The other day I was driving on Route 88 in the South Hills. (I had just paid a visit to a place called “Batteries Plus” -- what a terrific idea, what a terrific operation. They just sell batteries and they sell a ton of them)

As I approached Route 51, I couldn’t help but notice a huge 18-wheeler parked alongside the road. This monstrosity was parked at a perpendicular angle so that anyone coming from my direction couldn’t help but read the huge sign (it covered the entire truck), which read “Bid 66.”

“Bid 66,” I said under my breath, “Duffy’s company.” The Duffy I refer to is one John "Duffy" Conley, serial entrepreneur and frequent guest on my talk radio show. (And yes, he’s the same John "Duffy" Conley who was imprisoned for more than a decade on what I consider to be gambling charges that anyone of tens of thousands of people could have been accused of.)

Duffy is an inveterate self-promoter. I just love the way he operates. I can just see him on the phone with the owner-operator of that 18-wheeler. “Joe, I noticed that your rig just sits there day in and day out. How’s about you let me put my product name on the side? It’s just sitting there anyway. Oh, and do you think you could just turn it so it’s at an angle toward the road.”

That’s how the Duff operates.

Textbooks would call this “Guerilla Marketing.” Since I doubt that Duffy has ever even heard that term, he probably calls it something like “Street Marketing.” Or, more likely, “Selling.”

If you’re a start-up, you’re a guerilla. And if you are not a guerilla, you’ve probably got one foot in the grave.

I recently had as guests on my radio show Nick Friedman and Omar Soliman. Nick and Omar were just a couple more college kids looking to make a buck when they came up with the idea for a business they called, “College Hunks Hauling Junk.” CHHJ is just what it sounds like – college kids moving stuff in a van. There’s not a household in America that doesn’t have junk they would like to get rid of. These kids can accommodate.

But the reason this company succeeded beyond Nick’s and Omar’s wildest dreams isn’t because they have better trucks, better people, or powerful information systems. No, these two kids succeeded, and succeeded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue, because of their name and because they guerilla-marketed that name.

I particularly enjoyed a passage from their book entitled “Effortless Entrepreneur,” a passage that talks about just how much business they got as a result of simply wearing their CHHJ polo shirts every single day and every single place they went. (Like I said, there’s not a homeowner or renter in America that doesn’t have junk that needs to go from Point A to Point B.)

In this same chapter of their book, they also talk about how they dropped $15,000 to produce a “College Hunks” calendar. “People don’t use calendars as much as they used to,” writes Nick, “worst of all, calendars have a limited shelf life.”

Nick goes on to say that, “Had we analyzed the ROI on this venture upfront we would have never done it.”

By comparison, during the 2009 Presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C., Omar donned the “Guerilla/Gorilla” costume that the guys keep for such occasions, and stood atop a parade of eight HCCJ trucks that went through downtown Washington.

This stunt cost almost nothing and resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars of new business.

Years ago, and when I was starting one of my businesses, the customer that eventually would become our first client told us that he would sign the contract if we could “put his mind at ease” regarding the security of the data he was about to turn over to us. This individual was also making a visit to our office (his company was in Baltimore) and on numerous occasions he expressed concern about the security of his customer data.

At the cost of a couple of phone calls and by rummaging through some junk piles left behind by a large company that had just moved out of our building, we were able to rig up a completely useless, but formidable-looking security camera. Complete with blinking red light.

Had our prospective customer merely traced the coaxial cable, he would have soon realized that it went nowhere. But it hung above the door marked (and he did cost us about 20 bucks to have the sign made up) “Customer Data Room – Entrance to Authorized Individuals Only.”

It sealed the deal.

Sometimes the best guerilla marketing never happens, but nonetheless pays off. Let me explain.

Back when we were starting Primo magazine (Primo was targeted to Italian-Americans – it was all about preserving “I-A” culture.) I made an offer in the magazine to anyone who could get a copy of Primo on the coffee table on the set of the “Sopranos.” I didn’t expect anyone to take me up on this and I would have died if anyone had actually done so, but just the word on the street was such good publicity that we were able to significantly increase subscriptions.

One of my all-time favorite entrepreneurs is Don Jones. The entrepreneurial program at Carnegie-Mellon University is actually named after him. Don Jones likes to tell the story of how he scraped up every last dime to “build the largest and most domineering trade show booth at the annual motion-control systems show.”

In essence, Don went “all in” with this five-day show. He barely had enough money to get his people to the convention, but when they got there; their booth was a marvel to behold.

Don once told me, and had the gambit not succeeded, he “probably would have had to file bankruptcy.”

But succeed it did. I believe Don returned more than 10 times his investment.

Some months ago, I wrote a column entitled “Desperation.” In that column I talked about the fact that I am at my absolute best when my back is to the wall. When both time and resources are in short supply.

Some would call this “Freelancing.” Others might refer to it as “Making it Up as We Go Along.”

But small business owners and entrepreneurs all know that, and when it comes to building a company when you have no resources, guerilla tactics are almost de rigueur. And while there are certainly a number of great books on the topic (Guerilla Marketing by Gerald Levinson comes immediately to mind.), I personally think that the greatest guerilla ideas will show up, almost magically, right when you need them. (Sometimes a great bottle of Cognac helps, though.)

Good luck and good tactics!