What’s Your M.O.? | MO.com on www

Jun19

“Almost all marketing mistakes stem from one fundamental problem – failure to consider the customer.”

Hillary Berman

Popcorn & Ice Cream

Founder

Hillary Berman believes that to succeed in small business, a good idea and an entrepreneurial spirit are just the beginning.

Working in and for small businesses and start-ups over the course of her career, Hillary noticed a common theme – while small business owners are incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about their businesses, they’re not marketers. Yet in small business, everyone needs to be both a marketer and in sales. She and her team at Popcorn & Ice Cream help. In just two years, they’ve worked with more than two dozen clients to better engage with customers, raise their profiles and grow their revenues.

Popcorn & Ice Cream leverages a network of talented marketing professionals under Hillary Berman’s guidance. Hillary brings experience working in and for businesses of varying size to her small business clients. Cutting her teeth on Madison Avenue, Hillary got her first taste of small business at a dot.com reminiscent of Facebook, but sadly before its time. Upon moving back to Washington, DC, Hillary worked for a start-up technology company before turning back to the agency world where she supported both FORTUNE 500 and small businesses alike. Prior to launching Popcorn & Ice Cream, Hillary worked with her husband to build and grow a financial services business.

MO: What inspired you to launch Popcorn & Ice Cream instead of working for an established firm?

Jun18

No Comments

“My 5 Ps for success are : Prayer, Passion, Perserverence, Persistence and Presence.”

Cindy Tawiah

Diva by Cindy

Founder

http://www.DivaByCindy.com

Diva by Cindy hair products was founded in 2007. Cindy Tawiah , had a deep desire to create a hair product which would help stop hair shedding and breakage after 4 years of operating a Shades of U Hair Salon ( a full service salon), the product was launched.

Cindy had experienced tremendous turnover and questioned the direction of her business. A friend asked Cindy the reason why she had started a business in the beauty business to begin with. That’s when she recalled being taught to make nail polish and lipstick at the age of 16 and always having a deep desire to pursue her passion.

MO: Can you recall your “aha moment” of deciding to launch your business or was it more of a gradual realization?

Jun18

No Comments

“My design professor defiantly replied “Computers will NEVER be used for graphic design!”

Dana Edmonds

Creation Hotcomb Designs

CEO & Creative Director

http://www.HotcombDesign.com

Creation Hotcomb Design is a graphic & web design studio based in Montreal, working globally.

They are an international Web & Graphic Design Studio that creates clean, cutting-edge, professional and custom designs for clients.

Some of their impressive clients have included ELLE Quebec, United Nations, Esprit, Mega Bloks, La Vie en Rose, MUHC and recently Hans Koechling the image is to name a few.

MO: Can you elaborate on how a disagreement with a Graphic Design Professor was the springboard for leaving the Graphic Design program and ultimately launching your own business?

Jun17

No Comments

“YouMail’s goal is to provide everyone an automated secretary for handling missed calls.”

Alex Quilici

YouMail

CEO

http://www.YouMail.com

YouMail helps consumers and businesses deal with incoming mobile phone calls.

The YouMail Visual Voicemail Plus service is the world’s most popular third-party voicemail service, having answered the phone well over two billion times. They directly provide top-rated iPhone and Android apps, and third-parties have brought YouMail to Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

They have well over 4 million registered users and 150,000+ businesses of all sizes that have discovered how YouMail can help them interact more efficient with customers, prospects, and partners, through a combination of unique features like smart business greetings, automatic replies to voicemail, high quality voicemail to text conversion, and much more.

MO: How did you come up with the concept for YouMail?

Jun17

No Comments

“At Instacanvas, we believe the most interesting artwork of our generation is mobile photography. We love giving those artists a platform to sell their work and gain more exposure!”

Matt Munson

Instacanvas

CEO & Co-Founder

http://Instacanv.as

Matt Munson is the captain of the ship at Instacanv.as and is involved in just about every aspect of the Instacanvas site. Instacanvas is a mobile photography marketplace that allows Instagram users to receive a free online gallery to sell their work as beautiful design objects. Casual Instagrammers can also turn their own photos into wall decorations, greeting cards, and more.

MO: Do you think that mobile photography is starting to gain credibility as an art form? If so, how do you anticipate this growing trend to evolve in the coming years?

Jun14

No Comments

“Need a filter to sift through all that info when making a decision? Listen most to those who give you cash.”

Rob Ripp

Founder & President

Fintelligent

http://www.Fintelligent.com

Rob Ripp is the founder and President of Fintelligent, a company’s on-demand financial department. He has over 25 years operating and financial experience serving emerging companies as a C-level executive as well as stints at Fortune 500 companies. For the past 134years Rob has been a CFO to entrepreneurial companies in the IT, defense and healthcare fields. In that role he grown companies by securing customer contracts, raising capital, improving operations and negotiating exits.

Fintelligent was created to provide growing companies a professionally managed financial department at less cost and greater effectiveness. Utilizing the latest cloud technology, proven processes and trained experts, clients improve their financial performance with services that provide them accurate, real-time financial information any time on any device.

MO: How has your experience working at Fortune 500 companies helped shape the vision and direction of Fintelligent?

Jun14

No Comments

“Through running this business I’ve discovered that businesses in a small town such as Oneida have almost the same needs as businesses in a large city. However, the same resources aren’t available. We want to change that, at least for Oneida”

Abbey Dieteman

Dieteman Techonology Consulting

Co-Founder

http://www.DietemanTech.com

The team at Dieteman Technology Consulting specialize in small business IT solutions that keep your business moving including virus, malware, and adware scans; updates; software and hardware installation and problem solving. They offer monthly service contracts which means that you never have to think about your computers, they just work! And, if you ever do have questions, they have technicians on call 24/7. Most work is done outside business hours so you won’t have to hold up doing what you do best.

MO: How can having the right technology help business owners focus on what they’re passionate about?

Jun13

No Comments

“At 3M, I learned how a full scale marketing campaign works across many channels, from print media to digital media and everything in between and I soaked that knowledge up like a sponge.”

Colleen Eakins

Colleen Eakins Design

Chief Creative Officer

http://ColleenEakins.com

Colleen Eakins Design, is a one person design firm that specializes in creating effective graphic design, branding and marketing materials (online and offline) for clients all over the globe.

MO: What lessons or insights did you gain from the corporate world that you’ve been able to apply to your own business?

Jun13

No Comments

“Optimize employee referral programs for mobile devices and increase referrals to top talent.”

Assaf Eisenstein

GooodJob

Founder & CEO

http://www.GooodJob.com

Assaf Eisenstein is the founder and CEO of GooodJob. Previously the CEO of two publicly traded companies, Assaf holds a law degree from the University of Leicester in England, and an MBA from the College of Management in Israel. During his free time, he enjoys relaxing with his wife and two children, and mountain biking. Contact Assaf at assaf@gooodjob.com.

With GooodJob, you can optimize your employee referral program for mobile devices and increase referrals to top talent by engaging your whole team in the program.

They offer GooodJob Mobile, the first mobile solution for referral programs complete with a customizable native app for employees and social media integration. Their groundbreaking platform enables employees to refer and share your open jobs with their social networks directly from their smartphones. Built with their award-winning referral technology, it stands to revolutionize the way organizations approach their referral programs in this new age of mobile technology.

GooodJob transforms organizations’ ability to manage and fully leverage their referral programs. They help you usher in a new age of recruitment that delivers exceptional referrals and excellent ROI.

MO: How did you come up with the concept for GooodJob?Why do you think that Social Recruiting will be the new method of attracting candidates to jobs

Jun12

No Comments

“By clearly identifying our main customer segments and designing plans specific to each of them, we were able to immediately (and permanently) increase growth by over 300%.”

Ruben Gamez

Bidsketch

Founder

http://www.Bidsketch.com

Originally a software developer, Ruben Gamez bootstrapped Bidsketch while working full time and was quickly able to grow it into a profitable business. He spent several years working for a billion dollar payroll company. There he helped build and manage a custom proposal system that was used to regularly win seven and eight figure deals.

Bidsketch was originally founded as single person company in south Florida on November 2009.

Since then, it’s grown to help over 1,000 paying customers win millions of dollars in new business and save thousands of hours in the process.

Bidsketch is a web application used by freelancers, consultants, and agencies to create professional looking client proposals.

MO: How did you come up for the concept for Bidsketch?

Jun12

No Comments

“Ease of use is a key component to AlertBoot’s success since that translates to a significant cost savings for our customers when it comes to IT security management. We allow our customers to dedicate more of their time to revenue producing activities.”

Tim Maliyil

AlertBoot

Founder & CEO

http://www.AlertBoot.com

AlertBoot offers a cloud-based data and mobile device security service for companies of any size who want a scalable and easy-to-deploy solution. Centrally managed through a web based console, AlertBoot offers mobile device management, mobile antivirus, remote wipe & lock, device auditing, USB drive and hard disk encryption managed services.

MO: What inspired you to launch your business?

Page 1 of 14812 3 4 5...10 20 30...»Last »

Spotlight Interview: Gordon Logan

Spotlight Interview: David Allen

Love Twitter? Hate the Noise?

“Almost all marketing mistakes stem from one fundamental problem – failure to consider the customer.”

“My 5 Ps for success are : Prayer, Passion, Perserverence, Persistence and Presence.”

“At Instacanvas, we believe the most interesting artwork of our generation is mobile photography. We love giving those artists a platform to sell their work and gain more exposure!”

“Need a filter to sift through all that info when making a decision? Listen most to those who give you cash.”

“At 3M, I learned how a full scale marketing campaign works across many channels, from print media to digital media and everything in between and I soaked that knowledge up like a sponge.”

“By clearly identifying our main customer segments and designing plans specific to each of them, we were able to immediately (and permanently) increase growth by over 300%.”

“Ease of use is a key component to AlertBoot’s success since that translates to a significant cost savings for our customers when it comes to IT security management. We allow our customers to dedicate more of their time to revenue producing activities.”

MO Partners

Follow us on Twitter

Subscribe

MO.com Best Places to Work!

Some Notable Past Interviews

Our Interviews By Area: