Starting New Marketing Labs happened the way everything I've ever started happened: by grabbing a few people and just DOING something. Over a decade ago, I started blogging (when they called it journaling) and before that, I was very active on the early social networks (if you consider BBSes, AOL, CompuServ, and Prodigy to be early iterations of that). In recent years, as I figured out podcasting enough to co-found PodCamp (an international event with over 95 successful unconferences so far), I realized that there was a lot more we could do with social media and related technologies for marketing, so I talked with my then-bosses, now-business-partners Stephen Saber and Nick Saber, I grabbed up Justin Levy and Colin Browning and started New Marketing Labs.

Our projects have been fun. We built a listening station for a cable company. We improved audience engagement for a company with an online video property. We worked with one of the top educational publishers in the world on several projects (and counting), we've helped a software company coin a new term and frame their buyer persona differently (at least in how we're approaching it), and more. I enjoy how Colin and Justin worked at things, because they handled them from very different angles. That diversity made us better.

The truth is, when we started, we didn't exactly know HOW to be an agency. We just knew how to do social media for business, and so we had some really great clients who loved what we did, and yet, we had to learn how to be a bit more steady-handed in delivering back our results. I'm admitting to this because we fixed that (or are 85% of the way through fixing that). In the process, I was able to hire Colin Bower (who has a history running some part of AOL Interactive in the other web days) and Robert "Bob" Collins (who came from SHIFT, one of my top 3 PR agencies). They're giving us the chops we need to deliver better on all we know how to do.

I've also worked with T.J. O'Connor for over a year and change now. T.J. breathes this stuff from the code angle. He is the ideal "LAB" guy in New Marketing Labs, because we'll be having a conversation, I'll see his eyeballs go up into the "thoughtosphere," and then some time around 2AM, I'll get an email with a link to a working prototype of software that T.J. has created based on our conversations. Having that kind of firepower has proven really exciting for what we've delivered for some of our clients. T.J. isn't always right out there hogging stages like me, but he's every bit a part of what makes this team great.

Having Stephen and Nick as business partners means that I have a top Harvard MBA and a strong ops-minded guy backing up our moves. Stephen and I talk business models. Nick and I talk about making things run better. It's these kinds of relationships that give us a leg up on what I'd have done if I'd done this solo. They just know before I do when something might go wrong, or when something could be bigger than I'm conceiving it to be.

And finally, why are we a "labs" instead of some other term? Because we innovate. We never leave things at "good enough." Over 2010, we're doing all kinds of new things to try and further develop people's use of social tools to improve channels, to empower more sales marketing, to enhance engagements and experience marketing, and more. We've had a really stellar year so far in 2009, but 2010 is when we explode into more ways to help our clients be heroes.

It's fun telling the story of New Marketing Labs for a change. I don't like to brag on us much. It doesn't fit with my goals. But, maybe, I'll just say that our team is strong, and getting better at what we do, and that I hope to make solid wins for our clients in 2010 and beyond.