Q&A Series

Online Business Tips: The Importance of Building a Great Product

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Today’s post is the latest installment of our Q&A Series – short interviews with talented, experienced, and successful entrepreneurs who are on the front lines of running online businesses.

school cmsMy guest is Michael W. Kearns, CEO of TurnkeySchool.com – a school CMS website that Mike and his business partner  Jake Johnson developed.

I think you’ll like this discussion. Michael shares some great insights.

Here’s our discussion:

B5: Tell me about what TurnkeySchool.com is all about.
Michael: TurnkeySchool.com is a web platform that empowers K-12 schools with easy website management and design using our flexible content editor. Multiple content authors can add photos, documents, video and podcasts all in one place using our file browser. TurnkeySchool.com integrates with hundreds of online services for social media, blogs, calendars, slide-shows and more.

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Startup Lessons: Find the Right Financing Partner & Test Before You Invest in Marketing

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Today’s post is the latest installment of our Q&A Series – short interviews with talented, experienced, and successful entrepreneurs who are on the front lines of running online businesses.

new river innovation

My guest is Reed Humphrey. Reed’s an experienced entrepreneur having cofounded or led marketing at four start-ups, including a tax services firm that grew revenue by 100-fold under his direction. Currently he leads the marketing and public relations functions for New River Innovation/easyIRS.com, including advertising, social media, partnerships, news and media.

I think you’ll like this discussion because Reed is a smart, experienced guy who is right smack dab in the middle of the startup experience. He’s got a lot of good input on financing and marketing. And his company is working on a pretty cool idea that I think could be huge.

Here’s our discussion:

B5: The name of your company, easyIRS.com, probably says everything. But just in case, tell me about what the company is all about.

Read moreStartup Lessons: Find the Right Financing Partner & Test Before You Invest in Marketing

Startup Lessons: Guard Your Equity and Make Every Day Productive

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Here’s the latest installment of our Q&A Series – short interviews with talented, experienced, and successful entrepreneurs who are on the front lines of running online businesses.

My guest is Curt Dalton, founder of the new search engine NowRelevant.com – yeah that’s right. I said new search engine. I had a chance to chat with Curt this week. He had a lot of great insight’s about the entrepreneurial game and the search business. He’s got an interesting idea.

This interview is super interesting because of the industry involved – one that’s obviously occupied by giants that we’ve all heard of. Here’s our discussion:

B5: Before we get into your new venture, tell me about being an entrepreneur.
For me it has always been about how you think about a problem and how you look to solve it.  I have always been the “I can create a better mouse trap” type thinker.  So, you will strike out some, but you if you stick with it and be persistent you will find success on a project sooner or later.

new search engine

B5: So tell me about NowRelevant.com.
NowRelevant.com is a new search engine that shows you everything about a subject, but just for the last two weeks. We want to give users relevant information on topics without having to sift through 55 million results that date back to the beginning of time. We’re able to remove spam and SEO dummy sites from the users results as well.

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Lessons From a Startup: Adapt to What the Market is Telling You

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This the latest installment of our Q&A Series – short interviews with talented, experienced, and successful entrepreneurs who are on the front lines of running online businesses. I’ve always believed that it’s a big mistake to not at least listen to those who have worn the same shoes that we are putting on every day. I hope these interviews prove to be as informative to you as they have been for me.

Today’s guest is Wray Rives, founder of NeedaCFO. I had a chance to chat with Wray recently. He had a lot of great insight’s about year one of his newest venture.

Here’s our discussion:

B5: Talk a little bit about what NeedaCFO is all about.
WR: For several years I have worked with medium-to-large companies providing C-Level management support, mostly in the financial (CFO/COO/Controller) type roles.  At the same time, I have had a few fairly small business clients that I mostly do tax compliance work for.  I saw the need with the small business owners to have a senior level business advisor like a CFO or COO, but most of them cannot afford a full time person. Even if they have in-house accounting and finance staff, many small business owners end up performing the CFO role themselves, because the in-house staff is focused on day to day accounting duties and is not really looking at the business in a “big picture” way.

In my experience, small business owners tend to fall into two groups a) really good at some technical skill or b) really good sales people.  Very few of them are really good CFO’s. I felt like they needed somewhere to go and get solid business advice.

need a cfo

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