Episode 36: Mad Man Across The Table (The 4th Step in the Death of Online Dating)

With engineering and publishing seemingly under control, it was time to turn our attention to marketing.

Back in March, when we wrote the book proposal, Judy had told me about a guy she knew–Russell Quinan. “He’a a real Mad Man,” she told me. “He’s got a keen marketing mind and an uncanny genius in both concept and delivery.”

So the last week of July, we met Russell in Capitola at the Stockton Bridge Grill. The Stockton Bridge Grill sits right on the beach with a beautiful view of the water. Table 13 had become our official offsite conference room—they had even created a special sauce for their Lamb Chops at Stef’s request. Once again at table 13, with Chops and the “TrudyAnne” sauce, Judy and I awaited Russell’s arrival.

By this point we had already been courting Russell for several months. Although he was working with Judy on a marketing project for her day job as CEO of DreamTime, he had been studiously avoiding our advances for him to join the Magical Matches team.

With a good bottle of wine, we began to tell Russell about the book, the Mirror relationship, and how we thought the cornerstone of success for online dating was the online dating profile. We went round and round trying to help him understand what we intended to do as a company, but he just wasn’t quite getting it. He just couldn’t quite grasp our vision. Were we going to sell profiles? “Where’s the market for that?”, he asked. Judy thought we might want to start at the very beginning of the story and move forward, but I just kept right on going. “People would read the profiles, select one, and become part of a pool…”

It just wasn’t getting through.

Then it dawned on me. He wasn’t getting the big picture. Judy was right—we did need to start from the beginning! I looked at Russell and said, “We’re launching on online dating site to go with the book.”

Russell didn’t pause, not even for a second, before replying, “Count me in.”

Because we were in stealth mode, we hadn’t been able to explain the entire MM concept before; Russell thought we were only launching a book. He really didn’t have an expertise in launching a book, so he had avoided becoming involved. But marketing a website was right up his alley!

Russell immediately launched into his background. He had worked on soooo many large projects: Levis, General Motors, Got Milk, Alibaba, Xbox. He had even done marketing on Yahoo!Personals, Yahoo’s online dating site.

We were impressed. What we would come to learn in the future would impress us beyond imagination. In the days ahead we would come to understand that our new marketing chief was a titan in his field. He had worked for the premier marketing firms in New York and San Francisco. He had been involved in so many huge brands that it was impossible to count. He was also a founder in the largest, fastest growing interactive marketing agency in the US during the dot com era.

A titan indeed.

Russell would ignite and bring life to the MM brand in ways that we hadn’t even dare to dream.

Adding Russell to Team MM was the 4th Step in the Death of Online Dating.

Click here for Episode 37: Rights, Control, and Making Publishing History

Episode 3: The Profile Works Perfectly! (1st Step in the Death of Online Dating)
Episode 19: The King and I (2nd Step in the Death of Online Dating)
Episode 31: MM is Born (3rd Step in the Death of Online Dating)