The Entrepreneur

Michael’s parents were so proud that he had been accepted to the local University. He had really worked hard the final two years of high school and then two years of Junior College to put himself in this position. Once at the University, Michael enjoyed his classes, especially the Engineering courses, but his hobby, building computers, was earning him a reputation and popularity on campus as the guy to talk to if you wanted a really fast gaming computer. To him, building fast computers was fun and he enjoyed the attention it had created. His dorm room was quickly filing up with computer cases, motherboards, video cards and other computer parts. Michael found that his services were in great demand and he started selling the computers he built at a nice profit. People were lining up to be next for the opportunity to purchase one of his computers. Michael was getting less and less sleep and could not find time to keep up with his homework and the seemingly endless requests for new computers. One evening, he reviews his accounting for his computer hobby and figured out that if he was to do this full time, he could make a six-figure salary doing what he loved, but he would have to take a sabbatical from school. He was sure his parents would not approve, but he was determined to make this work. Michael continued to live on campus and acted as though he was still enrolled in school. On the day he was to graduate, he met his parents in front of the school and showed them his financial statements that showed his company generated a half million dollars in its first year. His parents were shocked and angry at first, but as they listened to Michael and came to realize how successful he had become, they could not help but be proud of their son.

Digital Marketing Series

Chapter 1: Chasing the Hockey Stick

Today I was approached by a colleague whose client was in a panic. The client is in charge of marketing for college courses. They have six college courses starting one week from today and they have zero registrations. Two months ago, they started working on a marketing plan for the six courses. They wrote content and created landing pages for each of the courses. They also rented an email list and executed a mass emailing campaign. Today, one week from the start date for the class, they looked at the results of the campaign. They sent out 20,000 emails, got 650 visits to the website, but had zero signups for the courses.

My colleague contacted me and asked, “what can we do with only a week until the course begins?” She said we need the registrations to go from 0 to 1000 in a week. That is what I call “Chasing the Hockey Stick”. They are looking for the magic wand that will make their chart suddenly shoot up.

Tomorrow, I will write about my suggestions to her on what she could do.