Baby Boot Camp

Earlier this year we mentioned working with a new client, a national franchise business headquartered in Sarasota that empowers women through fitness and entrepreneurship. It’s been more than six months since we first started working together, and in that time we’ve been able to accomplish several things. We will launch a new website for Baby Boot Camp within 30 days, but that’s not the whole story.

Like so many of our client stories, this one began with a referral. In this case the referral came from Doug Cherry, an intellectual property attorney with Shumaker, Loop, and Kendrick, who we have mentioned in this blog on several occasions. And this occasion happened to be a holiday party at his home last December.

A congenial host, Doug made a point of introducing my wife and I to several guests including Kristen Horler and her husband, Mark. When Doug mentioned what we do at Milestone she said, “Oh good! We’ve been looking for someone to help us build a new website.”

Of course we always appreciate a good referral, but I was intrigued. I knew of Baby Boot Camp having read about Kristen and her company in the local business media. We made plans to get together as soon as possible to talk about her website project.

After several meetings where we discussed the scope of work, which included up to four separate websites, and we demonstrated features of the content management system we use, we submitted a proposal that was eventually accepted. And that’s when we started working, but halfway through the project kickoff meeting the wheels fell off the bus.

As we have explained, the purpose of the project kickoff meeting is to dig deep – not just the functional requirements of the website, but also the company’s online marketing objectives. In other words we start at a high level to understand the strategy, and then we delve into to the details of site navigation and structure in order to create wire frames.

So there we were, Lee and I were sitting in their office speaking with Kristen and Katelyn, the company’s Brand Marketing Manager, about their website project. And we’re asking some tough questions. Big picture questions. Why questions. The kind of questions that some business owners have a hard time answering – especially as their business evolves over time.

Don’t misunderstand. These are smart women – very sophisticated when it comes to marketing (more so than most of our clients), and they know their industry inside and out. But I’ll always remember the offhand comment Kristen made halfway through the meeting when she asked, “Why do I feel like I’m on Shark Tank?”

At that point it was clear we discovered some uncertainties related to their marketing strategy. And it was obvious to Lee and I we shouldn’t proceed with their website project until they were addressed. I offered to meet Kristen later that week to discuss their marketing strategy in more detail and see if Milestone could help. 

A few days later we met for lunch. We did the whole “getting to know you” thing – talking about our families and careers paths. I suggested we put the website project on hold and engage in Milestone’s standard series of strategic planning sessions.

And that’s what we decided to do. Of course there is much more to the story, but that’s not the purpose of this week’s blog. Maybe we’ll get into those details next week. The point is we embarked on a journey together, and now we’re approaching the destination.

In four short weeks we will unveil the new Baby Boot Camp website at their national franchise owner’s conference here in Sarasota. And I’ve been asked to speak at the event. I’m looking forward to it.

Until next week,

Matthew Anderson, President
Milestone Marketing Associates, Inc.