The SuccessLab Podcast: Where Entrepreneurs Collaborate for Success

The SuccessLab Podcast: Where Entrepreneurs Collaborate for Success. In the SuccessLab you’ll discover how to master SMART growth through PR and marketing, time management, productivity, and business strategies. Hear from other entrepreneurs who are going through the same struggles and discover solutions for overcoming the obstacles we all battle. Take massive action to make an impact. Grab your pen and pad, and join us in the lab - an honest, safe, supportive environment where entrepreneurs share their challenges, victories, tips, tools, and resources.

Making Bets on Yourself 03/01/2021

Venturing Boldly into the Emerging World of Femtech 01/19/2021

The Art of Living: Bringing Intention to Everything 10/26/2020

Rising to the Occasion 08/18/2020

Fear Less, Love More 08/11/2020

Redefining Success on Your Terms 07/01/2020

Marketers: It’s Time to Own More of the Funnel 06/10/2020

Making Content "Sticky" Starts With Effective Planning 05/26/2020

Content That Converts Starts With Knowing Your Audience 04/27/2020

Get Out, Get Uncomfortable 04/09/2020

Patience: More Than a Virtue, It’s a Strategy 03/30/2020

Show Up and Follow Up: The Keys to Making Impactful Connections 02/04/2020

Trailblazing a Community Through the Power of Yes 01/29/2020

Paving the Way for the Fashion Industry in Arizona 01/22/2020

Creating a Solution That’s Good for Profits, People, and the Planet 01/15/2020

How Your Strongest Connections May Be Those in Your Peripherals 01/08/2020

This Entrepreneur Leapfrogged Convention to Design His Own Career 12/31/2019

Going the Distance with the Next Wave of Video Analytics 12/17/2019

From Small-Town Paper to CNBC: One Reporter’s Relentless Hustle to the Top 12/10/2019

How Being Open, Honest and Curious Pays Greater Dividends 12/02/2019

This Entrepreneur Said Goodbye to the Safe Path to Surf the Unknown 11/13/2019

Leading the Way to a World Without Passwords 10/04/2019

Leading the Way to a World Without Passwords It’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to weave storied journeys throughout their career –– and this particular one makes several interesting (an unlikely) stops. In fact, Kevin Goldman’s path is likely quite different from any you’ve heard before. A Phoenix native and graduate of Arizona State University, Kevin left the Valley in his early 20s to see more of the world. After joining a band in Seattle with Reggie Watts, who now leads the house band for The Late Show with James Corden, Kevin spent a decade creating music and touring the country, all while running his design consulting firm. After more than a decade run with the band, and another successful startup and exit under his belt, Kevin eventually landed as Chief Design Officer at Trusona, where’s helping to lead the mission to rid the world of passwords. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Kevin shares why he returned to Phoenix, opened his second design agency, 29th Drive, and how he connected with the team at Trusona. He also talks about prioritizing his values, who his greatest teachers have been and how he forms authentic connections while networking. How did your career begin? I was born and raised in Phoenix, and went to Arizona State University where I studied industrial design. At 23 or 24, I had this desire to get out of my hometown and see more of the world. I moved to Seattle and thought I might be a barista, because I didn't have a job lined up. At that time, I had been doing design work for a year when a business colleague asked me to do some contract work. That ended up being the start of a consulting career called Goldman Design that I had for over 10 years. It really was a perfect fit because this was early in the Internet era, so it was a case of being in the right place at the right time. Seattle in 1995 was also the right place and time for music. I had played bass guitar in bands through high school and through college, and that's when I met Reggie and Davis and Daniel Spils and all the guys in the band, and started really both careers at that time. I spent 10 years in Seattle and lived a dual life of playing music, recording albums, touring the country and then working on fun design projects at the same time for a lot of startups in Seattle, including Microsoft. Ultimately I moved back to Phoenix and a lot of business opportunities ended up popping up. That's when I formed a consulting firm called 29th Drive, which was later acquired. What significant challenges have you faced as a founder and how did you overcome them? Agencies go through times of having a lot of work and then times of not having as much work – that's just the agency life. At 29th Drive, we asked ourselves, "Well, what are we going to do when we're not as busy?" We decided as a team to develop and launch products. So the challenge was either keeping billable time up or making sure that we were always extracting value from the business, whether clients were there or not. One of the products that came out of that was a product called Inkwell. It's a physical sketch kit and it's made for makers or for entrepreneurs. We launched it and within probably four to six months, we had sold Inkwells in 22 countries and to some of the big luminary designers around the world. They would tweet about it and were thrilled to have a physical kit that embodied the craft of design that existed away from those glowing screens in front of them. We had a lot of fun developing that and ultimately turned that physical product into a lead generation machine for the consulting business. I take that as a creative win, looking at a problem and solving it in a unique way. How did you end up joining Trusona? My design team did a two day design studio workshop with the Trusona team. During those two days, I met the founder of Trusona, Ori Eisen, and I thought to myself, I'd like to get to know this guy. I emailed him and asked him if he'd want to get lunch. We met at his coffee shop and immediately started talking about all the things that you're not supposed to talk about – religion, Israel (he's from Israel), art, music – and we really just hit it off. So fast forward, eight months later I left where I was and came over to join Trusona as chief design officer. The mission here of getting rid of passwords is one that I can really get behind on many, many levels. Ask anybody if they love using passwords, and they'll tell you all kinds of stories about how much they hate passwords. But on the security side, there's something that people don't know a lot about or at least laymen don't know that aren't in the security world, is that passwords are the root cause for 81% of the breaches in the world. And if that wasn't bad enough, these breaches, there's a tremendous amount of money from these cyber attacks that go to global organized gangs essentially. And that money goes to child trafficking, human trafficking, drugs, weapons, you name it. So if we can eradicate passwords, we can both help with what the money is being used for from the breaches. And then of course we can also make it a little easier for people's lives because they don't have to create and use passwords every day. Have there been specific people who’ve significantly shaped your journey? Certainly with music, I learned so much from Reggie. I remember the very first day we ever jammed together, even though it was 20 years ago. But probably the most impactful connections that helped form my life were some of my yoga teachers back then in Seattle. Let me back up a little bit... A very good friend of mine recently exposed me to David Brooks. A concept that David Brooks talks about a lot and that is the concept of virtues – there's resume virtues, those are the things that we show on LinkedIn to say how great we are, and then there's eulogy virtues, those are the things that people will remember you by when you're gone. What do we really want to build up – our resume virtues or our eulogy virtues? Which do we give energy to? The biggest influencers in my life have been the ones that have helped to show me where things really matter. Friendships, personal growth and being able to meaningfully connect with other people requires you to be comfortable in your own skin. Eve Nyman was my yoga teacher in Seattle for probably 10 years and she taught me so much about some of these things that end up affecting the rest of my life, including the business side of my life. How have you successfully made impactful connections over the years, from your band to your business, considering they're both totally different audiences? If there's one thing that comes to mind around making impactful connections, it's about knowing yourself and being sincere about what your intentions are when you meet people in the business world or in your personal life. If you're out there networking and you want a job, don't buddy up to somebody because you're hoping to get a job. Be sincere if you are interested in that person as a potential friend and be sincere about that. At the same time, if you are also sincere about getting a job through a connection that they have, be sincere about that and let them know like, "Hey, I want you in my life." Or, "Can we hang out once a month?" But also be up front and say, "Hey, I'm thinking about making a career change and if you know something, I'd really appreciate it if you kept me in mind.” That sincerity I think is the most important thing. That dynamic can really go sideways when there's alternative motives that aren't spoken about. Take the time to meditate on why you're spending time with the people you're spending time with, why you reach out to the people that you reach out to and what you communicate with them. There's a lot of people that I network with that I may have some business relationship with, but they're also friends. It is very important to me to keep the communication clear on both sides. What's one piece of advice you would pass along to a fellow entrepreneur or designer looking to make impactful connections? Surround yourself with people that have a lot more experience than you. It turns into good things. Especially when you're young and first starting your career, try to be the worst one amongst your group of colleagues because you'll learn so much and it will get you out of your comfort zone. The second thing is to be sincere and be present when you're in those situations. /episode/index/show/successlab/id/11522591

Why Strong Networks Mean Staying Power for Journalists 09/11/2019

Why Strong Networks Mean Staying Power for Journalists With the media landscape changing at a rapid clip, journalists need to adjust and adapt to evolve with their profession. The rise of digital, as well as video and podcasts, also means today’s journalists need to be tech savvy and rely on strong connections within their networks. Take , who has been a journalist and editor for more than a decade, including more than five years as the editor at Entrepreneur.com. He has worked intimately with CEOs, founders, business leaders and experts to share their stories on Entrepreneur Media’s website, which brings in nearly eight million unique visitors every month. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Stephen pulls back the curtain on life as a journalist, including working his way from community news to eventually building Entrepreneur’s outside contributor network. He shares insights on building relationships with sources, identifying stories that will resonate and advice for journalists looking to advance their careers. Would you tell us about your career journey so far in journalism? It's been insane to say the least. I graduated from journalism graduate school in 2008, at the height of the recession. They told us, "All newspapers are going to go away and everybody's going to go digital. Good luck out there." I didn't find a job for about five months, and ended up taking a job for $23,000 working at a little community newspaper on Long Island, New York. I did that for six months, and then I was able to go back to a place where I had been freelancing, which is a free daily newspaper in New York called AM New York. I became one of their editors, doing front-of-the-book niche and world news. Then my old boss at the community newspaper called and said, "Hey, I've been working at this company called Patch. Do you want to join me?" I ended up covering the same community again, and I did that for three years. Later I ended up at Entrepreneur as their contributors editor and I was tasked with building their outside contributor network – CEOs, media executives, business professionals and the like – to generate story ideas and write columns for the site. When I started out there were probably around 20 writers, and then we ended up having hundreds and hundreds of contributors. Then I was promoted to the news desk at Entrepreneur and did that for about three years. And now I am looking for my next opportunity, as they say. It's been tumultuous. Are there any favorite stories you’ve covered? Over the past few years I've had the chance to cover the packaged food industry, which is kind of at a weird place right now, because milk is no longer milk, meat is no longer meat. Things are changing. There's been a lot more science to push things in the right direction environmentally wise, and taste-wise. I would say packaged foods have gotten significantly better –– better for you, better tasting, better for the planet. That's where most of my attention has been going. In terms of the stories in that vein, I got the chance to interview Ethan Brown of Beyond Meat, which was one of the first Q&As that I did in this area. He was very inspiring to talk with. Then one of the last stories that I did at Entrepreneur was about a company called Perfect Day. These are two guys who have invented a flora-based milk protein. The thrust of it is that they've created, through genetic modification, the exact same structures that are in milk dairy. They want to basically be the provider of this dairy alternative to the entire food industry. What's been one of the best things that you've done to propel your career forward? It really comes down to luck. I don't mean that in randomness, but putting yourself in the best position to move your career forward. I was very fortunate at Entrepreneur to have a good supporter in Ray Hennessey, the editorial director who hired me. He laid out the vision and the goals that he wanted me to accomplish. As he had a vision to expand Entrepreneur, he included me in that, and that's how I ended up at the news desk. What is one of the best ways you've made impactful connections for your career? That's a tough one. I don't network, per se, which is probably insane for me to say. You develop friendships with people that you work with, and hopefully you stay in contact even if it's just through LinkedIn, keeping up on their careers as they move forward and then keeping those connections warm as you make your moves. Grad school was a good place for that. Patch was a great place for that, because Patch employed so many people and they're everywhere now. Is there anyone who has shaped your journey significantly? The editor at my first job, Paul Shapiro. He's doing content marketing now, but he was a good supporter of me because he hooked me up with Patch and that helped my career a lot. And then, as I mentioned, Ray Hennessey was an early supporter of my skills and my ability while I was at Entrepreneur. He was just a good person to be around. How have you seen journalism change over the last decade? I think what's been the biggest change is the internet has democratized journalism in good and bad ways. Not everybody reads the same news anymore, so not everybody subscribes to the same facts anymore. You could have more voices, which is great, but more voices also bring pitfalls. In terms of actual changes, I would say video is probably the biggest. Online video is a trend that just keeps popping up. When I was in grad school, it wasn't on the radar. We were still being trained to do slideshows. Radio is still kind of a thing, and podcasts have roared back to life, which is just radio segments really. I imagine those two – video and podcasts – will have some staying power, as well as good writing, of course. How do you spot trends and identify stories that will resonate? I can't actually say I know what resonates, but I understood Entrepreneur's audience pretty well. They love stories that will unlock the secrets to them becoming millionaires. In terms of covering a beat, it's really just talking to people constantly and seeing what they're excited about, and usually that will point you toward trends. If you hear the same thing from three different people, then we in the media industry regard that as a trend. Twitter's also a good source because it can point you to what will be talked about in the future as well. How do you go about making genuine impactful connections with your sources? The number one is to be prepared. Learn about their businesses. See what they've written. See what they're excited about. Then just have a conversation with them. At least in the niche that I worked in, people really wanted to talk about what they were doing. They were excited and loved the opportunity to explain it to people as well. It also helps creating a backlog of your work and having them see it. If you do your job well, then they'll be more willing to talk to you because they can see that you have good intentions and that you want to tell their story. What is your advice for fellow journalists looking to advance their careers? Go deep on something that you're interested in. If you want to cover a beat, then read up on it, talk to people about it and get the word out that that's what you're interested in. Most people I've encountered will have no problem speaking to you. If it's a journalist in the field, say, "I really appreciate your work. I'd love to take you out for coffee." Journalists love free coffee. /episode/index/show/successlab/id/11213498

Overcoming Entrepreneurial Hardships By Facing Them Head On 08/29/2019

Overcoming Entrepreneurial Hardships By Facing Them Head On Risk taking is an inherent part of being an entrepreneur. The trick is, risk taking requires a delicate balance between calculation and gumption –– and even then, the outcome is not always predictable. And when it doesn’t work out, you have to be able to pick up the pieces and come back stronger. How do you learn to navigate these murky waters and not let the tough times drag you under? For Rami Kalla, it took surrounding himself with the right people. Rami is the founder of , a thriving video production company based in Tempe that specializes in video, virtual reality and 3D animation. After more than 16 years in business, Rami has endured his share of obstacles, but it’s been his tribe and relentlessly positive mindset that have helped him scale the business to all new heights. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Rami explains how leaving the corporate world opened up the path to following his passion, why entrepreneurs need to lean on one another to ride out their highs and lows, and why showing up and dealing with struggles head on is the only way through. What led you to start Point in Time Studios? My journey started when I was about 10 years old and my father brought home one of those old camcorders. I fell in love with it and started making short films with my friends and family, including writing scripts and creating little movies. I didn't know at the time it was going to lead me to what I do now. I went to ASU and studied business and Spanish, then worked for General Mills doing marketing. A few years into that I became very disenchanted with the whole corporate environment and realized I wasn't really living my dream and pursuing my passion, so I started to look into video production and how to turn something I love into a business. As I did research, I found there was a need for quality video production that provided a great product and great service. We started doing a lot of small corporate events, private events, and local commercials. From there, we started working with large companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Ford and PetSmart. Over the last several years, we’ve been getting to work internationally doing virtual and augmented reality, as well as video, for companies from L.A. to London. It's been a really fun experience and I'm very humbled to make a living doing what I love. What is one of the best things you’ve done to take Point in Time Studios to the next level? One of the things that I did, right toward the end of the recession, was join a mastermind group. I had gone to business school and worked for a large company, but didn't have a lot of experience as an entrepreneur. I was operating from an island making decisions based off the limited knowledge I had. I ended up being introduced to EO Accelerator through a friend. At the time, the hardest thing for me was admitting my faults. I was very proud, had a bit of an ego and I didn't want to admit the financial mistakes that I had made. Eventually I opened up and said, "Here's the things that I'm struggling with, and here's the mistakes I made." Half the room said, "Yeah, I've gone through the same thing, myself, and I know exactly what you're going through." That was really a turning point for me, when I not only joined the group but I got vulnerable, and I realized that I don't have to know everything, I do have a lot to learn, and I was able to experience-share from other people in the room. What’s been your experience riding the highs and lows of entrepreneurship? I'll be vulnerable here. In 2008-2009, I had built a 3,000-square-foot studio in downtown Phoenix and invested around $100,000 into creating it. I was going to build a stage so other companies coming into Phoenix and local companies could rent it out for music videos and films, and things like that. Of course the timing was awful – I built this big facility and it was crickets. Money was extremely tight. I had to let half my staff go. At the lowest point, I had $1.1 million in total debt, and I went to Burger King to get a Whopper and I couldn't afford it. I didn't have enough money to buy a hamburger and I was hungry, and I had three kids to feed at the time. I realized at that time I'd taken a lot of risks – I wasn't afraid of risk, but they weren't calculated risks. I had gone way too much into debt and hadn't really understood the repercussions of the things that I was doing. It took years to really dig out of it, pay off a lot of that debt and get the business back on track. As a business owner, you have to take risks. You've got to take some risks to grow. But don't take so much risk that you can't recover from things like a downturn or other challenges. How did you keep yourself motivated to recover from setbacks? A lot of people told me to just declare bankruptcy, hide behind the courts and just wipe all that debt. But I said, "No, I'm not going to do that. I created this mess and I'm going to clean it up." I called the banks and credit companies and worked out repayment plans. I made sure to exercise and make sure I was taking care of myself for my health, because, if you don't do those things, it's very hard to keep a positive attitude. I also surrounded myself with positive people. I got really clear on who I wanted in my inner circle and who I didn't. If you were a negative person and attracted negativity, I didn't want you around. It seems like a simple formula, but, so often, as entrepreneurs and as humans, we like to put our head in the sand and hope things get better. But you have to get up and deal with things, and that's what I did. On to networking, how do you go about building genuine connections? From a business perspective, I had it wrong in the beginning. I would go to networking events and I'd bring a stack of cards, and I would tell myself, "Okay, I need to get 10 business cards from other business owners at this event." Then I realized I was getting a high volume of cards, but I wasn't creating genuine connections. I was looking at it more as quantity, not quality. Now I tell people if you're going to a networking event and you're not being authentic, or you're out to get something, people’s walls will go up right away. But if you're genuinely trying to connect with people, then you're just planting a seed. It may not turn into business right away. It could be one year, two years or five years, but things come around. Start conversations and take time to really care about others. Be authentic and just enjoy the journey. What's one of the best ways you go about making impactful connections? Find what works best for you in your industry. A long time ago, my friend Jay Feitlinger said, "Fish where the fish are at." You've got to figure out what your business is about, including your mission and your vision. Then decide what niche do you want to play in and focus on that space. My mistake early on was trying to be a video company for every company and every market. But then someone said to me, "If you're going to go in for brain surgery, are you going to a generalist or a specialist?" I'm not going to go to my family doctor for brain surgery. And brain surgeons make more money, because they specialize in what they do. I realized that I needed to specialize in a specific industry if I was going to command the money I wanted to make. I picked a couple niches I really enjoyed and showed up. I learned that if you do a great job, people will refer you to other people in an industry. What's one piece of advice you can give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make impactful connections? Most of us don't have huge budgets for marketing and networking, so it’s important to find our niche. Look locally and see if there’s a group or industry you want to be a part of, whether it’s construction companies or accounting firms or whatever. Then find out what they’re involved with and show up to those events. Go there, network, learn the industry, learn the people, and then, if it's something you feel like you can invest in, then get a booth. Start to build your presence there but the key is showing up. Half the battle for networking and meeting new people is just showing up. So many of us have this fear of going to these events or being a part of them. By just showing up, you'll inevitably make connections and you'll meet awesome people in your industry. And, again, for me, I grew those relationships in not just showing up, but then exhibiting, and speaking at events, and sponsoring events, and all those things that I recommend doing. But, again, start small if you've got a small budget and work your way into it, and you'll find that the payoffs will be huge. /episode/index/show/successlab/id/11052113

Investing in a New Vision for Venture Capital in Arizona 08/28/2019

Investing in a New Vision for Venture Capital in Arizona For decades, Arizona’s five C’s – copper, cattle, cotton, citrus and climate – served an important role in how its economy was perceived. But as the Grand Canyon State’s technology ecosystem continues to heat up, Romi Dhillon thinks the five C’s should be updated to better reflect Arizona’s tech-focused future: capital, content, community, capabilities, and community carry. Romi is no stranger to bringing big ideas to the table. He is the founder and managing director of the Arizona Founders Fund and prior to raising the fund, he worked with Infusionsoft on the company's Series C and D capital raises. But his background in venture capital started long before that. In this interview, Romi shares how a mix of serendipity, luck and strategy helped him get his foot in the door of the VC world. He also explains why deep research and 1,300 hours of networking played such a critical role in the success of Arizona Founders Fund, and provides key advice for entrepreneurs looking to set themselves apart and make impactful connections with investors. What sparked your interest in venture capital? I didn’t take the traditional path to venture capital. I was recruited out of my MBA at Thunderbird in 2009 for an internship in Utah, which opened the door to work in a VC fund. It wasn't necessarily for any other reason other than serendipity and luck. Prior to that, about seven years earlier, I had completed my masters at Columbia and had aspired to work at the State Department in Washington, D.C. or overseas. I started to realize there was going to be a considerable amount of writing involved, especially when working in the foreign service, and I didn't enjoy writing that much. I knew that if I was going to have a happy career, writing couldn't really be a part of it, which meant that working in the foreign service wasn't the right place for me to go. When I stepped away from that, I began working in entrepreneurship on the operations side in a small family business in Northeastern Ohio. That's how I started my entrepreneurial journey. What motivated you to take that leap of faith and start Arizona Founders Fund? I worked in Utah’s startup community from 2009 until about 2012 – before Utah was as frothy as it is right now. Right about the time that I stepped away from Utah and moved to Arizona to work at Infusionsoft was when Utah kind of found its J-curve. I was working at Infusionsoft and we raised a series C from Goldman Sachs and a series D from Bain Capital. Infusionsoft was growing really, really fast, but I was also noticing what was happening in Utah and how any entrepreneur could take 10 steps in any direction and have some pretty incredible conversations with supporters and mentors, thought leaders, and investors. That's when I thought, "Why isn't that happening in Arizona?" Startups were leaving Silicon Valley. The housing costs were skyrocketing due to the tech boom. There was traffic and congestion, and it was an expensive place to start a company. I thought that Arizona was interesting, but Arizona was a conundrum in its separate way. This is still a place where the Secretary of State's website lists the old five Cs of the Arizona economy – cattle, citrus, cotton, copper and climate. It's the five ways they thought Arizona was different from every other state. But these were from the 1950s and I thought it was time to create the new five Cs: capital, content, community, capabilities, and community carry (how a relationship between a business and its community is continuously strengthened through its mutual commitment). What was your experience coming to a new community and starting Arizona Founders Fund? It depends on which day you caught me. Some days I may have felt I hit the ground running and there were other days where I spent a lot of time waiting for email replies. When I stepped away from Infusionsoft, I started engaging in a lean startup mindset of how to build this fund and began to interview everyone in town. There were 10 months of primary interviews and due diligence with Arizona's technology founders and investors where I interviewed 400 individuals representing 1,300 hours of discussion. I had 1,000 cups of coffee in that 10 month period and I even viewed the last 10 years of Phoenix Business Journal articles. I analyzed about 5,000 pieces of data concerning tech dealmaking in the state from 1998 to present, and spent a lot of time thinking about the Arizona market and why things were the way they were. It's one thing to identify problems, but I thought like a tech entrepreneur and tried to figure out what the solutions could be. What was one of the biggest challenges on launching the fund and how did you overcome it? I had similar challenges other entrepreneurs have when they go from concept to idea to then making the idea real. It was creating validation and trying to figure out who could be the champions alongside with me. I think that's really the essence of the entrepreneurial spirit – let's try to solve problems by trying to figure out how we can utilize limited resources and do the most with the very least. How have you gone about building relationships in a genuine way? One of the things I did when I was meeting with entrepreneurs or investors was make it clear why we were meeting right off the bat. I’d say, "Look, I'm here to pitch you on this opportunity. I think that you would be a great fit and I would really like to get your thoughts and advice on either investing, getting you to think about investing, or passing. And perhaps you might suggest someone else in your network who could be a fit." With entrepreneurs, I would share with them, "We're a venture capital investor. This is how we go about investing. Here are the check sizes we write. Here are the expectations that we have after we invest." Transparency is extremely important because it's pretty obvious what a venture capital investor does. We invest in high growth, fast growth, technology companies. Sometimes just networking for networking's sake is not beneficial to us. Our work is really unscalable and takes a lot of time, so I have to be strategic in how I go about bridge building and networking. What's one piece of advice you would pass along to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make impactful connections? I think there's a superpower that all entrepreneurs can have and it has to do with sending out follow-ups. People are networking all the time with champions, potential advisers, potential employees, customers, and even with investors or other providers of capital. I think one of the things entrepreneurs can do to separate themselves is continue to follow up with everyone who they meet. You don't want to say, "Hey, that person said I had a silly idea so I'm never going to reach out to them again." Because unless someone says, "Don't follow-up with me or remove me from your email list," the door is always open to have a potential relationship and have a positive network type of activity. My advice to entrepreneurs and anyone looking to build their network is to continually follow-up. Follow-up when you have a new insight on a market. Follow-up when you have a new thought. Follow-up with a quarterly newsletter. Follow-up with developments in your company. Follow-up as much as you can. Email is there for a reason, so leverage the power of email to send more information. I think it is really, really important and it's something that entrepreneurs can do to separate themselves from one another, from those who are very serious and those who obsess about their company's success. /episode/index/show/successlab/id/11029856

Growing a Tech Company by Putting People Before Technology 08/01/2019

Growing a Tech Company by Putting People Before Technology Meet Scott Holmen, the founder and CEO of Agency 73, a digital transformation company specializing in Salesforce and custom software solutions. He is also an investor in tech startups and created a recruiting company, Talent 73, to help find and connect talent in San Diego. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Scott shares his approach to prioritizing people before technology and how the desire to defragment San Diego’s tech ecosystem inspired a unique event to bring everyone together. He also discusses his company’s culture and how he has found success by strategically hiring then getting out of the way. What motivated you to start your own company? The desire to be better and provide value to my clients. Previous to starting Agency 73, my roles in tech companies were representing offshore software development teams as a business development guy. It works, but you’re always up against time, language and culture differences. Software is a complicated, intimate process, and to throw those variables into a process that requires a lot of detail, a lot of communication, a lot of collaboration, it's really difficult. I started Agency 73 to overcome time, language and culture differences by building up our team of senior level people here in San Diego so that as we're speaking with clients, the time, language and culture differences are no longer issues. Were there any skills you had to train yourself on as the company grew? In my heart, I'm a sales guy. I really love helping people solve problems. In starting the agency I had to, and still have to, wear the CEO hat. I can do those CEO skills, but it's more of a forced thing. I've had to learn about getting processes dialed in, managing people, hiring people and forecasting. What's really natural for me is selling and working with people with the actual structure that's required. We'll be looking to hire a CEO as we increasingly mature and grow the practice so that I can go out and be the founder or sales guy, which I love. Have you ever struggled with staying out your employees’ way or getting too involved with every little thing? No. It's kind of a joke around the office, but it's actually not a joke. It's, "Scott can barely manage himself, so he for sure can't manage the team." We've been very lucky. The team that we have is brilliant. We hire adults that take care of their stuff, and we don't care when they're working or where they're working, as long as they're hitting deadlines and staying within budget. I don't have to, nor would I have time to micromanage or manage my team very well. We're about 12 people in San Diego right now. We augment with some nearshore and offshore partners. But I've been fortunate with the team that we have because I don't have to manage them, and we're small enough that it's really easy to see when people are getting their work done or not. But that hasn't happened. We've been really lucky. We've got just the best team. They're a lot of fun. They're really smart, they manage themselves way better than I could ever manage them. Fortunately, I haven't been pulled into the delivery side of the business too much, and I really hope to maintain that going forward, because it's not my favorite place to be. Are there one or two impactful connections that have really shaped your journey along the way? There's way more than one or two. As an agency, we've been fortunate in that we don't have to do any marketing. I've focused for 20 years on building relationships in San Diego, even before I was in tech. People reciprocate. I've had a goal for years of introducing two people every day, and it comes back around. I was an outdoor education instructor at a camp in the mountains, and this guy told me, “People over program.” At the time I was focused on what I was going to teach the kids. He said, "Forget about that. It's about the people." That was in an environment where it was simple to switch to focusing on people, but I've maintained that in business. I genuinely care about people and enjoy helping them solve problems, even if there's nothing in it for me and knowing that it might come back around and it might not. How do you make genuine impactful connections to grow yourself in the company? Until recently, it's all been one on one. I would meet anybody and help them where I could and occasionally ask for help. I have struggled with pride in asking for help, but people have reciprocated. As we started Agency 73, the first year we had our agency, I focused on what I call defragmenting the tech ecosystem in San Diego. We have investors. We have enterprise companies. We have UCSD, who graduates more computer science kids than Stanford and Berkeley combined every year, so we've got the talent. We've got the money. Everything is here, but those stakeholders aren't talking to each other. Once we started Agency 73, I set out to meet those stakeholders. We ended up creating Spotlight 73. It's a pitch event, but we don't call it that because those kind of have negative connotations of investors poking holes in your idea and trying to prove that they're the smartest guys in the room. Spotlight 73 is a way of putting the spotlight on a local startup. As I went out and met investors, I said, "What's going on? How come you're not writing checks?" And they said, "Because we're not seeing anything new." At Agency 73, we see new startups all the time because they want us to do development work for them, so we've leveraged Agency 73 to bring those stakeholders together. It's worked. And by worked I mean started to raise a lot of capital from it that they wouldn't have otherwise raised, at least not as quickly as they have. We're getting brand awareness, we're getting deal flow. Most importantly, new relationships are being built. What's one of the best things that you've done to grow Agency 73? I think the best thing I've done is get lucky with my team. There's my partner and CTO – he's one of those guys who's very technically experienced, skilled and smart. He's also a great writer, which is very important when we're writing requirements. He's fun and social and people love him. As far as anything intentional I've done, I've authentically focused on people. Technology is second, which is weird to say as the CEO of a technology company. But the best thing I’ve done is listen to people and care not just about their business goals, but care about them and their family and everything. How do you keep yourself organized and energized? The organization part comes pretty easily because I have to. If I'm not organized, I'll fail. The systems that we have internally are good in helping us stay organized. We've got our own internal stack and our process is tight because we're kind of technical nerds. I have a great family that keeps me energized. They support me and love me. Then I surf a lot and try to workout every day. I try to eat well, but it doesn't always go well. Our proximity to the beach, again, is a big one. We can just run down and jump in the water and that clears my mind and gets the blood flowing. What's one piece of advice you would give to a fellow entrepreneur who's looking to make impactful connections? For me, that comes back to the people over program. A lot of entrepreneurs get focused on, "Hey, I have this idea for an app and it's like Uber but it's for this industry." They're so excited about the app that if you listen or engage in that conversation, you'll notice how long it takes for a lot of them to start talking about people. The advice I often give is to forget about your “Uber for whatever” app. Think about who it’s going to serve. How it's going to serve them. How's it going to make their life better? Who are you going to surround yourself with that can make you better? Who are you going to invest your time in if you are successful? My advice is to focus on people. Invest in people, and trust that it will come back. /episode/index/show/successlab/id/10732067

The SuccessLab Podcast: Where Entrepreneurs Collaborate for Success

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