Podcast appearances and mentions of alex hillman

Third Spaces are extremely necessary during this social and political time, so I decided to gather three brilliant voices in this space. Josh Odam, Camille Smith, and Alex Hillman joined me for a live show in Philly to discuss the need for third spaces and how they curated their own! Follow Camille SmithFollow Josh OdamFollow Alex Hillman--Buy My Coffee Here: Leroy's Blend Subscribe to my Youtube Follow Me On Social Media

In this week's special guest podcast, Alex Hillman (of Stacking the Bricks and 30x500) joins Andrew to coach him on early stage marketing at MetaMonster. They talk through Andrew's recent failed launch (and why not to worry about it too much), what he's doing differently now, and how your identity as a founder can impact your marketing. Plus, what pro wrestlers get right about identity and storytelling and how to create great content when you aren't an expert in your niche.There's so much great info packed into this discussion, enjoy! By the way, check out Alex's description of 30x500 at the 12:11 mark for a masterclass in positioning.  Links:Follow Andrew on BlueSky: @andrewaskins.comAndrew's writing: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Follow Sean on BlueSky: @seanqsun.comSean's writing: https://seanqsun.com/Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/Follow Alex on BlueSky: @alexhillman.comJumpstart your product empire in 12 weeks with LaunchFTWFor more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00:01.42AndrewAll right, so we've got a little bit of a different type of podcast episode. Usually it is me and Sean riffing on the things that we are building, but I'm super excited today because Alex Hillman is here to join us. So Sean is at a conference, so unfortunately couldn't be here today. But as I mentioned on the last episode, Alex very kindly took time out of his day to roast the shit out of my half-assed launch attempt. And then was even more generous and said, hey, I'll take an hour out of my day to come talk to you some more. Let's talk about this in public so that people can learn from this as we work through it together, is super cool. And for anyone who doesn't know Alex's background, Alex has been partnered with Amy Hoy on stacking the bricks and 30 by 500. They've been working on that for, you said 15 years?00:00:58.53Alex Hillman15 years, yeah.00:01:00.15Andrew15 years. I've been reading Stacking the Bricks for ages and really, really love all the content that you all have put out, have looked up to you and Amy for a long time. Still apparently didn't learn anything from from all of that reading, but i'm I'm trying to learn it now.00:01:15.29AndrewSo yeah, we're gonna get into it. But Alex, thanks so much for for being here. Just so appreciate you, man.00:01:22.85Alex HillmanYeah, i'm I'm happy to. This is going to be a good time. And, you know, I think the the common theme through all of this is and there's a lot of folks that read our stuff like our stuff and then willfully do the opposite or think that they did. what We told them and I go, I don't know where you got that from because those words never came out of my mouth. So I say all of that with, you know, with love and, you know, the the roast.00:01:47.38Alex Hillmancame from, from that point of view as well. You know, I think that there's, there's cool people doing cool things on the internet. And I know you're, you're a fan of the build in public, trying to eat those and mindset.00:01:59.19Alex HillmanI'm a fan of the help in public. And so that's my thought here is if I can help you, whether it's through a roast on blue sky or a podcast, and there's other folks that that benefit from that perspective, then that's a,00:02:08.00Andrewyeah00:02:13.34Alex Hillmanand at least three-way win. I win, you win, and and whoever listens wins. So really, really stoked to get into this.00:02:18.10AndrewAwesome.00:02:19.52Alex HillmanI think you're working on stuff that is common and and easy to get wrong.00:02:25.03AndrewYeah, appreciate that. Yeah, so to give folks some context, because I imagine there might be people who will listen to this episode who who don't typically listen to small efforts. So a few weeks ago, I sort of kind of launched a alpha-y type thing. Like I'm having trouble even describing it because it was so like half formed. But I basically like got in my head,00:02:53.09Andrewwe're okay I'm building this mailing list, I'm getting people on this list, I need to convert these people to you know potential paying users and we don't have a product yet so I need to like kind of pre-sell them but I don't want to actually ask them for money yet so I'm gonna pitch them on being a founding user and I sent out this this one email and basically said like Hey, I want you to be a founding user. You'll get a couple of things. And in return, I want a lot of your time. Click here to sign up. And I'm sort of being facetious, partially to protect my ego, because I candidly was like, once I realized like, kind of how bad I messed up, I was a little embarrassed. Like I had this feeling of like,00:03:44.44AndrewI have run a business before. I thought I knew how to do content marketing and knew how to do some of this stuff. I've been reading your content for years and so um so um realizing that I was making a lot of rookie mistakes was a little embarrassing and so even now as I'm describing it, I'm catching myself using self-deprecating humor as a little bit of a shield.00:04:04.73Alex Hillmanthat cushion00:04:05.14Andrewhello But but i mean that's kind of that's that's the basic context. I tried to pitch people on being early adopters of some sort. It was a very half-formed ask.00:04:17.85Andrewand and unsurprisingly, the result was kind of crickets. I got one person who responded to me and said, hey, I'd be interested. other than that, no responses. And so I tried to share about this on Blue Sky in that building public mindset and just be like, hey, anyone what what do you all see when you make these kinds of asks early on? And that's when Alex jumped in and was like, hey, tell me more. like what What was the context here? How much did you email these people and And so, yeah, why don't I kick it over to you and you can kind of give that initial context from your side and, you know, we can talk about some of the advice you got and then we'll get into what we're doing next.00:04:57.12Alex Hillmanyeah Yeah, I mean, ah you you know first of all, first of all like congrats on shipping anything. like for like to to not Not to backpedal the mistakes that were made, but you know the the making mistakes is is the result of of doing things and trying things. And one of the beautiful things about launches is that there's you know I think there's a myth of a single launch, a single chance.00:05:22.14AndrewMm hmm.00:05:23.16Alex HillmanAnd the trut...

In this episode, Andrew discusses feedback he received from Alex Hillman on his marketing efforts for MetaMonster, and how he plans to adjust his approach going forward. He's now focusing more on creating content and building anticipation rather than rushing to convert customers. Sean shares his thoughts on personal branding and how he's reworking his online presence. They also touch on the pros and cons of starter packs for growing following on BlueSky and the value of being an authentic, relationship-based creator versus optimizing for algorithms.Links:Andrew's Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean's Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/Worth Driving: https://worthdriving.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00.01SeanHappy Thanksgiving, or Happy Post Thanksgiving.00:03.75AndrewHey, happy post Thanksgiving.00:04.77SeanHey. Yeah. Did you pick anything up for a Black Friday?00:09.25AndrewOh my God. I spent too much money. I, I got sucked into a die work where, Twitter thread on, uh, links to black Friday deals.00:16.04SeanOh, sweet.00:22.53Andrewa couple of the links I was like, Oh, this looks really cool. That's $1,200 for a jacket. I cannot do that. I'm sorry. so I just can't bring myself to do that.00:30.68SeanWe gotta invest in yourself, man.00:36.16AndrewI'm trying.00:36.68SeanOkay,00:36.92AndrewI'm trying to like push myself to slowly start buying some nicer pieces. I've got my eye on like a leather jacket. That's more in like the 300 360 range that I might00:46.87Seannot bad.00:48.08AndrewPull the trigger on at some point in the next year in the next sorry in the next few months but yeah, but entirely too much clothing tend to like just buy nothing and then buy Everything in like one or two goes and then not buy anything for a long period of time And then I bought a bunch of gifts for people so it was actually like normally I don't do shit on Black Friday, but this time I was actually pretty01:03.52SeanYeah.01:09.18SeanNice. Sweet.01:14.74AndrewPretty active on the interwebs, on the, the e-commerce sites.01:17.08Seanthree01:19.45Seanwell i bought a humidifier so it has an app i haven't downloaded the app yet i know on weekends on weekends when i go to my computer when i'm in front of my computer i always feel like my eyes are really dry and i think it's because of a week of staring at the screen and then i turn on humidifier and it tells you how like dry your room is and it's like i think the like it was it was saying that the healthy range is 30 to 50 and when i turned on it was like01:22.51AndrewWhoa.01:25.08AndrewWelcome to your seventies.01:36.73AndrewHigh strain.01:47.95Sean15 uh like 1828 something like that it's like cool put that sucker on eyes not dry anymore life hack yeah01:51.12AndrewDamn interesting.01:55.44AndrewI get pretty dry in the winter around here. And then we have radiators. And so if we don't have the windows open, it gets so dry. But usually we have the windows open because our heating system is horribly inefficient.02:09.12AndrewAnd so you're either like cold as shit or you are sweating. So we have to open the windows to like let excess heat out because we can't just like turn it down. It's old houses.02:20.83SeanGot it. Yeah, sounds fun.02:22.24AndrewIt's pain. yeah02:23.47SeanI also bought into, uh, detailed, which is Glenn Alsup's, uh, uh, SEO private group.02:29.54AndrewOh, Oh, interesting.02:32.86SeanAnd, yeah, there was no sale. It was just like, here's the option to purchase it, which is kind of badass of him to do on a Black Friday, but.02:39.65AndrewYeah. It's like, cards against humanity always does the hilarious black Friday stuff. Like one, didn't they ah ah raise prices one year for black Friday? They were like, you can buy cards against humanity for double what it normally costs.02:48.81Seanthere02:52.63SeanIt's kind of sick.02:53.77Andrewthis year they sold a potato with diamonds stuck in it.02:56.76Seanoh cards The original mischief, just saying.02:56.93AndrewLike fucking weird.03:01.39Andrewthey They totally are the original mischief. That's very true. Is mischief still kicking? Are they still doing shit?03:08.22SeanYeah. Yeah. Yeah. They also have Black Friday sale. They're making shoes. I mean, whatever. I feel like they kind of fell off after the big but look big red boot moment.03:19.61AndrewIt's hard to like, when your business model is go viral, it's just hard to do that consistently, I think.03:27.45SeanNo. I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. I think it's hard to do that consistently and be ethical around how you do it. oh but I don't think ah they had a whole thing where that like, you know, every two weeks they would release a project and like, I'm pretty sure 70% of the projects were all sweepstakes.03:40.89AndrewThat might be true.03:48.93SeanThey were all like, sign up for things, share it, again, a chance to win in different flavors.03:49.16AndrewYeah.03:54.46SeanAnd then with different like creators as well. So,03:57.62AndrewYeah, that checks out. I mean, fucking Mr. Beast has built yeah the largest YouTube following in the world, basically turning his channel into a lottery.04:06.87SeanYeah. Yep. Yep. Are you? Yeah.04:09.00AndrewGambling, gambling and porn.04:10.69SeanYeah. Hell yeah.04:11.75AndrewSo all the Internet's good for.04:14.21SeanI agree. And this podcast, what else have you been up to the past two weeks?04:20.50AndrewSo I got roasted last week by Alex Hillman on Blue Sky.04:22.14SeanYes, you did. I'm Blue Sky.04:25.75AndrewVery, very positively roasted. I I went to Blue Sky looking for feedback on I think I talked about it on the podcast last recording.04:27.80SeanYeah.04:30.70SeanMm-hmm.04:34.84Andrewa Like I did this like kind of mini launch and trying to get, of what were we calling them, founding users, get people to convert to founding users.04:43.58SeanYeah.04:47.12AndrewAnd we were talking about just like only one person replied. And yeah, it just was kind of a flop. so I was just trying to do the building public thing and talking about it on Blue Sky and asking you know people what what their experience had been with pre-sales and that sort of thing.05:05.33AndrewAnd Alex Hellman was basically like, bro, you You like half asked this thing, what did you expect? but And I was like, oh, yeah, you're right.05:14.06SeanUh-huh.05:16.21AndrewYeah.05:16.78SeanYeah.

It's the Friday News Roundup! We're talking about Mayor Cherelle Parker defending her return-to-office policy, and a lawsuit trying to block it. Plus, Pennsylvania's license plate redesign, how to stay cool in Philly's extreme heat, and some of the most Philly things we saw on social media this week. Host Trenae Nuri is joined by Mike D'Onofrio, reporter at Axios Philadelphia, and Alex Hillman, co-founder of Indy Hall Clubhouse.  Our Friday news roundups are powered by great local journalism:  The Best Ways To Stay Cool in Philly How To Keep Your Dog Safe in the Philly Heat Mayor Cherelle Parker defends her strict return-to-office policy for city workers a day before the dispute heads to court Wawa fan collects every order slip from 000-999 then asks ‘What do I do with my life now?' Wawa to close Port Richmond store after 45 years Check out the Bungee Brand's Poncho: https://www.instagram.com/p/C8u77vSur_s/  The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is debuting a new license plate in 2025! Sign up to be first to get one of the new license plates. Indy Hall Reading Club Listen to Mayor Cherelle Parker's press conference on her return-to-office policy on the city's Facebook page. You can find out more about SEPTA's trolley maintenance blitz here. Want some more Philly news? Then make sure to sign up for our morning newsletter Hey Philly. We're also on Twitter and Instagram! Follow us @citycastphilly. Have a question or just want to share some thoughts with the team? Leave us a voicemail at 215-259-8170.  Learn more about the sponsor of this July 12th episode: Babbel Interested in advertising with City Cast? Find more info here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this insightful episode, Lucas speaks with Alex Hillman. Alex, from Indy Hall and Stacking the Bricks, shares his extensive experience in launching products and building successful communities. Alex discusses the importance of understanding your target audience through methods like Sales Safari, the significance of addressing pain points, and the value of strategic customer research.He also provides detailed examples of effective headlines and marketing strategies, emphasizing the long-term success of focusing on well-understood, specific customer groups. This conversation is packed with practical advice and lessons learned from years of helping creators and entrepreneurs launch and grow their own businesses.For more information about Courses and Funnels, head to: https://coursesandfunnels.com/Faceboook: https://www.facebook.com/courses.and.funnelsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/coursesandfunnels/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCce7KMUpUlCNaFKqkLxaZJgListen to the Courses and Funnels Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/courses-and-funnels-podcast/id1712988006Follow Alex HillmanWebsite: https://indyhall.org/

Alex Hillman is a business educator and coach, community builder, author of The Tiny MBA and Founder and Fearless Leader of Philly's Indy Hall, COVID dealt what could have been a death-blow to Philadelphia's premiere co-work site. Alex shares the story of how he and his team staged a world-class recovery and renaissance of their business and community.She spoke with PWPvideo Exexcutive Producer Michael Schweisheimer about this and more on Episode 24 of The MISSION Story Slam Podcast.

Alex Hillman is a business educator and coach, community builder, author of The Tiny MBA and Founder and Fearless Leader of Philly's Indy Hall, COVID dealt what could have been a death-blow to Philadelphia's premiere co-work site. Alex shares the story of how he and his team staged a world-class recovery and renaissance of their business and community.She spoke with PWPvideo Exexcutive Producer Michael Schweisheimer about this and more on Episode 23 of The MISSION Story Slam Podcast.

Welcome to a groundbreaking episode of "City Change Makers"! Today, we're diving deep into a transformative initiative that's not just reimagining Philadelphia's economic landscape but is set to impact thousands of lives in the city. It's all about the 10k Independents Project, a visionary plan that's poised to add 50,000 good jobs to Philadelphia's workforce over the next decade. In this episode, we explore the core pillars that make up the foundation of the 10k Independents Project. These pillars are not just steps but guiding principles that prioritize the growth and progress of individuals and small businesses within the city. The first pillar, "Inspire new paths to a good career," is all about shifting the narrative from "starting a company" to "creating a sustainable job for yourself." It encourages individuals to explore entrepreneurship as a viable path. The second pillar, "Move Independents from surviving to thriving," focuses on helping 10,000 Independent workers reach a point of sustainability. Sustainability, in this context, means consistently providing for themselves and their families and investing in their future and community. The project actively curates and connects small business owners with the resources they need to achieve sustainability. The third pillar, "Prioritize hiring and growth to benefit our neighborhoods and communities in need," aims to help 2,000 of the 10,000 Independents transition to employers. This approach to growth is designed to create a stronger and more equitable business community, serving the citizens of Philadelphia better. But how does the math add up? The 10k Independents Project breaks down the numbers, celebrating the 8,000 Independents who sustain themselves and estimating that 2,000 will become employers, each potentially hiring an average of 20 employees. This adds up to a grand total of 50,000 jobs – a conservative estimate based on existing data, with immense potential to transform the city's workforce. We also delve into the economic impact of this project, which is not just about creating jobs but also about cultivating a reasonably-paid, culturally-competent, and local-oriented workforce. This has the potential to empower communities, drive change, and harness the true potential of Philadelphia. One of the remarkable aspects of this initiative is that it's funded and owned by the community it serves. In 2023, a member-funded professional association will be added to the core of operations, ensuring transparency and voting power for the community members. To make this initiative even more inspiring, all those behind the 10k Independents Project are Philadelphia-based individuals who are deeply connected to the city and are building their independent businesses. They're not just thinkers; they're doers who have earned the trust of their community through their dedication and contributions. Join us as we explore the remarkable journey of the 10k Independents Project and learn how this cooperative model aims to put the power of change into the hands of its member-owners. This episode is an invitation to be part of a transformative movement that's shaping the future of Philadelphia. The 10k Independents Project: funded by us, owned by us, and designed for us. To learn more about this project, tune in here https://10k.city/roadmap/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/amasweekly/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/amasweekly/support

In Ethical Investment Week 2022 we are highlighting the important work that is being done behind the scenes to create positive impact and improve corporate behaviour. So in this episode I am talking to Alex Hillman - a long term client and ethical investor, who works at ACCR. The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility are a philanthropically funded shareholder activist group. Self described as a Corporate Watchdog, they believe that limiting global warming to well below 2°C is in the interests of shareholders. Their mission is to deliver changes to the strategies of major listed companies, in Australia and globally, to decrease absolute, real world emissions, in line with the best available science. They do this through research and shareholder advocacy.In this discussion with Alex, we talk about Woodside, Santos, Origin, BHP and AGL, and also how investors can get involved in making a difference with shareholder activism. Alex has spent over a decade working in oil and gas, including five years as Woodside's climate change advisor. This has given him an understanding of the energy transition, LNG business models and technology, asset and company forecasting, climate policy, and climate reporting. Since starting work with ACCR, he has developed a keen interest in how climate change should be included in financial statements.I hope you enjoy this special Ethical Investment Week 2022 discussion with Alex Hillman of ACCR . We wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we recorded on, the Wardandi Noongar people. We pay our respects to them and their culture; and to elders past, present and emerging.  For more information about James Baird and JustInvest Financial Planning see: justinvest and ethicalinvestment.    You can check out ACCR here:ACCR: https://www.accr.org.au/ACCR's Shareholder Hub: https://hub.accr.org.au/AGL's Loy Yang Mine Closure: https://www.accr.org.au/news/agl-finally-reads-the-room-brings-forward-loy-yang-closure-by-10-years/SMH Business Article - Woodside: https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/ex-woodside-insider-rejects-gas-industry-s-clean-fuel-net-zero-claims-20220211-p59voq.html 

Many organizations are still struggling to rebuild community after the pandemic forced everyone apart. Alex Hillman is the founder of Indy Hall, one of the first coworking spaces in Philadelphia. He had to answer the question, "How do you keep a space-based community together when the space goes away?"  In this episode, Alex shares stories that show why Indy Hall coworking is far more than a piece of real estate.  He shows how the community helps members find their way, grow and change.  Around 28:40, he shares some advice on choosing the best stories to tell - not necessarily stories of your most impressive success.  Alex is an entertaining and sought-after speaker. Enjoy your time with this episode! Reach Alex at indyhall.org or his email, alex@indyhall.org and share what resonated with you. 

Author, founder, and rebel scum, Alex Hillman returned to Ditching Hourly, this time to talk about paid project discovery engagements. Alex's Links Alex's Twitter Alex's email: alex@tiny.mba The Tiny MBA by Alex Hillman

Listen to Empathy Deployed! https://empathydeployed.com/Follow Jonathan! https://twitter.com/jotThis episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPTMichele Hansen  0:01  Hey, everyone, I am super excited to have a guest with me today. Jonathan Mark Well, he is a strategy consultant, and also the host of empathy deployed a new podcast about customer interviews, or rather, I should say of customer interviews. So he's doing example, customer interviews, so you get to be along for the ride as he improves his customer interviewing skill. He is also a longtime listener of this show, and was one of the people I interviewed about my book when I was drafting it. So you could sort of say this is a new episode. It's like longtime listener first time caller, sort of episode. So welcome, Jonathan.Jonathan Markwell  1:49  Thank you, Michelle. It's great to be on. Yep. It's wonderful to, to join you after, after listening for so long.Michele Hansen  1:58  I'm really excited to have you. And, you know, so one thing that we have talked about a lot, and it was a very big focus for you is the podcast that you're doing. But I think if you if you could kind of pull us back to like, how did you even get interested in the concept of customer interviewing? And like, like, how did you start working with that in your work with with your clients?Jonathan Markwell  2:28  Um, I think, you know, I've been aware of interviewing customers for many, many years, maybe 15. I actually did a postgraduate degree I didn't finish, but it was in human centered computer systems. And so an element of the user or customer research would have been customer interviews, or the star I think was quite different from, from from, from your style. And, and so it's kind of in the back of my mind, but it's not, it's nothing, something I've been particularly comfortable with. So admittedly just avoided it a lot. But then, as I've worked with more and more software businesses, I found actually some of the the biggest aha moments for us. In the end, the biggest chunks of progression that those businesses have made are actually as a result of what we're effectively customer interviews, although accidental ones. And so the more I realized that actually, maybe if we were doing this more formal and more systematically, like I probably know, we should have been doing all along, we might have, you know, made may progress significantly faster, and spent a lot less money, figuring out how to make these different businesses work.Michele Hansen  3:53  Yeah, it sounds like you sort of had these moments where things kind of sort of unexpectedly learned things that were helpful to you. And you kind of became hungry to get more of that.Jonathan Markwell  4:08  Yeah, yeah, hungry. But then still not. Not enough to get into the habit of really doing it. Every every time the opportunity came up, where it's like, you know, maybe if we did lots of customer interviews here, we might get us past this, this problem that we that we currently have. And I you know, I guess it's sort of only from listening to the, this, this podcast, and subsequently reading drafts of your, your book that I'm like, you know, it really, it's not that hard. I just need to get into the habit of doing it. I mean, not to say it's not hard. It's just that come on, John, you need to do Just get in the habit of doing it and learn this stuff. Because all the materials that you've got no excuse now, it's all laid out in front of yours is the is the how you can do it. And, and by doing it often, maybe I'll be more comfortable doing it when I need to do it.Michele Hansen  5:19  So I'm curious, so when. So So you started listening to the podcast, you sort of heard me extolling the virtues of talking to customers as I am wanting to do. And so from that point where you started reading the newsletter in the draft, like, like, at what point did you start interviewing people again?Jonathan Markwell  5:44  I'm not sure I know, I, it was definitely earlier this year, I need to look at my calendar. I didn't do very many. But I did a few here and there, using the the some of the early interview scripts that that you shared. And, and there were people that I already knew, but I really wanted to dig into some of the their approaches to solving their problems, which are customer interviews, things be very simple to fit fit well, with, they weren't my customers, they're people that I was interested in, if there was a product, maybe for them that I could help them with. So it's kind of like I used it, use it there. And then it wasn't until I had one client where that I started working with earlier this year, to May, June time where it was like, you know, to really understand what's happening here with this, you know, pretty successful, profitable product, but there's not growing so well, we need to need to really understand customers and start talking to them more. So then we got a bit more rigorous. And, and we interviewed over the course of a month, I think six or seven people.Michele Hansen  7:04  So what were some learnings that came out of those interviews.Jonathan Markwell  7:11  The I think the main thing, I did most of these interviews with the founder of that product on the call with me, so he was observing. And the best part of it was really him hearing firsthand just how happy his customers were with, with the product. And so you know, not having much of that feedback loop. Because it's a developer tool that he provides great support for, and as a lot of conversation with people via chat, and email, but very rarely. voice or video communication. And so hearing that those those people read it get a lot of value out of that it was a great product, I knew it to be as well, because I happened to be a customer of his in in the past. That was as pretty wonderful. And then hearing how they described the situation that they were in without the tool before and the experience that they went through to, to come to the conclusion that they needed his product and the you know, in settled on it long, long term.Michele Hansen  8:33  You know, I think when you're like when you have a product like this can be one of the most sort of rewarding parts about doing interviews is you know, you get a lot of support requests every day, you're used to hearing about bugs, you're used to hearing what feature requests and all these kinds of things. And rarely do you get an email and sometimes it had does happen but rarely do you get an email from someone that's simply just them effusively praising the product and talking about what they use before and how this is so much better than what they were doing before. And, and I think for us, who are you know, founders who were, you know, wearing a lot of hats ourselves, it can just be just so motivating, to too, and rewarding to hear wow, like, we really are helping people and they, what they were doing before does sound terrible. And now this is easy for them. And they're grateful to us. And then it kind of takes you out of that mindset of just sort of, you know, seeing an endless parade of, you know, help tickets or GitHub issues or whatever that is. It's being like, hey, like, No, we're really making a difference for people.Jonathan Markwell  9:45  Definitely. Yeah, and I, you know, I know and I, people that have worked in businesses that are much closer to people. My agencies are where there's a high touch, sell. So much of the energy that they speak People get is from that interaction with with customers and feeling that that loop. And it's yeah, it's strange that so many of us that are more working in very low touch sales or self service situations where often the customers don't want to get on the phone that you miss out on that, that whole back and forth. And, and don't get that benefit.Michele Hansen  10:27  Absolutely. So let's fast forward a little bit to your podcast because I'm really curious about, you know, sort of the caveat of your, or another caveat with the conceit of your podcast, rather, is that you are learning alongside the listener, which I love. And, and so I'm curious. So you so you've done about, you've done it, you've done a handful of episodes at this point. And I'm curious what you feel like you have learned and what you've noticed, in how you do interviews in that time?Jonathan Markwell  11:06  Um, good question. All right, it's, yes, it's good to take an opportunity to reflect on that, I guess. portion of the people I've interviewed I know quite well. So I started off with people that I knew quite well. And and so I found it really insightful learning things about that. I've known them for years, and yet I learned about how they making some of their decisions, and they're quite different from what I what I had guessed, or I expected to learn from them by going so deep into one particular topic and, and really listening. The there's also a bit of a strangeness around these, this particular approach to customer interviews, I feel quite different always. Because I know that there's going to be other people listening and the other the other people involved do so I'm not quite as relaxed. As, as I am, or I have been in other customer interviews that are just being recorded for, for me, and people know, well, to listen to take notes on afterwards. But yeah, I just, I love the fact that I just, I'm learning new things about people that I wasn't expecting to learn from, from each episode. And as I listen more critically, to my, to myself, I guess in these when I'm listening back, so I do, I'm doing all the editing myself, and I'm listening back, I'm very lightly editing really, I've had to take my dog out a few times who goes berserk. No one's at the door. But I guess I'm listening just as much more so to my approach to interviewing with these ones than I have with previous customer interviews. And so I'm kind of more kicking myself about things that I didn't ask. And hopefully, you're getting better at remembering some of the things to add in later. Also, realizing that I I'm using maybe some things as a bit of a crutch. And I've had I've had some feedback from people that maybe I I'm using the same response very often and it might not be helpful, helping people open up as much as, as, as they as they might if I tried a little bit harder with my responses or made them feel a bit more natural.Michele Hansen  13:52  What is that response that you tend to fall back on?Jonathan Markwell  13:57  I think it's, um, that makes sense.Michele Hansen  14:00  I mean, it's one of my books. That's sort of a Yeah.Jonathan Markwell  14:06  Yeah, so I, but I've had a specific as far as you know, if you said this in that situation, then you might, they might have opened up a little bit more. And I've actually, I've printed out I don't have them here now. But the I have a sort of crib sheet for each episode where I've sort of made a very big font, a lot of the affirmation or responses that you suggested in their in the book, and that one is the top of the list and his biggest because it's the shortest phrase, I think. So it's so easy to go to is like, say that to keep the conversation going. And, you know, the the conversation does continue and they've you know, I'm yet to hit the the the challenge that I know clean spoke about a lot where the conversation just just feels like it's ended after, after 10 minutes, I've experienced that once with a with a customer where it wasn't really set up so well as a customer interview. But I've, I've not experienced it on the podcast yet fortunately.Michele Hansen  15:16  I think it's interesting. I mean, you're doing this in public, which, you know, is so vulnerable of you to do that, and opening yourself up to other people saying, Hey, you keep repeating that. But I think it's so valuable, because, you know, when I was learning to interview I had, you know, people I was working with, who were very experienced in this, to give me that nudge to have like, hey, like, maybe tried to say this instead, next time, like, it's so valuable to have that. And you're kind of turning that on its head a little bit by having an audience that is telling you like, hey, so you said, that makes sense. So can we turn to this other thing? Maybe you should have said, Yeah, I can see why you would do that that way. And then let it hang. Right. Like, you're still getting those nudges, but you're kind of getting it publicly. And and I think it's really interesting, because because I, I wonder if you're helping listeners realize what phrases they might say, often, when they're talking to people, and maybe as you said earlier, you know, you're kind of a little bit more nervous, because it's in public. And so you're just kind of jumping to that first, easiest, sort of most convenient phrase, when otherwise you might be a bit more natural.Jonathan Markwell  16:39  I'd say. Definitely, like, I, one of the reasons that I really felt that I need to make this podcast and I made it happen is that every time I thought about it, it's like, it's a podcast, I wish I was I've been listening to for the last 10 years, and I wish I'd been recording for the last two. And I just know that, you know, even if no one listened to it, I would, you know, I have more insight. And I'd be better at doing this thing that I find quite, quite awkward. And you know, 10 years ago, me or 15 years ago, me if I had this to listen to I would have you know, hopefully, yeah, gain gained from it both in terms of understanding good and bad ways of, of interviewing customers, but also having lots of insights into some real situations, which maybe I could kind of build products for, or explored more deeply.Michele Hansen  17:34  Now worst case scenario, you have an audience of one person, which is yourself, and you're getting something out of it no matter what. Yeah. I'm curious have you interviewed your own customers or your because your clients customers? Because Because you work with a probably like a handful of different small companies, right, like in this sort of indie SAS business kind of space? Like, have you interviewed their customers? Since you started the podcast?Jonathan Markwell  18:06  Yes, I've interviewed the good to my clients, I've done it we've so one I've already mentioned. And another, less formally, so it's more that we've got an opportunity to talk to someone who may become a customer who is a customer, and I tried to make it more of a customer interview than a sales conversation, because I think there's more to gain from it. And everyone's happy to sort of have me lead in and do that for most of the conversation, which has been helpful to, to understand. You know, what, what they're what they're looking for. Yeah, and I haven't someone asked me this recently. It's interesting, because the sixth episode of my podcast, I'm being interviewed by someone who's interested in my experience of interviewing people, so it's a very meta episode. So this came up a little bit in, in that episode, which is that I realize I've not yet not yet formally customer interviewed my clients, or members of my co working space, which is a sort of side business that I run into is a co working community in Brighton, but I've not actually used it in those two situations. Yet, I have more informal conversations with them and, and I work so closely with the clients in particular that I'm not it might be a bit awkward. I mean, yeah, I don't, but maybe I should do that and, and put myself through that situation even though it's a bit too from, from what I've usually use customer interviews for, in the past, I should say two or three of the people I've interviewed are actually members of the co working space. It's just I've been interviewing them about their use of other products rather than them. Their use of the of the co working space.Michele Hansen  20:17  In the hardly 20 minutes, we've been talking, I feel like I've heard you mentioned in different ways three or four different times this fear of something being awkward. And it sounds like that's pretty front of mind for you, when when you're having these conversations, or whether it's an interview or even something else.Jonathan Markwell  20:42  Yeah, it's not my preference to talk to people, I guess. And I, I kind of,I like burying my head in code. Like, I will spend days at a time doing that. And you know, making conversations happen on a one to one basis with people I just, for some reason, struggle with, and I've heard other people say, say similar things. And it may be an element of my own neurodiversity, or divergence, which is, it makes me feel that way. Or it might be the weird experience of the last couple of years. But I'm, I'm, I, a lot of people say that I'm someone that has quite a wide network. And I'm known by lots of people. And so therefore I must communicate and talk to lots of people and be able to feel very comfortable doing that. But I've, I've compact my way to doing it by organizing events or, or running a co working space. And that means that mostly people come to me asking me questions, and that starts a conversation. And, you know, it's always easier if it's over a few drinks or something like that, that can take the edge off of a more relaxed conversation. But when it's when it's for mine is picking up the phone, or organising a zoom call with someone, it's just not something that that comes naturally to me or something that I look forward to doing. I'm even guilty of that with family. To be honest. I'm very bad at speaking to family regularly. Yeah, usually the conversations are started by them, rather than me going, going out to them.Michele Hansen  22:35  I think it's very normal, you know, to feel this awkwardness. And, you know, I'm just thinking back how, you know, it takes inertia to start interviewing customers, it feels it to everybody, regardless of how much they like talking to people, it feels like strange and very different. At first, because it's not really a conversation, and you really have to be convinced that like, it's something that's worth doing. And I'm all the more struck by, you know, now more deeply understanding your sort ofyour perspective on on having conversations with people in general, that is, it's really quite remarkable that it must, it must have taken so much inertia have been those insights you got from those accidental interviews that you did, those must have been so compelling, in order for you to take on this effort of learning how to interview them and dealing with that awkwardness like that the the risk reward ratio there like it must have been like the, the reward of it right like must have been that great that you were willing to deal with all that and then now on top of all of that, you have a podcast about doing this and I'm just sitting here kind of like amazed and in awe of the transformation that you have gone through and how much you have stepped outside of your comfort zone and and really pushed you're pushed yourself to do this despite it feeling so against your sort of, you know, normal habits and perspective on talking to other people. It's just it's, it's remarkable and I don't know if you have stopped to really appreciate yourself for, for that transformation that you've gone through.Jonathan Markwell  24:51  I mean, it's very, it's very kind to say I mean, you know, the probably quite selfish forces. Well, here I've, I've, we talk about the pull towards doing it. Like, I've tried other approaches to research, and I guess maybe I'm not as good as other people at detecting strong signals of sort of a willingness for, for someone, you know, a demand for a product or service from, from, from reading, research or, or doing all the other work that is required to really understand an audience that way. I mean, I've learned from people that are absolutely brilliant at this, like Alex Hillman, and ABI and taking their course was a huge, you know, leap for me, in my understanding of how people understanding how people view the world, and how they may become customers have a product or want a product, or you have a willingness to pay for something. And that actually really helped were identify a problem, and one of the businesses I worked with, but it was ultimately a customer interview. So it's the combination of the two that actually brought out because the audience that we were working with, we didn't really find them hanging out online and, and talking about this problem online. And it was when we went into an office of a few customers of a CRM that we had built, and talk to them about it, and really listen not to the people that we'd sold to, but the people that were being asked to use this tool that they told us, you know, we really want the reports that come out the other end, we don't want to do all the the building of you know, creating this, doing this whole workflow in the CRM to get there. And that's the the quick reflection, it took a bit more to really under understand that. But that turned a business that had 10 customers that were hardly using the product, and was probably going to churn soon. And we're really hard to onboard into a business that now has 1800 customers paying between $99.04 $199 a month. So you know, pretty solid business with 1010 employees as well, high profit, high margin, you know, the self service, wonderful SAS that any indie hacker would love, love to have. And so that there's, that's a pool, for me is the, you know, if you, if you can understand a problem that an audience are having, and really find that, you know, have those moments where you can see, that's actually what their problem is, it's not what you thought it was, that can just be so transformational, and can be very financially rewarding. And also, you actually just get to help out to people in a way they want to be helped, rather than trying to give them something you think they they want.Michele Hansen  28:03  You know, sort of it's sort of ironic, right? Because you said that business is a self serve SAS with over 1000 customers. And, you know, I think that is the indie hacker dream. And, but the irony of that dream is that in order to build a business that people intuitively understand, they sign up for it without talking to you, they have minimal support requests, they just pay you every month, right? You actually need to get out and really talk to some customers, and it doesn't have to be all of them. But in order to build that kind of a business where people can just use it and pay you and not need to talk to you. Right? Like, you really need to understand what is it they're trying to do, and especially in those early days figuring out like, what are the friction points? And what do they really want to do? And and so you need to make this investment and, and, and talking to people. But you can still have a business later on where you don't have to talk to them all that much.Jonathan Markwell  29:10  Yeah, yep, definitely. It's yeah. So it's an in pursuit of the dream of having the wonderful kind of product business that, that I think many people listening to this podcast would want. That, you know, doing some of that talking thing and the high touch stuff, which is what you don't want to be doing long time is the way to get there. Yeah.Michele Hansen  29:34  So I'm curious, we've talked a lot about your podcast and your journey with customer interviewing. What questions do you have for me?Jonathan Markwell  29:43  So very hopeful that I could get get more of your impression on the on the podcast and my approach to to interviewing and I'm trying to phrase this right. Because I know that you you don't want to be The police have of how people do customer interviews. But whyMichele Hansen  30:05  did you the police? Roll? I'm going,Jonathan Markwell  30:09  but But I'm curious as to how, you know, there's some standout moments in some of the episodes that you listened to so far where you would have you would have done it differently, or you would suggest I could try it differently next time. In a similar situation.Michele Hansen  30:27  I think I mean, there's always so many different directions you can go in, right. And I think you're the I think about your podcast is that you're not really interviewing anyone with an agenda, right? So you know, you interviewed someone about? They were like, they're a customer of a VPN service. Is that right? remember which one? And you know, if I'm thinking about creating a VPN, or I already run that company, that's the one he uses, right, like my perspective on what I want out of that interview, and the questions I'm going to ask are going to be very different. And how you steer that conversation. And so I wouldn't say that you've done anything wrong. And, you know, there's a lot of cases where you ask the question that I really wanted to know the answer to, and it's so it's always like, really exciting, because then it's like, oh, yeah, I really, I was hoping he was gonna dig on it. And then he did, yes. And I am I am interested in sort of understanding, you know, I think what that journey has, like been like for you, and, and it sounds like you have been getting that feedback from listeners of, hey, you know, you were saying that phrase a lot. And, you know, try this again, or, you know, try this other thing. Um, you know, I've given you some feedback on audio quality and whatnot. But I think that's, you know, that's very normal, especially for the early days of any podcast, I mean, this podcast, like, I didn't have a proper mic for like, the first two months, because I didn't know if anyone was gonna listen. And then it turned out people did. So I got a real mic. So thank you for suffering through that with me. You know, cuz I guess you're you're also you're learning customer interviewing, you're also learning how to, like, run a podcast as well. So it's like, you're, you're learning to separate skills at the same time?Jonathan Markwell  32:28  Yes, it's been pretty painful. I mean, I, I knew audio was a challenge. And so I got recommendations for the kit very early on, and got myself a decent mic. But the my main failure point actually on on there, so if anyone else is starting a podcast with guests on his, like, briefly, guests, make sure you know, figure out a checklist for them to, to, to make sure their audio is as good as possible, like, make sure they're wearing headphones, and little things like that, because most of the people I've interviewed haven't been on podcast before. And they don't have any, any any professional kit for, for doing audio recording. So they need a little bit more help. And that's helpful customer interview, as well. I've had some customer interviews, which where the audio quality has been really bad, and I haven't, which has made it difficult, after the fact, take notes and things and, and so that that sort of briefing might help with in those situations as well.Michele Hansen  33:30  Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of a sort of a trade off to you know, doing it as a podcast, right is because I've definitely had customer interviews where people are doing the dishes, they're eating, they're driving, like they're. So there was one customer interview where someone was in a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean, and I was like, Is this still a good time to talk? They're like, yeah, sure, it's fine. We're just we're pulling into port. So I got like, 45 minutes to kill, like, no worries, like, and I was like, okay, like, and you know, the kind of signal kept going in and out and like, that's, like, that's authentic. Right? Like, like, background noise is authentic. And distractions are authentic. And that's what you might experience but for a podcast, you know, you need it to be as as quiet as possible. And so I think that's kind of a, like a challenge of, you know, of how authentic do you make it right? Like, you know, in a movie, you'd never see anyone going or talking about going to the bathroom, right? Even though that's part of everyday life. And so it's sort of like that, it's like, okay, well, if they had their air conditioner running in the background, like, that's authentic, and I was genuinely having trouble hearing them, but like, how much of that authenticity do we put the audience there?Jonathan Markwell  34:50  Yeah. Yeah. So same with edit. So I'd be interested to hear what your your thoughts on this is like It's quite common I think in podcasts now especially, it's fairly easy with tools like descript to remove arms and ORs. From a from a podcast, it makes all this sound smarter and I know I an awful lot. There we go. So I kind of I was messing around editing early on, I think you should I take these out, I went and did a version that was taken out, but it just felt so unnatural. I probably went too far with it. And I'm not a professional editor. So I'm not sure if I should do that with these interviews or not my just gonna give them a very light touch. So far, yeah, IMichele Hansen  35:38  think on that I would I would err on the side of not editing and not editing out the hums and ahhs because they are authentic. And also, I think I think you sent me two versions of one of those early episodes. And when it was edited to remove the pauses and remove the arms and ahhs like, there were points where it almost sounded like you were interrupting the other person and I was listening to and I was like, that just doesn't sound like how he talks and how he would run an interview. And nevermind, that's also like in an interview, like the pausing is really important. Like, you know, if we had edited out the hums and ahhs and pauses in the sample interview, I don't think people would have quite grasped how important not pausing is, right, like the pausing is almost a, you know, a form of speech in an interview, because you need to let things hang. Um, and so, I would, I would veer on the side of not editing, even someone's dog barking in the background like that, that happens. And, I mean, even I mean for this podcast, right? Like we we were editing out hums and ahhs for a little bit, and then we kind of stopped because it's like, you know, people are listening, because they want to hear a conversation between people who are two people who enjoy talking to each other. And in any normal conversation, there's going to be pauses, we're gonna say like, and, and, and all those other things like, exactly right there, you know. But I think there's sort of this. For you, I feel this like push and pull between authenticity and listen ability. And like, where is that line?Jonathan Markwell  37:30  Yeah, I think I'm currently have the conclusion that I'm going to keep it very light. And I'm not, I'm not expecting anyone to really listen to every single episode, it's more of one to dip into where there's an a person that's in a role that you're interested in hearing from or we're talking about a software product that you're interested in hearing a perspective on, and you might dip in and out of it. So I'm just going to keep going and not really expect people to be listening to every single episode, as I do, because it's maybe it isn't an easy listening podcast, like many others.Michele Hansen  38:08  So if people do want to listen, where should they go?Jonathan Markwell  38:12  So you can search in your favorite podcasting app for empathy deployed, or visit empathy. deployed.com.Michele Hansen  38:23  Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming by today. I really appreciate it. And I'm really excited for the wonderful resource you were creating with the podcast.Jonathan Markwell  38:39  Thank you for inviting me on. Thank you, thank you for all the things that you've been doing over the last year that's inspired me ultimately to do this and been so supportive of me doing it and even provided the name for the for the podcast. So thank you. Yeah,Michele Hansen  38:55  I guess we should make it clear that I endorse you using a similar name to my, to my book, but I think I mean, I did that that's one thing that people kept asking for was more customer interview examples. And even you reached out to me asking for that. And I was like, That's a great idea. But I don't have time, you should do it. And then a few weeks later, you're like, Okay, maybe. Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Jonathan. It's been it's been really great chatting with you and excited for more episodes of empathy deployed. Thank you.

When North Star started, we initially resisted requests to create persuasive copy for our clients, because we didn't know how to write it without feeling a bit...skeezy.  Part of the reason we felt hesitant was because we didn't have a structure, and we certainly didn't want to sound like used car salespeople. And then Marie discovered Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman's formula called PDF: Pain Dream Fix. In this episode, Jessi and Marie will discuss applying those three components to persuasive copy. 

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Michele Hansen  00:00Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that I'm passionate about customer service and listening to customers. A few months ago, we noticed something wasn't working on the Oh Dear dashboard. We reported it to them, and they fixed it almost immediately. Everybody has bugs occasionally, but not every company is so responsive to their customers, and we really appreciate that. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app. Colleen Schnettler  00:35So Michele, I'd love to hear about how things are going with the book.  Michele Hansen  00:40They're going. Um, so after our episode with Sean last week, I realized that I kind of, I have to launch this thing eventually, right?  Colleen Schnettler  00:54Yes.  Michele Hansen  00:55And, you know, for, you know, I mean, for months I've been hearing that advice of, you know, do a, do a presale and like, start selling it beforehand, And, and I was like, yeah, I mean, you know, I, that's the best practice. That makes sense. And then just kind of be like, but that doesn't apply to me, right? Like, I couldn't make, um. It's, you know, it's funny, because it's almost, I feel like the way people feel about when they hear about customer interviewing, they're like, that sounds really valuable and like the right thing to do, and I'm just gonna act like that doesn't apply to me.  Colleen Schnettler  01:29Yep.  Michele Hansen  01:30So that's kind of how I was, and talking to Sean really kind of got me to be like, okay, okay, fine. I should actually sit down and do this. So I got a very simple website together, and then I actually did end up launching the presale.  Colleen Schnettler  01:46Oh, congratulations.  Michele Hansen  01:48Yeah, that was super scary. Like, because the book  Colleen Schnettler  01:50I bet. Michele Hansen  01:53And, like, random places where it says like, insert graphic here. Colleen Schnettler  02:01So tell us how many books have you sold?  Michele Hansen  02:03Okay, yeah, so I guess I get to do, like, a numbers update for the first time. This is fun. Um, so I have sold 34 copies.  Colleen Schnettler  02:15Wow.  Michele Hansen  02:16Presale. Colleen Schnettler  02:17That's a lot.  Michele Hansen  02:18So, and that's not including for like, you know, platform fees and whatever. Just like, you know, $29 times 34, basically. $986.  Colleen Schnettler  02:32That's amazing. Congratulations!  Michele Hansen  02:35So close to that, like, 1000 mark, which, I was talking about this with Mathias earlier, and he's kind of like, I feel like that's like a, you know, that's like, the legit threshold, is 1000. Like, and I don't know why, but it's like, yeah, it's like that feels like, that feels like the, the, like, the first big hurdle.  Colleen Schnettler  02:55I totally agree. That's wonderful news. Congratulations.  Michele Hansen  03:00You know, I expected to feel excited, or relieved, or something positive after releasing it, or the presale, at least. And I gotta tell you, like, I just feel pressure. Like, I'm really glad I didn't do this sooner.  Colleen Schnettler  03:25Really?  Michele Hansen  03:27Yeah. Because now I have, you know, at least 34 people I can't disappoint. Colleen Schnettler  03:32Right.  Michele Hansen  03:32And I feel like, just like, the pressure to make something that is a quality product, like, I already had that pressure on myself to put something out there that I'm proud of.  Colleen Schnettler  03:44Yeah. Michele Hansen  03:46Now I have all these other people who are expecting that, and not that anyone has emailed me and said anything to that effect, but that's how I feel. And I was thinking about this earlier. And I was like, man, like, writing and selling this book has like, brought out all of these, like, vulnerabilities and, and self-doubt and everything, like all of this stuff that I like, thought I had dealt with and then it's, like, sort of like bursting out of the cabinet, being like, hey, I'm still here. So it's, you know, I mean, I have tools to, like, deal with that, but it's been like, oh my gosh, like, I thought I had dealt with, like, I never feel this way about anything about Geocodio, like, so.  Colleen Schnettler  04:33So, this is interesting, because I, when I was feeling a similar way, many months ago, I don't actually know if I talked about it on the podcast, but I had a very high value client that I had a great relationship with that needed a file uploader, and mine wasn't quite done, and I had this moment of terror, panic, I don't know, where I was like, I shouldn't use mine because, because if I put it on my client's site, like, it has to work, right? There's no get out of jail free card, Kind of like, you've now sold this book. Like, you have to finish it.  Michele Hansen  05:07Right. It's not just like, throwing it in a PDF and then like.  Colleen Schnettler  05:09Yeah.  Michele Hansen  05:10Oh, whatever, nobody paid for it. Like, it's not a big deal. Like, it's like, no, this is, like, this is serious now.  Colleen Schnettler  05:17Yeah. And I think something that, that I'm thinking of as you're talking about this, I remember at the time, Alex Hillman had a really great tweet thread about you're not scared of failure, maybe you're secretly scared of success.  Michele Hansen  05:32Mm hmm.  Colleen Schnettler  05:33It was really interesting. Like, just when you think about, like, the psychology and all of these new insecurities coming to light for you, like, maybe you're scared of success.  Michele Hansen  05:42You know, and it's so I feel like we should have them on the podcast more, because I feel like they are, like, Amy and Alex in some way are like characters on this podcast, they're just not actually on the podcast. But like, the amount we talk about, you know, 30x500 and everything. She had, I think, I think it was her, or maybe, no, or maybe it was Dani Donovan, the woman who does the ADHD comics. But I think it was Amy, had a thread, like, couple months ago that was like, you know, people with, or maybe, I don't know if she has ADHD, so I don't know if this was her. Okay. Somebody had a thread that was like, you know, people with ADHD, like, you don't ever feel accomplished when you finish something. It's just over. And then you're on to the next thing. And it was like, yes, like, I expected to feel something when I finally got that out there, and now it instead feels like, oh, now I have to put in the graphics. Now I have to do the cover art. Like now I have to like, like, it just, it didn't, there was never this, like, moment of, like, feeling accomplished or anything like that. It just, it just rolled into the next thing. Colleen Schnettler  06:58Interesting. I don't, I don't have that problem. Like, that doesn't happen to me. I mean, but it's interesting, I find that interesting because one of the things, for me, is when I accomplish something, even if, I feel like if I'd been in your position and I got the presales out there, I do feel that, like, internal satisfaction of hitting that goal, and that's what keeps me motivated. So, if you don't get that same kind of dopamine hit, doesn't that make the whole process kind of painful? It doesn't sound fun.  Michele Hansen  07:28Well, what I do get that from is people, like, you know, positive reinforcement from other people. Like, so I've been asking people for testimonials to put at the front of the book. And on the one hand, that terrifies me, and, and then on the other hand, when they do come in, and people are talking about how the, the book and also sort of newsletter and like, like, all this, all this stuff is all sort of meshing together, has helped them, and what it has helped them do, and how they wish they'd had it sooner and everything. Like, that makes me feel good. That makes me feel like I am delivering the, like, a product that is worth somebody paying for, and that I can be proud of seeing how it's impacted other people. But I like I, I don't really get satisfaction out of achieving things, which is really ironic, because I think about younger versions of myself and I've like, you know, I describe me in high school as an achievement robot, like. Colleen Schnettler  08:39An achievement robot.  Michele Hansen  08:41Yeah, you know, you're, like, just taking as many AP's as you can and your life is over if you don't get in a top college. You know, that whole, that whole song and dance that turned out to be a lie, because now I work for myself. Not at all bitter about that. Anyway, um, yeah, it's but, this, so that is really, like, keeping me going or like, people tweeting out you like, hey, like, what is the book coming out? And part of me is like, oh, my God, am I gonna get them by then? But like, I've been getting a lot of really good reinforcement from people, and that, and I think that's, for me, that's been one of the really big benefits of building in public is not, not necessarily knowing that, exactly that people are going to pay for it and how much they're going to pay and having that money up front, but knowing that I'm creating something that is useful for people. Like, that is what keeps me going. Colleen Schnettler  09:31That sounds great, too.  Michele Hansen  09:33But now I got to finish the damn thing, so.  Colleen Schnettler  09:35Yeah. Now you gotta finish it.  Michele Hansen  09:37I was saying that the release date would be June 24. I actually just had to push that back to July 2, because I just, I don't think I have enough time.  Colleen Schnettler  09:44Yeah. Michele Hansen  09:45I do have an idea for the cover. Like, I want it to be like a terminal printout that's like, basically like installing, like, you know, like installing like empathy and like, loading scripts. Colleen Schnettler  10:00That'll be cute.  Michele Hansen  10:01Like, sort of corny. Developers aren't the only audience for it. But I also want them to know that this is a resource that is, like, accessible to them.  Colleen Schnettler  10:14Yeah. Michele Hansen  10:15I don't know. I have zero artistic abilities, like, I can't even, like, think visually, like, so I have so many people who are reviewing the draft right now, which is pretty amazing. Some of them are, like, super close friends of mine who are harsh editors, and I'm super grateful for that. And others are, like, people I have never even met who are so, I guess, so taken with, with the idea of the book that they're, like, helping me edit it, and I have never met them before, which is just so moving. But anyway, so someone has been giving me a lot of feedback on like, oh, like, this should be a graphic and like, this should be a graphic. And I'm like, I'm so glad you're saying that because it would have never occurred to me that that could be a graphic because I communicate in speech, and in text, and there's -  Colleen Schnettler  11:01Yeah. Michele Hansen  11:01Not a whole lot of pictures going on.  Colleen Schnettler  11:03Yeah. Michele Hansen  11:04So, so, yeah, I gotta kind of get all of, all that together in the next couple weeks. And like, hopefully release the, like, the print-on-demand version at the same time, but it's unclear. And then after that, I get to do the audio book, which, honestly, I'm really looking forward to, because then I just have to read the book out loud and as a podcaster, I'm like, I got that. Like, this does not involve any pictures. Like, I am good. Colleen Schnettler  11:32No pictures required.  Michele Hansen  11:33No art skills required. Colleen Schnettler  11:36Are you gonna hire someone to do the graphics? Have you figured that out yet?  Michele Hansen  11:39No, I've been making them in PowerPoint.  Colleen Schnettler  11:42Okay. I'm just saying there's - Michele Hansen  11:45Really simple. Like, there's not going to be like, pictures-pictures, like. Colleen Schnettler  11:47Okay. Michele Hansen  11:48If it turns out this book is a huge hit and I need to do a version that actually has pictures and like, somebody doing, like, professionally doing the layout then like, yeah, I'll, I'll do that, but.  Colleen Schnettler  11:59Yeah, so. Michele Hansen  11:59I mean, so like, more like flowcharts if anything, or like, putting something in a box so that it's, like, called out like even that kind of stuff. My brain is like, doesn't.  Colleen Schnettler  12:09Have you ever seen, there's a couple of people I've met at conferences that are developers, but they're also visual thinkers. And so they'll like, make sketch notes of someone's conference talk. Have you ever seen these? I'm going to send you some after the podcast. They're so cool. I mean, for your, for, you know, especially to hit, like, the developer audience, that would be, and that might be like version two of the book, but like, like sketch notes, or something would be super cool. Like, I could see a lot of cool opportunities here.  Michele Hansen  12:37Yeah, I tried to use something called Excalidraw, and I think my problem is like, I just don't think visually.  Colleen Schnettler  12:47Yeah. Michele Hansen  12:47Like, I never graduated beyond stick figures. My, my efforts that were beyond stick figures are hilarious. Like actually, like, yeah. Um, so I probably should, like, should bring that in, you know. But again, I mean, the book has only made, you know, just under $1,000. So I'm not, I'm not, I don't really want to, like, go out and hire an artist for a couple $1,000 for it. Like, I don't feel like that's a reasonable- Colleen Schnettler  13:21Not yet. Not yet. Right. I mean, that might be in the future. Yeah. I feel like that's not yet. I totally get that.  Michele Hansen  13:27Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's-  Colleen Schnettler  13:34It's exciting. I'm glad we gave you that push. I mean, I kind of felt like I gave you that push when I was basically like, you're gonna have this up by the time we launch this podcast, right. I'm happy. I hope it wasn't too stressful. But I'm happy you got there.  Michele Hansen  13:49I think I needed the external deadline because- Colleen Schnettler  13:52Yeah.  Michele Hansen  13:52And again, this is kind of one of those, for me, ADHD things. Like, I need an external deadline because if it's a deadline I've come up with then it's not happening. But like, the reason why the book was, is gonna be out by July 2 is because, like, our, well, it was gonna be June 23 because our daughter finishes school for the year on June 25. So I was like, it has to be out before she gets out of school. But then I remember that she has a week of summer camp. So I'm like, okay, I have another week.  Colleen Schnettler  14:16You have one more week. Michele Hansen  14:18No, it has to be done before she gets out of camp because otherwise then I, you know, I won't have as much time, so.  Colleen Schnettler  14:25Yeah. Michele Hansen  14:25External deadline. Super helpful. Yeah. How's, how's stuff in Simple File Upload world? Colleen Schnettler  14:33So, things are good. I, you know, signups have still been consistent, but because I lost that big customer, I'm just below 1k MRR. So I haven't really seen that reflected in-  Michele Hansen  14:48Is the big customer the one that, like, wasn't using it and you couldn't get in touch with them?  Colleen Schnettler  14:53No, that person's still there, but like, I lost one person that was, like, a tier below that, which is, because I have three tiers. And so things are fine. I mean, I'm not seeing a big increase, or really any movement on the revenue because of the churn at that level, at that more expensive level. But I'm pretty excited about some of the things I'm going to be trying to do in the next couple months. My summer is crazy. So I had at first resigned myself to just not really working on Simple File Upload for a couple months. I was like, I'm just gonna let it sit. It's doing great. It requires almost no customer support. But then,  Michele Hansen  15:32I mean, a thousand dollars a month, and then it recurs is like.  Colleen Schnettler  15:35Right! It's like, I mean, okay, can we talk about how awesome this is? By the way, this is awesome. Like, after fees and stuff, after I pay my hosting fees, and my storage fees and my Heroku fees, I clear like 606, 650. Like, that's like, pretty cool.  Michele Hansen  15:52Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  15:53It's like, I'm not so much. So I wasn't upset about this. But like, I just needed to see kind of where my life was and what I was doing. And I was like, I might just have to sit on this for a couple months because I don't have the time. But then I got an idea. So I am going to take, really what happened is I was really inspired talking to Sean last week about 30x500. I have never taken that course. But I read, like, everything Amy Hoy writes on the internet, and so I kind of feel like I get the idea behind Sales Safari, the idea being find where your customers hang out and find out what their problems are. Conceptually, it seems easy. I just haven't had time to do that. And him, he said last week that he spent 80 hours. Think about that. So he was trolling Reddit forums for 80 hours. That is a lot.  Michele Hansen  16:45I mean, I probably already do that, and there's no business purpose behind it. Colleen Schnettler  16:49It's just no focus to it, right? So, so that's, so I really think I'm at this inflection point where what I have is working. It's doing great. I don't need to build new, more features until I know what features people need. And as we talked about, I think two weeks ago, different audiences want different features. As a solo founder, I do, with a job, I don't have the bandwidth to build all the features for everybody. Like, I'm not trying to take on CloudFlare, right. I really want to niche down and find my people and build for my people. I can't do that until I know who my people are, and I still don't really know. So, I am going to hire someone to do some of the Sales Safari research for me since I don't have time.  Michele Hansen  17:42Oh. Colleen Schnettler  17:43Yeah. So I'm kind of pumped. And by someone I mean, my sister. She, yeah, so it's like, you talk about how, like, you love having a business with Mathias.  I would love to have a business with my sister. Like, I would love for her to be able to work for me, for this to become a real company, and, you know, for us to do this together. So she is just coming off her maternity leave. She has decided not to go back to her job. So she has only a little bit of time because she doesn't have a lot of childcare, so she has, like, one day a week that she's going to work for me doing marketing research and Sales Safari, and I was to kind of trying to teach her, like, what I think is useful. We're both kind of learning as we go, neither of us really knows we're just making it up. And we're gonna do that for the summer and kind of see where it takes us.  Michele Hansen  17:55Yeah. Wow, wait, so what is her background in?  Colleen Schnettler  18:35She's an environmental consultant. Michele Hansen  18:37Oh. Colleen Schnettler  18:40So she actually, it's in no way relevant. But she's, so really the deal is she's a writer. So in her job as a consultant, what they do is they, they have to write these, like, epic report. So her background is really in writing. So originally, she was gonna write content for me, and she wrote me a couple pieces, but it's really hard to come in, since she doesn't have the technical background, it's, I, and my, my audience is developers, like, I need really technical content. So I don't think she's going to fit as a technical writer. But she's going to do, she's taking a class in SEO. So she's going to do, like, keyword research, and she's going to jump into the forums and Reddit and try and like, find out what people's pain points are surrounding file uploads. Michele Hansen  19:24You know, it sounds like you guys have a good working relationship together. Colleen Schnettler  19:31Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, all problems, this stuff that I was thinking about. All problems are people problems, right? So, if you want to control your business, and I'm just hypothesizing here, the number one most important people, but the number one most important thing is the people you work with, and I can't think of anyone else I'd rather work with. So, I think she'll figure it out, or she'll hate it and if she hates it, then she won't do it anymore. I'll find someone else. But that's kind of our plan. I'm pretty excited.  Michele Hansen  20:02Like, yeah, you, if you have someone that you work well with, and you believe that they're capable of learning what you would need them to learn, then, you know, like, you trust them.  Colleen Schnettler  20:17Yes. Michele Hansen  20:17And that matters.  Colleen Schnettler  20:18Yes. Yes. So yeah. So this summer, for me, is really for, for Simple File Upload, I think, is really going to be a focus on figuring out what niche to serve. I was talking to another friend, and he just got a new job, and he works for a big event management company. And he pointed out, you know, he was, he actually mentioned you, because he listened to the podcast, and he was like, these huge companies, they don't care about the little guys who are making a million dollars a year. And his point was, they don't care. So he's like, if you can carve out a niche in one of these huge industries, like, you can be incredibly successful, and like, these big guys, they don't care.  Michele Hansen  20:58No. And you know, on your sister, it might be really interesting to have her do interviews with people because she will be completely coming in with a beginner's mindset. Like, I find this is something that is difficult for people to adjust to like, like, we've talked about when, when someone says like, oh, like, could I do this? And you start thinking through, like, whether they could and how you would implement it, or you know-  Colleen Schnettler  21:23Right.  Michele Hansen  21:24Talk about what they wanted to do, and you just like, oh, of course, you wanted to do this because of this, and like, you don't even question it. But she, but she would be like, well, why do you want to upload a file in the first place? Like, Colleen Schnettler  21:33Right.  Michele Hansen  21:33Well, how is that, how does that work? Because she's genuinely beginner. Like, I feel like, in some ways, the fact that I don't have a geography background has been an advantage for- Colleen Schnettler  21:45Yeah. Michele Hansen  21:46You know, for this because like, I don't come in, you know, with it, with all of these preconceived notions about why someone would want to do this.  Colleen Schnettler  21:56Yeah. Michele Hansen  21:56So I think that can be really interesting when she gets her feet wet, and kind of a sense of what's going on, to try to talk to the customers.  Colleen Schnettler  22:05I think that's a great idea. I hope we can grow into that. I definitely think there's opportunity there. I think of her as like you, and I'm like Mathias in the power couple building of a company. So we'll see. I mean, she wants to get into mark, we kind of are going down this route, because I don't have enough time. I want to do it, I need to do it, and she wants to, really she wants to transition into a remote career that's flexible, like most parents, and she's really interested in SEO and marketing. So, I think it's gonna be a fun little adventure. I'm excited to see what she finds out. Part of this was also, I think we've talked a lot about, I have an interest in no-code. So I had a call with the Jetboost IO founder, Chris. Michele Hansen  22:51Yeah, Chris. Colleen Schnettler  22:52Who, I believe, you know, as well, because you're a mentor and he- Michele Hansen  22:55Yeah, I mentor him through Earnest Capital. I literally just had a call with him the other day. Colleen Schnettler  23:02So I had a call with him, independent of your call with him.  Michele Hansen  23:06Which we didn't know about. Colleen Schnettler  23:07Which we did not plan, to talk about opportunities in the webflow space. And, so I think one of the first things I'm going to have my sister, well, not the first, but one of the things my sister is going to try and do this month is really see if there's a need in Webflow. The thing about Webflow is, in 2018, Webflow introduced their own file uploader. So before that, there was a huge need for it. Now, they have their own file uploader. So it might be that what I provide is no longer, you know, something people need or want. So before I go and build an integration with Webflow, I'm going to have her do some Sales Safari research. They have really active forums to kind of see what people are looking forward to see if there's opportunity there.  Michele Hansen  23:54Yeah, Chris was telling me that they have a, like, feature upload, like a feature up vote thing where people go in and request features.  It's exciting. Colleen Schnettler  24:03Yeah, I think it's gonna be great. I think, I think it'll be fun. It'll be good to have someone actually dedicated to reading Reddit and Webflow forums and Heroku forums and whatever, to try to identify, you know, the need there and in the file uploading space. And then with the SEO research, you know, I can then either write the content myself or hire someone to write technical content, depending on my time commitments, my time, you know, what I can do, so. Yeah. Yeah, I saw that. I think, you know, the interesting thing about file uploading and Webflow is they have a maximum size of 10 megs, and I, you can't do multiple file uploads at the same time. So the question is, how many people really care? Like, who really, did, are there enough people that are uploading large files, or want to do maximum, or, I'm sorry, want to do multiple file uploads at a time that it would be worth it for me to make an integration into that space. So, so, you know, she's going to kind of dive into that and see what we can find out and like, this is just gonna be a fun marketing learning time because I built this thing because I wanted to build something, as you know, and I'm really happy that I built something to scratch my own need because it's worked out really well. But I still haven't really honed in on who I can serve best, and there's lots of opportunities out there, so. Michele Hansen  25:42There's a lot to be, I think, sort of learned and discovered here, and, and also that SEO work you can do, that, like, that can also inform the kind of feature development that you do, too, like, because there, I mean, this just happened to us the other day, like there was something that I noticed we had a couple of customers ask us how to do, and so I wrote up an article about how to do it, and then, but like, to basically do it manually. And then I just saw this morning that it's, like, our top performing growing piece of content and has like a 400% increase in clicks, and-  Wow. And looking into like, oh, how might we add that? And it's like, okay, maybe we should like there's, you know, SEO isn't just for bringing in customers, but also for figuring out what, what people might want as well.  Colleen Schnettler  26:38Yeah, and you've said before, I think that SEO is your number one channel? Activation channel? Michele Hansen  26:44Yeah. We, we don't run paid ads. We don't do any outbound sales. Like, we occasionally sponsor conferences, but that's mostly because, like, our friends run them, and it's just like, kind of-  Colleen Schnettler  27:00Yeah. Michele Hansen  27:00To support our friends, like we're a sponsor of Longhorn PHP, the Texas PHP conference. But like, that's just because our friend runs it.  Colleen Schnettler  27:12Okay.  Michele Hansen  27:13It's not very, like, organized or intentional. It's just like, sure, like, we'll help you out.  Colleen Schnettler  27:18Now, when you do SEO, do you do, like, now you just said, like, you were talking to a customer and then you got this idea of a good page, but do you do traditional keyword research as well? Michele Hansen  27:34Maybe? Like, we use Ahrefs.  Colleen Schnettler  27:36Yeah, I don't, okay. Michele Hansen  27:39I don't know, I still don't know how to pronounce the name of that company.  Colleen Schnettler  27:42I know, yeah, I don't either.  Michele Hansen  27:43But yeah, Ahrefs, we use that. We used Google Search Console for a long time, which is honestly a really good tool, and it's free, because Ahrefs is, is pretty expensive. But yeah, you can do keyword research and rankings and referrers and all that kind of stuff. I don't keep a super close eye on it. Um, but yeah, whenever we're, you know, we, every so often, like every couple weeks or so we go in and look at what content is performing and what else we might need and whatnot. Colleen Schnettler  28:19Cool. Yeah, I don't know. I really haven't done, I've done absolutely zero keyword research. So I think it's probably worth our time to put a little bit of effort into that to see what people are searching for to get a better idea of how to use those tools. Michele Hansen  28:36Yeah, I mean, our approach is, you know, find those keywords and then write stuff that people might be searching for and show them how to do it with Geocodio, and I think I like that because I, and I think we talked about this is kind of something that I have struggled with with the book, is, like, I struggle with sounding salesy, like and writing, like conversion copy, like, it's just really something that I feel like I sound way too infomercial-y when I tried to write it. Like, you know, there are people who are really good at writing conversion copy and sounding like a natural human being when they write it, like, I mean, you know, Amy Hoy is one of those people. But I, you know, I might as well you know, be like, hocking something on the Home Shopping Network when I try to write it. So, so like writing be like, oh, you're searching for geocoding? Hello, we do geocoding. Here is how you can do it in like, like, all of these different ways you can do it and rephrasing all of those different things. And then here's where you can try it. And then here's where you can do it. And it's very, like, straightforward. That's like, maybe you need it. Maybe you don't. All of those options are fine. Not, like, buy this now or you will die. Colleen Schnettler  29:56Yeah, I'm hoping with our keyword research and kind of, like, since I haven't done this at all, you know, with what, the marketing research she does, as you've talked about, I think a lot of that is going to inform my content and building out future landing pages. So, that's really going to be a focus for me is like, trying to get content and you know, pages out there that appeal to people. Michele Hansen  30:24Well, I'm going to be spending the next week working on the book and you're going to be onboarding your sister and getting this research going. Sounds like we got our work cut out for us.  Colleen Schnettler  30:34It's gonna be a good week.  Michele Hansen  30:37All right. Well, I guess that'll wrap us up for now. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

In this episode Seth and Shannon talk with Alex Hillman, who is quite a renaissance man. He is the co-founder of one of the original co-working spots in the nation, Indy Hall, in Philadelphia, PA. He is also the author of the Tiny MBA, and the co-founder of Stacking The Bricks, an educational company that helps entrepreneurs on their journey. Preroll Ad:  This business book is excellent: Tiny MBA (https://socl.bz/tinymba) Tweet length business snippets from a business innovator in Philadelphia with more than 15+ years of business experience. Intro: Seth: Hey, Everyone, and welcome to season two, episode twelve of the Digital Marketing Dive Podcast. I'm Seth with Goldstein Media, and with me as always is the amazing and talented Shannon of DIAM Business Consulting. Shannon, you ready to rock? Today we have Alex Hillman on the show. Alex is the co-founder of Indy Hall, one of the oldest (2006) co-working spaces in the nation (maybe the world). He is also the author of the the Tiny MBA (*full disclosure our title sponsor for this show, thanks Alex). He is also the co-founder of Stacking the Bricks, an e-learning course business for product-centered entrepreneurs. Topics & Links Who is Alex Hillman?IndyHall.orgWith the pandemic Indy Hall's online coworking community has been growing beyond the Philadelphia-area.Open Hall!Tiny MBAHow did it come about? What's the origin story? What is your favorite part of the book?Stacking the BricksWhat is it? What is 30x500? Who should enroll? Shannon's Event In April: Piecing Together A Success Business https://socl.bz/6R Shout Out (Ad) Breesy Masks are Silver-Nano Protected, Breathable, Lightweight, Fog-Free.Xchange: Most Protective. 5 layers of protection with silver-nano technology.Sports: Most Breathable. 2 layers of protection with silver-nano technology. Link: https://socl.bz/masks Outro: Seth: Well, that was so much fun Shan.  Shannon: It was great!! Reach out to us on DMD's social media channels and let us know what challenges you are having with digital marketing.  I want to shout out to Breesy Masks for keeping us covered in the craziness of 2021. These are by far the most comfortable masks I've worn. They are lightweight and moisture-wicking for a cool and comfortable experience. Check them out. The link is in the show notes! Seth: If you're enjoying the season, please feel free to give us a review in Apple Podcasts or the podcast directory of your choice. We appreciate all the support. If you feel so inclined check out PodChaser and give us a review there! That's it for this episode, but we want to hear from you. Drop us an email at hello@digitalmarketingdive.com or join our Discord server here: https://socl.bz/dmd-dc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alex Hillman is always thinking about the intersection of people, relationships, trust, and business. These days, he splits his time between running Indy Hall (Philly's oldest coworking space), teaching creative people how to bootstrap their own business, and collaborating with people and organizations towards the goal of helping 10,000 people become sustainably independent by 2029. He's worked globally with hundreds of coworking operators and thousands of business owners, executives, entrepreneurs, and community leaders to deploy his lessons in the intersection of business and community building. Alex's expertise has contributed to everything from academic research to mainstream media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Philadelphia Inquirer, WIRED magazine, and many more.” In this episode, Alex and I delve deep into the reality of running two dramatically different businesses before and during a pandemic. He explains the importance of understanding your community, how to be directly involved in their progress, and why he and his business partner choose to focus on being great teachers instead of being all about the profit. We also talk about life when Alex was broke, profit margins, and how he's working to sustain a coworking space business during a pandemic despite the challenges that come with it.                  “Don't just have all the money, have the control.” -Alex Hillman Connect with Alex Hillman : Indy Hall Community Stacking the Bricks Twitter Mastodon Instagram 240+ Precise Interests You Can Use In Your Targeting   Today's episode is brought to you by a Google spreadsheet. People tell me all the time that choosing Facebook and Instagram ad targeting makes them want to throw their computer out the window and I don't blame them. There are a ton of options and that makes it easy for you to flush money down the Zuckerberg drain. So, I put together a big old list of what Facebook calls ‘Interests' for you and a totally free spreadsheet separated out by niche. I also created a short PDF that explains how to go about using those interests so you don't waste a ton of time putting together your audience.    Take the guessing out of Facebook and Instagram ad targeting.  Get my glorious spreadsheet and explainer PDF here.    Now it's time to GET PAID   Thanks for tuning into the Get Paid Podcast! If you enjoyed today's episode, head over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe, rate, and leave your honest review. Connect with me on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, visit my website for even more detailed strategies, and be sure to share your favorite episodes on social media.   Now, it's time to go get yourself paid.

In this episode Seth and Shannon talk with Alex Hillman, who is quite a renaissance man. He is the co-founder of one of the original co-working spots in the nation, Indy Hall, in Philadelphia, PA. He is also the author of the Tiny MBA, and the co-founder of Stacking The Bricks, an educational company that helps entrepreneurs on their journey. Preroll Ad: This business book is excellent: Tiny MBA (https://socl.bz/tinymba) Tweet length business snippets from a business innovator in Philadelphia with more than 15+ years of business experience. Intro: Seth: Hey, Everyone, and welcome to season two, episode twelve of the Digital Marketing Dive Podcast. I’m Seth with Goldstein Media, and with me as always is the amazing and talented Shannon of DIAM Business Consulting. Shannon, you ready to rock? Today we have Alex Hillman on the show. Alex is the co-founder of Indy Hall, one of the oldest (2006) co-working spaces in the nation (maybe the world). He is also the author of the the Tiny MBA (*full disclosure our title sponsor for this show, thanks Alex). He is also the co-founder of Stacking the Bricks, an e-learning course business for product-centered entrepreneurs. Topics & Links Who is Alex Hillman?IndyHall.orgWith the pandemic Indy Hall’s online coworking community has been growing beyond the Philadelphia-area.Open Hall!Tiny MBAHow did it come about? What’s the origin story? What is your favorite part of the book?Stacking the BricksWhat is it? What is 30×500? Who should enroll? Shannon’s Event In April: Piecing Together A Success Business https://socl.bz/6R Shout Out (Ad) Breesy Masks are Silver-Nano Protected, Breathable, Lightweight, Fog-Free.Xchange: Most Protective. 5 layers of protection with silver-nano technology.Sports: Most Breathable. 2 layers of protection with silver-nano technology. Link: https://socl.bz/masks Outro: Seth: Well, that was so much fun Shan. Shannon: It was great!! Reach out to us on DMD’s social media channels and let us know what challenges you are having with digital marketing. I want to shout out to Breesy Masks for keeping us covered in the craziness of 2021. These are by far the most comfortable masks I’ve worn. They are lightweight and moisture-wicking for a cool and comfortable experience. Check them out. The link is in the show notes! Seth: If you’re enjoying the season, please feel free to give us a review in Apple Podcasts or the podcast directory of your choice. We appreciate all the support. If you feel so inclined check out PodChaser and give us a review there! That’s it for this episode, but we want to hear from you. Drop us an email at hello@digitalmarketingdive.com or join our Discord server here: https://socl.bz/dmd-dc.

In this episode Seth and Shannon talk with Alex Hillman, who is quite a renaissance man. He is the co-founder of one of the original co-working spots in the nation, Indy Hall, in Philadelphia, PA. He is also the author of the Tiny MBA, and the co-founder of Stacking The Bricks, an educational company that helps entrepreneurs on their journey. Preroll Ad:  This business book is excellent: Tiny MBA (https://socl.bz/tinymba) Tweet length business snippets from a business innovator in Philadelphia with more than 15+ years of business experience. Intro: Seth: Hey, Everyone, and welcome to season two, episode twelve of the Digital Marketing Dive Podcast. I'm Seth with Goldstein Media, and with me as always is the amazing and talented Shannon of DIAM Business Consulting. Shannon, you ready to rock? Today we have Alex Hillman on the show. Alex is the co-founder of Indy Hall, one of the oldest (2006) co-working spaces in the nation (maybe the world). He is also the author of the the Tiny MBA (*full disclosure our title sponsor for this show, thanks Alex). He is also the co-founder of Stacking the Bricks, an e-learning course business for product-centered entrepreneurs. Topics & Links Who is Alex Hillman?IndyHall.orgWith the pandemic Indy Hall's online coworking community has been growing beyond the Philadelphia-area.Open Hall!Tiny MBAHow did it come about? What's the origin story? What is your favorite part of the book?Stacking the BricksWhat is it? What is 30x500? Who should enroll? Shannon's Event In April: Piecing Together A Success Business https://socl.bz/6R Shout Out (Ad) Breesy Masks are Silver-Nano Protected, Breathable, Lightweight, Fog-Free.Xchange: Most Protective. 5 layers of protection with silver-nano technology.Sports: Most Breathable. 2 layers of protection with silver-nano technology. Link: https://socl.bz/masks Outro: Seth: Well, that was so much fun Shan.  Shannon: It was great!! Reach out to us on DMD's social media channels and let us know what challenges you are having with digital marketing.  I want to shout out to Breesy Masks for keeping us covered in the craziness of 2021. These are by far the most comfortable masks I've worn. They are lightweight and moisture-wicking for a cool and comfortable experience. Check them out. The link is in the show notes! Seth: If you're enjoying the season, please feel free to give us a review in Apple Podcasts or the podcast directory of your choice. We appreciate all the support. If you feel so inclined check out PodChaser and give us a review there! That's it for this episode, but we want to hear from you. Drop us an email at hello@digitalmarketingdive.com or join our Discord server here: https://socl.bz/dmd-dc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re bringing you the first episode of Better Done Than Perfect’s Season 2. Join us for a talk with Alex Hillman, founder of Stacking The Bricks and author of The Tiny MBA. We discuss the company’s conception and philosophy, how they handle customer service, what makes a great course, and so much more.Please head over to the episode page for the detailed recap and key takeaways.Show notesStacking The Bricks — Alex’s company together with Amy HoyNoko, EveryTimeZone — products by Amy Hoy, Alex’s partner30x500 — Alex and Amy’s flagship productIndy Hall — Alex’s famous coworking space, now a remote work communityJust F#*!ing Ship — a book by Amy and AlexWrite Useful Books — a book & tool by Rob FitzpatrickUI Breakfast Episode 206: Writing Useful Books with Rob FitzpatrickBear — a note-taking appThe Essential Podcasting Guide — a book by Craig Hewitt of CastosNathan Barry’s ConvertKit AcademyMastering ConvertKit — a course by Brennan Dunn available at Double Your Freelancing RateFundamental UI Design — a book Jane wrote for InVision (currently a free course)BadAss: Making Users Awesome — a book by Kathy SierraFollow Alex on TwitterThe Tiny MBA — Alex’s book (use promocode BDTP20 at checkout for 20% off)Thanks for listening! If you found the episode useful, please spread the word about this new show on Twitter mentioning @userlist, or leave us a review on iTunes.SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best way for SaaS founders to send onboarding emails, segment your users based on events, and see where your customers get stuck in the product. Start your free trial today at userlist.com.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here’s how.

Bas (virtually) sits down with Siah McCabe, a Population Health Specialist with Independence Blue Cross, and former honoree of the Chamber of Commerce for the Greater Philadelphia/Young Professionals Council's Spotlight Award. The pair discuss adjusting to Philly, career development, and mental health. Siah and Bas end by examing how Siah lives her best life.

Can we apply customer success practices to books and courses? And how can infoproducts help SaaS customers succeed? Season 2's first guest is Alex Hillman, founder of Stacking The Bricks and author of The Tiny MBA. We discuss the company's conception and philosophy, how they handle customer service, what makes a great course, and so much more.Visit our website for the detailed episode recap with key learnings.Show notesStacking The Bricks — Alex's company together with Amy HoyNoko, EveryTimeZone — products by Amy Hoy, Alex's partner30x500 — Alex and Amy's flagship productIndy Hall — Alex's famous coworking space, now a remote work communityJust F#*!ing Ship — a book by Amy and AlexWrite Useful Books — a book & tool by Rob FitzpatrickUI Breakfast Episode 206: Writing Useful Books with Rob FitzpatrickBear — a note-taking appThe Essential Podcasting Guide — a book by Craig Hewitt of CastosNathan Barry's ConvertKit AcademyMastering ConvertKit — a course by Brennan Dunn available at Double Your Freelancing RateFundamental UI Design — a book Jane wrote for InVision (currently a free course)BadAss: Making Users Awesome — a book by Katy SierraFollow Alex on TwitterThe Tiny MBA — Alex's book (use promo code BDTP20 at checkout for 20% off)Thanks for listening! If you found the episode useful, please spread the word about the show on Twitter mentioning @userlist, or leave us a review on iTunes.SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best way for SaaS founders to send onboarding emails, segment your users based on events, and see where your customers get stuck in the product. Start your free trial today at userlist.com

On the show today is Alex Hillman. Alex is a partner of Stacking The Bricks (which produces the popular 30x500 course), founder of the OG co-working space IndyHall, and the author of The Tiny MBA.I wanted to bring him on because Alex doesn't consider himself a marketer, but he's a fantastic marketer. He and Amy Hoy are always top of mind for me when I think of marketing digital products like courses and books.You'll hear about the similarities between teaching and marketing, "flintstoning" marketing and avoiding the temptation to automate, scale, and delegate everything, how he's marketing his new book, The Tiny MBA, and how to build an audience in way that's truly helpful and not spammy or self-promotional.More on Alex: @alexhillman on Twitter Use the code SWIPEFILES to get 20% off The Tiny MBA Here's the Twitch streamer Alex referenced: Harris Heller launches StreambeatsSponsored by SparkLoop — the referral tool for newsletters. Hundreds of smart newsletter creators use SparkLoop to get more, high-quality email subscribers on autopilot. Get started in 5 minutes and start a free 30-day trial → sparkloop.app/eim

We’re revisiting highlights from this year’s run of Hi-Res Daily episodes with a look back on conversations with Jason Rothman, Jon Billet, Alex Hillman, Mel Calantropio & Meg Potoma, Ellen Manning, Lydia Nichols, Andrew Zaeh, John Antes, Nate Nichols, Dan Mall, Gena Senior, Emily Kelley, Allan Peters, Debbie Millman, Neil Binkley, Nisha Dent, Kelly Holohan, Jason Craig, Amberella, Nicole Saltzer, Dermot Mac Cormack, Thomas Foley, Chris Piascik and Christopher Lands.

For the transcript and full episode notes/resources, go to: https://bit.ly/3qR4FpzAnd if you have a moment, I’d love it if you could give me a little feedback via this SurveyMonkey link. (It only takes one minute.)Click here to directly email Andrew your questions, comments, and feedback! He reads everything that is sent in (click 'Allow' if you get a popup): connect@makethingsthatmatter.comYou can submit your own audio questions at https://www.speakpipe.com/andrewskotzkoIf you enjoy the podcast, please consider subscribing and leaving a rating/review. It really helps!

The weather has been fantastic in Taiwan as it always is around Halloween, but Mark's been really feeling the pressure to meet the requirements to renew his entrepreneur visa. He suspects that the easiest route will be to earn enough to hire three employees, or possibly to to set up a local company and spend a required amount. . Justin thinks the best bet to hit that goal is to work hard on his starter kit—Phoenix Igniter. Nugget's star pupil, Mateo, made his first sale on his project Heyhi! This is great news for Justin since he's been looking for the right case study. It could start with how he heard about Nugget, how he went through the lessons, started building experiments and finally profitable apps. Justin has basically boiled down the lessons from Nugget into a single sentence: "Hyper iterate on the product, talk to people and make what they need". Alex Hillman and Daniel Vassallo had an interesting debate on Indie Hackers about the value of an email audience vs a Twitter audience. We thought they both made a strong case, but leaned towards email for long-term safety if nothing else. Justin explained quite a bit more about how strange and interesting the Roblox dev environment is. Multiple devs and builders can all work on a game simultaneously and see the effects of each other's efforts in real time. It also wraps up client-server communication in a way that reminds Mark of 2013-era Meteor.js with Mini-mongo available in the browser's dev tools. The competition in Roblox dev is intense and it's fairly alien for a web dev, but Justin's got some big goals. Today's Topics include: Poor quality election debates Mark's visa renewal requirements Nugget's star Black Friday and Humble Bundle Roblox development Mentioned [Recursive Quality Factor] Julia Evan's Zines Heyhi Kutty Tailwind Components Render Twitter Audience vs Email Audience Phoenix Igniter Alchemist Camp Nugget Academy Mark's goals for next time Record 4 screencasts Awesome October Hold off on Phoenix Igniter Justin's goals for next time Keep working on the Roblox game Exercise 15 minutes a day Video version at https://youtu.be/TRNv3XsI0hs Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/32 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-09-30

Alex Hillman, Author of The Tiny MBA joins us to talk about why companies should provide an apprenticeship over an internship.

Alex Hillman, Author of The Tiny MBA joins us to talk about why companies should provide an apprenticeship over an internship.

Alex Hillman, Author of The Tiny MBA and Fearless Leader/Co-Founder of Indy Hall joins us to talk about why should companies provide an apprenticeship over an internship. Why should companies provide an apprenticeship instead of an internship? Alex Hillman highlights reasons why companies should do so and the importance of building a sustainable team. What […]

On this episode, we have Alex Hillman from stackingthebricks.com. Alex is an expert in email lists and newsletters. We'll dive into some interesting topics such as the common misconceptions with email lists and a type of newsletter called evergreen newsletters, which is essentially a fully automated newsletter.

Alex is based in Philadelphia, and after leaving Drexel University early, he started building websites for businesses. As he was freelancing, he had a deep desire for a community as he worked. He teamed up with a few friends to start Indy Hall, one of the first coworking spaces in the US, in 2006. For reference, WeWork didn’t start until 2010. Indy Hall has become a staple in Philadelphia and has grown to hundreds of members. Alex teamed up with Amy Hoy to start Stacking the Bricks, which is a company that helps freelancers bootstrap and build effective businesses. Most recently, Alex published a book, The Tiny MBA. This book is not your typical business book. Each page has one thought that is a small prompt to make your think about something bigger in your life and business. There are 100 ideas that will help you evaluate and execute on your built-in advantages in your business. In this episode, we discuss: How Alex came to write The Tiny MBA How to find your audience The difference between good self-promotion and bad self-promotion How Alex started Indy Hall and built an in-person community GIVEAWAY We will be giving out one copy of The Tiny MBA to one person next episode! All you have to do is write a review on Apple Podcasts or your podcast listening app! You can use the discount code HOWTOSHOW for 20% off if you don't win. Sign up for The Marketing Memo: https://www.gattozzicollective.com/the-marketing-memo Show notes: https://www.gattozzicollective.com/podcast-episodes/alex-hillman --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/how-to-build-an-audience/message

Alex Hillman of Indy Hall and Stacking The Bricks joins me to talk about his new book The Tiny MBA.

In this episode I chat with Tiny MBA author Alex Hillman about the psychology of money, our false assumptions about business, and what we can learn from the 90's sitcom "Dinosaurs".

Alex Hillman is an expert online audience builder who has taught hundreds of entrepreneurs how to grow an audience online. Today, he teaches us how to grow our podcast audience, for free, spending only 10 minutes a day. Grab The Tiny MBA here, and use code GROWTHESHOW for 20% off! Follow Alex on Twitter. Want to join a community of high-performing independent podcasters? Want to swap tactics, get feedback, and grow together? Want to have your questions answered during AMAs with podcasting legends? Join us in the Grow The Show online community!   Ready to have Kevin join your podcasting team? Apply for the Grow The Show Podcast Accelerator! or watch Kevin's 70-minute Masterclass on how he took his first podcast past 100k and $100k to learn more about the program. Resources: >> THE HANDS-DOWN BEST USB MICROPHONE: SHURE MV Want your podcast to sound as crisp and high-quality as mine does? Easy. Grab the brand-new Shure MV7. This is the first-ever USB mic created by Shure. It's completely plug-and-play, out of the box, and is the only USB mic that gives you the same silky smooth sound as the Shure SM7B setup, at 1/3rd of the cost. I literally cannot recommend this microphone enough. All of the convenience. Amazing price. BY FAR the best bang for your buck. Grab it now on Amazon!   >> THE BEST REMOTE INTERVIEW RECORDING SOFTWARE: SQUADCAST Squadcast is by far the best remote recording platform in the game. I use Squadcast to record my interviews for all of my podcasts, because it's the easiest platform for me and my guests to use, and it has the best audio quality. Within weeks, Squadcast will be introducing video recording too. Want to give it a go? Use this link to sign up and you'll be able to try the platform for free for an entire interview!   >> THE BEST WEB PLAYER + TRANSCRIPTION EMBEDDER FOR YOUR WEBSITE: FUSEBOX If you head over to growtheshow.com/episodes, you'll see that each episode features a nifty embedded web player AND an embedded transcript of the entire episode. This is easily done with the Fusebox plugin, which works for all website providers (WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, and any other HTML Website!) My favorite part? The transcript gets pasted in super easily, looks great, and the entire text of the episode counts for SEO. Use this link to sign up for Fusebox and quickly and easily revamp your podcast website.

WOW we are here!!! Season 2. You can expect even more terrible boss stories, and I promise you will be left jaw dropped and wondering "why, oh why, would this person lead others"? Season 2 is about THOSE horrible bosses, the ones that make you cringe, the ones you will never forget, and hopefully the ones you will learn from. We will also continue to drink obscene amounts of coffee BUT since we are big time we are now exclusively drinking Larry's coffee (link below to get you some of that stuff). In our first episode of Season 2 we do not hold back on the horrible boss tragedies and we also do not hold back on our coffee! Our guest, Alex Hillman has the coolest book out called The Tiny MBA which is what I believe is the book you need as an entrepreneur and leader in 2020. It's everything you need to know and no fluff or exceedingly lengthy diatribes on what business should be. He tells it like it is. After graduating from Drexel, Alex started his Co-Op experience working in software development. He worked with a great team and when a portion of that team started a new venture, Alex thought "hey this will be super cool, I'll work with people I know and like and do what I love". And there, my friends, lies the rub. Alex learned pretty quickly that his new boss, was not cut out to lead himself, let alone a team. Alex was left frustrated but still loving what he was doing, but working for a total tool. You can imagine how long that lasted. There is a happy ending at the end of this one though, Alex went on to do some pretty big things. Including being a pioneer in the co-working space. And get this, he even let his members stop paying rent but stay a part of their online community when COVID hit freelancers hard. He also wrote The Tiny MBA and you need to get this book now. You can read it over a lunch break, but you'll go back to it again and again. To get your caffeine fix on go here: https://larryscoffee.com/ To get to know Alex and get his book (do this, now): https://stackingthebricks.com/tinymba/#bio

Alex Hillman grabs a chair and joins our table for this special episode. We talk about his new book, The Tiny MBA.

Mark "went" to Microconf's first remote conference. There were a number of technical issues, but he was fantatically lucky in terms of who he met during the breaks. The very first person he talked to, Richard, lives in Pasadena and knows Justin! He also met someone running a large Elixir meetup and one of the founders of Elixir Drips, the OG screencast that started the niche Alchemist Camp currently occupies! Justin extended the launch of his bootcamp to his entire email list and is already seeing over 100 people going through the 7-day course. He's offering the premium version of the entrepreneur academy to people who complete it but none have bitten so far. The next step will be to share it on HN to get more people in the funnel and make A/B testing possible. In related news, Mark has realized that the median result of writing a blog post on Questing Log and submitting it to HN is hitting the front page and getting to #2. We talked a bit about post titles, submission times and user accounts. There was an interesting discussion between Alex Hillman and Justin Jackson on Twitter about how important it is or isn't for an entrepreneur to build an audience. Mark mentioned it, and as a result Justin jumped onto Twitter after the show and ended up recording an impromptu TechZing interview with Justin Jackson! We discussed podcasting mics in depth! Hat tip to Ben Orenstein and Pat Flynn for their suggestions and hopefully you'll be able to hear the difference soon! Probably not on Spotify though, at least not in a very listenable version... Today's Topics include: Microconf remote Successfully submitting to Hacker News How important audience is or isn't Amazon Podcasting mics Spotify for podcasters Experience points Interviewing Microphones Ben Orenstein's recommended mic: ATR2100 Justin's anti-recommended mic Mark's old mic: Yeti Nano Mark's new mic: Samson Q2U Mentioned Discussion on audience: Justin Jackson Discussion on audience: Alex Hillman TechZing Ep. 333 Questing Log Nugget Academy Mark's goals for next time Use the mic and record, record record! Follow up with the new Microconf connections Upgrade Phoenix Igniter to v1.5 (lower priority) Justin's goals for next time Focus primarily on making Slider (a Roblox game) Jump on the trampoline for 15 minutes a day No dairy for a week Add more people to the Nugget bootcamp funnel Video version at https://youtu.be/q6cs2BCah_c Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/29 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-09-02

Episode 087 - Alex Hillman, Author of "The Tiny MBA: 100 Very Short Lessons about the Long Game of Business" Our guest on this episode just can’t leave well enough alone.  He co-founded Indy Hall, Philadelphia's first co-working space, in 2006, and kickstarted the co-working boom that has exploded today.  In 2009, he co-founded "Stacking The Bricks" with Amy Hoy, where they taught creative people how to bootstrap their own businesses. Since 2019, he has been working tirelessly to help 10,000 people become sustainably independent by 2029. Through the 10k Independents Project, he and his collaborators are taking on the issues that hamper entrepreneurship such as access to affordable healthcare, skill-building, legislative support for solo businesses, and more. He is a serial-entrepreneur, but not a jerk, and he shares his experience and opinions generously on Twitter where the 100 tips that make up the book he recently authored, “The Tiny MBA,” first appeared. You can "@" him @alexhillman. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and friends, and loves food, travel, red wine or whiskey, and karaoke. Here for your listening pleasure are the Self Made Strategies of Alex Hillman. You can check out Alex's new book here: https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-MBA-Short-Lessons-Business-ebook/dp/B08DJ8ZDZV On this episode you will hear Alex discuss: How he came up with the idea for the book, The Tiny MBA: 100 Very Short Lessons about the Long Game of Business Nilofer Merchant (whose work you can check out here: https://atwork.substack.com/), in her foreword to the book, calls it the “anti-MBA,” but Alex is not really “anti” anything, he's a community builder, so we discussed what objective he hopes to accomplish with this book “Most business decisions are relatively reversible. If you have a decision that doesn’t seem reversible, try looking for ways to shrink the decision into smaller parts. That way, it’s cheap or free to undo the decision if things don’t go the way you expect.” “Money psychology impacts the ability to build a sustainable business in a massive way, but most people haven’t ever analyzed their own money psychology for habits and flaws.” Alex's theories on bootstrapping The 10k Independents Project and why Alex started it Production Credits: This Self Made Strategies Podcast is a SoftStix Productions LLC jawn. This episode was produced, hosted, and edited by Tony Lopes, remotely, in Philly, PA USA, with support from the team at SoftStix Productions LLC. The Self Made Strategies Podcast is sponsored by Lopes Law LLC (www.LopesLawLLC.com). Make sure you subscribe to the Self Made Strategies Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. You can find us on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Blubrry and many other podcasting platforms. Don't forget to visit www.selfmadestrategies.com to sign up for our newsletter, or to get more information about our guests. Follow us on: • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram • LinkedIn

Happy birthday to the guy who brought us together, Alex Hillman. Thank you for all you do.

The Iowa Idea: Alex Hillman “I'm really bad at faking it.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Alex Hillman. Alex is always thinking about the intersection of people, relationships, trust, and business. These days, he splits his time between running Indy Hall (Philadelphia's oldest coworking space), teaching creative people […]

Check out the Tiny MBA at http://tiny.mba

In this episode of the podcast, your host Louis Nicholls sits down with founder, author and all-round-business-expert Alex Hillman. Alex has decades of experience helping people build successful businesses. From running his coworking community Indy Hall, to his course, 30x500, where he and Amy Hoy have coached hundreds of founders. Now, Alex has distilled all of that experience and knowledge into his new book, The Tiny MBA. It's full of 100 short ideas to build your own business that lasts. I was lucky enough to read a prelaunch copy, and it's easily the best value per word of any business book I've ever read. Today on the podcast, Alex is going to walk us through three of my favourite ideas in the book. You can find Alex on Twitter at @alexhillman, check out his writing at StackingTheBricks.com, and - of course - grab your copy of the Tiny MBA at Tiny.MBA --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sales-for-founders/message

Ken and Becca talk to Alex Hillman about the launch of his new book, The Tiny MBA: 100 Very Short Lessons about the Long Game of Business. The post TechChat Tuesdays #7: Special Guest Alex Hillman on his new book, The Tiny MBA appeared first on Chariot Solutions.

Anxiety, Violence, Opportunity, and More in Process Hacker News from Hack the Process Podcast Welcome to the Process Hacker News, your roundup of useful news and updates from Process Hackers who have been guests on Hack the Process with M. David Green. This episode we’ve got anxiety, violence, opportunity, and more. For all the links, check out the show notes: https://www.hacktheprocess.com/anxiety-violence-opportunity-and-more-in-process-hacker-news-from-hack-the-process-podcast/ Enjoy! Media The Global Coworking Diaries is a project put together by Alex Hillman and Kali Norman, interviewing community leaders around the world about how the current health crisis has affected coworking. The pandemic has created a lot of disruption in our lives, but Andrew Nance wants to help ease your anxiety with some mindful breathing exercises. How did Maria Dismondy become a children’s book author? Find out in her new interview on the Coach Azul Podcast. Join Rhonda Magee and Dan Harris on Ten Percent Happier as they teach you to meditate and stop toxic tendencies.. Despite the current economic uncertainty, it’s still a good time to build your business from scratch. Tune in to Tom Morkes’s conversation with Jovana Miljanovic to lean how. Writing The Innovator’s Spirit, a new book by Chuck Swoboda just came out, and it’s already a bestseller, reaching number one among Amazon’s new release books! Congratulations, Chuck! In light of ongoing police violence against the Black community in the United States, Michelle Kim suggests twenty actions Asian Americans can take to show allyship. As a business owner, Zvi Band‘s latest article talks about the value of being transparent to your team and your stakeholders. A new blog post by Safi Bahcall features Michael Farzan, the Scripps Research virologist who worked on SARS, who mentions how Covid-19 is a dumb virus compared to HIV and Influenza. Recommended Resources Many people are having a hard time with their finances while sheltering in place. In an interview with Today, Ramit Sethi, a personal finance pro referenced by Maneesh Sethi, proposes ways to manage bills and credit card fees through strategic planning and negotiation. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is the topic of an article in Business Insider because he took a 90-day no lay-off pledge and is urging other CEOs to help their employees through the coronavirus by doing the same. Marc was one of the folks mentioned by Tiffani Bova in her interview. As we adapt to life during and after the pandemic, we have the opportunity now to prepare for a better future by prioritizing justice, diversity, and inclusion. Tiffany Jana, mentioned during the interview with Joy Wiggins and Kami Anderson, issues a call for us to focus on equity in her blog post. Thanks for checking out this Process Hacker News update from Hack the Process. If you liked what you saw, please leave a comment to let us know what processes you’re hacking.

Hey family! This week brings you a special episode. Alex Hillman and I teamed up for a live podcast interview and Q&A as COVID-19 was starting to take a toll on business owners.  This is a tough time for most of us. Some online entrepreneurs are seeing a decline in revenue while several industries have been shut down completely. What do we do when we're facing uncertainty, struggling to figure out our next move, and are trying to avoid thoughts of giving up completely?We pivot. We lean into our communities. We get resourceful.Alex is the founder of Indy Hall, a coworking community in Philadelphia, and the co-founder of Stacking the Bricks along with Amy Hoy. He joined me to dig into practical pivot strategies, tips for building online communities, and effective sales strategies for a down economy.  Our live audience brought some great questions, so stick around after the interview for some more great advice about marketing during a pandemic, free vs. paid communities, and creating free content when your business is struggling.   Episode Quotes"If we wait, there may be nothing... so let's be resourceful.""The difference between a group of people and a community is the direction that the support flows.""The value of the community gets bigger if the more people are in it and contributing.""The value of a community is the resiliency of your customers in their businesses.""Short term thinking is the thing that will kill a lot of businesses." Listen to Learn04:45 - Getting to know Alex Hillman, Rapid 5 Questions11:52 - Challenges small business owners are facing due to COVID-1918:06 - Marketing and pivot strategies26:40 - Product sales strategy in a down economy31:30 - Community building and management essentials40:07 - Community building during COVID-19 crisis43:59 - Q&A on finding the right marketing tone47:28 - Q&A on free content53:02 - Q&A on free vs. paid communities1:00:05 - Tools for online community building1:06:02 - Practical advice for business owners Connect with AlexDangerouslyAwesome.comIndyHall.orgStackingtheBricks.comFollow Alex on Twitter!   Looking for the Transcript?Episode 124

This is “the Dodcast” I'm your host, Nathaniel Dodson. In today's podcast I sat down with Alex Hillman, an entrepreneur, a co-working expert, and a buddy of mine. Alex is a mainstay in the coworking and startup community both in Philadelphia and around world. You can check out more about Alex at dangerouslyawesome.com or at indyhall.org where you'll find information about the coworking space we talk about here.In our chat, Alex and I talk about coworking, what it is, how it works, and where so many people get it wrong, we talk about some of the challenges of managing a space for hundreds of small business owners. I recall a time I got blocked from coming to Indy Hall, a time that he hacked his school's network, and one way he thought I brought value to the community when we first met. We talk about all this and much more on THIS, the fifth episode of “the Dodcast.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alex Hillman is the founder of IndyHall, the oldest coworking space in Philadelphia and one of the oldest and longest-running in the United States. Alex is an expert on creating and maximizing value from community. He talks about using stories to create and maintain community. Best quote: “Rules are the scar tissue of past decisions.” In the first ten minutes we talk about Alex's background and some stories about Indy Hall. Some highlights from the show: 13:40: For creating community, the key is writing yourself into the story – and now you have a story you can talk about. 14:25: “The story of why these microphones on the table is more important than the fact that we have these microphones on the table.” 18:40: The importance of letting go of the story and letting stories bubble up: giving people permission is the secret.  22:50: How to get a message across: how the Indy Hall team uses stories to help potential members see themselves in the Indy Hall story 25:40: Indy Hall's unique membership level: You can't buy your way into becoming a keyholder. You have to earn your privileges. Two stories of how this tradition came to be a part of the Indy Hall culture. 30:00 The role of the leader is to find out the stories everyone else has.  

Hello Shareable community! It’s hot this week in Philadelphia, and this episode is even hotter. It’s the first episode recorded in our new podcast studio! Woo! And if you caught us on Facebook Live, then you know who’s on this week! It’s Bart Mroz! If you missed it, don’t worry you can hear the whole episode right here and if you’d like to get the full picture watch us on Facebook. Bart Mroz is a long-time friend of Jeff’s. He’s the co-founder and CEO of SUMO Heavy, a digital commerce consulting and strategy firm. Bart is a serial entrepreneur, the founding partner of multiple consulting companies, and a thought leader who has been published in top eCommerce publications including Internet Retailer and AdExchanger. In this episode, Bart and Jeff dive right into technology and how it’s advanced their lives and careers. Bart shares why having a bad boss was one of his most valuable lessons, and how his grandma influenced the way he treats his employees at SUMO Heavy. You definitely don’t want to miss this episode. And shoutout to Alex Hillman for coining the acronym that everyone needs to internalize, “JFDI.” THX, Alex.

Session 3 is here! I invited my friend Vanessa Gennarelli to join me for a new recurring segment that we're calling "The Stack". Vanessa is a community builder of a special sort: she works specifically on learning communities, and is trained as a researcher in the field.What does that mean for you, though? In "The Stack", I choose 3 topics that are related to community building and coworking...though the connections might not be obvious at first. As you listen to this candid conversation, you'll get a glimpse into how Vanessa and I - two community professionals in VERY different fields - connect the dots, solve problems, and observe the world around us.I promise you this: you're absolutely, positively going to have your worldview expanded. Guaranteed, or your money back!On The Stack for this session:Accreditation (wtf is that)?How we create goalsOpen governanceGet new episodes right when they dropSubscribe in iTunes: http://bit.ly/coworkingweekly-itunesSubscribe in Stitcher: http://bit.ly/coworkingweekly-stitcherSubscribe to CoworkingWeekly emails to get future episodes first (and more from behind the scenes) in your inbox.I don't know if you saw this when I tweeted it, but we hit the podcast charts HARD in the Business category on iTunes. Thanks to your listening, sharing, rating, and reviewing, we hit the #9 spot! I'm overwhelmed, amazed, and grateful. Thank you, so much. I'll keep bringing it if you keep showing up!