By Karen Post, on July 28, 2011

I’m out of the cave, back in saddle and ready to rock and roll again with all of you. About 60 days ago, I signed out, took a break from Oddpodz and just about everything else to finish my 2nd book Brand Turnarounds: How Brands Gone Bad Return to Glory (McGraw-Hill 2012). It was a long and arduous journey. There were many sleepless nights and days of extreme stress. There were times I questioned my writing skills, my creativity and stamina to stay in the game. There were other days that I was a writing machine pumping out words that felt like a national anthem for all small businesses and marketing pros, I felt tremendous joy.

About a week ago I sent off my manuscript to my publisher. Over 70,000 words of brand scandals, near death days for companies, people and stakeholders and the game changers that bought them back to glory. I was nervous, it’s a new publisher for me, will they love the content as much as I do? Would it pass the mustard test on tone and style and were they convinced it will be a winning book? My stomach has been in knots waiting for the word back.

Last night I received an email from my editor. Here’s what she said, “I was truly happy with the manuscript. Your tone was exactly what it needed to be for your audience. It was engaging—I found myself getting very wrapped up in all the various scandals and brand disasters—but you struck a great balance of providing great, actionable information on how to prepare for or recover from such falls from grace so that it didn’t feel like a scandal book at all but rather a truly helpful book for marketing professionals and the broader business audience”.

WOW, it’s writer’s relief and an entrepreneur’s dream, with a new chapter. All my sweat and work is paying off!!

I know many of you have thought about writing a book. It’s a project, but can be filled with many benefits. In an upcoming blog I will share all the steps I took to turn an idea into a published book. Stay tuned.

OK, back to Oddpodz.

In 2006 this small company, Oddpodz LLC, was born with its sights set on being a social network for creative-minded people. We had a business plan, raised money and were off to the races. Like with many start ups, we hit some big bumps, made some bad decisions about our technology partners and stumbled around for two years. These missteps not only cost us money and momentum, but time too. And with the loss of all, suddenly the team that started the project was reduced down to a single full time pilot, me.

Last year, the site was rebuilt and the business model changed into a publishing enterprise. The plan was to run three blogs and offer digital tools for creative-minded entrepreneurs. The new route has been successful, we sold some products, our traffic has increased almost 200%, our opt-in list has grown, our in bound links and online exposure has scored significant traction.

While that’s all good, its a giant struggle to maintain, market and brand Oddpodz and my Brain Tattoo Branding practice and speaking with a small team that ultimately want to built profits for both and create a return for my investors.

One of the lessons in my new Brand Turnaround book is about simplification, returning to one’s roots and maintaining a singular focus. So that is what I’ve decided to do. Streamline the businesses and better leverage the assets, even if this means naming a sacrificial lamb called brand Oddpodz.

So here’s the plan moving forward.

Within the next 30 days, the Oddpodz brand and name will be put to rest. This will be the last lesson from Oddpodz and the last newsletter you will receive under the brand Oddpodz name. The next newsletter will be from the brand Karen Post.

The three blogs and all of the Oddpodz offerings will re-skinned and marketed under the brand Karen Post. There will be one blog and one destination. This move will allow my team a more efficient way to give you and all the readers even better stuff, tools and resources. All social media channels will be merged with brand Karen Post too. Giving our community one easy spot to find business growing ideas and tools.

The Oddpodz LLC company 2006-2011 will not go away, just the old name. All digital products and online services will remain in that business unit. My plans are to launch our first niche market program in July that is dedicated to restaurant marketing (phase 1 is already up, see more here) and then we will add other niche programs geared to retail, healthcare and eco businesses soon thereafter.

The Branding Diva® speaking, writing and consulting will remain under the Brain Tattoo Corporation.

This news of burying brand Oddpodz is bittersweet, as it reflected the fundamental values of the brave, non conformist creative thinkers and doers everywhere. I hope that our efforts inspired many to take chances and lead change without fear.

I believe this decision to combine the sites will best serve our community and my stakeholders. Our focus will remain dedicated to providing creative-minded business leaders, entrepreneurs and professionals useful and fresh business growing ideas and information.

So stay tuned, the new and improved brand Karen Post should be back with one single source for helpful, optimistic, insightful content and tools soon.

In closing, I want to share a heartfelt thank you to the community for sticking with us and the Oddpodz team that made the company possible, especially to Jocelyn Ring, Kristen Friend, Bryan Parnell, Lauren Angrick and all of our stakeholders.

The best is yet to come!

Karen

By Karen Post, on October 9, 2010

This week, our team has produced 7 articles for your success. For those of you who might have missed them – some of us are busy as hell during the week! – here is your weekly OWW-UP:

1 – In Liar Liar is your brand on fire, Joe Melle digs into the evolution of advertising over the past 50 years, focusing on infomercials. Joe wonders how marketing professionals look at their peers’ work. He also questions the extent to which Ethic impacts infomercials messages and he challenges every one of us to think twice about the way we communicate about our products? See Joe’s post here.

2 – In Leadership: the quality of your presence, Thomson Dawson highlights how leadership is an effect of a quality presence. He tells us why determined people are time-oriented and how they get to the next step. See Thomson’s post here.

3 – In Business Requirements Doc & Website Dev RFP Example, Karen Post follows up her last week article How Two Websites Almost Killed a Baby. Our CEO tells us what Oddpodz has learnt in IT adding some insights from Allen Clary and Brian Burridge

See Karen’s post here and download Business Requirements and Oddpodz Request for Proposal as examples.

4 – In Why you should master the art of “downloading people”?, Kenji Crosland develops the concept of “downloading people” – or how to get as many pieces of information from anyone as you can. Among the tips Kenji gives us: don’t focus on narrow objectives and remember that everyone has valuable information. See Kenji’s post here.

5 – In If it ain’t broke, break it…, Jocelyn Rings gives us 7 lessons she implements while brainstorming. Through the story of the successful startup SeamlessWeb, Jocelyn’s advices make a lot of sense for those of us who live through a continuous brainstorming mode! See Jocelyn’s post here.

6 – In How QR barcodes make it easy to attract & keep new online friends, Lauren Angrick shows us a Japanese way to communicate through mobile devices which is going worldwide at the speed of light! See Lauren’s post here

7 – Lauren brings it back in A little known way to spruce up your Facebook page for free. In this post, she adds up a great tool to the Oddpodz FREE biz findz blog with Facebook TabSite. A website that allows you to create for free a tab within your Facebook pages. See Lauren’s second post of the week here

Seven days, seven posts! The O-team has given its best for your success. Which insight has been the most helpful for you this week?

By Karen Post, on October 3, 2010

Last week I wrote about Oddpodz IT learning in our early days. If you missed the post, See How Two Websites Almost Killed a Baby.

I promised a follow up after the panel discussion.
It was a great night, a full house and lots of solid conversation on how to build a site with the help of the right professions.

Beyond my points, here other highlights from the panel including:
Allen Clary of www.Jibidee.com
Brian Burridge of Agile Nomads

And from event sponsor: Ian Ippolito of Vworker

• Karen’s nightmare is not unique in the IT industry, when you don’t know, what you don’t know
• Call references, not that the vendor gives you, but that they list as clients or that you uncover
• Get referrals from your network, your CPA, your law firm
• Always have someone leading your IT efforts (who really cares about your success or has a vested interest), especially if you don’t come from technology
• Don’t just sign a 20-page contract, especially on projects over $10,000. The devil is in the small print
• Companies like Vworker provide project based IT support and programming and guarantee their work Contractors from around the globe bid on project specs, provide transparent reference checking, thus reducing nightmare like Karen experienced.

I promised to share a good template for A Business Requirement (I found this on DocStoc, a great resource for documents, some free, some for a fee) and the outline of the RFP Oddpodz used in our second site build. If you any any questions, please post them in our Oddpodz Linkedin Group so everyone can learn from the discussion.

Business_Requirement_Document

Oddpodz_2007_IT_RFP_FINAL

Also view: Frequently asked questions about customer win-back.

By Karen Post, on October 1, 2010

Honestly other than the first two, I’ve rarely  met a bug that I truly  liked.  I know some eat other things that are creepier than they are,  but I’ve just never been a big fan of any critter.  And the only reason ladybugs make my cut is someone once told me ladybugs were good luck and I believed them. Plus, Ladybugs are aesthetically interesting, great color, nice dots. in other words, ladybugs are a styling insect and they don’t gross me out. In fact, this year I created a global brand and the ladybudy is one of our prized brand assets. And if you are feeling like you need some luck, you may be in luck. When I was searching for a good image of a ladybug for this blog post, I discovered that Sears sells the live lucky ladybugs for $19.99.

And who doesn’t love a Volkswagen bug. Whether you fell in love with Herbie the Love Bug or you are like me, it was the first car you drove, after first being terrified by that thing they call a clutch.

Bed bugs seem to be all the media rage, showing up in cities across America without an invitation leaving their nasty mark in the minds and bodies of many.  I’ve actually seen more news coverage on those blood sucking pests than on some political candidates that may end up running our country. That’s a scary thought.

But here’s the bug that really got under my skin this week, the technology bug. Defined by many as an annoying malfunction that happens to your website  and that takes a bunch of time to correct. Time that you could be using on marketing and writing interesting and useful blogs. We had one of technology bugs this week. Ours was concerning our twitter icon in the blog posts and in our ezine. It was not properly tracking all the blue bird Twitter love we were getting from our readers and that bugged me a lot. (which we very much appreciate, keep retweeting!!). So until we got it fixed the ezine was not buzzing into your in box.

Thank you Bryan our great IT leader and Phil our Feedblitz master.

Sorry for the delay, next week we’ll be back on schedule.

To read about our new newsletter service, view: Can a monkey make our mail better?

By Karen Post, on September 18, 2010

Monday September 20, I’m participating on a panel discussion “Avoiding Pitfalls in Website Development— Lessons for Entrepreneurs.”

If you are in Tampa you’re invited to join fellow high-tech entrepreneurs the Emerging Companies Network Event (Part of TBTF), which will be co-hosted by Tampa Bay WaVE, a member-based not-for-profit organization of web tech entrepreneurs dedicated to generating and supporting successful home-grown web ventures. The panel will be moderated by  Curt P. Creely of Foley & Lardner LLP and was coordinated Linda Olson of WOMbeat.

The panel of Tampa Bay WaVE members (Allen Clary of www.Jibidee.com, Yours truly–Karen Post of Oddpodz.com, and Brian Burridge of Agile Nomads) will talk about experiences, challenges, and war stories in developing their websites, including selecting and managing developers and getting their sites live, and you’ll also get helpful hints on such topics from a website developer.

If you can’t make the event, please check out my follow up blog on Tues. 9.21.10 for more insight from the other presenters.

As entrepreneurs it’s not uncommon that we refer to our companies as babies. After all, many took over 9 months to create, sometimes the challenges are so great, you want to trade the kid in for a better, smarter model, but in the end, it’s our responsibility to do whatever we can to give this living thing a happy, healthy future. So when their life, your company is threatened, it’s serious stuff.

Oddpodz, my baby has had three near death experiences. all evolved around technology and web site development. I’ve written about these experiences in the past. Which I suggest you check out the last post. I cover the biggest lessons learned.

The good new is,  since then, we’ve actually turned a big corner. And that’s what I will cover today and talk about Monday at the “Avoiding Pitfalls in Website Development— Lessons for Entrepreneurs.”

More of gory details are in the past post. Here’s the condensed version.
2006 had an idea and business plan.
Raised over $750,00
We (company leadership) didn’t know poop from apple butter concerning technology
Social media was like wild west in the 1800s, open source solutions were like the pioneers, just a handful

Site 1 – built in .net (cost $400,000, hosting costs $2,000 a month)
Hired a big company to lead us through the journey, they over sold
Should have hired an in house dedicated  IT leader
We did not have a business requirements document for site
We did not have a clear financial model
Our balance of design and functionality in the site dev was out of whack
Should have had a fixed price, scope creep killed us
Should have started in a simpler plan, we had too many ideas
Should have had a penalty for missing deadline, time to market was a defeat
Developer contract left no protection for us, we did not figure this out until it was too late, at the end, should have been at beginning
Bad decisions are a lot worse than the price you pay for them, they cost the new time needed to fix up the mess, plus the cost in professionals and related costs (hosting, ad server)
Once we realized our site really sucked, it took another 7 months to improve

Site 2 – built in .joomla 1.0 (bartered $30,000, hard costs $15,000)
Hired an experienced IT person to write our Business Requirement Documents ($5,000)
Planning and BRD took 60 days
Procurement of new firm took another 60 days
We engaged a smaller firm to built site 2, they needed us and we needed them
The site was much better, but still very dependent on the web dev company
Many solutions were cobbled, combinations of off the shelf and custom apps
There were data migration issues from changing platforms
After the new site was up, the smaller company had staff turnover, our design team vanished
Our low spending with this dev company was impacting the ratio of attention we were getting
Traffic is much harder to get than you think
Still were not generating income from the site
Cost to maintain site 1500-2000 a month, just to keep up with industry
Joomla was not longer supporting Joomla 1.0 and to upgrade was going to cost time and money
I attended a Joomla class and got some names of smaller Joomla specialist
Interviewed many, selected 1 that said they fully examined our site and to make the Joomla upgrade $3,000 and a couple months
BIG FAT LIE – they didn’t look under the hood and when we switched servers most of our apps did not work
They submitted a real bid for $20,000 to make the upgrade and it would take another 3 months
After much thought and RIO on upgrade investment, I could not convince myself that we could earn this back in the short term

Site 3 – built in WORDPRESS MU  (Programming  $2,500, design $2,000, hosting 20.00 month)
Hired two flaky programmers that went MIA
All my hair turned gray
After 3 months, via someone I met on Linkedin, ProTech Assist a veterans and small business IT support company jumped in, built our new site, three blogs, an e commerce store. They also provide monthly support for a nominal fee.
85% of the site updates can be managed by me and my team
We have started generating income from our learning products and coaching

Today
Our burn rate is low
Social media has matured and it is embraced by the world
Open source is wonderful thing
50% of our raised equity was forgiven, due to an aging investor
Our traffic is up 200%
We have a clear business model
We are leveraging our core assets
My other businesses are having record breaking years
This is fun again and we are confident we have a bright future

Also, check out: Finding inspiration in new places. An experienced dog meets new pups.