Temple StartUp Studio Accelerator Marketing Speaker

The 1810 Accelerator provides a place for the Temple University entrepreneurial community to share knowledge, experience, and connections that support the identification and evolution of new business ideas, and accelerate the growth of new ventures. Membership is open to students, alumni, faculty, and staff from all 17 schools and colleges at the University.

Anyone can apply and get approved. From there they will have classes, mentorship and startup tests to trial their new product or idea.

Startup Studio

The Temple Startup Studio accelerator is the official program run by the 1810 Accelerator and accepts a cohort each Fall, Spring, and Summer. Members of each cohort complete a 12-week curriculum to accelerate the growth of their ventures and provide necessary resources to move through the fund and launch process. Startup Studio culminates in a Demo Day where companies have the opportunity to pitch to potential mentors, investors, and industry professionals who can provide support based on unique company needs.

The class started out with me telling my story and background. I grew up playing sports then got recruited to play soccer in college. I played D3 in VA Beach for two years then transferred to Penn State where I studied Advertising, Business and Entrepreneurship. While at PSU I started two companies, had a few jobs, and built out an eship club. This gave me a good background to relate to the startup teams in this accelerator.

After Penn State I was recruited by Google and went to work in their ads consulting department with small businesses. I was there for a year while working on my startup with Vortic Watches still. Then I started another small phone repair company on the side, doing all sorts of digital marketing and SEO for phone repair.

After 1.5 years I started an agency consultancy on the side with small businesses and Google found out and fired me. This was devastating but forced me to go all in on Momentum Digital and Phone Repair Philly and move to Philly. Since my time in Philly I’ve grown both companies to dozens of people and over 7-figure businesses. It’s been a lot of hard work but very important for these startup teams to understand and relate.

Before I got fired I was running Ann Arbor iPhone Repair on the side making good money. I actually fixed an iPad for a local business owner who started asking me about his website and SEO. He asked if I could take a look and help him out. I didnt know what to do but told him I could do it, and then took the next 3 months to figure it out. This forced me to learn everything about websites and SEO in a short time period and was incredibly valuable for my career and growth.

During that time I was also consulting with small businesses as a Google Ads associate. Many of these customers also had questions about SEO, website and digital marketing. So I naturally referred them to my friend and we started working with them on the side. Coincidentally Google found out and immediately fired me. This was heartbreaking but forced me to go all in on starting the marketing agency and moving to Philly to start fresh.

As a startup or new business I think you need to build proof of concept and go to market ASAP. Depending on the type of business, you need to test your product or service right away or find out if people actually want it and how much they will pay for it. I suggest selling your idea and seeing who will buy it then figure the rest out from there.

Richard Branson is a hero of mine who also believes you should land a deal and figure it out as you go. You will learn a lot and really be forced to find aa solution.

My biggest suggestions is making your website incredibly fast and mobile/user friendly. You need to focus on answering your consumers questionss as quickly and easily as possible. It really depends on the type of business and your target market, but speed and user friendliness are paramount.

You name it, I’ve seen and experienced it.

• Issues with partners and ugly buyouts.
• Unruly or dangerous customers
• Hiring, firing and training employees.
• Customers and employees stealing from me
• Dealing with COVID and keeping the business afloat
• Having employees start competing companies
• Getting robbed, threatened, harrassed.
• Audits by the state and IRS
• Bad clientss, bad customers, bad interactions

We literally try to ask and incentive all customers and clients at both companies to write us a reviwe or testimonial. People rarely write reviews naturally. They need encouraged. We offer discounts and incentives and try to ask everyone in person right then and there. 5-Star Reviews are paramount to ranking higher on Google with Local SEO.

There’s a few key things Google looks at and cares about for SEO:

• Content and consistency
• Page speed and mobile friendliness
• On Page SEO, keywords, links, and quality
• Off Page SEO & high quality Backlinks
• Metadata, titles, tags, descriptions

Google really just cares about providing the best and fastest answers from reliable sources.

There are a few core aspects to running a successful kickstarter or crowdfunding campaign that I’d recommend.

• Having friends and family lined up ready to donate
• Get free press, PR and earned media
• Put together a thoughtful and unique social media campaign
• Run targeted paid ads and media with FB + Google
• Use social influencers and your personal networks to promote it