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In today’s episode I have the privilege of talking to my brother, Casey Ames. Casey is the founder of Harkla, a company that creates products to support those living with special needs. The product lines include weighted blankets, sensory swings and lap pads. Casey founded Harkla in 2015 after he saw a gap in knowledge and quality for special needs resources. So he set out to build a company dedicated to helping families and children through exceptional, high-quality products with a goal of relaxing, relieving, or creating joy in a family’s special needs journey.
Inside this episode, Casey shares a ton of valuable insights in our conversation, including:
- Harkla’s unique work styles and team, being completely remote in a results-only focused organization.
- He also talks about the strategies and tactics that have led to surpassing $1 million in revenue in under three years times.
- and of course, he shares more on Harkla’s impact and what they are doing to give back beyond just the products that they are creating to support the special needs community that is supporting them in return.
For a fascinating conversation, stay tuned to today’s episode!
Also, don’t forget, we are hosting a “podcast launch giveaway” to celebrate getting this podcast up and running AND thankfully my brother was generous enough to offer up one of his awesome weighted blankets as the reward!
Click the image below to check it out and sign up!
Episode Links:
- Casey Ames — https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseyames/
- Casey on Twitter — https://twitter.com/caseyames
- Harkla — https://harkla.co/
- Harkla Blog — https://harkla.co/blogs/special-needs
- Harkla Facebook Page — https://www.facebook.com/harklaproducts/
- Slack — https://slack.com/
- Jason Fried — https://twitter.com/jasonfried
- David Heinemeier Hansson — https://twitter.com/dhh
- UW Autism Center — https://depts.washington.edu/uwautism/
- Apex Summer Camp — http://depts.washington.edu/apex/apex/Home.html
- Grow Ensemble Giveaway — https://growensemble.wpengine.com/launch-giveaway
Show Topics:
- Overview of Harkla and the team behind it.
- Why Harkla made the decision to be a remote team from the start.
- Implementing a results-focused work style; ideal employee fit.
- What a sports club commitment can tell you about a potential employee.
- Importance of having empathy in the customer service role.
- Why Casey decided to outsource fulfillment for Harkla’s products.
- How Harkla approaches and embraces mistakes to learn.
- The workflow systems that the team at Harkla employs.
- Keeping the company vision top of mind.
- Three ways to improve your company revenue.
- Staying focused on projects that will actually move the needle.
- Growth that Harkla has experienced over the last three years.
- How Casey’s background in SEO has helped him drive website sales.
- Most surprising thing that Casey has learned about the special needs industry.
- The vast amount of misinformation about autism in the world.
- Future goals and projects for Casey and the Harkla team.
- How Harkla is supporting the autism community they serve.
- Why Casey chose to engrain the value of giving back into the business.
- And much more!
Tweetable Show Quotes:
“It’s perfectly okay to make mistakes, but we can’t make the same mistake twice and it’s only an issue if we don’t learn from the mistake.” — @caseyames [0:13:54.7]
“That systematic approach and scientific method to how we operate gives us more freedom than it is restricting.” — @caseyames [0:14:51.7]
“For eCommerce, there are three ways to improve your revenues: get people to order more frequently, get a higher order value, or get more customers.” — @caseyames [0:20:09.7]
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