From Freelancer To Hip Design Company Owner

By dcpreneur 2018-01-16 2018-01-24 Podcast

Aaron Scales, owner and director of BroCoLoco, an architectural design company in DC that turns buildings into brand ambassadors.

Aaron started his entrepreneurial journey as a freelancer working on ad hoc design jobs. Through a series of serendipitous events, his hobby projects gained community attention and before long, he was running a one-of-a-kind architectural design business. In this episode, Aaron talked about his experience in starting and running BroCoLoco, and the wins and challenges along the way.

“When you call yourself unemployed, you put the responsibility on others that may hire you. When you call yourself self-employed, you put the responsibility on yourself to sort things out. I prefer the latter.”

– Aaron Scales

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BroCoLoCo

Twitter, Instagram

Reference

Soundwise

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Startup Marketing Tips from the Trenches

By dcpreneur 2017-05-30 2017-05-30 Podcast

Kevin Alansky is the Chief Marketing Officer of Logi Analytics, a software company in Northern Virginia. Kevin was one of the early employees at DC tech scene’s superstar, Blackboard Inc. He was also the cofounder of startup SocialRadar. In today’s interview, Kevin share his marketing insights, including how to develop institutional partnerships and customer accounts as a B2B company, how to design a marketing strategy with low budget, and what founders need to know about hiring marketers.

“Driving the demand for your product requires a completely different set of skills than doing marketing research for product ‘positioning’.”

– Kevin Alansky

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Kevin Alansky

Twitter, LinkedIn

Reference

Soundwise: Audio Courses in Business and Personal Development

Logi Analytics

Blackboard

SocialRadar

Chief Martec

Heartful.ly

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Building A Business from Scratch as An Industry Outsider

By dcpreneur 2017-05-16 2017-05-15 Podcast

Danielle Vogel is the founder of Glen’s Garden Market. Glen’s is not your average grocery store. Almost all of what they sell are locally sourced. And they’re on a mission to combat climate change. In her pre-entrepreneur life, Danielle was a successful lawyer. She started Glen’s from scratch, with no retail or food business experience. And at the early stage of the company, there were quite a few occasions when she almost thought she couldn’t make it. It’s been quite a journey, and in this episode, Danielle talks about the length she had to travel to make the impossible happen, what to do when your business is not gaining traction, and how to survive those dark moments of intense stress as an entrepreneur.

“I remember sitting here, 3 months in. It’s another 20 hr day. And again we do no sales. It’s not just I don’t get paid if we don’t do well. My house is on the line! It’s a sense of urgency that cannot be overstated.”

– Danielle Vogel

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Glen’s Garden Market

2001 S Street NW,
Washington, DC 20009
(202) 588 5698

1924 8^th Street NW,
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 939 2839

Reference

EagleBank

Restaurant Man

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

Soundwise: Learn on the Go

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Creative Strategies to Get Customers and Grow Your Brand

By dcpreneur 2017-04-18 2017-04-17 Podcast

Melanie Spring is the Chief Inspiration Officer of Sisarina, a Washington DC-based brand strategy agency with purpose. Melanie had the entrepreneurial blood in her since she was a kid. She started out in the web-design and marketing business, and found her true passion in helping companies grow their brands and build their communities. In this episode, Melanie shared how she made Sisarina stand out from the crowd with authentic human interactions and relationship building. She also talked about some really creative strategies to attract customers and simple actions you can take immediately to refine and grow your brand.

“Your brand should reflect who you are fundamentally.”

– Melanie Spring

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Sisarina

Location:

801 A St SE #2
Washington, DC 20003
Telephone: (202) 854-8964

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter

Reference

Adventures in Branding Podcast

HERadventures

Melanie Spring

Soundwise: Audio Courses in Business and Personal Development

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How to Leverage Your Brand’s Story in Marketing

By dcpreneur 2017-04-12 2017-04-11 Podcast

Ann Yang and Phil Wong are the co-founders of MISFIT Juicery, a business with the social mission to reduce food waste by turning misshaped fruits and veggies into nutritious cold-pressed juices.

Ann and Phil started Misfit while they were college students at Georgetown University. They’ve quickly developed a network of distributors and partners over the past couple years and are now selling at dozens of retail locations in both DC and New York. In today’s interview, Ann and Phil shared how they created and scaled the business over a short period of time, their branding and marketing strategies, and offered lots of useful advices for new entrepreneurs.

“A lot of entrepreneurs go too far into building the business without validating their product with customers.”

– Phil Wong

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MISFIT Juicery

Email: squad@misfitjuicery.co

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter

Reference

Halcyon Incubator

The Economist

Dig Inn

Chaia

Glen’s Garden Market

Soundwise: Audio Courses in Business and Personal Development

No comments

Creating A Premium Retail Brand with Barth and Mary deRosa

By dcpreneur 2017-01-24 2017-02-08 Podcast

At Founders Nextdoor, we believe that entrepreneurship is hard work, day in and day out. We believe the most amazing entrepreneurs are ordinary people living in every community. And those people, your neighbors, are the people you can learn the most from regarding how to run your business. Because just like you, they have mortgages to pay and families to feed, yet they manage to create amazing businesses that make the world a better place.

Today on the show, I’m interviewing two such founders. Barth and Mary deRosa, the husband-and-wife team who’re the owners of Secolari. Secolari is a retail chain of gourmet olive oil and vinegar that has four stores in Maryland and DC. Now if this is the first time you hear about them, you’re probably like…”Olive oil? Seriously? That’s basically a commodity, right? How can anybody make money selling olive oil?” At least that was my first reaction. But I’m telling you, this business is no joke. Barth and Mary started it in 2011 and since then, business has been booming. And if you look them up on the internet, you’ll also see that they are truly loved by very passionate customers. So what’s their secret for making a successful business in a product category that seems to be highly competitive and offers little differentiation? You’ll find out in this interview.