University of South Florida

CEO + Hemp Advocate

Hometown Hero provides gourmet hemp derived edibles to consumers throughout the US.

Hometown Hero

Chief Executive Officer

Cloudhashing at the time was the largest Bitcoin mining operation in the world. We served thousands of consumers looking to begin Bitcoin mining with a hassle free and full-service operation.

Role:
Responsible for new customer acquisition, marketing and sales.

The company saw triple digit growth during my tenure and relocated to Silicon Valley after a large-scale merger to form Peernova.

I chose to stay in Austin and move on after having left California a couple years prior.

CloudHashing - A PeerNova Company

President

Role:
Hired as Marketing Director, promoted to CMO after 6 months and promoted to COO/CMO 6 months later. As CMO managed a 50-person call center with inbound and outbound telemarketing, lead generation and data management responsibilities. As COO, manage all business functions and 200 employees. 

High-Level Success Story: 
Greatly improved operation to break all existing sales records, refine fulfillment processes, groom future leaders and ensure long-term profitability of the company. 

Key Marketing Milestones:
Revamped marketing program to achieve a dramatic increase in sales in first 6 months and delivered ongoing marketing campaigns that exceeded prior response rates.

More than doubled sales leads despite shrinking margins in industry.

Halved annual lead generation expenses and simultaneously increased sales by introducing more cost effective online marketing strategies.

Created a “call-to-action” direct mail campaign that accelerated response rate by 900%, tripled number of sales appointments and broke every previous record for sales and prospect capture.

Introduced first dashboards and reporting tools to forecast and assess sales and profitability and fuel strategic planning initiatives with CEO.

Key Operations Milestones:
Slashed customer call abandon rate by 92.5% by implementing new technologies and better allocating staff and resources to accommodate call volume.

Reduced time spent on critical administrative tasks by 67% on average and eliminated millions of dollars in chargebacks by transitioning responsibilities from a third-party vendor to a newly-formed in-house operation.

Launched the staffing department, built a talent pipeline and oversaw high volume recruiting efforts during a period of organizational change and growth..

Aston Marketing Group

Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Operating Officer

Role:
Recruited directly from college to help drive profitability based on earlier entrepreneurial success in online marketing space. Hired to manage marketing function and quickly promoted to also manage all company operations including sales, fulfillment and customer service. Reported directly to CEO. Staff: 25

High Level Success Story: 
Greatly exceeded profitability goals in just 6 months and positioned company for lucrative sale 3 years later. 

Key Milestones:
Trimmed marketing costs by 40% while increasing sales leads by 200% by replacing traditional marketing campaigns with more cost-effective digital lead generation and reputation management programs leveraging Email Marketing, SEM and PPC strategies.

Doubled profit margin and annual gross revenues in year 2 and continued to realize significant gains in year 3.

Sourced and recruited top talent and created customer service training programs to elevate productivity and engagement and build a strong corporate culture.

Timeshare Lifestyle

Operations / Marketing Manager

Role:
Founded 2 online communities while attending college full-time. Created content and utilized SEM and SEO strategies to drive engagement and source advertisers.

High Level Success Story: 
Grew 2 specialized online communities from scratch to the largest sites in their respective categories; profited from sale of each business just one year after their founding.

Key Milestones:
Grew each community to 100K+ active viewers/users; authored 1,500+ articles and had work cited by the largest technology websites.

Drove tens of thousands of hits to audio sites by reviewing their products; granted rare access to top audio manufacturers in return for product reviews.

Managed operations as company grew and recruited content writers and programmers.

Audio Junkies / Garage Junkies

Founder and President

Role:
Managed radio and satellite communications and classified material at the Counter Narcotics Unit based out of San Diego, CA. 

High Level Success Story:
Achieved status as youngest member of the team; appointed to leadership role managing staff of 6.

Lukas Gilkey