Overnight something wholly amazing happened.
They opened their email box one morning a month into the passively pushed campaign and found they had, honest to Bob, over 7,000 submissions requesting to be a part of the campaign. Emails poured in from all over the nation taking part in the submission. We all clamored to the marketers’ desk to see this with our own eyes. An email box so overloaded with requests it called to mind the commercial of the new business that puts its store online and the orders just keep going up, and up, and up. Just like the emails that continued to pour in.

From joy to panic.
Some thought it was spam. Some were excited at the potential of something they did being that “viral”. Some freaked out at how they were going to service all of the requests with a limited supply.

With one of their web team helping, I started looking through some of the emails to see if we could detect signs of spamming. We couldn’t find any that were that obvious. The submission forms were filled out were each unique, accurate, and different, that the only thing that kept the curiosity of it being spam was the frequency of how these came in. It was roughly twenty emails a minute with each second a part from each other.

The Google Search is strong with this one.
So there we sat, debating on what to do, and I thought “Google will have the answer”. I threw the name of the campaign between some quotes in Google’s search box and hit send. My screen, and Google’s Search results, were maxed out with Freebie Sites, sites that do nothing but list where to find, and how to get, free stuff online, listing the “Free Gift” that came with campaign and how to get it.

I figured, “if it’s already this deep into Google…where else could it be”. I turned m search to the tools of Social Media. The links started popping up on Twitter with a link back to the directions on how to get the “Free Gift”. It was in different spots all throughout Social Media.

In a very short time, less then ten hours, the “Free Gift” had spread like wild fire. It was time for some damage control.

From excitement to frustration
From there, I created a timeline of when the first Freebie Site listed the campaign, which linked off of it, when other posts picked it up, and cross referenced it with when the emails came in and how often they spiked. Yeah, I know, I’m a geek. My wife reminds me constantly. Sure enough, the spike in email requests coincided with each time the campaign appeared on a Freebie Site.

This wasn’t spam after all, but an army of people who collectively thought the “Free Gift” was worth their time to blog about the “Free Gift” and share how sign up for it. They rallied their own troops, got the message out, and took action on it. This was truly an example of the kind of Viral Marketing companies’ dream of!

Yet notice nothing in that last paragraph talks about the connection with the campaign, the belief in the goal, sharing the message of the campaign over the free gift, or any positive remarks about the non-profit’s effort?

With learning that submissions were still flooding in, we closed down the submission request box. I sent emails to the Freebie Sites letting them know what the intention of the campaign was and how we hoped they update their info. Some did and thanked us. Some ignored us. I sent a few emails to those who submitted letting them know what happened. Some did and thanked us. Some got frustrated and said that they did what the website said and they wanted their “Free Gift” anyway. Some ignored us.

The moral of the story, kids.
This outcome was not what they expected, or intended, when they created their marketing campaign. They just wanted to add a little value for being a part of it. Those online saw the value not in supporting the campaign, but just filling out whatever they needed to get the free item they wanted.

Rather than give a long, lengthy explanation, here are the top five things the non-profit quickly learned:

1. Be proactive on learning the reason once you find a negative reaction to your campaign.a. You could have unintentionally created it. If you sit back and blame the people doing the very thing you asked them to, but for a different reason than you intended…you get nowhere.
2. Accept the mistake, learn from it, and work with it instead of running away from it.a. It’s safe to say, that on the next campaign this will be something that will be brought up and avoided.
3. Don’t give into our initial fear.a. Fear can cause you to assume your first reaction is the best one. Sometimes that’s not the case. Imagine what would happen if they thought they were spammed instead of doing the research?
4. Find out what worked, what didn’t, and, depending on your outcome, how you can either duplicate that later on or never let it happen again.Clearly the free gift had value to people. Is there something that they could leverage in this?
5. When people ask for your free gift that does not mean they are interested in you.a. Free gifts are great. They little items, that shouldn’t break the bank, that if well done should spark conversation or curiosity. They should not be a crutch to get people interested in you or your company.

I say, give “Free Gift” away, but don’t let the value of the gift be greater than the message. There are some really big marketing lessons in this that came to light. What, life lessons, have you learned from you marketing experiences?

Until next time, stay wicked.

If you liked it, please Tweet it.

…in a good way. His post “Backwards Work” stuck with me for a solid day, because he’s absolutely right. You’ve got to know the rules to break them, and you need to know what you want your end result to be before you start swinging for the fences. As Chris said, “know what it is you’re shooting at before you draw back.”

So without rehashing everything Chris wrote (its damned fine blog post on its own so go read it), I want to talk about the one thing that will help secure success…excitement in marketing your own company.

Excitement in your company period. Because, if you aren’t excited about your own business…no one else is going to be!

If you really want a good example of what passion and excitement for your product, brand, service or what it is that got you to start your own business, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better example than Gary Vaynerchuk. When I’m getting frustrated in what it is I do for a living, I go to YouTube and check out his talk from Web 2.0 Expo NY from September 2008 on “Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape,” and I get pumped all over again.

Now calm down, Sparky. I’m not telling you to go out and be Gary, but you can take a few things away from that talk that will help you. Gary’s passion for the things he loves (like wine, personal brand, and the New York Jets) is empowering. He loves what he does, and it pays off in spades? Take a lesson from that, and apply it to your own business. Whether it’s plumbing, coffee, design, legal work, the medical field, or, hell, even turning? paperclips into life size replicas of the entire 1969 winning Super Bowl team. In his talk Gary says, “if you love it you will win,” and that’s something I’ve always believed in.

Whatever it is…you started a business for a reason right? I mean, you didn’t start a business because one day you woke up and said, “I’m really good at (insert your whatever it is you want to do here), but I really don’t care about it…maybe I should go into business for myself doing that.” No. Something inspired you to shuffle off the 9-5 coil and strike out on your own. Now I’m saying this, and I am making the assumption you didn’t have a large bank roll behind you. I’m assuming you stepped out into the cold dark unknown of self employment, looked at the horizon, and smiled like a Cheshire cat. I’m assuming you looked out at whatever it is you wanted to tackle as the boss of a new business and said to yourself, “I can do this… and I want to for the rest of my life.”

You’re going to fail sometimes, but it’s that excitement for whatever it is you’ve decided to get yourself into that pulls you through to the next achievement. If you don’t have that, go back to the 9-5’er, lick your wounds, figure out what went wrong, and let someone else worry about where the monies coming from for a while.

If you’re on the fence about whether you’re excited about what you do or wherther the shine has worn off… pick a side and go there. It’s going to suck at times. It’s going to be exhausting at others. There are going to be days where you look at your loved one, friend, employee, or business partner and think, “What the hell did I get myself into?” The answer to that question is the very same thing: “I love what I do for a living!”

Chris Brogan wrote in his post: “Someone had to hunt the first mammoth. Oh, and that poor bastard died a bloody death.”

Bring me that mammoth and my rock. I’m ready to go down swinging. I’m willing to put in the hours, the time, and the effort to move forward regardless of the obstacle. I’m ready to get called crazy, loud, determined, passionate, and…a success. I am going to fail, and I look forward to it so I can get back up, dust myself off, and attack whatever knocked me down in a different direction.

I am a Small Business owner, and I’m excited to wake up every day and say that.

In Gary Vaynerchuks’s talk. he says, “if you love it you will win.” That’s something I’ve always believed in and something that, even before hearing Gary say it, has been the key to all of my successes.

Until next time…stay wicked.

* Photo courtesy of istockphoto.com

Especially during turbulent economic times, convincing a lender to believe in your business is challenging, especially for new businesses. But what people forget about is the fact that lenders are always looking for great investment opportunities. Pitching an idea without any financial history is tough but a strong idea, a sound business plan, and thorough due diligence will always peak a lender’s interest.

READ the rest of the interview at Grow Smart Business…

IN THE MEAN TIME….

Register for the GrowSmartBusiness Webinar at www.growsmartbusiness.com/webinar.

Find out YOUR marketing and finance score by taking the survey – your results will be benchmarked against the Small Business Success Index.

Back then they were a tedious chore because I really wished I had a corporate credit card but that was only available to the executives. However, I never noticed how those expenses added up because they weren’t mine and they were usually billed back to the client.

Then I launched my first business.

Eyes Wide Shut

I started my own business and my eyes were wide open – shut to the realities of how quickly things add up. I thought I was being conservative and budget conscious but I was still doing lots of business lunches, buying lunch for the team a few times a week, paying for drinks on Friday because I thought I was the “cool boss”. We sponsored various events at small levels because we were more concerned with seeing our logo out there than actually demanding that there be some type of measurable return. Very soon the $50 here, $50 there, $100 for this sponsorship, $250 for that sponsorship and lots of $75 for happy hour rounds started to really add up and we were spending $2000-4000 a month for non-sensical things but it didn’t stop until the party was over and we burned out.

Burn Rate? More like “Burn Out Rate”

You might have heard of the term “burn rate” during investment conversations and discovered that it is the amount spent on a monthly basis that you burn through and includes fixed and estimated variable expenses. The purpose of knowing this number for investors is to understand how much money you would burn based on the level of growth as you scale up to reach certain revenue/customer milestones. This concept can be applied to any business regardless of whether you get outside investment because it will be readily apparent in a cash flow statement when you would run out of money based on current operations if you are spending more than you earn. When I started the business, I had a fair amount of savings stocked away and as I ramped up and felt that I need to quickly scale to “run with the bulls” so I felt I was spending money to make money. Really I was just spending money. Clients would sign with me regardless if I took them to a coffee house or a fancy steak house.

These little expenses felt like paper cuts that all together were causing the company to bleed out and be on the verge of death. Things had to change.

5 Ways to Avoid the $100 Business Expense “Paper Cut Bleed Out”

Paper cuts are unexpected and happen in the worst places. The shallow ones sting and bleed a little bit. The deep ones bleed a lot more than you think. If you had 100 or 1000 of them happen at once, you could actually bleed out and die. I apologize for the morbid description but there is no better analogy than a paper cut.

We realized that since we were like most companies that did not have investors, our high burn rate was leading us down the path of burning out. We decided at that moment that we must first get our expenses under control then evaluate or correlate expenses to things that helped our business grow. We came up with five simple ways to make things work:

1.) Know your burn rate

2.) Question the expense before you spend it

3.) Budget for recurring expense amounts each month and keep it in check

4.) Find cheaper alternatives to off site meetings – If you meet a client off site, coffee is much cheaper than a meal and really cheaper than rounds of cocktails

5.) Get your employees to think creatively and reward them with saving the company money – if they can save $500 for you, give them $50 extra

How Have You Prevented Burn Rate “Burn Out”?

These five ways seem like no-brainers but you would be surprised how hard it is to actually admit you have a problem and understand the depth of it in order to make the change.

Wikipedia defines Founderitis as “the unhealthy condition that afflicts many companies whose founders maintain a stranglehold on organizational leadership. While many companies owe their success — and in fact their very existence — to their founders, those same individuals can create chaos that ultimately leads to the organization’s collapse. The challenge to founding CEOs and boards of directors is to take steps to change conflict and chaos into opportunities for growth.”

Founders, because they are not detail-oriented and are driven by their exclusive devotion to mission, often disdain management tasks. At some point, staff members begin to complain to the CEO or perhaps even directly to the board, calling for more systems to be established. Founders, comments Linnell, may “see all such challenges as malicious or wrongheaded or an abysmal waste of time in the face of the real (mission) work of the organization. This can lead to all-out battles between the champions of mission and the champions of systems.

While this may not be a disease that makes you sick, you sure can feel stressed and nauseous working for someone with this “affliction”. Unfortunately, I was someone who used to have this problem in a bad way. Over time I have learned that hiring people smarter than you and getting the hell out of their way is usually the best way to build a company. More on that topic in a future “Rules for Entrepreneurs”.

Symptoms of a Larger Disease that can Kill Your Company

Founder’s syndrome manifests in numerous ways. The Center for Association Leadership has an excellent list of the symptoms. The leader who suffers from founderitis exhibits these types of behaviors:

• Gives short shrift to planning activities, staff meetings, and administrative policies;
• Is reluctant to relinquish strategies and procedures that worked in the past, although circumstances may dictate new approaches;
• Neglects to institute new systems, even though the board has formally requested them;
• Seeks and accepts little input from others in making decisions;
• Sees all challenges as hostile and drives away staff and board members perceived as disloyal; and
• Refuses to delegate authority.

Treat the Personality not the Problem

Managing through a fit of founderitis requires a tricky mixture of growth opportunities, board involvement, and a firm delivery method. In the mean time, here are a few things you MUST do to beginning shed the affliction of Founderitis from infecting your company:

• Respect the need for planning activities, staff meetings, and administrative policies;
• Realize that as the company grows circumstances may dictate new approaches;
• Institute new systems with approval of your board;
• Seeks and accepts input from others in making decisions;
• Delegate, Delegate, Delegate
• Accept the fact that you can’t do everything themselves and you need to bring on people whose strengths complement your own.
• Separation of your identity and goals from your role as a founder.
• Accept that the organization’s success no longer depends solely on your creativity and decisions but instead requires the input of partners who are equally or perhaps more skilled than you.
• Dance around the room to let things loose
• Shift responsibilities to worthy successors and trust them to fail and succeed.

Don’t worry if you can’t over come this there is a simple solution. Get your board to hire a professional CEO and take a long vacation.

Do you have Founderitis and not even know it?

Do you see yourself in these words? Have an errie feeling that you might be like this or working in an environment where you engender Founderitis?

First, read this article again and see how many symptoms you may have already. If you notice some, ask those around you if you fit this profile. Tell them it is ok to tell you if you do and be very honest. If you are a classic case of Founderitis then go back one section in this post and follow the instructions on beginning to let go. This is not something that will happen over night. It took you all your life to build up these habits and it can take just that long to work them out of your system.

Photo Source: iStockPhoto

Below is a snippet of his thoughts about the Small Business Success Index. For the full interview, visit the Young Entrepreneur blog.

Network Solutions: What did the study reveal to you about the success of small businesses in 2008?
Evan: What I loved about the results was that small companies are taking clients away from big business by providing excellent customer service. Consumers are no longer willing to be put on hold and being treated like a number. Small business owners understand that and are leveraging this need to build successful new companies

Network Solutions: According to the results, Capital Access and Marketing and Innovation were the two biggest inhibitors for success. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Evan: I disagree with this on a number of fronts. I disagree that access to capital is the most heavily weighted part of this index. To say that customer service is only 1/3 as important as access to capital would be a slap in the face to all the entrepreneurs who have built a successful business by paying attention to the needs of their clients…

Read more here.

Steve: You have been in business since 1977. How did you get into the moving business?
Lynda: My brother Kevin started the business after graduating from The George Washington University in Washington DC in 1976. I joined shortly thereafter.

Steve: I know that I mentioned what your company does in the introduction, but I was hoping you could share with the readers how Town & Country strives to differentiate itself from local/regional competitors.
Lynda: We strive to provide Relocation services with an emphasis on customer service. Our philosophy from day one has always been: “if you give your customers a fair price, impeccable service, and treat their belongings as if they were your own, they’d recommend us to friends and family”. That philosophy has proven to be the cornerstone of our success.

Steve: Your business has been through many economic cycles and that must have provided you the opportunity to try many different things to see what works and when. Without getting into competitive secrets, is there advice you could offer small business owners who might be living through their first economic downturn?
Lynda: Remember to save for a rainy day..because sure as the sun will rise and set..it will rain one day!

Steve: Over time you have adopted new technologies and marketing opportunities to promote and grow your business. What is your philosophy on evaluating new things and when you should adopt them?
Lynda: The internet has changed all of our lives. Commerce now and in the future will be conducted on various Web based platforms. When we began operations back in the mid 70’s, the only real directory for service providers was the regional Yellow Pages. We committed an enormous amount of capital to YP advertising over the years. Now, we can be sourced globally by millions of people instantly. It’s quite amazing. We have taken a conservative approach to all of the technology available up to this point. Maintaining a website that is consumer friendly is essential and we have tried to do that. Now, with the advent of Social Networking, we are considering several options moving forward. The prospect of gaining customers globally via social media holds great potential and we want to try and capture as much of that as we can.

Steve: Many companies are making a move into using Social Media tools like blogs and social networks. What is your general impression of these technologies and how they might help your business?
Lynda: See previous answer. We are evaluating several tools and which ones might work best in servicing our customer base.

Steve: Small businesses rely on a range of internet business solutions and computer technologies to succeed. What are the most important to you and your business?
Lynda: Our interactive website allows potential customers to submit requests for estimates. This has proven to be an invaluable tool.

Steve: What would you like to see happen over the next 18 months for Town and Country?
Lynda: Continue sustainable growth in a challenged economy.

Greg is CEO of Blue Sky Factory, a leading email marketing technology company. And while many people think that email marketing is an older (if 10 years is older in your mind) channel where everyone deletes email newsletters, Greg’s platform, Publicaster, is extremely powerful and shows you how you can tune your campaigns so that never happens.

He was here at SXSW and we had an opportunity to chat and discuss the launch of the new version of Publicaster, version 7.0, and how it is evolving into a Social CRM platform and their recent partnership with BatchBlue.

The full interview is below:

In my career I have written many business plans, some of which raised money for a business, but even if that is not required, having a plan is good thing by all accounts. So I looked at this new year as a time when people are thinking of the year ahead for their business or might even be thinking of starting one for the first time.

So I thought about updating what I had written many years ago on another blog for today’s economic climate and the things that are really important in a business plan for 2009. Hence, the Business Plan Series was born.

This series is for seasoned entrepreneurs that want to pick up some nuggets of wisdom along the way or new entrepreneurs who have a dream and real passion to make something happen.

I will be writing this series over on our sister site, MySolutionSpot.com, and cross-posting here. I will be writing once a month on this in a sort of “month in retrospective”. I will be writing one article/post a month on this so you can follow along and be the end of the year be able to write a killer business plan.

Update on feedback from our readers have motivated me to rethink the approach for the Business Plan series and our Marketing Plan Series:

I will be writing this series here and cross-posting over on our sister site, MySolutionSpot.com. I will be writing the core series in a rapid fire set of posts over the next few weeks and once a month there will be an evaluation of putting this kind of plan into practice and tuning it along the way. In this manner, I hope to engage all of our readers out there to contribute their lessons learned and advice on building a successful marketing plan.

I was able to spend some time with her recently and here is a transcript of our interview:

Steve: How does eMail Our Military (eMoM) support our troops?
Trish: Service members register with us to receive morale support via email, mail and care packages. They are then matched with civilians who have registered to provide that support.
In addition to having the ability to correspond with a military service member — or several — on a one-on-one basis, eMail Our Military also runs seasonal and year round support projects to keep folks motivated and having fun, all while supporting our troops.

Steve: eMail Our Military (eMoM) was created in 2001 as a response to the DoD’s cancellation of the “Any Service Member” and “Operation Dear Abby” mail programs. How has it evolved over the last 7 years?
Trish: We started as a grassroots online group with a handful of supporters in the U.S.  Now, we’re a charitable military support organization with thousands of military and civilian members worldwide. We work with some of the best and brightest people and companies to get support to our troops.  We’re proud to say we were one of the 1st organizations to step in and help provide morale support to our troops immediately after 9/11 and we’ve led the way for organizations like the DoD’s AmericaSupportsYou.mil to follow.

Steve: What would you like to see happen over the next 7 years for eMail Our Military?
Trish: I’d like to see eMail Our Military (eMoM) continue to focus on innovate ways to support our troops.  We currently have community relations leaders in several states but I’d like to see that expand to include all 50 states.  I’d like for us to continue to be a leader in new media and help more of our service members embrace this technology. I’d absolutely like to see eMail Our Military become one of the most successful non-profit military support groups.

Steve: I see that you also have an online store, does this help raise money for projects and support the site to keep it running?
Trish: Yes, though we are in the process of moving away from that particular venue to focus on other areas we believe will be more successful. We want to do try to be as self-sustaining as possible. Though we rely  on member support, we understand that not everyone has the ability to contribute. We want to ensure that even when times are tough we’ll be able to maintain the level of support  our troops have come to expect from us.

Steve: What other things do you to offset your costs? Are you a non-profit?
Trish: Some of the things we do to help offset costs are run specific campaigns, like our postage patriots, that cover the shipping charges for our care packages. Campaigns like that target exactly where we need help and allow us to get the job done efficiently.
We’ve filed for non-profit status and are happy to say that it’s pending. We’re really excited about that dream coming to fruition.

Steve: How long have you been a Network Solutions customer?
Trish: 11 Years now

Steve: I sometimes like to close an interview with a “Do This List”. So for you, what are the top five things you have learned building a small business/non-profit on the web?
Trish: In no particular order,

• No matter how big  your business gets, remain community oriented.
• Social Media/New Media works in a big way.  Include it in your business.
• Listen to your audience.
• Don’t judge a person by their online profile.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.

If you would like to learn more about Trish and what she is doing, head to eMailOurMilitary.com and check it out.