The Beginning
goBRANDgo!’s roots trace back to 2003 at Saint Louis University when I was entering my senior year studying Finance & Marketing. I saw a hole in the service being provided to the fraternities, sororities, and student organizations with regard to their customized apparel, and set out to fill it.
After consulting with a few professors and advisors, the overall opinion was start a company with my name in it, so when interviewing for “real jobs” it would be obvious the company was my own, and so Weber Enterprise, Inc. was born.
Fast forward 9 months later and the strategy of starting a company to make a little extra college money and then get a job was in peril because of the success of the business. I was truly at a crossroad in my life and didn’t down play the importance of my decision of whether or not to pursue my business full time or take a sales position with another company. I met with several of my professors, head of the internship department, head of the entrepreneurship department, my suppliers, my friends, my family, and pretty much anyone else willing to talk about it with me. I can still remember vividly the point at which I said, “ok, let’s go for it!”
I was waiting to talk with one of my advisors, Debbie Opich, so I was flipping through a copy of Fast Company in the waiting area. One of the articles entitled “Leadership Lessons of a Rock Climber” by Jim Collins (author of Good To Great and Built To Last) really caught my eye. In the article, Mr. Collins describes the difference between Failure and fallure. As I was sitting there devouring this article, I was really hoping Debbie wasn’t going to poke her head out to let me know she was ready for me, and as luck or fate would have it, I was able to finish the article, and that was a really good thing because the most poignant part was yet to come.
As I reached the end of Lesson 2, it seemed as if Mr. Collins had written the article for me. He went on to detail a conversation he had while teaching at the Stanford Graduate School of Business with a graduating MBA student. The student came in his office and said “I’d really like to start my own company, but it just seems so risky, so I’m going to take a job with IBM.”
Mr. Collins responded, “What would happen if you give your startup the full try and failed?”
To which she said, “I suppose I would go and get a job.”
“And how hard would that be?”
“Not very hard.”
“So, you’re telling me that the worst-case scenario is that you’d be right back where you are now: looking at getting a regular job.”
…when I read that statement, I stopped dead in my tracks and knew at that very moment, where my future would be heading. Weber Enterprise would live to see another day!
The Evolution
After 3½ years of working out of a home office, expanding my customer base to not only include collegiate organizations but also many small businesses, my wife Bonnie and I made the decision to purchase our office building at 3301 Wisconsin. Upon first sight, it was a face only a mother (or someone that was either crazy or had a lot of vision) could love. After a little over a year of rehab work, the office came together nicely (click here if you would like to see some before & after pictures of the building), so now it was time to build a great team, which we have and are continuing to do.
Rebranding
In early 2009, I did a little business soul searching to try and figure out why some of our customers came back time and time again with great success in their promotions and others would only order once or twice and then dwindle away. The realization came to me that the successful clients were the ones that came to us with a blank slate; they knew they wanted to do something but came to us for advice and guidance. In order to make our product searches easier, I would sit down with our client, discuss their company, their target market, and what their goals for the promotion were, and then took that information back to the office to put together some product offerings that were right on the money.
At the time, I didn’t realize how powerful this was, it was just a way that saved a lot of time and headaches searching for products. It wasn’t until I realized this information is what made the difference between a consistently successful promotion and ones that were just ok. So, the time to reposition and rebrand was upon us.
During a brainstorming session with some of St Louis’ best young business minds: Scott Ginsberg of Hello, My Name is Scott, Brandon Dempsey, and Lisa Kuntz, I laid out the new vision and strategy of the company but needed a new name with personality, a new brand. After some pizza, a few cocktails, and a lot of crazy (and funny) ideas, the name goBRANDgo! came out (thanks Lisa!) and we all felt it summed up exactly where I wanted to take the company.
The Rebirth
In early 2010, Brandon Dempsey and I started having some conversations about working together as strategic partners; his online marketing business, Expert Status Online with goBRANDgo!’s offline. It made sense to do so knowing that customers needing online most likely needed offline and vice-versa. So, we started going on sales calls with each other and we worked together quite nicely. Both being young entrepreneurs, we went about our business in very similar fashions and had very complimentary styles. The only problems were that it got to be a bit confusing when at the end of the meeting we handed the prospect two different business cards, and then figuring out how to handle the customer relationship once we started working with them. So, in April of 2010 the two of us sat down for several hours to really talk through what it was that each of was looking for out of our businesses both personally and professionally and if it made sense to consider us working together more formally. From the discussion that afternoon, we laid out a series of steps that we would take in order to see if a partnership would in fact be a viable route.
They say a business partnership is like a marriage and in many ways that is absolutely true, and the steps we began to take were a business-courtship of sorts. So, after we had seen over a couple of months that we worked together well and had similar views of what an entrepreneurial venture should be (dating), we decided to have Brandon set up a desk in the offices of goBRANDgo! while still operating as Expert Status Online (moved in together). After about a month of working under this arrangement and many hours of discussion about business philosophy, Brandon in good faith, started talking to customers under the name goBRANDgo! (engagement). After a little over a month of this interaction, we started discussing what a partnership would look like and started putting some of the ideas and concepts down on paper, and in June of 2010, we went for it and made the decision that a partnership would ensue (marriage).
Our first move while getting the new partnership set up was to reach out to one of the most talented creatives in St Louis…the person who was the first to utter the words “goBRANDgo!”…Lisa Kuntz. After a great lunch meeting (that Lisa was 45 minutes late for due to a scheduling error), we threw it out there. ”We’ve got plans to build something really good, and with your help, it could be something great.” After a painstakingly long week of soul-searching and deliberations, Lisa agreed to come aboard as our Creative Director, and as an eventual minority partner. So, now from the original round-table consortium of entrepreneurial talents to rebrand Weber Enterprise, as of August 2nd, 2010, 3 of the 4 were now under one roof, which provided some amazing brain-power…we’ve still got our eyes on you Scott!
With the new power team, the flood gates seemed to burst open and business just started flowing in, which left us scrambling to find more great teammates, and find them did we ever. In the first year alone, we added 10+ more smart, driven driven people to the go! Team. Together we are building a business that we are proud of, a business that puts the interests of its employees first, customers second, and bottom line third. A business that we are extremely confident will help reshape the St Louis Marketing world and the St Louis community as a whole…and then we’ll shift our focus nationwide.
If you’ve made it this far in the story, well, it shows you have some dedication in order to read one of the longest pages in website history, but also, I hope you can find some inspiration and lessons in how we’ve gotten to where we are today. The trials and tribulations we all face along the road of life, and especially that of an entrepreneur, is really hard and riddled with pot holes and a multitude of reasons to just give up. There were several times over the last near decade that the journey seemed to hard, the roller-coaster ride too extreme, but with drive, grit, and determination and the support of my amazing wife and family, I’ve learned you just have to keep working hard and stick it out…and the rewards will certainly come.
The greatest rewards I see every day are most certainly not the financial ones, otherwise I would have given up long ago, but the joy of seeing our team develop something new to help others; the joy of seeing the look on the faces of our customers when we help them understand the true meaning and importance of marketing and making their businesses better; but the greatest joy of all, is seeing the growth every day–every hour, of the members of the go! Team. Seeing them become discouraged and overcome; seeing them learn and apply a new skill that just months earlier they didn’t even know existed; seeing our team come together like a family, supporting one another in a way that goes beyond just business, and then reflecting that feeling into the interactions with our second family…our clients. It’s truly inspring to be surrounded by some many great people.
We look forward to the opportunity to help you build a better business, and welcome you into our family. If you’d like to learn more about how we have built the culture at goBRANDgo!, reach out to us and schedule a go! Tour and see how we have built a Winning Culture…seriously, come take the tour, our Marketing Strategists set goals on the number of go! Tours they want to give each month, so you’d be doing them a favor.
Thank you for your interest and support in goBRANDgo! We will talk to you soon.
thanks,
Derek Weber
President
Recent Comments