By CHRIS HOBBS
HobbsDailyReport.com
DENVER, N.C. – My birthday just passed (August 1), which means it’s the time of year to pin the ears back and do what I do – and have been doing – for 43 years.
As high school football season (and volleyball, boys’ soccer, girls’ tennis, cross country and girls’ golf) near their starts and I spend anywhere from probably eight to 14 hours virtually every day from August to early June focused on local sports, it dawned on me on my birthday that I need to thank several people for helping me launch HobbsDailyReport.com.
The two current advertisers most involved – Dwayne Wilson Insurance and Burke Mortuary – have allowed me to focus on developing the website, even though it has a staff of one… thanks for taking that leap of faith.
And there’s a behind-the-scenes guy who deserves a shout out. There would be no HobbsDailyReport.com if he hadn’t accepted the challenge of helping a novice venture into a new realm.
He’s a former co-worker who many years ago always pushed the idea that my own sports website was what I should be doing.
Chad Austin, of Chad Austin Marketing and Media Design in Hickory, used to walk by my desk, look at me and say: “Why are you here?” and tell me that someday — when I got smart(er) — we could end up working together.
If you have visited the site – which you have if you are reading this – consider Chad if you have marketing and design needs. He makes it simple.
When I called Chad to tell him my situation and what I wanted to do, he accepted by business and jumped in and helped me get launched. That was about 107 days ago.
How simple did he make it? Very.
He asked me what I wanted to name the site, what colors I wanted to associate with it and we agreed on costs and moved forward immediately.
I told him only a targeted launch date and colors needed to be Los Angeles Rams blue and gold. By the time we finalized those colors, the name HobbsDailyReport.com and the graphics for the site were already ready.
Chad’s continuing to work on setting up the individual school pages as the area high school sports approach, on making the site “purty” and mentoring me on being a business person and on understanding the technical aspects of maintaining a website.
It’s a new adventure.
It’s hard work with sometimes long hours but rewarding because how good or bad — or useful or useless — the content is depends on me as the reporter I’ve always been (even though I had roles as an editor for a big part of my 40-plus years in journalism).
Lord willing, it’s how I am going to end a career that I’ve been fortunate to have had. It began way back in 1976… and I have designs on staying around until at least 2020 to reach having covered local sports in six different decades.
Thanks for visiting and reading.
Please reach out at hobbsdailyreport@gmail.com with comments and suggestions as I learn more and more about how to provide what readers want.