Gravity Free Radio

9/1/09 - Riding Resource + Interviews from the Pam Slim Event

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Today we had the pleasure of speaking with Erik Jacobs of Riding Resource who we met at the Pam Slim event a few weeks ago.  Riding Resource is a website that enables equestrians to search for all things riding related or as their website says,

“Riding Resource is the only fully-searchable online database of riding stables and tack stores that lets you find exactly what you’re looking for.  Founded in 2007 as a way to help riders connect with local facilities, Riding Resource is unique in that our visitors can fine-tune their searches with specific criteria in regards to location and services offered.”

Ainsley Hyman (who could not join us this time) and Erik built the site due not only to their love of riding but also because they saw that such a service was lacking within the riding community.  Many of the over 13,000 database entries were painstakingly researched and added by hand by Ainsley herself.  It is through their dedication and hard work that Riding Resource has become THE place for finding everything from stables, breeders, vets and beyond.

A big thanks to Erik for joining us and we’ll have him (and Ainsley!) back in a few months to check up on them and see how things are going.

For the second part of our show, we did a few interviews at the Pam Slim event. Again, that was a great event so definitely check out what people had to say if you weren’t able to attend. We hope Pam will make it back to Atlanta sometime soon!

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8/25/09: Ivan Reyes shares about audio sharing and Marna Friedman discusses self-publishing

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We had a great show this Tuesday and we were happy to welcome our regular Stephanie (Frost) back this week. Another big thank you to our good friend Stephanie Lloyd for guest co-hosting with Erik last week.

First, joining us this morning was Ivan Reyes, CEO of Chirbit a free online tool for audio sharing. People can record, upload, and share smaller recordings, from about two minutes long to two hours. A few great practical business applications are to share small daily tips with clients or highlight smaller segments of larger shows. Launching his first startup, Ivan shares that the biggest hurdles to overcome are networking and getting the word out. But thankfully, Twitter and Tweet-ups have been doing a great deal to increase business networking.

Marna Friedman, self-publisher and small business consultant extraordinaire also joined us. She talked about how accessing information on the Internet can be difficult when you don’t know what you are looking for. Her book, “The Small Business That Could,” makes the search much easier by listing all of the sites that a small business might need. She also went on to publish a book specifically for women entrepreneurs, “The Small Business That Could For Women.” The books come with space to record your passwords and tips on how to make them both easy to remember and secure. Marna lets us in on some self-publishing insight, including some common stumbling blocks regarding ISBN numbers. She also created a chapter in her book with details on self-publishing and all of the different companies that offer self-publishing services.

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8/18/09: Steve Tingiris of Enthusem.com talks about turning the sales funnel "upside-down" and Justin Daniels + Ted Schwartz give great tips for landing office space

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We had a great show this week! First though, we’d like to thank our good friend Stephanie Lloyd for stepping up and guest-co-hosting while our regular Stephanie (Frost) was off.

Our first guest of the morning was Steve Tingiris of an innovative startup enthusem.com which allows users to create, personalize and send customized printed greeting cards to their contacts. The enthusem.com tools even provide the means for users to provide an online attachment for each printed greeting card and track the number of times it’s accessed. But the most remarkable thing about what Enthusem does isn’t in the tools themselves, it’s in how they can be incoporated into an effective selling strategy.

Steve talked about how the traditional model of a “sales funnel”, where businesses market to a large market segment and then filter down to the prospects most interested, is an outdated approach to small business marketing. He instead recommends turning the funnel “upside-down” by focusing energy on a very few targeted outstanding prospects. We definitely recommend checking out enthusem.com and all you Twitter geeks out there should check out the innovative social media applications of their program.

We also spoke to our lawyer friend Justin Daniels and commercial realtor Ted Schwartz about how to negotiate your office lease. Ted quickly dispelled the myth, by the way, that bad market + real estate surplus = practically free office/retail space. He also gave us some great insight on what to look for in a landlord.

What may be most memorable from our discussion though was Justin’s analogy comparing a commercial lease to an octopus with it’s tentacles perpetually reaching for your wallet. There is obviously a lot of detail there that many business owners aren’t going to be able to easily navigate without an eye for fine print. So, until octopus-proof pants are readily available on the mass market, Justin recommends consulting with a lawyer before entering into a long-term lease with a landlord.

Feel free to email Justin or Ted with any questions!

Gravity Free Radio

7/28/09: Stephanie Lloyd Discusses Job Searching and David Eckoff Talks Startups

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We had two excellent guests join us today.  First up was Stephanie Lloyd, Founder and CEO of Radiant Veracity in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a National Careers + Workplace Columnist for Examiner, a division of Clarity Media Group owned by one of the largest media investment companies in the world. There she authors a highly-regarded career and job search advice column for 70 major markets nationwide.  Joining her was one of her interns, Stephanie Perrett, to discuss job searching in a down economy.  While it may be more difficult to find a job when the economy is down, it also presents some unique opportunities that recent graduates like Stephanie Perrett might not otherwise have if there was an abundance of jobs available.  She is enjoying the chance to “try on” a few jobs to help guide her decision about what she ultimately wants to do.  Stephanie Lloyd thinks this is a great idea and pointed out that for both recent graduates and those who have faced layoffs, an internship might be a great way to retool your career and transition into another field or broaden your experience.  Both Stephanies think that the networking tools available such as LinkedIn and Twitter can be invaluable for expanding your network and meeting people who might be able to help you in your quest.  Be sure to listen to this segment for other valuable job searching and recruiting tips.

Our second guest was David Eckoff.  As a technology entrepreneur and president of Revolutionary Ventures, a consulting company that specializes in taking revolutionary ideas from the drawing board to market, Eckoff has been an innovator in start up companies and Fortune 500 alike.  He is also the co-founder of Spitter, Inc., an early stage company with private Alpha already taking place July 2009, and Beta planned August 2009. Spitter helps users connect with other sports fans and stay in touch with news about their favorite teams.  We talked about some of the mistakes startups and entrepreneurs make and what it takes to be successful as an entrpreneur.  Mainly, entrepreneurs need to be willing to work and work very hard.  There’s no such thing as building a company to achieve “passive income.”  And, the most important work an entrepreneur does is also the least sexy but it’s the thing that will make the company profitable.  David also pointed out that the ability to listen to your customers is critical and then be able to quickly adapt to their changing demands.  If you’re working for a startup or you are an entrepreneur, David offers some great free advice. Be sure to listen!

Thanks to all of our guests for coming on and we’ll see you next week on Gravity Free Radio!

Gravity Free Radio

7/21/09: Legal Matters with attorney Justin Daniels

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Justin Daniels is a business attorney at Wagner Johnston & Rosenthal, P.C. here in Atlanta and had a lot of great advice on common small business legal issues. For example, how do you protect your intellectual property? Justin provided several scenarios that demonstrate how you, as a business owner, may not be buying what you think you are buying from your vendors unless it is spelled out specifically in the contract.

For example, you hire a web design firm and, in working on your web site, they come up with some text that they include in the site and that you approve. But who owns that writing? Unless your contract specifically assigns the rights for all work to you, your web firm owns that content and if you want to use it elsewhere you will likely need to purchase it from them after the fact.

Daniels also gave us some insight into choosing the right incorporation model for your business (LLC vs. S-Corp vs. C-Corp) and talked about some helpful tips to keep in mind when entering into partnerships.

You can reach justing through his law firm here if you have any questions. Justin has also generously provided his speaking materials for a seminar he gave recently on the question of LLC’s vs. S-Corps and you can download that here if you are interested. The full podcast for the show is available below.

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7/14/09: Social Media Guru Scott Allen and Networking Expert Taryn Pisaneschi join us on GFR!

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If ever we’ve had a “must-listen” show for anyone looking to get ahead in their business using marketing, networking and social media, this is it. We jokingly referred to Scott Allen as the “Nostradamus of the Social Media Age” and it’s not far from the truth. Scott started writing The Virtual Handshake back in 2002, was blogging about it in 2003 and published the book in 2005. In other words, Scott predicted how valuable a tool online networking would be before MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube even existed.

Scott talked about an “open source” type of collaboration project he’s working on for small businesses and gave what amounted to s hort seminar on using social media — and especially Twitter — for effective marketing. You can reach Scott Allen via Twitter or on his web site.

We also spoke with networking expert Taryn Pisaneschi about effective networking and what does and doesn’t work when you go to events, trade shows and other venues where you might meet prospective business contacts.Taryn talked extensively about the importance of setting goals in networking and working towards acheivable results and gave us a lot of insight into how offline/traditional netowrking and online networking (via social media) work hand in hand.Taryn is available via Twitter or on her web site.

You can listen to the podcast below!

Gravity Free Radio

5/19/09: David Hornik, August Capital + Jeff Hilimire, Shotput Ventures Discuss Startups and Funding

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David Hornik has worked with technology startups throughout the software sector for over a decade. Since 2000, David has been with August Capital in San Francisco and has worked with companies such as Technorati, StumbleUpon, Six Apart, and PayCycle. His educational background includes a degree in Computer Music from Stanford University, an M.Phil in Criminology from Cambridge University and a degree from Harvard Law. He is currently a lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and at Harvard Law school. As one of the first venture capitalists to start blogging and podcasting, David is helping entrepreneurs better understand how to go about getting funding and really bringing more transparency to the overall process . One thing he pointed out is that not all businesses are suited for venture capital funding. It really depends on the business but if your business is the type of business that would benefit from VC money, he said that there are some key elements that he likes to see in a when a company is making their pitch for funding:

• Credibility. He says that it is critical that the business owners understand their business and their entire industry. Having expertise in whatever you are building makes you a more attractive candidate to VCs.
• Passion. This is also paramount. If an entrepreneur is passionate about what he or she is doing, they are more likely to succeed.
• Good business model.  The business has to be something that people want and that is sustainable.
• Transfer the excitement. VCs are realists.  They look at everything in very practical terms so the key to a successful pitch is not only convincing them that your business idea is a solid one but also getting them excited about the product or service.  Let them try or experience it for themselves and you’ll have a better chance than if you just have a good business model.

For more information about David, follow him on Twitter or check out his blog at VentureBlog.

Our second guest, Jeff Hilimire, is from Atlanta and is a founding partner of Shotput Ventures, a technology startup accelerator fund that focuses on capital-light web services companies and assists in the conception phase.  Shotput Ventures is an annual fund that will work with eight companies per year to help get them through the initial phase of development so they can hopefully go on to secure more funding and continue to grow.  An entrepreneur himself, Jeff was the co-founder of Spunlogic and is now working with Engauge which acquired Spunlogic in 2008.  With Shotput, Jeff is able to serve as a mentor and advisor (along with eight other partners) to these startups who will receive anywhere between $15-$25K in funding to help them get their ideas off the ground.  He couldn’t tell us much about the companies but by the end of the summer, we should be hearing about some of them when they will present their ideas to both East and West Coast VCs.  If you would like to learn more about Shotput Ventures, check out their website and follow Jeff on Twitter or via his website.

A big thank you to both our guests this week! We all learned a lot.