Exclusive Interview with TalentEgg Founder Lauren Friese

Entrepreneur Lauren Friese talks starting your own business right out of university.

By Arina Kharlamova, Staff Writer

Founder of TalentEgg, Lauren Friese, is soul food for the young and viciously territorial business world. She’s managed to turn her misplaced school-based perseverance into a successful business that will shape the Canadian youth job market for years to come. All good businesses come from wanting to improve something. In Lauren’s case, it was Canada’s school-to-work transition – something uncontrolled, unfocused, previously un-researched, and yet vital to so many young Canadians.

Statistics Canada found in the summer of 2009 there were 40,000 fewer employed students than the year before – which means less experience for future jobs. In fact, TalentEgg just hatched a new project called StudentVoice, a battle against Gen Y unemployment that hopes to educate employers on hiring youth. Pieces that appear on the site all hit the same sour note, “I graduated with this degree thinking it would qualify me to do something, but it didn’t.”

Lauren Friese’s lays out the important things she learned on her way to becoming a young entrepreneur.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I started TalentEgg three years ago based on my own experience transitioning from school to work. I studied Economics at Queen’s, and when I finished that I was like, “Oh, what do you do next?” I was surprised, because as a kid you’re told to get your degree and you’ll find a job. I was surprised to find out that that’s not the reality.

I think a lot of students experience that kind of shock in 4^th year. So I went to the London School of Economics and studied Economic History, and when I finished that it was a lot easier to find a job. They had great online resources that really understood what you were looking for as a student. I used one of those resources called milkround.com, got a great job in London, and a year later decided to move back to Canada and see if I could do the same thing here.

Can you break down what TalentEgg offers students?

TalentEgg – our bread and butter – is information about careers, companies, and the jobs that they offer. A huge percentage of students that come to the site are looking for information about specific companies and career opportunities in those companies. We also compliment that with a ton of editorial resources – almost 1,000 articles on everything, from how to write a resume to how to use LinkedIn to how to ask for a reference letter. The idea is that we want students to be able to see a great job at IBM and be like, “Ok, now how do I get this job?” The other major thing about our resources is that they’re all mostly written in first-person – advice from someone who’s just been through it themselves.

How did you start putting all the puzzle pieces together?

I knew students in Canada needed something like milkround.com, but I didn’t know if there was a business there. In the research for our business plan, I started to cold-call employers and potential clients and said, “This is what I’m doing, can you tell me a little bit about your process, what your main points are and do you think this could work? If you were designing your dream online tool for reaching students, what would you include?” The guidance I got in those calls helped me understand what employers wanted and what they would pay for, which is super important when you’re starting a business.

When you started, did you have to look around for entrepreneur grants or funding?

We launched the company for between $5,000 and $7,000, what it cost to make the website, essentially, and a computer. For bringing on my first paid staff, I went to the Canadian Youth Business Foundation. I went there just for the mentorship, because they pair you with a mentor and give you a loan. And part of it is that you HAVE to take a loan, so I just took the minimum amount – $5,000 – and very quickly took the other ten, and paid that back really quickly.

So you would encourage new entrepreneurs to…?

Finding communities is the major thing. People always ask me if I have advisors or mentors, and now I do, but for a long time I didn’t in the traditional sense. I had a network I could turn to for questions about advertising, HR, marketing, or media.

How quickly did it grow?

I’m ALWAYS asked “How big is your company? How many people do you have?” as if that’s a sign of success. I’m proud of how much we can accomplish with such a small team. I take pride in being able to be big with having little.

What have you learned in the past 3 years?

What my strengths and weaknesses are. It turns out that I’m actually a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. Now as the founder of the company, I’ve got all these people around me that can fill in the slots and I can focus on the things that I’m actually good at, which is building the brand and PR and marketing.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve gotten to do as founder of TalentEgg?

Getting to go on TV and do all the press stuff is really fun. I love it. We have a column in Metro, we write for The Globe and Mail – I just think it’s amazing, I’m so happy about it.

TalentEgg logo

How do you feel about being a young entrepreneur?

I’ve been graduated from my first degree for 6 years, so I feel like I’m getting old – that’s the number one thing. The other thing is that being a young entrepreneur is the best job in the world. I wake up on Monday mornings and I’m like “Wicked!” because there are 5 full business days ahead of me.

Do you find it easy to balance personal with business?

It’s work-life integration, not work-life balance for me. I’m totally ok with that, and I think that’s potentially the future of work for many people. Some people may think it’s unhealthy – I think it’s pretty healthy, as long as you have friends and other things outside of work.

What are your most important strengths that you’ve discovered?

Persistence, and the ability to persist past rejection. I’m also super goal-oriented so I’m never ever, EVER happy with what I have. Which is, for my personal life, a very difficult thing, but for work I think it’s good. There’s a joke that I always say “Oh, we’re at our tipping point, we’re at our tipping point!” all the time. It’s because no matter what we achieve I think there’s something bigger coming.

TalentEgg talks a lot about how a GPA or a certain degree isn’t mandatory to get a job – it’s all about soft skills. A lot of students are realizing you can’t just get a job with a degree anymore.

Market yourself. Think about the way you’d want to be spoken to. Think what would have worked on you. I think the most important business skill they don’t teach in business school is sales, which is everything that you do in life. It’s all about convincing someone to do something. Even in HR and recruitment, you’re convincing someone to come work for you. Right now I’m convincing you I’m an entrepreneur. It’s all sales.

What about advice for new entrepreneurs?

Being young and straight out of school is probably THE best time in your life to start a career as an entrepreneur. Your opportunity cost is much lower than when you have a mortgage and a family. It’s the least risky time to start a company. Also, there are so many people willing to help young entrepreneurs. There are tons of resources, support, money and all that great stuff.

Experiences you get from being an entrepreneur make you extremely hirable to another company. Let’s say you try it and you’re not a great entrepreneur but you’re an amazing marketer – you’ll probably get a cool job after that. And on that note, for a student, one of the best places to get experience is with a small company or an entrepreneurial company, because everybody on my team does more than just what their job description says.

So what’s the biggest mistake that young entrepreneurs make when starting a business?

I think they get too caught up in their idea. They talk too much about their idea and not enough about execution. I can’t even count the number of people that have come up to me and said “Good job on TalentEgg, I had that idea too. Lucky you that you got there first.” No. Not lucky me. It’s not my own idea, I just saw something that worked in another country, brought it here and I’m the best one who did it. Ideas are easy. Execution is hard.

Any other advice?

Tell everyone, get feedback, and do it better than everyone else. And if you can’t do it better than everyone else, give the idea to someone else.

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