Permission with Dr. Sherry Walling

In this episode of the Founder Origins Stories, Sherry interviews Rob. They talk about his early experiences coding on the Apple IIe, selling candy, and the role his dad had on his life.

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Episode Transcript

Sherry Walling:

Today wraps us this round of the Founder Origin Story series. We do have this on the roadmap to do again next summer, so if you have a founder in mind that you absolutely want to hear from, you wanna hear about his or her background, where they came from, how they grew up, how they were shaped then please send us an email, Tweet at us, get in touch with us somehow and submit their name and we’d love to get them on the deck for the next round.

But we’re ending the series today with Rob’s origin story. So we talk about some things that I don’t think we’ve actually talked about on the podcast anywhere else or that he hasn’t talked about that publicly. His early experiences of learning to code on an Apple 2E, his early experiences writing comics, inventing things and being an entrepreneur selling candy at school, selling other things. And we also talk in this interview about the central role that his dad played in both helping him learn how to cope with hard things, to face anxiety, but also in terms of building up his belief in himself and his own ability to contribute meaningfully to the world.

So it’s a good interview. There’s a little bit of crying but it’s mostly by me. So thanks for listening to the series, and we have a lot of things coming up this fall. Love to see any of you join us for Business of Software in Boston in September, Robert and I’ll both be at MicroConf Europe in Lisbon in November, and we’re doing a lot of other traveling and speaking. We’re hosting a retreat, hosting some zen tribe groups, so all of that of course is available on the Zen Founder website and feel free to be in touch with us if you are listening to the podcast and you realize there’s something that we might be able to do to help bring a little bit more zen to you or to your business. You know how to get ahold of us.

Sherry Walling:

It’s a little bit funny to interview you about this since I know a lot about your life story, but I think it’s a really interesting story and it’ll good for the listeners to hear this part of you, which I don’t know that you’ve shared a lot publicly.

Rob Walling:

Yeah, I haven’t really had the chance. I think a lot of folks that you’ve interviewed for this series, there hasn’t really been a venue to talk about growing up because typically we start with … There’s often the question of “Were you an entrepreneur when you were a kid?” and then that’s it and then it moves it on. It’s like okay, so take us to when you started the business and we kind of skip through that, so I really haven’t gotten in depth about growing up and what my formative years look like.

Sherry Walling:

I think it is important to have that time to talk about the development of the founder and not just the development of the business, so I’m glad we’re doing this. So let’s maybe start from the beginning. Where were you born? Where did you grow up?

Rob Walling:

I was born in Santa Clara, California. I grew up basically in the South Bay and then in the East Bay area, so what’s interesting is that I didn’t realize growing up that the bay area was different then the rest of the world, and so seeing billboards for computer chips and manufacturers i

In this episode of the Founder Origin Stories, Sherry interviews Bridget Harris of YouCanBook.me. Bridget talks about the variety of careers she had held before becoming a full time entrepreneur. Support ZenFounder

In this episode of the Founder Origin Stories, Sherry interviews Bridget Harris of YouCanBook.me. Bridget talks about the variety of careers she had held before becoming a full time entrepreneur.

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In this episode of the Founder Origin Stories, Sherry interviews Clay Collins a co-founder of Leadpages. They talk about his early entrepreneurial endeavors, his departure from Leadpages, and his hopes for the future. Support ZenFounder Episode Transcript Speaker 1: This week in our continuing founder origins series, Sherry interviews Clay Collins, the co-founder and former […]

In this episode of the Founder Origin Stories, Sherry interviews Clay Collins a co-founder of Leadpages. They talk about his early entrepreneurial endeavors, his departure from Leadpages, and his hopes for the future.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1:

This week in our continuing founder origins series, Sherry interviews Clay Collins, the co-founder and former CEO of Lead Pages. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Clay for several years online, and we first met in person maybe eighteen months ago when Clay was about four or five months into the negotiation process for Lead Pages to acquire my company Drip; and it’s been great to get to know Clay on a personal level and I would consider him a respected colleague as well as a friend.

 

Clay Collins came on the scene teaching internet marketing years ago and had a podcast called The Marketing Show that was one of my favorite podcasts to learn about tactical marketing, and then he teamed up with two co-founders and started Lead Pages in January of 2013. His origin story is fascinating; he grew up in California and later moved to Minneapolis and has really had a major impact on a lot of peoples lives by starting this company and bringing more of tax startup scene here to Minneapolis. If you haven’t heard him talk about his childhood, growing up being homeschooled and basically the story of becoming an entrepreneur, it’s quite engaging and I think you’re gonna enjoy it.

Sherry Walling:

I think it was about, very close to a year ago, to the day, that I interviewed you from the closet of my new house while the movers were moving my stuff in.

Clay Collins:

Nice, the closet interview.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah, like literally I was in the closet; I was like hiding from everyone.

Clay Collins:

Yeah, stuff was banging around in the background.

Sherry Walling:

You were so gracious, you were like “We can reschedule.” And I was like “Oh, no, no, no, no. If I do one more thing related to moving or boxes, like I’m just gonna go crazy so please talk to me about some other part of life.” So I was in the midst of a giant transition the first time we did an interview and now you are in the midst of a giant transition; although not hiding in the closest.

Clay Collins:

Absolutely true.

Sherry Walling:

So what’s the big news? What’s the big transition?

Clay Collins:

Yeah, so, the big transition is that John Tedesco, our chief operating officer has been appointed to be CEO of the company, the board and I did that after a search kicked off by myself. And I’m moving on to be a chairman of the board, but my day to day role in the company is no longer, so I’ll still be in the office probably on a weekly basis. Certainly every other week I’ll still be involved in high level strategy, and of course I’ll still be on the board, but my day to day operating role is no longer and it’s really exciting. It’s the right thing for the customers, the right thing for the company, it’s the right thing for me and it really happened in a genuinely organic way.

 

John Tedesco, back at the end of 2013, started advising us just free of charge. We would meet for breakfast and we would talk about a number of different things and it almost felt like there was almost a karmic imbalance and Tracy and I offered him advisor shares &

  In this episode of the Founder Origin Stories, Sherry interviews LaTesha Burroughs of Optimize Player, about her early entrepreneurial endeavor of selling sneakers as well as her relationship with her parents. Support ZenFounder Episode Transcript Rob Walling: On ZenFounder this week, we continue our founder origin stories as Sherry Interviews LaTesha Burrows. LaTesha is […]

In this episode of the Founder Origin Stories, Sherry interviews LaTesha Burroughs of Optimize Player, about her early entrepreneurial endeavor of selling sneakers as well as her relationship with her parents.

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Episode Transcript

Rob Walling:

On ZenFounder this week, we continue our founder origin stories as Sherry Interviews LaTesha Burrows. LaTesha is an entrepreneur, and a WordPress aficionado who’s always dabbling in things related to marketing, design, development, and business. And I hope you enjoy Sherry’s conversation with LaTesha today. But before we dive in, I’d also encourage you to head into iTunes, or Downcast, or Overcast, or Stitcher, or whatever software you use to consume this podcast, and give us a five start review. Five star reviews helps us get found in the iTunes repository. They help us grow our audience, and frankly, they give us motivation to just keep putting out high quality shows. You don’t even need to write an actual comment, you can just click the five star icon. And we would really thank you for that, if you get any type of value out of ZenFounder.

Sherry Walling:

So, for people who don’t know you, since you haven’t been someone who’s been super out there with your story, or you don’t have a podcast, and stuff like that, but say a little bit about what you’re doing right now. I know you just launched something, so give us the five sentence version of your current business. And then we’ll work backwards.

LaTesha:

So, I currently run a start up called OptimizePlayer, which is a video marketing automation platform. So, pretty much you can tell it, if somebody watches this much of the video, or if they’ve performed this action on the video, tag them in drip, or another marking automation-

Sherry Walling:

That’s for that shout out, right there.

LaTesha:

Yeah.

Sherry Walling:

Perfect product placement.

LaTesha:

Shout out to Rob. Yeah, so you can tag them in these CRMs and these automation platforms, so that you can follow up with them more appropriately.

Sherry Walling:

Okay. So, just using video content, you’re basically using video to build your list. Or to build follow up into your business.

LaTesha:

Exactly.

Sherry Walling:

That’s cool. So, yeah. I sat down at a meal with people at Microcom last spring, and just put it out to the table. There were maybe seven or eight people there, and I said, who’s story do you guys want to hear? Who are you curious about? Who’s got something going on that doesn’t necessarily get a lot of air time? And I think it was Justin Jackson who was like, you’ve got to talk to [LaTesha 00:02:55]. You’ve got to get her story, she’s so … Just who she is, and I could tell … You know, there were some heads nodding around the table. People have a lot of respect for what you’re doing, and what you’ve built over the years.

LaTesha:

Yeah. I’m so grateful to hear that. He’s been so monumental right now, in this time. Because he’s just a great people person. So he brings the best out of you. And especially somebody like me, who is in their shell, Justin Jackson is just great for that type of personality.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah. Every introvert needs an extroverted best friend, o

Taking a mid-summer break from the Founder Origin Stories, Sherry and Rob reflect back and share some thoughts on their favorite interviews thus far. They give some updates on whats been going on with them and share some of their plans for the fall. Support ZenFounder MicroConf Europe

Taking a mid-summer break from the Founder Origin Stories, Sherry and Rob reflect back and share some thoughts on their favorite interviews thus far. They give some updates on whats been going on with them and share some of their plans for the fall.

Support ZenFounder

MicroConf Europe

In this episode of the Founder Origin Series, Sherry interviews Andrew Warner of Mixergy about his childhood. He talks about some specific memories from his school years and his thoughts on life. Support ZenFounder