An anniversary is a good time to reflect. As I approached the first anniversary of Bullet Marketing and thought about the previous year, I realized I had a lot to be thankful for. In this blog post I’ll attempt to say thank you to a few people who have been especially helpful to me over the past year or two.
I’m grateful to EMC, my former employer, which gave me the opportunity to start my own company – something I would not have done without a little push. (A swift kick in the butt is probably more accurate.)
I’m grateful for the faith that OpenText, a competitor to EMC, showed by offering me my first assignment as a freelancer. It was that project – and several others with OpenText over the following months – that gave me the courage and financial support I needed to let go of the job search and focus on creating a business. I’m especially grateful to Lubor Ptacek, VP of product marketing at OpenText, who introduced me to Jennifer McCredie, VP of corporate marketing, who hired me on that first project. I knew Lubor from our days at EMC and had a great deal of respect for him then. Thank you, Lubor.
I’m grateful to my longtime friend and colleague, Leslie Feldman, who introduced me to Kevin Payne, a colleague of his at EVault. Kevin hired me to write a white paper for i365 – shortly before he left to work at Intelleflex, a small startup. It was Kevin who introduced me to Jennifer Kyriakakis at MATRIXX Software, who subsequently hired Bullet Marketing to write a technical white paper. That relationship has continued to this day.
I’m grateful to Naomi Miller at Citrix, someone I’ve known for about 10 years, going back to my early days at Documentum (before the EMC acquisition). Naomi and I met for coffee one day several months ago, just to catch up, and since then we’ve worked on some fantastic projects together, including Citrix Startup Accelerator and The Connection, a Citrix Global Reference Community.
I’m grateful to Kathryn Ankrum, with whom I worked at McAfee. Kathryn’s referral led Alder Yarrow, principal at HYDRANT, to give me a call one day to help out with a little writing project. That referral led to several much larger projects that have been challenging but very rewarding experiences. I’ve learned a lot about the business working with HYDRANT, and it all started with a referral from Kathryn.
I could go on and on, thanking people who have offered me encouragement, given me work, and entrusted me with the success of some aspect of their business.
What this experience has taught me is that so much of what happens in business is due to the relationships you form and nurture. I’ve come to appreciate how important those connections are, because you just never know where they’ll lead…