Happy to report that Expect Success Coaching and Training went live over this past weekend. Created by Steve Thornton and Lynn D Spencer, Expect Success is a business coaching and personal development training system hosted online.
It includes over 100 video and audio "modules" on topics such as gaining and increasing wealth, managing a team effectively, setting and achieving life goals, and many related topics.
Going one-step further, to the benefit myself and many other business owners, Steve and Lynn address these topics from the Christian worldview. That’s not to say the principles are unapplicable to non-Christians. On the contrary, I think the spiritual grounding will provide unique insights not found in many other books and coaching materials.
The content is delivered via video, audio sessions, and weekly live webinars – and each module is nearly one hour long.
Currently the team is adding about 10 new modules every month, often directed by the needs and requests of those members who are actively involved with the program.
My role with Expect Success was an afterthought, and only happened because I called Steve one afternoon last April to catch up and discuss new business opportunities. Eventually I was brought on-board to fill their website conversion needs and offer guidance with the marketing overall.
The result was an entirely new website design, auto-responder sequence, testing and tracking guidelines, SEO, and the list goes on.
Accepting work from a client where I’m not an equity partner is a rare choice these days. However, the system was rolling, the men leading have a good track record, and affiliates were already promoting.
Without sharing details, I agreed to be paid based on results, on-going. This aligns with my firm belief that designers should look for projects that provide long-term income after the initial work has been completed.
This topic will be expanded in the future, but the bottom-line principle is to find clients where you can deliver value and get paid more than once. The obvious (and greatly discouraged) alternative is to work hourly – or flat-rate – for a client and not get a dime more once the project has been uploaded to the server.
Website Design / Development
The website was developed using WordPress and the Thesis theme. It was my second Thesis theme customization, after my personal blog, and required I dig further into hooks and custom functions – especially for a homepage template that was greatly different from the inner pages.
One trick required adding a div region for the drop shadow – seen along the left and right side of the inner pages, and around the opt-in box on the homepage.
function dropshadow_background() {
if (is_home() || is_front_page()) { ?>
<div id="homepage_dropshadow">
<?php } elseif (is_page(‘blog’)) { ?>
<div id="dropshadow_background">
<?php } else { ?>
<div id="dropshadow_background">
<?php }
}
add_action(‘thesis_hook_before_content_area’, ‘dropshadow_background’);
That allows a different background (in this case, a dropshadow) on the homepage, blog, and inner pages.
Followed by:
function close_dropshadow() { ?>
</div>
<?php }
add_action(‘thesis_hook_after_content_area’, ‘close_dropshadow’);
That closes the div opened by the first set of code. Without this, your page layout is likely to break.
Also, I’ve joined the club that officially refuses to consider IE6 in the development pipeline. If you visit the site with decade-old software, you’ll receive a kind greeting and reminder that you should embrace 2010 by upgrading your browser.
On a side note, I impressed the management team (and myself) when I remembered the name of the font used in their logo. For whatever reason, I’ve always considered font memorization as a sign that you need more time away from the computer…
