Our Origin Stories

It’s become a standard feature of any business website worth its salt: a blog. 

These blog posts are often filled with advice like “Here’s how we would do X-Y-Z,” “Why you should never A-B-C,” and “Why it’s important to do 1-2-3.”

Beeline is no different. 

It makes sense: New visitors to a business website want to find out who they are and what unique knowledge they possess. This information is crucial for potential partners or clients.

However, that can get monotonous. 

Read enough how-to blog articles, and your brain quickly starts groping for the OFF switch.

So this post breaks the rule. We want to switch your brain back ON.

How better to do that, than tell a good story! A few, in fact. This article pulls together a collection of Chris’s own experiences.

The human brain is wired for Story. 

It’s a rare human being that doesn’t find another human being’s accounts of pain, joy, error, failure, success, accident, unexpected discovery . . .

. . . endlessly FASCINATING.

You can teach folks something a lot more easily if you sprinkle your lesson with personal stories. In fact, the lesson is often optional – if you tell your personal story, it’s near certain your listeners will learn something. And remember it far more easily.

Businesses, nonprofit and for-profit, don’t do this particularly well. IF they tell a story, they’re likely to tell it hurriedly, and then apologetically say, “Right, sorry for blabbing on so long. Let’s get back to business!”

That’s a mistake.

Because just as human brains are wired for Story . . . nonprofits are wired for Story. 

People start a nonprofit (or go to work for one) because they want to do something beyond just making money. They want to make a difference. They want to correct an injustice, soothe pain, make heroes out of people, and find the hero in themselves.

The story isn’t secondary to a nonprofit’s business. The story IS A NONPROFIT’S BUSINESS.

And guess what (here’s a big hint) . . .

By telling human stories, you tap into the deepest of your beneficiaries’ (and donors’) emotions . . . like nothing else:

Want to boost donations? Tell stories.

Want to recruit new volunteers? Tell stories.

Want to make the people you’ve helped . . . AND your donors . . . and your staff and volunteers . . . and yourself . . . feel better about themselves? 

Yup. TELL STORIES.

Stories assure donors that what they’re contributing to is real. Stories inspire them to (a) not quit, and (b) take it up a notch. Stories remind beneficiaries that they really are better off for having encountered your nonprofit.

And there are some simple techniques to capturing beneficiaries’ and donors’ stories – we recommend reading this article, if you’re interested.

But to practice what we preach, instead of a whole article about why you should tell more stories and how you can get better at capturing them, I’m going to tell you my story . . . (well, several of them)!

Our Beeline copywriter (Dave) sat down with me, the founder, (Chris) over Zoom. Dave was the interviewer, Chris the interviewee. The stories below fall out of that conversation. If you can do something similar for your nonprofit … you’ll quickly make new friends for yourself and your nonprofit.

How Chris learned his partner was trustworthy . . .

DAVE: 

OK, Chris, you told me briefly a while back about how you discovered your partner was trustworthy. Tell me the whole story now. Anything like that is huge. Good people are hard to find, and hard to keep. 

CHRIS:

I’d been working with (and paying) this one contractor-partner for a couple years.

For 6 months his team had been handling a paid-ad account for one of our clients; a client who wanted their ads targeting only one specific state.

In fact, not even the whole state – just a specific large city within that state. 

His service had been stellar.

Or so we both thought.

Six months along, he calls me up.

Turns out, the ads had been going out of state for some time. He’d been overcharging me, and I’d been overcharging my client, the whole time. 

Not by a lot – maybe $1,600 worth. But it was still $1,600 the client had spent on clicks they didn’t want or need.

(My client hadn’t even noticed. I missed it myself.)

Contractor came to me and said, Chris, this is what’s been happening. I’m really sorry, we’re going to fix this, NOW. 

And then we’re going to refund you, so you can refund the client.

Holy COW. 

Think I’ll keep him and his team.

Partners (and people) like that are GOLD.

And how Chris’s employer learned he was trustworthy . . . 

CHRIS:

And actually, I can tell a similar story to that where the shoe was on the other foot.

DAVE:

What, in your past career?

CHRIS:

Yup. I started out in B2B sales in foreign exchange payments processing.

My employer at the time had a gauntlet of checks they had to run through whenever a client was signing an application.

And one of them was: The applicant had to check off a box that said they had never committed a felony. (If the box was NOT checked, it wasn’t a showstopper. However, the applicant had to then submit an explanation for not doing so.)

Payments processing, remember? Highly regulated industry. 

The design of the application form was such that it was an easy box for applicants to overlook. And 99% of the time, it was just that: An oversight, easily corrected with a phone call to the client.

This one day . . .  we got an application back from a new client – a chocolate shop who imported their amazing truffles from Europe – and who had been referred to us by a group of similar shops. 

On the application, the box in question had been left unchecked. . This had to be an oversight (thought I).

In a hurry, I checked the box for them, and passed the application along for processing . . .  forgetting this one time to call them first.

Shifting uncomfortably yet?

Next day . . .  Compliance calls.

“We can’t approve this application. We can see in the owner’s records that they committed a felony, and they lied on the application. You’re gonna have to let them know we can’t do business with them.”

DAVE:

Uh oh?

CHRIS:

Definitely uh-oh.

Hindsight being 20/20 . . .  what I should have done (obviously) . . .  was call the client before checking the box.

The one time, the one time I don’t do my homework . . . 

A colleague in my office advised me: Keep your mouth shut and take this secret to your grave.

But I knew what would happen if I did that. My conscience would punish me for years. Far better to say something now, than keep it hidden.

So I drove 20 minutes across town to HQ, then waited in the office of the Director of Compliance . . .  sweating bricks . . .   until he was available to see me. Whereupon, I ‘fessed up.

He was justifiably upset, and gave me the shellacking I deserved. 

And then . . .  expressed appreciation that I’d come to talk to him about it.

I left the Director’s office red-faced, BUT . . .  sleep that night was still sweet.

And there was a delightful Hollywood ending:

Years later, after I’d launched Beeline . . .  that Compliance director actually reached out to me for help, and hired Beeline for a project!

When taking responsibility is hard

DAVE: 

Wow. So ‘fessing up’ turned out to be good for business.

CHRIS:

Yup. But really, the reward for me was peace of mind.

And it actually happened again. Sort of. Although this one wasn’t my mistake, but the principle is similar. 

I had a Japanese client who supplied Japanese-made specialty restaurant equipment to customers around the world.

On one particular occasion, he’d paid for some equipment to be delivered to a customer in Asia somewhere. And he needed his payment to be pushed out to his Japanese suppliers.

His customer had paid him on time, and he paid us on time. But for reasons I still don’t understand, our payment wire to his supplier . . .  went missing.

Payment wires go rogue from time to time. When it happened, it was always outside my control, and very frustrating, but I grew to accept that it was something that happened, and it was pointless to ask, Whose fault is it? I’d never get an answer, it wouldn’t solve the problem, and the money would always appear in the right place eventually.

This time, however, it caused the shipment of equipment to be late leaving the supplier . . . 

. . .  and late arriving where it was expected. (On a very specific date.)

(And we’re talking sums of order $100,000 or higher, here.).

Result: My client was left with a huge amount of “egg on his face”. 

His message to us was simple: We are never. Using. You guys. AGAIN.

Time for some self-correction. My boss, expecting that we had lost this client, drafted up a letter blaming me, and indicating I would be disciplined for poor communication.

(While I wasn’t being disciplined other than discussing this issue, we wanted my client to know that we were taking personal responsibility.)

Then I decided to try an experiment. (Worst case scenario, it would end with an apology to the client and give me a way to do something in a situation where it was otherwise out of my control.)

I memorized a phrase in Japanese expressing a deep sense of regret, then I physically went to this client’s office with the letter.

As I walked in the door, the look on his face was one of complete shock. (It was a small office – just him and his wife, and two employees.)

Handing my client the letter, I bowed and said:

“Mōshiwake arimasen”. (申し訳ありません｡)

Groping for words, but still upset, he finally blurts out: 

“What are you doing here? You guys broke my nose! You embarrassed me in front of my customer!”

I said, “Yes, we did, and yes, we are at fault.” 

I apologized again, then left.

And then two weeks later, he calls up and says:

“Nobody . . .  in all the years I’ve been in business . . .  has EVER apologized to me like that.

“We’re going to give you guys another shot.”

Fear of loss will blind you to big gains

DAVE: 

WOW. So you’re rescued your employer from their own mistake. That’s something. How many years were you with them?

CHRIS:

13. The first 6 years were fantastic. The learning was immense. The last half of my time there, wasn’t as good, but there were still some good moments. This story isn’t one of them, though!

I always wanted my clients to be happy and to have their payments processed right away. 

However, when they were new clients wanting to pay by direct debit or check, we’d have to hold their money until it cleared, in case they were a fraudster. 

If they wanted it to go through faster, they needed to provide us with financials, so that we could ensure they weren’t fraudsters. So it was a constant balancing act. 

And sometimes . . .  a control freak colleague . . .  obsessed with defending their petty fiefdom . . .  wouldn’t help.

For example, we had this client who regularly sent payments worth around $2,500 in Euros, a couple of times a month. They had a good payment record, but this credit manager would hold up their payments every time.

When the client complained, I discovered it was due to their credit limit. 

I approached the credit manager to get it raised, but he refused. 

The situation came to a head when the client, frustrated by the delays, threatened to take their business elsewhere. Despite having a million-dollar credit line with their credit card company, they couldn’t get a $2,500 wire released promptly? Crazy, they said. (I agreed.) 

In a last-minute move, just before the cutoff time, the credit manager finally released the wire, but it was too late. The client had already decided to leave.

In the financial sector, $2,500 . . .  is less than peanuts. It’s a peanut crumb. 

It’s the cost of doing business. Better to be bilked out of $2,500 and have to close the account, than lose a client over late payments.

In fact, the business owners had already let company leadership know we were not losing enough money due to bounced payments! 

They actually got angry because the business was NOT losing enough money. 

Because they knew that if you’re losing enough small money, it’s because you’re aiming high enough. To make Big Money . . .  you have to risk losing small money.

Why dreams are like people

DAVE: 

OK, so you’re in the twilight of your time at this place, and your feet are starting to get itchy. Tell me about that.

CHRIS:

I always managed the clients I brought in. 

I took care of their transactions and payments directly. This way, I built strong relationships based on trust. 

But if you hadn’t already deduced it from the previous two stories, things didn’t always go smoothly. 

Sometimes, it was my bad communication. I make my fair share of mistakes. 

(I am still learning to not be a people-pleaser in the beginning by under-promising, so I can bring real satisfaction in the end by over-delivering.)

Sometimes, it was poor internal procedures. 

And occasionally, it was way, WAY outside my . . .  indeed, our . . .  control.

I hated those moments. 

And if I’m honest, that was the biggest reason I left. 

I wanted to be the one in control, to deliver exactly what had been promised. If something went wrong, it would be on me, not an outside operations team. 

This dream grew stronger over time, especially when I realized that if this company, for some reason, went bust, I would not look for a job at another payments-processor. And I did NOT want to retire in the currency exchange business. I’d fallen into currency exchange, but it was never a passion.

The industry also had a lot of turnover. 

People often moved from one company to another, taking their clients with them. But the grass wasn’t greener anywhere else; they all had their own problems. I was in a good job, and I had picked the best company in the industry, at its peak . . .  

Before it started to go downhill or get bought out, as happens with most companies. (Note: It got bought out.)

I knew I was good at sales and even enjoyed it. When I brought clients on board, I wanted the stress of making promises and delivering. 

I wanted the responsibility and didn’t want to depend as much on an outside team for crucial tasks. It was too stressful to see mistakes made that I had no say in, and to deal with the emotional fallout of an upset client in a situation I had no way to fix (I didn’t even have the ability to approve a refund).

So I knew I would someday have to jump.

Beware biz opps . . .  but sometimes they pay off

DAVE: 

OK, so tell me about the jump. You and I have both traveled in Perry Marshall’s orbit at different times, and I know that features into it. Tell me about that.

CHRIS:

When I was a teenager, I always dreamed of starting my own business and doing something meaningful. 

I was interested in other cultures and languages and thought I might do something abroad. However, I wasn’t interested in traditional faith-based missions or ministry work. I just thought I’d figure it out after college. But part way through college, something happened that I hadn’t bargained on.

Funny how meeting the woman of your dreams tends to rearrange your priorities.

So after college, I needed to start earning a living quickly. I landed a job at the aforementioned payments-processing company. At first, it was just a way to pay the bills, but I discovered I enjoyed sales and building relationships with people.

Then after several years with this company . . .  I fell for a biz opp.

In 2015, Perry Marshall started offering a course on how to do Google Ads for local businesses. It cost $1,000, but I decided to invest in it. 

Like anyone . . .  I quickly thought, Chris, have you fallen for a scam?

BUT, to my surprise . . .  the course was quite good. And I learned a lot about online advertising. 

It was SO good . . .  that in 2016 I fell for Perry’s next “scam”. I invested another $2,000 in a course called the Consulting Accelerator, which had a hard-to-resist guarantee: I’d get my first client, or my money back. 

This course also was quite good.

I was still working for the payment-processor, remember. (Although it was remote work now.) And my family was growing . . . 

And then, in early 2016, following the Consulting Accelerator course . . .  I landed my first paying client. 

That’s how Beeline was born.

That one deal covered the cost of both courses within a few months. The client was a marketing agency in Canada, and I worked on their sub-client’s ad campaigns. (Although that sub-client didn’t last long, I continued working with the Canadian agency, and they are my client to this day.)

Throughout 2016, I brought in more clients and continued to grow my business. 

Looking back, my journey from employed salesman to starting my own business was driven by a desire to be in control – specifically, to be able to make and deliver on my promises. 

DAVE:

Reminds me of that Warren Buffett mantra: The best investment you can ever make . . .  is in yourself.

How nonprofits chose Beeline and not the other way around

DAVE: 

So Beeline’s up and running. Was it always going to be a marketing firm for nonprofits from the get-go?

CHRIS:

Not really. That’s just how it’s worked out.

In 2015, when I took that first biz opp and started learning how to manage Google Ads . . .  I knew I would eventually face the old chicken-and-egg problem: To get a job, you need experience, and to get experience, you need a job.

So to give myself a jump-start, I started volunteering with a nonprofit I knew. 

They had a Google Ad Grant, and I offered to run their ad campaigns for free. This gave me hands-on experience, while it solved a problem for them.

Then, on the second biz opp in 2016, I landed that first paying client.

And then, the nonprofit for whom I’d been volunteering surprised me with, Chris, we really like what you’re doing with our Google Ad Grant, and the paid ads. We’d like to start paying you to scale it up for us.

And it was like . . .  Oh, uh . . .  okay!

Two clients now. And the third wasn’t far behind, or the fourth . . . 

Great problem to have, but problem, it still was. 

I’d realized by the time I had two clients that managing Google Ads on my own was very time-consuming.

If I kept doing it all myself, I’d burn out. And burning out when you have 3 kids and a 4th on the way, is not a good thing to do. (More have been added since then, see the family pic!)

Luckily . . .  I’d met someone who took the same Google Ads course who was willing to offer white-label services. 

He could handle the detailed work, allowing me to focus on bringing in new clients and managing the overall strategy. Initially, I was hesitant, but after seeing the growing workload, I knew I had no other option if I really wanted to run a viable and scalable business.

So I took him on as a contractor.

This proved to be sheer good fortune, because he is the “partner” I referred to in the section above titled How I learned my partner was trustworthy.

And it inadvertently allowed me to focus on what I most enjoyed (and excelled at): Sales, and Client Strategy.

Win-win situation.

A few years later, I hired a second contractor to help with client management. This decision was partly by the need to have a backup plan if anything happened to my main partner. Additionally, my main partner’s religious convictions constrained him from working on certain types of projects. Having a second team made the business resilient.

Along the way . . .  nonprofits have kept beating a path to my door.

Like I said, I never set out to focus on them. I’d simply started out by volunteering for a nonprofit. Then another needed help, then another, and suddenly, I was the Google Ad Grants for nonprofits guy. 

DAVE:

You didn’t choose them, they chose you.

How an allergy ignited a fire

CHRIS:

Precisely.

I’m not complaining whatsoever. I thoroughly believe in the nonprofit model. I just can’t claim to have deliberately targeted the sector and succeeded.

DAVE: 

Some people are raised with business and entrepreneurial initiative in the family from an early age. Was that you?

CHRIS:

No. In fact, when I was a teenager, I was allergic to corporate America. 

My dad worked for Hewlett Packard. He hated it. He was burning out and miserable, so I thought business was the last thing I wanted to do.

After high school, I was interested in other cultures and languages and thought about living abroad. I even considered missions work, but didn’t want to raise support or rely on donations. So, I wasn’t sure what career path to take.

And then, after college, I needed a job quickly. My wife and I had just gotten married, and we needed income. I got a job at the aforementioned payments-processing company. But deep down, I knew I wanted to do something different.

And I knew “something different” was possible, because years earlier, when I was 16 . . .  Mom and Dad made it possible – They set the example. 

They started an assisted living business. At first, they’d thought about opening an ice cream store, but the workload seemed insane. Then, they found an opportunity to take over an assisted living home. Mom was a registered nurse, which was perfect for managing the medical side of things. My dad turned out to be a good caretaker too, even though he didn’t realize it at first.

Their business paid the bills, and allowed my dad to quit Hewlett Packard. It didn’t go supernova, but it was a success nevertheless. They did this for about ten years before passing the business on to someone else.

Seeing my parents succeed in their own business made me realize: Entrepreneurship (and a better life) was possible. I didn’t have to do corporate America. I could carve out my own path and find something that was a better fit.

Eventually, I realized that Corporate America wasn’t really so bad. Business wasn’t bad. In fact, I liked it, especially sales. It wasn’t the corporate world that was the problem; it was finding the right kind of business. A business situation in which I was in control, could make promises to clients, and deliver on them . . .  was the ideal.

Word to aspiring jockeys: Successful ones ride several horses

DAVE: 

You’re preaching to the choir with that one.

But Google Ads is how you started, but I know you do much more than that now. Tell me your thinking around that.

CHRIS:

As Beeline grew . . .  I started thinking more about how to manage potential risks. 

The world of marketing is always changing, especially with the rise of AI and new technologies. You gotta adapt.

DAVE: 

Classic Darwin: Not the most intellectual or the strongest of the species that survives, but the one best able to adapt and adjust.

CHRIS:

Exactly. And in the marketing and advertising world, one of the main risks is any marketing platform you don’t control. Like Google.

Google makes most of its money from ads, so they’re not likely to stop offering them. However, they constantly change how ads work, especially so now with AI becoming more common. 

Another risk? The Google Ads Grant program for nonprofits. The program lets nonprofits use Google Ads for free, BUT . . .  if Google ever decided to end the program, it would affect nonprofits significantly. 

So I started exploring other services to offer. 

One idea? Facebook lead ads. 

These ads help clients grow their email lists and find new supporters. Google ads, coupled with a Grant, remain the most cost-effective way for nonprofits to spread their wings. But if the Google Grant went away, Facebook lead ads are a viable alternative. This way, my clients could still reach their audience and grow their impact.

Another idea? Live chat. 

Sometimes, clients get leads from our ad campaigns, but those leads don’t convert into sales or donations. What if we offered a live chat service to help engage these leads and increase the chances of sales or donations?

Together with my main partner we’ve started testing a live chat service with clients. If it works well, we may offer it to more. 

I’ve only scratched the surface of the ideas here. There are tons of different marketing platforms and tricks out there. TikTok is currently the flavor of the month in the marketing world. 

A few years ago, it was Pinterest and Instagram. Tomorrow, it will be something new. Watch this space.

Summary: gather stories of your mission!

OK, now you’ve read a few good stories about me, how Beeline got started, and what drives it.

Fair chance I’ve piqued your interest. Now go and do the same thing yourself!

You’re sitting on a TON of stories . . . 

Your own . . .  stories of the people you’ve helped . . .  and stories of people who are helping you . . . 

Start telling them.

It’s human nature to underestimate the resources we already have, and overestimate the resources we don’t have. 

Trust me, the grass isn’t greener over there, it’s greener right where you are now. You just have to dig a little.

And here are two hints:

1. People LOVE being asked to tell their stories. 

They just have to be asked. So ask them a good question and then keep asking (just listen)!

2. Modern technology makes it incredibly easy to tell and spread good stories.

You really only need to have a conversation with a willing storyteller, and an app or two to automate everything else. 

And if anything in this article has ignited something in your mind, but you’re not sure how to get started . . .  get in touch. 

Happy to have a conversation that will likely lead to an answer, and hopefully some good stories!

– Chris