It’s My Business Info

The press just keeps on coming at the moment, I can hardly keep track of all the great coverage O2GO is getting.

I had a photo shoot yesterday (always weird) and am in two magazines this week – the swell has been amazing. They always say about business that if you can feel the swell and the upsurge, and it’s going well, the bigger the wave becomes the more unstoppable it is. I have my down days but it’s just going to keep growing as a business – as my business partner said, I’ve created a monster! It’s just being able to manage this monster and point it in the right direction.

I’ve been told by a few people that they saw me in ‘so and so’ publication, and I wasn’t even aware of it. So it’s being syndicated about. The Weekly News is coming up but they can’t tell me when so I have to keep buying it to see. I’m in the Harrogate Advertiser a lot, weekly almost, and in Elegance Magazine. My wife was saying that I have now become famous in Harrogate when she visits, something which I get the feeling she is tiring of (lots of ‘didn’t I see your husband in …’ comments)!

I’m leaving in a minute to go to London for my latest marketing push – it’s my biggest marketing spend yet (thousands of pounds). So last week was spent preparing that the leaflets, samples and t-shirts were in the right places for a company to do the branding and hand-outs at four major London stations for us – King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, Victoria and Waterloo. Between 7 and 11 am they’re going to hand out 40,000 samples of O2GO to commuters. And an advert is also appearing in Metro. It’s going to be busy!

What people don’t realise when you start your own business is that you really to have to do everything, though. If you see a pack of my O2GO product, every little bit of it I’ve had to fight for and think about and change and update and sign off etc etc etc. People don’t appreciate how much effort goes into it. I make it look easy according to people – which is a great compliment – but it really hasn’t been.

I sent out 55,000 leaflets last week, and to save money I proofread them myself. Big mistake. I missed a typo, so my dilemma is, do I get these reprinted, or leave them with the mistake. It isn’t a terrible error but how professional do I want my company to be, is it worth paying £150 for a reprint?

Back to the press … I’ve had queries about my seek to hire a new pair of hands to help the business (from this very blog!) which has been great. And because of the local press people are asking for my advice. It’s odd as I don’t feel qualified to, but they seem genuinely ‘helped’ by my comments.

Marketing cold-calling can work by the way. I get a lot of calls that I have to fend off, which isn’t always good, but one was of interest and I have paid for some marketing to be done in London in February.

And we now have a brief from the MoD so are expanding on our product range, which you always have to do. O2GO Sport Plus (powdered isotonic drink) and O2GOSPORT + (powdered isotonic drink) and O2GOSPORT + XClr (same but clear). Retailers want to see a family of products. You don’t want to be a one-hit wonder, you need a string of hits for real success and longevity.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 10:23 am and is filed under Jonathan Yates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.