Startups

Kevin Sandlin on startups, content marketing, and digital marketing

SBA PPP Program Exposes Weaknesses of “Banking Relationships”

As part of our federal government's effort to keep the U.S. economy from completely collapsing, Congress passed, and the President signed the $2.1 trillion CARES Act. Part of that legislation was the SBA Payroll Protection Program, or PPP. The PPP provided $349,000,000,000 in forgivable loans to "small businesses." The entirety … Keep reading >>>

New CMO: You Grow What You Focus On

Back around 2007-2008, just before the great recession started, I was running CWNP, and we were loving life. We had found our focus - WiFi Certification & Training - and we had grown to over $1M in revenue. It was about that same time that we realized we had a … Keep reading >>>

New CMO: EVERYTHING is a Campaign

Everyone has their own methodology for getting stuff done. As the CMO (barely 5 weeks in!) at FINSYNC, one of the first things I had to get my head around was how things flow, how stuff is getting done today. Then I had to organize it. By the way, that's … Keep reading >>>

New CMO: How Should We Make Decisions?

I took a different route to becoming a Chief Marketing Officer. I started my career in sales, then project management, then business development. In those positions, I was an employee of two small (<60 employees) companies and then one very large (>40,000 employees) company. My next position was Founder & … Keep reading >>>

Brand New CMO: Where do you start?

So you're a brand new CMO (and by "you", I mean "me"), where do you start? That's what I've been figuring out for the last few weeks as the new CMO at FINSYNC. There is no "I" in "Team" The first thing was easy: I need a team, and we’re … Keep reading >>>

The Four Pillars of a Marketing Organization

I've been marketing in one capacity or another, for my own companies and my clients, for a quarter of a century (gulp!). In that time, I've hired many marketers and worked with many agencies and freelancers. What I've determined - and you are free to disagree - is that there … Keep reading >>>

Is Atlanta’s Startup Ecosystem “Mature”?

It's Venture Atlanta week. BIP Capital's annual report is just in time. This year, the report measure's major southeast cities (Atlanta, Research Triangle Park, Charlotte, Nashville) as they compare to the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, and New York City. I've always referred to Atlanta as a "teenager" in the … Keep reading >>>

What’s Your Marketing Process? You can’t repeat what you don’t have.

You can read a lot of articles about how to crank up your company's marketing effort. You read things like "create some content" and "run ads on Facebook, Google, etc." and "run webinars, create video, create infographics." Those are all great, but yet for every one of those, you have … Keep reading >>>

Half of People Suffering from Depression get NO treatment

Depression among people of all ages is becoming more and more common and problematic. That fact alone is problem enough; however, there is another problem that makes the first issue even worse. Half of people who are suffering from depression do not get any treatment at all. Uplift wants to … Keep reading >>>

Atlanta Tech Blogs Can Be Yours!

Atlanta Tech Blogs is for sale. "Busy is the new stupid", so I have taken the beginning of this new year to take a solid inventory of everything I do on a daily and weekly basis. Here's a short list not including family time, by which I mean this list … Keep reading >>>