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iFulfill Owner Uses Blog to Chronicle Every Entrepreneur's Nightmare, the Company's Demise

My client and friend, Paul Purdue, founder of iFulfill.com is in the midst of every entrepreneur's nightmare – he's going out of business, and he's using his blog to chronicle what he calls "the demise."

Until he threw up his hands and threw in the towel after six years of 14 hour days, he says in a post this morning, "you maintain the same faith and continue to believe that you can work out problems."

"I just kept believing that I would find the right answer. Under capitalization and rapid growth did us in," he told me.

Scoress of customers are venting on the blog, and Purdue is letting the laundry air in the name of transparency.

Growing too fast
The company recently doubled its warehouse space, created an incredible new infrastructure, got a slew of new clients through its new website (the creation of which, ahem, I am responsible for), was getting as high as 50% conversion on our Google Ads, and is still getting a constant stream of new business inquiries. But they ran out of money paying for it all. There were no investors. This was a one-man magic show grown into a multi-million dollar operation.

"As an entrepreneur, I have two main sides. There's the guy that shows up for work, is always smiling, has enthusiastic plans, loves what he does - you get the picture. Then there's the guy that lies awake at night worrying about money and infrastructure and other aspects of running a business. A big part of my job is to be the cheerleader; the guy that everyone turns to for inspiration and guidance."

He'll be back
"Now I've lost the company I built, and am starting over on a personal level.

But first, we've got to get everyone back together with their product!"

I doubt there's an entrepreneur on this planet who can't relate to this story. You can't be an entrepreneur without being an optimist. You just keep saying, "if this doesn't work out in three more months, I'll give up." People ask you how you sleep at night without knowing where your next check is coming from. You come up with a glib response and you live on air for a while. Because once your hard wiring is set for entrepreneur you keep giving it another three months and another and another. Sometimes you get the miracle. Sometimes you lose.

One thing I'm confident of: Paul Purdue will be back in some business some time soon. And the next one will really kick tushy.

UPDATE:Steve Outing at Poynter.org writes: "This is a great example of "transparency" -- something we talk about a lot in media circles. It's refreshing to see it in the business world. I suspect that Purdue has read "The Cluetrain Manifesto," the popular new-business book of a few years ago that gave a prescription for new ways of doing business in a digitally networked world."

Stephen Baker at Business Week Blogspotting writes:"One lesson here is that while you start a blog with one goal in mind, you may end up using it for something entirely different."

Please note: I will not publish comments that do not have a name and a legitimate email address.

Categories: Blogging and Moblogging, Business Communications, Commentary, Corporate_Blogging, Trends

BL Ochman | Jul 27 05 9:48 | TrackBack (2)

Comments

How very sad. It shouldn't ought to end that way.

Posted by: shel Israel at July 27, 2005 1:49 PM

Excellent item, B.L.

Not every company gets to live a full, long life, and it's not always someone's fault. Sometimes the factors that would make a company sustainable don't come together at the right time, or in the right order. I wish your friend good luck with future ventures.

Posted by: Eric Eggertson at July 27, 2005 2:58 PM

B. L. , your defense of your friend is admirable, but the sudden way he chose to end his business is not. Even though he is permitting customers to vent through comments to his blog, his posts fail to address his plans for minimizing the damage that his untimely "demise" is causing his fellow entrepreneurs.

I am all for optimism except when it is used as an excuse.

Posted by: Kay at July 27, 2005 3:05 PM

Just a quick thought, and I'm certainly not armchair quarterbacking here, but for the future and something we can all learn from this is would it have been beneficial to use the blog when the demise had not yet unfolded? Could he have begun to discuss his infrastructure problems, capitalization problems and had the public informed? This in turn could have alerted perhaps someone that could have helped him with the problems he was facing and perhaps even advised prospective investors looking for such a program? It's one thing to fall on your sword and allow people to kick sand in your face, but I see a chance that "transparency" could have been more helpful from the start.

Posted by: Jim Turner at July 27, 2005 10:46 PM

Hard to say how far someone should go airing their business problems. There are so many layers. I do think that many, if not most, entrepreneurs refuse to ask for help.

I wish he'd hired me earlier to help with marketing because we really made a positive impact. I'm sure there are plenty of coulda, shoulda, wouldas here.
BL

Posted by: BL at July 27, 2005 11:46 PM

I can say only "good luck".

Posted by: Natalie at July 28, 2005 8:05 AM

I might not agree with the short notice either, but every bit of faith I had in Paul as an effective communicator seems to be paying off. Don't you find it rather difficult to maintain anger at someone you feel you know? It's not like Paul was my "friend" and he certainly wasn't my "client" -- but flexibility and the high-touch approach sure engendered enough loyalty in me in 4+ years to give him the benefit of the doubt. I suspect Paul won't sleep until he makes this as good as he can in the situation.

And there's that power of loyalty: I'm testifying for him without him asking me to and without feeling like I have to. That's the "earned media" power of loyalty :)

Posted by: Brian Clark at July 28, 2005 9:48 AM

Hmm, blogging a demise? That's a different take. Seems like there are better things to be doing than blogging if a business is in that state. Throwing around the "transparency" cliche doesn't really seem to apply here.

Posted by: TDavid at July 28, 2005 12:58 PM

As a former client of Paul's, just wrapping up a hard, hideously expensive week that Paul carved out my life with truly amazing brutality, I have to say I can't believe I'm in the middle of this nightmare because Paul had no alternative. In a way it's my own fault -- the warning signs were there, balls being dropped week after week. And then there was the big warning sign: Paul's blog, in which the genuinely inventive enterpreneur turned grandstander, becoming a philosopher of business as his business became less and less capable of getting its work done. A lesson in blog-reading: when the ego starts oozing out, then it's no longer about business and it's time to grab your wallet and run.

Posted by: David Foy at August 1, 2005 12:36 PM

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About BL Ochman

Blogger, social media strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and sought-after corporate speaker B.L. Ochman heads the creative team of whatsnextonline.com. She also publishes the Ethics Crisis blog for SRF Global Translations

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