I’ve been at BzzAgent for just over four years, and I think that we’ve lost our way.  I’ve got nostalgia, but I’ve also got perspective, and I’ll leave it to you to separate one from the other.

Back in the day of 20 employees, and maybe even in the days of 40 and 60, the Agents were our partners.  With ComDevs responding to BzzReports all day long in the office, there was a very real feeling of connection to the Agents out there.  Our work was pervaded with a sense that these people were helping us make this word-of-mouth experiment a success.  It was the Agents who were proving their worth to our clients; we were just the go-betweens and the cheerleaders.  In an “us vs. them” world, the clients were “them”, and we and the Agents were “us.”

Agents have become a “them.”  We commonly told stories about our most wacky Agents, which felt to us like stories about those friends whose quirks make you enjoy them all the more.  They taught new employees an unexpected and untrue lesson, though: that Agents are a crew of crazy people that we use, but whom we don’t really relate to.  Meanwhile, ComDev moved to a rotating group of faceless telecommuters scattered across the country, so we lost our strongest connection to Agents.  We had one employee who could be said to control the friendly BzzAgent “voice” and steer the Agent experience, but his role was limited as he launched another business, so the voice and experience began to be dictated by clients.  Employees used to be in almost every BzzCampaign, but now when someone asks what the latest BzzReporting interface looks like, no one in the room knows, and all of a sudden we aren’t Agents ourselves.  The words “our Agents” have drifted from meaning “our partners” to meaning “our possessions.”  And we’ve started to hear words applied to Agents that we’ve never heard before: lifetime value, monetize, dollars-per-click, dollars-per-acquisition.

Agents are now our cattle, and the Central Hive isn’t even the ranchers, who live with their cattle every day.  We’re the executives who are willing to serve poor-quality food because some cattle will eat it, because we maintain “reasonable attrition rates” and “above-average productivity”, and because more cattle are being born every day.

This business needs to remember that Agents aren’t to us what “consumers” are to other businesses.  BzzAgent was special because we treated people like they matter for more than their power to spend money and spread word-of-mouth.  Agents are our partners in a common mission, to teach corporations that empowered, engaged people make better customers.  And the only way to empower & engage people is to remember that everything that you learned about it at your last job is wrong.

How do we teach that to every employee, and get back on the path that we lost?

Write a caption for this photo…

New Employees:

Aaron Burnett: DBA

Brian Anderson: IT Manager

Welcome aboard!

Sad News:

Sara Wallace is moving to Chicago after 3.5+ years at BzzAgent, and at least 50 soccer games.  Her last day was 8/8 and she (is already!) missed.

The Pitch (Our SVP of Sales provided a pitch as we’d give to a potential client):

I’m not going to be able to do justice to the actual pitch in notes form so I’ll talk about some of the follow ups that clients often ask and how they are handled.

What if they hate my product: This can be a blessing in disguise because you can find out what the problem is and correct it

How many people participate: Between 50% and 80%, which is mind-blowingly-fantastic compared to any other media, where .0001% of people engage back with you… by complaining to the FCC

What are the most difficult questions you get: How to prove that WOM works compared to media, this comes because people are scared to stick their neck out, no one gets fired for buying TV…

Additional Announcements:

-We have 3 Finalists for the Director of Analytics position and we should have an offer out to one of them within a week

-We’ve hired a Senior Analyst who will be starting in 2 weeks, and she put together a killer deck as part of the interview process (in house!)

-We are close to hiring an MSD as well (hired!)

-Mypoints is going well, as the transfer of our points to theirs has gone smoothly…phew.

-We’re going to be launching our Advocacy Platform product (not to be named after an animal) this October [editor’s note: later delayed to Q1].  This was a major focus of the BOD meeting on August 5^th and more info will follow.

-User Generated Frogs will be rolling out mid-August-ish.  Agents will be able to submit their own frogs in a separate section of the Pond.  This feature is designed to add stickiness to the site and allow Agents to voice their opinions more.  It has been designed so as not to detract from other (paid) frogs, and it will be community governed, to get rid of inappropriate/subpar content

Questions:

-Can we have a way to watch TV in the office somewhere? Yes, we can, talk to Erik and advance and we can have TV in one room. (any room, one room at a time)

-Can people not use their phones so much in meetings? We’ve covered this before, and the blanket statement to get off your Blackberry/iPhone has been re-issued.  Another tactic is to call people out on it as it happens

-Have we considered pricing our agents differently based on geography? (a client mentioned that their other media costs more in NYC for example)?  We have considered things like this in the past (based more on psychographics than geography) and are still considering pricing Agents differently, there are pros (more money, more like media), and cons (less simple, perhaps more difficult to sell)

(click me, says Tower Stream CEO, Jeff Thompson)

The Who’s Who registry is inbound spam that many businesses have learned to accept.  Do you think they really spend the time determining who is who, or is it that if you think you’re the who, then you’ll buy the book once your name is printed in it…

From: Who’s Who Publishing [mailto:MJohnson@XXX.com]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 2:00 PM
To: Dave Dugan
Subject: Final Request for your listing into Who’s Who…

Dear Candidate,

You were recently appointed as a biographical candidate to represent your industry in the Who’s Who Among Executives and Professionals, and for inclusion into the upcoming 2008-2009 “Honors Edition” of the registry.

We are pleased to inform you that on August 9th, your candidacy was approved. Your confirmation for inclusion will be effective within five business days, pending our receipt of the enclosed application.

The Office of the Managing Director appoints individuals based on a candidate’s current position, and usually with information obtained from researched executive and professional listings. The director thinks you may make an interesting biographical subject, as individual achievement is what Who’s Who is all about. Upon final confirmation you will be listed among thousands of accomplished individuals in the Who’s Who Registry. There is no cost to be included.

We do require additional information to complete the selection process and kindly ask that you access this form on our website by Clicking Here

Sincerely,

Matthew Johnson
Managing Director

A few days ago, I landed in a small group of new employees that Dave took to lunch.  Clearly we didn’t know what to expect – one of us carried a Blackberry, one of us carried a wallet, one came empty handed and I carried a pen and paper in anticipation of whatever insights Dave was going to share with us about being successful at BzzAgent.  As it turned out, we didn’t need the Blackberry, the wallet (thank goodness) or the pen and paper.  This really was just lunch with Dave.

I’ve been here three months now and clearly this is still Dave’s gig.  A sales rep told me this week the tough thing about not hitting a sales goal is that it affects Dave personally.  Although BzzAgent is growing quickly, the shift from start-up – where everyone embraces the vision of one really smart person – to real company – where everyone is focused on what the company is bringing to the marketplace at large – is still evolving.

The good news is that it’s pretty cool to be part of one person’s vision – as long as that person isn’t Jim Jones of course.  Very few people in life get the big ideas coupled with the drive to execute on them.  Fewer still have the ideas and the drive and the gift of rallying people behind the vision.  This is the third time I’ve had the opportunity to work with that type of person and I totally recommend it as a great career strategy.  Especially when there’s a free lunch involved.

BzzAgent has grown rapidly for quite some time now, and there are a lot of people who work here these days.  In addition to all of our remote employees (regional sales reps, com-dev contractors, etc.) there are almost 100 people who work in the main office in Boston.  Now, there are many trivial and not so trivial issues with increased headcount, from new employees changing the culture of the company, to more serious matters like the forks all being dirty by 12:45 every day (up until yesterday, thanks for the new forks Sue!).  One of these issues which seems pretty trivial but actually represents other “growing pains” is knowing (or not knowing) everyone’s name. I think I’m a little ahead of the curve on struggling with names, simply because I’m terrible at remembering names.  So far I’ve been able to keep up, but when there’s a flurry of new employees it takes me a week or so to get everyone in the ol’ memory banks (the trick I use is to associate the name with someone I already know who has that name, if my dad wasn’t named Brian I would have had to quit out of frustration with this issue months ago).

If things continue to go well (which we all work very hard to make sure they will) there will come a time when you simply can’t know everyone’s name.  This really isn’t a big deal, but will make it just a little bit harder to have a “close-knit” atmosphere at the company.  It won’t be impossible to still be close-knit but we’ll have to do it with out actually being close to each other.  So, how do we maintain a strong working relationship with people who we don’t even really know anything about?  I guess we just have to trust that we’re working toward the same goal, so everyone deserves our respect, effort, and best small-talk-gems.

What other ways are there to keep a large number of people feeling connected to each-other (trust falls anyone??)  Because if this doesn’t get figured out, parts of work will be like one of those family functions where you struggle to remember the name of that third cousin who you met once when you were 4 years old… awwwwkkkkkkwarddddddddd.

After six seasons as captain of the BzzAgent Killer Bee’s soccer team, I am signing over my duties to MSB. It’s been a pleasure playing with you guys and we’ve had a great run, haven’t we? A few of the more memorable highlights to share with the world:

- Befriending other teams (and picking up Z) after a few rounds of drinks

- Invigorating the atmosphere of Brighton’s dive bars, and making friends with bikers

- Playing (one) game with Dave, in which he wore sunglasses the entire time

- Becks and Posh moments

- My graceful mud dive, thanks to the rough guy on the red team

- Chris…The League Tough Guy

- Rain outs, snow outs, no lights, no refs

- The ballet dancer form of McGlinn

- Playoffs in December - in sheets of rain

- The bizarre, ever-changing outfits of Toof

- 1,000’s of just-barely-missed shots on the 6′x6′ goal - seriously, 1,000’s…

Have a great fall season and beyond! Thank you BzzAgent for supporting the team all these years - one last game on Friday…GO BEES!

(What a tough looking crew?!)

of someone at their first week of work at BzzAgent.

I started at BzzAgent this past Monday the 28th. I was with my last employer for a bit over five years so my dread of wandering aimlessly through the BzzAgent digs for the first week had grown to epic proportions by the time I set foot in the door Monday.

I arrived Monday morning before most everyone else was in and much to my amazement not only was there a desk for me, but my computer and phone were sitting there as well. I work in the engineering department so having a computer isn’t just a nicety, it’s a necessity. I’m going to like this place I thought to myself.

The honeymoon abruptly ended at 9:00 AM as I was scheduled for a two hour meeting on a project that although I would be heavily involved, I knew nothing about at that moment. The “new guy” gremlins had a field day dancing all around my chair as I attempted to grasp the subject matter of the meeting all the while nodding my head at each person speaking to give the impression that I at least wasn’t comatose. That technique appears to have fooled everyone in the meeting.

That was just about the last of the NGS (New Guy Syndrome) that I experienced here at BzzAgent unless you count wandering around looking for a random printer that I printed to before I had any idea where that printer lived. Before the day was out I had met about 80% of the folks here, was brought into the fold, and got to play dodge-ball with the big kids at recess. I had found a home.

By the end of the second day I think I met just about everybody who works here at the Hive.

Allow me to tell you about the people here. They really enjoy working here. They really like BzzAgent not only as a company but for what BzzAgent does. They really like (dare I say love?) what they do. They are really smart. They really care. They are really dedicated. Lastly as a whole, they are really nice. So much so that I was waiting for the veneer to crack so later I would see them for how they really are when they don’t have their best foot forward for the new guy. Its Friday afternoon now. There’s no veneer.

On Wednesday during our company-wide meeting I got to see our company through a perspective client’s eyes as our VP of sales presented to all of us. I gotta tell you, BzzAgent’s aproach to WOM is extremely cool.

To wrap up, unless you want me to go into excruciatingly paniful technical details of what I do here at BzzAgent, suffice to say that I know I made the right decision to come here and am very happy to be a part of BzzAgent.

Aaron “New Guy” Burnett

Having worked with several entrepreneurs throughout my career, I’ve noticed precisely nine common traits that unite them together and distinguish them from the rest of us.  But what’s particularly interesting is this: just as these characteristics unify entrepreneurs into a discrete group, so too do they corral those who work for them into a community of their own.  You see, entrepreneurs inadvertently create a culture in which the staff that survive bond over the realization that it is not each of them that is crazy.

Enter Exhibit A: This post.  I wrote this post because our entrepreneur/leader constantly complains that too few blog posts are being submitted.  I decided to write minimal text, and instead let the image speak for itself.  After reviewing the post, our entrepreneur/leader informed me that “we” (another baffling entrepreneurial habit is to use plural pronouns when assigning tasks to an individual) need to add more text to make this post more about “the business” (code for “the entrepreneur,” himself?).  So that’s what I am doing.  And, in doing so, I have found myself reconsidering the image, itself.  Perhaps the size of the rearmost lobe (labeled “self-esteem,” which was polite for “ego”), should be, err, adjusted.

So what’s it like to work for an entrepreneur? It’s a never-ending exercise in dimestore psychology and a constant evaluation of one’s own sanity.  That’s what it’s like, every moment of every day.  But yet I have voluntarily worked for several, so maybe my next post should dissect the brain of the entrepreneur staff member?  That could be a more valuable exercise.

Anyway, I hope that was a sufficient amount of text.  Now let’s get back to the interesting stuff.  Alas, I present you, dear reader, with Pepe’s “Phrenology of the Entrepreneur.” Limitless thanks to Papa Bonus for his help with the image.