“It is not my job…”

In 2004 I sat at a staff meeting and asked the staff of my Internet company to start creating more buzz. They argued that they did not know anyone. They argued that they were not sales people. One programmer even told me he only hung out with losers that would have no interest in what we do or have money to buy our products. I countered that I was just asking them to talk about us more, not to actually close sales.

Finally, one of our very good employees said what they really all had on their mind. “It is not my job.”

Ouch! The success of the place that pays him is not his job?

Maybe I was naive to think employees should care as much as the owner. Maybe it had been too many years since I’d had just a job. I was determined to understand this culture and attitude of “my job” and find a way to change it. I lost several entire nights of sleep puzzling through how we’d gotten to that comment and what was wrong with the picture.

Then, at around 11:00 PM on a work night a few weeks after the incident happened, I got an idea. It started with the idea to write a book on the importance of creating buzz. Then I decided in my infinite wisdom to spend a ton of money building a buzz software package that would challenge people to get out of their comfort zone and create buzz. I did not sleep that night, and it might go down in my personal history as the most valuable 8 hours of work I ever did.

Birth of Buzzoodle

By 8 A.M. the next morning, the name of the company was picked out. (Buzzoodle came from Oodles of Buzz), the business plan was done, the logo was designed and the philosophy and direction was crystal clear to me.

I repositioned staff and in 3 months we released Buzzoodle.

The software turned out to be too hard to use and people did not want the one size fits all challenge lists.

So the company was not the huge success I thought. Money did not pour in. I did not retire. But something did start to happen…

Big companies started calling us. Small, desperate business owners started to call us. Start ups releasing new software started to call us. People started traveling from Europe to come and meet us, even when we told them not to.

We’d Hit a Nerve

We’d hit a nerve but we did not have something easy to sell them.

Applying the new Buzzoodle Philosophy to our old business also caused incredible growth. We went from steady to high growth in about 6 months. The end result is in 2006 we held back on sales as we improved our scalability and focused the company more narrowly.

It still took us a while to realize we are not a marketing agency. We educate people on how to create buzz, how to empower employees to create buzz, and what tools exist to facilitate buzz creation.

I have now been speaking and training people about Buzz creation and employee evangelism for years. I published the book, Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing and the Buzz Marketing Strategy Guide eBook for managers.

Me Personally?

Just a regular guy that grew up in Ohio, lived all over the US and worked as a University Professor in Mexico until I finally got married, finished my degree and started a business or three.

I have worked in service, retail, technology and sales. I worked for start ups and fortune 500 companies.

I am passionate about Education and Publishing. Buzzoodle is more about education and empowerment than marketing.