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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 make a difference 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!
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
Show Topics:
- Overview of Harkla and the team behind it.
- Why Harkla made the decision to be a remote team from the start and Casey’s tips for working remotely effectively with a team.
- How to improve employee engagement with a results-focused work style; and finding an 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!
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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