Today we’re taking an intermission from the normal marketing-heavy, keyword-stuffed, SEO-bait articles that occupy this space although to wish the happiest of birthdays to 1981 co-founder and all around awesome dude, Daniel Tomlinson!
I know he would not want me to pass up a good blog format on his behalf, so to digitally celebrate his big day, we’re taking a brief, 600+ word count look back on just some of the highlights from the past year of his life.
5 Awesome Things Daniel Tomlinson Did This Last Year!
1. Got Engaged!
Of course we have to start here. That lovely lady you see in the photo above (photo credit: Brooktree Studios) is Daniel’s better half, Bayleigh, and they got engaged this year! The two of them had just gotten together around the time Daniel and I had first met, and it’s been a gift to watch them build a life together over the last few years.
2. Moved to Springfield!
Speaking of life together, Daniel Tomlinson (full name because it’s the focus keyphrase of this blog) and Bayleigh also moved on up to the big city this year too. Decatur, Illinois (keyword) had essentially run out of hands to high five, so they packed things up and headed to Springfield (keyword) to explore all the possibilities the Land of Lincoln had to offer, including…
3. Started a Business!
The Journal of Psychosomatic Research lists “change in relationship status”, and “moving/change in living conditions” in the top half of life stressors, so why not add “Change in responsibilities at work”, “Change in work hours or conditions”, and “Change in sleeping habits” from the list as well and start your own marketing agency! While we have been laying the groundwork for it for much longer, 1981 Digital Marketing officially (and legally) became a business this last year, facebook official and all. This was something I have hesitated to take the leap into for years and Daniel came along and gave me the motivation to go for it. He is the heart of this company and 1981 could not possibly have a better partner.
4. Launched His First Website!
And with 1981, Daniel successfully launched our first website together this year! It was a doozy of a project and the details of that will be coming soon in another blog (or twelve), but The River in Decatur, Illinois was the catalyst that kicked off this entire partnership and has already helped it grow faster than we could even imagine. Although I’ve built hundreds of sites, whenever someone wants an example of work I’ve done, this is the first one I pull up. Whereas most websites would simply show that “this is a cool place sells coffee”, Daniel added unique visual touches that perfectly captured the warm, comfortable, hospitable, feeling inside of the shop that the community loves about it.
Oh, and on top of all of that:
5. Daniel Tomlinson Started Training for a Freaking Half Marathon!
I was almost reluctant to add this one since I didn’t want to jinx him with shin splits or something when he’s only a few weeks out, but as if my dude didn’t already check enough boxes this year, he also got the running bug and started training for the Lincoln Presidential Half Marathon. I expect for his birthday next year he’ll be eying the Appalachian Trail.
Between everything else that Daniel crams into a week, let alone an entire year, you would think he wouldn’t have time for anything else, and yet we could easily triple the size of this list with things like: constantly doing incredible photography and video work, periodically dusting off the guitar and playing music with his band, getting some road trips in, helping people move even though they didn’t help you move although to be fair you didn’t tell them your exact moving day and they found out you had already moved the day after on Instagram, consuming a concerning amount of coffee, and on and on. Needless to say, the guy is annoyingly talented, endlessly creative, and while he’s always on the go I’ve never seen him too busy to stop for a few minutes and talk for a bit with an acquaintance at a Panera as if they weren’t best friends for years. Happy Birthday, friend. I can’t wait to see what the next year has in store for you.
(…for fun, I did set the focus keyphrase and optimized the blog because we’re nerds and can’t help ourselves and I wanted to see what our analytics on this article will look like in a year. HBD!)
