so, i think that making a blog poast about my son's business and our journey will be a good thing, so i'ma do it. or i'm gonna start it, at least. and i need to get back to writing, anyway. we joining in progress, during the second week.

for backstory, check these poasts:


http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=12666288&mesg_id=12666288&listing_type=search

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=12578794&mesg_id=12578794&listing_type=search



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2nd Week After Launch (i'll make titles and stuff later. i'm just tryna write now).


So, the app for android came out last friday (12/4/14). Just in case we were under any assumption that this would be easy, we *just* crossed 50 downloads last night, with 6 paid !!! Everyone who was listed as a tester automatically got a license, including me, so that 6 is prolly all of y'all (THANKS!). We strategizing on how to use that $4.16 right now!

So, just like the long haul that this has been since around March, this continues to be a lesson in patience. I'm also quietly under the gun because I have two pressing goals:

1. Ensure that this is at LEAST successful enough to make back all of the investors' $$$, including my pops' life savings

2. Ensure that there is a management and growth structure around this such that Cameron will not be tempted to focus on this full time next semester, to the detriment of HIS schooling

A distant third is to make enough paper to tell a certain company to kindly kiss my black ass, but that's really not as big an issue. I got jerked around at the beginning of last year and wound up on a new project with new management, and all of these folks are cool as hell. The larger corporation is still ass juice on a stick, but I'm not gonna leave my immediate team high and dry.

Anyway, with those two goals driving me, its about growing this thing as quickly as possible, and within our modest remaining marketing budget. At the same time, I'm trying to groom my son and his partner for everything that comes along with the ride, to minimize missteps, and help them maximize their effectiveness.

Part of the strategy for sy llabeye is to combine tops down and bottoms up growth. That's a personal strategy that I've employed in my work as an IT consultant, either in launching a new service offering, proliferating a new tool or product, or introducing organizational change. It goes like this, identify the high level people with the ability to issue edicts and directives to everyone in an organization. At the same time, identify the ground level, desk level personnel who would most benefit from xyz, and reach out to key influencers there.

This is essential because organizations are resistant to change. Even if you *are* able to get an exec to issue a directive that everyone should use a certain tool or process, if you haven't, in parallel, reached out to the low level employees to make them actually understand the need for and *want* the new stuff. I've seen that time after time, from billion dollar software deployments, to million dollar tools implementations and smaller process rollouts.

Translated to this particular project, it means that we have to get universities to understand and embrace syl labeye while also getting students to clamor for it. To that end, Cameron has met with the Vice Chancellor of his school, who was extremely enthusiastic, and decreed (yay!) that the Business and Engineering Schools should be the pilots. Now that he's meeting with them, he's encountering a bit of pushback from their 'fiefdoms' (as I tend to call the domains mid-level execs who are fiercely territorial). So he has a meeting shortly to do a demo with the IT department of one of the schools to show its efficacy with the syllabus templates we're providing.

In the meantime, Cameron is training interns and marketers to do demonstrations at strategic spots throughout campus, to engage and excite individual students, and spur downloads and conversions. In light of my stated motivations, we have to put a replicable system around both of these tops down and bottoms up marketing approaches, so that they can work, almost autonomously. So we can expand quickly and exponentially. And so I don't have to worry about my son failing out because he's spending all his time on his business.








peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

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I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad