Basically what it boils down to is a network/community site about dogs. I’ve currently got the main domain, PoopieDogs.com and about 80+ other domains. GreyhoundPoop.com, AkitaPoop.com, DachshundPoop.com, etc…

What I really want to know is if you think this is a cute, catchy idea… Or if I should scrap those names in favor of something less… disgusting than “poop”.

Let me know what you think in the poll and the comments, and please RT and share this with all your other friends so they too can weigh in? I’d really appreciate it! (And don’t worry about offending me… I want HONEST opinions!)

Update: I remembered that I have GreyhoundSpirit.com – could also run with that if you guys think it’s a good idea.

Today I’d like to talk about the people I met at the ProBlogger Dinner, courtesy @TasteMGMGrand and FiAMMA Trattoria. A few of these people I’d met before, but never had the chance to really spend time with them, and a few are “new” to me.

Photo Courtesy: Reem Abeidoh

Left to Right: Lisa Morosky, Jen Wilson, Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Patrick O’Keefe, Zane Aveton, Darren Rowse, Reem Abeidoh, and me.

First, Darren’s guests who were invited to come along with us to help make the dinner great for the winners of the draw to attend.

Patrick has this book called Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards that’s been a pretty big hit. I’m excited to start reading it myself, given the recent launch of ProBlogger.COMmunity. He also owns the iFroggy network, a collection of websites and communities on various topics.

Chris is an amazing, sweet, kind man who takes the time to connect with every human being who crosses his path. He’s also a big deal, in case you’re not aware. His latest co-authored book, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust made the New York Times Bestseller List and I strongly recommend that if you do business of ANY kind online that you get and read this book. He’s also the President of New Marketing Labs where he works with another coolie guy I met and had a heart to heart with at BWE, Justin Levy.

Brian’s all about copywriting, online marketing, and showing people how to have success with their blogging and writing efforts. He’s truly an amazing teacher in this regard. His free PDF Authority Rules: The 10 Rock Solid Elements of Effective Online Marketing is fantastic and a highly recommended read.

Zane Aveton (@zaneology) – This chick ROCKS. She’s one of the funniest, outgoing, sweet-hearted people I think I’ve ever met. She lives out loud (one of my favorite types of people) and is original and stylish to boot! Zane’s going places – she’s the energetic one. She’s the one who knows where all the “cool geeks” are hanging out. She’s got AMAZING shoes.

Part 1 – KB (Karen Bell) is here.

Of course I met so many fantastic people, it’s inevitable that I’ll either forget a few or won’t be able to include them all. Please know that this doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy meeting them, or don’t adore them. It’s just impossible, as this entire blog would be full of them!

This is part one of “I have no idea how many parts this is going to have”. I also don’t know how long it’s going to take. I want to take my time with this, and really devote the energy to it these great people deserve from me.

So without further explanation, here’s part one.

Karen (KB) Bell

As you may know, I work for Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. We got the chance to give away a Weekend Pass to someone for BWE and ran a little competition on the site to find the best person to give the pass to. People from all over the world had entered, offering up their idea of why they felt they deserved the pass. There were so many great entries, it was hard for us to pick one, but KB’s stood out to me and when I suggested her to Darren, he agreed.

KB is a spiritual life coach, musician, and all around sweetheart. I can’t explain the sense of peace and happiness I had just in our everyday conversation, much less just being around her with friends. She’s amazing, beautiful, and a new friend I’m absolutely blessed to have.

She was so excited when I emailed her! I had her call me and I was in the casino at MGM at the time, so I told her just to book her travel arrangements and I’d call her back when I got up to my room. Once we had some time to talk, I explained that like her, I have retired racing greyhounds and it was really neat that she did too. KB makes handmade martingale dog collars, which are the preferred style for sighthounds, and they’re gorgeous. (She brought me one for one of my babies… how sweet!)

What really moved me about her was initially the video she posted with her entry. I’d like for you to take a minute to watch if you don’t mind. You’ll see what made me fall in love with her right off the bat.

Karen, thank you for spending so much of your time with me. I’m blessed by it and can’t wait to make a trip up to Toronto to hang out again soon! <3

You can follow KB at @ktotheb on Twitter.

My next post in this series will cover the folks who came to the ProBlogger Dinner at FiAMMA.

Last night, @TasteMGMGrand and FiAMMA Trattoria treated us to the most absolutely amazing Vegas dining experience. We all had our pick from the “Fall Tasting Menu” but on top of that Chef Carlos Buscaglia wanted us to have a true sampling of what FiAMMA is made of. (He also came out to the table afterward to meet us all. I can’t remember, but aren’t you supposed to applaud the chef? Part of me wanted to – because he’s amazing – but I think we were all in such a food coma that we didn’t  think about it. I feel bad… But I did talk with him and I totally gushed over the food. I hope that helped!)

We started our meal with a salad of mixed greens with the most AMAZING dressing I’ve ever had, and blackened shrimp. After that, we were presented with about a dozen different dishes to share around the table. Fresh pastas, short rib ravioli with truffle sauce, rolls with honey-truffle butter, octopus, arancini, fresh mozzarella (with that creamy stuff inside – can’t remember what it’s called but I’ve had it before and it’s amaaaazing), lobster gnocchi and more… I swear, I’ve been around the world and I’ve never had so much delicious food at one meal in my life.

After that, they brought out our choice main dishes. There was a pasta dish that I don’t think anyone had ordered because we all wanted something rich and protein-filled I guess. The majority at the table ordered the skirt steak while a few of us (myself included) ordered the salmon. I love salmon, but I’ve never had salmon like this! It was served on a chunky tomato base with asparagus. It was phenomenal. I don’t think I can ever look at salmon the same – I’m a salmon snob now!

Pic by @lisamorosky

As if that weren’t enough, we all received dishes of Panna Cotta with dried mission figs that were soaked in some kind of amazing something I can’t remember right now but wow… it was delish! A nice palate cleanser. But oh no, we’re not done yet… These HUGE dessert plates came out with a sampling of 8 MORE desserts! There were three kinds of gelato in little cups, tiramisu and these “donut holes” my Aunt Jeanette calls zeppolis (which I’m surprised they don’t call them that at FIAMMA, since it’s Italian) and people in New Orleans call beignets with 3 different dipping sauces. There was a dessert that can only be described as some kind of chocolate cakey raspberry torte something. Another ice cream coated in chocolate. I really honestly can’t even describe it.

I left the table feeling like it was a Royal Thanksgiving meal and I needed to unbutton my pants and sit back on the sofa for a nap!

Oh! And the sommelier was wonderful too. He brought us champagne and a sparkling dessert wine. Oh, and if you go, head to the bar and see Tom. He’s awesome.

So how did all this come about? Well, my super cool boss Darren Rowse (@problogger) had asked me to see if I could try to arrange some kind of small party or meetup for us and a few guests when we were in Vegas for BlogWorld. I knew we were staying here at MGM Grand so I wanted to try to get something going here. (It’s my fave place in Vegas.) Thanks to @TasteMGMGrand and FiAMMA, we had invited 8 guests plus ourselves for this glorious meal.

Our guest list included Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan), Patrick O’Keefe (@ifroggy), Brian Clark (@copyblogger), Reem Abeidoh (@rabeidoh), Lisa Morosky (@lisamorosky), Jen Wilson (@jenwilsonphoto), and Zane (@zaneology). So yeah – it wasn’t just about the great food, we had GREAT company, too! Thanks to everyone for coming, it was a great kickoff to our BWE experience!

Lisa’s review (with pics of the gang).

I’ve noticed that I haven’t updated any of my own blogs in several, several months.

I’m totally not complaining, but it’s before 5am on a Friday morning and after going to bed at 830pm last night because I had a headache, I’ve spent the past hour and a half trying to focus.

My life right now is REALLY good. I mean, I’m way happy with work stuff, current projects are awesome. I’m finally starting to see the fruits of my last 5 years working for myself. It’s a wonderful feeling when you start to realize that your self-employment dreams are kinda coming true.

I’m headed to Blog World Expo 2009 with Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) in less than a week, and am working on tying up work’s loose ends before I go. I’ve really never had to do that before… LOL

Current and Recently Completed Projects:

• ProBlogger.COMmunity – I’m the community manager for this great new project by Darren. I’m insanely excited about this project, to say the least.
• Thirteen Yards to Victory – These guys are amazing. Really talented, adorable, and the epitome of the “Pay It Forward” mentality.
• Cars4Cancer – Raising money to directly help cancer patients. This is what this country needs more of. Real help for real people.
• TwiTip – I’m the assistant editor for TwiTip, another project by Darren Rowse.

There are a few other projects in the works, some small, some not so much. I’m not willing to talk about them much right now because they’re not entirely confirmed yet.

The bottom line? If all works out, I’m booked through January and beyond.

Now, all I need is a love life.

Okay so it’s become painfully obvious to me that my business has gotten so busy that I have severely neglected my personal projects. My company blog is lacking in a major way, but so are all my other little pet projects.

I’m definitely an “idea woman” and I find that I get compelled to act upon every new idea I have. What I’d really love is to have a full staff of people whom I can afford to pay full time to help me keep all these little ideas running (and growing, of course). Just not happening at the moment, that’s for sure.

I’m kind of notorious for taking on too much sometimes, too. Sure, the money’s great, but when my stress level reaches 11 on a ten-point scale and I’ve got no time to spend with friends or family, the money seems so not worth it sometimes.

Okay wait, that’s a flat-out lie. The money’s really worth it, it’s just trying to get others to understand sometimes that’s difficult.

So here’s the problem: I’ve got too much I want to do, versus what I need to do.

What’s the solution?

Do I drop some of my personal project ideas? Does that mean selling off the domains that I just KNOW are going to be really great projects/money makers? Or does that mean continuing to dump a couple hundred bucks a year into the domains just so I can hang onto them until I have time or a staff?

Do I try to develop a hard-core, rigid schedule? I do tend to wander sometimes, as I often work best on borrowed time, but maybe it’s time to really work hard at overcoming that.

I’m really leaning on sitting down and mapping out a plan for the rest of the year, as best I can, to include a certain amount of “personal project” time, and then spidering that out into time spent on each project before I determine whether or not it’s a pass/fail.

Here’s a very generalized list of the projects:

1. Very large, specified niche network of blogs. Goal was to have at least one writer for each blog, with approximately 60-80 blogs. Would need major sponsorship I think, in order to get it rolling properly. Would need help acquiring such sponsorship.
2. Personal finance blog/possible network. I have mine started, but think it would be nice (in this economy) to help others.
3. Weight loss/health blog (possibly opening it up to a social network). This has been one of my many babies for over a dozen years. One I’m pretty positive I’m not ready to give up on.
4. Luxury living blog/possible network. (I know, a contradiction to #2, but I’m thinking it’s nice to dream, right?)
5. Fashion/beauty blog. (I’ve kind of had this tied into the weight loss blog, which is odd and un-fitting. Would like to branch it off.)

Now, keep in mind that I am still running the consutling business full-speed, and am possibly looking at taking on a solid 50 hours of work each week with that. I know, in no other country but America do people work so much, but given my own valid reasons, I really don’t mind as much or as often as many would.

So what wisdom or sage advice would you offer? I’d love to hear opinions as I work my way through this grasping of control and fun and making a living that I’m doing! Please share in the comments!

Meet Chicken II…

Chicken II is the great-great-great-great-grandturtle of Chicken I, however since we’re not sure how many “greats” belong in there, and we haven’t seen Chickens in a few years, we decided to name her Chicken II. Okay, I need to explain why I’m calling turtles chickens now, don’t I?

When I was a little girl, we had this turtle that would come to the front yard from the creek across the street. She’d find a nice spot in the landscaping (and even one time under my dad’s car, in the gravel driveway) and would lay a whole mess of eggs. I’d sit there and watch her for hours… it was the coolest thing my young eyes had seen.

Of course, being the animal loving freak that I am, whenever Chicken was done, she’d cross the street and go back into the creek… but I’d be worried about her making it all that way without a car coming through and taking her life. So I’d walk with her. I’ve stopped more cars that come flying down the street so they didn’t hit my sluggish friend… one older man once got out and yelled at me, and then went up to the door and yelled at my parents!

In any event, it became the joke around the house… “Why did the chicken cross the road? To lay eggs in the Kulpa’s yard, of course!” We had even convinced the mayor of the village to erect signs resembling the deer crossing signs you see… only with a silhouette of a turtle, instead of a deer! There was one sign on either side of our property line… It was so cool…

So back to Chicken II…

I noticed her crawling through the driveway and followed her as she headed toward the street. I looked for trails, wondering where she’d been, where she came from, but I saw none. She had a leech on her back leg that I tried to remove with a stick, only to later remember table salt, and regretted not having used it. She was covered in swampy moss and mud, as any glamorous turtle would be, and then I saw this…

Chicken II is missing her left eye. She’s trucking along, like any proud turtle would do… and she’s missing an eye. It looked like it’d been poked out by something, and just healed up and she’s all good to go. It made me feel like I was sneaking up on her though… so I wound up switching sides a lot because I was trying to get some good shots of her.

We hung out in the driveway for a while, before she decided that she needed a break and some rest in the shade…

That’s my dad’s van… later she moved to underneath my car. And no, she didn’t lay eggs anywhere this visit… more on that later.

I was leaving to meet a friend for dinner and I was concerned of course, about Chicken II being under my car, so I had my father help me navigate around her. When I came home, I was sure she’d have been back under my father’s van but I couldn’t find her.

I walked around the house to see if she went to the creek in the woods behind our property. No trails, no Chicken.

I walked across the front of the house, looked under some big pine trees, into the neighbor’s yard, and under some lilac bushes. No trails, no Chicken.

I even checked across the street, to see if I could see her in the banks of the creek, and there was nothing. No trails, no Chicken.

So I came in and my father had left me a note:

Ra,
Chicken II hung around for a little while, then slowly scratched her way to the street. I watched over her as she turtle scurried her way to the other side, then slid her way down to the creek. She swam away with a smile on her face and memories of a nice day at the Kulpa’s with a long nap under your car.
Love, Dad

Ahh, the joys of taking life a little slower. Sometimes we all need to be reminded that we don’t have to “do something” (like laying eggs) but rather it’s more important to be finding some nice shade and taking a nap on a hot day is what’s going to put smiles on our faces. That there’s nothing at all wrong with just taking… life… a little… slower. No matter what you’ve been through in the past.

See ya next year, Chicken II! Thanks for the lesson, you wise old gal…

[All images © Lara Kulpa. All rights reserved, may not use without permission.]

I feel outcasted. I feel like all these people who I call my online friends and I are SO different right now.

One of the things I’ve seen a few mention is that watching the sea of people and the looks on their faces is inspiring to them. There are so many ways to look at it, though. My father, a staunch conservative, might look at it and say that those people are jaded. That they drank the proverbial Kool-Aid and they have no idea what’s ahead of them. There are so many who are self-proclaimed “non-believers” yet they’re wearing the look of divine spirituality while watching this man take office. There are people who are talking about this man like he’s already a leader, and I happen to think that leaders need to prove themselves. He can’t possibly have done that yet, being he’s only been our new Commander In Chief for approximately 90 minutes at the time of my writing this.

I’m not against anyone who is capable of doing the job of President actually being elected to do the job – male, female, young, old, black, white, or otherwise. I just don’t have enough faith in this man’s experiences to believe (yet) that he’s the right man.

That being said, I do hope that I get to develop that faith in him. I really do hope that all this emotive strength that so many are feeling is real. I think that not hoping for that WOULD make me a bad American. To me, America is supposed to be the place where dreams and visions can and do come true. America is supposed to be full of inspired people, all helping each other to live their pursuit of happiness with excitement and vision. But I also know that it’s not the reality for everyone. There has to be a balance – we’re not a world based on Utopia, and we’re really never meant to be there.

I’m worried that the people in this country who really don’t want to work hard at making their dreams come true are going to have other peoples’ dreams handed to them. I’m worried that in the quest for balance, those who fought to beat the odds are going to get a bad hand.

I’m reminded of how in my naiive youth I once asked why, if there is so much poverty and pain, that the government didn’t just “make more money”. By that I meant, head down to the US Mint, and place an order for more $100 bills to be printed. I thought of it like I did making your own business cards or something. I wasn’t aware of how things worked, and it didn’t make sense to me. However as I got older, I’d heard of stories where homeless people were rounded up, cleaned up, trained to work, given clothes and warm places to stay, and handed jobs – and then they’d not go. They’d give up on the best opportunity they could’ve ever imagined, and go back to living in cardboard boxes on the streets. They saw what it was like, first hand, to live as a productive member of society, and CHOSE to go backward. I’ve heard of stories of men who had spent decades in prison, also given training in a trade, and upon their release didn’t know how to handle the world so they’d commit another crime just to get back into the slammer, or worse, had killed themselves.

That’s so NOT inspiring.

Yet I watch these estimated two million people who went to DC today… I see the looks on their faces as if they really feel their world (their environment, their own personal “world”) is all okay now. It’s not, people. There is LOTS of work to be done, and we cannot just sit here and assume that all the decisions that will be made will be for our individual best interests.

President Obama made a nod to “small business” in his speech, and Twitter went crazy with people who consider themselves entrepreneurs and small business owners. The truth is, you and your blogs or your web design businesses (myself included) are NOT “small business”… we are most literally, MICRO businesses. We’re still at the very bottom of the food chain, and these proposed changes aren’t going to affect us, I promise you. We still have to work twice as hard, we have to give our work every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears we have (and even that borrowed from our families) to even reach small business status where Obama’s supposed changes are going to benefit.

I’m inspired, I promise you. I know it might not sound like it, but it’s fear that’s inspiring me most right now. It’s the thought that all this hope, all this inspiration that’s so strong right now is going to fade out and we’re going to find ourselves right back to where we were as a nation, or worse. I can no longer worry about people as individuals, as I have to spend so much energy worrying about myself, and I admit that makes me a little sad. I have to step up MY game. I have to work harder, all because I need to be able to find that faith in our new President. I have to see results that I otherwise might not even have paid attention to, or all the negativity is going to eat me alive.

To quote Loren Feldman: “They work harder than you do.” That’s where successful people are. That’s where they move from micro business to small business and where they live within inspiration. I want to BE inspiration for others, for myself, for my godkids and for my future children. I want to work my way into feeling the way the blind faith believers are feeling right now. That’s the only way to know that I was truly inspired and successful.