Welcome to the Scaling Success Stories series!
If you’re new to this series, I ask online entrepreneurs questions regarding growing and scaling their business.
This is the series description:
You can get your fill of online business tips by reading the other interviews on the Scaling Success Stories page.
Interview with Greg Van Horn From Launch Potato
It was my pleasure interviewing Greg Van Horn, founder of Launch Potato, a digital publishing company with brands including Finance Buzz, Smarter Auto, and Prize Grab. Greg started as a freelance web developer at the age of 15 and by the age of 20, he quit his full-time job to devote all of his energy to his business. Today, he oversees a team of 40 and his company was named one of Florida’s Best Companies to Work For.
Check out what Greg had to say to my questions!
1. Why did you start an online business and how does your passion still drive your business’ growth today?
I started as a freelance web developer when I was just 15 years old because the internet was fascinating to me.
Through this early work, I gained a really strong understanding of how different types of businesses run. I started to dissect what works and what doesn’t work as I built websites for other businesses and eventually was able to build my own business in a vertical where I believed I could be successful.
With that first business, we sold magazine subscriptions online.
We focused on SEO and were able to rank above the brands themselves and sell their subscriptions.
At one point, we generated more subscriptions for a national news publication than all of their other marketing efforts combined.
This was also when I got my first taste of paid marketing — the first ad I bought was on collegehumor.com in their hot links section. I think I paid $150 for it and generated $1500 in revenue.
Today, almost fifteen years later, I still love building technology-based businesses using a similar approach. I’m the CEO of Launch Potato, a start-up incubator headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida.
Here I’m overseeing several businesses and a team of over 40 employees.
2. At what point did you realize that your business was “taking off” and that you could really make money from it?
When I was 20, I moved to Florida to work for one of my freelance development clients full time. At that time, I had been working on my magazine subscription site as a side business for a few years and it really started to take off.
Each month it was generating close to what took me three months to make as a developer.
It made sense to quit my full-time job and devote all my energy to this growing business, but leaving that job was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.
My boss at that time told me…
“You can always get another job. If you have a business that’s working, that’s rare. You 100% need to go do it.”
I’m thankful he gave me that push.
3. At what point did you realize you were living the life you wanted to?
I love building businesses and working with really smart people — these are the things that really fuel me, even when times are difficult.
4. One of the biggest fears of outsourcing is trusting the people you hire to run your business the way you would. How did you overcome this and where did you find the right freelancers and employees to help you grow your business?
Having been on the other side of the freelancer equation for a few years, I’ve always believed there are great people regardless of their location. Today, half of our team at Launch Potato is located in our Delray office and the rest are distributed around the world.
Many of them started as freelancers before moving into full-time roles.
Like anything, you’ll get out whatever you put in, so building really great processes, KPIs, and communication is essential for the success of employees, especially for freelancers and remote employees.
On the communication side, it’s important that everyone’s using collaborative tools like Slack and Asana and having regular 1-on-1 check-ins.
But, most important for me, is having people on my team that excels at parts of the business where I’m not the strongest.
I’m really lucky to have some amazing leaders on our team who focus on these areas and allow us to succeed.
Editor’s note: R.J. Weiss, Kirk Du Plessis, and Jeff Proctor hired contractors to supplement their weak spots, too!
5. A common myth is that as you grow and scale your business, you have to sell your soul to make money, especially when you venture into paid advertising. How do you debunk this myth in your business?
I don’t think you have to sell your soul at all.
But, you do need to sell something that people want and know how to get it in front of them.
Paid advertising can be incredibly challenging — each channel is different (ex. Google vs. Facebook). Most of the businesses I’ve scaled over the years have been built on paid advertising, but not every channel works for every business and the platforms are always evolving.
If you’re already doing SEO, then I would recommend starting with paid search because it uses many of the same metrics as organic search. You can build off the keywords trends and search terms you’re already targeting.
I have a few rules for paid marketing success:
- Start with just one channel. You can add more channels later.
- Be extremely organized in how you track campaigns, including the ad copy and targeting you’re testing.
- Focus on lower-competition verticals with higher conversion rates — this allows you to use smaller tests budgets and shorten the feedback cycle. If your average conversion rate is 20% then you only need a few hundred clicks to get a baseline to see if your campaigns are working.
- Research, then research some more. There are tons of great free resources out there including sites like DigitalMarketer.
- Test quickly and often, but also make sure you stick to a budget. Only spend what you can afford to invest.
6. Why do you think most people fail to grow their businesses and what advice would you offer them to keep pushing, despite all the setbacks?
Most “overnight successes” actually take years to achieve. From the outside, it always looks easier than it really is.
One thing I’ve found really helpful is finding other business owners whose businesses are roughly the same size (revenue-wise) as mine and who share similar aspirations.
While it certainly helps if they understand your business, an outside view can be extremely helpful, too. What’s most important is that you can all speak with full transparency about what you’re going through and provide one another with feedback.
Editor’s note: Kara Fidd and Carly Campbell touched upon how overnight successes really aren’t overnight in their interviews.
7. How important has niching down been (no matter how hard it hurts) to your business’ growth and profitability?
This is a big challenge for me because I see so many great opportunities out there. The key is to stick to what you’re great at and excel there.
Niching down is fantastic but if the circumstances are right, I encourage you to test new opportunities.
It’s the right time to test if you…
- Have an opportunity to expand using the same customer base you’re already working with
- Are in an extremely optimized niche already
- Have someone who can continue to own and grow your current business so you have the bandwidth to pursue the new opportunity
8. What do you attribute your success to and how do you explain it? Do you think the same strategies will help you reach your next monetization goals? Why or why not?
Growing a successful business requires self-awareness.
It’s essential to really understand what you’re the absolute best at and then to surround yourself with people who are both passionate and better at the things that aren’t your strengths.
For me, I’m not great at the operations side of things. I can develop the strategy, KPIs, and goals, but when it comes to building processes and systems, I rely on my team members who are amazing at this part.
They design the systems and make sure they run efficiently so we can beat the KPIs we’ve put in place.
9. To scale, you really need to have a systemized business. What steps have you taken to build those systems and how do you optimize them?
First, you need to communicate a clear strategy and KPIs to the team so they can go off and work towards hitting these goals.
For example, with FinanceBuzz, one of our Launch Potato brands, we’re building out our content operations.
As part of this effort, we have weekly and monthly production goals around things like the number of pieces of content published and the number of outreach emails sent. We also have KPIs around our goals for these efforts.
We’re very transparent with all of these numbers. Everyone on the team knows exactly where we stand at all times. This helps keep us aligned as a team.
10. If you could speak face-to-face with yourself when you first started your business, what pearls of wisdom would you impart?
I’d say two things:
- Find amazing partners to balance out your weaknesses.
- Profit and positive cash flow are king. You need to understand your spending and know how long it will be before the revenue will actually be in the bank. A business credit card can help manage the difference between your payables and your receivables but you need to make sure you have the ability to manage the float.
About Greg Van Horn
Greg Van Horn is an internet entrepreneur and the CEO of Launch Potato, a digital publishing company with brands including FinanceBuzz, SmarterAuto, and PrizeGrab.
Conclusion
Thanks for participating in my series, Greg!
As you can tell, it’s NOT EASY growing and scaling an online business, but there are some things you can do to aid you in the process.
Inspired by Greg?
Now, it’s your turn!
I assembled the Scaling Blueprint to show you how to…
- Outsource Effectively
- Systemize Your Business
- Shatter Your Revenue Goals
After working with six-figure and seven-figure clients, I know the difference between how they function.
Let me help you start scaling successfully.
Cheers to future success!
