Listen on iTunes | Listen on Stitcher

Co-founder of Raven Tools Jon Henshaw reveals his journey of the successes and pitfalls he experienced before solidifying his brand.

• 
  
• Introductions and Updates
  
• Internet Interview – Jon Henshaw, Entrepreneur and Co-founder of Raven Tools
  
• Outro Song (Andrew) – “Wheels of Steel – Remix” – The Polish Embassador
  

Send questions, comments, suggestions or love to podcast@owningyourown.com

• 
  
• Raven Tools allowed Andrew and Alan to form “Voltron” (5:04)
  
• Intuitive and robust platform is one of Raven’s strong points (6:06)
  
• Jon Henshaw got his graduate degree in counseling psychology  (6:20)
  
• His first computer (he obtained as a junior in college) had Windows 3.1 and he started having a fascination with computing technology.  Discovered his “geek side” (8:30)
  
• Internet sharing of knowledge and technology is always incredible (9:50)
  
• Worked at New Horizons computer center, completely unqualified but knew enough to present data in a way people understood (11:40)
  
• He eventually migrated to making HTML websites….really ugly websites (13:00)
  
• Defacto IT person, using Windows NT server (14:00)
  
• Jon thought about an idea to store files on the cloud pre-Dropbox, he just couldn’t pull the resources together at that time. (17:00)
  
• Had several entrepreneurial ideas but abandoned them for a real job with Visa (18:10).
  
• Through the Visa job he discovered SEO; via accessibility (19:00)
  
• Had the idea for SEO tools and picked up and headed to Tennessee based on an “itch” (22:11)
  
• Wanted to create something for sales and it would evaluate a URL and analyze the SEO data related to it.  This tool gained popular and eventually evolved into a tool for companies and agencies (25:00)
  
• Raven was a boutique agency, presumably no one would pay for SEO tools (27:30)
  
• Wanted to build a centralized place to handle link building (29:00)
  
• Raven Tools was formally known as Raven SEO Tools (29:30)
  
• Got feedback from people that it “sucked”, but caught attention of agencies that helped them formulate their vision better (29:45)
  
• People think the Raven logo name is a band (35:10)
  
• Everything matters in regards to people being passionate about your product, including your image and name (35:10)
  
• The name doesn’t have to be term related as evident by Raven (40:00)
  
• Survival was key, take on as many types of clients as possible (41:20)
  
• “Shedding hats” find someone better at wearing the hat than you (42:15)
  
• Conflict of interest running an agency and providing tools for agencies.  (44:00)
  
• Dropped the agency part of Raven about 4 years ago (45:15)
  
• The social component came as part of desiring to build an integrated internet platform (48:02)
  
• Raven is a bootstrap company (48:20)
  
• Soliciting feedback and constant improvements is a must (50:00)
  
• Raven has upcoming updates that should blow away what they have now (1:03:45)