Intern Meeting

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Amidst a growing rash of lawsuits across the country that might just dork up the whole concept of internships I made my way up to KinetixHR to talk with their class of student workers over lunch. My friends there said all I had to do was talk about myself, my career choices, and what I had learned along the way. Easy enough. No prep required.

This is what I told them I have learned over the course of my career.

  • Values matter
  • Do what you love
  • Brand yourself
  • Have life goals
  • The path is not straight

And this was my job hunting advice

  • Always be networking, nearly all my career moves came from networking
  • Never send a resume until someone asks for it
  • Have a well built out LinkedIn profile because…
  • The first thing someone is going to do is Google you
  • Control as many top 10 SERPs as you can

Great group, had a lot of fun. Afterwards every single one of them reached out connect on LinkedIn. I was forewarned they would do so. And I accepted of course. I don't know if the Kinetix interns are paid or not, I do know the company is working hard to deliver them value over the summer.

July 16, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Personal, Presentations

Mobile Coupon Explosion

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Business Insider is pimping their new mobile industry report so much that there is hardly a reason to sign up to get the report. As has been noted here before mobile coupon use is going through the roof.

Mobile Coupon Users

Some interesting conclusions/actoids from BI.

  • Mobile coupons have a 10% redemption rate vs. 1% for print coupons.
  • Mobile coupons can lure new customers into brick and mortar stores.
  • Retailers should think of coupons not as a discounting vechicle but more of a brand content play with an offer.
June 20, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Mobile

Does Father Know Best?

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When your former public relations agency of record reaches out to you with an infographic sponsored by a former consulting client on a recent FoG subject how can a dad say no?

Most interesting stat to me. 74% of Americans want to work from home at least part-time.

Does Father Know Best

June 17, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Current Affairs, Management

Working Remotely

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Based on my position on the matter in the past readers of FoG will be quite surprised that I have joined the growing number of Americans working from home for the moment.

It's interesting situation. I was given a project that required my undivided attention. None of the team that I am working with is in our Atlanta office. They are literally spread across the globe. Remove me from the office, remove distractions.

I have been doing this for a week or so and my typical day looks like this. Get up in the 3:45 – 5:30am time frame and communicate with my Eastern Europe comrades. Work til 8:30 then help my teenagers get off to their summers camps/jobs for 30 minutes. Turn my attention domestically then and perhaps a little exercise or a meeting for lunch. Then back to task with the USA Eastern time zone cohorts. Wrap that up around 5, set tasks for those whose workday begins at 1:00am Eastern time, and communicate with contractors on the West Coast or those with full time gigs between 7 and 11pm. The latter which I just wrapped up before writing this post.

Not sure if it is an actual lifestyle improvement or not. I will say this, I am not getting much sleep but I put on long pants for the first time in about a week today.

Will update as we move along.

June 12, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Management, Personal

Growing Consumer Mobile Coupon Interest

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Interesting new report out by comScore and UPS, Pulse of the Online Shopper. The most amazing snippet to me is that 47% of shoppers are willing to have a retailer send a coupon to their smartphone when they are in-store or nearby. Seems like a sea change from not that long ago.

Growing Interest in Retail Mobile Coupons

From the study here are the full infographic, the executive summary, and a white paper.

June 5, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in E-Commerce, Mobile

Two Years

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Willie King over at WorthPoint reached out to me earlier this month via LinkedIn, "Congrats Lance on 2 years" he said. How time flies. He is talking about my time at Half Off Depot/nCrowd.

It has been quite busy. So busy that I have not really had a chance to practice my preach of updating your resume every year just to remember what you have accomplished. Doing that and keeping it to the required two pages is just way too time consuming. So at the risk of being self aggrandizing here are the bullet points of the past two years (one of the reasons I have a blog is to find things that are important to me) that someday I am going to have to whittle down and properly format for a resume.

  • Played a significant role in the company securing $7 million series A.
  • Selected expansion markets and in conjunction with CEO set expansion strategy.
  • Successfully expanded into first additional market within 60 days of joining company.
  • Based on the results recommended to board that we accelerate expansion.
  • Expanded into four additional markets with 100 days of joining company.
  • When Groupon botched its IPO recommended a market rollup.
  • Took over direct duties of CTO and Vice President of Marketing.
  • Personally led the negotiation of two asset acquisitions.
  • Identified and made initial inquires to major acquisition target, oversaw due diligence and closing of the same.
  • Oversaw the development of proprietary platform and assumed direct management of the darn thing. As in doing sysadmin and committing code.
  • Assisted in securing venture debt for major acquisitions.
  • Acted as corporate secretary. 
  • Started as employee number 21, employee base now reported to be 70.
  • 3.5x revenue run rate growth.

Not a bad list for two years. It will be interesting to see what the next two bring.

May 30, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Half Off Depot, nCrowd, Personal

Atlanta Startup Village Meetup

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Last night I had the honor of presenting at the Atlanta Startup Village Meetup. It was quite the rockin' affair. About 250 people registered, 175 or so showed up and Monday Night Brewing suds were on tap.

I was joined at the front of the room by VillageDefense which I regret to say I don't fully understand cause the demo had some technical issues; DudeRanch, a TripAdvisor for wannabe Cowboys and an interesting domainer story; Sidewalk District, which is going to need some serious UX work to to work; and Ionic Security, fresh off a $10 million Kleiner/Google Ventures round.

Mr. Cummings claims the meetup is the largest startup event in the South. Mr. Bird claims I am OG, which I think is a compliment. Regardless it is worth a trip if you want to see the new edge on the Atlanta startup scene.

May 29, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Accelerators, Entrepreneurship, Food and Drink, Networking, Startups

Sales Is A Numbers Game

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Not too ago we were having a meeting about sales activity and what a rep needed to do to have a healthy pipeline and this ended up on the white board.

Healthy Pipeline Math

Essentially contact 50 prospects, reach 10 decision makers, send out 10 contracts and get 5 signatures. Directionally correct for a rep in my current business.

Not many folks know I started out as a sales rep. Sold capital packaging equipment. I had to cold call 100 prospects to land ten face to face appointments. Those ten appointments would turn into three demos. Three demos would turn into one sale. I had to get 3.5 orders to reach my quota every month. Essentially had to make 100 cold calls a week.

Sales is a numbers game.

Know your numbers.

May 21, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Sales