Tamara Nall founded The Leading Niche, a consulting firm to the federal government and larger firms.  She shares with us the secret of growing her company to $4M in revenue - the relationship map.

For complete show notes: http://www.launchandlead.com/20 

Randy Reyess is co-founder of VenturePact, a technology services firm that matches companies with talented application development teams from around the globe.  He has also written in publications such as Forbes, Fast Company and Harvard Business Review.   In our conversation today, Randy describes in detail how to acquire customers through online advertising, including VenturePact's strategic use of dynamic landing pages.  He also describes his approach to growing the company from 2 to 27 people in 3 short years.   For more lessons about how to be an execepreneur, visit www.execepreneur.com. 

Rachel Rodgers started the Rodgers Collective, a cool, innovative take on a law firm.  She has grown the company over the past 5 years or so, and has lot to share, including a great way to think about protection as an entrepreneur.

Four questions for Rachel this week:

1. How have you rocked Rodgers Collective while raising a couple of newborns at the same time?
2. How did you systematize your business?
3. How did you productize your legal services?
4. What legal guidance do you have for Entrepreneurs?

 

For complete show notes, visit www.launchandlead.com.

We continue our conversation with Rand Fishkin this week and dive into the details of how to build an online presence - even if you're starting from scratch. We started with search engine strategy and ended the conversation with a case study to bring it all home.   We asked Rand - if someone starting a new professional services firm (lawyers, accountants, consultants) came to you and said “I’m building a firm to last me a couple of decades, and I’m willing to commit 5 to 7K / month building out an online presence, how would you guide them?”   For show notes of today's episode, visit www.launchandlead.com/fishkin.

Rand is known as the Wizard of Moz - the godfather of SEO and all around highly respected online marketing thought leader.  He's the founder of Moz, a suite of popular tools to help build and manage your online presence. The episode covers the six different channels to market your business online, and talks about how to focus your activities on what's most relevant for your business. The Venn diagram Rand mentions is certainly a game-changer if you’ve been wading through tactics (vs. strategy) to build your online presence.

  Show Notes: www.launchandlead.com/rand.

Brittany Hodak is co-founder of ZinePak, a company that creates custom, interactive publications for super-fans. They partner with top brands and entertainers (ahem... Taylor Swift) to elevate regular consumer promotions (e.g., CD in a store) into an interesting and memorable experience. Several months ago, they were invited by Shark Tank Producers to pitch their company, and walked away with an offer of $725,000 from Robert and Lori.

We had 5 questions for Brittany this week:

1 – How’d you get the company off the ground?

2 - Tell us all about your Shark Tank Experience

3 - You’ve had fantastic growth - what’s been key to your customer acquisition strategy?

4 - What has been critical to growing the business well?

5 - Tell us about how your Shark Tank experience inspired you to start a charity?

For complete show notes, visit www.launchandlead.com.

Aman Advani co-founded Ministry of Supply while at business school at MIT. They have created the performance professional category - business professional attire that's actually comfortable.

You can see from the way they run themselves that they’re engineers solving problems in  the fashion space. A Fast Company piece on them put it this way “its conception, its design process, and how it interacts with customers, Ministry of Supply arguably has more in common with the likes of Apple and Google than with J. Crew “

So that's why we wanted to Amam - to understand how they've applied that hypothesis driven testing approach to the fashion space, and how you can leverage testing to benefit your business.

www.launchandlead.com/mos

How have engineers created a new clothing category?

"We think with our engineering hats on more than we do with our fashion opinions or ideas. It's a deeply rooted customer insight-based focus on how can we create a new category that is not just creating a slightly better pair of socks - but a truly rethought pair of socks or rethought undershirt"

My questions this week?

1. How did he wind up launching this particular business?
2. How did he and his co-founders launch the then highest grossing kickstarter fashion campaign?
3. How did they use their engineering background to create a new fashion category?

Sign up for member-only content at www.launchandlead.com.

Theban Ganesh has built and sold two different businesses that have attracted over 1 million users.  In today's conversation, we cover the rise and exit of his two startups, why he chose to go back to corporate after his first, how to choose a co-founder, and most importantly, his advice to companies that are struggling to gain traction with their products.   For our bonus question with Theban - the process he would follow to start his next company, please visit www.launchandlead.com/tgstart/   Our question for Theban this week: What's the most important part of building product?   Our four questions: 1 - What was your path to starting your first company? 2 - Describe how you built your first company and exited to Zoosk? 3 - Why did you go back to Corporate after you exited your first company, and why did you make the leap to starting another company after three years? 4 - What should a company struggling to gain traction with their product do?   For complete show notes, visit www.launchandlead.com/theban.  

Gary Swart joined oDesk in 2005 as CEO and led the company for over 8 years, turning into the market leader in the online work industry. It was the first workplace to reach $1 billion in work, and has over 5 million freelancers and thousands of jobs posted daily. Gary led the company through a merger with #2 player eLance before leaving to join Polaris.

In this episode, part II of our conversation, he shares with us the importance of focus in a company, iterating quickly, why he thinks being an execepreneur is a good idea – and why he’s ok being hit by a pitch.

My question for Gary this week: Having been involved with large corporations like IBM, and a number of startups, what motivates you to help grow small to large and what’s your advice for execepreneurs?

“I remember flying home from Seattle in a small Alaska Airlines plane and I got claustrophobic… I said I don’t want to wake up 15 years from now saying I didn’t step up to the plate.  That wasn’t going to be good enough for me.  Even if I didn’t hit the ball I wanted to stand at the plate”

Questions:

1. You started to discuss focus last week and how that was critical for oDesk - can you give us examples of tradeoffs you had to make?
2. What are your thoughts about Executives taking the leap to entrepreneurship, similar to your situation?
3. What’s the one thing you’d leave our Execepreneur audience with?

Gary Swart joined oDesk in 2005 as CEO and led the company for over 8 years, turning into the market leader in the online work industry.  It was the first workplace to reach $1 billion in work, and has over 5 million freelancers and thousands of jobs posted daily.  Gary led the company through a merger with #2 player eLance before leaving to join Polaris.   In this Episode he shares with us his path to oDesk and how he was able to grow the company the way he did.  In next week's episode (part 2), we dig more into the topic of focus, iterating quickly, why he thinks being an execepreneur is a good idea - and why Gary’s ok being hit by a pitch.   This week's questions:  

1. Set the stage for us - how did you become the CEO of oDesk?
2. What did you grow it to become the world’s largest online workplace with over 5 million freelancers?

  For more information about this episode: www.launchandlead.com/gary.

Manpreet Singh is co-founder and President of TalkLocal, a company that connects users with service providers over the phone within minutes of their request.  He started his first company in high school - a website that had 300K visitors per month.  He then worked full-time at an investment management firm through college and his MBA, helping to grow it from $20 million to $2 billion under management, and now has launched TalkLocal.

Our two questions for Manpreet?

1. Why did he leave an investment management firm he had been at for twelve years (as Employee #1) to start an internet company?
2. How did he conceive of TalkLocal and get it off the ground?

For insightful articles on making the transition from executive to entrepreneur, including member-only content, visit execepreneur.com.