“If bad things happen don’t waste time by blaming someone, or some earlier decision:  Take control, focus, communicate and redeploy a new plan to solve the problem.“  Leo Pound, Turnaround Specialist, President of Pound Consulting

The Rich Niche Group blog interviews and enables you to hear directly from successful entrepreneurs and product managers about the steps they took to grow their businesses/products and how they were able to create, penetrate, and/or dominate their niche.  This week we interview Leo Pound, the founder of Pound Consulting, a turnaround consulting firm often brought in by outside investors or the Board of Directors to fix ailing companies and get them back on the right path.

Interviewee:  Leo Pound, Turnaround Specialist and Financial Expert. 

Why Selected:  Mr. Pound is the President of Pound Consulting Inc., with over 30 years experience in many industries. For over 18 years Mr. Pound has specialized in high growth and troubled situations, with a focus on increasing customer and shareholder value. Mr. Pound’s in-depth knowledge of operational and strategic planning, M&A, forecasting and budgeting, cash flow, cost containment and re-engineering is balanced with his understanding of the customer and market needs. He is a team leader who builds consensus while moving a company forward. Mr. Pound is a hands-on professional who is sensitive to the pressures and challenges facing a troubled company and their management team. He has been active in the CEO, CFO and COO roles in manufacturing and further processing, distribution and service industries. In addition, he has been responsible for managing banking relations, Big Four auditors, outside legal counsel, the financial community and investor relations. Mr. Pound has had direct accountability for Sales and Marketing, Manufacturing, the Controller function, Treasury, Human Resources, MIS, Risk Management, Contract Administration, Customer Service, Real Estate, Purchasing and Administration.  Mr. Pound serves on many public and private company boards and consults with companies of all sizes.

Several years ago, Leo was brought into a firm I was working with and his insight and advice helped us get that company on the right track and eventually sold.

In the following interview, Leo discusses the issues he most often finds when brought in to help turn-around a company in trouble.  The key points you’ll take away include:

1.  The key to success is having a well rounded team that compliments each other and a focus on executing a well conceived plan.

2.  An early warning sign your company may be in trouble is if your revenue cycle is out of synch with your payable cycle. 

3.  Keep your lenders fully informed when bad things happen and what you plan to do about them.

4.  Don’t be afraid of change, it’s what growth is all about.

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“We originally had visions of building a little bit of a client base, selling to AOL, and retiring in the Caribbean. Well, we were a little late for that, so we had to opt for Plan B which was to buckle down and build the business.“  Dale Coyner, Serial Entrepreneur, Founder of Communicast and Open Road Outfitters

The Rich Niche Group blog interviews and enables you to hear directly from successful entrepreneurs and product managers about the steps they took to grow their businesses/products and how they were able to create, penetrate, and/or dominate their niche.  This week we interview Dale Coyner, the founder of Communicast (which was sold to PrecisionIR Group), Open Road Outfitters and a noted author of several motorcycle touring books and a motorcycle touring blog

Interviewee:  Dale Coyner, serial entrepreneur. 

Why Selected:  Dale is a two-time entrepreneur and one of the pioneers in the use of interactivity and streaming technologies within the web conferencing and webcasting industries.  Dale is also a motorcycle touring enthusiast and author of several books and a blog on the topic. Dale is also a member of the Virginia Governor’s Motorcycle Advisory Council.

I had the pleasure of first consulting to and then partnering with Dale (and David Paul, co-founder of Communicast) as we grew the company and eventually sold it to PrecisionIR Group and their Vcall division.  Under Dale’s guidance, Communicast became known as the leading interactive webinar platform and was one of if not the first to integrate streaming audio and video.  Dale’s foresight and unique ability to understand problems and break them down to their smallest and easiest to solve position enabled Communicast to continue growing while delivering its famed “white glove” service.  Dale also understands himself, his strengths, and the strengths of those around him and he has the ability to bring those strengths together to make the team more productive. 

In the following interview, Dales takes us through how he was able to keep Communicast growing without ever taking any venture capital and how the start-up of Open Road Outfitters differed from Communicast.  During the interview, Dales makes several points about what it takes to grow a company, the key points you’ll take away include:

1.  Know your buyers.  Possessing a solid understanding of your buyers will enable to you understand their problems and build products they understand.

2.  Take advantage of the numerous open source and low-cost solutions are now available to help small businesses. 

3.  “It’s the rare opportunity that can stand up to the scrutiny you’ll put it through if you write even a simple business plan.”

4.  The biggest threat to losing your position as a market leader is to become complacent to the changes in your niche/industry.

You are now on your 2nd start-up, how has the start-up Open Road Outfitters differed from starting Communicast?

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“One of the common mistakes that marketers make is to believe that their customers are different than they are.  They’re not.  Just like us, our prospects hate cold calls, throw away junk mail, and ignore most advertising.“ 

Dharmesh Shah, Founder & CTO of HubSpot, Serial Software Entrepreneur and Startup Blogger 

The Rich Niche Group blog interviews and enables you to hear directly from successful entrepreneurs, product managers, venture capitalists and others about the steps they took to grow their businesses/products and how they were able to create, penetrate, and/or dominate their niche.  This week we interview Dharmesh Shah.

Interviewee:  Dharmesh Shah, serial entrepreneur, author and startup blogger. 

Why Selected:  Dharmesh is the founder and CTO of HubSpot.  HubSpot provides marketing software for small businesses.  The company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has raised over $30 million in venture capital, and has over 1,700 customers. 

He developed grader.com – a free suite of online tools for marketing measurement.  These tools, including WebsiteGrader.com and TwitterGrader.com have won numerous awards and have been used by millions.

Dharmesh is the co-author of the new book “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs,” published by Wiley in October, 2009.  The book has been consistently ranked in the top 100 business books on Amazon.

He also authors OnStartups.com, a top-ranking startup blog with over 15,000 subscribers and 100,000 members in its online community.  He is an active member of the Boston area entrepreneurial community and a frequent speaker on the topic of startups and internet marketing.

Dharmesh has a B.S. in Computer Science from UAB and an M.S. in the Management of Technology from MIT.

In the following interview, Dharmesh discusses how he used inbound marketing techniques to help his company’s grow and how any business regardless of the sector it is in can use these same techniques to reach its customer base.  During the interview, Dharmesh provided some great insights on what it takes to launch, grow and sustain a company in today’s market.  The key points you’ll take away include:

1. It is critical for entrepreneurs to figure out a way to efficiently gain access to customers and to really reach people, you need to give them something that is valuable and compelling. 
2. As your company grows, one of the challenges you needed to be prepared for is how to stay on top of rapid growth and ensure that the organization shares a common vision and maintains the culture that has made it successful thus far.
3. Successful companies that enter a niche have a good understanding of how the existing players are failing to deliver sufficient customer value.
4. Companies that dominate a niche find some sort of “network effect” whereby each additional customer adds value to the remaining ones.

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“The narrower you focus your initial market, really really narrow, the larger your market actually is!!“  Barry James Folsom, CEO, Twirl TV 

The Rich Niche Group blog interviews and enables you to hear directly from successful entrepreneurs and product managers about the steps they took to grow their businesses/products and how they were able to create, penetrate, and/or dominate their niche.  This week we interview Barry James Folsom and we’ll come to understand how he has “focused” his companies in order to grow more quickly:

Interviewee:  Barry James Folsom, serial entrepreneur. 

Why Selected:  Barry James has over 37 years of executive management and strategic marketing experience with a successful track record of growing divisions and companies rapidly into category leaders. He has played pivotal roles in the creation of 4 major market categories: PCs, Workstations, Internet Data Centers and Web Conferencing.

As a respected company leader, Barry James was Frost & Sullivan’s 2002 CEO of the Year.  He is also a frequent speaker, e.g. Ad:Tech, Media Summit, Digital Hollywood, & Digital Connections.

Barry James is CEO of Twirl TV. Twirl TV is a Social TV gateway experience to online TV for the 30M 16-to-24 year old YouTube on-demand Generation whose PC is their TV.  Twirl TV viewers have choice – from over 400 shows/6000 episodes –  as well as camaraderie with their Twirl TV friends, including chatting and watching together on their respective PCs.

I had the pleasure of partnering and working with Barry James when he was the CEO of PlaceWare (now known as Microsoft Live Meeting) which he sold to Microsoft for $200M. 

In the following interview, Barry James provides you with some insights on how he was able to come into PlaceWare and implement some changes and processes that enabled them to grow faster.  In addition, he gives us a look inside his new company, Twirl TV, and how it is changing the way young adults access, watch and interact with their favorite TV shows.  During the interview, Barry James brought up several points and ideas about what it takes to solidly grow your company.  The key points you’ll take away include:

1.  Look for the pain points of your target market and how your solution can solve them.

2.  If your target market is already in the customer base of an established business, leverage that business to reach and gain customer acceptance.

3.  Know what your adoption cycle is and look for ways to decrease the time it takes to get a “sold” client using your service/product.  This will have an impact on everything from customer satisfaction to cash flow!

4.  Focus, focus, focus…by being narrowly focused you can get to know your prospect’s and client’s needs better and deliver a product/service they highly value.

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“The ability to acquire the skills to be an effective CEO is as difficult as an average singer becoming a great recording artist.  Unfortunately many entrepreneurs as their companies become more and more successful fail to acquire the next level of skill sets…”  Roy Cammarano, former leader of three INC. 500 companies and author of Creating Do-It-Yourself Customers and the award-winning book, Entrepreneurial Transitions.

The Rich Niche Group blog interviews and enables you to hear directly from successful entrepreneurs and product managers about the steps they took to grow their businesses/products and how they were able to create, penetrate, and/or dominate their niche.  In addition, we also interview those that provide services entrepreneurs and small businesses need in order to help them build their companies.  This week we interview Roy Cammarano:

Interviewee:  Roy Cammarano, former President of three INC. 500 companies, business consultant, public speaker and author of Creating Do-It-Yourself Customers and the award-winning book, Entrepreneurial Transitions.

Why Selected:  Having had the pleasure of working with Roy at two different companies, I can attest to the fact that Roy’s perspectives and insights into helping entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial organizations and businesses of all sizes grow themselves and their companies is invaluable.  I would encourage every entrepreneur to read Entrepreneurial Transitions, it is one of the very few books that can help you move from being an entrepreneur to a leader.

In the following interview, Roy discusses how starting and running a business is analogous to starting a family, helping it grow and some of the mistakes to avoid along the way.  As you read the full interview, here are some points that stood out to me:

1.  As a company grows, the founder and/or leader of the company must transition from being the “entrepreneurial genius” to visionary leader.  One key to this relies on the leader of the company building a strong executive team and then enabling them to run their departments.

2.  Entrepreneurs need to realize that at some point in order for their company to reach its full potential, they may need to bring in someone to run the business.

3.  When times get tough, focus everyone on a common goal and use that to rally the troops by celebrating small wins and build positive momentum. 

4.  When hiring outside consultants, only hire those that provides the skills the company needs and does not already possess.

5.  Companies that continually dominate their niche are always asking themselves, “how would I compete with me” and then building the barriers to keep them competition at bay.

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