my own training.

I’m struggling with questions like:

• How do I scale my team?
• How can I optimize my sales process?
• How do I structure incentive plans?
• What software exists to make the life of my team easier?
• How do I navigate a complex sale?
• How do I negotiate with large companies?

I realize that there is a lot of readily available materials free of charge, but I’m finding out that the real gold is in high-quality training programs, niche conferences, and 1-on-1s.

One small problem: They are not cheap.

First-rate conferences are expensive. Private coaching is expensive. High-quality training programs cost money.

In my personal experience, there comes a point in your professional life where you feel stuck. You feel like you've reached your limit. It's a sucky feeling. It can feel like defeat. More so if you are a young professional.

When you reach this level of self-awareness you know its time to look for avenues that can help reduce your knowledge gap.

My solution is investing in high-quality training opportunities.

For 2016, I am:

• Attending 1 regional conference and 1 national conference.
• Finishing a high-quality training program based on the recommendation of my industry peers.
• Finding a mentor / coach that can help me think more clearly and strategically.

I've already begun this journey. The results so far have been exactly what I've been looking for.

Training is expensive, but worth it!

There is so much to do already: hiring, scaling processes, strategic planning, intelligence gathering, sales optimization, etc. Although I don't have to do all things by myself a lot of it still falls on me for the initial stages.

For those of you in business, I think it goes without saying that college can't possibly prepare you for business, much less start-up life.

So what in the world does college do??!

Here are 5 things I've personally learned:

• Stats 101. In start-up life we talk about "hacks," which is a way of doing things faster and more effectively. One of the key strategies I use is testing my methods via experiments. I remember learning about experimental methods back in college. These principals helped me understand the power of data. I use my stats skills EVERY SINGLE DAY.

• Psychology 101. Business is 10% technical skill and 90% people skills. How so? Dealing with people is the primary means of driving business forward. This year alone I've conducted over 50 face-to-face meetings, over 500 phone calls, and 10 or so interviews! The basic principals in psychology apply: what is the buyers true motivation? What is the root of their fear? Heck, I even throw down a Likert scale survey... "So on a scale of 1 to 1o" -- it works, folks!

• Speech 101. I do a lot of talking. Some might even go as far as saying that I talk for a living! One of my biggest take aways from college was learning how to speak to large audiences, small teams, and personal relationships. I learned theories of conflict communication, as well as family communication theories that have helped me understand to a small degree why people talk the way they do!

• Health & Wellness 101. Anyone that works at a start-up knows that work can have a toll on the body. It's not good. The weight gain, lower back pain, hurt wrists... ring a bell? I remember talking a wellness class in college that taught me principals of health, including stretching, proper posture, and breathing techniques. I don't think I would have picked up on these so soon if I didn't have to put these in practice for class!

• Theology 101. Start-up life can be chaotic to say the least. In theology class I learned to think about chaos vs. order -- good vs evil -- beginnings and ends. Those nights when I think about work, life, and the universe, I'm glad I have a basic framework to work with. Something to help navigate the big questions. What about you? Any big take aways from college that you apply in business / start-up life?

We talked business, personal development, and relationships. During our conversation, I couldn't help but think how much fun my work life has been this year.

I started working at our digital creative agency only a few months ago, but I feel like the people I've met have been my long lost friends.

Those of you with agency experience know that the relationships you have with colleagues can be either really good or really bad.

When you work at an agency you often work long hours, operate on tight deadlines, and run on coffee or XYinence. It's easy to get annoyed with one another when things aren't going so well, so you have to find ways to chill and remind yourself to have fun.

I'm thankful for the leadership at our agency for incorporating fun elements into the daily grind.

This year we:

• Ate fancy lunches.. just because
• Closed down a restaurant on a random Tuesday night
• Took some afternoons off to watch movies
• Threw a huge party
• Danced the night way

It's the little things we do in daily hustle that keep pushing us forward to do great work.

I've had a lot of fun at work in 2015. I'm committed to making 2016 equally enjoyable.

Hustle hard and have fun while you're at it!

So after listening to our first podcast, you now know to just get up and start taking action on your ideas. But where and how do you start?

Checkout the next podcast discussing what are the next steps in starting your own business.

Episode 2 - Where to Start by Luis Eduardo Trevino on Mixcloud

And there were so many great things to talk about, we actually split the podcast into two episodes.

Episode 3 - Where to Start Part 2 by Luis Eduardo Trevino on Mixcloud

As we mentioned at the end of our podcast "Part 2," we want to hear from you! Email us your feedback on how we can make the podcast better. :) hello [at] createthebridge.com

We just launched our very first podcast!

This episode is a quick introduction to the Just Start podcast. We created the Just Start podcast for the entrepreneur in everyone. We're very excited to start this and share our experience in providing listeners with actionable advice on starting a business.

Listen below.

Episode 1 - Just Start by Luis Eduardo Trevino on Mixcloud

As we mentioned at the end of our podcast. We want to hear from you! Comment below with questions or feedback on how we can make the podcast better. :)

It’s my third month at Create the Bridge, to say that I’m learning a lot would be an understatement. Before I started my internship I had very limited knowledge of the industry. I’ve since asked many questions, read countless articles and blogs, followed along with tutorials and screencasts, and written some of my own code to practice.

After a couple months of this, it was time to take the training wheels off and jump on my first project: implementing a slide down nav bar. It seemed simple enough but for a green dev such as myself, there were some hurdles along the way. In an industry that advocates for the sharing of knowledge, I hope that by sharing some things I learned along the way will help other beginners.

Getting Started

For this example, I’ll be using Haml, SCSS, and CoffeeScript to make things a bit more readable. First, a simple ul for our navigation links, and some links for our menu and site title:

%nav.top-bar-container
  %ul
    %li
      %a{href: '#'} One
    %li
      %a{href: '#'} Two
    %li
      %a{href: '#'} Three
    %li
      %a{href: '#'} Four
  .menu-items
    %h4.menu
      %a{href: '#'} MENU
    %h4.logo
      %a{href: '#'} Company Name

Let’s add some simple styling to get things going.

nav.top-bar-container {
  top: 0; left: 0; right: 0;

  ul {
    width: 100%;
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0;

    li {
      list-style: none;
      width: 25%;
      background: #34495e;
      border-right: 2px solid #2c3e50;
      box-sizing: border-box;
      float: left;

      &:last-child {
        border-right: none;
      }

      a {
        width: 100%;
        color: white;
        display: block;
        padding: 1.875em 0;
        font-weight: bold;
        text-decoration: none;
        text-transform: uppercase;
        text-align: center;
      }
    }
  }

  .menu-items {
    clear: both;
    padding: 1em 3em;

    h4 {
      a {
        color: #95a5a6;
        text-decoration: none;
        &:hover {
          color: #34495e;
          transition: 1s;
        }
      }
      &.menu {
        float: left;
      }

      &.logo {
        float: right;
      }
    }
  }
}

While I was toying around with styling this part, I was able to learn a couple new things. I had initially given most of the styling to the li elements but quickly realized this wasn’t the most efficient approach. By focusing on the li elements, the navigation links would only be clickable when hovering directly over the text, which would technically work but not be the most ideal. Instead, by giving the anchor tags display: block and some padding, the navigation links would now act as more of a button rather than a simple link.

Next came the challenge of getting the navigation bar to be responsive. I first approached it by giving the ul a width of 100%, and taking the border-right: 2px of the li elements into account, giving each li a width of 24.89%. Pretty solid logic, right? I confidently resized my browser window expecting a very fluid nav bar, but it quickly broke into two fragmented pieces and caused several more headaches for me. I tried several more fixes (some I am too embarrassed to even write about), but it still left me scratching my head for a bit. The fix ended up being very simple and obvious (as I’m quickly learning is the case with most fixes):

box-sizing: border-box;

To understand the way this CSS3 property works, we first have to understand how the box model works. If I had a div with a width of 300px, but then gave it 10px padding and a 2px border, at 100%, the true width of the div would now be 324px. If I were working with a fixed window size, perhaps my initial 24.89% would have worked (furthermore, I could’ve also written tons and tons of media queries, but that did not sound fun). However, if the parent div (window size) got wider, the nav bar wouldn’t touch the edges, and if the window was reduced, it’d cause the bar to spill out and break.

The box-sizing property, in all of its infinite wizardry, takes care of this by taking any padding and border into account and we can now use a nice and even 25% when declaring our width. Thus giving us a fluid navigation bar that looks great on any screen. Huzzah! For a more in-depth explanation of how this property works, check out this article over at CSS-Tricks.

Creating Hover Effects

As it is right now, our navigation bar is about 75% there. We’d still like to add some hover effects and get it to slide up and down on command. Let’s start with hovering. I used Hover.css, a library of CSS3 powered hover effects. Hover.css makes it incredibly easy to implement these effects, just copy and paste some code and give your li elements a class. For this example I used “underline reveal.” I assigned my li elements the class “hvr-underline-reveal” and tweaked the Hover.css code a bit to change the color of the bottom border, as well as the transition duration.

.hvr-underline-reveal {
  display: inline-block;
  vertical-align: middle;
  -webkit-transform: translateZ(0);
  transform: translateZ(0);
  box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);
  -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden;
  backface-visibility: hidden;
  -moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;
  position: relative;
  overflow: hidden;
}
.hvr-underline-reveal:before {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  z-index: -1;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  background: #2c3e50;
  height: 14px;
  -webkit-transform: translateY(14px);
  transform: translateY(14px);
  -webkit-transition-property: transform;
  transition-property: transform;
  -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s;
  transition-duration: 0.3s;
  -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out;
  transition-timing-function: ease-out;
}
.hvr-underline-reveal:hover:before, .hvr-underline-reveal:focus:before, .hvr-underline-reveal:active:before {
  -webkit-transform: translateY(0);
  transform: translateY(0);
}

Great. Now that we’ve got that working we can focus on getting the bar to slide down and up. To do this, I’ll use a bit of JavaScript to add a class when the “Menu” link is clicked. Before we write some JS though, first we should get the nav bar to be hidden when the page initially loads. To do this, I’ll use the property transform: translateY(-5.3125em) on the nav bar. All this does is move the object up or down (translateY) or sideways (translateX). By using a negative value, this will allow the nav bar to be out of sight when the page is loaded. We can give it a couple more properties to make sure it makes for a good user experience. position: fixed will make sure it stays visible as the user scrolls down the page, and z-index: 100 to make sure the nav bar is always at the top of the stack order so that other elements on the page don’t scroll in front of it.

We’ll have to create another class for when we want the nav bar to become visible. If we have transform: translateY(-5.3125em) to hide the bar, then our second class will simply declare transform: translateY(0) to make it visible. For some added oomph, let’s give both classes a property of transition: transform 0.5s, because we want a transition effect both when we open and close the nav bar. The final bit of code will look like so:

nav.top-bar-container {
  position: fixed; 
  top: 0; left: 0; right: 0;
  transform: translateY(-5.3125em);
  z-index: 100;
  transition: transform 0.5s;

  &.open {
    transform: translateY(0);
    transition: transform 0.5s;
  }
}

CoffeeScript Wizardry

Now that we have all of our styling done, it’s up to JavaScript to add/remove the “open” class to our nav bar (this is written in CoffeeScript syntax).

$(document).ready ->
  $('.menu').click (e) ->
    e.preventDefault
    $('nav').toggleClass 'open' 

Boom. We’ve got ourselves a nice little nav bar. A demo of it can be viewed here.

I’ll admit that piecing this together took a bit longer than I had hoped, but I’m quickly learning that there is no way around it. Sometimes the biggest annoyances ultimately lead to the biggest teaching moments. Luckily the dev community is built on a foundation of sharing knowledge and resources. I am excited, relieved, overwhelmed and sometimes even a bit terrified to be entering an industry that changes so rapidly and requires you to never grow stagnant. With that rapid change comes new challenges and room for growth, both of which I happily accept.