Many good things have come from the recent publicity Broadwick received in Investors’ Business Daily, the Raleigh News & Observer, the Chapel Hill Herald, and localtechwire.com. In fact, it is actually funny how publicity has directly created significant positive change for me. This time a 57 year executive from Carrboro read the N&O article and decided then and there that he wanted to work with Broadwick. Today, he agreed to come on as my Vice President of Sales, being paid partly with commission and partly with equity. He also may put some money into the company.

If you are doing something newsworthy that hasn’t made the news, start today building relationships with editors and reports are your area publications. I’ve been featured in the paper four times in my life. Here’s what each time did for me:

July 2001, “Teen Runs Internet Firm” (Bradenton Herald, Sarasota Herald Tribune)
Got me a job as VP of Marketing at a company that we ended up building to a million dollars in sales

August 2002, “Virante Design & Development a Success” (Sarasota Herald-Tribune)
Mentioned my upcoming book. Seeing that in print gave me significant motivation to finish it, which I finally did two weeks ago.

September 2002, “Freshman at UNC launches UNCstudent.com” (Daily Tar Heel)
Made Aaron Houghton know who I was when he met me in October. Aaron is today the CTO of my company Broadwick.

November 2003, “At Broadwick, the CEO is 19” (Raleigh News & Observer, Investors’ Business Daily, Localtechwire.com, Chapel Hill Herald)
Got me 1) on the front page of Investors’ Business daily 2) an experienced executive willing to work for me as my VP of Sales and 3) an appointment with a significant potential reseller for Broadwick.

The lesson here. Build relationships. Network. And send out press releases when you have something unique and newsworthy.