Recruit Rockstars Podcast

Seth Kniep has a remarkable entrepreneurship origin story. He found himself working at Apple, leading a 20-person team of tech support advisors. But he was miserable, working as a cog in the world’s most valuable company. Fascinated with an idea, he went about doubling one dime 20 times. He shared his vision with random strangers & asked them to double his dime. He turned it into $400, just by asking. Discouraged, $24,000 in debt, and living the death-by-paycheck cycle, Seth believed in a better future for himself & his family. He poured his heart into learning online eCommerce. In 2016, Just One Dime was born, based in Austin. He began teaching & training people how to sell on Amazon. He’s trained multiple students to become Amazon eCommerce millionaires. Amazon even flew him to its Seattle HQ for his consultation on improving their third-party platform. Now his company builds Amazon stores for people who don’t have time to do it on their own. It’s a turnkey service, and they share the revenue. Seth has recruited & leads a team of over 100 at Just One Dime. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat.  

There are a gazillion ways to write your résumé (or LinkedIn profile). Because everyone has advice: “Do it this way.” “No, do it that way.” But what if you want to do it the best way? The right way? I wanted to find an expert… the guru… who has the answers and can tell you everything you’ve always wanted to know about résumés. I found him. Marc Cenedella is uniquely-qualified to answer these questions, because he’s spent decades on the topic. Based in New York, he’s Founder & CEO of Ladders, one of the nation’s leading online job boards. And if that wasn’t enough, he’s also Founder of Leet Resumes, which actually will write your resume for free. Free! Prior, he led finance & operations at HotJobs, acquired by Yahoo for $400M. And he began in Private Equity with The Riverside Company. In this 20-minute conversation, Marc reveals the biggest mistakes people make when writing their resume or LinkedIn profile. And how to do it the right way, the best way. (You’ll love the speed round, where Marc aced all the tricky job search questions.)

“I now pronounce you successful entrepreneurs.” Nothing brings out the romantic in me like a New Year. The fresh possibilities, the clean start. And a super-cool online business. John Ruggiero & his wife are co-Founders & co-CEO’s of Manly Bands, one of the fastest-growing direct-to-consumer brands in wedding retail. The couple quit their jobs, drove cross-country, and setup shop in Utah. Following their own endless search for wedding rings, they decided to redefine the formerly-conservative category with unique & affordable ring designs for men. And in just 3 years, they bootstrapped an 8-figure company from scratch, which is now an Inc5000-ranked company. For the first time in human history, men are free to choose a wedding band that is more than just a boring silver or gold ring. Their options include rings made of wood, meteorite, antler, carbon fiber, even dinosaur bone. In this 20-minute conversation, John reveals how he & his wife scaled Manly Bands by putting a Rockstar in every seat.  

The smartest Venture Capital firms invest heavily in talent for their portfolio companies. After they cut the check, the hard work just begins. Here’s an example. Jason Felger is Head of Operating Platform at Chicago-based Jump Capital. He works with the CEO’s across Jump’s portfolio to help them scale their businesses, particularly by putting a Rockstar in every seat. Says Jason: “Right now, it’s all about the recruitment & retention of talent, more than I’ve ever seen.” Jump Capital, which recently raised $350 Million for its 7th fund, provides series A & B capital to data-driven tech companies in FinTech, IT & Data Infrastructure, B2B SaaS, and Media. It also invests globally in cryptocurrency companies & projects. Portfolio companies include Fast Radius, M1 Finance, Upshow, AcreTrader, Autopay, Balto, Sporttrade. Jason’s unique qualified, as he’s sat on both the investing & operating sides of early-stage companies. As CEO, he led Food Genius (acquired by US Foods) following his service at Redbox/Coinstar & Chicago Ventures. In this 20-minute conversation, Jason reveals what VC’s look for when they hire. And his observations on the biggest mistakes business leaders make when scaling their team.  

If you’re like most business leaders, you spend plenty of time designing your company’s business model. Mike Maples warns that you need to spend as much time designing your team, based on your company’s stage & strategy. He should know. Mike is Co-Founder & Partner at Floodgate, one of the original early-stage venture capital firms (i.e. writing the first $1M check) he formed 15 years ago. Mike’s been named to the Forbes Midas List 8 times in the last decade, and for good reason.. He was an early investor in the companies you love: Twitter, Lyft, Bazaarvoice, Storable, TaskRabbit, Twitch (acquired by Amazon), Chegg, Demandforce, Smule, Outreach, Okta, Weebly (acquired by Square) Better still, he’s built companies on both sides of the table, starting as an executive at back-to-back startup IPOs: Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM) and Motive (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent) He’s one of the most insightful investors I’ve met. Which is why I’m hooked on his Starting Greatness Podcast. On it, he talks about teams & hiring Says Mike: “To build your bench, you must spend 25% of your time on recruiting, no matter what.” Something tells me if Mike wasn’t a legendary VC investor, he’d make a remarkable recruiter. In this 20-minute conversation, Mike shares how to design the right team for your business model & current stage.  

Like you, I’m just too busy to listen to cruddy podcasts. So, very few survive on my Podcasts app for more than an episode or two. Mixergy is one of them. I never miss it. Its creator & host Andrew Warner started Mixergy back in 2006, making it one of the top-ranked & longest-running business podcasts. Since then he’s interviewed over 2,000 entrepreneurs, business thought leaders, and authors. (…including me in 2012 when my hair was thick & lustrous) Andrew’s story is fascinating. In his early 20’s, he started an internet company Bradford & Reed with his brother. They hit it big …like crazy big… by creating a website for sharing electronic greeting cards which processed over 400,000 greeting cards per day. With $1M in monthly revenue, the website’s traffic was ranked in the top 25 of ALL internet websites during the year 2000. Then, Andrew burnt out. He sold the business, and decided to build a company helping entrepreneurs build their companies. In addition to Mixergy, he’s also author of the new book “Stop Asking Questions: How to Lead High-Impact Interviews and Learn Anything from Anyone” If you interview candidates, guests, customers, anyone… you’ll get a ton out of it. In this 20-minute conversation, Andrew reveals how he scaled both businesses & what he’s learned from the world’s best entrepreneurs about the people part of growth-stage companies.    

Charleston, South Carolina might seem like an unlikely place to find one of the nation’s fastest-growing tech companies. But it’s home to Digital Ignite. Mike Samet leads this rollup of adtech, martech, and data businesses that was recently named to the Inc5000 list. The full-service digital marketing agency using radical data-informed strategies to grow businesses & ignite sales Their clients include national players like Hoover, Dominos, and Harris Teeter. In this 20-minute conversation, Mike reveals how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat of the company.  

They say that “the riches are in the niches.” Well, Jason Hennessey proved them right. He’s built a highly-successful SEO firm within the legal vertical (a niche of a niche?) He’s CEO & Founder of Hennessey Digital. His LA-based agency has been named multiple times to Inc5000’s list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies. Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student & practitioner of SEO and search engine marketing. He started Hennessey Digital in 2015 and has grown a small consultancy to a $10MM+ business with 130 employees. Jason is also author of the #1 Amazon Bestselling book “Law Firm SEO: Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases” (but it’s equally applicable to every industry) In this 20-min conversation, he reveals how he’s scaled his team & put a Rockstar in every seat.  

Based in Golden, Colorado, Scott Lewis is CEO of Spartan Investment Group. Spartan syndicates investor capital to develop & operate real estate assets. Under Scott’s leadership, the business has pivoted from residential real estate to commercial, much of which is self-storage. It’s the 2-time Inc500 ranked company, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing. Following a successful career in the US Army, Scott started the company which now has 70 employees. He’s got some no-nonsense views on leadership & building an organization. And in this 20-minute conversation, you’ll discover how to do the same.  

Few VC investors have seen more than David Hornik. He’s Founding Partner at Lobby Capital, which he co-founded after 20 years as General Partner of the legendary VC firm August Capital. Based on The Lobby Conference, David admits that Lobby Capital is about one simple understanding: “it’s all about the people.” He’s invested in 40 companies, 5 of which grew into multi-billion-dollar businesses. His success stories include Splunk, Bill.com, Fastly, GitLab, MaintainX, Vowel, PayNearMe. Along with his colleagues at August Capital, David started the first venture capital blog, VentureBlog, and the first venture capital podcast, VentureCast. He’s received Deloitte’s Venture Capitalist of the Year award and has been honored by Forbes Magazine as a member of its Midas List of top Venture Capitalists. When not investing, David teaches entrepreneurship & VC at Stanford Business School and Harvard Law School. In this 20-minute conversation, David reveals what 20+ years as a VC have taught him about the people part of growth-stage companies.