{"id":56699,"date":"2014-11-26T08:50:08","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T13:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=56699"},"modified":"2014-11-26T08:52:48","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T13:52:48","slug":"ranger-up-paying-it-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=56699","title":{"rendered":"Ranger Up: Paying it forward"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Actually meant to do a post about this a few weeks ago when it was on Fox, but couldn&#8217;t find the link until I looked around this morning.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been lucky that I ran into this guy Nick Palmisciano a few years ago, and we really hit it off.\u00a0 Like myself he was in the Army (albeit he was unfortunately an officer) and we are both from Massachusetts.\u00a0 So, mostly we just bonded over sports teams, and his made up drink which invoves Irish Car Bombs, shots of Jaegermeister and red bull, followed by making the bear fight movement from the movie Anchorman.<\/p>\n<p>Suffice to say, that I think highly of him.\u00a0 Once a year I go through my clothes and toss some, and it occurred to me that in the T-Shirt division roughly 3\/4 of what I own are Ranger Up shirts.\u00a0 Like this one, which is my favorite:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.burnpit.us\/sites\/default\/files\/Trex.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, a few weeks ago Fox News did a piece on how Nick runs his company, and how he is paying it forward.\u00a0 It really speaks to me about how vets look out for other vets:<\/p>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/video.foxnews.com\/v\/embed.js?id=3887640715001&amp;w=466&amp;h=263\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><noscript>Watch the latest video at &amp;amp;lt;a href=&#8221;http:\/\/video.foxnews.com&#8221;&amp;amp;gt;video.foxnews.com&amp;amp;lt;\/a&amp;amp;gt;<\/noscript><\/p>\n<p>There was also an awesome story this week in a somewhat unlikely place, the website of Dr. Steven Pressfield.\u00a0 Pressfield is an author, and specifically the author of my favorite book of all time Gates of Fire about the battle of Thermopylae.\u00a0 If you liked the movie 300, this is like 10 times better.\u00a0 Not only do I own the book, but I have the audio book which I listen to nightly.\u00a0 (I have weird sleep issues, so listening to the same thing over and over calms me.)\u00a0 It kind of broke my heart when I had a bad email experience with Dr. Pressfield who was openly critical of both Iraq and Afghanistan.\u00a0 But he&#8217;s such an incredible author I try to forget our politics are so different.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the beginning of his piece about Nick and Ranger Up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stevenpressfield.com\/2014\/11\/ranger-up-leads-the-way\/\">which should be read<\/a>\u00a0in full:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Nick Palmisciano was earning a quarter million a year when he learned he was being promoted \u2014 a promotion that would add another hundred thousand or so to his income.<\/p>\n<p>The promotion announcement landed on a Friday. The following Monday he gave his notice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew that if I took that promotion, the golden handcuffs were being slapped on and <a title=\"Ranger Up\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rangerup.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #0066cc;\">Ranger Up<\/span><\/span><\/a> was going to die\u2014and I was going to spend my life working for other people doing something I really didn\u2019t care about that much,\u201d said Nick.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is Ranger Up?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In Nick\u2019s words, \u201cRanger Up is a content machine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t let the t-shirts and jeans on the home page of its site fool you into thinking it\u2019s an apparel company. Yes, there\u2019s the clothing, but if you dig, you\u2019ll find a full-fledged media company, leveraging its free content to move pay-walled content.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike many other content providers, who are struggling to monetize their content, offering a free article here and there and then banking on the hope that readers will buy a subscription instead of site jumping to another URL where more free content is available, Ranger Up offers a seemingly endless supply of videos and images\u2014including the original series \u201c<a title=\"You Tube: The Damn Few\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PL-6e-ZX4aO-kzJw55JPm8k2O-rZ2kG129\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #0066cc;\">The Damn Few<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u201d and the \u201c<a title=\"Rhino Den\" href=\"http:\/\/rhinoden.rangerup.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #0066cc;\">Rhino Den<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u201d blog. The content being created by Ranger Up is distinct. It isn\u2019t available in bulk online, which means its audience is digging in its heels and sticking around for more. In turn, this content has helped them engage, retain and grow a community that pays for content, too, in the form of t-shirts and jeans and signs and other gear, rather than site jumping for its next dose of free content.<\/p>\n<p>How\u2019s that working for Ranger Up?<\/p>\n<p>According to <em><a title=\"Internet Retailer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.internetretailer.com\/2014\/01\/07\/how-rangerupcom-drives-big-sales-facebook\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #0066cc;\">Internet Retailer<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/em>, Ranger Up\u2019s \u201chigh level of engagement is what drove $750,000 in social commerce sales for the e-retailer in 2013\u2014as 28% of its total online sales came from shoppers who clicked to the site from social networks. The role of social networks in driving traffic is even greater: Nearly 39% of Ranger Up\u2019s 2013 traffic stemmed from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube . . . . That earn[ed] the merchant the No. 2 spot in this year\u2019s Social Media 500, which ranks online retailers by the percentage of traffic they receive from social networks, a measure of how effectively they are reaching their audience via social media.\u201d So, if anyone cares what I am Thankful for at this time of year, high on that list is guys like Nick that look out for their brothers in arms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you want to buy their T-Shirts for Christmas presents,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rangerup.com\/\"> you can go to their website.\u00a0\u00a0<\/a> This is the one I am asking for.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.burnpit.us\/sites\/default\/files\/Ranger%20up%202_0.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Actually meant to do a post about this a few weeks ago when it was on &hellip; <a title=\"Ranger Up: Paying it forward\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=56699\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ranger Up: Paying it forward<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}