How many times have you been to a networking event and been afraid to talk to 99% of the people?
Even outgoing people sometimes feel out of place or get the wrong vibe from the crowd. I have solved the problem with a simple process:
Setting a goal.
I always decide how many business cards I want to leave the event with, based on the number of people attending. If I only have 9 cards and I set a goal of 10, my fears disappear and I find it so much easier to approach a person and strike up a conversation.
I recently attended a Gold Coast Venture Capital Association (GCVCA) event in Boca Raton, FL and felt a little hesistant at first. I had no wingman, I was clearly the youngest in the room and the elephant in the room was obvious - 97% of the people were white males. Most minorities can feel awkward at times like this because you instictively feel that you should interact with the people you most quickly identify with.
You scope out the room, look at the way people dress, their mannerisms, their ethnicity, listen for accents (I am Jamaican) and start narrowing down.
Luckily I grew up in Jamaica so race has never been what I see first, even though being in America has had some negative effect in that regard.
My parents taught me that someone's attitude and intellectual pursuits are more likely to reflect whether or not I would get along with them than their skin colour, age or social background. I headed for the sharpest dressed people first (I was dressed in a dark blue suit, white-collar blue shirt with cufflinks and a yellow tie).
That night I met 3 GCVCA board members, 1 potential investor and a Jamaican who runs a strategic advisory firm. The Jamaican loved my elevator pitch and introduced me to 5 more people. I had no idea he was Jamaican when I approached him, he just looked sharp, which for me means that you mean business because I was taught to "dress for success".
1 week later he called me.
He had spoken to a client who was looking for ventures to invest in and wanted to get our executive summary and business plan because the client was interested in investing up to $500k if the numbers and business made sense to them. (I have also learnt that not people understand what we are trying build so not everyone is actually a good fit from an investor standpoint).
That contact has been helping us finetune the plan and financial projections at no cost because he loves our drive and was really grabbed by our pitch.
If I had not set that goal of 15 cards for that night, I could very well never have approached him and benefitted from all of this.
Goal-setting in life is always good so use it to improve your networking skills, especially if you are a shy person.
I am not sure how I am managing to even write this post: I have not slept in 29 hours! I did manage to take a 45 minute nap :-)
Yesterday evening I left the office at 5pm and drove straight to Orlando for a meeting with our main advisor (I live in West Palm Beach - about two and a half hours away).
The plan was to meet, go to sleep, then wake up early and drive right back to the office for 8:30am.
The meeting finished at 4:20am!
I walked into the office at 8:23am.
It was well worth it though. I managed to help Richie set up his Nintendo Wii finally, I ate at a Thai restaurant for the first time and we set the stage for my upcoming investor presentations.
It didn't hurt that he is looking to invest $25k either. Now I have homework - a use of funds statement and projections on what revenue that money can be used to generate, as well as a timeframe.
It's been a while since I have gone without sleep for more than 24 hours but that used to be a regular thing when we first launched. My brother and I once went 2 full days without sleeping - The 3rd day didn't exist, we slept soundly for 24 hours from being so burnt out.
This shouldn't be surprising to any entrepreneur though. For some reason we entrepreneurs are willing to go for insane hours in order to work on our projects and increase the chances of success even minutely. There is no way someone could pay us to be that dedicated though right?
The effects of perceived reward on behaviour are truly amazing.
I was hoping I could get some sleep this evening but I need to buy a new video camera for my brother to carry to Jamaica tomorrow morning to cover the big Reggae music festival that we are sponsoring, then it looks like I have a "short" meeting after that.
I am thinking about this today because we just signed a huge strategic partnership deal that I am not allowed to announce as yet.
It should make it much easier for us to raise outside capital, provide a new revenue stream and will certainly make Realvibez one of the most powerful Jamaican-owned media companies focused on Caribbean entertainment and culture, finally living up to the claim by Boston College's school paper that Realvibez is "the closest thing to a Caribbean MTV on the web."
But it won't matter if we don't execute properly.
Since relaunching, I have done my best to steer us away from taking on too many projects because one mistake we made the first go 'round was saying yes to everything that fit our dreamy "follow Virgin" business plan.
We should have focused on our core competencies, built up a defensible position that was generating great cash flow, build up a war chest and then mobilize into another arena to "conquer".
Microsoft didn't try to conquer multiple markets at once so what makes me think I am smarter or luckier than Bill Gates?
Sometimes I wonder if my MBA education has caused me to not think like an entrepreneur - "I can beat all the odds by just persevering."
But then I quickly realize that most entrepreneurs fail exactly because of that attitude - not preparing properly for the journey that perseverance will take them on.
We have another deal in the wings and that will be big, but this new one is on a completely different scale of massive - think Earth vs. the Milky Way galaxy - they fit well together, but there is an obvious difference.
But again, if my team and I cannot execute or get buy-in from other partners, it is going to be the most public failure I would have to endure yet - and I have no intention of embarassing myself in front of millions of people.
I don't want nightmares from being on one of those "dot com failures" or making it into someone's book like those in F*d Companies.
First things first - Spend some time with my dog-eared, overly highlighted copy of Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start.
Fourth - re-read Good To Great and Built To Last. I just finished reading Richard Branson's Losing My Virginity so at least his drive is fresh in my mind. These books should make a great combination in succession.
(Yes, I actually like to read, unlike most people under 30)
Lastly - put myself out there for motivation...and criticism. I can use this public diary to track my execution of projects, or lack thereof.
I am sure that public flogging will be a great motivator to avoid failure.
Today I happened to be thinking about my last few presentations at conferences, especially at the Global Reggae Conference in Jamaica in February where I was invited to speak about leveraging the web to promote Reggae music.
The short answer to the title of my post: Yes.
I spoke about the advantages of a push strategy and how it has worked far better than our original pull strategy for Realvibez.
When we launched in February 2001, the web was all about destination sites - Yahoo! and so forth. You would create a site and then spend tons of money to pull people to it. That changed with the rise of embedding and YouTube is a great case study of using a push strategy successfully to build an audience quickly and even generate revenue.
Traditional media companies would want you to have to view content on their site only but YouTube was built around sharing and so it allowed the embedding of videos anywhere. These videos carried it's logo - promoting the name and the brand - and clicking them brought you back to the site.
A brilliant marketing strategy that was incredibly cheap - It let the users become a virtual street team.
The attached image of YouTube's meteoric rise proves that you can build an audience by letting users push your content to where people already are (see Google Trends graph for YouTube.com).
In my presentations I point to the successes we have had in the last 12 months that are built on this push philosophy. Instead of trying to build an audience by spending money to bring people directly to the site, we focused our efforts on pushing our content out to where people already were and finding ways to generate revenue from that (or using it to save money).
One of our advisors told us that VCs care a lot about the costs involved in attracting users and we did not want to go to pitches and say that we wanted $1 million so we could spend $500,000 on marketing (we have yet to actually raise any money from sources other than friends and family).
Reaching Audiences and Revenue-share Deals
Realvibez is the only official Caribbean media partner for Imeem.com, Flux and Bebo.com, allowing us to reach a wide audience.
With revenue-share deals in place with most, we have an incentive to put our content on someone else's site or use their services. Flux for example is Viacom's social platform that allows users to use one set of login information to join Mtv.com, Vh1.com and partner sites like Realvibez.tv, with one click.
Instead of trying to build our own social network, we opted for Flux and aside from the technology benefits and the fact that we are in the company of Viacom properties, we earn revenue from the advertising placed within our specific Realvibez network while not forcing users to remember yet another set of login information.
Imeem has been even more of a success for Realvibez because our videos have been featured on the front page, including Sean Paul's most recent music video. Also, our channel has been featured and even a "Best of" video playlist, introducing our brand to all sorts of people.
Our channel is in the company of Showtime and Palm Pictures but being able to tell an artist like Sean Paul, someone who sold over 3 million copies of his last album, that we, "little" Realvibez, got his video featured on the front page of a website with over 22 million users, has a major impact on his attitude towards us.
We could never have achieved the same thing through our site alone without the capital to attract a massive audience.
Our push strategy has accompished what we ourselves could not, while generating revenue and exposing our brand to a much wider audience, all at a fraction of the normal costs.
What if you don't have a revenue-share deal?
Our approach is akin to that of a film distributor instead of a tv station. Tv stations want to horde content for themselves - you have to watch their channel to see it. Distributors don't care where it's watched, as long as they get paid.
If you can get paid by uploading your videos to YouTube, MySpace and Imeem, it would be wise to take advantage of the millions of users already there and hungry for content.
If you aren't getting paid, they can be marketing tools to grow awareness and drive traffic to your site.
I was recently asked why I felt that YouTube is an "opportunity" for Realvibez instead of a "threat" and my response was a very short story about how Realvibez connected with Columbia Records.
We relaunched Realvibez in May 2007 after a long hiatus (we had gone into tremendous debt trying to make it work and we finally had to pull the plug in 2006).
YouTube never existed when we originally launched and now that it was here, I wanted to figure out how we could benefit from it because it had commoditized some of our videos and so competed for views of those music videos.
I figured that the best way to learn was to experiment and one of our advisors (whom we met through Facebook), suggested that we upload some videos because putting them only on Realvibez was akin to "singing the park with few people around."
I uploded an interview with Collie Buddz, a Reggae artist from Bermuda who had been signed to Columbia Records (watch the interview).
That video was uploaded on May 27, 2008.
On July 10, 2008, I received the following message on YouTube:
Dear RMedia,
My name is (name removed), I am an intern with Columbia Records,
and I work for Collie Buddz. My job is to gather content for his
updated website, that will hopefully contain various rare video's,
interviews, performances, etc. I really like your interview with Collie
Buddz, and I was hoping to use it for our website. If you would be
willing to send me a copy of the file, please e-mail me back as soon as
you can. Of course, you would be given credit and your name would
appear on Collie's page. Please get back to be as soon as possible.
Thanks.
Of course I sent the video to them and they have sent us promo items to give away on college campuses and via the site.
I couldn't have called Columbia and gotten anywhere but by uploading a video to YouTube, we got them to come to us and establish a relationship.
Once again I repeat what I often say, that the web provides us with tools - video sharing sites, social networks, etc. - and it is how we use a tool that makes it valuable or not.
YouTube.com can be a site for uploading videos of your cat or a marketing channel and revenue driver for your company, just like how Facebook can be a site to poke people or a site to network with potential investors, advisors, strategic partners and entrepreneurs - it's your choice.
Push your content out to where a ready audience already exists and find a way to make money from it.
NewTeeVee recently carried a post titled Report: User-Gen to Only Ever Account for 4% of Video Revenue that relied on a recent study from the Diffusion Group. This upcoming study claims that user-generated video accounts for around 42% of all video streams online but only 4% of the revenues, while professional video accounts for 58% of the streams and a whopping 96%t of revenue.
This should come as no surprise to people following the trends in online video.
The Wall Street Journal printed an article on July 9 that declared Google Push to Sell Ads On YouTube Hits Snags, which was also followed by an AP article titled YouTube's Ad Revenue Short of Expectations. While YouTube is held up as a great example of web venture success, it was originally built around content that advertisers don't want to advertise against.
I quote from the WSJ article:
"One complaint from mainstream advertisers is that YouTube -- where clips uploaded by users range from raunchy to heartwarming -- lacks enough content alongside which they want to run their ads."
Online video entrepreneurs take note, without advertisers, you are limited to a subscription model - pay for play. If you want to drink from the holy advertising grail, you have to give the advertisers what they want, plain and simple.
A number of potential investors have asked why we don't consider allowing users to upload their own videos and follow the YouTube model to build an audience. These people clearly have very little understanding of the online video advertising world.
Now I can point them to the WSJ article instead of trying to educate them since they failed to do their own research before suggesting a business strategy (Do we actually want investors like that is a whole other story).
I don't doubt that Google will eventually figure out how to monetize the content effectively, but even they are finally going to test pre-roll and post-roll video advertising, something they were against.
Never forget that Google did not invent pay-per-click advertising for search, they adopted it from GoTo.com (which became Overture and then was acquired by Yahoo! - oh the irony).
Google adapted ppc to their specifications - focusing on relevance, not just the highest bidder.
Google issued a statement in a 1998 paper they published about Google technology saying that ad-funded search engines are "inherently biased to the advertisers...the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want."
Look where they are today thanks to an ad-funded search engine. They could very well find a mousetrap for ugc video advertising and create a better one.
Until then, it is much smarter for entrepreneurs with limited funds to focus on the money.
I was researching for a blog post about YouTube and professional video vs. user-generated video but I couldn't find the specific quote I was looking for: One where Sergey Brin (I am sure it was him and not Larry Page) said that he did not like pay-per-clicks ads beside search results.
It was meant to prove that Google moving to finally adopting pre-roll and post-roll advertising on YouTube was no surprise - they do change their minds (or flip-flop as it is no fashionable to say).
I came across an interesting article on c|net from 2002 when Google signed a deal with Earthlink, ousting Overture. At that time, Tim Cadogan, Overture's vice president of search, had this to say:
"We're a leader in paid search, and Google's a great leader in algorithmic search. That distinction will continue."
Of course, Google went on to blow Overture out the water and Overture was eventually acquired by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing.
If this deal goes through, it certainly would be ironic (and not the first time that Yahoo and Google work together).
Note to self: Never downplay the challenge from a potential competitor, it could very well backfire.
I hope other entrepreneurs and business people heed the warning as well.
When I sent my recent email to tell a good friend about the book testimonial, part of his reply included the following:
"It clearly shows that you are cultivating a personal brand around entrepreneurship. I have seen from my real estate career that personal brands are what ultimately fuel corporate brands. It's about the leaders and how they are perceived. You're doing a good job reinforcing your personal brand of innovation and entrepreneurship. That should bode well for RealVibez and anything else you commit to doing."
He would certainly know because he is a senior executive at the Peebles Corporation, the largest African-American real estate development firm in the USA, run by R. Donahue Peebles (read Inc. magazine's How I Did It: R. Donahue Peebles for more info).
From day one I decided to focus on both my personal brand and the corporate brand, working hard to build both. Long before starting a company I had realized that personal brands could be a competitive advantage for entrepreneurs and business people.
I always looked up to people like Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell and those business leaders that had managed to create strong personal brands that directly benefitted their companies and any new ventures.
I knew that whatever field I got into, I would have to work hard to build that personal brand as well. After launching realvibez, there were many people, especially Jamaicans, who did not understand what I was doing. They just thought I loved the spotlight or liked being the centre of attention.
In Jamaican parlance they would say I am "too nuff".
I was in the papers, on tv, doing interviews and showing up on websites - great publicity and brand awareness overall. I ignored the naysayers, and still do.
My dad seemed to understand from early on because he has published numerous papers and been invited to present at medical conferences thanks to his reputation. He knew first-hand the importance of building credibility and a personal reputation around specific areas of expertise.
Why me and not Robert?
I have generally been the crazier one, willing to do insane things to get attention, and as I have said before, Robert preferred that I be the face of the company. It has been harder than I would have preferred because I routinely have to weigh building my personal brand against building the brand of the Mullings Brothers.
Even though I write all the posts on our blog, it is still called Mullings Brothers. I purposely did that because I want Robert's personal brand to benefit as well.
I had more chances to build my personal brand because I was living in Jamaica for quite some time after launching realvibez so appearances, meetings and interviews tended to only involve me. I have also been the most active in leveraging the web to promote our story and be at the leading edge of marketing and pr strategies (remember I am the one who specialized in marketing in business school).
Each time realvibez puts out a press release I try to include a quote from Robert and even though I was asked to give the recent book testimonial, I made sure to involve Robert in the video.
We joke that we eventually want to be called the Super Mullings Brothers :-)
We dream of reaching a point where people talk about the next venture that the Super Mullings Brothers are launching, investing in or buying, and generating significant positive press just for that.
We continue to dream.
The bottom line is that entrepreneurs should think of themselves as brands and then make sure to market themselves, focusing on the brand attributes you want to be associated with.
Lots of people will say you are in it for the personal glory but those are the people who don't understand the power of personal brands and bad-mouth people like Richard Branson or Steve Jobs.
Ignore them, at least they are talking about you. Never forget what Eleanor Roosevelt said:
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people"
I chose to focus on a brand that revolves around entrepreneurship, innovation, gen-y business, helping Jamaica and leadership. Besides How To Win Friends and Influence People, I routinely read two articles from Harvard Business Review's July 2008 issue:
Even though the first article was focused on brands in the sense of companies, it is easy to apply the concepts to people.
You can ask my wife, the HBR issue lives on my bedside table, along with How To Win Friends, and I read them every month and before every major meeting and public engagement.
The book testimonial is the start of breaking into mainstream US business circles and I might have some more surprises between now and the end of September :-)
What have you been doing to build up your own personal brand?
Exactly 7 days have passed since my wife and I launched StartupToons.com, our comics website that pokes fun at entrepreneurship, the web, angel investing and venture capital.
We have spent a total of $50 of our money to launch the venture and then I have used various different marketing techniques to get word out about the site (I will dive into them after the stats). Check out the stats to see how it has faired so far:
Total Views: 1,202
Referrer Number of Visits
Inc.com ------------------------- 124
Facebook ----------------------- 106
Wordpress ----------------------- 15
Digg ------------------------------ 14
FastCompany.com --------------- 9
MariahCarey.com ---------------- 7
ToiletpaperEntrepreneur.com --- 5
Google Reader ------------------- 5
Email ----------------------------- 4
The rest of the users have typed it in directly or found it in some other way that Wordpress can't track.
The site is also #1 in Google for startup toons and the first 8 results on page 1 for startuptoons is all related to it or me.
Inc.com's staff blog post about the site on launch day and our campaign on Facebook have obviously paid the most dividends.
I am also very surprised by the Fast Company visits and you will see why below when I explain the marketing plan.
How Did We Market The Site?
I am sure a number of people are eager to know the details of our marketing plan around the launch that allowed us to get a total of 1,202 visits within 7 days after launch without spending any money out of our pockets.
We both changed our status on Facebook to "please check out StartupToons.com"
Launched a Facebook Fan Page- We created the page so that as each person became a fan, it would show up in their news feed and help with viral promotion/word of mouth.
Facebook Ads - I signed up for the Visa Business Network to get the free $100 of advertising on Facebook and then created two (2) campaigns: One keywords like entrepreneur and venture capital and a second one targeting people at media outlets like Inc Magazine, Wired, Washington Post and GigaOm (You can target ads to people based on where they work). This seems to have lead to the post on Inc's Staff Blog: What A Coincidence!
Changed my name on Blackberry Messenger to StartupToons.com- I don't this has done much since I only have 7 friends, but it's free.
Wrote A Facebook Note about the launch - I wrote a note about how I finally turned my wife into an entrepreneur and tagged the maximum number of people possible so they would know about the note.
Post about the site in relevant Facebook groups - I am a member of groups like Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs so I posted on the discussion forum asking for feedback.
Digg.com - We signed up on Digg and submitted the first toon, then we used the fan page to ask fans to digg it
MariahCarey.com - Kathryn is a very active member of the official fan club and posted about her new venture. The fans really support each other.
Blog about the Inc.com feature on Fast Company - Last month I decided to sign up on Fast Company and start a member blog, Diary of a Gen-Y Entrepreneur, not expecting anyone to ever find it much less read it. Clearly a few people have read it and then clicked through to the site.
Link on book testimonial website - The website for The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur launched on the same day and I made sure that my testimonial, just below Donny Deutsch's, included that I was Co-founder of StartupToons.com and was a clickable link.
Promote via Twitter - I made sure to talk about the site on twitter
The total cost to us - $0
Guerilla marketing on the web is just like offline - creativity is all that is needed. I expect the site to slowly build traffic and land some more prominent press soon that will cause another spike.
I still have some more plans that we haven't unleashed as yet ;-)
Some people will read this as YAFS - Yet Another Facebook Story - but I think it is different because it shows how I used a social network in a way that will provide free promotion for me, my ventures and build my reputation: Something that I feel would be helpful to many people.
I was recently asked to read an upcoming book on entrepreneurship and provide a written testimonial and video if I liked it. The book is called The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur and is written by Mike Michalowicz coming out in September.
I jumped at the opportunity because of Mike's bio and reputation, read it below:
A graduate of Inc. & MIT’s “Birthing of Giants” Entrepreneurial Program, Mike received Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards multiple times. He is a recurring guest on CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, has been featured on National Public Radio (NPR), and in the New York Times, Smart CEO Magazine, and other publications.
Mike is a guest lecturer for entrepreneurial groups at Babson, Boston College, Columbia, Harvard, Penn State, and other colleges throughout the country. He bleeds Orange and Maroon (meaning he’s a die hard Virginia Tech Hokie fan).
No one passes up an opportunity like that right?
I read the book and really liked it so I provided a testimonial and recorded a video with my Co-founder my younger brother Robert). My testimonial is now on the website sitting just below Donny Deutsch's and will also be one of only four (4) on the back cover of the book when it comes out in September!
The testimonial will be just below Donny's and the credit will say "David Mullings, Co-founder of Realvibez.tv" - unbelievable promotion for our venture.
Not only am I going to benefit tremendously from this, I am most likely the only and also the youngest Jamaican ever asked to endorse a mainstream business book in the USA, possibly the World (I am only 27 btw).
I also volunteered to help promote the book on Facebook since that falls within my marketing expertise (fan pages, ads, groups, etc.)
So what did Facebook have to do with this?
I joined Facebook last July after seeing my wife spend so much time on it and finally asking her to explain what was so intriguing. I immediately realized that the groups provided a great way to network with other entrepreneurs and became active in a few of them, posting questions, sharing stories and answering questions.
Within 3 weeks I connect with Scott Bradley, the president of the Boston College Entrepreneurship Society at the time. He loved our story and my blog posts on entrepreneurship (on my blog) and ended up flying us to Boston College in October 2008 to present at the school.
Mike Michalowicz presented the week after we did and Scott arranged a conference call to introduce us because he thought we would like each other.
Ever since then we have kept in touch and when Mike completed the draft of the book, he reached out to me because he knew our story so well and really liked my approach to business and entrepreneurship.
I keep telling people that social networks are tools and how people use them is what makes them valuable. Most of the other networks would not have lead to this outcome because they either don't have the right people or don't have the right environment to facilitate this kind of networking. Even LinkedIn wouldn't lead to this because it is so much harder to find groups than on Facebook.
This is not the first major thing I have achieved through Facebook and I know it won't be the last. How are using social networking sites to benefit your venture or your reputation?
I have been nagging my wife with an idea since 2005 that I felt was the perfect team project to combine my business experience and her graphic design abilities:
Startuptoons.com - a website/blog focused on editorial commentary on startups, entrepreneurship and venture capital through cartoons.
It officially launched on July 2 and I started an ad campaign on Facebook using the $100 I got for being among the first couple thousand to join the Visa Business Network.
I targeted one ad to people who worked at companies like Inc, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and so forth, with the hopes of getting to people I otherwise would have to hire a PR firm to reach.
That evening, the staff blog on Inc.com (Inc. magazine's website) had a post mentioning the site and how it was such a coincidence that the July issue was all about startups - What a Coincidence.
That publicity has been great for traffic and raising the profile of the site. I expected this venture to get far more publicity in the next 6 months than my main one, Realvibez.tv, but day 1 caught even me by surprise.
