Pure Visibility

This interview with Catherine Juon, Co-Founder and Catalyst at Pure Visibility, marks the first in our series on "Financing Your Innovation". The series was sparked by the observation across multiple interview participants that they faced common problems in financing their innovative businesses.

Catherine introduces us to the issues faced in financing a services business. As we have covered previously, Pure Visibility is a three year old Internet marketing firm that helps its clients grow their businesses online. Like many services businesses, Pure Visibility has grown through bootstrapping. In their particular case, this has meant:

• They started with immediate cash flow from clients they had garnered in previous ventures so could forego bank financing.
• In addition to contract work, they established monthly recurring revenue streams that guaranteed a source of revenue.
• Working capital, the difference between payables and receivables, has been an issue as the company has grown. Pure Visbility is currently seeking bank financing to help with working capital but has also financed it through credit cards and loans from friends and family.

In this two minute segment (download iPod compatible, 10MB), Linda Girard, Chief Visionary of Pure Visibility, outlines her plan to go from 15 to 25 employees in the next year. She will need multiple kinds of talent because optimizing web sites for high search visibility is a labor intensive process. Sites need "people power" to make their story known. Linda's highest objective is to grow a happy, productive environment where staff work with customers to achieve this objective.

In this 8 minute segment (download iPod compatible, 47MB), Linda explains how Pure Visibility uses consulting, training, and social media to help client achieve better Internet visibility.

Pure Visibility targets training classes at smaller companies. Clients can come in and takes these classes and then call with questions. Over time, Pure Visibility hopes that training can lead to more extensive relationships.

Social media (blogs and wikis) can serve both small and large clients by helping them manage word of mouth. One area where blogs and wikis can help is in mitigating negative word of mouth. Negative word of mouth from one dissatisfied customer may cost a business between 32 to 36 other customers. Pure Visibility has been in social media since January, 2006, and recently brought on Ed Vielmetti to help grow that practice.

In this 6 minute segment (download iPod compatible, 31MB), Linda Girard describes Pure Visibility's hiring model. They hire an eclectic staff from a number of disciplinary backgrounds. You might thing of it as scientists and engineers who can communicate. Analytic creativity and close client contact are both important. Among the highlights:

• Staff spend 60% of their time in client meetings.
• Google has told them that they have produced unique never seen before search engine marketing campaigns.
• There may be a west coast office in Pure Visibility's future.