Today we’d like to introduce you to Joel Gross.
Joel, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was raised in the Pacific Northwest and really had not ventured outside of that region for most of my life. After college, I found success in search engine marketing for a funded startup in Seattle, but quickly realized that working for someone else wasn’t in the cards for me.
After some soul searching, and some conversation with friends who had moved on from the gray, rainy skies of Washington state, I decided to head to Southern California. Over the course of two weeks I got rid of most of my belongings, said goodbye to family, friends, and great paying job, and packed everything I owned into a Ford Contour.
One long drive later, and I found myself in Venice Beach, and Coalition was founded. Since then, the company has grown a lot and changed office locations 3 x in West LA- first out of my apartment in Venice, then out of a live-work apartment in Marina Del Rey, and currently in Culver City. We’ve grown from being a one man shop (me) to having over 100 team members domestically and abroad. Better yet, none of them work from my home!
Has it been a smooth road?
Definitely not a smooth road!
Just wiping out your life in an area you have a lot of history and support in was a big challenge and one that I second guessed a lot. “What was I thinking?” could easily have been my second corporate slogan during the first year or two of Coalition.
But once our work started getting noticed and word of mouth began to help us grow, the challenge changed from uncertainty in the decision to do it, to uncertainty in how to keep pace with our growth. For the first five years, that mean my home was also our headquarters and that brought a lot of challenges. Personal relationships are hard to develop and maintain, when you have a dozen people working late in your living room, and when you have little time to ‘come up for air’ from building a company.
As the company has matured, and we’ve found a more identifiable culture, things have really stabilized and allowed me to focus more on growth than maintaining what we’ve had, and that’s helped us to accelerate hiring and marketing significantly in the past 12 months.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Coalition Technologies is most known for our SEO campaigns for ecommerce websites.
We have key partnerships with some of the leading ecommerce platforms (software that supports ecommerce websites) and have more case studies than any other SEO agency globally (as far as we’ve been able to find). Our focus on ecommerce SEO also means we have very talented designers, developers, copywriters, digital strategists, data analysts, and social media marketers under our roof.
We’re not only proud of our client successes, we’re also very proud of our operations – most agencies fail because they lack an understanding of how to scale without compromising on their work product. Our recruiting, training, and professional development for team members really set us apart in that regards.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
LA has huge opportunities for savvy businesses but you have to be prepared for a lot of competition, and equally prepared for some of the persistent anti-business elements in state and municipal government.
Pricing:
- Search Engine Optimization services starting at $110 per hour
- Ecommerce Design and Development services starting at approx. $10,000 dependent on scopes of work
- Online Paid Advertising starting at $110 per hour.
Contact Info:
- Address: 3750 S Robertson Blvd., #200, Culver City, CA 90232
- Website: https://coalitiontechnologies.com/
- Phone: 310-827-3890
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coalitiontech/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoalitionTech/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/coalitiontech
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/coalition-technologies-culver-city
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
