Posted Under: Entrepreneurship, Our Heroes

Today under the “Our Heroes” series we are interviewing with Alyssa Dver, Chief Marketing Officer turned multi-talented entrepreneur and creator of Mint Green Marketing. It is quite fascinating that Alyssa took on so many initiatives while staying committed to her family. Let’s speak to Alyssa and find out about her many entrepreneurial efforts…

DD: Who you are and what kind of corporate job were you at?

AD: I had two corporate jobs that lead me into entrepreneurship in fact. I will focus on the second experience as it was much more recent and leaves off where I am today….
My last corporate job was Chief Marketing Officer for SEDONA Corporation (OTC:SDNA), a small public company that develops Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for smaller banks and credit unions. I worked there 5 years and as a result of SEDONA I acquired my own startup, Lead Factory Inc. The acquisition included the software I had developed for lead management as well as me, the primary architect and product manager. I was very fortunate in this transition as I had no affinity for dealing with all the non-marketing aspects of the product such as legal, accounting, deep technology discussions, staffing, etc. Therefore, moving into SEDONA provided the corporate infrastructure I needed so I could focus on the aspects I adored for my product ‘baby’: marketing and product management. I was also afforded the ability to work from my home in MA with SEDONA located outside of Philadelphia. This was especially great for me as a mother of a one year old and 3 years later pregnant with son number two. During that period, I was shuttling between Boston and Philly on Amtrak due to its convenience and 911 physical and mental comforts. It was during those rides that I authored my first book, “Software Product Management Essentials” that remains a bestseller in its category. I wrote that book primarily wanting to get the information out of my head and into a reusable form for all the product managers I continued to literally “train”. However, I also was preparing a backup career strategy as a writer just in case the software bubble once again exploded on now a breadwinning mother of two.

DD: What made you leave the job? When did you realize that you wanted to be an entrepreneur & why?

AD: Following this second financial objective, I also started writing articles on CRM in vertical magazines which delightfully lead to a long term stint with BusinessWeek. It was quite a good situation and one which I was comfortable with lifestyle-wise, but career-wise was quite rocky. SEDONA was suffering from a lack of necessary funding and the Board had some significant leadership issues. I was witnessing the company lack in sales and the commitment to direct appropriate resources to sales, so I volunteered myself as a salesperson which meant taking on travel and all the humbling aspects of selling. A year later, despite the introspective experience it brought me as a marketer, I decided sales wasn’t what I wanted to do long term and I thereafter agreed to be laid off from SEDONA so I could explore other career paths.

DD: How did you prepare yourself for the employee to entrepreneur transition?

AD: That year with my separation agreement and unemployment providing startup financing, I fully thrust myself into yet another of my own entrepreneurial efforts, Wander Wear. Wander Wear was all about products that help prevent children from getting lost in public places. We developed an adorable line of tags, shirts, books, and other practical, affordable products. However, while the primary research and feedback had all indicated a go, the company just never took off. There were many close calls to becoming very rich and famous but my patience, funding and ego ran out before those things occurred (though ironically, there has been quite a lot of interest recently as I just shut down the corporation officially this year!). During my “Wander years”, I did immense amounts of research to understand and create rules for caregivers and I honed my media skills as a writer, presenter and interviewee by attending some expensive training plus doing A LOT of PR work. I met with CEOs and mingled with the Masons. I learned about licensing and inventory management. I even dabbled in Quickbooks and all sorts of SMB tools. I turned over every rock I could find and even extended the company with a non-profit affiliate, The Center to prevent Lost Children. This enabled us to provide the market with the required education which for credibility purposes, needed to be separate from the clearly product-oriented Wander Wear.

A year into it, I knew my funds and confidence were running out so I began transitioning back to my core skill in marketing and thereby opened Mint Green Marketing as a consulting entity. Three years later despite a bad economy, Mint Green is a marketing consulting company that provides affordable but expert marketing help to businesses around the world. Our clients are often themselves smaller startups or re-startups who seek executive level marketing leadership but don’t have the funds or need the full time overhead of a staff CMO. I actually carry about 5 different company business cards with CMO on them as I represent that function for all of those companies part time. Following my love to teach and present, I speak at least once per month at a major conference or association and I write articles here and there for both national and industry magazines. So in many ways, the skills that I acquired from my Wander Wear experience still pay off and I continue to believe there will be a better time and place for that opportunity.

DD: What are your Top tips for employees who want to be entrepreneurs but are hung up on something?

AD: My best tips for aspiring entrepreneurs are:

1. A good idea isn’t worth anything financially and friends and family are not good barometers. Seek tough love third party feedback and test, test, test with real prospects asking them for money, not just opinions.

2. Only take advice from people who are more successful than you and who know first hand what works and what doesn’t. It doesn’t guarantee the same will or will not work for you but at least you are vetting ideas offensively.

3. Spend the time figuring out what you sell to whom and why the heck they absolutely will buy it. Don’t spend a dime on any other marketing until those questions are answered with data, not guts.

4. Give enough time to your venture – nothing happens in less than a year and often longer.  However, see tip #5 too.

5. Know when to quit and move on. Failure isn’t for losers… the most successful entrepreneurs all fail one or more times in order to succeed. It’s a right of passage for most and as such, if the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact a train, abort mission (or at least write a book!).

6. Don’t worry about your brand. Worry about sales and revenues first. This in turn gives you the leverage to control your funding options. Don’t put donkeys before the cart lest you cannot pull and will be pushed instead.

7. Stick to your knitting and let others do all the other tasks you aren’t good at or that take you disproportionate time. Entrepreneurial assets are mostly time which you must be spent on making fires, not fanning them.

8. Realize that your worth isn’t measured by your own money but your contribution overall. Great entrepreneurs ‘get’ the law of attraction.

9. It is easy to edit and hardest to create. Being an entrepreneur gives you elite status, a secret society, a higher calling, and a justification for existence. Embrace your luck but work hard as a professional for there is no greater accomplishment than carving a place among individuals with intent and impact.

10. 9 out of 10 people (or some such ratio) will tell you no.  Thank each one as it gets you closer to that 10th one that says yes.

DD: How are you now? Are you still in same business, and how do you feel?

AD: One thing I have stayed true to is my lifestyle and commitment to my family, employees and clients. I hire other ex-executives who also left corporate roles to maintain a better balance in their own lives. They are professional and reliable and only want part time, meaningful work. As such, their 1099 status works really well for me so I don’t have big management responsibilities. It also helps keep my costs down so I can pass those savings to clients and be as agile as necessary when work is lean or the opposite. I try to take on work that I know I can do well on and that is a win-win-win only. I feel that life is too short to be aggravated and the marginal profit you get from working on things that are frustrating or with people that are ill-willed isn’t worth the costs of the stress and related impact. As such, I often say that I don’t think of myself as an entrepreneur but rather someone who is entrepreneurial. I love coming up with new ideas and finding the justification and refinement of the good ideas into profitable work. However, I still don’t desire to have a large company where I would have to deal with the undesirable issues like legal, accounting, staffing, etc. At the core, I am a marketer and I want to share that talent and passion with my clients to help them flourish along side of my own business.

Yes, I do dabble once in a while with new business ideas and have a new book in the works (not marketing at all!) as well as personal investments with some chosen clients that I believe are poised for great things. I sit on a few advisory boards and am often called to pre-startup marketing advice where I get to help on some new cool products again without the overhead of the business itself to manage. I read all kinds of entrepreneurial magazines, blogs and Tweets as much as time allows so I can keep inspired and fresh. I also hire interns and do college and business school guest lectures so I can feel the entrepreneurial energy in order to revive my own spirit. Most importantly, I work with so many new entrepreneurs who are much less experienced or prepared as I have been having gone to Wharton, been on several startup management teams, and been there, done that multiple times! I love helping them establish their marketing strategies and address the very early needs of finding the right product for the right market…so perhaps I am a bit of a vicarious entrepreneur in the end.

DD: Wow, thank you Alyssa for sharing your story! It is so great to hear about someone who has dabbled in multiple entrepreneurial roles and is successful in more than one of them! I wish you the best of luck in all you do and hope to see Wander Wear on the market one day, it sounds like a great idea!

AD: Thank you, Devesh, for listening to my story and for believing in entrepreneurs like myself who want to do something different and be part of this “secret society” where all members are entrepreneurs. Good luck in all you do as well.

DD: That was Alyssa Dver, a woman who is a mother of two and the successful creator of Mint Green Marketing, one of her multiple entrepreneurial efforts. I particularly enjoyed one of the metaphors she put forth in her tips for wannabe entrepreneurs: Don’t put donkeys before the cart lest you cannot pull and will be pushed instead.