Am I In A Made for TV Special (part 2)

Wednesday was indeed, a new day. Still kind of reeling from the faux invader of the previous night, I didn't have too long to dwell on this as I had a meeting with the fortune 500 company who wanted to use my technology. Now when I try and learn a new subject, I go on a reading spree, and so I've recently purchased about 6 books on marketing.

I was going through one such marketing book about a half an hour before my meeting, and one of the points it made was that competition in the market place can be good. The whole Coke v. Pepsi thing actually helped both companies by increasing awareness of the dark cola market. Polaroid shot themselves in the foot by suing and kicking Kodak out of the instant development film industry. I'm not sure why, but then I began to wonder to myself "but what if you could own both "competing" brands? You could market one against the other to create a buzz, get loyal followings for both, and come up the big winner".

Putting that though aside, I went downstairs to my computer to get ready for my meeting. That's when the crazy made-for-tv light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel music would have began if there was a producer in the house. I checked my e-mail, and I had received an e-mail from my former company which I had proposed to work with on this type of technology, back in October.

At the time, I gave them a totally sweet offer that would have cost them nothing, but looking back, the marketing mistake I made was I didn't "find the pain". They didn't have a need, so the potential reward was outbalanced by the perceived risk of working with an outsider.

Wednesday morning, they had their pain. For the past 3 years since I left the company they've been advertising this program that only I knew how to create. Now it seems, someone wants this program, in a big, big way. A typically customer might have 5-8 products they want highlighted. This company wants 50. In short, it's roughly 8 times bigger than the standard project. It's so big, that it would take about 2 months of engineering development time.

So now, a half an hour prior to my first project which is very large in it's own right, my former employer, who only 7 months ago thought this type of technology was not worth pursuing, now has a very interested client.


So only 7 hours from the faux burger incident,  I have the potential to have my first two projects, both of which are unusually large. And remember the Pepsi v. Coke scenario I had been thinking about only minutes earlier, it could totally happen here. My brand takes off, I create a project for my former employer with their company brand, and presto! There's a buzz in the industry, and the two leading brands are controlled by yours truly.

Granted, there are about 50 ways this whole thing could go wrong, but I do think God's timing is really interesting. Who knows what the future holds, but our dreams of traveling the world 2-3 months out of the year to do mission work, school Elliana in far off cultures and places etc. seem more and more like a real possibility each day... 

Am I In A Made for TV Special (part 1)

5-26-10

The last 24 hours have been drama. Full of highs and lows, victory, and failure, love and um, anger. Here's a recap...


Last night I went to state street in Madison to work after Debbie came home from work. I've got it down to an art. I've got an extra battery, a desktop wireless mouse, headset for talking with my VAs over skype,and a list a mile long. The evening started off pretty well with a conversation with a marketing expert about how to position my brand. He thinks my product could be really big because it's not a "me too" brand. No one else is out there doing this sort of thing, so being the first is always a good place. We discussed a marketing campaign followed by a press release a month down the line after I have my first 5 clients. Etc.


This got me feeling pretty good about the business. By the time the coffee shop closed at 11pm, my mind was buzzing with ideas, and a walked up and down state street for awhile to process things. Then I was off to buffalo wild wings - they're open until 1:45am, and free wifi, plus .45 cent wings on tuesday. Win-win-win.


Anyway, at about 12:30 I felt like I had gotten a lot done, and didn't need to push on to 1:45am, and would come home early. I really felt like things were really starting to fall into place with the business, and things were getting better and better. I probably wouldn't need to do many more late nights out until 2am as things were starting to gel. I decided to take a victory lap up state street, around the capital, and to my car, smoking a victory cigar. I was making my way 'round the capital building, and on my way back down state street to my car when the trouble began.


I got a frantic call from Debbie. She though there was a burglar in the house. Normally she can be a little skiddish at night, but she seemed particularly worried. She was whispering and I could barely hear her, and it was noisy on state street, so that didn't help. She told me to "get home fast" and I tried to explain that if there were indeed a burglar in the house, then me arriving home 30 minutes later despite a highly accelerated pace and sprint to my car would probably not be the best course of action.


We went back and forth for about 10 minutes while I tried to tell her she should call the police if there was truly a home invader, and she told me to wait, and then hush, and then she couldn't talk loud. Meanwhile, I was so distracted trying to determine the legitimacy of the home intrusion that I was unable to find which lot I parked at. She kept asking if I was almost home, and not wanting to alarm her further,  I told her I was on my way.


Finally after about 25 minutes of agony on the phone, her fear coupled with her frustration that I was not home resulted in a hanging up of the phone. When I finally got home, there was no burglar, but there was a very angry and scared wife who told me that I should never go to Madison to 2am again, and that I should just get my work done and home, etc. etc.

Not the best way to end the night, but a fitting spot for a commercial break.

Gearing up for the big launch

I just realized I currently have almost 10 Virtual Assistance working for me. No wonder I'm so busy! I've got a guy working on an IPAD app for me, 2 web researchers compiling a list of potential clients, a guy doing audio DSP work, a flash programmer, marketing guy, web layout person, and a few others. After the dust settles I think I'll have spent about $250 for all the work I think.

I won't do a recap of all the irons I have in the fire, but basically I'm trying to ramp up to get my website up, my first marketing campaign launched, my software capabilities expanded, and keep up with 3 potential clients.

My first marketing campaign will involve offering a free IPAD if clients spend $2,500 or more. We'll see how it goes.

Gotta run!

I've never been more tired, or more excited in my life

More exciting news. Well first of all, today I was really, really tired. I got about 4 hours of sleep for the past three nights straight, plus Elliana kept waking up, so I'm not sure how much of that was actual sleep. Debbie and I have worked out this schedule where a few nights a week I can go to Madison to get some work done. I usually start at a coffee shop from 8pm-11pm, and then move to buffalo wild wings until 2am. Both have free wifi so I can get my work done.

Don't have much time here, so here's just a few quick developments....

1) Have a meeting with green glue and their marketing firm next Wednesday to discuss the project

2) Hired a lady from Egypt with an IT degree to do some research for me. Came up with a crazy idea of having her sell my product in the middle east on my behalf since she speaks Arabic. She's actually pretty excited about the idea. There's about 50 ways it could totally not work I know, but it might be fun to give it a shot. The most important thing though is not to make this a distraction for all my other stuff, or sales. So I'm limiting my time on this to 2 hours a week max. She basically has do to all the research, learn more about acoustics, and try and find some sales. I'll give her some pointers here and there. If she makes a sale then great, if not, she's learning in the process, and I'm learning about international selling as well. We'll see...

3) Got a great idea to port my software to the Ipad. That's cool in and of itself and I'm talking with some VAs to see how much it would cost. The real cool thing though, is I'm thinking about having a promo - Buy a $2,500 project and get a fee Ipad! I'm thinking that marketing people already will like the product, and the chance at owning an Ipad might be enough to push them to buy.

4) Dan Miller has agreed to meet with me to discuss my business! He's got this program where you spend a few hours with him and he helps give you direction for your business. He only takes people whose business seems like they have good potential, so I'm really flatter he's agreed to take me on.

Next week is when I hopefully can get a lot of the loose ends tied up on the website and product development, and can start to focus on selling. I think I tend to focus on the product and the process, and really need to go out and get some sales. I know that will make Debbie happier and more prone to think all my scheming is a pipe dream. We'll see...

More Progress

Things have been really busy lately, where to start... My Virtual Assistant from the Philippines who does DSP has been working out great, better than expected. Between the two of us we've really nailed the engineering side of the project, and streamlined it. I've been hiring him on a per project basis, but now I'll be hiring him part time for $1.85/hr.

I hired a guy from Pakistan to do some market research. I spent about an hour working on a spreadsheet and explaining acoustics to him in a document. He did well his first 14 hours... then he kindly asked if I'd give him a raise. Curious (and a bit dumbfounded) I asked what he would suggest. He suggested I increase his pay 4 fold. I declined, and promptly went out and started looking for another VA as backup.

One thing I'm finding is if I take the time to detail the processes and instructions, it helps me think through the process, as well as makes it easy to shift the work to someone else if needed.

I decided I should have a professional looking logo, so I went to the website 99designs.com where a bunch of designers compete for your business. You spec out what you're looking for, and a bunch of people submit designs. You set how much you're willing to pay for the logo, and the winner wins your cash. Had some really good ideas come through the process, and as I've given feedback to various submissions the designers have been tweaking and improving them.

I hope to have my website up in two weeks. I was shooting for this weekend, but the person working on the website theme is taking longer than expected, but should be done this weekend.

I'm also looking for some flash programmers and a layout artist to help me create some new software templates that are more professional looking and have more features. The first company that bid on my job gave a really good rate, and then when I spoke with them they did the ol' bait and switch and promptly increased their fee 4X.

So in about two weeks I hope to have a much more professional business in place. A good looking website and logo, expanded software capabilities with a more polished look, and hopefully a marketing plan in place to attack the 200+ companies I'm finding.

In the back of my mind, it still feels like something's going to crash and burn here. Like I'm forgetting something obvious that's going to totally crush the whole idea. Maybe it's just that I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that maybe this could actually work out. Maybe it's just the fear of the unknown, I'm not sure.

Guess that's it for now.

Things looking up for the biz.

Lots of developments since my last post, where to start... I got my first project! Also, the company that gave me the first project referred me to another company who's looking for similar work. I'm actually more excited about the reference because to me it tells me that they see real value in what I do.

Also, I hired a VA (virtual assistant) from the Philippines. He's in his final year studying to be an electrical engineer, and has a strong background in digital signal processing. I'm teaching him how to do a lot of the audio legwork for my projects. He's also going to do research for me as well. We've talked over the internet a few times now, and things are going really good.

I just read the book 4 hour work week which is revolutionizing my thinking. The book sounds like a get rich quick scheme, but it actually has a lot of practical steps to make any job more efficient, and shows you how you can work from anywhere in the world, take 1-3 month trips to far off places very inexpensively, and basically do the dream Debbie and I have of doing mission work part time each year.

I know, probably sounds like pie in the sky, but I'll get more into it later. Next on the horizon is I plan to hire another VA to do research and data entry for me, probably for $1.50/hr, hire a graphics design VA to get my projects to look much better, and save me the time of doing that portion of the project, and finally I'm looking into hiring someone to do the selling of my project, which is the part I struggle with the most, and takes of the largest portion of my time.

Once I get all these systems in place, instead of a project taking me 35 hours it will actually only take me 4 hours of work. The selling commission is still the big unknown, but I'm beginning to think this could actually work.

To think that if I get 1-2 sales a month, spend 5-15 hours a week on the business, and be able to do my work from anywhere in the world on my laptop is really mind blowing. We could travel the country, go to India from Jan-March, and I'd be doing the work I love. That's still hard to wrap my head around. I know there are still ups and downs, and twists and turns in this drama, but after almost 5 months of hard work on the business and Debbie supporting us financially, it's great to finally see some headway.