Small Business Marketing Case Study How We Built Our Business On $200
Small Business Marketing Case Study: How We Built Our Business On $200
Author: Jimmy Vee
We started our business with $200. When we opened our bank account, we each deposited a whopping $100. That was the only capital investment we eve made. Everything else that has ever flowed into that account has been earned - albeit, sometimes it seemed as though by rubbing 2 sticks together.
I should note: we began with no clients in hand, no stolen accounts (as most agency guys do), and no external support of any kind. It was actually kind of stupid.
So here’s what we spent that first $200 on:
2 orange visors - one said ‘defy’ and the other said ‘gravity’ A label maker As many plastic name tags as we could afford - they were all engraved with ‘Ask me how I Defy Gravity.’
I should also note - I am not recommending this as a viable strategy. I’m just reporting on what we did. It worked for us. But it may not work for you.
While deciding what to spend our money on, we wrote the first edition of “The 10 Tall Tales of Traditional Marketing” and we prepared a presentation called, at that time, “There Are 7 Bs in Remarkabbbbbbble.”
When we finished those items, we donned our orange visors, packed our name tags and label makers into a little sack, and headed out to a Chamber of Commerce after hours networking event. It was the first time I had ever attended an event like that. Maybe it was Jim’s 4th time. We really didn’t know what to expect.
The after hours was at a bank.
When we walked in with our orange visors, people looked at us like we had just escaped from an asylum. I felt the same way. One thing was for sure - we got a lot of attention!
But we started walking up to every single person in the room who had one of those sticker name tags, and asked if we could make them a nice, permanent name tag. We had plenty of takers. We would ask them for their business cards so we could type their name into the label maker. While one of us was doing that, the other would explain that we had just finished a new ebook, etc, etc and would love to send them a copy for their feedback, etc.
At about that time,
