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.

Gravity Free Radio

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.

Gravity Free Radio

4/28/09: The Franchise Show with David Asarnow and Stan Friedman

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What a great show we had today! We were joined by two great guests–both of whom are very successful in the franchise arena. David Asarnow, CEO of Clix Portrait Studios and Stan Friedman, President of Retrotax helped to break down the process of becoming a franchisee and what they, as franchisors, look for in potential business owners.

They both agreed that you must do something you are passionate about. You don’t want to own a restaurant if you hate food preparation for example. However, you don’t have to have much experience in something you know you will be passionate about. You can still be successful owning a portrait studio franchise even if you’ve never been a professional photographer. As with anything, it’s a lot of hard work and persistence. Just because you are buying a “turnkey” operation, you still have to do the leg work to find your customers, connect with the community and grow your business.

And, unlike starting a business from scratch, a franchise offers you the opportunity to be in business for yourself but not by yourself. As cliched as that might sound, it’s nice to have the support of a corporate office as well as a community of franchisees. You have a road map and systems already in place as well as operations manuals and proven methods for being a profitable franchisee. And, the franchisor can project with much more accuracy how long it will be before you will be profitable since they’ve already done it before.

For more information, listen to the podcast and let us know what you think. Thanks to both David and Stan for joining us! Have a stellar week!