LifeTwo in 2007

As the first full year of operation for LifeTwo comes to a close, it is time for our resolutions. Of course, being a business we don't really do resolutions. Instead we establish new processes & procedures and put together an annual plan.

Being a young company, an Internet start-up no less, we find that too much changes in the course of a year so we do quarterly plans and having just finished our first quarter 2007 plan I thought you'd find it interesting what we are going to do:

1. Continued focus on the topic of "midlife crisis." LifeTwo is about providing help for the major decisions that individuals make in midlife. But this is a very broad area for a new company to tackle so we decided to at launch to emphasize midlife crisis. We felt this was an important area that was under-served on the Internet (if that is even possible). A great deal of our traffic comes from people searching for information on midlife crisis and we will continue to add to the resources that we provide. In the first quarter you are going to see us add a great deal of new information into our soon-to-be-renamed "20 Questions about Midlife Crisis" (more on that below).

2. Add a second major area of focus: midlife career change. We'll call the new section the "Second Career" but the reality is that it will be for helping people with their 2nd, 3rd and 4th careers. Midlife career changes are a natural follow-on to midlife crises. They are enormously stressful, exciting, risky, etc. and require a tremendous amount of soul-searching, planning and research--exactly the types of things we like to do. We will be creating a dedicated Second Career section on the site, with it's own "home page".

3. Changing the site's organization. Before launching, we spent six months building an organizational structure for LifeTwo (our taxonomy). We then spent six months living with it and watching how you our readers use the site. Of course in the process we learned that everything has to be changed and you will see topics, tags and sections all changed to reflect how you look for and access the site. There is a business adage that the best thing you can do when building an Internet company is launch and watch, and the worst thing is to plan, plan and plan while sitting on the sidelines. In short, we agree.

4. Site design. In addition to updating our taxonomy, we are going to revamp our layout, especially the home page and "topic home pages." We are going to redesign the home page to make it both cleaner and more engaging for exploration. The goal is that you not only find what you are looking for but you also see other things of relevance and interest along the way. We are also going to create topic home pages for our major topics. Initially this will be for Midlife Crisis and Second Careers. Others will be rolled-out later in the year.

5. Interviews. Over the past few months we have started running interview of people that we believe are doing unique and interesting things with middle age life whether they be authors, entrepreneurs or researchers. These have been very well received and we will probably increase the frequency and variety of these.

6. LifeTwo Podcasts. Sometime in the first quarter we will be launching the LifeTwo podcast series. Our first set of six will feature LifeBite's Nina Boski. Nina is an accomplished media personality and currently has a show on Sirius Radio and on the Lime TV cable network.

7. Enlarging the LifeTwo family. You have almost certainly seen some new names pop up as contributors. For example, Dave Schoof is a leadership coach with extensive expertise with midlife crises. Among other things Dave has added valuable information about the do's and don'ts when encountering what he terms "the disquiet." It is excellent reading. We are in discussions with others who expressed interest in contributing and are always open to finding more. Just let us know. (While not a contributor, yet, we'd like to also thank Rhea at Boomer Chronicles with whom we created the BloggingBoomers).

Please let us know your suggestions (by comments or email) and thank you for making our first year a success.