Perceptint Musings

When I took the dive this time, I swore my goal in starting this business was to keep myself smiling. My background in start-ups educated me to the level of work and dedication it will take to make Perceptint real and ongoing. What I was
striving for mentally was creating a job with a perfect blend of excitement, engagement, execution, and open-ended flexibility.

When I posted the bullet list that kicked the business idea for Perceptint into a reality, I believed I knew how my model would play out. I would begin an engagement with an ongoing client, dive in deep with them, and then resurface three months later, ready to take on another client or two. Basic risk analysis said my need to get more than one client was very high and should be acted upon with haste.

In the reality of those three months working as a digital marketing advocate for my first client, the client and I realized the engagement we had needed to grow. My time was proving to have more of an immediate impact than expected because I was providing more benefit to the team in the short term as an operational medic, helping stave off a world of fast moving bullets.

The digital marketing strategy of the client is in pretty good shape. It needs some sculpting, but overall it’s running on a well defined track. The world that is bleeding and suffering most is the internal pipeline tasked with getting all the digital marketing projects out the door. Second behind that is a need to tie together a vast mountain of campaign reporting data into a more digestible, public facing team data point.

The client employs well over 150,000 people across a variety of regions. As more of the organization wonders about digital marketing tactics, the need to satisfy those demands grows even faster. A group that a few years ago was managing fifty to one-hundred projects is now pushing close to one-thousand projects through a pipeline that has not scaled as much as needs.

My background in project management and delivery in the agency world means I am bringing new ideas about running production and forecasting into a group where these concepts can have a very rapid impact. If we implement it correctly, it should help them scale to meet ongoing demand, and help build a clear picture of the groups’ immense value within the very large world of the organization.

These are near real time additions to the work that I defined early in the client engagement. Some of the elements we identified for me to work on are coming to fruition now that we’re through the deep dive – building a centralized knowledge base using wiki technologies and creating the Vision Report for this group to help broadcast success, failure, what we’re learning and where we’re going.

The core information offering I put forth is also proving to be a helpful addition to the team. Technology reviews, being a better ambassador to IT, and helping them better understand their agencies and their need to better lead them are all becoming topics I am no longer selling internally in conversations.

At the same time that we knew the first engagement needed to grow, I also knew that my need for diversity in my business wouldn’t be served with another direct client relationship. My scalability in the consulting side would only be to add more hourly based projects for myself or begin hiring other consultants. I’m not ready to hire and I’m not ready to triple my workload, so…

Since I have the freedom to do it, I can toss the first growth model in the virtual waste bin. Sizing up the next chapter of the business, writing, publishing and speaking more - the true core of what will keep me smiling - are to be attacked
with haste and urgency.

The satisfying part is that I’ve laid out this plan with my client and they are whole-heartedly onboard. Part of their perception of my ongoing value is my presence in the organization as an outside thought leader.

Developing this flexible model of the insider/outsider within the organization engages both sides of my brain in a way that I was not expecting. Being an ER stabilizer and a surgeon in the same day pushes my thinking, keeps me nimble, and forces me to focus in ways I am just now discovering.

I’ll keep you in the loop as to how it all develops and give you tips from what I’m learning as they come along. As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

© 2008 Keith Boswell

The first time you step into the dewy mornings entrepreneurial air, something electric is unleashed in your mind. Like a perfect mix of calming storm that settles your mind and spirit, a certain part of your inner psyche is finally unwound before you. Besides my wife and two daughters, nothing else has captured a part of my soul that I didn’t know was there before like jumping into the unknown of a start-up business.

The first time, I was 23 and didn’t know better. And I’m glad I didn’t. I made $700 a month working full time in the Internet marketing game, unseating local ad agencies for one-tenth of the cost they were charging to design websites. It was a visceral hands on rush through from freshman to diploma in about the time I would have spent in post graduate, lectern filled halls working for an MBA.

When our four person agency decided to throw in the towel, we had crossed $500,000 in yearly revenue and were paying ourselves in the low to mid 30’s. It felt good to walk away without driving the car into a cliff and say we had run a successful business and decided to close it to pursue other interests.

A few years later, I had spent time in bigger agencies, honing and growing my skills for larger clients. I knew it was time to strike out again and trust my gut.

My second start-up had gone through both the dot.com boom and bust. They had been in business for two years and had grown from 3 to 10 to 3 during that time. I joined the company as employee #4, in an overhead position, to help rewrite their business plan, secure additional cash flow, and see if we could find a second life for it in “the big game” - the Valley or beyond. It was a start-up because we were free to create any Frankenstein the market needed.

About a year and a half earlier and on the side while living in Seattle, I had begun writing their email newsletter/article about online marketing and the growth in search, email, viral, and other new channels. My seventh or eighth article was about the viral marketing campaign for the movie Artificial Intelligence (AI) by Steven Spielberg. We had been getting positive feedback on the articles before this one, but something about it clicked with people.

Timing and word of mouth spread it quickly around the web. Then I’m sitting at my day job and I get a call from the side gig. CNN called and wants to talk to me about the the AI marketing campaign. And I’ve been positioned as the VP of Marketing for side gig, how soon can I be in San Francisco for an on camera interview with James Hattori?

The day job had been going through a painful hemorrhage/merger and acquisition dance for almost 6 months, but the latest round of potential buyers looked very interesting and skilled. I went to my boss and told him the newsletter I’d been writing had been picked up by CNN. And I wasn’t writing it for our company, and I needed to be in San Francisco two days later, and I had been positioned as the VP of Marketing for this company.

Because the dance was going so bad for the whole company, he grinned bright, put his thumb up and said, “I’ll see you on Thursday. Have a great time and tell me more when you’re back.” Seeing that strategic inflection moment in time, and jumping on it before it is moves away, you should never doubt that timing can be on your side.

The thing I remember most about that interview was sweating and James Hattori laughing with us that after our interview, he was headed to talk to some “bloggers” - web loggers who diary about themselves. Oh 2001 self, look and laugh at you now.

I did join the side gig a few months later. By the beginning of 2002, the stars aligned for me to make the jump. I would join Marketleap with a 3 month contract. I would make less than I was making at my day job, the books showed they had exactly three months of operating capital, and we’d see how it went. Two years later, we were acquired by one of the largest email marketing agencies in the world and little slivers of us were available for sale on NASDAQ. A year after that, another NASDAQ fish. We had completed the jump from ten people to six thousand.

I’ve been lucky enough to walk away from good jobs into better opportunities. This time, I had to get back a part of myself that giving up the slivers on Wall Street had taken away. The freedom to make a nimble, gut based decision as a shareholder/owner of one. The freedom to serve a client better than I could from inside the beast. Because I see an opportunity in front of me that I trust I should follow. 

A deep inhale of the fresh air, that kinetic energy you feel when you believe in something enough to dive to the ground for it, that’s what being an entrepreneur feels like. Perceptint is my first time stepping out completely on my own with no one else to catch me. It’s a mix of the excitement and fear that I’ve never felt.

Over the coming days, I’m going to be spelling out the Perceptint offering that I’ve outlined and pitched to my preliminary clients. Feedback as always is welcome. My goals is to create a transparent, open business model for myself and any other marketers or entrepreneurs that might benefit from it. Because if you think you can do as good as or better than me from seeing how I think, how I organize, what I share with clients, then I feel like I am helping to push the market ahead and contributing to a bigger good that I want to help nurture amongst the business people of the 21st century.

We often think of evolution as a gradual, thousands of years event. I believe as individuals we are capable of more and can make it happen for ourselves faster than that. Honestly, I just don’t have time to hope and wait that long. I’ll turn thirty-six this summer and I’m working in the eighth stage of my career. I’ve set goals for myself that I never knew if I’d reach them, but setting them gave me a direction and a pace that has kept me steady. Noticing the off-beat trails and paths that lead me here, I know that there are many more like me. Inspired by the storms of life to run for and make our own cover.

© 2008 Keith Boswell