The term “family office” can mean a few different things. They were originally set up as private wealth management offices who specialized in managing the financial and investment activities of wealthy families. Think private wealth management but on an even higher level with almost a completely outsourced solution.

Family offices can invest in a wide variety of investment vehicles. One of those places is the ability to invest in startups.

Roger Edwards has a knack for turning Marketing into a much simpler and more efficient process. You could say it is his superpower.

Having spent a good amount of his Marketing career in one of the most boring industries there is, financial services, Roger decided that there had to be a better way for companies to stand apart.

In today's episode I wrap-up Season 5 of the podcast, as well as share my plans for the show over the next two months.

What that means is that I will be personally taking a two-month break or "hustle holiday". 

However, I do have episodes to share with you that have been pre-recorded or pre-planned. 

As always, thank you for being a loyal listener and I look forward to sharing Season 6 with you in the near future.

Col Gray is humble and very transparent. He also just happens to be a world class graphic designer and brand strategist.

In this interview, we talk about Col’s experience in the corporate world. Including a few instances working for people that were such bad leaders that Col found himself feeling physically ill. That kind of experience pushed Col to create his own company.

In 2005 Col founded Pixels Ink. Today the company works with businesses on the branding strategies, including logos.

Ahmed Khalifa knows exactly who he is and who he isn't.

After years in the corporate world, he decided three years ago to start his own business.

That business is focused on helping people understand and leverage search-engine optimization to grow their business.

On top of that, Ahmed spends his time as an advocate for the deaf. Which is a personal challenge he has lived with since birth.

Listen in to our discussion around these topics, including best practices for leveraging SEO.

It is hard to believe, but this is the 100th episode of the podcast. 

So, as a special treat, I wanted to share with you some updates on how past guests are doing.

Most of the startups have gone on to increasing amounts of success and one has actually been successfully acquired.

As a reminder, there are 2-3 episodes left in this season before I take a break to focus on other projects.

In the meantime, enjoy the 100th episode of the Southern Startup podcast.

I generally know exactly what piece of content I am supposed to make on a given day. Today was supposed to be about the Top Twitter accounts to follow for advice on startups and Marketing.

But, it's not....

Today I decided to remind you that business SHOULD BE personal. If it isn't then you aren't doing it right.

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Aakash Dave the founder of Spotmi.

He is a rare startup founder in that he has experience as a technical founder (his education is in computer science) and business experience through financial analysis and obtaining an MBA.

Like most entrepreneurs, Aakash has experimented with a few businesses. His current endeavor, Spotmi, leverages facial recognition and machine learning to enable deeper interactions inside a proprietary social media network.

The challenge with online ads is that the keywords you are looking to compete on are often very experience when comparing the "Cost Per Click" or CPC.

When that is the case you can easily eat through your ad budget trying to compete against other companies.

One way to work around this is to focus on competing for keywords that are similar to the main keywords you'd like to target, but have less competition and are therefore less expensive.

Minimum Viable Product (MPV) might be a known concept to you. But, what about Minimum Criteria for Success?

Your MCS might be enough money to walk away from your day job. Or, it might be that you need a set number of clients.

For example, with a product, I am currently working with or Minimum Criteria for Success is to be able to obtain 200 clients. Why 200? Because that is the minimum amount of paying customers that we would need to earn an acceptable return on investment.