The Whole Fam Damily and The Drive to Succeed

Work and Family.  Family and Work.  I could write about the importance of “balancing work and family” but that would be way too cliché, overdone, and well, a little boring for my taste.  And I figure if I’m going to bore you along the way, I might as well do it with a new concept and content that I find less overcooked.  So I won’t tell you how or why you need to “balance work and family” but I’ll let you in on what that means to me, Ryan D. Miller, the Business Development Manager of the fastest growing branded browser company in the world, Brand Thunder.

Before I fill your cup with my exciting revelation, there some significant items I should point out.  I’m not married, I don’t have kids, and my idea of family may be different than yours, but Family is Family.  The truth is, if I don’t figure out how to “balance work and family,” I probably won’t have either any time soon.  I do however plan on being married to my significant other soon, find myself raising a needy Labradoodle, continue to be involved in my lovely nieces’ lives (one turns 13 today, and the other turns 15 ten days later), stay close to my brothers and sister, and of course honor my mother and father, who deserve to be parents of the year, every year.

It’s the friends and family that keep me happy with my home life.  It’s my happy home life that gives me a drive to succeed.  It’s the drive for success that allows me to pour my sweat and tears into the growth of the company.  I have found that a “balance of work and family” isn’t a 50/50 split (or any other split for that matter) where you completely separate the two.  It’s revelation time.  I have learned that a “balance of work and family” is managing the overlap between the two.  It’s that little gray area that so many try to avoid seeing and push the two as far from each other as possible, it’s that area that I embrace.

First from the side of Family.  It’s inevitable that I’m going to talk about work outside of work hours, pick and choose your battles (great advice Mom), and that’s not a battle I’m going to fight with myself.  I share my success stories and my war stories, when appropriate and in moderation of course, with my family.  They become my mentors, my sounding board, my career coaches, and a great source for leads.  Yeah, leads, who would have thought?

Brand Thunder builds custom themes or skins for your web browser, bringing your favorite brands to the bland gray area above this web page.  I spend hours strategizing and uncovering as many of the thousands of top brands we approach including professional sports teams, universities, social networks, and online gaming to name a few.  In a recent conversation about some potential targets, they brought to my attention that I needed to approach Cosmopolitan and People Magazine, Oprah, Food Network, and others.  You would think these are no brainer brands to approach, but none of them have been on my radar until now.  My family, the consumer, the end user, a voice from our target audience.  It’s this kind of positive mesh between my work and family that aids in my success.

Now from the side of work.  I’m with a start up company, boasting under ten employees, and we all eat, sleep, and live the colors of Brand Thunder.  We have very different roles, but ultimately the same goal.  It would be hard to argue that a family isn’t the same, a group with very different roles, but ultimately the same goal.  Like any other company, I spend the majority of the hours I am awake interfacing with the team.  The team at Brand Thunder isn’t just a group of colleagues, they’re Family.  I’m not 100% business; I talk about my home life with my team just as much as I talk to my Family at home about work.  This is my “balance of work and Family.”

Everyone knows how important my family is to me, whether it be a Family determined by blood or by common business cards.  This is what I’ve learned to be a “balance of work and Family” and Family is the basis for my drive to succeed.

You can now follow my Brand Thunder progress on Twitter! @RyanDouglas24

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Forecast Calls for Success and a Chance of Gain

Most of you probably spent a good deal of time during the last few months of 2008 submitting your budgets, projected numbers, and even goals for the fiscal year 2009.  All of the figures are documented and a single forecast put together for all of the stakeholders surrounding the company.  For most companies forecasting is a very important process to keep the stakeholders informed of progress, create accountability, and to aid in budgeting.  Those key purposes make forecasting a necessity for any company of size, but what about a start-up?  Of course a business plan covers most of these areas but how important is a yearly forecasting routine in the early stages?

I find myself using analogies over and over, so why make today any different?  Forecasting numbers for a start-up company plays a very large role in business development and one of the largest benefits of forecasting is identifying a realistic vision of where you see the company at the end of the year.  Here comes the analogy.  Ever heard of GPS, Garmin, TomTom, or VZ Navigator?  I thought you might have.  The idea of navigation systems is becoming commonplace, whether it comes equipped in your vehicle, given to you as a holiday gift, or downloaded to your fancy touch screen phone.  There is a reason they have become so popular and they all have one thing in common; they help us get where we are going but they won’t get us there unless we identify a destination.

Forecasting is the best way to identify the next destination for a start-up company.  Just like your favorite navigation toy, you can’t get where you going until you have identified your destination.  Getting in a car and driving without a determined end point can be a waste of time and miles.  So how can you take your start-up anywhere, unless you know where you’re going?  Forecasting does a lot more than relay progress to stakeholders, create accountability, and aid in budgeting.  It is the necessary destination when creating the roadmap to your success.

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Eat Your Own Dog Food

In my years of being in a customer focused business I have learned a very important phrase and philosophy: eat your own dog food.

Most of what I have to say this week is stepping back to the basics.  But that’s where successful business processes have to begin so these points can never be over emphasized.

I was fortunate enough to teach a high school economics class this week through Junior Achievement, that’s where I found the inspiration for this blog (thank you to Ms. Campbell’s first period class at Olentangy Orange High School.)  The class is selling t-shirts for a project that gives them the experience of running a business.  One obstacle the class has seen so far, was selling a t-shirt they couldn’t show off.  The shirts have not yet been shipped so they don’t yet have the product in hand.  Out of a muffle of conversation identifying reasons sales were low, I heard one student say “If I could actually wear the shirt, I could sell it easier.”  Ah ha!  Eat your own dog food.

The ability to communicate your product or solution to your client is the key to making a deal.  A part of that communication is knowing your product and being able to spread the importance of what you have to offer.  By using your product or solution internally you not only better understand your offering, but you can better understand the needs of the client.

In my situation, we build customized browsers, so I personally use one of our customized browser on all of my computers (currently using our Christmas theme for those of you wondering).  The client has to trust that what you have to offer is the best there is, and if it’s not good enough for you, than how is it good enough for them?  One of the strongest tools you can bring to the sales table is being a client yourself.  We have all see the commercial “not only am I president, but I’m also a client.”

It’s easier to communicate the quality of dog food if you feed it to your beloved pup at home.  It’s easier to express the wow of a t-shirt if you can wear it yourself.  It’s easier to show off our customized browsers if I surf the web with them daily.  Practice what you preach, eat your own dog food.

Happy Holidays Everyone

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Building a Game Plan

For starters, I love basketball.  It is hard to swallow the end of the college football season, but its good to know that college basketball is always right there to catch my fall.  Although that sounds like random gab, you’ll get the picture when you’ve finished reading this blog.  Business development and basketball, how could you not read on?

When a company has a great product or service to offer the first step to sales is getting deals as easy as possible.  The typical approach is tapping into the contacts that you have and taking the shot gun approach to get in front of anyone and everyone.  No doubt this will provide some immediate success and help build some case studies that will be the foundation of your company.  This will also get your name out there and start developing chatter in the industry giving you a presence within the market.

Leveraging existing contacts and going after easy wins can jump start any company, creating a base of clients and generating necessary revenue to move forward.  Thanks to the immediate tactics you have seen the early success you were anticipating and it’s evident that there is a demand for your offering, so what’s next?

This is where my addiction to analogies comes in.  I think it is safe to say that the overall objective in basketball is to score, and score as much as you possibly can.  As a start-up company our objective is pretty similar, land quality deals, and land as many as we possibly can.  Knowing the objective is to score, basketball coaches spend days, weeks, and sometimes even months coming up with a game plan that will maximize the teams potential.  At a competitive level you won’t see any team take the court without a game plan.  Shooting at will from all over the court won’t lead to success.  Although some shots may fall, ultimately maximum scoring potential won’t be reached.

At Brand Thunder we have a talented team and great scoring ability, but what will make us successful is our strategic approach to expand our presence in the market.  We continue to put together a strong game plan internally and expect it to pay off in the end.  The next step is execution, which is fairly self-explanatory.  A coach can put together a book with the greatest plays, but if you don’t execute correctly, you won’t see the desired results.  And not unlike basketball, you have to be flexible and willing to change the selling game plan when necessary.  Go into half time and make adjustments where necessary and take what the market gives you.

Not having a thought out strategy can be detrimental to the success of business development.  The sales approach and strategic direction at Brand Thunder is ever evolving but a game plan is in place.  We believe we have the team, the scoring power, and now the game plan to come out on top at the end of the fourth quarter.  Fortunately for me, all I have to worry about is offense.   ☺

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Joining a Start Up

Taking the leap from the corporate world to join a start up company can be a scary thing and create a sense of uneasiness to many people.  During my process of deciding if making this change was the right move or not I weighed heavily on three major factors: proven success, ideal business model, and the existing team.

Just the idea of joining a company that has been existence for less than the lifespan of my favorite blue jeans was enough to make shiver at first.  After doing my research and after endless numbers of conversations with the team, I started to realize that Brand Thunder already had proven success.  This is when name-dropping was more than appropriate.  I research recent clients such as Sugarland, Huffington Post, and the Washington Capitals; Brand Thunder and the Browser solution was no joke, and the common phrase we use popped into my head, “I just get it!”

The second area I took a close look at was the business model and how Brand Thunder was going to move forward.  I was able to see that this start up wasn’t just about getting a few clients here and there to pay the rent.  Brand Thunder was getting into position to own the market.  Without getting into specific details, the vision of this team was much bigger than today, and the pieces were in place to move forward.  The tool that Brand Thunder used the most is the tool that drew me in, EXCITEMENT.  I couldn’t talk to anyone on the team without noticing the excitement for company and the product, and let me tell you, its contagious.

Similar to any career change someone will make, the people you could be surrounded by for endless days/hours make a difference.  I was able to see right away that Patrick believed in the team, individually, and as a whole.  Granted, those of you reading this may only know a few of us, one of us, or even just know our names from reading about us, but this company wouldn’t be making the progress it is without great people involved.  And that to me was more than enough proof that Brand Thunder was more than a startup, it was a new place for me to call home.

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