Mobile First

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

Scott Lennartz is an experienced marketing professional, leader, and accomplished yogi. Whether growing a Silicon Valley business to multi-billion dollar run rates, revamping a local yoga studio to better serve the Portland community, or balancing a handstand in the early morning, Scott has successfully navigated a variety of challenges both large and small.

Scott has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics, a Master of Business Administration, and is a Yoga Alliance E-RYT 500. He is currently the owner of Yoga Bhoga in Portland, Oregon, as well as the Vice President Marketing and Business Development at Voicebox Industries.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Scott’s passion in putting his energy to things which make a change or makes an impact. His focus on outcomes was brought about by his craving of seeing results from decisions he had made after working with different types of companies.

About his interest in technology since he was a kid, how things like coding gets him stoked and his smart decision when he went from Cisco rather than pets.com up to the time he left Cisco and joined Voicebox.

What Voicebox is all about, how it works in a seamless way that makes users feels good, how they use the technology to tailor-fit or make a unique experience for users before and after the event and why it is essential to get rid of all the confusion by designing your products to be very intuitive.

Scott discusses why they went for being mobile responsive but have not decided to invest in a mobile app. He shares that in their opinion, downloading an app will be a negative experience for their user and would contradict to their goal of having Voicebox to be as simple and fun as possible.

The hurdles that they are experiencing such as internal growth, developing talent and raising capital for expansion.

How they get input and feedback from customers through pop ups where you can enter a text message in your phone and it will pop up in the big screen. It’s fun and gets people to engage in more ways.

The cool project that they are working on right now: Roulette, a feature where you can go to a page and spin to get random songs for you to sing. If you want to keep tabs on the things that Voicebox is working on, go to http://vbsongs.com/.

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

Ken Herron is a cool hunter for new ideas, strategies, and technologies to increase the value of world-class brands. A global marketing alchemist, he unleashes peoples' creativity to use technology to develop stronger emotional connections between companies and their customers to drive revenue and market share.

Ken has rapidly grown revenues for multiple early- and mid-stage startup companies. He has held executive marketing and sales leadership positions for multiple SaaS enterprises including Purple Communications, SocialGrow, and Online Buddies; and held product leadership roles with Avaya, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T.

A graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business' Marketing Management Program, Ken earned his Master's degree in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and his Bachelor's degree in International Economics and German from Drew University.

Ranked the #2 Chief Marketing Officer on Twitter worldwide by "Social Media Marketing Magazine", Ken is a frequent author and popular speaker on leveraging technology for marketing, and the leading practices to engage enterprise and consumer brands' customers online.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Ken starts off with how his passion of helping people put pieces together and have aha moments for themselves is derived from being an educator. He expounds on how he was molded and energized by being forced into new situations and by change.

He shares his interest in being in a role where he can affect the most change and how this led to the journey he has so far. From being with large corporations where he felt he had very small impact, he moved to smaller organizations where he can have greater responsibilities and greater impact to both business and people he works with.

How empowering it can be to have tools available at your fingertips to have an idea published and communicated directly; and whether or not it is more advantageous to have an entourage of designers, etc. to present presentations for you.

What Unified Inbox is, some items which needs awareness from their users and non-costumers and the many way that their brilliant technology can make our lives way easier and improve the quality of our lives.

How they are looking at improving their product in line with the current technology and especially for mobile; how they are making their content as accessible to as many markets as possible; and the processes they have in place to ensure they are keeping up with the trends.

Check out the coolest project they had just finished by going to demo.unifiedinbox.com, log in and passwords are: uib. You can find the Unification Engine Project that they had just put up in their website. You can play with the tool by yourselves. You can find a virtual kitchen, virtual street scene, virtual factory, etc. and you can send messages using your own cellphone using your own network. Go and set your thermometer or turn on your vacuum cleaner..for real!

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

Nic is currently the GM for Adidas Group North America Direct-to-Consumer. A veteran in the retail industry, Nic has been with the brand almost 8 years and has held roles of increasing responsibility during his tenure. He is highly knowledgeable about the sporting goods industry and is best known for the turnaround of a bankrupt brick and mortar business, making it one of our most profitable channels year over year.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Why Nic is most passionate about the aspect of helping people achieve their goals and how this drive started. He shared how this value was embedded to him when he was a kid and stuck until he is 44.

The underlying trend from his career transitions -- from Hollywood Entertainment Corporation to Target to Adidas -- and the secret sauce of how he managed to balance relationships and business.

Nic goes through the process in identifying a person’s personal goals and how you can align it with company’s values starting with being a great listener, asking the appropriate questions and reading people’s non-verbal cues.

Nic’s main focus items in his role as GM for Adidas Group North America including creating the vision and cultivating the culture within the organization (The Brand Guardian).

The unique things that he is doing for the organization which makes him an outlier emphasizing on how he is flipping the traditional paradigm upside down in terms of the importance of roles.

How Adidas transitioned to mobile and how mobile turned their world around especially with how information is passed on with lighting speed.

The biggest hurdles that Nic is trying to overcome with the transformation that is happening in the industry and why innovation is a core ability that companies should have in order to cope up with all the changes.

The initial pain points in the world of Direct-to-Consumer: being average in demand fulfillment, below average in mobile and below average in terms of connectivity to the ecosystem.

How they are keeping themselves up to date with the evolving technology such as creating a newsroom with skilled individual tracking sites, buzz words and the works; and developing apps for music to make the consumers become part of the brand and help them move the brand forward.

Nick believes that the future of mobile is already here and he expounds on what he thinks will come next.

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

Robert is a startup enthusiast with a passion for technologies that make the world more connected, efficient and sustainable. He is currently Founder & CEO at Workframe, where he's focused on leveraging technology to reduce the cost, time and effort required to design and build an inspiring workplace. Robert previously served as Director, Business Operations & Insights at Intent Media, where he owned business analytics, FP&A and sales operations; earlier in his career, he also worked in venture capital and investment banking. He completed his MBA at the Yale School of Management and holds an MPhil in International Relations from Oxford University.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

We learn about what gets Robert up in the morning every day and his core of excitement; and the path he took to get to Workframe starting from Deloitte, Credit Suisse, SJF Ventures to Intent Media. He also shared why he ventured into commercial interior design and how it paved the way to his transition to Workframe.

An overview of Workframe and what they do and why technology is a key piece of their being and a key piece of why they were able to scale.

How they structure deals and the pricing models and methodology they use; and what they are focusing on right now to get traction.

Strategies in testing the market including being aggressive in testing the market and the next steps to take towards expansion.

The most recent hurdles that they have overcame which led them to scale and tactics they employed to get through them including building a core team of people to give them the credibility that they needed to be successful.

The current challenges that Workframe is facing and what they are doing to address that.

How mobile can go in and completely change the way the industry works because it can bring about better decision-making, better outcomes, reduces a ton of friction in the process, drives efficiency which drives cost down = the outcome is better all around.

With the advancement of digital, Robert enumerates the things that he is particularly excited about surrounding all the opportunity it can open up to; and which one he feels will happening anytime soon.

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

Maria Seidman is the CEO and co-founder of Yapp, an award-winning platform where anyone can create and instantly publish a mobile application for your event, group, or promotion. Before founding Yapp in 2011, she ran mobile for Warner Bros. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children, one of which was born while launching Yapp. She is passionate about women in technology, mobile trends, media, and entrepreneurship. Seidman was named Entrepreneur Magazine's Emerging Entrepreneur of 2014.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Maria starts off with how her frustration of not being able to know to code paved the way to her passion in making software that users love to use to enhance their lives.

About a women’s retreat that inspired her to create Yapp, at what point she decided that it was worth the investment and the process she went through in creating the app from validation to looking for a technical co-founder.

Maria walks us through her choice of approach and steps she took from conception of idea to coming up with a prototype.

The timelines and phases Yapp went through and some of the mistakes that they have learned the hard way. She also shares that, if she can start all over again, she would start on the mobile side and emphasize user testing and market research before building a single line of code.

Solve the problem really well for a specific user and start from that → Why Maria’s advice can save you tons of time, money and effort.

The transition she went through from working in an organization as global as Warner Brothers, the hustle she needed to employ when running her own start-up company and the pros and cons that went with the change.

The initial hurdles they had encountered before they gained traction such as building their reputation and finding early adopters; and even the current ones now that they have scaled.

The steps they implemented to get through their challenges and the iterations they did to optimize adoptions including efficient prioritization. She also talks about scaling customer acquisition and the roadmap for Yapp.

Yapp’s ideal audience and the coolest things that they are working on right now.