Noon to 2 p.m.
The Del Merei Grille in Alexandria, Va.
http://www.delmereigrille.com/
What a pleasant place to meet for lunch. It is about 10 miles by bike from my house, about 1 mile from the Braddock Road metro stop. We have a tradition of getting the fried pickles as appetizer. Nice menu, you can eat healthy and tasty at the same time.
It hasn’t been too crowded at lunch, and the booth provided a little privacy for talking business.
If you’re reading this now, it is because of the great counsel and advice of JMR Consulting. Today I met with Jody Schramm, who heads up JMR Consulting, and one of her team members, Mary Ritley.
One thing cool about JMR Consulting is that it is a virtual company. Judy works out of a home office. So does her husband. (he does not work in JMR). Sometimes they email each other instead of walking down the stairs. She has built an incredible network of marketing professionals from all over the US, and in fact, the world, who also walk on the wild side, and work out of their homes. Judy is a little ahead of me in that she has hired a virtual assistant to take care of invoicing and filing, and other administrative tasks. This is something I really need to look into.
Another cool thing is that I was Judy’s first client, over 11 years ago, in my role as Founder and Chief Life Support Officer for Ferox, my first startup. She did a lot with very little. I always liked the starburst Ferox logo she helped create.
And I’ve always like Judy’s common sense approach to software marketing. One thing nice about working with someone over an extended period of time is that you get to observe how they adapt (or not) to new technologies, and new business models. Judy stays on top of technology and marketing, and sometimes nudges me gently into the 21st century. If you see videos of me explaining Cash Flow Planning on You Tube in the near future, it will be all Judy’s fault.
Mary entered the picture a couple of months ago. Judy sent me an email that she had a new team member who was just starting in the JMR network, and might be available at a cheap rate. The timing was good with Version 2.0 of SurvivalWare so near to completion, so I decided to invest in getting her up to speed on SurvivalWare and the market I’m trying to reach. Er – I am trying to reach a market. It’s just not always obvious from the website.
I’ve had Mary help me get the blog in shape, and she will continue to advise on style and appearance. (The content is all mine, which is usually painfully obvious). Today at lunch she suggested that I cover the Entrepreneur Lifestyle as part of this blog, since that is something I feel passionate about, and after all I am trying to reach other entrepreneurs like myself who can benefit from using SurvivalWare.
Mary is doing a user story on one of the early users of SurvivalWare who used the Cash Planner to help get through some turbulent times. It’s kind of gratifying to think there exists someone out in the world who is willing to go on record that they may not have made it if it hadn’t been for SurvivalWare.
Mary is putting together a launch and communications plan, and we have settled on May 12th as the official marketing launch date. After 6 years, I am finally getting serious about marketing. There have been some zigs and zags since the SurvivalWare Website first went online in February, 2002. The focus on helping entrepreneurs has not changed. The software has evolved a lot – from first concentrating on Detailed Cash Planning for business owners struggling with cash flow, to improving the financial management and reporting for healthier companies (who have money to spend on software tools to do it efficiently!) We all struggle at one time or another, and the SurvivalWare promise is that we’ll help you gain control of your business, and spend less time worrying. Whether the wolves are already at the door, or you are prudently planning ahead – makes no difference.
Filed under: Challenges of bootstrapping second time around | Tagged: marketing, SurvivalWare, virtual company
