Hope all is going well. Hard to believe that we are ready to close out January next week. I really do not know where the month has gone. Life is just moving way too fast. Feels like we just got done with the holidays. As you may have noticed, we are switching the blog over to Thursdays instead of Fridays from this point forward. We noticed that the amount of people that search on our website tends to be higher on Thursdays so we figured we would continue to try to reach out to more people. Coming into 2023, our website viewership from all over the world continues to grow. This type of decision is made after evaluating our analytics data. I am still amazed about how much information can be gleaned from our website analytics. For those of you that like to read the blog on Friday, it will be there when you are ready for it. We did not want to disrupt these folks either so we get the best of both worlds. Before we dive in, I also wanted to let you know that we will have another announcement about a new addition coming soon. Stay tuned for this announcement in the following weeks.
Website analytics are something that I’ve come to really appreciate, especially as we look to grow our customer base for our IVRT and cell chamber products. Over the past several years, we have spent very little on marketing. Being a small business with a limited budget, you have to be creative. Last year, we used analytics to target placement of ads which showed some success. We’ve worked hard and looked to build the customer base one customer at a time. We plan on spending more money this year (marketing will be happy) as we look to really grow our brand. I am always amazed at how our little website is viewed by so many countries around the world.
This discussion leads me to the topic of this week’s blog which is related to doing the dirty work to get things done. Being a small business owner, we are even doing the mundane jobs. We do believe that it is important to understand all aspects of the company because that makes you appreciate all of the little successes. These past couple of weeks have really exemplified this statement. I could not help thinking about this as I plowed through the list of connections we made on LinkedIn. We are always looking to connect with people whose companies could have some interest in BioSurfaces’s technology. This is a long and tedious process. What can be frustrating is that we will reach out to possible contacts letting them know we are interested in connecting to introduce our technology. When a person looks to connect with me, I will not accept a request to connect if their interests do not align or we cannot help them. I would not want them wasting time thinking that I could help them or that we could use their technology or product. Their time is as important as mine. I will also mostly answer people who reach out even through a cold email requesting a call or meeting to let them know there is no alignment. Some people will connect, leaving us thinking they are interested in learning more. Many times, when we approach after them accepting the invitation, we only end up chasing a ghost which could have easily been avoided. I am appreciative of the few people we connect with that take the time to say they are not interested, even though we connected. We still believe that there is value in this regardless of how challenging it can be. Even if we get one lead, it will have been worth the work.
As I’m wallowing in my pity party for one since I want to be anywhere else but doing networking, I look around the company and see all of the different ways that each of our team members are doing the dirty work. These jobs range from getting all of the documents ready to submit to our accountant to file our taxes, producing IVRT and cell chamber orders in place of doing research, working long hours to test our cell chambers for cell loading capabilities, developing and expanding on pricing models for our IVRT business, conducting a literature search to find information to tie to our data, searching out contacts on social medias, writing up agreements and troubleshooting an electrospinning unit that spontaneously decides to glitch. Even our current winter interns are logging in orders and cutting hundreds of little plastic o-rings for our IVRT customers. What our team doesn’t realize is that all of these individual jobs, no matter how challenging or tedious they could be, will ultimately help drive us to success. As they say in professional American football (I need to specify this since we have an excellent overseas following), games are won in the trenches. We have a group of “dirt dogs” who are not afraid to roll up our sleeves to make something happen. The pity party was short-lived and I dove back in because I know any one of the potential contacts could affect our business. I just needed to understand that we are all in this together.
Next Friday February 3rd will be our #FactualFriday followed by our Monthly Spin on February 10th. We recorded the webcast this past week and it should be ready for your viewing by the end of February. This webcast will be focusing on our Bio-Spun™ Cell Chamber.
Matt