Podcast appearances and mentions of clayton christiansen

Why do people listen to podcasts? And why do they listen to YOUR podcast (or one like yours)? It turns out, the answers to these questions can be found in a nerdy, obscure marketing concept called Jobs to Be Done Theory. Jobs to Be Done Theory origins date back to the 1930s, but was more fully developed by Harvard Business School researched Clayton Christiansen—primarily through an iconic case study about milkshakes… and how people don't buy milkshakes for the obvious reasons you might think.But JTBD applies to much more than milkshakes. In fact, it applies to every product, service, piece of content—including podcasts—that any of us spend time, money, or attention to consume. In this episode, we'll break down how to apply JTBD theory to boost the effectiveness of your marketing by aligning your content, messaging, and packaging with the job your listeners are seeking out a show to do.

What's up everyone and welcome to The Corporate Bartender!Is innovation important to you? Do you need your people to think creatively? Well, we all know that people are messy, change is hard, and getting to those amazing ideas can take some doing.We've got Robyn Bolton on the program today. Never heard of her? You're in the right spot! Robyn is the founder and Chief Navigator at MileZero. She's an innovation expert who's been involved in some pretty iconic product launches (I'm looking at you Swiffer Wet Jet!). She's worked with innovation guru Clayton Christiansen, and have a unique take on getting your folks to level up.Innovation isn't an idea problem, it's a leadership problem. 'Nuff said. This conversation was a hoot, and I think you're gonna dig it!If you wanna skip straight to the interview, 4:35 is your spot.TCB Layout:0:00 - Show Open & Intro0:59 - Titles1:25 - Kickoff 4:35 - Robyn Bolton Interview49:10 - Funny Things & WrapLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robynmbolton/Website: https://www.milezero.com/Join our community!https://the-corporate-bartender.mn.co/

Stock Investing Info from Earnings Hub w/ Hamid Shojaee – Part 2   AZ TRT S05 EP24 (239) 6-16-2024    What We Learned This Week: Earnings Hub is a platform where you can find all the information on a company, when their earnings are coming out, & quarterly calls Earnings info for Public Co's is often hard to find, and the income for stocks is crucial to the price Hamid is a long term investor like Buffet, more of buy and hold of good stocks, only owns 8 stocks Concentration Builds Wealth – Diversification Preserves it. Looking for companies that can grow 10x over the next few years, and this is hard with massive companies worth $ trillions like Apple or Microsoft   Guests: Hamid Shojaee https://aztechbeat.com/   Hamid talks all thing AZ tech, Startups and what the world of an Angel Investor really looks like. His 2 decades + of experience is laid out, from starting and running software companies, plus exited the industry to now an Angel Investor mentoring the next generation of Startups. Hamid (Founder of Axosoft and Pure Chat) has always had a passion in helping Arizona's up-and-coming tech talent. Since 2010, Hamid has been involved with various AZ tech initiatives, including bringing tech founder and CEOs together, investing in startups and helping push the #YesPHX community forward. Axosoft – software tools for software development PureChat – live chat software for websites Hamid is a 20 year + software veteran who's built four different multi-million dollar SaaS products in the last twenty years. He recently sold two software companies, Axosoft and Pure Chat, and has been advising and investing in Arizona-based startups for nearly a decade. He recently announced he'll be investing $10 million in promising Arizona tech startups. Hamid is also host of the AZ Tech Podcast, where he interviews Arizona's most successful founders, investors and doers.       https://savvytrader.com/ What is Savvy Trader? Create Create a virtual portfolio of your stocks and crypto. Buy or sell your investments at any time to keep your portfolio up to date. Share Share your portfolio for free, or set a price, for your followers to get access to your portfolio and notified about your trades. Notify Notify your subscribers when you make a trade. Savvy Trader will send a text or email to everyone subscribed to your portfolio.   Savvy Trader is on a mission to make investment information more accessible. Learning about stocks and crypto can be intimidating and overwhelming with incredibly high levels of noise and very little signal. Savvy Trader helps solve this problem in two ways: Create and trade stocks and crypto in a safe virtual portfolio environment. The Savvy Trader virtual portfolios work a lot like a real brokerage account, except the trades are not real, allowing users to experiment and learn. Portfolio Creators can also share their virtual portfolios. A great way to learn about stocks and crypto is to see the virtual portfolios of others, see the actual performance of those portfolios as if they were real, and learn about the reasons behind the creators decisions for buying or selling each holding. So go ahead, create a virtual portfolio and share it with the world. Speaking of, I have a Savvy Trader virtual portfolio myself. Truth be told, I wanted to create Savvy Trader for myself as an easy way for me to consolidate my holdings in multiple accounts into a single virtual portfolio that represents my actual investments, and I wanted an easy way to share my portfolio details with friends and family. You can subscribe to my portfolio below - it's free!     Notes:   Savvy trader a website created by Hamid for portfolio sharing. You can see what stocks other people are buying. You can also create custom portfolio as well as build an audience. They pay creators $25 a month.   Under the Savvy Trader brand, they created Earnings Hub, which gives the quarterly earnings reports of Companies and their stocks. You can get a summary of the quarterly calls, analyst expectations, analyst analysis, the actual earnings, and the calendar on when the earnings come out.   Hamid is a long-term investor who looks for growth, earnings, and earnings validation. The old mantra of, trust but verify. He is definitely a fundamental investor like Buffet, who looks at the numbers of the company. Also believes in companies who make investments in R&D. Looking for great companies with a growing Market Cap.     Part 2   Another company Hamid likes is called Rocket Lab. Stock is $4 and they have a Market Cap of $2 billion vs a competitor like SpaceX valued at $180 billion. Just like SpaceX, Rocket Lab will be putting satellites into orbit.   Over speculation on a stock, and making a problem more than it is, can hurt a stock price. This can create opportunities, if it's a good company, can withstand the short term problems. Investors need to see through those problems, and see how serious it is. What will be the short term cost to the company.   You want to buy good companies, at a great price. Stocks in 2022 at a great price, lots of opportunities. In 2024, stock price is high. It's now just a good price even though the company still good.   A good investor can take advantage of short term volatility. An example of this. is Tesla. That has both benefited, and then sometimes been hurt by volatility. The story behind Tesla sometimes is a growth story based around EV cars, and the mystique of its CEO Elon Musk.   On the downside, when he does some controversy on Twitter, it can hurt the stock. 2023 into 2024, Tesla is facing some issues with slowing growth. Hamid believes that the story of Tesla is actually helping to prop up the stock.   Elon Musk has diversified through the years, not only is their Tesla, now owns Twitter, he owns SpaceX, and has moved into NeuroLink.   Savvy trader, you can share your portfolio. Anyone who joins can see her needs portfolio. Once you make a change on a stock, it is shared in real time.       Part 2 -  OT   When do you sell? Try to sell high, when stocks are at prices of euphoria and take some profits. Take money off the table.   For example, Hamid has been trimming Netflix stock holdings as the price has gone up. He's also trimmed some of his Meta-Facebook stock, as it had grown to 30% of his portfolio. He is even trimming Robin Hood, even though he thinks the stock has more potential to run up.   Hamid monitors about 20 stocks, and then will buy one or two.   He's a big fan of Rocket Lab, which is in competition with SpaceX and its subsidiary Starlink providing satellite internet. This is all about putting satellites into space. Curious to see if Amazon Jeff Bezos space company, Blue Origin will be in the mix later.   One book Hamid likes is Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christiansen, that discusses the problem of disruption from smaller companies. Culture of successful Company typically is it married to their current business model and technology. Rarely do innovators innovate a second time. They become a prisoner of their current business and cannot see what the next stage is going to be.   For example - Kodak originally had the digital camera, but was stuck in their current business model, and did not become a leader in that technology.   Have to see what's going to be the next phase of some big tech companies like Google or Amazon, what do they have on the radar? Amazon seems to be moving into AWS and AI. Google with Bard is also moving into AI to get a better search engine.   It's a lot harder for a $1 trillion company like Microsoft to have massive growth. Hamid is looking for stocks that are worth multi billions versus hundreds of billions. The stocks then have the potential for 5 or 10X growth.   A division of SpaceX is Starlink. They are giving satellite Internet feeds to rural areas.   This is a disruptive technology versus companies like AMT American Tower and the cell tower business or traditional fiber optic Internet. They are launching 20 satellites per week and growing the business.         MB Host on Disruption – Show HERE       Reference Show: Create Your Investing Profile & Share It on Savvy Trader w/ Hamid Shojaee BRT S03 EP58 (157) 11-20-2022   What We Learned This Week Savvy Trader allows you to share your portfolio Investing Track Record - see how people actually invest & their results Why Software is Such a Good Business Model, Build 1x, sell multiple X VCs want to see Traction in Startups Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) & Long term Value of a Custer (LTV) are critical in scaling a startup long term, how much does it cost to get a customer, and how long do you keep them    Full Show: HERE     Hamid of AZ Tech Beat on Technology, Software, Startups & Angel Investing in Arizona - BRT S02 EP 37 (84) 9-12-21                    5 Things We Learned This Week... Difference of Angel Investing vs Venture Capital Working With & Advising a Startup Valuations of Tech Co's vs Standard Business Why Software is Such a Good Business Model Importance of Teams in Software Co's   Guests: Hamid Shojaee AZ Tech Beat https://aztechbeat.com/   Full Show: HERE   Tech Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Tech-Startup-VC-Cybersecurity-Energy-Science   Best of Tech: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/size/5/?search=best+of+tech     Investing Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Investing-Stocks-Bonds-Retirement     ‘Best Of' Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Best+of+BRT     Thanks for Listening. Please Subscribe to the BRT Podcast.     AZ Tech Roundtable 2.0 with Matt Battaglia The show where Entrepreneurs, Top Executives, Founders, and Investors come to share insights about the future of business.  AZ TRT 2.0 looks at the new trends in business, & how classic industries are evolving.  Common Topics Discussed: Startups, Founders, Funds & Venture Capital, Business, Entrepreneurship, Biotech, Blockchain / Crypto, Executive Comp, Investing, Stocks, Real Estate + Alternative Investments, and more…    AZ TRT Podcast Home Page: http://aztrtshow.com/ ‘Best Of' AZ TRT Podcast: Click Here Podcast on Google: Click Here Podcast on Spotify: Click Here                    More Info: https://www.economicknight.com/azpodcast/ KFNX Info: https://1100kfnx.com/weekend-featured-shows/   Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the Hosts, Guests and Speakers, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent (or affiliates, members, managers, employees or partners), or any Station, Podcast Platform, Website or Social Media that this show may air on. All information provided is for educational and entertainment purposes. Nothing said on this program should be considered advice or recommendations in: business, legal, real estate, crypto, tax accounting, investment, etc. Always seek the advice of a professional in all business ventures, including but not limited to: investments, tax, loans, legal, accounting, real estate, crypto, contracts, sales, marketing, other business arrangements, etc.

Experte für Patente & Lizenzen und treibende Kraft in Innovation und Unternehmertum Peter Hug ist passionierter Erfinder, Inhaber mehrerer Patente und Marken, leidenschaftlicher Unternehmer seit mehr als 25 Jahren, und ein gefragter Innovations-Experte. Als autorisiertes go-Inno Beratungsunternehmen des Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK) hilft Peter und sein Team, Klein- und Mittelständischen Unternehmen (KMU), Selbstständigen und Gründern, Ideen erfolgreich umzusetzen. Nach der technischer Ausbildung und Studium hat Peter Hug, neben seiner Tätigkeit als Leiter der Produktentwicklung eines KMU, ein Executive Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) mit Schwerpunkt Technologie und Innovationsmanagement an der Steinbeis School of Management & Technology abgeschlossen. Danach ging Peter nach Kalifornien, in eine der Innovativesten Wirtschaftsregion der Welt, um Betriebswirtschaft an der Pepperdine University in Los Angeles zu studieren. Währenddessen war Peter Mitglied des Entrepreneurs Club der Graziadio School of Business and Management, und konnte über deren Business Angels Netzwerk bei Pitch Veranstaltungen den Gründerspirit des Silicon Beach live miterleben. Er hat zu dieser Zeit in Santa Monica gelebt und gearbeitet, wo sich derweil Tech Unternehmen wie Snapchat, Yahoo, Dollar-Shave-Club, Hulu oder SpaceX in seiner direkten Nachbarschaft angesiedelt haben. Patente & Lizenzen - Ideen zum Markterfolg bringen Nach einem Abstecher an die Universität St. Gallen (HSG) in der Schweiz, hat Peter mit einem Master of Business Administration (MBA) mit Schwerpunkt Innovation & Entrepreneurship cum laude abgeschlossen. Seither hat Peter mehrere Unternehmen gegründet, Produktideen umgesetzt, und Innovationen erfolgreich an Unternehmen lizenziert. Seit 2016 unterstützt er Unternehmer, KMU Geschäftsführer, und Selbständigen dabei, aus deren Ideen einen Markterfolg zu machen.   Peter`s Geschäftsmodell steht auf 2 Säulen zu Patente & Lizenzen - dem Erfinden, also dem Umsetzen eigener Ideen mithilfe von Lizenznehmern, also etablierte Unternehmer mit vorhandener Unternehmensstruktur, Produktion, Sales, Service etc… - zum anderen unterstütze Peter KMU Geschäftsführer, Unternehmer und Selbständige dabei deren Ideen umzusetzen. Der Schlüssel, um erfolgreich zu Innovieren ist möglichst viele Ideen zu validieren, testen und umzusetzen. Clayton Christiansen von der Harvard Universität hat einmal in einer Studie herausgefunden, dass aus 10 Ideen nur 2 oder 3 sich am Markt durchsetzen, im besten Fall eine durch die Decke geht. Erfolg mit Innovation ist ein Zahlenspiel. Um für möglichst viele Ideen umzusetzen, beispielsweise um Prototypen zu bauen (MVPś), Markttests zu machen (proof of market), Patente anzumelden, Kapital zu akquirieren etc. musst du möglichst Kosteneffizient und strategisch klug vorgehen, um nicht schon am Ende zu sein, bevor es losgeht. Patente & Lizenzen: Mit dem 9 stufigen Lean Inventing Ideen testen Dafür hat Peter einen 9 stufigen Innovationsprozess ausgearbeitet, das Lean Inventing. Damit können Peters Kunden einen erproben Prozess durchlaufen, um schnell und kosteneffizient Ideen zu testen, anzupassen, und am Ende erfolgreich umzusetzen. Beispielweise arbeitet Peter ich mit einer Methode um temporären kostenlosen Patentschutz zu nutzen, mit 3-D Druck und anderen Rapid-Prototyping Methoden Prototypen zu bauen, oder der Nutzung von (quasi kostenlosen) staatlichen Fördermitteln. Auf der Finanzierungsseite gibt es nämlich für Selbständige und Unternehmen extrem hilfreiche Unterstützung in Form von staatlichen Fördermitteln. Dafür gibt es wunderbare Programme von Bund und Ländern für innovative Ideen und deren Umsetzung. Der Staat ist daran interessiert, dass Innovation im Land bleibt, Arbeitsplätze geschaffen werden, und am Ende Steuern gezahlt werden. Dafür gibt er gerne Geld für gute Ideen, was eine großartige Starthilfe für die Unternehmen ist um Ideen umzusetzen, oder auch um Risiken zu minimieren wenn mal etwas nicht funktioniert. Und das Beste daran: Du musst dich nicht um aufwendigen Förderanträge, Papierkram oder langes Warten auf die Förderzugsage einstellen. Darum kümmert sich Peter und sein Team, und garantiert dir Fördermittel von bis zu 20.000Eur und mehr, damit Du gleich durchstarten kannst. Dein größter Fehler als Unternehmer?: Meine erste Gründung war mit 22 Jahren, gemeinsam mit einem Partner. Wir waren privat befreundet, beide Techniker, und wollten selbstbestimmt für uns arbeiten, und nicht für andere. Wir hatten die gleichen skills, sollen beide gleichberechtigt entscheiden und Partner sein. Ohne klare Aufgabenteilung nach Fähigkeiten, Interessen oder Stärken. Das hat zwangsläufig zu Konflikten geführt, wir haben beide für weniger Geld mehr gearbeitet, und der Traum von der Freiheit als Unternehmer wurde zum zwischenmenschlichen Albtraum. Später im Studium habe ich die Story einem meiner Professoren erzählt, der auch VC Partner war. Er kannte solche Geschichten zu Hauf. Wenn du gründest, nimm nur einen Partner dazu dazu, wenn sich Fähigkeiten ergänzen, also die Partnerschaft einen finanziellen Mehrwert hat – „only partner for spreadsheet reasons“. Freunde sollst du trotzdem haben, geh mit ihnen feiern oder ein Bier trinken, aber gründe keine Firma gemeinsam nur weil du Gesellschaft brauchst. Deine Lieblings-Internet-Ressource?: Trello, ohne dieses Tool bin ich verloren :) ich arbeite gleichzeitig an mehreren Projekten die ich mit Trello strukturiere, organisiere und manage.   Deine beste Buchempfehlung: Buchtitel 1:   Buchtitel 2:   Kontaktdaten des Interviewpartners: Peter Hug PRODUCT. BUSINESS. INNOVATION. Hornstaaderstr. 23 D-78343 Gaienhofen Phone +49 (0)7735 9380291 Fax +49 (0)7735 9380 292 Mail: ph@peterhug.com www.peterhug.com Goodie für unsere Hörer: kostenloses 30-minütiges Beratungsgespräch für die Unterstützen Deiner (Erfindungs-)Idee, und wie Du diese zum Markerfolg führen kannst. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mehr Freiheit, mehr Geld und mehr Spaß mit DEINEM eigenen Podcast. Erfahre jetzt, warum es auch für Dich Sinn macht, Deinen eigenen Podcast zu starten. Jetzt hier zum kostenlosen Podcast-Workshop anmelden: https://Podcastkurs.com +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++   So fing alles an. Hier geht´s zur allerersten Episode von TomsTalkTime.com – DER Erfolgspodcast. Und ja, der Qualitätsunterschied sollte zu hören sein. Aber hey, dass war 2012…

Sima is delighted to have Henry Hays joining her on the podcast today! Henry is the energetic and inspiring Co-founder and Disruptor at Henry Hays Consulting. In this episode of Data Gurus, Henry dives into the concept of disruptive innovation. Biography Henry spent most of his adult life in sales and sales leadership- mainly in pharmaceuticals and biotech. He started in the late 1990s and had the good fortune to get promoted to several different roles where he gained a good sense of the business. His break came when he was recruited away from a comfortable job by his professional mentor, and he literally said “yes” before even learning what he was supposed to sell! Within five years, they had grown the company (Avanir Pharmaceuticals) to the point where it was acquired. That gave Henry resources and choice, so he chose that point to step away from the hamster wheel pace. It happened at the time when the first few Blockbuster Video stores began closing, which was crazy for Henry. So he dove head-first into disruptive innovation and has remained in that space since then. Henry's background Henry describes himself as a lifelong sales guy. He has always been extroverted, so he loves interacting with others. After spending 22 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, he had the opportunity in 2008 to help start a company in the Southern California area. After running the company for almost five years, it got purchased. Soon after, Henry's intellectual curiosity led him to find Clayton Christiansen, the Harvard teacher who came up with the concept of disruptive innovation. Henry was fascinated with Christiansen's ideas and decided to dedicate a good portion of his time to evangelizing about disruptive innovation.  Tremendous opportunity Society has been experiencing some radical shifts lately. As a result, disruptive innovation has taken on a different and more urgent tone, which provides a tremendous opportunity for business owners. Disrupting businesses Henry believes that if people are not disrupting their own businesses, someone else will do it for them. He feels that disruption is much easier for smaller businesses because they are more agile and less challenging to transform. A moment of doubt It is not unusual for disruptors to experience a moment of doubt and wonder if they have done the right thing.  Processing innovation and change  Henry has found that the further we get from our years of schooling, the harder it becomes for us to process new things that do not work for us immediately. Now, when he does not want to opt for some change, he seeks to understand the forces driving the change, why it is happening, who stands to lose, and when. That helps him detach from the emotion of the situation and look at it objectively. Disrupt Ready  Henry and two other partners recently started a company called Disrupt Ready. They provide simple, face-to-face technical education for legacy executives on how the blockchain works and help them facilitate a connection to the third-party tech players that match what they want. They designed Disrupt Ready with adult principles in mind. The Disruption Innovation Index Henry and his partners at Disrupt Connect came up with what they have called the Disruptive Innovation Index to help executives by giving them a sense of where they are as a company and as an individual. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Henry Hays Consulting Henry Hays on LinkedIn

“There's all these different ways that we can look into the future and if you want to speak to some of the major things that you see coming that we might all go, oh yeah, totally understand. And then some surprising things. If there's like a top three list or a top five list, maybe a global scale, but of course root it in what you know for your region.”In “Three Cultural Trends about the Future of Food, Interview with Melissa Clark-Reynolds,” host Beth Barany, creativity coach, and science fiction and fantasy novelist, chats with Melissa in this final episode of a mini-series where they discuss the cultural trends surrounding food and what food industries may look like in the future.About Mellissa Clark-ReynoldsMelissa Clark-Reynolds ONZM, ChMInstD became a Foresight Practitioner and Professional Director after 30 years experience as a technology entrepreneur and CEO of a number of Technology companies. She trained as a Foresight Practitioner with The Institute for the Future in Palo Alto and also with Clayton Christiansen in his approach to Disruptive Innovation through Harvard. She has also trained with Futurist Sohail Inayutollah in his approach to corporate narrative and content level analysis.Melissa works with companies like AsureQuality, Kotahi, Lincoln University, the NZ Screen Sector, and BiosecurityNZ on Strategy and Foresight. Melissa has a particular interest in Platform and Subscription Business Models. She developed and teaches courses in Strategy, Digital Governance and Disruptive Business Models for the NZ Institute of Directors.https://futurecentre.nz/https://twitter.com/HoneyBeeGeekhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/melissaclarkr/RESOURCESFree World Building Workbook for Fiction Writers: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/Part 1: Ep. 31: “Tips for Writing Into The Future: Interview with Foresight Practitioner, Melissa Clark”: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/2023/02/06/tips-for-writing-into-the-future-interview-with-foresight-practitioner-melissa-clark/Part 2: Ep. 33: Your Orientation toward Time and Why I Write Science Fiction, Conversation with Melissa Clark-Reynolds: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/2023/02/22/your-orientation-toward-time-and-why-i-write-science-fiction-conversation-with-melissa-clark-reynolds/--CONNECTContact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580Email: beth@bethbarany.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethbarany/CREDITSEDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCAMUSIC: Uppbeat.ioDISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465

“I've seen so many different stories use science fiction to explore where we are today. And, there's something always very surprising about them. I just really enjoy them.”In this episode, “Your Orientation toward Time and Why I Write Science Fiction, Conversation with Melissa Clark-Reynolds,” host Beth Barany, creativity coach, and science fiction and fantasy novelist, continues her conversation with Melissa as they discuss what fascinates Beth in writing science fiction including the setting of her Janey McCallister Mystery series and share their results from Mind Time's survey, inviting listeners to do the same.About Mellissa Clark-ReynoldsMelissa Clark-Reynolds ONZM, ChMInstD became a Foresight Practitioner and Professional Director after 30 years experience as a technology entrepreneur and CEO of a number of Technology companies. She sits on the Boards of Atkins Ranch, Alpine Energy Network, Daffodil Enterprises Ltd and the NZ Future Bees Trust.  Melissa was previously Chair of Little Yellow Bird, Deputy Chair of Radio NZ, the first independent Director of Beef & Lamb NZ and a Member of MPI's Primary Growth Partnership Investment Advisory Panel. Melissa has been part of the Te Hono Primary Sector Bootcamp at Stanford University, twice. She trained as a Foresight Practitioner with The Institute for the Future in Palo Alto and also with Clayton Christiansen in his approach to Disruptive Innovation through Harvard. She has also trained with Futurist Sohail Inayutollah in his approach to corporate narrative and content level analysis.Melissa works with companies like AsureQuality, Kotahi, Lincoln University, the NZ Screen Sector, and BiosecurityNZ on Strategy and Foresight. Melissa has a particular interest in Platform and Subscription Business Models. She developed and teaches courses in Strategy, Digital Governance and Disruptive Business Models for the NZ Institute of Directors.https://futurecentre.nz/https://twitter.com/HoneyBeeGeekhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/melissaclarkr/RESOURCESFree World Building Workbook for Fiction Writers https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/Mind Time Survey https://mindtime.com/mindtime-thinking-style-survey/New Scientist Weekly: #159 Aboriginal stories describe ancient climate change and sea level rise in Australia https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-scientist-weekly/id1496847791?i=1000594531152Editor's Note: Not the “overlook perspective” but the “overview effect”. Coined by Frank White.SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth BaranySHOW NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDadec. 2023 BETH BARANY--CONNECTContact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580Email: beth@bethbarany.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethbarany/CREDITSEDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCAMUSIC: Uppbeat.ioDISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465

“It is very different than how novelists usually think about their stories set in the future or in an alternative time. Usually, we are thinking of only one kind of story in one kind of direction. Whereas futurists and foresight practitioners think about multiple opportunities that might present themselves going forward. And I find this mental exercise really eye-opening as a science fiction writer.”In this episode, “Tips for Writing Into The Future: Interview with Foresight Practitioner, Melissa Clark-Reynolds,” host Beth Barany, creativity coach, and science fiction and fantasy novelist, kicks off an exciting podcast mini-series featuring futurist and foresight practitioner, Melissa Clark-Reynolds as they discuss how to solve future problems, including the importance of creating a vision from creating different futures and what is backcasting.Content Warning - briefly mentions abortionAbout Mellissa Clark-ReynoldsMelissa Clark Reynolds ONZM, ChMInstD became a Foresight Practitioner and Professional Director after 30 years experience as a technology entrepreneur and CEO of a number of Technology companies. She sits on the Boards of Atkins Ranch, Alpine Energy Network, Daffodil Enterprises Ltd and the NZ Future Bees Trust.  Melissa was previously Chair of Little Yellow Bird, Deputy Chair of Radio NZ, the first independent Director of Beef & Lamb NZ and a Member of MPI's Primary Growth Partnership Investment Advisory Panel. Melissa has been part of the Te Hono Primary Sector Bootcamp at Stanford University, twice. She trained as a Foresight Practitioner with The Institute for the Future in Palo Alto and also with Clayton Christiansen in his approach to Disruptive Innovation through Harvard. She has also trained with Futurist Sohail Inayutollah in his approach to corporate narrative and content level analysis.Melissa works with companies like AsureQuality, Kotahi, Lincoln University, the NZ Screen Sector, and BiosecurityNZ on Strategy and Foresight. Melissa has a particular interest in Platform and Subscription Business Models. She developed and teaches courses in Strategy, Digital Governance and Disruptive Business Models for the NZ Institute of Directors.Website: https://futurecentre.nz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/HoneyBeeGeekLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissaclarkr/RESOURCESHow To Write the Future:http://howtowritethefuture.com/Free World Building Workbook for Fiction Writers:https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/School of International Futureshttps://soif.org.uk/Institute for the Futurehttps://www.iftf.orgSHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth BaranySHOW NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDadec. 2023 BETH BARANY--CONNECTContact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580Email: beth@bethbarany.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethbarany/CREDITSEDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCAMUSIC: Uppbeat.ioDISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465

Whitney Johnson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Disruption Advisors, a talent development company. Whitney is a globally-recognized thought leader. author, keynote speaker, executive coach, consultant, and a popular LinkedIn Learning instructor. In this conversation, Whitney discusses how musicality has lessons for the business world, and the wide applications of the S-Curve. https://bit.ly/TLP-328   Key Takeaways [2:35] At her daughter's prompting during the pandemic, Whitney and her family started watching Korean dramas. The family became obsessed with them. Whitney now studies Korean for two minutes a day on Duolingo. Whitney describes the characteristics of Korean dramas. [5:22] Whitney majored in music, studying classical piano and jazz. Because of her musical background, when she structures a keynote, a book, or a podcast, she looks for musicality and a musical structure to it. Musical structure and musicality inform the work she does. Also, as an experienced accompanist, she knows how to be second, allowing her to be a good interviewer, and as a coach, to listen well. [7:04] Brett Mitchell, the former conductor of the Colorado Symphony, said that music is what happens between the notes. Whitney discusses pauses relating to leadership and cites Clayton Christiansen, saying that partway through his career, Clayton Christiansen started a practice of praying before teaching a class. Once he started that practice, he started to have a significant impact on his students. [8:42] Whitney suggests that before you speak, have a meeting, or a coaching session, you pause and think about the person you're about to speak to, and how to convey to the person that they matter to you, that is an element of leadership. [10:33] Wayne Muller, author of Sabbath, pointed out the pauses in Martin Luther King's exclamation, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” [11:41] Gino Wickman, in The EOS Life, recommends entrepreneurs take sabbaticals. One of Jim's clients just took a sabbatical and reported that stepping back and taking a break allowed them to reflect and then grow. [12:20] Whitney has a LinkedIn Learning class, Grow Yourself, Grow Your Leaders, and a book, Smart Growth. Whitney's view is that we are wired to grow. Virtuous growth is growing in such a way that everyone around you grows as well. She believes that human growth is unbounded. [13:23] Sociologist Everett Rogers applied the S-Curve to the study of how quickly innovation is adopted. Working with Clayton Christiansen, Whitney realized she could apply the S-Curve to individual change and growth. Growth comes in three stages: slow (launch), fast (sweet spot), and slow (master place). Every time you start a new role or a new job, you go through the curve. This is covered in Smart Growth. [14:45] Whitney's LinkedIn course focuses on how to create the conditions where people around you can grow, with the resources they need, and how they can feel connected to what they're doing and the people they're working with. Whitney also talks about building resilience and nurturing people. If you can do all those things, you're creating conditions wherein the people around you can grow. [16:59] Whitney makes the underlying assumption that if you will grow yourself then, by the contagion effect, the people around you will grow. Then, by default, your business will grow. [17:49] You can manage your organization as a portfolio of curves. The people at the curve's launch point will need the most support. They will also have a fresh perspective, opening the door to innovation. You want about 20% of the people in your organization to be new, 60% to be in the sweet spot, and 20% in master, ready for a new challenge. This is a good distribution for innovation. [20:10] De-prioritize the things you do really well that somebody else could do. Whitney gives an example from a client. If you stop doing the things you should delegate to others, you will have time to do the things only you can do, and you get out of the way for them to work on the steep part of the S-Curve. [23:06] Every organization needs to have, as part of their vision, growing human beings and helping them reach their potential. The vision starts with the founders, and as people join the organization, they begin to co-create the vision with the founders. Everyone helps each other grow. In the most fluid, powerful organizations, everyone contributes to the creation of the vision. [26:56] Whitney addresses growth pre-pandemic, in-pandemic, and post-pandemic. A lot of adaptation and resilience have been required. When people are under stress, they go to default stress behaviors. You need to make sure people work together and not against each other. People want to grow but are not always sure how to do it. This goes back to Whitney's course, Grow Yourself, Grow Your Leaders. [28:39] Whitney asks Jan and Jim for their thoughts on getting people to work together under stress. Jim states that when people are stressed they need time and space to solve their problems. People are pausing to figure out how to work together. People need time and space to get up to game speed. Executives are not paid to be busy. Pausing is a good way to grow by asking yourself tough questions. [31:35] Whitney has an assessment that she administers to clients. It includes seven accelerants of growth. The one that ranks the lowest is frequently “Step back to grow.” People are not taking time to pause and reflect. Whitney quotes Tiffany Shlain who asks, “What if we thought of ‘rest' as technology because the promise of technology is to make you more productive?” [34:17] Egon Zehnder surveyed 1,000 executives whether they strongly agreed that to transform your organization you need to transform yourself. Before the pandemic, 18% of executives agreed. After the pandemic, 805 of the executives agreed. The only way you have the moral authority to ask people to change is if you, yourself, are changing. The fundamental unit of change is the individual at every level. [37:52] Whitney lists some people that inspire her, and why: Rashika Tolshan, who wrote about the Queen of England passing away, Brené Brown, Musician Jacob Collier, author Richie Norton, and NFL QB Steve Young. Each of them inspired Whitney with their visions of growth. [41:35] When Whitney was making her list of influential people, her default was to go to all men. She had to make sure she included some women. She had to be very mindful and deliberate to determine who is actually influencing her and she wanted a diversity of perspectives. Jim highlights the leadership lesson of intentionality. [42:49] Whitney's audience homework: On the topic of pausing and resting, listen to these two episodes of Whitney's Step Back to Grow podcast: Episode 139 with filmmaker Tiffany Schlain and Episode 180. Don't avoid taking a pause to rest. [43:57] Closing quote: Remember, “It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.” — Queen Elizabeth II   Quotable Quotes “Because of being a musician, I think of things in a musical sort of way. When I'm structuring a keynote; … a book; … a podcast, there's always a sense of, ‘Is there a musicality to it; is there a musical structure to it?'” — Whitney “I wrote a piece about the importance of taking a break, that you needed to rest because the ability to rest was going to allow you to recharge so that you could then move forward.” — Whitney “For me, growth is our default setting. We're wired to grow.” — Whitney “Every time we start something new, we're on a new S-Curve. There are three stages. There's the launch point that feels slow, there's the sweet spot, … where growth is fast, … and … the master place, where growth is … slow.” — Whitney “People who are successful are intentional. It doesn't just fall in your lap. … Successful people are intentional people and [a high] level intentionality is something to be admired and something for people listening to this podcast to take away.” — Jim   Resources Mentioned Theleadershippodcast.com Sponsored by: Darley.com Rafti Advisors. LLC Self-Reliant Leadership. LLC Whitney Johnson Disruption Advisors Korean Dramas Duolingo Tiffany Shlain on Step Back to Grow, Episode 139 with Whitney Johnson Step Back to Grow, Episode 180 with Whitney Johnson Brett Mitchell Clayton Christiansen Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, by Wayne Muller I Have a Dream Gino Wickman The EOS Life: How to Live Your Ideal Entrepreneurial Life Grow Yourself, Grow Your Leaders, with Whitney Johnson on LinkedIn Learning Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company, by Whitney Johnson Everett Rogers 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week, by Tiffany Shlain Egon Zehnder Ruchika Tulshyan Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, by Brené Brown Jacob Collier Anti-Time Management: Reclaim Your Time and Revolutionize Your Results with the Power of Time Tipping, by Richie Norton Steve Young  

In 1942 economist Joseph Schumpeter claimed at the core of our economic system was a "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."  He called it creative destruction Half a century later, Harvard professor Clayton Christiansen wrote in "The Innovator's Dilemma" that "By doing what they must do to keep their margins strong and their stock price healthy, every company paves the way for its own disruption…The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption." Which of these two is telling the truth? They both are, it depends on companies and the individuals within them. It's up to them whether they will change with the times or be left behind. My guest today is Engelina Jaspers, who has experienced revolving-door CEOs, business course-corrections and lots of reinventions during her 30-year corporate career. Across all her VP leadership roles — marketing, brand strategy, environmental sustainability, corporate communications — none escaped disruption. After being tapped to lead multiple company-wide transformations, Engelina became a student and teacher of business and career agility. These experiences led her to develop the MARKETING FLEXOLOGY Management Framework™ — a mindset and a toolset for future-proofing your career, your team and your marketing platform. Engelina shares marketing agility know-how in her book, presentations and workshops so you, too, can anticipate and prosper from unplanned change. People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show NRC's Downloadable (PDF) 5-point Agility Scale  Uniform Commercial Code Engelina's LinkedIn Profile Engelina's website and info on the book: marketingflexology.com Please visit https://funnelreboot.com/episode-108-marketing-flexology-with-engelina-jaspers/ for more information

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN: 00:37 - How encountering Warren Buffett changed Jake's life.09:36 - Jake's motivation for writing The Rebel Allocator.28:22 - Why Berkshire Hathaway's recent underperformance shouldn't concern investors at all.30:41 - What Jake wishes he could go back and tell his 20 year old self.50:18 - How Jake is positioning his portfolio in these expensive market conditions.55:57 - How Jake thinks about holding cash in his portfolio.And much, much more!*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.EPISODE RESOURCESGet a FREE audiobook from Audible.Read the 9 Key Steps to Effective Personal Financial Management.Check out our Investing Starter Packs about business and finance.Learn about our Investing Starter Packs on real estate.Jake Taylor's book, The Rebel Allocator.Tobias Carlisle's book, Deep Value.Benjamin Graham's book, The Intelligent Investor.Clayton Christiansen's book, The Innovator's Dilemma.Related Episode: MI042: Warren Buffett Value Investing w/ Gary Mishuris.Related Episode: MI072: Why Warren Buffett Might Be Wrong w/ Matthew Piepenburg.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.Save with a credit union that helps you build financial confidence with Navy Federal Credit Union.Make it simple to hire and manage remote employees across all 50 states with Justworks.Make your home safe with Simplisafe and get 40% off today. Indoor and outdoor cameras, comprehensive sensors, you name it.Now, not only the wealthy can afford collectibles! Enter Otis, an investment platform that makes it possible for almost anyone to invest in shares of cultural assets. Sign up now at withotis.com/TIP to get your first share for FREE!Impress your audience and yourself. Enjoy presentations for free with Canva.Read this episode's transcript and full show notes on our website.Connect with Jake: Website | Twitter | LinkedInConnect with Clay: TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:07:31 - What opportunities Jason has been focusing on in 2021.16:10 - What Jason looks for in companies he invests in.19:40 - The business units that produce Amazon's revenue.30:29 - Why Amazon has been such a successful business over the past 20+ years.41:09 - How Jason thinks about the valuation of Amazon as an investor.And much, much more!*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.EPISODE RESOURCESGet a FREE audiobook from Audible.Read the 9 Key Steps to Effective Personal Financial Management.Check out our Investing Starter Packs about business and finance.Learn about our Investing Starter Packs on real estate.Jason Moser's Blog and Articles.Brad Stone's book, Amazon Unbound.Jim Collin's book, Good to Great.Clayton Christiansen's book, The Innovator's Dilemma.Related Millennial Investing Episode: MI015: Start Investing In Individual Stocks w/ Jason Moser.Related We Study Billionaires Episode: TIP11: Billionaire Jeff Bezos – The Secrets To His Success w/ Preston, Stig, & Hari.Related We Study Billionaires Episode: TIP362: Amazon Unbound w/ Brad Stone.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.Save with a credit union that helps you build financial confidence with Navy Federal Credit Union.Make it simple to hire and manage remote employees across all 50 states with Justworks.Make your home safe with Simplisafe and get 40% off today. Indoor and outdoor cameras, comprehensive sensors, you name it.Now, not only the wealthy can afford collectibles! Enter Otis, an investment platform that makes it possible for almost anyone to invest in shares of cultural assets. Sign up now at withotis.com/TIP to get your first share for FREE!Impress your audience and yourself. Enjoy presentations for free with Canva.Read this episode's transcript and full show notes on our website.Connect with Jason: Website | Twitter | LinkedInConnect with Clay: Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I talk about Clayton Christiansen‘s question and then he used to ask his students “how do you ensure that you live a life worth living?” This is important question that we often fail to think about. We also tend to prioritize things that are measurable in our life, like salary, wages, and profitability. things that are more important in our life like virtues, such as joy, happiness, and love are difficult to measure. As a consequence, we tend not to prioritize them in our lives. How might you go about prioritizing these important virtues so that you live a life worth living? --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

According to DigitalCommerce360, consumers spent a staggering $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020. This is a 44% increase in spend year over year which is thought to be the "highest annual U.S. eCommerce growth in at least two decades." There are clearly many opportunities and avenues for expansion and success in the eCommerce market. On today's episode of Link Up Leaders, Francois and Lisa are sitting down with Stefan Haney of Foundry to discuss and explore the new opportunities in growth, innovation, and leadership that have been created by brand aggregators, COVID, and Eastern Europe. --

On what it’s like becoming the CEO of a startup and gradually having more and more employees taking over some of the day-to-day responsibilities, guest Ron Tarro says the following: “It’s almost better to view what you’re building as a machine; it’s a machine where, if you actually step back from it, the machine keeps running.” Tarro is the former CEO of a telecommunications software and management services company founded in Boca Raton, Florida. His own experience of developing a startup led him to becoming the Vice President of the Board of Directors at New World Angels, a group of 78 accredited, private investors, operators and entrepreneurs dedicated to providing equity capital and guidance to early-stage entrepreneurial companies with a strong presence in Florida. In this episode, Tarro sits down with host Richard Miles to talk about his own trials of creating a startup, as well as discussing the importance of intellectualizing business as one forges their own path within the marketplace. TRANSCRIPT: Intro (00:01): Starting and running your own company. It’s not for everyone, but for those who have done it, it can be exhilarating, exhausting, and easily the hardest thing they’ve ever done. So we decided to go on and talk to some of those people and find out what they’ve learned, what they’d repeat and what they’ll never do again. We’ll hear stories from their first year, then from the period when they realized they’re going to survive and how they intend to position their companies for the future. We’ll find out what a CEO’s normal day is like, how they build and manage their teams, what it’s done to their personal lives. And finally, when is it time to move on? Join us for CEO 101, a limited series of deep looks at people who are their own boss, for better or for worse. Richard Miles (00:38): Welcome to another episode of CEO 101, a series of special episodes in which we talk to, and about, CEOs of startup companies. I’m your host Richard Miles today. My guest is Ron Tarro, CEO of a number of companies, as well as an advisor and investor in many more. Welcome to the show, Ron. Ron Tarro (00:55): It’s very nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Richard Miles (00:57): So why don’t we start with an overview of your career. You’ve done a lot of things. We just were talking about your role in a number of companies at various stages and levels. So why don’t you give a brief summary of where you started and what you’re doing now? Ron Tarro (01:09): Yeah, so I started as a nerd, software engineer, and I really came through a technical track. My background was in mathematics and the sciences. I ended up getting hired by IBM in IBM labs and so was on product teams, software engineering teams. Went through product marketing and product management jobs there, where I began to focus, not just on making the product, but deciding what should be in the product. I jumped out like a crazy person, one day went I into consulting and joined the industry young, ended up in a leadership position in the management consulting group, which focused on technology companies. So it was basically back to, what should we make? Why should we make it? Who should we sell it to? Those types of things. Did that for a bunch of years. In the meantime, a couple of my pals had started a software company here in Florida, and I was based in Minnesota at the time. I did work at IBM in Boca Raton, if you’re into Florida-centered conversation, and then started a company, I started advising it. I married one of them. My wife was one of the founders of this company and that company is telecommunication software platform. And we took that company, bootstrapping it, with no investment actually, and ended up putting it out into, I think 30, 40 countries. By the time we left, its largest market segment was in hotels and resorts, so we had a pretty big market share. We ultimately sold that company to what is now part of Cisco WebEx actually. And it’s gone through usual chopping up, getting acquired by a public company, where I was a public company, vice president for several years, as part of the arrangement, they went along with the desks and the pencils and that. So since the exiting, all of that, I’ve been an advisor in the incubators here in the state with the university system, in the leadership of a longest standing angel syndicate for investment in startups, so I do a lot of that. And that’s about it. Now, I’ve been a personal angel investor along with my wife, Dana, around the state. So that’s basically it, I mean, nerd turned business person, but still likes to do macros on spreadsheets or something. Richard Miles (03:00): Right, yeah. Nerd turned management consultant turned investor. Ron Tarro (03:03): Yeah, something like that. *laughter*. Richard Miles (03:05): You’re perfect for our show, Ron, perfect. You’ve a great experience in that you are able to both be an outsider and an insider and watching this process unfold of companies starting and then growing and then getting sold from a number of different angles. Why don’t we start with, what’s the biggest difference between watching it from the outside, like as an advisor or something, and actually doing it yourself? When you actually did that yourself with your wife, that company, were there things that you thought like, wow, I thought I knew what this process is like, but this is something nobody told me about? Ron Tarro (03:35): I guess I would look at it this way: in running an early stage company, in whatever form, you are absolutely single-minded. And I would say that what I know today that I didn’t know then is probably, I have more context in seeing some of the moves that we made. So we may have turned left, we should have turned right. And seeing lots of companies making left and right turns, you begin to look at it and say, “hmm, we could have thought about that problem very differently.” Now I would say this, that in our case, I think we made most of the fundamentally right decisions. And we can kind of walk through the life cycle of a company: when to get out of the company and sell it, all that stuff was being driven by stuff. But when you run a company, the thing that you need to be particularly careful, especially as an early one, is you are single-minded in your vision. And as a practical matter, what you don’t know can kill you. And so, I think once you’ve been through this a couple of times, you step back, you begin to see all of those other dangerous–there’s a counter argument, by the way, which would be your ignorance and optimism is the reason you’ll succeed. But I guess I’m a little bit more hardened by some of that. Richard Miles (04:36): Let’s get granular here and talk about the very, very beginning, but from your own experience in companies that you’ve helped start or advise. The first, maybe 30 to 60 days, where you’ve got a founder or a couple of founders, they’re very excited, they’ve got a lot of energy. Why don’t we start with the mistakes? The mistakes are always fun to talk about, right? What are some common mistakes that people make in the first few weeks, did they really come to regret later on? And maybe they don’t even know that they’re mistakes when they’re making them in that first 30 or 60 days? What have you seen? Ron Tarro (05:02): Yeah, no, I’ll start with the very basic one. Should you even bother? Is this a good idea? Because I think one of the things, when you see a founder, is they’re going to walk into this and they believe what they believe. And I’ll actually use the test with New World Angels, which is the angel group that I’m part of and leadership of, is this idea you have is derivative. It’s not better enough from anything else out there. It’s not enough to dislodge the current state. The way to look at that would be: I have a new idea for electronic banking, but can I get everybody to take everything out of this bank, including electronic banking, and move it to that bank? There’s a speed bump. There’s something here: you’re 10% better, but it’s 20% too much hassle to do it. And so one of the big challenges is you see a lot of folks coming into incubators and applying or coming to me for advisory. It is, I don’t know, has this been done before? And if it has, you better have some sort of transformative argument. It was Clayton Christiansen; he’s one of the Harvard guys that wrote a book. Is this sustaining innovation, meaning it’s incrementally improving stuff up, or is it disruptive? It restructures how something’s done fundamentally. Obviously you want a big success, it has to be fundamentally different, not just a flavor. It’s sort of like, there’s Uber and then there’s Uber for pizzas. It’s like, okay, you can make a living at that, and by the way, don’t want to discourage you, but it may not be an investible company, and it may be a company that’s only going to get to be this big because just by the nature of how you defined it in the first place. So part one is, is it even an idea that’s going to be able to, in effect, dislodge what’s already there? And if there is something there or is it clear sailing? And the other is, is it disruptive? Is it just incrementally improving something that already exists? I mean, obviously we want to be disruptive and there’s another great book out there, The Blue Ocean Strategies book that I always talk about, which is as a startup, this whole idea of derivative ideas will repeat. So it’s like, well, if Uber gets into pizzas, you’re dead. You’re, you’re not sailing in open ocean. You’re sailing in the shipping lanes. And so you better have a pretty good argument for why you think you’re gonna be able to stay afloat, new captains, smaller boat, limited gas (meaning financing). So you end up being in a little bit of a challenging spot. So really before you imagine a company, you have to sort of hack your insight, if you will, and say, yeah, I really believe that there’s insight here. There’s an engineer’s disease, and I can make fun of engineers because I used to be one, which is: because I can build it, I should. And that’s not the case. When you look at a lot of products, you see a lot of technology is built by a technical person that is logically and intellectually interesting, and economically kind of is around. For me, it’s like very first thing. Are you onto something here, something transformative? Can we go back a little bit about how you might evaluate that? That’s definitely the very first thing I look at. Yeah. Richard Miles (07:34): So you’ve been, I’m sure pitched a bunch of times. You’ve been to a lot of these pitch competitions, so on. You’ve seen probably thousands of presentations by typically a young-ish or very excited team and probably a bunch of engineers and they’re onto something, they’ve proved it somewhat, and it’s withstood a few proofs of concept. Have you developed, sixth sense is not really what I’m getting at here, but do you have like rules of thumb, five or six things that for you either, you’ll say like, nope, I’m done next? You see right away, apart from what you just talked about, say, is it a derivative idea? And then the other side, when a same team that if they say something, you go, okay, I’m going to go get that guy’s business card or I’m going to call them back because there’s something about their structure. Do you have like a mental checklist or is every presentation sui generis? You just figure it out after you’ve heard the presentation? Ron Tarro (08:22): So actually not only do I have opinions here, actually I’ve written a blog post. If you go to the newworldangels.com blog, there’s a post up there called Back-Testing, why we said no, essentially. So you just layered it right into a whole set of things that could take an hour. So clearly it’s the idea, you haven’t differentiated the idea in the marketplace and that’s a big deal. But at the other one that I look very quickly towards is the structure of the team. Again, I should put some context here. I’m a tech guy, right? So if we’re talking about opening a restaurant and marketing shoelaces, boy, am I the wrong person, right? It’s all a mystery to me, I’m a straight up core software person. But when I look at a team that’s bringing a technology product, if not out of the university, maybe even just an open market, I’m going to go, who are the founders? My favorite founders are one business person that knows the market space, where they think it’s going to apply, and one technology person who can make stuff. Period. If you have a business person who’s hiring out disinterested parties to make stuff, it’s a risk. It doesn’t mean no, but I’m going to worry that if the money runs out, all the cash is running out the door to the consulting firm or wherever it’s going to be. So very much, I look at what that team looks like and what their direct to main knowledge happens to be inside of it. So you have a team that seems logical. I begin to look at the market size, it’s called TAM, people talk about Total Addressable Market or serviceable market. And I always do this in dollars. It’s like, all right, this is great. This is really cool, and there’s 27 people in the world who would use this. So in order for it to be exciting, they each need to pay a hundred million dollars, right? (I’m making numbers up by the way). But it’s this idea that you have a market size that’s way too narrow, and so I’m going to worry about that as an investor. Now, again, you may look at this and you may say, yeah, this is a good product. And it deserves to be in the world. But from an investor standpoint, you’re going to have a ton of uphill battle with what’s being examined. Forming a company is a team sport. I’ll use Florida analogy here, but if the founder gets eaten by an alligator, what happens? And the answer should be well, there’s three more to carry on the journey, right? Richard Miles (10:18): Pre morph the alligator to snack. Ron Tarro (10:20): *Laughter* That’s right, so this whole idea of that is a big deal. And so all of this is back to the design of your company, right? What are you trying to do? Where are you focused? Does it matter? Is it big? Those sorts of things? And by the way, this is the theme you’ll see over and over again with investors, especially. But there’s a reason it’s not just because investors want to make a lot of money. It’s actually very rational. If I go back to running our company, we had lessons learned, but we had a total addressable market for our company, in that we dominated this total addressable market pretty successfully. We made a choice to not change industries, but to go global across one industry, those types of decisions. So in essence, when you look at our company, you would have said, okay, it’s a nichey product except globally, it’s a big niche, right? That kind of idea. And so those are the kind of decisions that you’re forced to make with left and right turns. We think we made the right one because it made us a pure play to be acquired one day. Richard Miles (11:14): I want to follow up on something you said in your ideal team is that you’ve got an inventor and a business person, but I’m sure you’ve seen–we’ve seen it in the Cade Prize competition–particularly coming out of research universities, you have the professor, right? Or you have the scientist or whatever. And they’ve got some grad students with them or whatnot. They love their idea. They’re smart people. and they figure how hard can it be to start and run a company, right? And your heart kind of aches for them because you want to say, you need to stay in the lab. Who has that tough conversation? Is that your job when they bring you along as an advisor or as an investor, for instance? Is one of the first conversations you have and say, look, professor, you need to stick to the, and the development of the idea and the product, and you need somebody who knows how to do this. I’m guessing the successful ones listened to you, and the ones that don’t listen to you, what happens to them? Ron Tarro (12:02): I’ll give you the losing argument, which is, “Hey professor, do you want a hundred percent of zero? Or do you want 50% of a lot?” There’s a question here. It’s hard to succeed in most of these companies; never say never, but aspirationally, there’s always this idea that being the CEO might be cool. However, if you look at the pain in the neck that that job can be, even as a college professor, I’ve been on both sides of the technology versus business fence. Some days I really missed the corny technology story. The reality is that you’re not going to get momentum unaccompanied very easily by being a part-timer, especially a professor. And you see it again and again, where they don’t get funded. The best thing you could do as a college professor would be back to my one maker, one business person that can carry and coordinate. And if you’re a member of the academy of arts and sciences or whatever the case might be, why would you check out of that? Where’s your next idea? What’s your next core research? It’d be better as a professor to have a portfolio of companies that you have a significant interest in that, where you were the founding insight, right? The technology, whatever the case might be. And you let those things grow and nurture because the attention required, you have to choose, you can’t be both. And there are a lot of PhDs who jumped out of academia to run companies, but that’s the choice you must make, I think at the end of the day. So you can rationalize it for a little while, but I know personally a number of folks that just have not been funded because they insist on being CEO as a professor or as a doctor or something like that. And so the funding dries up because nobody wants to fund a hobby, right? Or a side hustle. My money’s at risk and you’re part-timing me, not going to happen. Now maybe again, if you can make it all work without any money up from outside or whatever. But basically go find your best friend’s CEO and found it together, and then you can be chief science officer and you can contribute intellectual property into the business in really interesting ways. You get all the benefit, none of the work, you stay to your passions. And so I think you have to be honest with yourself too. Do you want to be a professor? If that’s where you want, you want the intellectual rigor to an effect, break down new territory. If that’s what energizes you, great. If you have that one idea, you think it’s it, then you got to go all the way in. Richard Miles (14:03): The counter-argument you hear from these researchers is they say, yeah, I recognize I need somebody with a business background, but these people really need to understand the core idea and a core principle here. And sometimes the core principles are fairly sophisticated, like, particularly in the healthcare field or in tech field. So if a business person doesn’t really get the technology, you understand it, right? They’re probably of limited use because they may have trouble visualizing or imagining the applications of that technology, if they don’t really understand how the technology works. Ron Tarro (14:33): Okay, I would argue a little bit differently. All you described was your requirements in recruiting for a CEO. You’re not going to get a CEO who did real estate management, no offense to real estate managers. That’s an entire industry that has a focus. If indeed, and we’ve done a series of investments in med tech, so basically what you need is somebody who understands the marketplace for these technologies. Here’s the problem with investing in research. Science is not the thing that adds value, it’s the application of the science in the marketplace. So you need somebody who knows the marketplace. So you have to go to a professor and you have to say, “Hey, you know the science, now you need somebody who needs to know the application space for the science.” And that’s different. They don’t have to be you, but they have to be somebody who is in effect, creating value through the application of the technology. That’s a different thought process. That’s a quite different thought process, because at some point it has to be commercialized. Now, if you’re just busy selling patents, if you will, you can do that. But then hire a patent troll, they’ll know how to do all that stuff too. So you still have somebody who’s going to spend all their time thinking about that. So there’s an intellectual foundation for a business and there’s an application foundation, if you want to think of it that way, maybe. So you still really haven’t defeated the argument. My two-person model is still the best model and that’s what should be pursued to create value. You know, I’ve been in the consulting world, which is sort of the intellectualization of business, right, which is all about strategies and frameworks and methods. And I worked at a think tank, for a number of years, doing this kind of published work. I get the academic-business divide. The reality is, is putting something in the marketplace takes balls. Period. Yeah. Richard Miles (16:05): So it sounds like important advice. Number one is it’s not enough to get somebody with a generic business background or business skills. You really need to have somebody who understands that particular market in which you’re trying to enter with your technology. Ron Tarro (16:17): And came out of networks, and networks and telecommunication. And there’s some young motivated types that can come up those learning curves, and that’s all great. But listen, if you want a CEO, you probably want somebody who knows how telecom works. All the better, right? We’re going to get back to, what you don’t know can kill you, right? So they bring actually wisdom that an academic probably wouldn’t bring to the business. Richard Miles (16:36): So let’s talk about the strategy and the frameworks. Now let’s imagine a company and I’m sure you’ve got real-world examples of, let’s say they’ve gone through their first year. They’ve launched, they’re getting revenue. They’re doing pretty well. They’re starting to grow, but then they face some serious choices, right? Do we grow in this direction or that direction? You start having to make significant trade-offs in terms of hires or just start hiring like crazy. What are some of the pitfalls, let’s say after a successful year one, that companies make in terms of a strategic direction after that first 365 days? Ron Tarro (17:05): So I’ll change your 365 days, cause I’ll let that flex, and I’m going to look for certain milestones. So I carve up a company lifestyle this way, is somebody is in the phase of hacking value. It’s the idea that I have a technology and I am busy refining potential uses for it and testing that. A good program in that startup type of stuff, iCore, I think most of the academic world has seen the iCore program. If you want NSF funding, et cetera, there’s iCore, is certainly a help to that process. But this is the idea of, before I build it, should I, right? Or, and what should it do? So this is the idea of hacking your insight, right? Getting that really polished, such a way that you have an insight and you know how it’s going to be applied, then build a prototype. So I’m gonna look at a company first and say, where are you at with that, and have you established that as a phase? Second thing I’m gonna look at is, okay, let’s hack product market fit. Product market fit is this idea that somehow it’s the right set of features and it’s the right price, and you’ve demonstrated that by a bunch of things like, maybe selling it to a few people. And so hacking product market fit to me is you’re done with that based on basically a quick check. Are you having to force customers to take this product or are they excited to take it? And we can talk about how to do that. And you’re going to test your different ways to sell it and your messages and stuff like that. And then third, you’re going to hack growth, and hack growth is another way of saying, you’re going to hire more salespeople and you’re going to begin to accelerate because things start to get repeatable, right? Here’s the problem, if you haven’t properly hacked your product market fit, and now you start hiring salespeople, guess what happens? They work really, really hard and they don’t sell a lot. Or worse yet, they do sell something, customer doesn’t like it and is always yelling at you, and maybe they stop using it. So what’s going on? The ones who went through and did this in steps. It’s not a calendar step. It’s sort of like a testing thing almost to say, I have insight. I have fit. Now I’m going to chase growth. And then you start hiring salespeople and evolving your messages, and you decide whether you’re going to use in-house people or whatever, and that lots of different things can go on. But that’s how I look at it. And you can see more often than not, that’s how companies get stuck, is they actually didn’t do the first two steps. The other interesting thing that you see with companies is you can look at the marketplace, crossing the chasm, that guy, this idea that you’ve got innovators and early adopters. And when you’re a new company, brand new product, and this idea that you have, these innovators and early adopters, and when you’re first starting a company, you have a brand new product. The tendency is to take the product out there and convince everybody how great it is. And if you did your insight right, what you really want to do is just look for all the people who are desperate to have it. Ron Tarro (19:40): There are certain people that a narrow range of people who will be fast adopters to this; it could be people with a huge problem and they don’t care about the wrong or risk it takes on a new company, somebody who’s the perfect fit for the product. So you’re looking for people with perfect fit, not trying to convince the rest of the world that you have the next big thing. You’ll see a lot of folks doing a lot of presenting, and what they haven’t done is they haven’t narrowed everything down into a nice tight message to a very tight group of people. And so they burn weeks and months, even a year or two, break their picking because they’re tackling the wrong folks. The other side of that is you want the risk takers, the people who have such a big problem that take a risk on you, right? And what you’re going to have is the big corporates. Everyone says, I want to sell this. I want so-and-so to buy it, big NASDAQ, New York stock exchange company. The reality is is those folks more often than not are managing risk of technology acquisition, along with innovation. You need somebody who needs the innovation because they’re desperate for it. So, I watch where people are on the cycle of early stage, and what you find is that some people rush it and fail late, after they’ve collected a lot of money by the way, from investors or worse yet, from their mom. So now you’re sitting there going, well, what happened here? Well, you weren’t quite defined in what your product was. It’s interesting, the story of our company really was similar to this, which was, we built a piece of software that was essentially a middleware, to use software terms. And we put that software into very select companies that were very innovative and had very sophisticated requirements that only we could do. And so we’ve found that one and then this one and picked our way individually through the group until we said, okay, this is a story that’s turning out to be repeatable with everybody else, and we refined it. So it happens that way in real life. If you try to circumvent that, you lose. Richard Miles (21:26): Let’s talk some about CEO’s as managers. You referred earlier to the life cycle of an early stage company, and you start out say with four or five people on your team, and it’s more like a family or a basketball team than it is a company, right? Because everyone knows each other. It’s very close. And then you get a little bit bigger. Maybe now you’re 25 or 30 employees. And then one day you’re 150 to 200 employees, and that obviously requires a different management structure, a different management style as you start growing the company in size and scope. How many CEOs are able to successfully make that transition from five people working for them to 200 people working for them? And how often is the case where somebody says, you know, “All I ever want to do is manage startups, I don’t want to manage a big company. It’s not fun. It’s too bureaucratic. Blah, blah, blah.” What is the range of outcomes that you’ve seen? Ron Tarro (22:13): Well, actually you described it. Let me just put it this way, maybe. Let’s just talk about growth of a CEO. So I started a company, it’s getting bigger. How do I have to change personally, right? Now I came into a small company from a large, so I had some visibility on what it’s like to manage a more complex environment, I suppose. You go as a founder and a CEO to, in effect, managing a product and customers, right, and building a product, if you will, to, in effect, building an organization. So it’s almost better to view what you’re building as a machine. It’s a machine where, if you actually step back from it, the machine keeps running, right? So you see a lot of CEOs who, and they’re right in the short term, they could probably do everybody’s job better than the person they hired. This becomes untrue as time goes on or less true, anyway. It’s probably even untrue. And so, they hold on to stuff too long. If you show me an overwhelmed manager, the first thing I look for is a delegation problem where they’re not viewing your organization as an organism that care and feeding, if you will, and they haven’t spread things out. And the real telling thing happens when you become a manager of managers, that’s the break point where it forces you down this road. So if you’re reaching into your managers or over your managers, then you’re just in the wrong head space. So to me, the growth thing is you have to then begin to say, okay, “how do I set up structures and communication so that everybody knows what I know believes, what I believe is seeking what I seek, KPIs to use fancy terms, Key Performance Indicators, to design the organization a little bit, so everybody’s a believer?” Ron Tarro (23:38): Listen, Elon Musk is great. He knows how to do this intuitively, which is our mission is to get to the moon, right? Who believes that we should be on the moon? So he’s got a whole organization, absolutely energized to this big idea and lining everything up to it. Here’s all the steps. And that’s the big thing is that basic transition away from being the best at everything and the person who’s best at moving the chess pieces around, if you want to think of it that way or best at designing ways that everybody can get stuff done faster. You don’t give up everything, you know, you choose. So for me, an example of how we sold early on; I sold, because we’re not venture backed, so I was selling the product, if you will. Ended up then having a sales group. In the sales group, they would in effect do some selling, but I would focus on various strategic things like this customer right over here has to be the one that we get next, Marriott or something. And so, I’m actively involved in that, because it had a material impact. But once we got Marriott corporate on board, getting every Marriott hotel to in effect use our product, an entire team that could drive that. So you begin to move yourself into something and then back out. You look at the messaging, all your positioning. So in our case, it was strategic impact sales, and then also the product roadmap. What are we making and why? One of the most telling things, cause I obsess on Musk probably too much is he’s not the CEO he was. But if you look at where he spent his time, he spent it as chief product officer, chief engineers. He’s very focused, because the product is what makes the business as a foundation and then its application and alignment to the marketplace the second. Those are the two things. If you have a CFO, the CFO makes sure that the mine is not running out the door wrong or something, but those are not the core things for a CEO. The CEO is what do we make and who are we making it for and why does it matter, et cetera. And that’s until you go public. And even then, still that. Richard Miles (25:24): Do you see that often where a founder, the idea person says, I just want to stick with product, developing products because that’s what I love? Is that fairly common? Ron Tarro (25:33): One of the reasons I came into our company was our CTO and COO were like, “we really don’t want to run this,” our CTO just really wanted to stay on the product side, it’s all he wanted to do. And by the way, that’s a very honest self-assessment, just to say this is not something I want to do. You can still own a huge percentage equity of a company and do profoundly well, but you just don’t want to go through the brain damage to that other job over there. And by the way, since you are a founder, is you get to pick your job. So why shouldn’t you? I actually have a lot of respect for that. The idea that, especially with technical co-founders is I say, “I want to be on the technical track. I don’t want to be a CEO. I don’t want to be dealing with every HR issue and financial and market, this and blah, blah, blah. I want to design and make products.” That’s hugely valid and maybe even desirable if I were to go back. Richard Miles (26:17): Ron, why don’t we conclude with something you said at the very beginning. You mentioned, if you could give yourself advice, young Ron Tarro advice from the older Ron Tarro, what would it be in terms of lessons learned? Let’s say you’ve got the young idealistic tech guy at 22, 23, or tech woman, and they’re going to go conquer the world, start the next Facebook, whatever. What do you think their older selves would be telling them in 20 years? Ron Tarro (26:40): At the end of the day, I end up getting rather tactical. I’ve been asked this before and I end up getting, “I would’ve made this decision differently,” but in general, if I were looking at all of it, I would have much more peripheral vision than I did. In some sense, we were pretty good at this, but not good enough. So the idea that we could have gone into other verticals faster, that we could have accelerated faster, that we were a little bit too conservative in what we were up to. Now, the reality is it turned out okay. But I would say that there’s an element of luck to that, that is significantly large, so we beat the odds. In some sense it was our success, but it was also probably a limiting factor of the company. So in a lot of ways, there’s a tendency to try to make what you’re doing today better, more efficient, more whatever. And sometimes there’s a breakout idea that you should be focused on to really grow the company. You could reasonably argue that we didn’t have enough peripheral vision to make a bunch of decisions or even see the decisions to be made. And so the advice to myself would be to get wider faster on what’s going on with mega trends, et cetera. I’m like 75% convinced of what I just told you. Now we pivoted different products in different markets. And the other was a strictly technical one and maybe more tactical too. It was really fundamental. There’s this thing called technical debt in software, and technical debt is this idea that you designed a product that has an architecture, but as you grow, your architecture is not so cool. It doesn’t support the growth or better yet, it sort of turns into a hair ball and you’d be adding this and adding that. Customer A wants this and customer B, and you lose control of the core product, and I would say that you suffered from a technical debt issue, because as an early company in our segment, we said yes to everybody. Sure, we’ll do that. Sure, we’ll do that. And we did not take a step back and abstract, what we’re doing, get back to peripheral vision, why are we doing this, right? What’s the larger context. And so we literally had to take a year pause on our product to say, it’s time to remodel the house. We should have been remodeling the hallway and then also abstracting. And so this is very much a software technology CEO problem, very specific to my world, but this idea that you sort of lost control of your code base. And so now every time you wanted to do an update, it took you 47 horses and a mule to get a new release out, when it should’ve just been a horse. You end up with a slower and slower product cycle. And so, one of the big lessons on the technical side was to really approach, I think, the software engineering story differently, but we survived. Richard Miles (28:58): I actually have one final question, both from your personal experience and what you’ve seen. What does being a CEO do to somebody’s personal life? Because everyone thinks like I want to be my own boss, that’s the best thing in the world. But then once you are, you realize that you’ve exchanged some freedom for responsibility, right? Part of being your own boss is you have to worry literally for a time, at least, about just about everything. You don’t really get to go home at 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM and check out and then show up at work the next day. You are the person. What was that like for you? And what has it been like for others that you’ve seen in that position? Ron Tarro (29:28): Well, I thought about my business every day of the week and pretty much all day. So let me give you the motivation. There’s a moral case for a CEO, especially startups, with deep respect to startups. What you have is you’re changing the world in a positive way. You’re creating something that will improve something for somebody somewhere. And so, if you have a passion for that, that’s pretty cool. And that is a motivation. I find that CEOs that care about money, it’s a crappy and soul-deadening way to approach life. Money’s a by-product of changing the world in a cool way. And so if you’re chasing money, then you’re just chasing money, and there’s no excitement. Then work is work, a slave to a dollar rather than a slave to change. I think one of the things I heard, I always sort of kept in the back of my mind is if you’re a CEO in these companies, what you’re trying to do is, it’s not about you making a product. It’s about you solving a problem in the world for somebody. And so, stay focused on the product or the problem. And with that focus, everything else takes care of itself. It’s its own joy. You made this industry better. You made this customer better. You made the world better. Something to that effect. That’s a huge personal motivation and something worth chasing. Back to, are you in the business of making profitable rockets or are we trying to get to Mars? And what’s the big calling here? And so I think as a CEO, if you have that, then everything else kind of gets easy, and you start blending work, play, and purpose all together in one thing. And that’s much better than being a slave to a dollar. Richard Miles (30:47): Ron, thank you very much for joining me today on CEO 101. Lots of good advice. I hope all of your clients and your companies are doing well and do well, and look forward to having you back on the show at some point. Ron Tarro (30:58): Cool. Hey, it was very nice meeting you. Outro (31:01): Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews. Podcasts are recorded at Heartwood, Soundstage, and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak. The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist Jacob Lawson.

Sahil Bloom is Vice President at Altamont Capital Partners, a generalist investment fund managing over $2.5 billion in capital. At Altamont, Sahil helps lead the consumer products and services sector. Sahil also participates in board activities at Altamont's portfolio companies Fox Racing, and Brixton.Sahil is an angel investor in over 25 tech startups. He works with entrepreneurs and founders to build scalable and sustainable value for all stakeholders. Sahil also publishes a popular newsletter about business, mental models, economics, and more.Sahil graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in economics & sociology, and holds a master's degree in public policy. While at Stanford, Sahil was a four-year member of the Stanford baseball team. Sahil is also a two-time recipient of the Bruce R. Cameron Memorial Award. This award honors students exhibiting excellence in athletics, academics, and leadership.In this episode, you'll learn: How Sahil went from 500 to 200,000 followers on Twitter in one year The emerging seven-figure opportunity Sahil sees for localized newsletters Sahil's system for writing exceptional content The key difference between income-producing activities and wealth-producing activities Links & Resources Packy McCormick Mario Gabriele Anthony Pompliano Fred Wilson Tomas Gomez a16z Future Synthesis School Hone Sequoia Benchmark QED Investors Ryan Holiday Notion Clayton Christensen Institute Pallet Patrick O'Shaughnessy Ben Thompson Sahil's Links Follow Sahil on Twitter: @SahilBloom The Curiosity Chronicle Episode TranscriptSahil: [00:00:00]I think of writing and storytelling as foundational skills to your entire life. I mean, if you write well, it makes you better in every other area of your life. I think more clearly it exposes the gaps in your thinking so quickly. And that happened to me all on the way. Like the amount that I learned about investing by writing about investing was insane.Nathan: [00:00:27]This episode is with Sahil Bloom. So, Sahil, full-time is an investor. He's a vice president at Altamont Capital Partners. On the side he has built a massive Twitter following over just the last year before we started the interview.I had no idea that his 200,000 plus Twitter followers have been in the last 14 months, basically since COVID.So, in this episode, we talk about growing a Twitter audience. We talk about all kinds of things. Sahil was a baseball pitcher for Stanford. And so we get into the new name/image/likeness rules for the NCAA.What else? There's all kinds of good stuf: his creative writing process, his mental models, how he thinks about income versus wealth. It's the kind of episode that I absolutely love some.So I'm going to get out of the way and let you listen to it. But really quick, if you'd do me a favor and go ahead and subscribe on Spotify, iTunes, wherever you listen to the podcast, and then write a review, I'd appreciate it. It will help the podcast reach a few more people.So, all right. Let's dive in.Sahil, thanks for joining me.Sahil: [00:01:34]Yeah. Thanks for having me.Nathan: [00:01:35]Okay. So, I want to start with what you put in your bio, which is just three words, investor, educator, and storyteller. I like how concise you've got this down to things that describe you, but how do you think about the way that those three interact with you?Sahil: [00:01:50]You know, it's it's interesting. I tend to think that there is like a natural flywheel that is being created in real time around the universe of like investing, in the universe of creating. And you're seeing it in real time with some of these, you know, creative capitalists for lack of a better way to put it.Like Packy is one of my favorite writers, does an incredible job. Mario, over at the The Generalist. A lot of these folks, I mean, Pomp was one of the early ones to do it. A lot of these folks have built these scale platforms, these audiences, and then as a result of that, and as a result of the reach and the leverage that they're able to get on, having that kind of owned audience in a certain extent, to a certain extent, they're able to really support these companies.And so, as an investor, as an advisor, you can kind of just create this natural flywheel around it, where your content creation and the creative work is the leading into, these really interesting investment and capitalists opportunities. And then because of those, you're actually getting more content to write about.It actually is creating this really unique, flywheel that I think we're really in the early days of candidly, like, we've seen a lot of people starting to do it, but it's very much the first inning in my opinion. And I think there's a massive shakeout happening in the investment world because of it.All of the VC is, and all of these growth equity funds are just starting to realize that in order to win deals, in order to be a part of these cap tables and really provide value, you know, they've said, how can we be helpful as like the joke moniker for a long time, but in order to really be helpful, you need to be able to do tangible things for the companies that you're supporting and investing in.And these creator capitalists, I do feel like have figured that out and I don't put myself in the same ranks as those people that I mentioned at all. I'm kind of very green and new to this, but, it's been fun to start see the early fruits of that.Nathan: [00:03:42]Yeah. It's interesting to me. Cause you've seen for a long time, investors like, Fred Wilson, Tomas Gomez and others, like have these blogs or newsletters, you know, for a long time. And it's gotten them incredible deal flow and reputation and everything else, but it does seem like there's a new wave.I don't know if it's just the next generation of creators doing this, but it's much more Twitter forward rather than starting with a blog and a Twitter, a newsletter. do you see other continuations or differences between like sort of the previous generation in the second generation.Sahil: [00:04:17]Yeah. I mean, I think that the VC world has known this for a long time. like the early stage VCs in particular have known that. Audience and reach was a wedge for deal flow. And so like, you look at the of the world, they built from the early days, really like a content house, right? Like they put out incredible thought pieces.You know, they recently launched this thing, Future, which is really just like a content ecosystem that they're going to continue to expand on. So there are certain firms that have been doing this for a long time, or to your point, there are certain investors who have been doing this for a long time. I think the scale of it has changed, discovery and the algorithms have been dramatically improving.And so, you're able to generate just a much larger following and a much more engaged following. And so the people that are consistently putting things out, it's not one piece every six months, it's, you know, you're capturing attention because you're consistently putting out great content that captures eyeballs.Those are the people that are actually able to generate leverage on that audience. And as a result, create value for the companies that they're investing in. Synthesis School. I think is a great example of it. It's this really cool education technology platform. They have a long list of amazing investors, all of whom are kind of individual creator, capitalists, and you know, people on Twitter that are big Twitter personalities.And so, they're able to just basically have this like narrative domination effect where on Twitter, you constantly are seeing content and people posting about this. And you're like, what the heck is that? What is that business? And it just creates this massive advantage for a business like that. That's able to capture that mind share and become a like cognitive reference, for lack of a better way to put it for education disruptive.Nathan: [00:05:59]So do you think when, when someone's looking to take money from, from you as an investor from, you know, someone like Paki or anyone else, who has these audiences, how much is it? The, like the reputation and the brand of that person that I love the term creative capitalist. Cause it sort of differentiates here, but, which is that reputation and brand versus like what they'll, what that credit capitals will do as far as audience and reach later, like for example, the men's health, sort of raw, what is it?Brown home. There you go. Ron is a different Rona's AI is a clothing brand .Yeah, exactly. also a solid company,Sahil: [00:06:44]Cool brand. Yeah.Nathan: [00:06:46]Hone you like I think it was just yesterday that they had these pieces kind of going up everywhere and it was basically all of their, you know, creator, capitalist investors who have these audiences who coordinated some level of a launch.And so I'm curious as people are taking this money, Is it like, Hey, you're going to be useful as an advisor or is it really like, your money is quite a bit better than someone else's because you're also going to promote and put out this link pieces and link to it in your, in your content.Sahil: [00:07:17]Yeah. I think the way that founders are thinking about it, and this is, you know, informed partially by my own perspective, partially from talking to a lot of these founders. So you have a $5 million round, you know, it used to be that you kind of get your anchor like some lead and, you know, hopefully that's like a tier one VC, a Sequoia benchmark, a 16 Z you know, QED, whoever it might be.And you kind of then have the rest of that round to fill out. And normally you bring on, you know, someone that's not the lead, maybe a couple of other VCs, but then you have this like million dollar set it's on the tail. End of it. That's left. And now you're deciding between, do I take on a tier two tier three VC to like fill out this round, basically the VCs that are willing to write a smaller check behind a bunch of other people that are leading.Or do I go bring on 10 people at a hundred K each or at smaller checks that can really meaningfully accelerate and allow me to achieve escape velocity. And for these early companies, especially the ones that are consumer facing that like getting eyeballs on their product or on their service, whatever they're creating is meaningfully differentiating in terms of the trajectory of what the creating.I think it's a no brainer. I mean, for a lot of these, especially at seed and a stage, like just getting them traction in the early days from a revenue growth perspective is so important because it allows you to go raise your next round and basically push out competition because the way these markets work is like capital flows, especially in technology.When you have potential and of one place there's capital is flowing to the people who can really meaningfully accelerate and get to that end point and you fall a little bit behind. You'll find that the capital markets are really pinching for you, and you're no longer able to raise money. And so. That's kind of how I think about it is like, if we can go take on that last chunk and for a small amount of dilution, add a tremendous amount of value.That's a real differentiator relative to taking on another VC on the backend of your, of your cap table.Nathan: [00:09:10]Yeah, that makes sense. So I want to go back to maybe pre Twitter, famous Sahil, like, cause you're thinking about going into, because you have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter now, like it's turned into a pretty massive audience. What were like, was that a deliberate decision to say, okay, I'm going to go all in.I'm going to build this public persona or this public audience, or did it happen more gradually over time?Sahil: [00:09:38]Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, look, I, I played baseball in college. I was solid. I wasn't great. Like I was never the star, so I never had some big following, like the college athletes of today that are the stars and have these massive, massive followings. So I had a Twitter account had never really used it.I kind of. Looked at funny stuff on there and, you know, would see news and things like that. COVID hit in March, 2020, and suddenly I wasn't commuting, you know, my job, which I was normally on the road three or four days a week for, I wasn't traveling. I had like all this time that just got unlocked all of a sudden.And I couldn't figure out like what to do with it. And what I realized was there was all these people, that were so confused about what was happening in the world of like finance business market. and what I like the realization I had fundamentally was that there were kind of two ends of the spectrum of financial education.There was like the, you know, very low end, like tic talkers, talking to you about like random options you should yellow into. And I didn't view that as particularly socially. Good. And then there was like the high end, which is the establishment financial educators who are basically just throwing a ton of jargon at people, trying to make them feel dumb.It's like, let me make you, realize that you need to hire me to pay, to manage your money by throwing a bunch of jargon, throwing a bunch of terms at you that you don't understand. And so what I said was like, I'm going to do neither of those things. I'm going to go straight down the middle. I'm going to be the light Toyota Camry of this market.And just say things in a way that anyone can understand no jargon, no complex terms, just like make it for everybody so that it's accessible. Digestible. And so I started just writing. it was may of 2020. I wrote my first thread had like 500 followers at the time on Twitter. Didn't really know what to make of it.I knew that it was a pretty good thread. And I said to my wife, jokingly that I thought it was going to go viral. And she like rolled her eyes at me. And, you know, whatever happened. it started to kind of pick up steam, like tweeted one of my things, mark Cuban retweeted, one of my things. And it was shocking to me, but pretty cool.Cause I saw it start to gain traction and I realized, okay, maybe there's something to this. but the reality for me was like, there was never a grand strategy to it. I never intended to build some huge audience. Like I thought it was amazing when I got to 4,000 followers. I remember thinking like, this is insane that I have this many people following me that care about what I think.And I kind of just kept putting out content. I mean, over the last year and two months or whatever, it's been since I started I've written. A hundred, 1,314 threads, 90,000 words. mean, it's just been consistency over anything else, candidly? I never had like one piece that blew me up over the, 20,000 followers or something.It's just been like a steady grind of just putting things out, kind of a slow drip effect.Nathan: [00:12:22]So that points to us to get a schedule. Are you basically putting out two threads a week? Is that the case?Sahil: [00:12:28]Yeah. I would say in the early days I was like, I had more time cause COVID and everything going on and I was kind of like probably doing three. There were probably times when I put out four things a week, because I had more time, but in the early days too, it was taking me a lot more time to write these things.Because I hadn't figured out what worked and what didn't. And so I was like in test and learn mode, it was taking me a ton of time to research and like figure out the right hooks and the way to write things and the style of writing that worked on Twitter. And so I spent, I mean, hundreds of hours over the course of the last year on the weekends, like sitting around, pounding my head into a wall, figuring it out.More recently I've kind of gotten into a cadence of like one piece of writing a week. and then with the newsletter I have, you know, I usually expand on that one thread and kind of a more robust newsletter. And then I have the Friday piece, which is a curation thing to kind of help promote other creators.Nathan: [00:13:20]Yeah. So I'm curious, what are some of the things that. That changed as you, well, may, maybe we'll start with the amount of times, like when you're putting, let's go to a single thread, maybe in the early days, how much time was one of those threads taking, and then, you know, now how much time does it take to put together a thread?Sahil: [00:13:39]Yeah. So in the early days, I would say I was doing a lot of like deep research based writing. you know, like I do take an example. Like I did a thread on the game stop thing in January, and like GameStop was, you know, rip roaring. Everyone was wondering what was going on, what had happened, how could that happen?Et cetera. And so I sort of like went into a, down a rabbit hole on understanding, short squeezes and gamma squeezes, and all these complex finance things. And that took me a long time because basically I had to figure out the concept of a gamma squeeze and, you know, the, and how that can be disseminated in a way that anyone can understand, which is like much easier said than done.And I might've rethought it if I had, if I had known how long it was gonna take me to figure that out, but that early stuff I would say. You know, would take me kind of five to six hours probably to like research, write, edit, and kind of refine those pieces. Similarly with those like early, like more story-based threads that I was doing, kind of the stories of people's lives that you see a lot of now on Twitter, less of back when I was doing it, those would take me six, seven hours, cause I was going deep, you know, into these people's lives and figuring it out.And it was really driven by my curiosity. Like I just love learning about these things. And so I would write about things that I genuinely wanted to go learn about and that made it a lot easier. Cause it didn't feel like, oh, this is a waste of time. If it doesn't take off and go viral, you know, at worst I learned a lot and at best I learned a lot and it went viral and got me a bunch of followers.And now more recently, I mean, I'd say I'm in a good cadence of it where it's like, you know, one of my more kind of like mental models, decision-making frameworks thinking, frameworks type threads probably takes two to four hours depending on what I'm writing. But I have this, like, we can get into it, but I have this just massive repository of like content ideas, notes that I've kind of dropped in there over time.So when I actually go to write something, a lot of it's just there and I just needNathan: [00:15:38]Right.Sahil: [00:15:38]How to construct it.Nathan: [00:15:40]Okay. Yeah. Let's, let's focus on that because I think so many people wonder about writing habits and they're like, how do you weave these things together? You know, like I read one of Ryan holiday's books as an example, and he, I'm always amazed at his ability to pull in. Like reference some historical figure creator, author, any anybody tell their story, make his point move on.And you're like, oh, that was so good. Wait, you did that in two sentences. You know, you did that, like in his really concise way, he's got these perfect examples, but if you ever hang out with Ryan or visit him at his house, he has this like ridiculous collection of no cards. You know, it's like boxes of note cards per book, and, you know, it's as crazy process and really every successful author, every school writer that I've worked with has some really great organization process.So I'd love to hear more about,Sahil: [00:16:34]Yeah, I love that story about Ryan. That's a cool one. I'll keep that for later. yeah, so I mean, my, my strategy with it has evolved over time, but th the way I generally think about it is you kind of have a proprietary content engine, and what that is differs for everybody. Like it, that's kind of the inputs.So that's, what are you reading on a daily basis? What are you watching? What are you listening to? All of those things are kind of like your content engine, because those are, what's giving you ideas, things that are coming up. That's like all the stuff you're consuming on a daily basis, and then you have the outputs and that's like, how do you turn that?Like, put it into your little meat grinder and like, turn that into what you're writing about. And so the way I generally think about it is. Part of my daily habit as I'm reading and consuming interesting content. and it might be newsletters, blogs, podcasts, tweets that people send me, like all of this stuff goes into my content engine.What I do personally is I have a notion, page that's a board and it's, I just have it set up as like, a few columns where I have kind of like, you know, ideas that I have, like, you know, things I'm going to write about soon. Then I have things I've started and then like finished pieces that I haven't posted yet.And then all of the stuff that's posted and done. And so when I have something I'm reading and it peaks my curiosity, or it's like, oh, this is a cool concept, whatever it might be. Like, I recently wrote a thread on, the concept of like the Fox and the hedgehog. and that was the one that, like, I had just been reading something on a friend's, VC funds page.And it was like, oh, this is an interesting concept. Let me throw this into my notion doc. And so I had Fox and hedgehog in there. I linked. Article I've been reading. and then like a few weeks later, I kind of got it to learn more about that. And so I went and read some things and I dropped in some notes and dropped in a few more articles and pieces where I had heard people see, you know, or talk about it.And now suddenly when I go to write about it, the next day I have like four sources. I have a bunch of notes sitting there of like things that had come to my mind in the moment when I was interested about it. I kind of had a framework for how I wanted to think or write about it. And so it made the process of starting much easier because I already had all that stuff sitting there.I wasn't starting from a dead stop and saying like, I need to write this great piece on foxes and hedgehogs. I had all this stuff and I just needed to figure out how to craft it, like sculpt it into what I wanted. So that's kind of how I think about the process. It's like, you're consuming mean things on a daily basis.Figure out what those are. It doesn't have to be like smart stuff is whatever you're consuming. It shouldn't feel. And take that and leverage it into creating this like repository of interesting ideas, because like when you do it that way, you never run out of stuff to write about. I get asked that a lot.Like how do you write something every week? Or how do you not run out of things? And my, my answer is like, there's an endless amount of interesting stuff out there in the world. And it's just a matter of like opening your kind of content engine to all of that so that you can then go and write and comment on these things and, and share about it.So that's kind of how I think about it generally. It's like kind of, you have the inputs and the output, so you need to figure out what your kind of middle is your middle layer, so that you can turn the inputs into the outcome.Nathan: [00:19:44]Okay. This is a little bit off topic, but when you were. Starting school, you know, going to school at Sanford for like economics and sociology and then getting a master's in public policy and you're getting into investing and starting your career there. Did you ever think that you'd be a writer like that?That would be the primary, source. It's just so interesting the way these worlds overlap.Sahil: [00:20:08]The short answer is no, I never considered myself a good writer. I don't know, I still don't consider myself that great of a writer to be honest, like people like my writing, which makes me think maybe I write reasonably well, but I think it's just effort. Like I've just spent more time on it over the last year, a lot of people, but, no, I never really thought I would kind of be able to like create something that had value around creative work that was never in the scope of what I thought about my primary job is still as an investor.Like, and I think we'll continue to be. And I, and I still think of like investing and advising as kind of like the primary, kind of part of my ecosystem that I'm creating the creative work is becoming a bigger and bigger part of what makes me a unique and interesting investor. and I love it. I mean, that's the thing for me is. I get so much energy out of the fact that I get to spend time on writing and content creation on a daily basis. I love doing it. You know, I'm starting to do more video stuff. I'm going to be engaging more in that realm, but like the fact that I get to write think read, and that's kind of part of my job.Like that's a really, really cool thing to me. And I never really thought, you know, going to school or whatever I thought I was going to do next. It definitely didn't come within the realm of what I'm actually getting to work on.Nathan: [00:21:23]Yeah, I think it's so interesting. Like I never thought that I would be a writer and I remember like specifically telling my parents, like, I hate writing. Like why would I ever, you know, why do I have to do so much of this in school and all of that? my mom was an English major, you know, and like big advocate for, writing and all of that, which I now am very grateful for.But it's amazing the number of people now that, that we think of that are like really quite effective writers that never started there never expected that.Sahil: [00:21:54]Yeah. I mean, I think of, I think of writing and storytelling as well. Foundational skills to your entire life. I mean, if you write well, it makes you better in every other area of your life. Like since I've spent more time on writing and have a writing habit that is making me a better writer, I've become veteran every other area of my life.Like I think more clearly it exposes the gaps in your thinking so quickly. Like if you, if you sit down and you think you understand something and you try to write it down in a way that, you know, a kid could pick it up and understand it, you very quickly realize if you don't understand that thing. and that happened to me all on the way, like the amount that I learned about investing by writing about investing was insane because I had to sit down and try to explain it to a five-year-old basically with my tweet threads.And when I didn't understand the thing, like the gap was like a blaring thing in front of me and I had to go research it more and dig into it and understand it. And so I just think that like, when you write, you expose flaws in your thinking, and that causes you to go down the rabbit hole and learn more about whatever it might.Nathan: [00:22:58]Yeah. That's good. Is there anything, any resources or things you paid attention to to get better at writing? Like, do you read any of the traditional, you know, and Lamont bird by bird?Sahil: [00:23:07]Yeah, I read elements of style. when I was younger, like I think in high school, I read that and that stuck with me. you know, candidly, like I just study some people that I respect and think of as great writers. Like David Perell has become a friend and I feel very lucky for that, but I just thought of him as a great writer and the things that he put out in his, the elegance of his writing and the different, you know, ways that he was writing things on a, for brig, has become a friend.I think she writes exceptionally well on, on education and some of these topics. I just think that there's a wealth of unbelievable, talented, people out there that like are publishing things that anyone can read and you don't have to pay. Like you can go see it, learn from it. And so I try to be a student of the internet in that regard.Nathan: [00:23:53]Yeah, no, that's good. okay. So since you've built such a massive audience so quickly on Twitter with threads, I'm curious, what have you found? What are the things that are really working? What makes a good thread? You know, now you're writing to those things that, that resonate right away, you know, and you're like, oh, I can cut out all of that, that I was doing before.Sahil: [00:24:13]Yeah.Nathan: [00:24:14]What's working. What have you.Sahil: [00:24:15]Yeah. I mean, I would say there's like a handful of principals that I think were quite well. you know, number one is like, if you're writing a thread, the hook has to be good. because you need to give people a reason to click and convert and, and, and kind of look through to whatever you're writing.I do think, you know, now more than ever threads are like a somewhat saturated game, so to speak because people realize, I mean, I, when I first started writing them, very few people were writing threads. Twitter didn't even have like infrastructure built around long form content. It was pretty janky. You had.Manually add a tweet under each one and copy and paste it in. And now they, they realize that it keeps people on the platform, then it's a great mechanism for them. And so the algorithms prioritize it. People realize it's a growth hack, you know, like really is much better for growth than single tweets.And so it's become a bit saturated, I would say. And so, as a result of that, I think the burden of proof is higher on like the quality of the content that you should be putting out. I think there's a risk of like losing high quality followers. you know, by just like over, you know, just putting out too many threads that aren't really high quality.And so my best advice is like, make the hook rate, make sure the hook is like really catchy and draws people in and then just make sure that quality is like exceptional and something. You can be proud of. My whole thesis all along with my Twitter was, you know, there's like a spectrum of kind of posting frequencies.You have the like, pump who has been exceptionally successful. Every single day, he's all over it. He's posting a lot, you know, high frequency. And then I'm on the other end of the spectrum, like a Julian Shapiro's on the other end of the spectrum. People like that, that like right every now and then, you know, it might be once a week.It might be once every couple of weeks. but what you, what you're putting out is like, I stand behind every single thing that I've ever written on Twitter. you know, from a thread perspective, because I know that I spent a bunch of time on it. I really thought it through, if I didn't understand something, I was getting it vetted.I was having someone review it. I mean, I just, the internet is permanent. Right. And so I like it's my personal capital on the line and I wanted to make sure everything was really, really good. And so, that's important as you, as you put things out there is just like, make sure you feel really good about the quality of what you're writing.Nathan: [00:26:31]Yeah, that's a good point that if you're doing the approach of, like, I went to a Wikipedia article and like made a thread of the content that's in there, which is a lot of threads that you come across as, that's a genuine question that ISahil: [00:26:44]Yeah.Nathan: [00:26:45]Reading some of them. the quality really matters.Sahil: [00:26:47]Yeah. I agree. And I go both ways on that. Right. Like I did, you know, a bunch of like, in my early days, especially I did a bunch of what people would have thrown into that bucket of like Wikipedia threads, my perspective on it was always, great. The Wikipedia articles there. but if you wouldn't have seen it, and it's a really interesting story and I'm packaging it into something that makes it more broadly disseminated, that's a value added service that I just brought to the table.And so like, I don't know, like Morris Chang, I wrote a thread on he's a founder of Taiwan, semiconductor manufacturing company, amazing guy, incredible story. Does he have like, you know, information on Wikipedia about him? Sure. But like I posted it and 17,000 people liked it and saw, you know, 5 million people saw it that most of them probably didn't know who the hell he was because they were never going to go to that Wikipedia page.And so I kind of go both ways on that criticism. The reality is that type of thread has become a bit of like a meme where, you know, there's clearly broad push back against it and, and, you know, it's become a little bit of a meme of itself. And so I do think it's worth being kind of wary about regularly publishing that type of content.Nathan: [00:27:55]I think it probably comes down to how unique the story is that you're sharing. Like maybe it is on Wikipedia, but, well, exactly what you're saying. That is not someone that I would have gone to look for, but I read and enjoyed that thread. Whereas if you're just like, here's this thing about Steve jobs is like, you mean the Steve jobs story that everyoneSahil: [00:28:15]Yes,Nathan: [00:28:16]Heard a hundred times then it's very different,Sahil: [00:28:18]I totally agree with that. I mean, like if you're going to go tell the story of. You know, Elon Musk, how he, you know, started space or whatever, like start Tesla or something like, yeah, everyone kind of knows that and it's, it's a little bit played up and, and people understand it. And so I just think it's worth balancing with your own unique content.And that was how I always did it. Whereas like, if I was going to post in one of those stories, I was going to post something that I like deeply researched and did unique educational content and just kind of balance the two. And I think that would like, that worked for me. I think it probably works for others.Nathan: [00:28:51]How do you think about the intersection between your Twitter following and your newsletter? Like as you've built that over the last year.Sahil: [00:28:59]Yeah. I started the newsletter. Yeah. I first just created it in January of this year. and I originally just created it because there were a lot of people on Twitter who wanted to get my threads in their inbox. Like didn't like the Twitter format for them and wanted to just have it in a nicer format.And so for the first, five months of it, like through mid may, all it was was just me sending out my threads the day later, with, you know, just like a nicer format. And so the newsletter list grew to something like 13,000 people just from that, which I was pretty amazed by honestly, you know, more recently.So mid may I decided to do the Friday, I'm calling it the Friday five now, but basically curation focused, five pieces of interesting things that I consumed, like my content engine during the week. and really focused on promoting other creators. that was like, I really wanted it to be a positive, some thing.I'm creating this list and I want to help use it to kind of promote others that are creating great content that need help with discovery that maybe they're smaller. They need more eyes on their things. They're putting out great things, but sometimes it's hard, it's going into the abyss. And so I'm helping with discovery for them.And so I launched that. and then I've recently started just more expanding on the concepts that are my threads. And so it's sort of like, I think of the threads as sort of a taken down version of a longer form newsletter piece as I've prioritized the newsletter. and I, you know, I really use Twitter for like, it's a discovery mechanism for the newsletter.The reality of newsletters as you know, is that discovery is really, really hard and it's cobbled together and there's no like central, kind of authority for discovery right now. And so you need to kind of hack it together and figure out how do you make your newsletter really shareable? How do you drive new eyeballs to it?How do you kind of like generate growth over time? Because. You know, if your Twitter is growing at 15, 20,000 a month, you know, of new followers and your newsletters growing out, like, you know, 50 that's kind of a problem. and so driving people through and like figuring out how to convert that funnel is like really what I'm trying to figure out and understand right now.Nathan: [00:31:07]Yeah. I think that what I mean exactly the point that you made newsletters don't have any. You people talking about like, there's no algorithm for newsletters, so you're not having to fight to, I read your, your readers. And it's like, yes, absolutely. You're spot on. Also, there's no algorithm for newsletters.And so there's no distribution, you know, there are, there's no discovery. And so you're having to use outside channels, like the newsletter authors from 5, 10, 15 years ago. they use their blogs and, you know, sites like dig and hacker news and others to get along new followers, but also just search, you know, having the, the, long form articles that were ranking really well on Google.And, and I feel like very much the newsletter creators of today are all in on TwitterSahil: [00:31:56]Yeah.Nathan: [00:31:56]Yeah.Yeah. There's but like very much on Twitter to get that discovery.Sahil: [00:32:00]Yeah. I agree with that. And it's, it's going to be interesting to see how the, like the newsletter wars continue to play out. Right? Because all of these platforms are realizing and Twitter realized it. I'm sure Facebook realized it with their recent launch that way. They are providing discovery for a lot of people that are then going off platform with their longer form content.And so Twitter acquired review, you know, Facebook has their new launch and it's just, it'll be interesting to see kind of how that plays out in terms of, you know, where people go with their, you know, with their newsletters and how it all kind of, how it all shakes out in the coming months and year.Nathan: [00:32:35]Yeah. Well, let's dig in there more. Cause like I obviously care about that space a lot being in the middle of it. And you see, you mentioned Twitter and Facebook. Spotify is in the mix. They reached out to us. I don't know, two months ago about, you know, acquiring ConvertKit oddly, they were more, I thought that it was, they were interested in us because of the music side of things, as we've made acquisitions in the music space and all of that turns out, they were more way more interested in the podcast side of things.Like then we have the Tim Ferriss of the world, you know, a lot of top podcasts using ConvertKit. And so I'm curious where all of this goes. I think, you know, like everything five years from now, 10 years from now, we'll look back and the path that ended up becoming most common, you know, whichever platform dominates or if it stays fragmented, you know, we'll look back and be like, oh, that was obvious.But in this moment, I think it's actually fairly up in the air of like, is sub stack going to continue to rise? Will it be review, will bulletin. I mean, that's what Facebook's isSahil: [00:33:33]Yep.Nathan: [00:33:34]Be a flash in the pan or will it actuallySahil: [00:33:38]Yeah.Nathan: [00:33:39]Six around.Sahil: [00:33:40]Yeah. I mean, I think if I had to guess, I think Twitter is in the pole position on it. And the only reason I say that is. they are the main mode of discovery for most writers. And so if they can do anything with the algorithms to prioritize discovery, to review newsletters, that's a massive advantage.Embedded, you know, just because they already have people on the platform. And so th that'd be like it from an investor standpoint, that would be my guess is just that continues to try to ship product that allows them to capture more of the value that their platform is actually been creating for the last 10 years that they've captured none of,I mean, like Twitter has been abysmal at capturing the value that's created through Like, I mean the amount of value that I have flowing through Twitter broadly speaking, Twitter's capturing $0 of, and that's sort of a travesty just from a business standpoint. And like, as an investor, you look at that and you're like, man, that's a huge opportunity if they can figure out how to capture of that.Nathan: [00:34:35]Will you see it reflected in their market cap versus Facebook's Write of like, I mean, I I don't even know what Twitter's market cap is, but it's yeah Twitter's marketSahil: [00:34:45]Cap caps like 55 billion, I think, but like the, yeah, I mean, Twitter is Twitter's ad product is also just pretty bad relative to, you know, relative to Snapchat or Facebook, but I think it should improve. I mean, as they do more of the creator economy and as they spend more time, you know, actually capturing some of this value, the quality of their ads and the ability to target and all of those things should just get a lot better, which makes their ad monetization better.And that drives the whole engine. So, I mean, I personally, like I'm on Twitter and their opportunity around all of it. I'm also like native creator. I mean, I basically wrote a blog on Twitter over the last year. I'd be like, create these content loops and I'm linking back through the old threads.And like, I sort of do a Ben Thompson does what Stratec Curry, but I do that on Twitter, inNathan: [00:35:29]That's super interesting. I'm looking at it from the perspective of, if it's going to be. Like a major platform, like as we look at newsletters, will it be basically Facebook or Twitter at this point that, that dominates that with reviewer bulletin? Or will it be still a mix of the subset convert kit?That kind of thing, like will creators end up starting on review and be like, oh, you know, I wrote some dreads, I got a thousand followers, Twitter like pops up and says like, Hey, you should do a newsletter. You know? And so they start that and then maybe they want more functionality and then they move to a, you know, a ConvertKit or another platform, or if the distribution will become so powerful, that, and the discovery is so powerful that there's a real reason to stay on,Sahil: [00:36:14]Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like the. The Clayton Christiansen, model of like disruption and innovation, where you like you, you know, the, the, the platforms that are like very newsletter specific are going to be able to provide a better solution for the full range of potential creators that are on the platform, because that's their entire focus.Like that's all they spend time on and, you know, newsletters are never going to be Twitter's sole focus and they, you know, need to get better at shipping product. And they have a bunch of different areas they're working on and focused on. I'm sure they have a team that's focused on newsletters and long form, and I'm sure that team is great and have great engineers, but, if you can be a player that is like newsletter specific and you can provide an amazing solution for every kind of type of creator and archetype that sits on your platform, that's a real way that you can create a wedge and create a sticky customer base there.Nathan: [00:37:06]Yeah. We'll see how it plays out because, one thing is that email has never been a winner take all market. You know, we look at like, MailChimp's the biggest player by far, but even then, I don't know what their eight or 900 million a year in revenue, something like that.Sahil: [00:37:20]Yeah.Nathan: [00:37:20]And, and you've got plenty of players that are, you know, likeSahil: [00:37:23]Yeah.Nathan: [00:37:24]Campaign monitors and others in the hundreds of millions of, yeah.Sahil: [00:37:26]Yeah. It's also going to be a long tail market. I think the most interesting part of the greater economy are going to be these like micro creators actually that are like hyper-local and writing about, you know, interesting local news as an example where they're not trying to get the like biggest following in the world, their goal is not to have a hundred thousand newsletter subs.It's to have like a thousand true fans, you know, that And so I think that that market is probably the most interesting, like there's going to be a ton. A hundred thousand dollars a year earners that are basically writing like the defacto newsletter for news in, you know, X part of the bay area, or for news in, you know, Westchester county or whatever it might be like.There's going to be all of these people that rise that are doing that. and making a six figure salary and working from home. And it's an amazing setup. And so I, I'm actually more interested in that than I am in the like macro influencer world of the creator economy, to people that are going to be making seven figures on all of this.Nathan: [00:38:27]Yeah. And you see all kinds of that. cause it happens not just in the local news side of things or basically people finding a niche based on geography, but it happens a lot with a niche based on, you know, topic or, or where like we've seen people, artists talking about very specific things and you're like, there's an audience for that.And digging like sure enough, 8,000 subscribers and 50 or a hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue. And, that's actually a good transition to talk about monetization. So you, you know, you have a, all your content is free. I don't think you have any paid content out there is that.But you monetize through ads through a job board, as, as you're looking at, or ads being sponsored content or, or, sponsorships, I should say. yeah. How do you think about monetizing your content andSahil: [00:39:19]Yeah.Nathan: [00:39:20]You played with and, and why have you settled onSahil: [00:39:22]I mean, I'd say I'm in the very early days of figuring all of this out and testing things. My operating premise has always been to never charge people for anything, like never charge people. I just, and it goes back to like, when I first started doing this and writing, it was about education and it was about giving people, empowering people with information that they otherwise wouldn't have had and making them feel happy or inspired or whatever it might be.And so that doesn't rely on me charging people for things. I think if I ever. Did something like that was going to take a ton of time. And I was going to have to spend a lot more energy or effort on it maybe, but I can't really see myself, charging people for anything. So as a result, the flip side of it is like I have all these eyeballs.I have a lot of people that this goes out to. And so sponsors are, you know, willing to kind of support that and have their product or whatever it might be, get seen by all of these people and hopefully clicked on. And, you know, I have a high burden, I would say for like the type of companies that I would work with on that.Because I just want it to be brand right. And people, you know, companies that I'm excited about or would support either way and not just. Hey, some oil and gas company wants to sponsor me, so I'm going to take it on. And so that kind of flows through both, you know, the sponsors for the newsletter, which have been great and companies I feel strongly about, and also to the job board where it's kind of a natural flow through of like I have this platform, I have all these amazing people that are, that are following me and have gifted me with their attention.A lot of whom are like looking to kind of grow and level up their life and, you know, take on new adventures. and then I had on the other side, all of these amazing companies that are trying to find those types of people and these amazing, you know, this amazing, new group of talent. And so I'm kind of sitting in the middle where like, it used to be that LinkedIn was that person sitting in the middle cause they had gathered all this demand.And so how can I dis-intermediate that? And this amazing company palette came along and it's doing it disclosure, I'm an investor in palette. I think it's an amazing company. but they kind of enabled that infrastructure. And so creators can be the kind of direct conduit between companies and between their audiences.And there's going to be a bunch of flavors of it. I mean, for me, It's kind of a large audience and I get you access to a lot of people. And it's a little bit of top of funnel marketing for the featured companies, because I tweet about them. And so you get kind of a social proof that comes with being included and that I included you on the list.But for me, it's like, I think it's a really cool thing. I mean, there've been people that have gotten jobs through the board and now that's like, wow, that's a really neat thing that I was a part of somebody who's kind of acceleration of whatever path they are on.Nathan: [00:41:55]Yeah, it's another part of the flywheel for the, I don't know, your ecosystem, your community, and all of that, where you like someone is going to go from a fan of your work to like, I don't know, a super fan of some in some way, if they got a job through, through that. And like every company is going to keep track of that.Like hiring and recruiting every person that we've ended up hiring, we know exactly where they came from. Cause we're looking for those, those trends, not that like out of 65 or a hundred people, you're seeing like massive trends, you know, or statistical significance, but you're seeing like, okay, This didn't come from a giant job board.This came from a referral or from, you know, a nice jobSahil: [00:42:34]Yep.Nathan: [00:42:35]Creator.Sahil: [00:42:35]Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right. I mean, I think it's just like trying to figure out now, what is the model that works with these boards? Because for me, like what I want to move towards is fewer and fewer jobs on the board, but make them like really exclusive, almost like a limited edition drop every month that you have like 10 companies that like this month, I'm really going to push and promote and kind of, cause I think these roles are amazing and these companies are amazing and I want my audience to see them versus the like, you know, 200 jobs on a board and you hope people scroll through it and find the thing that they're looking for.And so I'm sort of like toying with what's the right model. What's going to drive the most eyeballs for the companies, so that it's really beneficial for them. And what's going to drive the best outcomes for my followers, where like they're finding unique jobs and getting access to things they otherwise wouldn't.The other. Great tailwind is that more and more companies are starting to believe in open access, hiring, recruiting, diversity, all of these things that I think and believe very deeply from a values perspective. And so the fact that I can create something to, further kind of progress, that trend, is really meaningful to me, just on a, from a social perspective.Nathan: [00:43:45]Yeah. Yeah, that's good. And I think that we're going to see a lot more interesting monetization methods. Like I saw people running job boards as a separate business, you know, years ago, whether it's like we work remotely or authentic jobs, or like in specific niches, like authentic jobs, for example, you know, really got going in the designer like designer and web developer, ecosystem.But now that's very much a trend of like creators running their own job board. And I mean, palette is driving that a lot. actually I guess this is one of those places where right. You're, you're providing real value as an investor. Not like the thing that we make fun of, of like, oh, how can I be helpful? it's like, you're actually running on a job board usingSahil: [00:44:32]Yeah.Nathan: [00:44:32]Advertising it,Sahil: [00:44:33]Yeah. And helping them figure out what's working, what isn't like, what could creators use more of different features? You know, frankly, they have a great growth loop. And the fact that like every time I promote a job, that's featured on my board, it's a pallet link. That's getting shared on Twitter and more and more people are seeing palette.And you're like, what is that? And that includes investors that follow me. It includes, you know, other founders that are looking to promote roles. And so, they have a cool kind of endemic little growth loop gone, and they're doing really well around it. But to your point earlier, like the sky's the limit for that type of thing, because as you can.Do more and more of like figuring out how to get to that warm lead that referral-based, the talent pool, where like people are vetted and you're kind of like really high quality leads on a certain role. the better the quality of the outcomes are going to be for the companies. And so they're working on things around that, which I think are really exciting because then you stop getting the, like, you know, you're not just going to the large mass audience, it becomes this like really curated, interesting pool of talent that you're like linking directly and that companies can have access to.So I'm just really excited about the future of like opening access to, to hiring and disrupting, you know, the, the kind of incumbents like a LinkedIn who I think have just been asleep at the wheel in that market.Nathan: [00:45:49]Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that. okay. I want to talk about something that maybe is more specific to you. you have this term creative capitalist, which I really like, I'm going to start using more because I feel like it describes, you know, a very specific type of creator, that I, I love to follow.But I'm curious with your background in, playing college sports, as, as a pitcher for Stanford, and then, what you're seeing, basically, we're going to see this wave of creator athletes. You know, now that the NCAA has made the changes where you can actually, profit from, name, image, name, image, likeness.Sahil: [00:46:30]Yep.Nathan: [00:46:32]What do you think there? And what, like, what trends do you think are going to come from that? As we have a whole new wave of creators able to.Sahil: [00:46:40]Yeah. I mean, first off, I think it's amazing. And I think it's a long time coming. I played college sports from oh nine to 13 and it was like always a topic of discussion. It has been for the last 20 plus years. I think it's way overdue. I mean, I think it's a massive disservice to a lot of athletes.It was the one time in their life that they could have made a lot of money off of a very unique skill. And then whether they got injured or it didn't pan out, I think it's a travesty that it has been this way for as long as it has. I'm glad it's finally changed. and I think it's like a classic example.You know, kind of like a regulatory disruption that unlocks a massive new market, gambling has had the same thing like sports betting, I think probably in the early days of having a similar thing as it gets legalized, but you basically just had regulation that was holding back. a huge market and now it's come, it's gone away and you have this huge inflow of talented people that have huge audiences that people feel a high degree of affinity towards.And so it's a, it's a huge inflow of new creators basically. And people that, you know, previously didn't have access to these markets until they got done with school. and the reality of a lot of them is they're not going to play professional sports. They're going to be highly, highly relevant for their handful of years that they're in college.And this is their one chance to capitalize on that. And so I think it's, I think it's great. I think there's going to be a ton of cool business model. that come up around it obviously like agents, they're probably frothing at the mouth trying to figure out how to go capture this, media studios, brand studios, all of that.I mean, I think there's just a huge unlock for a lot of these student athletes. and it's going to be cool to see how it flows. I mean, I think the general way these things will work is that it like probably over-correct where you have people spending too much on these athletes and like the market gets a little frothy and then they realize the ROI is not good.And so it kind of swings back, sort of like, you know, ad monetization on all of these social platforms. Like when they get started, people freak out and throw all the money at the like one thing and it squeezes out the return within that as always happens. And so then you kind of come down to a baseline.I imagine that happens with the athlete market.If I were still an athlete, if I had been anything, I would be all over it. and I think a lot of them should be.Nathan: [00:48:56]So going back, let's say, yeah, let's say you were an athlete today. When, when those changes were put in place, what are the things that you'd be doing? You know, what you know now about like growing an audience and monetizing on platforms and stuff like that, youSahil: [00:49:11]Yeah.Nathan: [00:49:12]What would you do?Sahil: [00:49:13]Yeah. I mean, I guess my best advice is like focus on long-term value and owned audience over just like fleeting little like brand deals and promotions. like what value I, my, my mental model around all of this has always been like value capture. if you are creating a lot of value, you should be trying to capture a decent amount of that value you're creating.And the reality of most of the. Like one-off influencer deals and things like that is you're actually creating a lot more value than you're capturing. And it's not a great mechanism for long-term value or longterm wealth creation. I think Warren buffet said when it's raining gold, you put out a bucket, not a thimble.And I always loved that quote. I think it's like very, various student and very relevant for these kids and young, young men and women that are going to be out in this market. It's like, it's raining gold right now in a lot of cases for you. but you want to make sure you're setting up infrastructure in setting yourself up in a way that allows you to capture it for the longterm and to capture a good proportion of what you're creating for the longterm.And so if that's, you know, rather than doing an influencer deal, it's like starting your own thing or having your own ownership of something. You've seen some of the tech talk influencers doing that Tik TOK creators, realizing that like equity is much more valuable to them than just taking a $10,000 put up a post, whatever it might be.Spencer rattler the quarterback for Oklahoma. It was like starting a merchandise line and it's his own thing. And he's like, I think that that is really interesting. and you're going to see a lot of cool, it's going to be a great like idea lab, which I'm just excited to be around for, to learn from, because people are going to test and learn a million different things with all of these athletes that are around, trying and seeing what works.Nathan: [00:50:55]Yeah, it's really going to be all the same principles, but you know, over again with a new, a new group of people, right? Like I wrote an article called the billion dollar creator, and it was basically about those who go from an, a specific, like how I might've had my audience by selling with a one-time thing.That would be the brand sponsorship, the other deal, you know, something like that. And instead, focusing on the ones who like really build equity in something they're starting a company, they're saying like, great. Instead of letting someone else sponsor my audience, I'm going to be the one selling that product, you know?And so it's the, like glossy is an honest company and you know, these other ones where. You know, the individual creators, likeSahil: [00:51:40]Yep.Nathan: [00:51:40]Capture all of that value rather than say like, great, I'll get paid 10,000 or a million dollars. You know what, depending on your influence level for a one-time thing.Sahil: [00:51:50]I totally agree. It's something I think about constantly too, is like, you know, as I continue to progress in this world, you know, what am I actually building equity in versus earning income around. And I think you see it, you know, like creators have figured it out. Ben Thompson, you know, with launching his passport thing where he's kind of creating a platform for people to engage and he's creating equity around it and trying to build something Patrick O'Shaughnessy, you know, with the Colossus platform and kind of being the go-to place for, for business ideas and business breakdowns and investing.I think a lot of people are doing that. I have something in the works right now with a good friend and, that we're partnering on that I think is kind of in that vein that I'm really excited about. But, it's definitely something that people should be thinking about in real time.Nathan: [00:52:33]Is that the, when, when people ask on Twitter, like what are you most excited about? And you answered the thing that I, that I can't talk about yet.Sahil: [00:52:39]Yeah. Yeah. We're close to being able to talk about it, which is exciting and it's coming soon. but we've got, a couple of people that are going to be really, really cool to be involved with on a project. it's going to be dope. I'm super excited.Nathan: [00:52:52]Nice. Yeah. I mean the biggest thing, like going back to monetization, you know, just for creators in general is really looking at what do you own long-term what do you have equity in? Right. Cause the sponsorships even, well, the job board, right? It's something that you're building equity in. Right. And so I like that.Cause it, it builds this reputation. Sponsorships are a great way to drive revenue and be more connected with companies build relationships. But like that's not a. That is just cash.Sahil: [00:53:23]Yeah,Nathan: [00:53:24]Doesn't, it doesn't build equity. And so I'm, I'm superSahil: [00:53:27]Yeah,Nathan: [00:53:28]Like this is the thing that I preach all the time when I'm talking.I guess I don't preach it publicly as much.Sahil: [00:53:32]Yeah.Nathan: [00:53:32]That I preach behind the scenes allSahil: [00:53:34]Yeah.Nathan: [00:53:34]You're talking one on one.Sahil: [00:53:35]Back to me mental models, just cause I about these things a lot, my mental model for this one is like, you kind of have there's there's two sides to your life. You kind of have like income producing activities and then wealth producing active. and the way you want to set it up, you know, like how I think about it is you need an income producing activities because you need to pay bills.Like you need to pay your mortgage or buy groceries, like car bill, all of those things. That's like you have income producing assets. Any, Delta between your kind of expenses and what you're producing from an income producing activity standpoint should be funneled into wealth producing activities. so that you're actually building wealth and equity and whatever is.And so wealth producing activities can be as simple as investing in the stock market or in whatever you're investing in. Or it can be like further along on the risk curve where you're starting a startup, you're building something you're, you know, investing in startups, you're, you know, trading in crypto, whatever it might be.It's like here, you're taking, you know, one end of the, like flywheel of your personal kind of financial ecosystem and using one end to kind of fund the other and actually build long-term equity and wealth in something. That's how I tend to think about it is like you need income producing activities and any excess that exists on that side and people should strive.I think, to live within their means any excess is, you know, used and funneled into wealth, producing active.Nathan: [00:54:54]Yeah. I love that. you and I share a passion for helping people build income, build wealth and all of that. And so I'm going to use that simple modelSahil: [00:55:04]Yeah, love itNathan: [00:55:04]Lot. It's good.Sahil: [00:55:05]Good.Nathan: [00:55:07]If someone asks them to put her in. And I was curious about this as well. going back to the investing side, if you'd only invest in two companies, public or private and what would they be?Why?Sahil: [00:55:15]That's a tough one. I don't want to spend too much time on, on private cause I've already probably invested in some of these, you know, pallet is probably one of those for me right now. Like I just, I think palette's an amazing company and I'm huge, huge fan of what they're building. I, on the public side, honestly, Twitter could be one of the companies I would invest in today.I just think the potential and. The external perception of Twitter is very different from my perspective on it. And so I think I have a variant perception of the future that, you know, that would allow me to capture a lot of value if it goes, if, you know, if I'm proven right. in the future, Synthesis School, I, again, disclosure, I'm an investor in that business.I just want that business to succeed because I think the world is a better place if it succeeds. And I want my kids to be in it and taking classes it and being a part of it. and so I just want that business to succeed so badly, whether my investment ends up being an amazing one or not because of, you know, for whatever reason, I just want that business to win. And so I, I would invest in that 10 times out of 10 I'm sure.Nathan: [00:56:18]Just for everyone listening, give like the 62nd 32nd pitch on synthesisSahil: [00:56:23]Yeah. Synthesis School is a kind of alternative education program for children. And basically the whole idea is that li

How do you remove corruption from a society? How do you create lasting, sustainable prosperity in developing nations? Neither of these questions has an easy or obvious answer, but today’s guest is a leading thinker in how we can make positive investments in developing countries. Efosa Ojomo is co-author of Prosperity Paradox, and he’s here to help us think about how to create prosperity. He was such a great podcast guest that we asked him to speak at the FDI event in a few weeks, so you’ll want to tune in today and then at the conference to hear everything he has to share.

There are so many keys to success when you’re building a business online. So many that no one even knows where to begin and some of them even contradict each other! If people in the fitness industry differ with loving and hating carbs (with others not even caring at all), it’s the same thing with business. In this episode, James and Dean help you zoom out and look at how all the pieces fit together. You’ll be surprised to know that the path to get results are the same fundamental things you’ve learned!   “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – James P. Friel   Outline of This Episode   - [05:10] The value of the fundamentals   - [14:07] Being clear on who you want to serve    - [31:40] Helping people make decisions    - [45:23] A market to message match and market into message mismatch    - [47:55] Generating traffic and setting up affiliate networks   Cut Away the Noise The late basketball coach John Wooden stresses fundamentals, even to the degree of putting your socks on! If you get blisters because you put your socks on wrong, you’re not going to be at your best. For your business, be a master of the simple things first!   Understand Who You Want to Sell To How old are they? What do they do? Know the needs of the people you want to serve and figure out how they would feel good about buying from you.   Solve People’s Problems When your offer is good enough that it meets the need your prospect has, there is very little selling involved. A person who accidentally ate a spicy pepper needs no sales talk for cold water!   Resources & People Mentioned   - John Wooden (Former UCLA Coach) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wooden   - Competing Against Luck - https://www.amazon.com/Competing-Against-Luck-Innovation-Customer/dp/0062435612   - Clayton Christiansen - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen   Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License   Interested in being a guest on the show? Visit us at https://justthetipsshow.com/apply-as-guest/   Connect with James and Dean   James P. Friel:    - CEO Quickstart: https://jamespfriel.com/ceo-quickstart/   - Facebook Group (The Hustle Detox): https://www.facebook.com/groups/hustledetox/   - Facebook Group (BulletProof Business): https://www.facebook.com/groups/1107362546297055/   - Site: www.jamespfriel.com   Dean Holland:   - Blog: www.DeanHolland.com   - FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/DeanHollandHQ   - Billion Dollar Project: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BillionDollarProject/   JTT Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/justthetipsshow/

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is John Berardi. John is a Canadian-American entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Precision Nutrition, the world’s largest nutrition coaching, education, and software company. He's also the founder of Change Maker Academy, devoted to helping would-be change makers turn their passion for health and fitness into a powerful purpose and a wildly successful career. And he’s the author of the best-selling book Change Maker. Over the last 15 years he's advised companies like Apple, Equinox, Nike, and Titleist, among others, as well as the San Antonio Spurs, Carolina Panthers, US Open Champ Sloane Stephens, and 2-division UFC Champ Georges St. Pierre. He's also been named one of the 20 smartest coaches in the world and 100 most influential people in health and fitness. Regardless if your passion is in health and fitness, there is a lot you can learn from John about entrepreneurship and life and I’m excited for him to share it with you in this episode. www.JohnBerardi.com Health and fitness was not the likely path for John. He was born premature, had asthma and allergies, and as he grew up was very much an introvert. It wasn’t until he got to High School that he began to study health and fitness to better himself. It then that his passion for it was born. But, it wasn’t without major challenge. Because John was more introverted and lacked self-confidence, it manifested in abusing drugs and alcohol at young age to cover up his pain. He fell in with the wrong crowd and one night was out driving around drinking with friends and got into an accident and miraculously survived without a scratch. That was his wake-up call and when he made the decision to focus on his health. He started going to the gym, found a mentor, and didn’t look back. The mentor even gave him a job at the gym. John went onto to become personal trainer paying his way through college, but he knew he needed to learn more. He need to learn the psychological side. Combining the two disciplines is what helped to birth Precision Nutrition. Precision came about right as things were transitioning off of dial up to high-speed internet and Precision was positioned well to grow. From the start they grew the company remotely. As John said, back then, they were “weird.” They were totally remote. They didn’t have an organized management structure. Instead, they used Holocracy. In 2017, John and his co-founder, sold the majority of the ownership in the company and John has been focused on unique projects such as Changemaker and others. In our lives, we have moments that help define us. There is more to the car accident story where your friends actually got the wrecked car back on the road, but you decided to walk home. They ultimately got arrested. What was it that told you to walk away in the moment? That would have been the 3rd time John would have been arrested with these same guys. John shares that while the accident was happening and the car was spiraling across the road, it was like a movie scene. Everything slowed down and he saw scenes from his life. The last scene was watching himself get lowered into the ground as his parents wept. They ultimately landed between 2 trees perfectly and didn’t hit them – all perfectly fine without a scratch. It was this moment that he chose to go a different direct and walk home while they drove the wrecked car away and go arrested. The change to be better was tough. John no longer had the friends he had. He stopped using drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. So, getting better and to his next level was lonely. But, that is why he started going to the gym. At the 17 min mark, John and I have a great conversation on how what we go through shapes us, why you should not regret, and how you should learn lessons from the past while getting perspective on the ones you are making right now. What do you feel is most important to consistently succeed at high levels? Reputation. You can talk about the value of it, but you will reach a point where you see its true impact in your life. John gives the example of selling Precision and essentially starting from zero, but in launching Changemaker, his reputation – a history of doing great work – served him well as people know and trust him and thus supported him. Reputation is built by having strong standards in life that we adhere to and live by. Often we think that we need to come up with our standards/principles alone. You don’t. In fact, John says, “Nothing worth doing can be done alone.” You are going to need other people as everything from inspiration to idea generation. At the 29 min mark, John talks about how the book Principles by Ray Dailo was a direct result of his co-founder Phil. Ray had not planned a book on what then just a sort of pdf manifesto that he had put out. “The best ideas are not in your own head. "The best ideas live in the interface between you and others. It is when you pile ideas on top of each other that the best things emerge.” Tell us about Changemaker. What does it mean to be a changemaker? The book was really a culmination of everything John has learned and done to succeed that has made a real difference. What someone thinks doesn’t always have a bearing on what they did. Watching someone in action many times will give you much better lessons than hearing what they think. Use “squinted eyes” to seek the truth. See things fuzzy and look at the shapes before you seek the clear version. Many things are not just black and white – you need to see the grey. Changemakers align what they think and what they do, but also constantly are looking at things through squinted eyes. What do you teach people about how to find their calling? Every career person should go through the purpose, unique abilities exercise. First, come up with your origin story – how did you become the superhero you are? Define what led you to where you are, so you know where you are… Ask questions of yourself and those around you to determine this. Your purpose and what you do every day can have a disconnect. You may have a deep purpose, but not like what you do. So you need to understand your unique abilities. Your unique abilities are the things you are world-class at – the things you are great at that you can really enjoy doing. What of these moves the needle on your purpose. When you know your purpose and align it with your unique abilities – then you can truly find what to do to serve your purpose that is based on you and who you really are. The last part are your values – your guardrails that keep you aligned. These are all things you don’t do on your own. You have to get the feedback from others to help shape these things. You have to get “for real.” You should have your best self, coach you and build this into your routine. Set time aside where you are in a peaceful mind set, able to think clearly, and work on a problem or set of problems. Set aside time to let your best self show up to help you. At the 48 min mark, we talk about the importance of structure in our lives, but how it needs to be a flexible structure. Rigidity is the enemy of consistency. The more rigid the rules are and how things have to be “just so.” The “just so” lifestyle can lead to problems too. There is a fun interplay between structure and flexibility that is needed to have the success that we want. Are there any principles from the book or thoughts you want to leave us with? The idea of “What is business? What is entrepreneurship?” It comes down to 3 things. First, you have to know what people want and are willing to pay for (much easier said than done) Precision used the “jobs to be done” framework from Clayton Christiansen at Harvard. Second, create that thing in the most remarkable way. You cannot possibly know this all on your own – get feedback and ask people to think aloud. Get people’s emotional reactions, not their logical. Third, tell everyone about it. It’s more than just marketing   Best Quote: "The best ideas are not in your own head. The best ideas live in the interface between you and others. It is when you pile ideas on top of each other that the best things emerge."   John's Misfit 3: Practice compassionate, active listening in your life. Hunt for feedback. The most successful people collect more feedback than anyone else. They have fine tuned the practice by accepting all transmissions they can to grow their success. Don’t deify action. Don’t take action for action’s sake. Strategize for your action. We need a minute of thoughtfulness before taking action.

Timothy J. Mohin is the Chief Executive of GRI, developer of the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting standards. A veteran in the field of corporate sustainability reporting, Tim is responsible for driving GRI's mission to empower decisions that create social, environmental and economic benefits for everyone.   Prior to his appointment as Chief Executive, Tim was Senior Director of Corporate Responsibility for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). He is also a former Chairman of the Board for the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and former member of the Conflict Free Sourcing Initiative’s steering committee.  Previously, Tim founded and led Apple’s Supplier Responsibility program. He also led Intel’s environmental and sustainability functions. Tim started his career with the US government. With the Environmental Protection Agency, he led the development of the toxics provisions of the Clean Air Act Amendments. Later, Tim was senior legislative staff for the Chairman of Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Tim Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Testifying for mandated ESG reporting in the US Evolving GRI standards and framework to meet new demands Developing a new GRI standard to disclose corporate taxation Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Interview Highlights: Can you talk to us a little bit about the importance of ESG initiatives to a company's bottom line and how you think we can best communicate this to those that don't get it? Yeah, it's a great question. We are viewing this from a global perspective and there's many, many examples where undisclosed material risks have led to some pretty negative effects on companies. But the bigger picture that we're seeing is that ESG information, so-called sustainability information, has moved from a niche, let's face it, reputational issue into the very mainstream of global commerce where analysts, investors, asset owners are demanding this information and rely on this information to make decisions. So, GRI has responded to that by becoming the international standard setter, but we need to do more. We need to have better consistency, better compatibility and better quality. Let's face it, a lot of these reports are a hundred pages or more and they have a lot of pretty pictures and they're somewhat marketing oriented. The disclosures now need to be much more professional and that is the change that we're trying to push forward and that's the change that we're seeing in legislation, not just in the US but across the world. Investors are clearly picking up on this. They're understanding that these companies with demonstrated commitments to sustainability and transparency are outperforming others. Obviously we're seeing a huge rise in ESG and socially responsible investing. What has that recent interest and growth in ESG and socially responsible investing meant for GRI and the reporting world? Last year we had the CEO of the largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock, say that within the next five years, all investors will measure a company's impact on society, government and the environment to determine its worth. It's a pretty incredible statement that received a lot of attention in the investment community and the sustainability world. Well, it certainly brought us a lot of attention because as you know, most companies that are reporting are using GRI to report. Currently, we're looking at data that shows that of the top 250 companies by revenue, 93% are reporting sustainability information and 75% of those are using GRI. The numbers in the top 5,000 also show that 75% are reporting and 63% are using GRI. So, we are converging around a global standard and I think that's very important. It brings us a lot of attention and puts a lot of pressure on us as well. But I think one really important difference to point out as we mainstream from a niche reputational paradigm into one that's much more in the center of global commerce, is this area of materiality. Some actors in the field are really focused on financial materiality, but frankly, if the issues are financially material, they should be disclosed anyway in the regular financial disclosures. The fact is, when you come to ESG information, it's very difficult to make a financial materiality case for many of these issues and so you have to apply a different test. You have to look at not only what is the effect on the company in the near term, but what is the company's effect on the environment in the longterm. That's what the GRI materiality test brings to the table and I think it's very important that test be maintained as these mandates start to come online. On the topic of evolving the GRI standards, you're now addressing the issue of corporate taxation as a sustainability issue. GRI is now developing the first global standard for disclosures of the taxes companies pay in the various countries where they operate. Can you tell us a little bit about why GRI is going down this path and where you're at with that? It's really exciting because this is our first new standard in many years. We have 33 topic specific standards in the economic, environmental and social space. This one is obviously in the economic space. So, why would we prioritize this one? Well, it turns out that having appropriate payments to governments, tax payments to governments, is fundamental to government's ability to provide sustainability services to their people. If industry is not paying their fair share, if they're hiding their resources in tax havens for example, then the whole system starts to crumble. So, we have been told by many different stakeholders that this is a high priority issue and that there's millions, billions and trillions of dollars, euros and pounds that have been hidden from taxes, and it's time to expose that. Specifically embedded in the standard is country by country reporting, which is absolutely central. Most industries would argue we already have to report this, which is true within a certain country, but multinationals don't have to report across their business globally. So, that's the innovation here. We got 85 different submissions when it went to public comment and they were all positive. 43% of them were from investors. So, even investors who you might imagine going the other way are very much supportive of new standard. What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? I actually wrote an entire book about this. It's called Changing Business from the Inside Out. So, of the 270 plus pages, what I would pick out as this: lead from wherever you stand. A lot of people in many organizations can feel that they don't have a lot of decision making power, but they have a lot of passion for the topic. What I talk about in the book is there are many ways to express that passion to help move your organization in a sustainable direction. You don't have to be in the sustainability department to express those views in your professional life. So, lead from wherever your standing. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? You know, it's that mainstreaming movement that we talked about earlier. When I started this, I mentioned sustainability hadn't been invented, and then when it became invented it was kind of a niche play of, let's say, altruistic people. And now it's really personally and professionally satisfying to see something that I've dedicated my career to become mainstream. Now it's being talked about by global commerce actors, by the chair of the Bank of England, by Larry Fink and by others in the business world. I find that to be incredibly satisfying and hugely important to our future. What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read? Well, my book of course, Changing Business from the Inside Out. But also, there is a book that I really thought was inspirational. It's called How Will You Measure Your Life, by Clayton Christianson. Clayton Christiansen is the author of The Innovator's Dilemma which is a classic in the business book genre, but he also has lived his life in a way to bring a lot of extra value to the world that is not all about just making money. He wrote it all down in a book called, How Will You Measure Your Life. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? There's many I can choose from, but for me the GRI standards are incredibly helpful. Why are they helpful? Because everybody likes to talk about sustainability, but very few people can define with specificity what it means. I'm not just making this up, I say this in my book, if you really want to know what sustainability means start with the GRI standards, because it will lead you through how to conduct a materiality assessment and then each and every specific topic that's under that broad rubric of sustainability is defined. Where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at GRI? So I do have a website, timmohin.com. That carries all of my latest social media postings as well as my articles and press reports. That would probably be the best way to follow me, personally. Of course, there's the GRI website and the GRI newsletter, which are also really good resources for your listeners. About Sustridge Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.  

Many sellers overlook fundamental selling principles, but salespeople must learn the importance of a strategic network for business and career success in order to become proficient in our jobs.  Judy Robinett is an advisor to Springboard, an incubator that helps women founders, with great statistics of 19 IPOs and 165 strategic sells. Judy loves educating people and meeting entrepreneurs and helping them with connections.  She wrote the book, How to Be a Power Connector, a bestseller in 2014, and she recently published another book called Crack the Funding Code: How Investors Think and What They Need to Hear to Fund Your Startup. It's a book that tells us how investors think and what they need to hear to fund your startup.  The beginning Judy worked as a social worker but she didn't stop there. She explored her options and opportunities after making some bad decisions like starting her own franchise restaurant. In time, her business failed and she had to sell it.  She worked with a then-unknown company called Skullcandy® when they were broke and had a quarter of a million dollars in revenue. She helped the company build its credibility and bring its revenue up again. That fueled her interest in startups and she became an investor herself. Fast forward to now, she's a managing director at Golden Seeds.  Crack the funding code Many great entrepreneurs in the U.S. don't understand the facts. For one, there's no lack of money. In fact, there's $318 trillion of private global wealth. These entrepreneurs don't understand the players: there's private equity that are all investing into startups as well as the sovereign wealth funds that manage 10% of the global GDP.  The book Crack the Funding Code is an easy-to-follow roadmap on how to find and pitch investors. The book's appendix has term sheets, actual pitch decks, and other relevant research information. It is a book that will educate entrepreneurs because these people can change the world.  Lessons in mistakes Entrepreneurs take calculated risks. Along the way, missteps create lessons waiting to be learned. Judy's bankruptcy lawyer said of her failed franchise restaurant, “They can break you but they can't eat you.”  Judy learned to kick fear to the curb and understand that there's no lack of resources in the world because resources are connected to human beings. It is true that sales are critical in finding and catching investors. It's also important in catching the customers. Entrepreneurs must learn to navigate in their mistakes.  They need to figure out how to get investors to figure out how to find customers.  If you can't figure out how to find a venture capitalist, you can't figure out how to find a customer. #investors Funding mindset  Howard Stevenson, known as the Lion of Entrepreneurism at Harvard, wrote a book on how to be an angel investor. His book talked about how you can set yourself apart from everybody else. In order to be perceived as a high-potential startup: Be clear on your exit strategy and the comparables because investors want to get their money back.  Mitigate risks as viewed by the investors.  It is good for startups to put high-powered people in their advisory board to help build their credibility, especially if the CEO hasn't done a startup before. In the VC investing world, people talk about adult supervision. This is critical because you want to have reliable people in your team with deep industry expertise who can open doors to money, media, and other resources that you might need.  Getting investors is more than just being good and being able to produce something.  One of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs do in their pitches is the way they focus on technology and explain the details at length. Investors, however, care less about that. Harvard researchers found that the average amount of time people spend looking at a particular slide is 11 seconds. Financial slides, however, get 23 seconds worth of attention. Investors look for a team that can execute to a big enough market, the total addressable market (TAM).  Three C's Arthur Rock was the first venture capitalist who started the industry in Silicon Valley. He said that if somebody comes to him with a B product but with an A team or an A product but with a B team, he'd always go for the A-team. This means that investors invest in the team that can execute.  So, the first C is you need to be coachable. We all have that blindspot of not knowing what we don't know. It's important to come across as coachable rather than arrogant. If somebody asks you about something that you don't know, then be upfront and tell that person that you'll get back to him. Then ask for help to show that you are coachable.  The second one is having a level of confidence. You are selling your concept, your company, and how you're going to grow it to the investors so a level of confidence is important.  The third one is character. Howard Stevenson said in his book that when he hears an exaggeration or half-truth, he runs away instead of walking so that he won't lose money. Investors have a way of looking at your character in a substantial way.  Be coachable  The moment we say that we don't need more information is the moment that we stop growing. When we stop learning and stop being coached, we also stop progressing and growing.  A sales rep who has been selling for 10 years and who stops reading books about sales is stuck in the same way that an entrepreneur who stops needing advice is stuck.  Businesses fall short because entrepreneurs stop growing and because they don't have a board of advisers to tell them the truth or advise them what to do.   CB Insights did a post mortem of 101 startups and one of the problems they found was the inability to learn and pivot. Clayton Christiansen, an expert on innovation at Harvard, said that 75% of startups pivot. Viagra didn't start out being used the way it's used today, but the nurses noticed a side-effect. Everybody must be in an exploration of finding out what you don't know because that's where growth happens.  The obstacle is a gift. Run to your obstacle much like David running toward Goliath. Understand that every time you have a vision, Goliath shows up so you must master how to learn and pivot.  There are two words that mean fear: the first refers to being terrified, and the second is the sense of awe and wonder. This happens when you step out of your comfort zone.  You need to reframe your fear and deal with it.  Network your way to the right investors  It is critical to be in the right room. Judy met a founder who was trying to get investors in Salt Lake City for her company but she was in the wrong room because she wasn't Mormon and she was a woman. Judy took her to Boston and San Francisco where she closed deals and then sold her company for millions There are specific groups of investors. First, you start with your family, then your friends, then your credit cards, and you move up to the angel investor, the seed round. There are 400 angel groups in the U.S. and $317 trillion in private global wealth. There is no lack of money here. There's also the governmental fund, the sovereign wealth fund. It is important that you know which group to go to.  You can find them via searching in Google, by going to pitch events, or by asking top lawyers and bankers who work with startups.  Do not forget to ask them the two golden questions:  What other ideas do you have for me? Who else do you know that I should talk to? On average, people know between 600 and 1,000 people. You don't have to know tons of people; you need the right people to get in the right room.  Another good way to build your network is to find your way to private curated events and talk to people.  Let them know what you do. You can also ask them their opinion and who they know that you ought to be talking to as well. You'd be surprised at the number of people who are happy to help but you need to learn to ask.  This is particularly difficult if you are from the lower to middle class where you're taught to keep your head down, get a degree, work hard, and don't ask for help because people would notice. In truth, people do not notice.  According to research in Denmark, 5% of people in any corporation or organization are the true influencers and power brokers. Those are the people that you need to get to know. Delivering a compelling pitch You need a concise, compelling narrative. Dick Wilson, a VC who has had $1billion exit every year for the past five years, was asked how to create a compelling pitch. He said that it's important to be concise, be compelling, and have passion.  You want to get to the second date so don't spill all the details or all the financials because your job is to get those people to be interested in you and start doing due diligence. John Livesay, also known as Pitch Deck Guru, is a great man who can help you out with your compelling stories. Research often suggests that the majority of startups fail but that data is inaccurate. Hard research shows that about 50 percent fail because the owners aren't willing to learn.  Reasons startups fail Phil Graham, one of the Y Combinator founders, said that there are two reasons why startups fail: lack of customers  lack of sales  One of the Dropbox founders said that before he started Dropbox, he didn't know anything about sales engineering and product development. He bought the top three books in each of those areas, and he got an advisory board. Simply put, you don't have to be brilliant and smarter than everybody else.  Don't fail your startup. Use the two golden questions and start reaching out to strangers. Open your mouth and ask. Investors are everywhere and they need startups, too. They need to put their money into entrepreneurs' startups so a little leg work and some networking is helpful. Go to the National Venture Capital Association and the National Angel Association to find lists of everybody.  Do your homework and do your due diligence on the investors.  “The importance of a strategic network for business and career success” episode resource  Stay in touch with Judy via email, judy@judyrobinett.com, and her LinkedIn account.  If you're a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Training Sales Program. A course to guide sales reps and sales leaders to become better in doing their pitches and presentations. It has 12 courses to help you find the right customers, ask the right questions, and close great deals. You can get the first two modules for free!  Or you can also check out Audible as well and explore this huge online library with thousands of books. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.  Thank you for tuning in and if you liked this episode, do give a rating and review on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of the New York Times Bestseller, Influence and Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade, talks the science of influence. Dr. Cialdini, or the “Godfather of Influence, has earned an international reputation as an expert in the field of persuasion, compliance, and negotiation. He discusses how small changes can yield big results.      Key Takeaways  [3:10] Dr. Cialdini’s book Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade, quickly became a Wall Street Journal and a New York Times Bestseller. Dr. Cialdini wanted the book to be something his grandchildren can use as a guide through their adulthood, and he put their picture next to his screen while he wrote it.  [6:08] There is no one size fits all approach to influence others. Instead, we have to go into the situation armed with knowledge of the powerful principles, and then identify true ways others would benefit giving their assent to it.  [10:12] When you congratulate people on their progress, it actually moves them away from the goal and puts them back to the starting line. Instead, try giving them praise for their commitment to the goal.  [15:22] When we make a public commitment to positive features, it puts us in a state of mind where we continue to think positively about the subject. For example, on a job interview asking the potential interviewer about why they picked you as a potential candidate will get the ball rolling for them to think about your personal attributes.  [17:04] When we ask people for their advice instead of their opinion, they are in a cooperative state with us and along for the ride.  [18:58] Put the exact numbers of your figure at the front end of your proposal. This positions you as an honest communicator and clear thinker. The more specific the numbers the better, as this shows you have thought the value through completely.  [20:22] Persuasion is both an art and a science. Influence comes naturally to some, but it also can be taught and learned.  [27:49] Great influencers draw attention to an idea that readies people for the core goal of the message. It primes and readies them to the concept that will get more success as a result and they clearly understand what’s in it for them.  [36:02] Not all influence practices are manipulative and exploitative.  [45:39] There is no ethical problem with educating people of things inherently and naturally part of the situation, and pointing them in a direction that offers them benefits and value. Not only do you get paid in the moment, but you will get paid down the line with their trust and business.   [48:19] Go into every new situation expecting the best from the new people you encounter.    Quotable Quotes  “Change the word progress to commitment.”  “ We need to reinforce ethical behavior.”  “People want to see themselves as living up to their commitment.”  “If you get that advice, you get an accomplice. When you get for their opinion, you get a critic.”  “You have to prioritize the truth.”    Website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Books    Carol Dweck  Consumer Reports  Leadership BS Ep #121: Jeffrey Pheffer Challenges Our Assumptions  Clayton Christiansen  Spitzer Center 

Mike Zisman founded Golf Genius after a long career in information technology, starting with the creation of Soft-Switch in 1979, which was one of the very first companies to participate in the electronic mail industry. On this episode of The ModGolf Podcast we learn how Mike combines his love of golf with his passion for IT to help revolutionize the golf industry. window.dojoRequire(["mojo/signup-forms/Loader"], function(L) { L.start({"baseUrl":"mc.us19.list-manage.com","uuid":"fb1db86bf86e67d377747be70","lid":"2e2f634e4c","uniqueMethods":true}) }) Season 5 Sponsors https://uploads.fireside.fm/images/1/1ea879c1-a4a2-4e10-bea4-e5d8368a3c7a/3QqeEFBq.jpg https://uploads.fireside.fm/images/1/1ea879c1-a4a2-4e10-bea4-e5d8368a3c7a/Z2ynjMPO.jpg The number of entrepreneurial insights Mike crammed into this episode is truly phenomenal. Here's our Top 10 list of what we're calling "Mike's Nuggets of Wisdom": * “There’s a difference between building software and building software products. Software products rely on customer self-sufficiency if they want to scale and make money”. * “What I love about the cloud is the elasticity, the scalability". * “You have to listen very carefully to your customer because they usually have excellent ideas”. * “When you look in the code and there is ‘if the customer equals ‘x’ do this, that is the death of you. You end up with this mish mash of spaghetti code”. * “Great leaders always simplify” (actually a General Colin Powell quote!) * “We are constantly working on the user experience by reducing complexity”. * “Elegance is a simple solution to a complex problem. Not a complex solution to a complex problem.” * “You will never be as smart as all your customers put together”. * “We’re totally virtual, we live on Zoom and Skype for collaboration and sit on top of all these other software products. If we had to do this all this stuff alone it wouldn’t be very productive. Today you don’t have to do any of that. You can focus 100% of your energy on the business problem you are trying to solve.” * “Someone will always come up your tailpipe” referencing Clayton Christiansen’s The Innovators Dilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma) of how competitors solve a simpler problem for a smaller market that you’re not interested in. Michael referenced The Trough of Disillusionment" as one of five stages on Gartner Group's "Hype Cycle", which is a graphical representation of the stages a technology goes through from conception to maturity and widespread adoption. You can find out more about the technology Hype Cycle here (https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Gartner-hype-cycle). https://uploads.fireside.fm/images/1/1ea879c1-a4a2-4e10-bea4-e5d8368a3c7a/uI74PsQq.jpg To learn more about Golf Genius, check our their website (https://www.golfgenius.com/) and YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJaTARgMNHrOlhSikbaHPXA). https://uploads.fireside.fm/images/1/1ea879c1-a4a2-4e10-bea4-e5d8368a3c7a/baQx8K0V.png (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJaTARgMNHrOlhSikbaHPXA) Special Guest: Mike Zisman - CEO, Golf Genius Software.

Alexander Genov but will be affectionately refer to him as Alex for the purpose of this interview. Alex is an experienced Customer Research Professional who applies his Experimental Social Psychology background and his passion for research, design and innovation to solving important customer and business problems. His professional goal is to help teams create remarkable products and services which make people's lives easier and more enjoyable. Currently, Alex is Leading Customer Research for the Zappos Family of Companies. In previous positions, he was responsible for research and usability of the products and services for companies like Turbo Tax also known as Intuit, State Farm Insurance and the Active Network, he has over 15 years of relevant experience, 5 years of academic research and over 10 years of customer research in the software industry. Alex received his Ph.D. in Experimental Social Psychology from Clark University and his areas of research include defining and measuring emotions, individual differences, usability and consumer segmentation.    Questions   Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey What is does Social Psychology mean and how does that connect to customer experience? Talk a little about your research that you have found, what works, what doesn’t as you pointed out individual differences and that customers are the same. Why do you think it’s important to invest in research to help you grow your business and become more customer centric? What is one online resource, website, tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you? What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people? Where can our listeners find you online? What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?   Highlights   Alex Genov pointed as it says in his bio that his background is in psychology, that his passion is understanding people. And more specifically his specialization is understanding emotions and how we define emotions, how we measure emotions, how people experience emotions, the area of emotions is not as simple as it sounds. On the face of it we all experience emotions, we all talk about it but what I found through many years of deep research and study of emotions is that it differs not only how we talk about emotions but how we experience them and measuring them is a tricky thing. That's his specialty and also another area of expertise he brought from said psychology was individual differences and that's something he believe deeply in which is that not everybody not all people are different. And by the same token not all customers are different. In his career, he has been trying to help companies understand customers as people and understand the individual differences that are important for each specific industry and in each specific product. He was initially headed to be a Professor but soon gave up the idea because he didn't want to be poor for many many years. He kind of sold out to the software industry but he has no regrets. It's been an interesting challenge and a lot of fun experiences trying to bring rigor to research in the industry but also to make it practical. So, that's been the biggest challenge for him all along is to make it to kind of walk that fine line, keeping that balance and keeping the organization honest in terms of research but also being practical and not being too academic and kind of obstructionist in that way.   Alex Genov stated that there are many areas of psychology when you start specializing in it. So, one area for example is, Social Psychology and other area is Personality Psychology which is a bit more focused on the individual and other area is Clinical Psychology so these are people who help people with mental problems and so on. He picked Social Psychology because it was the most interesting to him and when he was studying it all the really fun experiments from the 50’s and 60’s that really kind of make jaws drop nowadays but they were all designed to understand people in the sense that how is our behavior determined and motivated by the real or imagined presence of others. That's the definition of social psychology. The methods that he brought with him to the industry or essentially the methods of scientific psychology which are based on the empirical method of research. And the most kind of defining feature of that is the question “How do you know?” When we talk about something and we say, “I believe this and that to be true” some people may be fine by saying, “I feel it in my gut and that's what I believe” or they say. “I know from experience and I know it to be true” but an empiricist will say, “Well how do you know?” “Do you have the data to look at and to measure?” An empiricism is basically this belief that we all have to have some kind of shared experience to be able to determine that something is the case. So, for example, if he asked you what the temperature is and you tell him 72 degrees then you can both look at the thermometer and agree that that's the case. When it comes to emotions you can see how becomes tricky to say ok how do you feel and then you feel happy but many times we don't have direct access to our emotions or we cannot articulate them or we don't want to share them. So that's where it gets tricky how do you measure, how you define emotions. For example, you can define them by the facial expressions which is a behavioral indicator, you can define it by overt behavior, are people jumping with joy literally right or are they running away? Also, you can always ask them how do you feel but again one of the principles of research that brought that led him to the industry was to measure the same thing using different methods and to triangulate the results so that we have a higher degree of confidence that what we're saying when measuring is exactly what we intended to measure. He doesn’t want to get too technical but that's basically the background.   Yanique mentioned that we talk about Zappos all the time in workshops and people think about Zappos as the Customer Experience guru in the Retail Market especially in the online space. They basically came in and they transformed how retail business is done online. The fact that they have a 365 day return policy, if you call them somebody is going to answer the phone even when you go on their website, unlike other websites, every single page on their website has their telephone number at the top. So, at the end of the day when somebody has an issue or when a customer has an issue whether it is to make a request or it is to query a product or service that they have already engaged you for a lot of times they want to speak with a live human being and sometimes it's so hard navigating on these organizations websites some of them don’t have a phone number, they have this contact us page where you have to type out your entire request or issue and then wait for somebody from their company to respond to you. So, the fact that Zappos actually makes themselves available by providing a telephone number on all their pages really sets them apart.   Alex Genov agreed and stated that he joined Zappos about 4 years ago and he can take absolutely no credit in it's incredible success over the years. He has contributed something in the past 4 years but indeed the company was formed early on based on the belief that it will be successful only if they make their customers happy, employees happy and the vendors happy. That was the focus. When Tony Tsheish started investing in the company, basically he was intensely focused on the customer experience and on making this very new behaviour which is buying shoes online as easy as possible. We're talking about 15 - 16 years ago. They realized that in that kind of business things usually will sometimes go wrong and you cannot prevent that but what you can do is to do everything to make it right by the customer. So, one of the initial defining moments was one day something went wrong with an order and a customer was not happy but then they went out of their way to make it right and then that person wrote an e-mail and in the subject matter, she started by using the word, “WOW.” Bear in mind, this is 15 - 16 years ago. Now everybody's talking about wowing customers. But that was so long ago and then at that point they realized this is going to be our defining characteristic, is going to be customer service and at a time when everybody is considering service a cost to be cut. Zappos said, “That's who we are and we're going to invest in that.” That's really counter-intuitive in a way thinking has let it success because the whole belief is that we're selling shoes that are also available in other stores or in other places. And if we do all the same things that other retailers do and if we compete on price and we can be done on cutting costs then we're just going to be another retailer. And you know what's happening with retail nowadays, this was decided so many years ago. Sometimes it's really because he’s a proponent of the online experience. Sometimes there's intense focus on customer service is going to be a point of frustration because he’s thinking can we focus a bit more on the website. But then you'll realize what the roots are and also, we have a saying at Zappos that “Zappos is a customer service company that just happens to sell shoes right now.”   Yanique mentioned that if businesses looked at their companies like that, “I'm just an airline” or “I'm a customer service company that just happens to be in the airline business transporting people from one location to the next for all different reasons, weddings, business, vacation.” And they realize that their focus is on service because without these customers we have no business. I think it would really change the mindset and propel, it would be like a paradigm shift in how we as customers experience business.   Alex agreed and stated that it will help to have some competition, some industries are more much more like monopolies right. And they have less choice than there is much less pressure to not be customer centric in general. One question in the outline about what business owners can think of and what's going to make them successful - it's very simple, it's just focus on the customer and of course you have to have your business plan and you have to have your operations to be excellent. You cannot be focusing on the customer and giving away free product and you know you're going to be in business for maybe 3 days, you will have very happy customers but very short-lived success. You need to have your financials work but beyond, he loves Zappos because it's a company that's focused on purpose before profit. And it’s a very subtle but very important difference, if you say that you’re in there for the profit then you’ll be making all those decisions that ultimately end up hurting customers. If you are saying that you’re here for that purpose then but also make sure that you are making profit. Ultimately, if you're making customers happy they will be loyal customers and they will be telling others about your business. Alex stated that another thing that sets them apart is that they don't do a traditional advertising. They don't pour billions into TV ads for example, but people know about Zappos from word of mouth, from things that they do that benefit the community. And they have a very strong Social Media Presence. So that's another lesson for entrepreneurs and for business folks. Focus on the customer, focus on the community, do good things for the community and for the customer and then you're going to have those customers that are not only customers but they're going to be your ambassadors they are going to spread the word about you. So, it's going to be saving a lot of money on advertising essentially and marketing.   Alex stated that if you're a small company you cannot really afford PHD’s and specialist to do this for you but you can do it yourself to a large degree and then why is it important? If you want to make some customers happy, now we talk a lot about personalization, a lot about meeting the customer needs or the jobs supposed to be done then you don't know your customers. You're probably going to be basing decisions on your own experience and if you are lucky to have a lot of customers just like yourself, so be it then you have to do any research. If you want to differentiate yourself you need to understand a little bit of the competition but mostly the customer. There are different types of businesses, for example, we are a corner coffee shop, then you're going to be providing the staples, you may walk around the neighborhood see what the other coffee shops charge and you're going to price your offering accordingly and then there's not much to research about, what people need is coffee, pastries. Alex stated that one of the books he read recently that influence him is one from Harvard professor called Clayton Christiansen and he's been talking about jobs to be done for a long time, customer jobs to be done and it's a variation of user needs or wants but it's much more specific in the sense that he's saying customers are hiring you and your product to do specific jobs and if you do the jobs, they'll continue hiring you, if not they are going to fire you and your product. So, the example he gives is a big breakfast chain here that they wanted to grow their milkshake business. They were getting a hard time selling more milkshakes so they hired this company to really observe people and how they buy milkshakes and then they talk to people and all they found was that the same person stopping by in the morning and stopping by in the afternoon had different needs when it comes to milkshakes. So, in the morning they were on their way to work, pretty long commute and they needed a little bit of nourishment like breakfast but also, they needed something to keep them occupied in the car sitting there bored. And so, they designed these milkshakes with something to do with nutritional value but also with some chunks of stuff in the milkshake so that you know people would just drink the milkshake and have something like some more sensation in their mouth. In the afternoon, when the people stopped by after picking up their kids from daycare and so we had kids in the backseat making noise and shouting, angry and so So, they are buying milkshakes for them and the job to be done was to give them some nutrition but also to keep them quiet back there. They were designed not only the milkshakes but also the straws so that they're thinner so the milkshake last longer. And you understand the whole point of this is that if you didn't observe people in action and didn't talk to them about why are you buying this and what are you trying to achieve with that milkshake, then you will be in the dark. Some things are pretty straightforward like opening a coffee shop with the staples but even then, if you're really customer focused then you'll know your customers and when they come in you know that this person, they have their usual and you offer them that. Or maybe they're upset, talk to them about what’s bothering them, bartenders are great at that. They solve these emotional jobs to be done like a friend for somebody who is a little bit down maybe or doesn't get anybody to talk to at the moment. The point is all of this is based on knowing people understanding people and if you're just focused on your business and your numbers and you don't see your customers as people but just as walking wallets then ultimately, they'll find another place that treats them better. So, you have those basic needs and wants. When he was talking about individual differences is when it gets to be bigger businesses that now start serving millions of people or different types of customers for example, if you are a B2B business and you're selling something to a company, you have different interactions, for example the CEO who is going to be signing the cheque ultimately. And interacting with some procurement person who is responsible for implementing the system. And then you may or may not interact with the end user but they're all different user groups and they all have different mindsets and they're going to have different interactions with the system. So that's a very simple form of segmentation based on role in a company. For Zappos for example, to some extent gender plays a role of course because all men's shoes are different from women's shoes, clothing. They dress somewhat differently. When he was working for Turbo Tax for example and it's a financial, Do-It-Yourself financial product. Gender made no difference in terms of how finances are kept, if anything women are much better at keeping finances than men but when it came to how we understand the product you think about finances there was no different so for each business it's going to be a bit different. Just to finish the coffee shop example and maybe some of the audience have some customers that are vegan now so you have the vegan customers and you have the ones that are not. So that will be kind of a surprise and delight for your customers to say, “Do you want regular milk? or you want soy milk?” But that's another example of maybe your segment based on taste and health preferences and so on.   Alex shared that in his tools of the trade like analytics programme. He uses SPSS too because everybody at Zappos does hands on work. And there's no more managers there now and it's a different self-organization kind of environment. A lot of his work is hands on work. They have a really powerful survey tool, they do a lot of surveys with our customers and with prospects - general population, US shoppers. They collect information that way and then he uses an analytics tool called SPSS to do the analysis. They also collect a lot of text data and it's very challenging to analyze sentiment and he’s talking about large volume. Like 600,000 reviews on the website or even they do a survey when they get to 2,000/3,000 verbatim comments from customers in text form. It's very difficult to analyze, now they’re starting to explore a tool that is a very powerful text analytics tool developed on technology from the MIT media lab and so you have the best scientists there working to develop this kind of artificial intelligence to extract meaning for example from text. And it's not as simple as just counting the number of times a word appears. That’s extracting meaning what the word is connected to water. He mentioned that Google is amazing, Google is like this really powerful software company if you have to find anything you Google it and find it right away.   Alex shared that one of the key influences for me is this Italian designer called Roberto Verganti. He wrote several books but one of his key books is called Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean and his main idea is that you need to understand customers as people and that's been his kind of mission in the past couple of years as don’t really just study customers as shoppers in the process of shopping or in the process of calling but understand them holistically as people. He has been advocating for this sort of radical innovation which is that a dual meaning of what things mean for people and that's very hard to do but it's going to guarantee the biggest success. One of his examples is this company that was the leader in candles, a few centuries ago. A couple of centuries ago they were there for a hundred years, they were the best, made candles and then electricity came along. And instead of them changing the meaning of what they were doing they continued to focus on the light, how long does the candle was lasting, how safe it is. And then of course they disappeared, they went out of business. Alex asked – “Can you guess one Candle company that is thriving right now?” Yanique replied – “I cannot…” A candle company that is thriving now is called the Yankee Candle Company, it's very big in the United States but the reason why they're so successful is that because they change the meaning of what a candle means, it's not used for light but it's used for mood and they made it smell good but you see how they changed the meaning because the other company was focused on safety and they didn't want the candle to smell right and then it lost its purpose. That’s all he talks about, understanding what things mean for people. Another example is this kettle for boiling water and they made this kettle that looks pretty cool but also was emitting the sound when it was ready, it kind of whistle and the meaning there was not only was it a tool for boiling water but it’s a signal for the family to gather around the table. You would think it’s a simple object and then people pay US $500.00 for this. It’s the shape, the meaning. A good question for all the listeners is the business they’re in, are they innovating on that level versus just making things better the way they are, keeping the same meaning but making it better. “Are you innovating or are you making things better the way they are?” [Question to ask yourself as a business owner]   Alex stated that at work he is excited about a couple of big programs they are doing which is the Voice of the Customer, they are enabling their customers that go on their website and don’t call on the phones to give them feedback and for the organization to be able to consume that feedback, so they are working hard on that. Again, exploring text analytics, it’s going to open their eyes, it’s just a ton of data that has been left unexplored. In his personal life, he went back to a passion of his which is Martial Arts after many years of not doing much and in Las Vegas there are Shaolin Monks teaching and that’s super exciting for him. There is one authentic Shaolin Monk visiting to hold a seminar and he’ll be taking some time off work to do that.   Alex shared listeners can find him at – LinkedIn - @alexgenov   Alex shared that what inspires him in times of adversity in his professional life is thinking about the customer and Zappos is a part of Amazon and Jeff Bezos is talking about customer obsession and then in his personal life, is this idea of no hacks, it’s just perseverance and hard work. Links Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean by Roberto Verganti

They're back! Reda and Kyle team up for a new season of Tentative. In this episode we discuss the thought process, tools, and execution plan for goals and resolutions in the new year. Plus, books for Reda to read over the coming year, and the importance of reading not only as a designer but also as a person. Gina Bolton’s V2MOM Getting Things Done Moonwalking with Einstein Kindle Competing Against Luck- Clayton Christiansen Kale and Coffee Compete- Alan Klement Making Sense of Color Management- Craig Hockenberry Creativity Inc. Thinking Fast and Slow

In this episode of #ThisOldMarketing, Joe and Robert discuss GE's move away from prime-time advertising and increasing move toward branded content.  "Homeless" media is a huge opportunity for media companies and brands, but it comes with a big risk that most organizations are not aware of. Credit Suisse may or may not build a social network for super-rich people and John Bell has some wise words for marketers regarding content marketing.  Raves include Clayton Christiansen and WSJ launching an annual print magazine. This week's TOM example: Ancestry.com. This week's story links: GE Is Dumping Prime Time Advertisinghttp://qz.com/564910/general-electric-is-dumping-prime-time-tv-advertising/ The Rise OF Homeless Mediahttps://medium.com/thoughts-on-media/the-rise-of-homeless-media-97e031c8b319#.o0saw6r9q Credit Suisse Building A Social Network of Rich Peoplehttp://adage.com/article/agency-news/credit-suisse-building-a-social-network-rich-people/301540/ There’s A Fresh Business Case for Content Marketinghttp://johnbell.typepad.com/weblog/2015/11/a-fresh-business-case-for-content-marketing-by-brands.html SPONSORWiden's DAM Decision Guide -  http://bit.ly/widen-dam-guideRANTS AND RAVESRoberthttp://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/12/02/fresh-insights-from-clayton-christensen-on-disruptive-innovation/ Paired With….https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation   Joehttp://echojunction.com.au/facebook-cracks-1bn-daily-users-10-insights-q3-results/# http://www.freeportpress.com/wsj-sees-the-futurein-print/   #ThisOldMarketing - Ancestry.comhttp://adexchanger.com/native-advertising-2/ancestry-drives-sales-not-awareness-via-content-marketing/

I think I'm in love with Mimi Ikonn. Oh, and also her husband Alex Ikonn. Don't want to confuse anyone! When I was a kid I didn't think I would be happy unless I was a "millionaire". Some kids in my school said they were millionaires and they would make fun of anyone who wasn't. I asked my dad what he was worth. He said $2. Maybe that scarred me so much that I always make sure to have wads of $2 bills on me at all times. A year or so later his company went bankrupt. So he wasn't worth the same anymore. In his mind, he was worth ZERO. For the rest of his life he sat in the living room, depressed, and listened to music. When he was a little boy he loved music and won an award. At some point we all return to what we loved as a child. I suppose that means I will return to comics, Judy Blume, and spying on people. A few weeks ago I met Mimi Ikonn and Alex Ikonn. I was insanely curious about them. How come? Because Mimi makes videos of herself, delivers real value to people, and then makes over a million a year because of those videos. I don't know how old Mimi is. She's much younger than me. She's much younger than my father ever was when I was alive. He would've liked to live her life. So Claudia and I asked Mimi and Alex if we could interview them. Because they seemed very happy also. The podcast comes out later today but here's the summary. This is a simple post. How to make a million. I am absolutely sure the same techniques that worked for Mimi and Alex can work for anyone. I had them lay it out step by step. A) EMOTIONS Mimi became obsessed with beauty and hair. She and Alex watched before and after videos of women who were getting hair extensions. "They seemed much happier after getting extensions," Alex said. "Whenever there are strong emotions about something you know there is an opportunity." So Mimi started making videos of herself discussing hair and beauty and hair products. "I never thought I would get more than 1,000 views," Mimi said. "But I loved doing the videos. And I wanted to share my love for the topics with as many people as possible." Now she has had a quarter of a BILLION views on her videos with 2.7 million subscribers. B) HUB AND SPOKE People ask: "How do I get traffic to my blog". Or "how do I get buyers of my book." or "How do I get people to follow me on Twitter." A lot of it is about loneliness. We sit in our house writing blog posts and then hit Publish. We want family to love them. We want friends to love them. And then we want the world to love them. I'm really just talking about myself. I know when people enjoy things I do, I feel as if I have a family. I'm happy. At least until the next post. Mimi loved making the videos but needed traffic. So they did the only two-step technique that gets traffic online for anything you want to do. Well, make it a three-step technique. 1) Love Know more, love more, express more, bleed more, than anyone else. Was Mimi the only one doing videos on beauty and hair? No. But maybe she put more passion into it. 2) Spread the Love Alex would take images and posts and links to her videos and spread them on Pinterest, Instagram, blogs, other sites and have them all point back to her YouTube channel. I call this "the Hub and Spoke" approach. Youtube was the hub, with a dozen or so spokes reaching out to popular sites that all would link back to the hub. 3) Make more Love No matter what you do - some will be good and some will be bad. Not every video or post is going to have views. So you do more. When you do more, several things happen: a. More people find you b. You rank higher on search c. You improve d. People who find you start clicking on your older videos so now they start to get more views. The "Make More Love" technique always works. Michelle Phan did 54 YouTube videos before she made a massive hit. Hugh Howey had already ten novels before he published "Wool" which became a massive bestseller. Clayton Christiansen applied for NASA for 18 years in a row before they accepted him. Make more love. C) 1000 PEOPLE Note she said she only thought she was going to get 1000 viewers. The number 1000 keeps coming up with people who have HUGE audiences. Kevin Kelly wrote about this in a great post called "1000 True Fans". He writes about it kk.org. He also talks about it on my podcast. Tim Ferriss talks about how every one of his posts he makes sure he's going to deliver value to at least 1000 people. Of course he delivers much more value than that. But 1000 seems to be the right number that people who know seem to focus on. Keep focusing on delivering value for a 1000 and then they tell 2 friends and so on and next thing you know you have a quarter of a billion views, five bestsellers, movies being made about you, you go into space, your own makeup lines, and on and on and on, depending on what it is you love. D) BUY LOW, SELL HIGH Alex and Mimi noticed that many of the other beauty videos were talking about a specific brand of hair extensions for women. So they went to my favorite place in the world - the mall. "We saw these products were priced at $500," Alex said. "So then we went on Ali Baba and saw the same products being sold for $100. We then went to the manufacturers and saw we could buy directly for $50. The exact same products that were being sold for $500." They borrowed from mom. Borrowed their full amount off of their credit cards. And they placed an order. Then, I imagine (they did not tell me this) they prayed. E) SOFT SELL Mimi talks about many products on her videos. She expressed a radiant, confident personality and talks about everything she is wearing, what her habits are, what products she uses. She NEVER sells anything. But underneath the video is just a link. www.luxyhair.com. The orders came in one at a time. Then 100 at a time. They sold out of their inventory, paid everyone back, and bought more. In their very first year (2010) they had over a million in revenues. Ever since then they've had more than a million a year in profits. Never once using the words "buy this" anywhere. F) QVC-A The most successful people have a model for their success. I think that's why I enjoy Peter Thiel's "Zero to One" book so much. Or Peter Diamandis's "Bold". Or Marcus Lemonis's TV show "The Profit". Each book has a different, but very very simple, model for how to achieve success or how to judge which companies are successful. Mimi and Alex developed their own model, they stick with it, and have used this simple model to keep jumping from success to success. Alex explained it to me: Q - Quality Everything they do is quality. The cameras they use for videos ("But not overdoing it, because this is YouTube and not television," said Mimi). The setting they use and how it fits their message. The products, etc V - Value Mimi is not trying to sell anything in her videos. She explains what she does and how she does it. She does the research and believes in the products. Rather than asking, she is giving. "When you give a billion dollars in value," Alex said, "you get a billion dollars or more back." C - Consistency I read a book about television once by TV mega-executive Grant Tinker. He was Mary Tyler Moore's husband, ran NBC for awhile, and then ran MTM productions producing such shows as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", "Bon Newhart", and a dozen other super hit TV shows. I only remember one thing in the book. He said, "whenever they changed the time or date of a show, then that show would die. If you moved a show from Tuesday at 8pm to Thursday at 8:30pm then you just lost your whole audience." Mimi said, "if you are going to put out a video once a week, put it out once a week. Put it out the same day each week if you can. Don't do once a month. Don't do random. Your audience starts to anticipate and look forward to your shows and knows when to expect them." A- Authenticity Mimi only talks on the videos about what she believes in. There's no fluff. There's no pitch. She's exuberant and it shows on each video. H) LESS Mimi and Alex were working 80-100 hour weeks. They had the money in the bank. They had achieved their goals. They loved what they were doing but when you hit a lifelong goal you start to ask, "is that it?" They got depressed. Goals are a myth. Our ancestors for 200,000 years didn't have goals. Every day started from scratch: hunt, forage, eat, sex, sleep, wake up to a new day. Then we were told to find our "goals". And now everyone asks, "I'm 17 years old and feel like I've accomplished nothing in life. What should I do?" Learning to find happiness with less is true wealth. Claudia and I recently got rid of most of our belongings, for instance. Then we started cancelling most meetings that I had set up. Sometimes it was hard. I had agreed to an event and then I would cancel. Ultimately we are the sum of our experiences and not the sum of our belongings. There is nothing wrong with making money but it is only one small part of living a life of comfort, of compassion, of calm. Mimi and Alex started to focus more on the other things that were important in their lives. "And you know what happened?" Alex said. "The more we did that, the more money we made." – – – I really enjoyed talking to them. I am always curious how people made money through a channel like YouTube. Now I know and I think it can be replicated by anyone who is willing to do all of the above. I'm afraid I don't have a face for YouTube. Or Instagram. And I'm not even sure I have a face for podcasting. But I think I love doing what I do. And I like having the time to explore other interests and ideas. And then sometimes I like doing nothing at all. There's nothing wrong with that also. – – – P.S. NOT SURE WHAT TO DO WITH THE REST OF YOUR LIFE? Great new resource shows clever way to start a business, get a new job, find a retirement career, publish a book, make extra money in your spare time, and more. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.