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2 episodes with zaarly
3 episodes with zaarly
2 episodes with zaarly
2 episodes with zaarly
2 episodes with zaarly
3 episodes with zaarly
Links: Join us in Rolling Fun! Hear our other Rolling Fun eps! Rolling Fun GPs: Al Doan - Founder of Creativity Inc., a $100m+ collection of e-commerce brands. Founder of Pretzel. BS from BYU Hawaii, OPM at HBS. Makes one hell of a peach cobbler. (Twitter, LinkedIn) Bo Fishback - Founder of Lightspeed Genomics (acq 2008), Orbis Biosciences (acq 2020), Zaarly (acq 2020). BS in Biomedical Engineering from SMU, MBA at HBS. Once drank a whole gallon of milk in an hour. (Twitter, LinkedIn) Eric Jorgenson - CEO at Scribe Media. Author of Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Has a podcast. Barely graduated from a state school. Received a cease & desist from Craigslist for some frowned-upon marketing techniques. (Twitter, LinkedIn) Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:49) - Showing love for new LPs (00:10:25) - Q1 New Investment: Dirac (00:16:23) - Q1 New Investment: Reactiv (00:26:53) - Q1 New Investment: Longshot (00:34:44) - How Founders can find lead investors (00:52:05) - Stell Engineering raised a Seed round! To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! Important quotes from Naval on building wealth and the difference between wealth and money: How to get rich without getting lucky. - Naval Ravikant Making money is not a thing you do—it's a skill you learn. - Naval Ravikant Seek wealth, not money or status. - Naval Ravikant Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. - Naval Ravikant Money is how we transfer time and wealth. - Naval Ravikant Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games. You're not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom. - Naval Ravikant Important quotes from the podcast by Naval on Leverage: “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” —Archimedes To get rich, you need leverage. Leverage comes in labor, comes in capital, or it can come through code or media. But most of these, like labor and capital, people have to give to you. For labor, somebody has to follow you. For capital, somebody has to give you money, assets to manage, or machines. - Naval Ravikant Capital and labor are permissioned leverage. Everyone is chasing capital, but someone has to give it to you. Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you. - Naval Ravikant Code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. - Naval Ravikant If you can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts. - Naval Ravikant Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment. - Naval Ravikant Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve. - Naval Ravikant Important Quotes from the podcast on Business and Entrepreneurship There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes. - Naval Ravikant You have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business. You could own equity as a small shareholder where you bought stock. You could also own it as an owner where you started the company. Ownership is really important. Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP. That can be through stock options if you work at a tech company. That's a fine way to start.
Links: Join us in Rolling Fun! Hear our other Rolling Fun eps! Rolling Fun GPs: Al Doan - Founder of Creativity Inc., a $100m+ collection of e-commerce brands. Founder of Pretzel. BS from BYU Hawaii, OPM at HBS. Makes one hell of a peach cobbler. (Twitter, LinkedIn) Bo Fishback - Founder of Lightspeed Genomics (acq 2008), Orbis Biosciences (acq 2020), Zaarly (acq 2020). BS in Biomedical Engineering from SMU, MBA at HBS. Completed the ‘impossible' Gallon Challenge, drinking a whole gallon of milk in an hour. (Twitter, LinkedIn) Eric Jorgenson - Founding team of Zaarly. Author of Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Has a podcast. Barely graduated from a state school. Received a cease & desist from Craigslist for some frowned-upon marketing techniques. (Twitter, LinkedIn) Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:00:06) - Warming up the vocals/ catching up (00:09:14) - Q4 Catch-up and new deal flow (00:15:16) - Portola (00:41:40) - Atomic Industries To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! Important quotes from Naval on building wealth and the difference between wealth and money: How to get rich without getting lucky. - Naval Ravikant Making money is not a thing you do—it's a skill you learn. - Naval Ravikant Seek wealth, not money or status. - Naval Ravikant Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. - Naval Ravikant Money is how we transfer time and wealth. - Naval Ravikant Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games. You're not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom. - Naval Ravikant Important quotes from the podcast by Naval on Leverage: “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” —Archimedes To get rich, you need leverage. Leverage comes in labor, comes in capital, or it can come through code or media. But most of these, like labor and capital, people have to give to you. For labor, somebody has to follow you. For capital, somebody has to give you money, assets to manage, or machines. - Naval Ravikant Capital and labor are permissioned leverage. Everyone is chasing capital, but someone has to give it to you. Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you. - Naval Ravikant Code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. - Naval Ravikant If you can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts. - Naval Ravikant Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment. - Naval Ravikant Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve. - Naval Ravikant Important Quotes from the podcast on Business and Entrepreneurship There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes. - Naval Ravikant You have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business. You could own equity as a small shareholder where you bought stock. You could also own it as an owner where you started the company. Ownership is really important. Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP. That can be through stock options if you work at a tech company. That's a fine way to start.
In this week's episode, Patrick Donley (@JPatrickDonley) sits down with Eric Jorgenson to talk not only about his recently released book called The Anthology of Balaji. They also touch on some of his key learnings from writing the Almanack of Naval Ravikant, how to build the future according to Balaji, Balaji's bitcoin bet, and what Eric's new role at Scribe media will be and how it came about. Eric Jorgenson is the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and the Anthology of Balaji. He is the host of the Smart Friends podcast and is an investor in early stage tech start-ups. In 2011, he joined the founding team of Zaarly, a company dedicated to helping homeowners find accountable service providers they can trust. His business blog, Evergreen, educates and entertains more than one million readers. He recently became the CEO of Scribe Media. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro. 03:30 - How Eric describes what he does. 03:53 - What a creator capitalist is. 05:13 - Why he choose to focus on tech entrepreneurship. 08:25 - How Eric became interested in Naval Ravikant. 11:54 - How publishing the books through Scribe has changed his life. 23:17 - Why desires gets in the way of happiness. 25:51 - Why wealth may not lead to the happiness people think. 27:53 - What Eric's writing process looks like. 31:04 - Why he became intrigued with Balaji. 33:05 - What Balaji's reading habits are and why he has studied history in depth. 42:32 - What transhumanism is. 46:54 - What Balaji's big ideas are for building the future. 49:24 - Why Balaji made his infamous Bitcoin bet. 52:33 - What Eric's new role at Scribe Media will be and how it came about. 54:53 - How Scribe is disrupting the traditional publishing model for books. *Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Kyle and the other community members. Sign up for TIP's free newsletter, We Study Markets. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson. Richer, Wiser, Happier by William Green. The Anthology of Balaji by Eric Jorgenson. Smart Friends podcast. Naval Ravikant episode on The Knowledge Project. Poor Charlie's Almanac. Principles by Ray Dalio. Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters. The Egg by Andy Weir. The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson. The Network State by Balaji Srinivasan. NEW TO THE SHOW? Check out our Millennial Investing Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try Kyle's favorite tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: Airbnb NetSuite Babbel Masterclass Shopify Principal Financial Connect with Patrick: Twitter Connect with Eric: Website | Twitter
In this week's episode, Patrick Donley (@JPatrickDonley) sits down with Eric Jorgenson to talk not only about his recently released book called The Anthology of Balaji. They also touch on some of his key learnings from writing the Almanack of Naval Ravikant, how to build the future according to Balaji, Balaji's bitcoin bet, and what Eric's new role at Scribe media will be and how it came about.Eric Jorgenson is the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and the Anthology of Balaji. He is the host of the Smart Friends podcast and is an investor in early stage tech start-ups. In 2011, he joined the founding team of Zaarly, a company dedicated to helping homeowners find accountable service providers they can trust. His business blog, Evergreen, educates and entertains more than one million readers.He recently became the CEO of Scribe Media.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:00:00 - Intro.03:30 - How Eric describes what he does. 03:53 - What a creator capitalist is.05:13 - Why he choose to focus on tech entrepreneurship.08:25 - How Eric became interested in Naval Ravikant. 11:54 - How publishing the books through Scribe has changed his life.23:17 - Why desires gets in the way of happiness.25:51 - Why wealth may not lead to the happiness people think. 27:53 - What Eric's writing process looks like. 31:04 - Why he became intrigued with Balaji.33:05 - What Balaji's reading habits are and why he has studied history in depth.42:32 - What transhumanism is.46:54 - What Balaji's big ideas are for building the future.49:24 - Why Balaji made his infamous Bitcoin bet.52:33 - What Eric's new role at Scribe Media will be and how it came about.54:53 - How Scribe is disrupting the traditional publishing model for books.*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCESSign up for TIP's free newsletter, We Study Markets.The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson.Richer, Wiser, Happier by William Green.The Anthology of Balaji by Eric Jorgenson.Smart Friends podcast.Naval Ravikant episode on The Knowledge Project.Poor Charlie's Almanac.Principles by Ray Dalio.Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters.The Egg by Andy Weir.The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson.The Network State by Balaji Srinivasan.NEW TO THE SHOW?Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Kyle and the other community members.Check out our Millennial Investing Starter Packs.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.Try Kyle's favorite tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance.Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services.Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets.Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts.Help us understand our audience better so we can create a more intentional user experience by answering this survey!SPONSORSSupport our free podcast by supporting our sponsors:AirbnbNetSuiteBabbelMasterclassShopifyPrincipal FinancialConnect with Patrick: Twitter Connect with Eric: Website | TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
“What if this life were the paradise we were promised, and we're just squandering it?”-Naval RavikantBeing happy and rich are learnable skills, and our guest today, Eric Jorgenson, has learned from the very best. His compilation of wisdom and winning business strategies from legendary tech innovator Naval Ravikant took the internet by storm, and his unbelievably popular book, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, holds a prominent place on the bookshelves of rich and happy people all over the world.Even more impressively, though, he's brought these ideas and timeless insights back into the real world again to create the foundations of a legendary career for himself as well. Eric Jorgenson consistently proves the truth and value of this wisdom via his own work and positive example. During our conversation, he holds nothing back and lets us inside two fascinating minds, both his and Naval's.In this episode, we cover:- What it's like working with Naval Ravikant- How to decide which book to read next- Why it's more effective to focus on your trajectory than your current results- Why everything is getting better all the time- Using leverage to get to the point where you're only doing what you want to do- The importance of honing in on your specific knowledge- Allowing your path to unfold organically as the fast track to genuine expertiseOne of the greatest lessons you'll learn in this episode, though, is that where you start off doesn't have to be where you end up. If there's a skill you lack, you can learn it; if there's a big scary problem looming over you, you can overcome it; if you want more out of life, you can have it. About Our Guest:Eric Jorgenson is an entrepreneur, writer, and investor. He is on the founding team of Zaarly, and has been publishing online since 2014. His blog has educated and entertained over a million readers.Naval Ravikant (not present) is an Indian-American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder, chairman, and former CEO of AngelList. He has invested early-stage in over 200 companies including Uber, FourSquare, Twitter, Wish.com, Poshmark, Postmates, Thumbtack, Notion, SnapLogic, Opendoor, Clubhouse, Stack Overflow, Bolt, OpenDNS, Yammer, and Clearview AI, with over 70 total exits and more than 10 Unicorn companies. He is also a podcaster who shares advice on pursuing health, wealth, and happiness.Please leave a review if you enjoy The HighExistence podcast. You've gone Down The Rabbit Hole. Now it's time to walk up The Stairway to Wisdom.Introducing a brand new weekly newsletter from the minds at HighExistence.Over the past year, we've been publishing the wonder-inducing weekly email known as “Down The Rabbit Hole,” and now we're taking it a step further.We want our readers not only to feel a deep sense of enchantment towards the world around them but also to apply deep teachings to their daily life so they can experience the life-transforming benefits of wisdom-in-action.The Stairway to Wisdom is a premium weekly newsletter for those who are ready to dive deeper. We've partnered with independent researcher and knowledge connoisseur, Matt Karamazov, who has taken sharp, meticulous notes on over 1000 books so that he could share the most inspiring pearls of wisdom with the world.Learn more here
Eric Jorgenson is the author of the Almanac of Naval Ravikant, a GP in the seed investment-focused Rolling Fun, and the creator of the course Building a Mountain of Levers. Eric also has a podcast called Jorgenson's Soundbox and was part of the founding team of Zaarly, proximity-based, real-time, buyer-powered market platform. Eric has condensed the wisdom of Naval, a prolific entrepreneur and investor, into a concise and poignant book. That book has opened doors for him and represents a clever method of accelerating one's career. In this conversation, Eric and Aaron discuss Naval's advice for creating wealth, how to build the skill of being happy, and how to get started creating leverage for yourself. Eric Jorgenson's Challenge; Find and implement one new automation to create more leverage in your life. Connect with Eric Jorgenson Twitter Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 46 with Taylor Pearson where we discuss writing the End of Jobs and creating better career opportunities. Underwritten by Piper Creative Piper Creative makes creating podcasts, vlogs, and videos easy. How? Click here and Learn more. We work with Fortune 500s, medium-sized companies, and entrepreneurs. Follow Piper as we grow YouTube Subscribe on iTunes | Stitcher | Overcast | Spotify
Eric Jorgenson is an author and the creator of "The Almanack of Naval Ravikant" book. He is also an Angel Investor and Entrepreneur. Eric recently launched his rolling fund on AngelList. He was on the founding team of Zaarly, and has been publishing online since 2014. His blog has educated and entertained over a million readers. The guys discuss everything from Building Wealth and Judgement, to Leverage, Naval, Balaji, Angel Investing, Web3, writing books, content creation, and much more. You can also watch this episode on youtube at: https://youtu.be/_LMoWRF-q3E Eric's website: https://ejorgenson.com Eric's Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricJorgenson Eric's rolling fund: https://rolling.fun Navalmanack free download: https://navalmanack.com https://rationalvc.com Timestamps: 00:00 Teaser 00:48 Intro chit chat 03:12 Eric's roots 04:56 Why Eric wrote the Navalmanack 07:23 Babak Nivi and Venture Hacks 11:28 Building wealth, judgement, and happiness 13:52 Improving decision making 17:33 Productise yourself 25:53 Authenticity vs. views 30:44 Leverage and social media 34:24 High leverage side projects 38:03 Leaving the conventional path 43:33 Process of publishing a book 53:02 Writing essays online 58:26 Launching a rolling fund / investment thesis 1:06:57 Angel Investing 1:11:23 Crucial to be an operator before investing 1:15:27 Mindset in private markets vs public markets 1:17:33 Balaji Srinivasan's big ideas / balmanack 1:24:05 The Web3 discussion 1:35:39 Resources that have shaped Eric's world view 1:37:57 Outro chit chat -- Rational VC provides regular content on technology investing and technology building. We also write long-form memos. You can sign up for these monthly memo newsletters on the website: https://www.rationalvc.com/ We break everything down to first principles, to simplify the complex technology world. We aim to bring you content that is insightful, logical, and rational. We cover tech products and tech companies across the lifecycle, from pre-seed to seed, Series A to D+, to IPOs and beyond. We also cover all investing methods including Angel Investing, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Public Markets, etc. For more information on Cyrus, Iman and the channel, check out: https://www.rationalvc.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/cyrusyari/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanolya1/ https://twitter.com/CyrusYari https://twitter.com/iman_olya Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rational-vc/id1537462327 Your feedback and comments are very welcome. We hope you enjoy listening as we embark on a journey to understand this space; clearly, and rationally, of course. --- Disclaimer: The content and materials provided are solely for informational purposes and do not constitute investment or legal advice. All opinions expressed by hosts and guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of their employer(s). No copyright infringement intended.
Learn more about David:David's LinkedInDavid's WebsiteDavid's TwitterDavid's InstagramCMX LinkedInCMX WebsiteBevy's LinkedInBevy's WebsiteEpisode resources:The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive AdvantageSend your stories and feedback on this episode to pod@cmxhub.comIf you enjoyed this episode, then please either:Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow on Spotify
In this episode of Masters of Community, our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, hosts a solo episode where he talks about how he got fired from his first community job. David admits that it was one of the lowest points of his career and life. He was discouraged, and it took him some time to get back on his feet. Having dealt with these moments, he now shares what he learned from them and how it might help others deal with the hardships of getting fired. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, community leaders, community members, employees, and employers. Key takeaways: (00:49) - Overview about today's episode (02:59) - The context of how David got fired (06:52) - Shifting towards community and Zaarly (12:45) - Facing challenges and problems (21:00) - Getting fired (23:34) - The lowest point of the career (28:00) - Help and hope: meeting Thomas Knoll (29:56) - Starting a new job (31:45) - Getting over being fired (38:56) - David's lessons and bits of advice Notable Quotes: 1. “I think there's a lot of stigma around getting fired” 2. “If you are drowning, if you are overwhelmed, if you're not in a healthy place, it becomes hard, if not impossible, to support other people, to take care of them, and to see what they need” 3. “I started burning out, feeling depressed, I had no idea what to do, I couldn't perform, and I couldn't get results” 4. “If you are in a position of leadership, when you think someone did a great job, tell them cause you never know how it could impact their life” 5. “If you're depressed at work, take a step back, gain perspective, pause, take a breath, take space, take time off, take care of yourself so that you can take care of others, turn to communities”
Kevin Urrutia is Founder of Voy Media, a “growth marketing agency” focused on helping marketing executives grow their online businesses – but not from the “ground up.” Voy Media does not help companies that want to get started in online marketing, build clients' businesses, or act as any client's marketing team. Instead, the focus is on scaling successful client companies and taking them to the next level, moving them from 6 to 7 to 8 figures in monthly sales . . . and doing it fast. These clients already know what they need to do to build a business and they're doing it. They already have mature systems and processes in place for emailing prospective buyers and getting online content and reviews. Voy takes this collected information, breaks it down, and uses it to feed the creation of new ads, new videos, and new images for clients' social media – their already existing Facebook pages, Google Ads, and LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. Kevin's background is in computer programming. During college, he started a web development consulting company. After he graduated, he moved to Silicon Valley to work for Mint.com (Intuit). In that fevered e-commerce boom era (global e-commerce sales topped $1 trillion in 2012, up 21.9% from the previous year), “I kept building things. I kept going to hackathon startup events.” Frustratingly, all that “building” and networking did not result in sales. Then Kevin discovered “marketing.” He researched SEO, found it “interesting,” and concluded that “Everything around you is really marketing, but it's great marketing when you don't think it's marketing.” He jumped to a startup called Zaarly, and then moved to New York and did what none of his programming buddies wanted to do: He started starting his own businesses. His buddies wanted “jobs.” He wanted to own something bigger and was willing to take the risk. Kevin started an online-scheduled cleaning company. and thereafter, a number of e-commerce companies, learning the lessons on switching products to drive sales and growing teams that he, today, passes on to his clients. In this interview, Kevin discusses how the recent iOS update, iOS 14, allows individuals to turn off tracking and limits a lot of ad options that used to be available for advertisers. Now, instead of looking at the individual platforms to get information, companies must ask the questions: “How much revenue did we make from new customers this week? How much did we spend on ads? What is the ratio between new customer revenue with ad spend?” Kevin says things are more “fluffy” in one sense, but companies do have a better grasp on their profitability. He says, “People are actually building brands again, versus like, ‘Hey I just want to make quick buck online.'” That's a good thing, he believes, because “Building a real business takes years.” Companies need to “reinvest into the branding. You got to reinvest into ads, copy, photography.” Kevin can be reached social platforms and on his agency's website at: https://voymedia.com/ where you will find case studies, courses, and Kevin's blog. Transcript follows: ROB: Welcome to The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Kevin Urrutia, founder at Voy Media, based in New York City. Welcome to the podcast, Kevin. KEVIN: Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me. Super excited to be here. ROB: Great to have you on the cast. Why don't you start off by giving us an intro to Voy Media. What do you want to be known for? KEVIN: Voy Media . . . we're growth marketing agency. Pretty typical, but the difference between us and other agencies is my background is in computer science programming. We'll talk about a little bit more of that later on. The way we help founders is by we come in to help you scale. We're not here to help you get started in online marketing. That's a different type of agency. We're more here for founders or other marketing executives that want help to grow their online business with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Creatives are also a big part. We're doing that now with the whole new iOS update and we're seen trying to switch around and again restructure agency to fit the market's needs too. ROB: (Laughs) I see. So, this is not, “I have an idea. I want to get the word out there.” This is “I know who my customer is but help me because I still don't know how to reach them.” Is that where you play? KEVIN: It's a little bit after that, too, where you already spent some money and now you're saying, “Hey I have a marketing person in-house but we still need help because we want to scale” and you don't want to bring somebody new on again. So, I tell people all the time, we used to do what we said before . . . “Hey, you have a brand new idea. Let's help you” . . . and then it turned out that this was just a different type of client or customer that we didn't want to educate about what marketing was. It was just very difficult. I see some agencies do that. It's like I'm prey to you. Those clients, the ones that pay you that much, they're calling you every single day to give you an update. I think it's so funny, but like you've probably heard before, the more they pay you the less they call you. It's so true. ROB: That's amazing. What is it about a business at that stage that aligns with your talents? What's the playbook that starts to make sense at that stage that maybe isn't available sooner? KEVIN: I think the playbook that's available is that these businesses already have systems on how to get content, how to get reviews, how to do all that stuff – just feeds our creative team to make new ads, to make new videos, to make new images for their social media, for their Facebook page. It's not like we're saying, “Hey, you should send an email out to get customer reviews.” They already are doing this, so their mindsets are already in this – “Yep, this is what we need to build a brand or a company.” It's just a different business shift of a person and for us, it's less pulling, like “Hey, we need this from you.” It's more like “Yep, this is already in our pipeline. You're gonna get it next week.” If we can, we get user-generated content every week – We just get that in the Slack channel – “Hey, guys. Here's this week's content.” They already have a process in place and we're here to help them. I tell people all the time – a lot of times business owners, in the beginning, want us to basically build their whole business for them. I say, “No, I'm your marketing team. I'm not here to build your company.” ROB: This is our customer. What do you think? KEVIN: Yeah. I'm like, “I don't know. You have the product.” They're like, “Isn't your team supposed to do that?” Yes, but like, “I don't know exactly what you're doing” :Hey, it looks like this product. . . .like customers are complaining about this. Are you going to switch your product?” They're like, “No.” I'm like, “All right then. If your sales aren't going up, then you need to do something.” So, for me too, this comes from not just doing marketing, but because I've also had my own e-commerce companies too. So, I've had to switch products, I've had to grow a team, and that's where for me, it's like, I see you sometimes, I mean before like we work with founders, I'm like, “Hey, people are clearly complaining about this. Why aren't you switching or doing something?” And at least for me when I had my outdoor gear company – we recently sold it -- we made three to four versions of a trekking pole based on customer feedback because that's what you do as a business. You iterate over and over again. Sometimes people say, “Hey, this is a perfect product.” I'm like, “Is it a perfect product? You need to switch things around if people are complaining about it.” So, I don't know, for me, I'm trying to find people that, like I tell people all the time, the best people that we work with are people that have done it once, failed, and like, “Okay now. I know what to do because everybody has been through the trenches in the fire.” ROB: Sure. What it sounds like they have is they have a steady pipeline of content that speaks to their audience but . . . I think a lot of people's natural format is more long-form and not marketing copy, right? So, you can kind of take what they have, break it down, atomize it, align it to different channels, test some things, and then layer on a set of known tactics that work when you have legitimate content. KEVIN: Exactly. That's what it is. It's like, “We're here to use tactics to help you grow versus help you figure out these tactics are. We can help somewhat but there's only so much time we can tell clients, “Hey, you need you see.” and they're like “Oh? why? I don't know how to go get it.” I'm like. “Send an email out.” They're like, “Oh okay I forgot this week.” I'm like, “All right. (sighs) I can't press this send button for you.” ROB: Right? Step 1 is send an email this week. Then come back and talk to me. KEVIN: So yeah. I get it. I think for me, our agency – at least I tell people all the time – it just depends on what type of company or business you want to build. There's people that want to be in that zero to 1 stage, where it's like, “Hey, we're gonna build this system and process for you. But for me, I just don't want to be doing that. So, we're saying, we're shifting more towards – “Hey you have something and you have some sort of team. We're gonna come here implement, help you and supplement you and be that agency.” ROB: Sure. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, I heard you mention briefly iOS 14. Obviously, the kind of individual targeting, opt-outs, all that is changing how ads run, how ads are tracked. What has been changing for you and how are you responding or suggesting people respond when it comes to the options that are no longer available to them due to those changes? KEVIN: I think iOS 14 . . . it's interesting. I see both. For us, bad side for a lot of agencies like us is . . . I tell people, like we were, you could track everything. So, our incentives are very like, “Hey look! We spend more money. We make more money.” We see revenue going up, we can spend more money.” Because it's tracked and now that has really affected our ability to scale as an agency and again clients as well because they were spending 15k a month, now they're spending 20k, and they're just like, “Well, the results are even worse and we're not getting any sales.” So, I think, what has changed a lot is the way we're tracking because now we're so used to just looking at the platforms, Google, Facebook, say, “Yep, this is a 1 to 1 or at least pseudo 1 to 1, where right now it's even worse. I don't even know where it's coming from. So, tracking itself has changed and, at least for us, the way we're doing it now is like what people should have been doing or at least sort of had done. Which is like, “Hey, this week, how much revenue did you make from new customers? How much did we spend on ads? What is the ratio between new customer revenue with ad spend?” It's a bit more fluffy, but at least you're saying that, yes, you are profitable. So, more daily profitability sheets/ weekly profitability sheets or even monthly – like your P&L. Go into your account each month and say, “Yep, reconcile all the expenses. Were we profitable?” Great, business is still good. That is something that, at least before iOS 14, people didn't really know, which is interesting. I think any business, you have to know this stuff. People are getting a little more savvy with these numbers. At the same time, something that I've seen shift is that – I think it's good going back with my background. I think now people are actually building brands again, versus like, “Hey I just want to make quick buck online.” ROB: Right. KEVIN: That was something that we saw so much because it was so easy to track, like, “Hey, you like pet stuff, right? Let me make this pet niche store and for the next 3 months let me make 20K.” It wasn't like a brand where, right now, similar to any business like you probably seen . . . Building a real business takes years. ROB: Right. KEVIN: And there's gonna be years where you don't make money. Everybody had this weird mentality like, “Hey, if I spend a thousand bucks, I need to make 5k this month” . . . or else “You suck – not me.” This is not how you build a company. You got to reinvest into the branding. You got to reinvest into ads, copy, photography . . . I just saw this crazy, quick-flipping of businesses where ten years ago, you were actually okay, “I'm gonna mess with your cake(?) and I'm gonna make this thing a big brand and try to build something. I think that's coming back again, which is great because it's gonna be entrepreneurs that I think want to build true businesses for the long-term. ROB: Right on. I think I may have heard this. I may have heard it wrong, but there's also an increasing challenge with now with the attribution window. Is that right? That there's actually a short, you can't, I think it's like used to be able to see if . . . so you ran an ad and somebody bought in thirty days. Mow you get what 7? KEVIN: Yeah. You got like 7 or even like 1 day. Sometimes it's just so much tougher? Yeah. ROB: So, it is more empirical. It's, “I spent money, am I making money? I increased my spend a little bit ago, am I making more money now?” It's trickier. KEVIN: It's definitely trickier, like I said. I think you now need to have the stomach for it, like, “Hey, you're hoping to make money,” and I get both sides. You know there's always the side of like, “Hey, I'm not a VC-funded company.” I'm like, “Yeah, I know.” Most people aren't, but there's a reason why companies like Facebook and Google – obviously those are outliers, but other companies such as them that spend . . . like Uber, right? literally in business for ten years and every year lose money, right? There's a reason why it's like – again, that's a bigger scale but you sometimes need to think yourself as a smaller scale, say, “Hey, you're in this for the long run.” You're like, “There's a reason why everybody knows Uber, like, “Hey I'm gonna get a cab because all the brand equity of the advertising.” So, a lot of times you've probably seen business owners don't want to do that because like, “No I need to make money.” I'm like, “Yes, you should make money – but there is something to be said for reinvest into your business and saying, “Hey, I'm gonna do this as ‘quote-unquote' my life's work. It doesn't do your life, but like the next 5 to 10 years, right. ROB: Sure. I think it's helpful. I think people are starting to get this understanding a little more – to know when you're doing brand marketing and to know when you're doing performance marketing because getting those things twisted is also a real source of misunderstanding if you . . . KEVIN: Oh yeah, there's definitely performance marketing everything and there's also brand marketing. A lot of people just want to do performance marketing but you still need to have great Instagram accounts, great Twitter accounts, great social media people. I tell people all the time, like, “Why do I need a social media manager– they don't make any money?” – But you still want people interacting with your community, talking to them. You know, some of the best companies out there do both performance and branding. Branding is one of those things that you see it when you see it. But when you're doing it, you don't see it. It's tough to put into a balance sheet but you know it when you see it. It's like Uber, you know? Lyft, you know? So it's hard. I know that for sure. ROB: And when sometimes it's even just a negative signal you're never going to see right? Somebody looks up your company. They look up your Twitter or your Instagram or your Facebook or your LinkedIn and if there's nothing there or if it's really dead, people judge that. I mean, they do. I do. KEVIN: I know I do. I always think marketing is so funny because, like I tell people, “What do you do when you look up a business?” I know you're gonna go like look up reviews. I know you're gonna look at Instagram and then I'm like, “How come for your company you don't think you need to do that?” ROB: Yeah. KEVIN: They hate when it's like, “Oh, yeah. I don't know what I'm saying.” They feel dumb but I just hate saying, “I'm like you. You do this same thing, too. So why don't you do for your business? I'm like “Hey if . . . I also tell people this. I'm on calls. I'm like, “If you weren't on your website, would you buy?” And if it's a no, then, “Why do you think other customers would buy?” – So like, “I don't know.” ROB: Take us back a little bit in time here, Kevin. Where did Voy Media come from and what led you to jump off this company-building cliff. KEVIN: Voy Media is my newest company that I started. Basically, my quick background is computer science. I was a programming major in upstate New York . . . Binghamton. All throughout college I knew I wanted to do my own startup – since I was17 – it's something I wanted to do for a long time. So, in college, I started doing one tiny bit which is my web building. I was 19 or 20. I had 2 employees working on web projects there. We were just getting customers through Craigslist – so developing stuff. For me it was mostly like I've always wanted to build a startup. After college I was like, “Okay I gotta go to Silicon Valley.” I went to work for Mint.com as a programmer and then I went to work for another startup there for 3 years. During this time, I wanted to build stuff so I kept building things. I kept going to hackathon startup events. One of the things that happened for me during this time – I have always was in this mindset of like, “Hey, if you build it, they will come.” Because, hey, if you have a great product people just naturally find you. That was the thing that programmers in Silicon Valley just said to each other. Like “Hey, if people build something great, people will just find it” is one hundred percent not true looking back – but the mindset was very different back then. So, I kept building stuff. Eventually, I was like, “Man, how come I'm not getting any customers?” And then, I started looking up “what is marketing.” I was like, “Okay, this is actually a thing.” That's when I started learning more about marketing. My initial foray into marketing was SEO, like black-hat, world-affiliate marketing, CPA stuff. That was for me very interesting. When I first discovered it, I was like, “Oh, this is very interesting.” The reason why I found it so interesting because these affiliate guys were getting these twenty dollars like, “Hey, you can make twenty dollars off this widget that you sell,” so they had to sell it for a hundred twenty bucks to make profit. So, I was like, “Oh, these guys are using cutting edge tactics.” You would join these underground forums or Skype groups of people saying like, “Hey, try this marketing message.” I was like, “Whoa!” I didn't realize marketing is like that – it was like performance for me. I always thought marketing was this branded thing. I didn't know there's this other type of marketing that was purely based on sales. That's what got me at least . . . at that point I wasn't doing ads. It opened up my eyes to this marketing world. I was like, “Oh, everything around you is really marketing, but it's great marketing when you don't think it's marketing.” Behind the scenes, there's guys pulling the levers that's doing the marketing. So, it's like one of those like realizations that you have. I was like, “Okay, this is kind of what I need to do anyways.” I came back to New York because I missed my family. I started my cleaning company called Maid Sailers and here, for this cleaning company, is where I did almost all the marketing. I did SEO. I did reviews, blogging, PPC, Yelp ads, kind of everything. I did that for about a year-and-a-half. I wanted to keep growing it but people that have a service-based company – even some like Moy media – service-based businesses can only grow as you grow people – humans, right? So, it's human capital intense kind of business, which is great to get started. So, I think I tell people, times like these are great businesses start. But if you want to grow it, I didn't think I could grow it that big. So, then I started ecommerce because at that time too I saw all my friends are doing FBA, Amazon, I was like, “I got to jump into this, right?” It's one of those things with FOMO -- I got to do it. Then I did my Montem, which is my outdoor gear company. This was more scalable because, at the time – it was much easier back then with e-commerce products like Amazon. You're selling. Then, again for Montem, when we did e-commerce, I learned so much more. This is kind of where I first started doing more Facebook ads, Google ads, review blogger reviews. We were like number 1 on Wirecutter, so we were able to do partnerships. We did retail. We were pitching retails with the events – kind of like everything involved and, at least for me, that's why I like entrepreneurship in startups because I like all this stuff I just described. If I worked for somebody, I would never be able to do it all. Because you're only stuck in 1 thing where it's like a founder you could just say, “Okay, I'm going to do it all like,” and you figured it out somehow, which is either exciting or not exciting for some people. For me, it's like, “Oh, this is awesome.” I went to China 3 times up to my factories. So that's kind of where the concept of Voy Media came – because I was doing this e-commerce stuff. And then I was like, “Okay, I want to help other founders achieve success,” – that's the inkling, the idea of Voy Media. Of course, what we are now is very different than what I thought initially because you iterate your business based on what you see. But that's how Voy Media started. ROB: How did you navigate away from those assumptions of the business, from those predispositions that you had? I mean, candidly, folks who come from a software developer background a lot of time have a hard time taking their hands off the keyboard. They want to be writing code, right? So how did you kind of navigate to the truth of the business instead of where you started? KEVIN: I always tell people that one of the main reasons why I always wanted to do a startup and it's something that I've always like wanted to do since I was 17. But one of the things when I was in Silicon Valley, at least for me when I was 21 or 22 – I don't know, I was probably 23 at the time – very naïve. I was looking at a lot of my friends in the space, like the programmers there, and they would just talk about stuff and I was like, “Oh, wow! These guys are really smart. I don't think I'll ever be that good. I need to do something else because these guys are just awesome programmers.” My roommate, his name was Adam. We worked at the same company and he would talk about a concept. I'm like, “Dude, I have no clue how you just got that!” I thought I was smart but that's kind of what for me I'm like, “I got figure out something else in my life because I want to make money but, clearly, you're on another level.” I was like, “Let me just do business stuff and that's kind of it for me.” Another relationship for me was that I would talk to him or talk to other people like, “Hey, why don't you start a company. You are really smart,” but they're like, “No, I just want to be an employee.” That made me think, “Hey, there's guys like me that want to have a company and then I can hire guys like him that don't want to take the risk,” and you're gonna hire these super smart people that are gonna work for you and that's where the realization came to me, “Hey, I don't have to be the smartest but there's a lot of smart people that don't want to take the risk I want to take, and they could just work for me. Yeah!” ROB: Yeah, so that's a good lesson to pick up along the way. As you reflect on the journey so far in building the business, what are some other key lessons you might want to go back and just tell yourself if you were starting over? Some good advice. KEVIN: Good advice is so obvious. But like hiring people – I think once you feel an inkling that a person's not going to work out, you really got to let them go because it's a drain on the company and drain on yourself. That's probably the one people always say but it's also the hardest because people with emotions and working with them. But that's really tough. I think it's getting better, at least for service-based companies, it's just getting really better at vetting the people you work with just because it's a really personal relationship and, if you already feel like they're gonna be a very demanding, upstart, they're probably gonna be demanding the whole relationship and it's just gonna be a battle to please them. That's something I tell my sales team all the time. Like any red flag. I could see an email and I'm like, “This is a red flag. I can tell already this is gonna be a terrible partner to work with. Let's not even sign them,” and they're like, “Why?” I'm like. “Trust me. This one word they said, I pretty much know what they're looking for.” I think another one that's super important, I think for me at least, it's like, “I couldn't do my theme(?) companies. Every company I've done it, it's been with a partner.” You need somebody there to talk to, to help you with the problem, because like any business they're gonna be high highs and low lows. Sometimes you need somebody else to talk to them about it because sometimes you can't tell your employees how you're feeling because then it's like, “I work for you,” and then they're like, “Oh well. If the founder's feeling this way, I can't feel that way either.” Having a partner that's on the same like equal level as you or around that area – you can like tell them the real issues and how you're feeling, so I think a partner is gonna be great. And again, it helps distribute the work depending on what you're doing and how you're splitting the stuff with the business because it's a lot of stuff to do. ROB: Yeah, is that somebody that you had early in the business or is that somebody you brought in? Is that somebody outside the business for you? What's that look like? KEVIN: For Voy Media, it's Wilson. I've known him since college. We've literally known each other for over ten years and we've going back to everything before like one tiny bit the Ruby on Rails company. He was my partner there, too, in Silicon Valley. When I moved there, he was in college and I just graduated. And I was like, “Yo, Wilson! I'm moving.” He's like, “I'll move there with you.” So I've known him for a long time. I tell people it really depends. There's these relationships are very . . . You need to be careful because there's a level of trust you already have so you can't really get mad at each other. But again, it's careful. Sometimes things go wrong, you get mad at each other but you know that “Hey, we're doing it because we both” . . . I I think you both need to know the goal of the business. So, it's like, “Hey, this is why I'm like upset with you. It's not that I'm upset about you personally, it's because I'm upset about the business and we both want to achieve this and we're not achieving it together. How do we get there?” So, it's a careful relationship, like any couple. Things are upsetting us. Why? Because we both want to be happy. How do we fix that issue so it's not like I'm attacking you personally? ROB: Right. And if you're partners on that, you got to solve it one way or another. You can't stay grumpy and you can't stay stuck in the mud. It can go sideways pretty quick. So, you had Wilson there really early on in the business. KEVIN: Yeah. ROB: What was another kind of key inflection point that you noticed, where you felt like you had to level up the capabilities of the firm? The people in the firm, the processes – were there any kind of chokepoints so far that you had to kind of reevaluate in a significant way? KEVIN: Yeah. I mean like honestly, at least for Voy Media, one of the biggest things that we made was hiring an operations person to really help clean up everything at the agency. Because from reporting to hiring, I think that really helped us. I think it's one of those things where . . . I consider one of those positions where you want to be so involved sometimes. But you need to bring on someone that can do the work for you, that's smarter than you, that you can give complete ownership. I think, with any business, that's probably the hardest part – giving up some part of the business to somebody else to run and just trusting them. That's probably some of the best things that we've done because now the agency has grown quicker. With that comes a few points. One is cash load. You have to have the money to hire somebody good or can you take a little hit on income? That way you know that this person is going to hopefully pay off in six months. As a bootstrap founder, you think about these things but hiring people like that is super helpful. ROB: Where was the business in terms of size, however you think about it, when you made that operations move? KEVIN: We were probably like 5 to 6 people. Now we're about 30 people. So, it's definitely grown a lot more now. But yeah, hiring those people – like higher level people are helpful because there's only so many people that are doing the work. Of course, you need those people as well. But you need people thinking about strategy, thinking about processes and systems and that's why it's helpful and again, at least for me, it's the biggest . . . honestly, one of the biggest things too is thinking about yourself as the founder, as the person running the company. What do you want to be doing? I don't want to be doing all this stuff. I want to hire somebody else to do it because that doesn't give me energy. It drains me. I want to be doing what gives me energy, which is podcasting, sales – that's exciting for me. So, I know I'm gonna do a better job and I know I'm gonna be reading books about it whereas like – “Hey, accounting, – I don't want to look this up.” Find somebody else to do it because it's going to drain you and that's going to affect your whole day. ROB: Wow. That all makes sense. As we look ahead for Voy Media – when you look at either what the company's doing or what will be necessary in the types of marketing that you do – what's coming up that you're excited about? KEVIN: What we're excited about right now I think, again going back to what I said before, we're working with founders building these great brands. Better for us to work with founders out in the long run – before I was quick. Like, “Hey this month sucked. You guys suck.” It's like, “Oh god, this is a stressful relationship.” It's more like, “Hey, let's build something big and great together,” and again a big thing for us too. It's gonna be the creatives. People are really open to having great images, great creatives. People are more open to trying new things now because they're seeing that Facebook isn't the only platform. There's now Facebook, there's TikTok, there's Instagram stories, like there's all this new stuff out there. It's exciting again to make content. I see that as exciting. Where before people were just like, “I just want to do Facebook ads. Okay.” “Well, TikTok.” “No, I don't know that platform.” Where people are, I think . . . I don't know . . . there's a shift there where people are more open to new stuff now. ROB: Yeah, it's certainly a shift. It's certainly interesting in terms of openness. How do you think about the difference between what should be legitimately out of bounds for a particular brand versus what is their being flexible in a way that that is actually necessary? People have their experimental budgets. It can't all be experimental but some of it has to be. KEVIN: I think it just depends what level you are. I think, for example, when we work with consumer companies, all the consumer platform is always great – TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook of course. But if you're a consumer company, Linkedin doesn't make sense because that's more like professional. So, there are certain industries where it's very clear cut like, “Hey, if you're a SaaS or software or marketing company, you should be on LinkedIn because that's where quote – unquote professionals are. We think about it like that. As you get bigger and you're scaling your business, you need to think about platforms outside – like billboard ads are something that's more branded but there's a lot of ways to access those now in like easy platforms stuff. Some of my friends do that because they raise money and they say it's not effective. But I think something that brands need to think about right now is that, before, it was “you just sell online.” Now I'm seeing a big shift of online plus retail as well. So, getting into the Walmarts, the Targets, the Amazon's, the stores – everything like that is so important because it's more omnichannel versus like, “Hey I'm only direct to consumer.” I'm seeing that big shift now, too. ROB: Right on. When you say the billboard stuff is more accessible, what does that actually look like? Can I go like buy a billboard? Can I buy it where I want it? Can I set what time of day I want to see a digital like, I don't know . . . What can I do? KEVIN: I forgot the exact website. I'll try to find it later. But yeah, basically you can do exactly that. I think it's ClearView, one of those company that owns it. They now have a website similar to what you said where you can just say like, “Hey, for 100 bucks I want an ad near Times Square.” It makes it super simple and easy. You can just upload your creatives. Before it was kind of what you were saying . . . even subway ads now in New York City, you have to spend 30K minimum to get like one car of subway ads, where it should be self-serve, right? “Okay, I want one car, one creative . . . how much is it gonna cost? All right?” Subway ads are harder because you actually need to print the thing, where some of these new billboards are digital. So yeah, you could do it. I forgot the exact platform but it's cool. I've seen some friends do it just for experimental. It kind of works but it's one of those things where you just try it out and see. ROB: Sure. I've thought about it. There's some ways . . . maybe it's too creepy . . . but you can almost get account-based marketing. You know a bunch of people for this company come this way, light up this billboard during the commute, leave it shut down during lunchtime – like who knows, right? KEVIN: Yeah. It's funny you're saying that because there's this company . . . they were a remote job board, right? Facebook announced, I think a few months ago, that like, “Hey, starting in 2022, everybody needs to go back to work in the office.” So, then this company took out ads on that highway to say, “Hey, don't want to go back to work? Apply for new jobs here.” But exactly what you're saying. You can know where these things are, they'll pinpoint the area, and then you can do account-based marketing that way. People do this when they launch a Walmart or Target in the city. There will be billboards around there so say, “Hey, look! We're now available at Target down the street!” So, you can do that type of stuff. ROB: Very interesting. So much to do. So much to learn. Still, Kevin, congrats on the journey so far. Thank you for coming on and sharing with us as well. I wish you well and I know our audience will enjoy what you had to share. KEVIN: Thank you Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. ROB: Thanks, Kevin take care. Bye
Eric Jorgenson is a startup growth guy, writer, and (rarely) an Angel investor. He is on the founding team of Zaarly, and has been publishing online since 2014. His business blog, Evergreen, has educated and entertained over a million readers. He is also the man behind the bestselling book 'The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant: A Guide To Wealth & Happiness." Links: Join Our 'Healthy, Wealthy & Wise' Newsletter: https://freedompact.co.uk/newsletter https://www.youtube.com/freedompact https://www.navalmanack.com/ https://www.ejorgenson.com/
Eric Jorgenson is a man of many projects. He's a startup growth guy, writer, and (rarely) an angel investor. He is on the founding team of Zaarly and has been publishing online since 2014. He builds books, products, and courses and writes about wealth, startups, and leverage. He most recently wrote the best seller "The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”. Naval is the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of AngelList, as well as a prolific angel investor. The book collects and curates Naval's wisdom from Twitter, Podcasts, and Essays over the past decade. Eric is also something of a sandwich connoisseur. Eric's website: https://www.ejorgenson.com/Eric's course: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage
Eric Jorgenson is a startup growth guy, writer, and (rarely) an Angel investor. He is on the founding team of Zaarly, and has been publishing online since 2014. His business blog, Evergreen, has educated and entertained over a million readers. ————————————————————————————— Connect with me here: ✉️ My weekly email newsletter: jousef.substack.com
Eric Jorgenson is a writer, course creator, blogger, and podcaster. He is also on the founding team of Zaarly, an online marketplace for hiring home service providers.Eric has been publishing online since 2014, and operates a monthly newsletter. His business blog, Evergreen, has educated and entertained over a million readers.Eric is the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor. Naval's principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness have captivated the world.The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval's wisdom and experience from the last ten years. It's a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections.Eric's current project, Building a Mountain of Levers, teaches “how to accomplish superhuman feats by playing a different game — building leverage.”In this episode, you'll learn: The most important things to do when starting a newsletter What leverage is, and how to use it to exponentially scale your business How a random tweet blossomed into Eric's best-selling book Links & Resources The Almanack of Naval Ravikant Naval Ravikant's podcast @FAKEGRIMLOCK Ben Caballero Rework Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur Peter Bevelin Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T Munger Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders Eric Jorgenson's Links Eric's website: ejorgenson.com Twitter: @EricJorgenson Episode TranscriptEric: [00:00:00]Munger said the best thing a human being can do is to help someone else to know more. Everyone has something to teach. Everyone can participate as a student and as a teacher at different points in their lives. There's always somebody who's one step ahead of you to learn from, and always somebody who's one step behind you that you can help.I think counseling and learning keeps us humble and keeps life exciting. Teaching is rewarding. The fact that we can all kind of be a part of it is really fun.Nathan: [00:00:29]In this episode, I talked to Eric Jorgensen, who is the author of one of my favorite books. It's actually the book that I have gifted the most recently, and that is The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, which is a distillation of the wisdom writing podcast episodes of Naval. So Eric did this awesome project where you compile all this edited down into a book.And I know we talked about that at the end of the episode, but throughout the episode, we talk about online education, leverage—we spend a lot of time talking about leverage—which is sort of this thing that Naval has really made the centerpiece to a lot of his content that he's produced.Eric has gone even further and produced a course on and talked about so much great stuff. Really important concepts that I think you're really gonna enjoy. So I'll get out of the way and we'll just dive in.Eric, thanks for joining me.Eric: [00:01:18]Thanks for having me. You're on like the Mount Rushmore of heroes of like bootstrappers, turned content creators, turned bootstrappers. So like I'm super excited to be talking to you in any context. This is going to be fun.Nathan: [00:01:30]Well, good. And now, now I'm curious who else is on Mount Rushmore?Eric: [00:01:33]I knew you were going to ask me that. And I don't, I, I don't know. I have not prepared for it, but we can start Photoshopping it up later.Nathan: [00:01:41]Yeah, exactly. That'd be a really good use of both of our time.Reading through all of your stuff online, you are obsessed with education, specifically online education. You've got Course Correctly where you're like reviewing online courses with a friend of yours.You've got like there's a lot going on and you truly care a lot about the details of online education, and I'm curious, like why, where does that come from? Where does the interest turn into obsession?Eric: [00:02:12]So long-term I think like going to Mars is awesome, and curing cancer is awesome, and like solving world hunger is awesome. But education is the variable with the biggest coefficient into all of those things over the long term. So, like all of us who are alive right now are kind of like, Oh God, we've got to solve all these problems that are like affecting us.But if we just kind of look at the species over like a few hundred years or a few thousand years, like our ability to educate ourselves. And then the next generation is like a huge, huge, heavily weighted variable. I guess into like the outcome that we achieve over a long period of time and like how we can affect that.And I think like there's no, you know, the, the first principles kind of like where's the laws of physics limitedness is like, we have the ability to be so much better at education than we are, and we are. There's some specific context where we're incredible educators. Like our doctors are incredibly well-educated; the rigor of like a pilot's education or doctor's education compared to, you know, somebody who maybe like a writer, like different creative pursuits or do an MBA, like is just, we're just missing easy opportunities to kind to become significantly better.And the internet lowers the cost of that and increases the accessibility of it. And so I think we're going to see like a really kind of cool transformation of that over our lifetimes. I was excited to kind of see it, see it come together.Nathan: [00:03:40]Yeah. So what I hear in that is there's individual pursuits, you know, that will like advanced civilization. You know, in like one very specific and highly effective area, but then education is like the rising tide for everything of like, if you can help people teach well, you know, learn well, any of those things and make those, those tools and Content, everything available, then that can go in any, any, and every direction.Eric: [00:04:09]Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like Munger said, like the best thing that human being can do is to like help someone else to know more. And I think that's a really, like everyone has something to teach and. We are all trying to learn. And, it's something that everyone can participate in as a student and as a teacher at different points in their lives.And there's always somebody who's like one step ahead of you to learn from, and always somebody who's one step behind you that you can help, kind of all the way. You know, through your, through your life. so I think it's a really interesting thing and I think constantly learning keeps us, keeps us humble, and keeps life exciting.And teaching is fun and rewarding in a way to kind of solidify the things that you're learning. It's just a really, it's an exciting thing. And like the fact that we can all kind of be a part of it is, is really fun and that the internet is making it much more accessible for everybody, and change, transforming it, right?You can learn while you're doing while you're like in the context of a project that you're already trying to accomplish, is really cool and kind of a new thing. And. I, the rate of change is just so crazy that like the rate of learning has to match it and where I don't think we're quite ready for that yet.Nathan: [00:05:23]Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in there, but what about when someone is maybe when someone's starting a newsletter or starting online, like coming into this world of online business and audiences and all of that, what are some of those things that you really try to teach them that. Are like those two or three really pivotal things where like, when you understand this, you will see the world differently.Eric: [00:05:45]Yeah. So I think there's. The first thing. I mean, if somebody is at zero, like the first thing I was, I was like, start doing like you, you will learn much better in the context of doing, which is not a thing I used to appreciate. And I actually wasted a lot of time, like trying to learn before I did. I think,Nathan: [00:06:02]You had a tweet at one point. I think you were saying like, and I'm trying to remember if you were like, find yourself reading something for the third time, or like learning about something for the third time. Like it's time to start doing instead.Eric: [00:06:15]Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it feels good to learn and like, feel like you're getting closer to knowing how to do it, but like, Learning how to do something is a cheap way to get a fraction of the dopamine of actually doing it. But it doesn't really get you that much closer to doing it, especially if you're on like your second or third rep through.So yeah, I would think like, you know, start that newsletter, like send an email to like five people throw up a Google form, like. It's really, it's easy to get started. And when you encounter a roadblock, like go learn how to remove or overcome that roadblock. but don't try to anticipate too many steps out, just like get work done.Even if you do end up down a dead end, like that proof of work and effort will help you. Kind of contextualize when you hear the right answer or when you go, you know, find a friend or mentor or teacher and say like, Hey, look, I tried this thing and like, it didn't work. And I don't know why I'm like, that happened to me this morning.I was like working on this XY project and like, like I'm in a dead end and I don't know what to do. And I call the front and he's like, here's what I would told you if you talked to me two weeks ago and I was a part of me was like, shit, that was, that was like expensive. Mistake time-wise. but it's also like a lesson, a cute lesson learned. So I'm going to remember that one, much more.Nathan: [00:07:37]I like the idea of working towards something like until you get stuck. it's probably 2011 to 10, somewhere in there is really getting into designing and building an iPhone applications, which I didn't have a strong background as a developer. I was, I knew the design side, but you know, I was like objective to like, let's learn this.Let's dive in. And. One app that I was building, I would code until I got stuck and could not figure it out in one direction and be like, okay. But then there's also the other feature I'd code that way until I got stuck in like stack overflow, couldn't help me anymore. And you know, and I do that like three different directions.So I'm like, okay, I actually can't really meaningfully work on this anymore before I, either get help or substantially level up my code knowledge. And so then on like a Saturday, I would go over to a co-worker's house and. Say like, okay. Here's the areas that I'm stuck, you know? And he'd been developing iOS apps for a couple of years.Well, it's still pretty early, so yeah, I guess two years, three years at that point, And he'd be like, okay, I see where you're stuck, but let's take a step back. Let me under, like, let me explain number of types to you. Do you know about floats and integers? And I'd be like, now he's like, alright, well, computer science one-on-one, you know, like some of those things, but it was really important to go far enough to where I got stuck myself. Rather than just being like, I don't know. I need somebody to teach me how to build life on apps.Eric: [00:09:00]Yeah, that like is he has a similar thing. So when you were, w were you writing that book at the exact same time that you were like learning that stuff yourself for the first time?Nathan: [00:09:10]I had learned the design side pretty extensively and that's what the book was about. and so it was probably a year before I wrote the book. and so I had been doing a lot of the design side and then I was also trying to do the development because sometimes there's this weird debate that happened.Of like, is it better to be a designer or a developer, which is the dumbest debate you could ever get into, but you'd see it like popping up all throughout the internet. And I remember thinking in my head like, well, office is better be a designer because I am a designer. But then I had this moment where I thought about it and I was like, wait if a developer build something, it will function, but it'd be ugly.If a designer design something, it will look pretty. And it won't do Jack, like it's not actually useful. And so like in that realization, I was like, Oh, I guess I'm going to, like, if I want to keep doing like indie projects on my own, I'm going to learn to code. And that's when I got into that side. And then probably a year later I wrote the book on, designing iPhone applications.Eric: [00:10:11]Yeah. That whole period, everybody, every designer was trying to become a developer and every developer is trying to become a designer, but like the same timeNathan: [00:10:17]Yeah, I it's interesting. let's see, where were we going with that?Oh, particular things that, so that people should learn. So we're talking about like, the first thing is actually do it,Eric: [00:10:29]Yeah, just let's start, like, yeah. Start putting skin in the game, like set a goal, set a mission.Nathan: [00:10:35]Yeah.Eric: [00:10:36]You know, open up a page, build something tiny, no matter how small, like, just start doing before you start learning. Cause learning like as important as education is like, you can spend your whole life learning and no time doing.And like it's a lot like a designer designing an iPhone, have those like a very pretty wireframe. It's like, wow, you have a lot of PhDs. Did you ever do anything with Elvis? He was like, Nope.Nathan: [00:10:59]Yep. That makes sense. One of the other things that you're like really obsessed with that I'm also obsessed with and I love talking about, which would probably be what I would put in the list of like the second thing to teach people. it would be leverage you and just. How, how that works. I feel like so much of your personal brand online now is tied into like being the guy, talking about leverage, which is amazing because more people need to learn that.So how do you think about leverage and, and what are the parts of that fascinate you the most?Eric: [00:11:28]Yeah, I think it's, I think leverage is super important to know. I mean, I think everybody should know the mental model at the very least, especially when they're starting out. even if they don't know a ton of the mechanics, it's like compounding, right? Like. You're told you're supposed to like save money, but you're not really sure, like what the point is, unless you get compounding.And then you're kind of like, Oh, like I should be saving and investing because it means I'll be able to retire like 20 years earlier. And leverage is kind of the same way. Like when you're first starting out, you're trying to figure out like what you want to do and how you want to do it and how to kind of plan for growth in your career over time. And if you don't understand if you're, if you are blind to leverage and like where that leads you, you're going to end up down a little bit of a dead end or in a spot where, you know, you're maybe in a job where you're just trading time for money or you're in a job that's extremely unlevered and you end up feeling like you'll never earn more than $60,000 a year because you don't have a way to apply, leverage to what you're doing.So I think like, it's, it's really interesting to see all the people. I think you are a prime example of this who kind of like without ever, probably using the word leverage, you'd like intuited, what it was and how to get more of it and build it over time, the last like 10 years. so I like leverage from my perspective and the way I kind of organize and share thoughts around this, kind of comes in four forms, which is tools, product people, capital.So tools being like anything from a hammer to a chainsaw, to Xavier, product being any form of like capturing and preserving your judgment or experience in code in media, you know, we're, we're recording a product right now. but it could be a blog post. It could be a book. it could be a movie and then working into people.So everything from like, Fiber. So task-based labor up through like building a whole team. and capital kind of comes in a variety of forms, but like usually money. so all of those kinds of things build on each other and you can sort of trade them for each other and you'll end up with like constraints and bottlenecks and things, but like over time, you know, you go from.Starting a newsletter to writing a book, to building a course, to building a software platform. and you go from, you know, some very specific tasks based help. to maybe a part-time assistant to maybe hiring an agency to maybe a hundred people full-time, and the capital grows and the margins grow.And like you sort of increasingly reinvest in higher margins of leverage that are more self-sufficient and longer levers so that they can move, you know, have quote unquote heavier loads, and help you kind of accomplish more with the time and experience and judgment that you have.Nathan: [00:14:14]Yeah, it's as simple as an example of that, like in my life would be going from designing iPhone applications for other people, you know, which is very. One-to-one like conveniently, it's a high paid skill, so that's better than other activities, but you know, it's still not there. And then teach, you know, creating a, running a book, creating a course teaching that.Now there's real leverage because money and time are disconnected. And then going up from there would be. What did I do now? I mean, I guess the next thing was like creating that leverage from software in a recurring way, or like the number of people that are going to buy a course or consume content compared to the number of people that now use ConvertKit.And the other thing is the. Because, like you said, the compounding effect and that's the magic in SaaS and they're occurring in the, you know, the recurring business. It's like, you don't even have to have that good of a growth rate, but it compounding over time, and continuing to do it for a long time, then it gets to the point that the leverage is just pretty incredible.And like now, you know, 350,000 people use ConvertKit and it's like, Oh, well, that's sort of a different scale than. You know, the, the like the hours I put into designing an iPhone app for, you know, an individual client .Eric: [00:15:32]Yeah. And it would have been correct me if I'm wrong. Like, I don't know that the details of the story there, but I think it would have been really tough to just make that huge leap. Right. Like even if you knew you wanted to end up building a SAS app, you know, in a high margin business, like even if you knew that that was your destination, would you have been able to just kind of like jump straight there without some of those intermediate steps?Nathan: [00:15:54]I don't think they think. So there's so many lessons that you have to learn along the way of like, well, so I've read about this a little bit. In my blog posts, the ladders of wealth creation is like making some of these leaps between steps of like me selling you on something. One-to-one that there's a certain amount of skills that I have to understand why you would want to buy it.And other things like that. But then me. Getting you to go to a website and buy the same thing without me talking to you when there's real leverage in that, because now like a thousand people or one person could read the website and it works the same either way, but it's really hard. Like that is a whole skill in building trust and copywriting and understanding and all of that.And so when you're like, I'm going to go from a client work to a SAS application, there's like a thousand of those skills. You know, there's probably actually like 50, if we're gonna break it down, you know? But,Eric: [00:16:48]It feels like a thousand. Yeah.Nathan: [00:16:50]Yeah. It feels like a thousand and that's why like it's so insurmountable.And if you want to try to learn all of those things in a single step, you, you can, there's plenty of people who do it, but then don't be surprised them that step, instead of you're like, Oh, it should only take six months. and it takes six years instead, like, just know that because there were six years worth of lessons that you chose to do in one step. Whereas other people chose to do it in incremental.Eric: [00:17:15]Yeah. And, and in my experience has been that each kind of, one of those steps is gives you increasing resources and confidence and skills to like, know that you're, that like the next one is in reach. Right. I actually use your ladders of wealth creation as an example in the book it's like, of course the laboratories, it's a very similar kind of framework to like, Hey, look, leverage is like this big, important idea.And it's going to define your life. If you let it in the same way that compounding can, but one, you have to be willing to start small and be patient, but look at how we can connect the dots going forward. but you do have to. Respect to the idea and kind of pay homage to it in each little decision that you make for years before you start to see that payoff, just like compounding.I like that. It's a painful, you watch that graph for so long. Look really flat until it takes off. And when you can layer, actually have some like graphs in the, in the course that show like, You know, here's the margin of a book. Here's the margin of a course. Here's the margin. And when you layer these products onto each other, with increasing skill and increasing leverage in each one, the top of the graph looks exponential, but you can break it down into like what's actually stacked up on top of itself.And it's this very similar idea to ladders and wealth creation.Nathan: [00:18:38]Yeah, that that really resonates. And I think one thing that you reminded me of in there is like the leverage of relationships, because it takes so many relationships to build the SAS company. You know, not only in who you need to, like you're talking about, you know, the cat, like, human leverage, you know, like getting wrangling a whole bunch of people and getting them to go in, in a single direction.You know, if you have relationships and reputation, that's so much easier to do. And, you know, and see if you're jumping right into that, people are like, no, I don't want to come and work for you for less money for, you know, any of these things. I don't even want to work for you for more money. No. You know?But in. In compounding reputation, from like the first, you know, the first of all iPhone app. So the book, so the building audience, then when it comes time to do this thing, you know, I hate when you buy this, people are like, Oh, I trust you from this. Like, I was just having a conversation with, Justin Jackson, over Twitter DMS.And so he's the founder of transistor, who we used to host this podcast and doing amazing things. He's actually the longest running, paying customer of ConvertKit. And I know him, you know, from like, blogging's like that whole world, you know, it nine years ago. and like that relationship has been super valuable, I think for both of us, but it started. You know, way back here and isnow, you know, valuable to both of us as we run software companies. So I'm curious for you, like what's your take on, on relationships and how those play into leverage and compounding.Eric: [00:20:16]Naval originally called it labor leverage, and I think I've reframed it as people because I think that's so like, what you said is exactly true and people leverage is so much broader than labor, right? Like if you, if you're stuckNathan: [00:20:27]Labor implies that, like I founded Walmart and now I've got a hundredEric: [00:20:31]Yeah.That is permission that I'm compensating people directly, that it's like all or nothing that it's, you know, you just kind of have that image of like people, you know, dragging stones around building the period pyramids. And you're like today, People leverage, it looks much more like a network of kind of trusted, like high credibility people.It looks more like an audience. and that's not, it's not compensated leverage, right? Like some of those influential, like highly leveraged people on earth are just people with big fan bases. And that's all kind of like double opt in. People are expressing themselves through their dedication to a person and an artist, you know, a writer, a musician, Or so there's the, there's kind of like the audience fan base.And then there's the, kind of what you're alluding to though, like friendship, credibility, network support, and then, then all the team and people that actually like who skills and vision and belief you need to kind of. Build a product that takes more than one person's skillset. you know, we talked about building those 50 skills, but like practically what happens is, you know, you build 10 or 15 and you find other people with 10 or 15 and you kind of combine them into like, Hey, I've got this credibility and this experience and this audience and this product idea.And they're like, Oh great. I have this engineering expertise in this, you know, this credibility and I can build a team and I can make architecture decisions. And somebody else comes in with like, You know, some, some Content expertise and like those, you, you are all, each other's leverage. Like that's the other thing that people want, which is like, leverage is a little bit of a.There's this connotation that it's like to get leverage over somebody like the mafia kind of leverage. and I think that some people will kind of hear people leverage and they're like, Oh, I don't like it. which is totally fair. Like this is not about coercion or persuasion or anything. This is about like, we are all using each other's skills and expertise.And like, you know, you are writing a book to serve your readers. They are buying a book to serve, you know, to reward you for that. And like they're getting 10 years of your experience. For $40, like that's a bargain of a lifetime. so there there's a lot of, you know, I think we need to get comfortable with that.You know, we're all, we're all serving somebody. We're all somebody's customer. We're all, you know, somebody's, somebody's chef somebody somebody's waiter, somebody Writer, somebody entertainer like.Nathan: [00:22:57]Yeah. And I think. Even on the relationship side of having the ability to email someone, and then, you know, have them say like, yes, I'll make an introduction to this person or, or like you and I have built leverage in like personal brands where in both ways, right. I'm emailing you and say, Hey, will you come on my podcast because I'm a fan of your work.And you're saying like, yes, I would love to come on your podcast. Cause I'm also a fan of your work.Eric: [00:23:24]I'm a fan of your work. Yeah, exactly.Nathan: [00:23:26]You know, and so that's because we've both built leverage in those areas from like ultimately, but started with writing and teaching and, you know, in some way, and then that just compounding over time.Eric: [00:23:37]Yeah. And there's no, one of the questions I get from people is like, do I have to like go be a public internet person in order to like, build leverage? and I know Lisa, like the short answer, I think there's, you know, every, like, Industry probably has their own version of this. Like you still have reputation yourself, credibility, you still have network.You know, you don't have to be out there writing blog posts in order to build, leverage through network and friendships and experience and, all those things. Although there is a unique dynamics to like an uncapped audience, like worldwide audience, that I think is worth people paying attention to.Nathan: [00:24:14]What are some of those other things? Right. So if someone's saying I don't want to be. The public internet person, which I think is something that people wrestle with a lot, especially today, as you see it, like it's always been a really high upside thing, but we're also seeing, like, it can be fairly high downside, you know, especially if you don't have, a thick skin or, you know, like if you, you, there's more to lose now.There was always a lot, but I think maybe there's more examples of, the negative side of things.I'm curious. What other types of leverage you would point people to when they're thinking of like, I don't like the whole audience blogging podcasting thing, like I'll stay as a reader, listener things.Eric: [00:24:55]Yeah. I think so. There's, there's definitely there's people who are increasingly doing it anonymously. so there's, you know, there's, there's the pseudonym, there's the anonymous route.Nathan: [00:25:05]What do you think about that?Eric: [00:25:06]I support it. I support it.Nathan: [00:25:07]Yeah. Would you have, like, have you considered doing it yourself of like, as you, you know, spinning up?Eric: [00:25:13]Yeah. Yeah. I've always, I've always thought about like, if you had to just like drop a match and like get rid of your identity and like start over tomorrow anonymously, like what would it be like, how would you do it? What could you do? Like, I think that was like a fun mental exercise. And then people were doing, I saw some, I saw, I don't know if it was a guy actually tweet the other day.He's like, I just like abandoned my public persona with 30,000 followers and like started over with an anonymous account. And like, I'll never tell you who I was, but like, here we go on while you're unplugging and plugging it back in. and I think for some people that's like, I think it will be increasingly common in the crypto world.Like we're we can see a bunch of that already. I mean, there's like. Anonymous accounts at the head of like a billion dollar Dow, treasury, like that's crazy. but makes sense. It's also like I was, I was thinking about this earlier. There's like, have you read the sovereign individual and like all of the logic of violence and it's like a very fashionable will kind of like crypto book to read.It basically says like the logic of violence determines the structure of society. and you can kind of get into this thing where like, if. No one knows who you are. Like the safest thing you can be as anonymous, in a world where like anybody could show up at your house at any time. Like the safest thing to do is just have nobody know who you are and where you are.Because if they know you're in control of a billion dollar Dow, treasury, that's not a good thing like this, like there's no physical thing that can protect you or as much more expensive than just being digitally anonymous and untrackable. to the extent that you can. So I think there'll be increasingly common.I think like it's a very simple solution to kind of like workplace equity and fairness is just like your, your track record is associated with a pseudonym. not, not a real world identity or name or photo and like, that's fine. I would have no problem hiring anonymous people. I kind of do it accidentally online already through marketplaces.Right. I don't know if the person I hire on Upwork. Is that real name or no, there's a real photo. Like I just know that they have a bunch of good reviews and I pay them to do the work and they do it. And that's great.Nathan: [00:27:33]It's interesting to think about. Like people doing that with audiences. And there's plenty of examples that we've come to, like, you know, a Twitter account, like Ram capital or, or, you know, there's, there's plenty of them.And I don't think it really holds you back. Like, in some ways, I wonder if it's speed things like speeds up audience growth or, or leverage in some of those ways. So, okay. Ways it's harder, right? I can't be like, Hey Eric, Hey, you know, David who like texted a bunch of friends and be like,Eric: [00:28:05]Yeah.Nathan: [00:28:06]Wrote this post, will you promote it? That kind of thing.Eric: [00:28:08]For, for people who are yeah. Starting from zero without those friends and connections, it's probably, that was probably a wash. but it's definitely a challenge if you already have them. I think it's a little harder to trust somebody. Like, it takes me a little bit longer to build a mental model of an anonymous.Person. but you can mean advantages. You can build a brand that's much more extreme than a real world person is willing to be.Nathan: [00:28:37]Right,Eric: [00:28:38]I don't know, there's always been like a joke accounts that are justNathan: [00:28:42]Right.Eric: [00:28:43]Things. th that tend to grow really quickly,Nathan: [00:28:46]What was the, like, in the, start of space? Fake Grimlock.Eric: [00:28:50]Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That that's the name I was trying to come up with. Yeah. The like caps lock, dinosaur monster guy. I mean, startup startup called Jackson was a really famous one. yeah. And it's like those accounts build credibility, like huge credibility. and I think, I don't know, I don't have a good example off the top of my head of somebody who's like turned that into a really big business, but like, I think there's plenty of people doing, doing great through anonymous accounts.Nathan: [00:29:16]Yeah. It's interesting. Once it probably is harder to get traction in some ways, but then what you're talking about of being able to take strong stances, you know, the internet, both rewards and punishes. Strong stances. Like if you're out here going, like, you know, leverage is, is, is nice. Like if you can get it, I don't, know.You don't, you're like all soft about it. No, one's going to pay any attention. But if you're like, Hey, this is a thing you have to understand. Here's why it matters. And all of thatEric: [00:29:40]Yeah.Nathan: [00:29:41]But they'll really pay attention. They'll read the posts, they'll share it.Eric: [00:29:44]So that's a thing I'm like, that's a card I'm pretty unwilling to play because I'm like a normal person who wants to actually represent myself as a normal person online. And like, it is pretty. I think it's kind of trivially easy to win the like outrage retweet game. And there's people who just like tweet hot takes in deliberately clumsy ways to like, get the reach of people, like quote tweeting and like dunking on them.But like all the time they're getting more followers and people show up to defend them. And I'm just like unwilling to do that, even though it clearly obviously like works for gaining a bunch of followers. but like if you were to set off at a, as an anonymous account to do that, like easy, right.Nothing to lose. That's your brand from the beginning.Nathan: [00:30:27]Okay. So we were, before we went off the anonymous direction, we, we were talking about, like other types of leverage that, you know, isn't relying on, on that audience or reputation.Eric: [00:30:38]Product is leveraged and a very common like starting place. Right? So anything you can record, you know, at the end of the course, I kind of try to codify these like 10 laws of leverage. That's like these little triggers to like remind you and like turn this into instinctive behaviors.And one of them is don't repeat yourself, record yourself. So when you hear yourself telling the same story over and over again, you should be writing it down. You should be recording it as a video you should do as a Podcast, you should, whatever. And I think it's easy to underestimate the power of like creating something that can serve hundreds or thousands of people in parallel and into the future.And like, you know, people will make a YouTube video and it only gets like a hundred views and they're kinda like bummed about it. I was like, Like do the math on that, like ROI, like that is a miracle. Like if a hundred people listen to this podcast probably way more are going to, but if a hundred people listen to this podcast from one hour of our time, like, That's a crazy miracle that couldn't possibly have happened a hundred people in a room and I'd be like sweating, but like 5,000 people are going to listen to this.And that's absolutely wild. so think like product leverage at almost any scale is like a miracle that we see every day that we've just forgotten is a miracle. and. When you are prolific with that, even if you don't like you get good at it fast, and that leverage has its own kind of compounding, in, in, in a way being prolific is like its own form of credibility.Like you make a thousand podcasts, like you're probably not going to suck by your thousands Podcast, no matter how slowly you improve, you just can't not get better.Nathan: [00:32:23]What makes Seth Godin has this thing that he says, like, I will come on anyone's Podcast. You just have to have recorded at least a hundred episodes. You know, and partially cause he's going to, like, I want you, I want to make sure that you're consistent with it. I don't wanna be your third guest on your fifth guest.You know, like most Podcast die after, you know, probably three episodes. and so he's like saying, I want to help you, you know, I like encourage that, but like here's the bar that you have to get to. And hopefully you won't be a terrible interviewer by the time you get to a hundred episodes, you know?Eric: [00:32:54]Yeah.Nathan: [00:32:54]Credibility and, and all of that, that comes with being prolific.Eric: [00:32:58]Yeah, that's a great rule. And then you're not evaluating it, then you're not thinking about it, then there's going to be, there's certain to be like some sort of guaranteed minimum audience, probably by the time they get to a hundred episodes. yeah, that's, that's really smart.Nathan: [00:33:10]Something else, on productizing level or product as a leverage side of things that maybe it made me think of is we have a internal Podcast for that ConvertKit team. that is each team member being interviewed about their life story. by another team member. And so you're like outgoing on your run.And you're thinking about like Charlie, who's our creative director and you're like listening to her life story. And so there's a bunch of, she records that once, for an hour, you know, and then now the 67 other people on the team, and then everyone who joins from today. Forward, like listens to that. And then now when I sit down or anyone sits down and talks to Charlie, then it's just like, Oh, tell me about growing up in Brunei.And like this whole thing, like, we can shortcut so much for that becauseEric: [00:34:01]Yeah.Nathan: [00:34:01]story and she's listened to mine. And like, weEric: [00:34:05]That's as a brilliant application, as a brilliant, there's so many, like so many. Onboarding's have the like, Oh, like go get coffee with the whole team. And so like that just breaks so fast. As soon as you have like an onboarding class of five as like what, I've five coffees this week. Like I'm going to spend 10 hours, likeNathan: [00:34:22]Yeah.Eric: [00:34:23]hanging out with new members of the team every week.But that's brilliant. And then you can just kind of wait until you're like, Oh, I have my first meeting with Charlie next week. like I better. Go get some contacts and they hear what it's like. Yeah. Listen to her episode, hear what it's like to meet her here, like where she's coming from, what she does here, what her goal is. That's super, really, I love that.Nathan: [00:34:43]You said there's 10 rules, or like the key things that you reminding people of? What are a few others of this.Eric: [00:34:49]Oh, okay. so one I have, that's like the one I probably have to tell myself the most often, is, is do the things only you can do. I find myself like do the work only you can do is a really good way to remind yourself, like, what's my highest invest use, how much stuff am I doing that? Like, Either doesn't need to be done.Someone else can do for me, or could be automated, could be, you know, delegated, whatever. that one is, I catch myself doing that a lot. and then sometimes I'm like, no, I'm kind of enjoying this. Like, I'm good. Like, I'm fine with that. but usually the stuff that only you can do, is the highest impact, like.Longest term outcome stuff. It's usually like talking to customers, giving, like creating a new sort of standard operating procedure, like figuring out, you know, some sort of high leverage like cops situation, which is speaking of, I have listened to maybe two or three separate interviews about your profit sharing system.And I absolutely adore it. I think it's brilliant. I love kind of collecting the stories of like Nucor steel and Glen.Nathan: [00:36:02]yeah.Eric: [00:36:03]I feel like you are. In that lineage in a amazing way.Nathan: [00:36:06]Well, thanks. We'll, we'll give it some time to see how it all plays out, but those are also the kinds of stories that I, that I like to collect. I'm curious in the, in like the collection of stories, side of things, like what are some of the stories, like favorite examples of stories of leverage, you know, or in different types of leverage, applied that are your go-to.Eric: [00:36:26]I think, I really like this like example of, real estate agents. So I worked with real estate agents a lot over the last few years, and I kind of like Naval uses them as an example in the book of just being a high leverage job because your inputs and your outputs are disconnected. Most realtors are not actually it's.Using that like, they're not actually adding leverage, but the ability is there for any of them to add it. if they, if they choose it's really independent contracting sales job, right. and most sales jobs have, this is just, everybody can relate to realtor. So one, one lesson I have in the course takes like realtors, four different realtors that are operating from like the first one is just like a very normal, basic, you know, Linear sort of time and money relationships.She does like 10 clients a year. It makes 50,000 a year. Okay. Normal, normal day job. The like best realtor in a typical office makes like. $400,000 a year. and it's usually because they have like a full-time personal assistant or to the transaction coordinator. They're usually spending money on advertising.They're usually spending money on, tools like upgraded tools and systems. and they have like enough of a, more speaking of like opt in people leverage. They have past clients who are driving word of mouth for them. so like that is a really. That is a high leverage thing that people don't think of as leverage, because it's not labor is not even really audience.It's just like happy customer base. and then you get into the order of magnitude above that, and you've got the realtor. Who's like the number one realtor in the city. And they've got a team of 50 agents below them that are all doing the stuff that the best agents in the office are doing. They're all paying for personal assistants, they're all paying for marketing.And that person is like coaching and managing and recruiting all of those agents and building a team, a whole team of them in a culture that. Helps those agents become better and earns a percentage of all of their earnings. and this guy, I was wondering how far this went. And so I looked up, who's the number one real estate agent in the country.And it's this guy in Texas named Ben Cabalero caviar, I think is his name. And he started out as just like a normal realtor and he kind of found his way into this, like a niche of new home builders. And so he's got now. this team, like, I don't know a team dozens under him. And like half of them kind of work on these partnerships with new home builders who are companies that build like dozens to hundreds, to maybe thousands of homes per year.And they have to figure out how to sell them involved. And so they just don't give him like here's a thousand listings, like go sell all these houses. And then he's got a software team that is building a platform to actually like manage the inventory of all these houses and all of their listings and all their sales.And then like, So he, he's basically like a founder of a software company with a BD team and like designers and marketers and engineers, but he's still functionally a realtor. And he earns commissions as a realtor on thousands of homes a year. And my napkin math is that this guy makes like a hundred million dollars a year.That could be like 50 million high or low, but like it's crazy either way. And is the ultimate illustration of like, if you add system, if you systematically add leverage. Is of these four types. You can go from a very normal job, to an absolutely insane kind of like founder situation and the mindset and the instinct to like add leverage where you can and in a safe kind of, sustainable way.That's manageable. Like. Is a huge, huge difference. You have to find your way into a place where you don't have that ceiling and you can reinvest in that leverage and like you get the benefits of that. and there's a lot of traps or places where that's not as true. but if you can find that place and you can develop that mindset and like get into it as a habit and then go for, you know, 10 or 20 years, you can get to some crazy, crazy places.Nathan: [00:40:32]Yeah, it's not that leverage plus compounding, but the two of them together, pretty powerful. You have another tweet, You talked about blockbuster. he's a Netflix didn't kill blockbuster being over leveraged, killed blockbuster. I'm curious some of the, like the downsides of leverage or people misuse it or, yeah, don't understand what they're flying with it.Eric: [00:40:55]Yeah, yeah. Leverage. I mean the lever goes both ways, right? Like leverage pushback. and that's actually like, so leverage law eight and nine levers. A lot of our aid is live by the lever.by the lever. Like if this is the game you choose to play, like understand that it can hurt you. and levers a lot.Number nine is like leave room for things to go wrong. which is just kind of the like normal. Peterson way that all the investing nerds would say margin for margin of error. but there's a difference between being over leveraged and being super leveraged. So like you can have really, really long levers, right?Like Warren buffet has a really long letters. he's got billions of dollars. He's got multiple many companies. He's got, you know, 250,000 employees. but if those levers push back on him, they're not dangerous amounts of large and he can. Absorb that pushback, kind of with equanimity, because it's not just because this long does it mean the travel is high and doesn't mean there's like a huge force pushing on the other side.And so there are people who, you know, if you make $50 an hour and you hire an assistant for $40 an hour, And try to outsource your whole job and then like, there's no room for things to go wrong. And if there's pushback on that other side of that lever, you know, your revenue changes, your costs, change.Something happens like all of a sudden you're in deep shit because that lever is pushed back too hard on you. You don't have the like capacity to absorb that blow. and now all of a sudden this is like launch you into space and, and you're done.Nathan: [00:42:31]Gross margin matters. When you'reEric: [00:42:33]Yeah.Nathan: [00:42:34]how, like, to what degree you can use leverageEric: [00:42:37]And, and as you layer things on top, right? Like if you're making a hundred dollars an hour and $10 an hour system makes a ton of sense, but if you hire five of them like that stacks. And so all of a sudden, so like you've got to run the math and, and be cognizant of all the other levers, things like product leverage.Like we talked about the risk of being. Public person. And so like, that's less quantitative, but it's still intangible and it's still a form of risk. but you can layer a lot of those on top of each other before you have like financial risk associated with that. but that's not true, you know, when you're, when you're playing like leverage trading games and like, you know, I've, I've seen plenty of people lose way more money than they thought was possible because they were using leverage that they did not understand.And when those good. Multiplied out, things can move really quickly. and leverage, leverage just gets you more of what you're already getting. It doesn't change your outcome. So like, if things are going poorly and you add a bunch of money to it and make things happen poorly, faster, and more often than like you have not done yourself, any favors, except that maybe we make it more clear.What were you were already getting? so yeah, it's a very, I, you know, I say to anybody, who's thinking about the course, like this is not for people who do not know. What they're doing, or do not, are confident in the direction that they're heading and are confident, like investing money to get more of the results that are already getting.Nathan: [00:44:05]yep.Eric: [00:44:06]Is for like, getting more of what you're already getting.Nathan: [00:44:08]Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. somebody else that I want to turn to talk to a bit is the, the book, the Almanac of involve Africa, which is, has replaced, well first rework, and then anything you want as my most gifted books. so thanks for, thanks for writing that. it's just one of those things where I'm like talking to someone, whether it's a sibling or a friend or someone else I'm like.This will change your world. Know like it is the most condensed way I can get them to think in a completely different way. So thank you for doing all of the work to, to put that together. I'm curious how that started. like, what, what inspired that project and then how did you start working on it?Eric: [00:44:51]Yeah. I mean that, the inspiration came really from a podcast that navel did with Shane Parrish. on the knowledge project, it was an awesome interview. I listened to it two or three times. and I was a little, like I'd been following them all for 10 years, right? Like, since 2009, maybe when he like, started writing on venture hacks, there's really still an awesome blog.I've been following him and learning all these, you know, what are used, mostly talking about startups and investing for a long time. And this interview with Shane Parrish was the first time he kind of talked about like some of his, some of his like principles for how to build wealth and some of his principles that he had been like kind of teaching himself about the philosophies and practice and habits of happiness and building happiness, and that you are totally in control of your own happiness.And I thought this was such a good Podcast. And I love podcasts. I listen to them a lot, but I'm also very aware that like, most people don't listen to podcasts and even if they do the discovery is not great of whole episodes or even within them. And I just thought it was such a tragedy that most of the stuff that of all is shared on Twitter and in Podcast is just in such a like difficult to access kind of subcultural like ephemeral format.And I spent. I mean, I'm, I'm, I've been curating and assembling and editing and writing for a long time. And, it was kind of between projects. I was like, all right, I'm going to go like, Just throw this idea out there. and I was like, you know, I saw the tweet is so dumb and I just thought up a Twitter poll is like, if I wrote the book of knowledge and like compiled a few of his important transcripts, like, do you want that?And like treated it and went to bed. And I woke up to find that Naval had retweeted it and like, you know, 5,000 people were like, Oh my God, yes, please do this. And Naval was like, I'm not gonna provide you all the materials, like rock on. And I, I don't have any reasonably that he knew who I was. I had no connection or, kind of prior access or anything like that.And, I mean, he gave me an export of his whole Twitter history and everything else was public record. I just started doing transcripts of the podcasts and interviews and books and, just kind of like threw it all on the table. It was like, all right, let me like start kind of. Learning to condense this and makes sense of it.And I mean, it was well over a million words of source material that I just kind of like started organizing and distilling and lumping into ideas and categories. And, I just, I mean, I was excited to like swim around and all these ideas and like absorb them and learn them. And. spend time like reading and rereading and just do this giant, like weird conceptual jigsaw puzzle and make it easy for people to read and get these ideas in their own head and put it into a format that would last for, you know, hopefully decades and be relevant for people for a long time.Nathan: [00:47:30]I didn't realize how early in the project didn't have all got involved or like, you know,Eric: [00:47:35]Yeah.Nathan: [00:47:36]gave his blessing. That's pretty cool,Eric: [00:47:37]Yeah. I mean, he's got, I have no idea. He was probably like, yeah, sure. Go for it. Like there's no chance you're actually gonna finish it. I I've, I have no idea. but he's, he's pretty like, you know, and then we, we kind of came to terms he's like, make sure there's a, you know, free version available for everybody and, make sure that it's clear that like I'm not selling it.And not earning money from it. because it would be critical to some of the material that's in the book and all like done and done, like. Let's go and it took me three years to finish it and publish it, but it's, we got out there and I'm really, I'm proud of it. And I think it's a really, I like, I really enjoy hearing that people got a lot out of it.I wish I'd had it at 18. but the next best thing is, you know, making sure that the next next generation can have it and are better educated than we were. soNathan: [00:48:27]right?Eric: [00:48:28]we all end up better off in the future, you know?Nathan: [00:48:29]Yeah. What are some of those other cool things that have come from it? You know, maybe unexpected you go from, I'm gonna throw out this random tweet and go to bed and then fast forward a few years and you're like, okay. This, you know, this thing happened And, it's because of what ultimately started with a tweet after it podcast episode.Eric: [00:48:45]Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a thousand little things, you know? just like getting DMS for people that are like, you know, I gave this to my 18 year old brother and like, it totally changed his life. people who are like actually made me drop out of law school and like go become a software engineer because I didn't.I didn't understand why technology was going to be so key. And, it's just, it's really interesting to hear, you know, it's a bunch of individual stories, I think, you know, it's been cool to like kind of come on podcasts and talk to people and meet them. And, I'm really excited about, this format.Like I think there's so much valuable stuff that's created in a femoral digital mediums, and I think books just will always have a place. And, and that kind of transformation and that, that practice of curating things into like something really timeless and taking somebody's whole body of work. And.Turning that into, like this has always been my favorite genre of book, right? Like I love Peter Beth Mullins books, and I love Porcelli's Almanac and the letters of Warren buffet and, like principles. I think, like it's not, everybody's going to sit down and write their own book and dedicate years to doing it.But I think the ability to kind of like condense someone's best advice and worldview and things into, into a book that someone can read in a few hours and like really get the experience of a lifetime. Is really cool and valuable, and I hope we see more of those. I certainly intend to keep, keep doing them.Nathan: [00:50:21]Yeah. Yeah, that's great. is there something that you're working onEric: [00:50:24]not, not that I can talk about yet, but,Nathan: [00:50:26]yeah,Eric: [00:50:27]Yeah, I got it. I got a new spreadsheet. I'm working on it.Nathan: [00:50:31]I know they're new million words of source material out there.Eric: [00:50:33]Yes. Yes. I know there are New million ways.Nathan: [00:50:35]That's not intimidating at all.Any numbers that you can share from like the book launch or something like that? I'm always curious how, like the scale of something like this, especially when it has the free version. And so even in the number of people who read it or anything like that?Eric: [00:50:51]Yeah. I mean, we have like the site, the page views on the site are, are like, I think, well into the millions now. or somewhere in the mid six figures for, I think like digital downloads, that's harder to track, but it's like,Nathan: [00:51:09]Yeah.Eric: [00:51:10]Yeah. It's a lot.Nathan: [00:51:11]And then I assume a substantial number of people going like, no, I don't want the digital version. Like, I'll take the, you know,Eric: [00:51:17]Yeah.Nathan: [00:51:18]like, I think I've bought eight or 10 copies of the book.Eric: [00:51:23]Yeah. Impossible. The answer is like what the effect the net effect has been like, does the free version drive more sales? Like, I've definitely have heard stories of people. Like I read the free version and it was a few chapters in and the like, then I went and bought the physical version or finished the free version.I loved it. And so like, I wanted it as a trophy, a physical version, or they read it and then they gift it or like, whatever. so yeah, it's, it's impossible to know, I think, but like, you know, my goal for this was just like, Please. I hope it gets back to cash that I put into like making it professional and like well-designed and well-published and, it has done that and more.Nathan: [00:52:02]Right.Eric: [00:52:03]You know, Naval seems happy with it as a like representation of, of him.Nathan: [00:52:10]Have there been like, did it result in more conversations in interaction with evolve over time or has he been pretty much like thumbs up from a distance?Eric: [00:52:19]Like, you know, we, we actually never spoke live about this. Like we did it all through email. I kind of kept them updated and he was kinda like, cool, let's go ahead and like, as comprehensive, as that's a lot, like yeah. yeah, so, no, I appreciate, I mean he was, his support has been like.Super super valuable. And I'm actually not sure that I would have felt good about doing it because like, there's this huge risk of kind of like putting words in his mouth. and in opening him up to misinterpretation by just like recontextualizing all of this stuff, which is kind of like what I'm doing by definition.So it's, it took a lot of faith I think. and I, I appreciate the kind of trust he put in me there to do it. and yeah, I'm glad to see it's, you know, if I can, I can be positive, like a piece of people finding their way to him and understanding that better. Like that's, that's awesome.Nathan: [00:53:20]Yeah, that's great. And I'm excited for more of that format, because like you said, there's a lot of people who have this like wealth of knowledge and, and Content, but it's not like packaged nicely that I can either read myself or like give to my brother or anything like that.Eric: [00:53:35]I can't wait to do the Almanac of Nathan Berry.Nathan: [00:53:37]Yeah. hopefully I'll be one of those people that like writes it all down myself rather than me, you know, but I'd be down, Yeah, well, I'm, I'm curious, like as we, as we wrap up, where should, well, first, what are you working on most right now?And then where should people go to, to follow you?Eric: [00:53:55]Yeah. My main project right now is a course on leverage. So, this is, this is all very top of mind for me. The biggest question I get from the books, people who read the leverage chapter and are kind of like, that's awesome. I totally get the importance of this idea but, I don't know how to apply it to my life.So I kind of have been really distilling frameworks and ideas and collecting stories and like putting them all in this course, that will launch soon. And it's kind of like quietly in beta, letting people in as we get confident that like we got, the right kind of level of fidelity and things here.So, that's, that's a huge focus for me right now. I'm really excited to be like building my first course and like getting to kind of put my hat in this ring of education. And I think, I really am enjoying experimenting with like, I want to provide the flexibility and availability and like kind of perfectly available, of, of asynchronous, like evergreen course with a layer of kind of very light accountability and social connections, and community that comes with it.So I'm trying to pull the very best of like a high-end very expensive cohort-based course and, like, permanently available kind of course and like merge them into one here. So it's a little bit of experiment in medium and like getting to explore this topic that I really like. so that's really cool.That's on my website: ejorgenson.com, And, I spend like way too much time on Twitter. So, if anybody wants to come hang out with me, like I'm easy to find.Nathan: [00:55:29]Sounds good. Well, thanks for coming on. We'll both had our separate ways. We've got stuff going on this evening, but, it was good to catch up and I'm excited to see the course come to life.Eric: [00:55:38]Yeah. Great to talk to you. I can't wait to, to flip the mix and, have you on my podcasts and, get to dive into more of the story. I think, I think you're going to be a perfect, like exemplar case study of intuition of leverage and building that ladder. And I can't wait to dig into it.Nathan: [00:55:54]I love it. All right. We'll chat soon.Eric: [00:55:56]All right.
Founder's FAQ: answers to all the possible questions of a founder. Hosted by Ilker Koksal. This episode's guest is Eric Jorgenson. Eric is a product strategist at Zaarly, where he was one of the very first employees. Outside of his time at Zaarly, he has spent time writing and condensing ideas on his blog Evergreen, which has educated and entertained more than one million readers since 2014. And he is the author of Almancak of Naval Ravikant. In this episode; 1-) Long term games 2-) The ideal team 3-) Managing micromanagement 4-) Managing disagreements Founder's FAQ is a book for founders and you can order through the website. You can also reach us through @foundersfaq on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.
Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe. About the book Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn. So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like? The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn’t a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval’s own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life. Sources, links and more information: https://www.navalmanack.com/ About the Authors Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur and Investor. He is founder of Angellist, Epinions, and Vast.com He is an Angel investor in Twitter, Uber, Yammer, and 100+ more. Naval has become widely followed for his thoughts on startups, investing, crypto, wealth, and happiness. Eric Jorgenson is the author of the book. He’s a product Strategist at Zaarly and writer. His business blog, Evergreen, has educated and entertained more than one million readers since 2014. He is also on a quest to create—and eat—the perfect sandwich. Big idea #1 - Develop mental models These are your foundation. And this foundation is critical. Naval describes mental models as compact ways to recall your own knowledge and having those solid fundamental truths will allow you to think more clearly, make fewer decisions and therefore act faster. These can be in all different domains; it could be wealth and happiness or health or work or time, whatever it happens to be. But you might have some that actually are fundamental across almost any domain. Side note: wealth is very different to being rich. This is defined in the book. The best way to build mental models is to read, especially from some of the baseline ideas such as science, maths, and philosophy. Particularly science and maths, where there’s generally a true or false, or basic fundamentals such as the laws of physics, etc. And yes, of course there's still things we don't know, but findings the underlying mental models means that you're going to have high quality ideas as a starting point and a solid foundation to build on. Naval actually goes as far as to recommend an hour a day of reading on those particular topics, particularly science, maths, and philosophy. But also says that you should read what you love until you love to read, if you don’t already have a reading habit. The book is filled with these mental models and principles that Naval uses. One of them for example, is that if you can't decide, the answer is no. (Note, this reminds me of Derek Sivers’ work of ‘hell yeah or no’). Similarly, he says, if you can't split between two different decisions, you should take one with the most short-term pain on the basis that things with short-term pain are probably going to have greater long-term benefits. Having that mental model of ‘greater short-term pain = greater long-term benefits’ means that it helps him make decisions faster when he's trying to pick between two different things. You can then overlay this with other basic principles such as compound interest or evolution, and you've then got momentum to start making decisions in a much faster, clearer, and more rational way. PSST. Consider supporting the podcast with your next book purchase. Save the Steph’s Business Bookshelf affiliate stores for Book Depository (Global) or Bookshop.org (US) in your browser. Big idea #2 - find your leverage This runs across the two main topics in the book of wealth and happiness. One of the key ideas he talks about is time. He talks about time in the sense of wealth, and how you're using time to build wealth, and happiness, by having control of your time. So leveraging your time, your brain power, your effort, and essentially working smarte, is the key to wealth and happiness. He says the year he became the most wealthy, he worked the least. This is because he had got to the point where he could maximise his leverage, and he had learned what he needed to leverage to do so. But, what should you leverage for the greatest gains, and how that has changed from previous generations? For Warren buffet, for example, capital was where you could find maximum leverage. But now it's things like code and media and attention. Naval says that this comes down to ‘learning to sell or learning to build’. You need to be able to do one or the other, and if you can do both, that is amazing. With that in mind, he talks about the idea of ‘earning with your mind, not with your time’. So not just trading hours for time, because that does have a ceiling, but the more you can earn with your mind in and reach multiple different people asynchronously, the better. And yes, unsurprisingly, he believes that 40hour work weeks are a relic of the industrial revolution times and need to be left where they belong. There is an important point that underlines all of this. He says that no one is going to value you more than you value yourself… which is a useful reminder. Big idea #3 - embrace death There is an overwhelming sense of calm perspective in this book and in Naval’s writing. He comes across like someone who has found what works and is just having fun, living life, learning, reflecting, and repeating. Fittingly, at the end of the book, there is a section on acceptance, especially being able to accept the things you can't change (very relevant and useful right now). And a particular, a piece on embracing death. This is all right before the section of the book about taking responsibility for yourself and your own actions and own happiness, so it’s interesting how accepting death, or accepting things you can’t control, will help you take more responsibility. “You're going to die one day. And none of this is going to matter. So enjoy yourself.” It’s a great way of looking at life more generally, but also particularly at work, because we often do take it a little bit too seriously, don't we? But actually, so little of that is going to matter, and that fact should free us, rather than depress us. Because maybe we can have a bit more fun and maybe there is less risk in failing than we think, because none of it's going to really matter. (I mean, don't do anything really bad, just take things less seriously). Naval is only 47, so it's not like he's coming at this with 90 years or 100 years behind him. I think that is quite inspiring, that you can find that level of acceptance and peace and ability to have fun and enjoy things, without necessarily having lived your whole life to have that perspective. Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode of Auxoro, Zach hosts product strategist and author Eric Jorgenson in a conversation that stretches from the power of weightlifting to the power of familial influences to the power of a beautifully constructed sandwich! Author of the wildly popular “Alamanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness,” Eric shares what he learned while compiling his exhaustive compendium of thoughts from the man behind one of the most popular Twitter accounts in the world. Culled from a deep trove of social media, podcast interviews and essays, the Almanack curates years of Naval Ravikant’s compelling insights and evolving principles. In addition to his writing projects, Eric is a product strategist and founding team member at Zaarly and also an occasional Angel investor. The Almanack of Naval RavikantFollow Eric JorgensonEric's Blog Patreon: Early Access and Bonus Episodes Watch The Auxoro Podcast On Youtube FOLLOW AUXORO (INSTA): https://www.instagram.com/auxoro/FOLLOW AUXORO (FB): https://www.facebook.com/auxoromag/FOLLOW AUXORO (TWITTER): https://twitter.com/AuxoromagFOLLOW AUXORO (TikTok): https://www.tiktok.com/@auxoroAUXORO NEWSLETTER: https://www.auxoro.com/thesourceWEBSITE/BLOG: https://www.auxoro.com/
Creating the Almanak of Naval Ravikant with Eric Jorgenson Eric Jorgenson is a founding team member at Zaarly and is the brains behind The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. In today’s episode, we talk in great depth about Eric’s book, as well as the business and personal growth that came with writing it. We kick off the show by hearing about Eric’s background and discovering his business mindset and knack for creating opportunities. Eric tells us more about his early years and why he has to try every idea that comes into his mind. Turning our scope toward Eric’s book, we ask him about what he aimed to get out of it. Following this, we uncover Eric’s methods for cherry-picking the best, most useful content about Naval Ravikant, and the long process behind sieving through information and creating drafts. Eric’s book is nothing short of a huge success, and he goes on to tell us how he managed to collaborate with big names like Tim Ferriss and Jack Butcher. We also talk about the substance of his publication and why Eric chose to write a book instead of creating a collection of blog posts or an audiobook. He then notes his favorite aspects of his book and touches on other influential publications. To find out what these are and much, much more, be sure to tune into this episode! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:16] Introducing today’s guest, Eric Jorgensen. [00:35] Today’s topics of business and personal growth. [00:50] Eric tells us about his background. [02:01] What projects Eric worked on in San Francisco and the risks that came with them. [03:10] How Eric came to realize he needed to be in San Francisco. [03:53] How small experiments helped Eric get to a point where he could write a book. [04:20] What Eric was aiming to get out of his book. [05:55] How it felt when Eric received a physical copy of his book for the first time. [06:39] Eric’s approach to pulling up all the best, most useful pieces of content. [08:44] Hear about Eric’s publishing methods. [10:19] How Eric got the likes of Tim Ferriss and Jack Butcher to be part of his project. [11:19] Twitter DMs were part of Eric’s success in creating his book. [12:14] Eric tells us about his 1,400 ratings and what it took to reach this number. [13:42] How Eric feels about being the “Almanac” guy. [15:33] Eric talks about how his relationship with Naval has evolved. [18:42] The methods behind Eric’s book updates. [19:53] Why Eric would choose to write a book over creating an audio book or blog. [22:26] How Eric’s book has given back to him. [25:05] Hear what Eric’s favorite philosophy book is. [25:48] Eric’s best tool for business. [26:33] The most compelling content that Eric has consumed recently [27:31] That’s it for today! Resources From The Interview: Eric Jorgenson Eric Jorgenson on LinkedIn Eric Jorgenson on Twitter Zaarly Almanack of Naval Ravikant Scribe Media Jack Butcher Tim Ferriss Christian Murdy Poor Charlie’s Almanack on Amazon The System’s Bible on Amazon Otter.ai Gong Grain Acquired podcast James Clear Farnam Street Leave Some Feedback: What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed Connect with Eric Siu: Growth Everywhere Single Grain Eric Siu on Twitter
In this podcast episode, I speak to CEO of Voy Media, Kevin Urrutia, on his multiple entrepreneurial ventures, both successful ones and the ones that couldn't take off.We talked about how Kevin came up with his first business idea, the struggles when starting his first business, the changes in the struggles as he started his next business and how he continued to push through even though there were setbacks!Truly a transformative episode if you have been facing setbacks in your business and you're looking for some motivation to keep moving forward!Don't forget to subscribe to my podcast and leave a review if you liked this episode! ✨Buy my book, Zero to Four Figures, here: https://www.themarketingnomad.co/books/zerotofourfiguresA bit about me:My name: Prithvi MadhukarPseudonym: The Marketing NomadI'm a marketer, business owner, entrepreneur, author of Zero to Four Figures: Lessons Learned by a Broke CEO, podcaster, youtuber, Etsy Shop Owner, Skillshare Teacher, and influencer with a zest for life, passion for marketing and an aim to travel the world while building my business empire ❤️Say Hi! to me:Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/themarketingnomadLinkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/prithvimadhukar/Skillshare - https://www.skillshare.com/r/user/themarketingnomad?gr_tch_ref=on&gr_trp=onPodcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-marketing-nomad-show/id1531854014YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/themarketingnomadMy Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheMarketingNomadCoConsulting Services I offer:Social Media Marketing | Website Marketing | Content Marketing | Email Marketing: https://www.themarketingnomad.co/packages☕ Buy me a coffee if you'd like! ☕https://www.buymeacoffee.com/marketingnomadDISCLAIMER: You are absolutely not required, ever! However, if you liked this episode and you want to say thank you, then this is just me keeping that option open :) I am grateful for anything but please never feel like you have to! :)Download:1. Marketing Plan Worksheet - https://www.themarketingnomad.co/marketing-plan-worksheet2. IG Post Checklist - https://www.themarketingnomad.co/lm-start-post-checklistAbout our Guest:Kevin Urrutia, CEO of Voy Media, has been featured on Forbes, Adweek and given keynote presentations at several NYC digital marketing events. Kevin also hosts the Digital Marketing Fastlane podcast with over 150+ 5 star reviews. A little more about Kevin:Worked as a developer (Mint.com, Intuit, Zaarly) in Silicon Valley to now doing marketingGrew his home cleaning business from $0 - $3 million in 18 monthsStarted his own e-commerce company, Chester Travels, to $0 - $1.5 million in 12 months and grew those sites organic traffic from 0 to 60K a month. Built Voy Media and worked with clients that have been featured on Shark Tank (Several big companies, such as Big Life Journal, UMG Gaming, Paw.com, Lacoste, and XG Cargo, form a part of our clientele.)Co-Author of Digital Marketing Made Easy: A-Z Growth Strategies and Key Concepts of Digital Marketing book Kevin is also developer of Shopify Apps such as Metrics Box ‑ Store Analytics and Metrics Box Email Reports Support the show
Founder's FAQ: answers to all the possible questions of a founder. Hosted by Ilker Koksal. This episode's guest is Shane Mac. Shane is a general partner & co-founder at the Logos Fund that invests in startups defining remote work globally. Previously, Shane was CEO & Co-founder of Assist, the automated assistant platform for messaging and voice, which was acquired by Conversocial in 2019. And he's currently an SVP at Conversocial. He's also co-founder and chairman at Squared Away, which employs military spouses as executive assistants. He ran product at Zaarly and worked on Gist.com, which was acquired by BlackBerry. In this episode;1-) Keeping the momentum early on2-) Create a great place to work3-) Focusing on relationships before you need them4-) Realize that the exit happens three years before the exitFounder's FAQ is a book for founders and you can pre-order through the website. You can also reach us through @foundersfaq on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.
Eric is a product strategist and writer. He is the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, a guide to wealth and happiness. In 2011, Eric joined the founding team of Zaarly, a company dedicated to helping homeowners find accountable service providers they can trust. His business blog, Evergreen, educates and entertains more than one million readers. Eric is also the creator of Course Correctly where he writes independent, unbiased reviews of online courses intended for knowledge workers to help enable anyone with internet access to build knowledge, skills, and careers. -- Thank you for listening to Pod of Jake! All shares and reviews are appreciated! If you enjoy this podcast, you might like reading blogofjake.com If you prefer listening over reading, you might prefer Blog of Jake's blog on tape, available through any of your favorite podcast providers. Website: podofjake.com Twitter: @blogofjake Email: jake@blogofjake.com Call: superpeer.com/jake Support: patreon.com/blogofjake Bitcoin: 3ESGQxrJZmGqd2SifqCUiHPvah1uWtN1Zd Ethereum: blogofjake.eth 0xF89aCC1f8c4FeEAc372997006BfE7c0fdD99F80c Bitcoin Cash: qznma8vxf8kjn4v9phsfkhzd0559gm7yfsx0gkl4sf
Kevin Urrutia decided to teach himself to code while in college so that he could turn all the different business ideas he had into reality. Little did he know that after years of building apps and websites and trying idea after idea, he would need to completely change his mindset about how to get ideas off the ground to have his first entrepreneurial success.Kevin left his home in New York to go to Silicon Valley and work as a software engineer for Mint.com and later a little known startup called Zaarly where he would learn the power of SEO and marketing. After reading every marketing and sales book he could find, he moved back to start an online maid service called Maid Sailors. In this episode he talks about how his new found love for marketing helped him scale Maid Sailors to millions of dollars in revenue, and truly kicked off his entrepreneurial career helping him launch several more startups, including his digital marketing agency Voy Media.This show is brought to you by School16, a tech career accelerator for professionals interested in roles in Product, Marketing, Sales and Operations at top tech firms and startups. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
“I write to find out what I know and what I don't know, like writing is thinking to me.” Eric Jorgenson is a startup growth guy and writer. He is on the founding team of Zaarly, and has been publishing online since 2014. His business blog, Evergreen, has educated and entertained over a million readers. Eric is on a quest to create (and eat) the perfect sandwich. He tweets at @ericjorgenson and publishes new pieces and projects on ejorgenson.com. And he is also the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A guide to wealth and happiness. Get a copy of Eric's book here: https://www.navalmanack.com/ Connect with Eric at: https://www.ejorgenson.com/ Find him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricJorgenson/ Read Eric's business blog: https://medium.com/evergreen-business-weekly/ Other books mentioned by Eric: Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins The Jobs-to-be-Done Handbook: Practical techniques for improving your application of Jobs-to-be-Done by Chris Spiek and Bob Moesta Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress by Bob Moesta The essential list of books written by Clayton M. Christensen Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T Munger Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio Other blogs mentioned by Eric: Startup world essays by Paul Graham (my personal favorite and one that I've read several times is called “Wealth”) Venture Hacks, Naval Ravikant's Blog 25iq by Tren Griffin Wait But Why --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kennysoto/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/kennysoto/support
In this episode of Money Talks, Hugh had the opportunity to interview, The head of Product Strategy at Zaarly in Kansas City, and author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Eric Jorgenson. Eric spent over three years putting together and compiling this amazing and instructive manual of one of the pioneers of Silicon Valley, Venture capital. Eric and Hugh spent time discussing the genesis of the book, how Eric spent years emailing Naval and discussing his critical concepts of building wealth and happiness in our lives. Eric discussed on of the many key concepts in the book, Leverage. How Naval thinks about Leverage and why understanding Leverage from a myriad of ways is key in the digital world. In addition, we spoke on the importance of “productizing” oneself in the digital world. Finally, Eric spent time discussing the power of the internet and how it has, “ massively broadened the possible space of careers.” Hugh Meyer - https://www.instagram.com/hughmeyerofficial Eric Jorgenson - https://www.linkedin.com/in/erjorgenson/ https://www.twitter.com/EricJorgenson https://www.Navalmanack.com
Eric Jorgenson is a product strategist at Zaarly, creator of the business blog Evergreen, and author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.In collaboration with Jack Butcher, Eric spent three years distilling over 1,000,000 collected words from Naval's writing and podcast interviews into a succinct, high impact book on wealth, happiness, and philosophy. Throughout the interview we dive into some of the books big ideas, which include ethical wealth creation, productizing yourself, and the concept of specific knowledge.Last, we talk about why Eric took it upon himself to compile The Navalmanack, and what he has learned through the three year journey of intensive study and curation.Links:Read the Navalmanack (It's free!): https://www.navalmanack.comCheck out Zaarly: https://www.zaarly.comCheck out Evergreen: https://medium.com/evergreen-business-weeklyFollow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricJorgensonHelp Us Out:If you would like to reach out to us, the best way to do so is on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe!Last, please take a minute to leave us an honest review and rating on iTunes. They really help us out when it comes to the ranking of the show.Thanks for listening!
Eric Jorgenson is a startup growth guy, writer, and (rarely) an angel investor. He is on the founding team of Zaarly, and has been publishing online since 2014. His business blog, Evergreen, has educated and entertained over a million readers and he most recently wrote the best seller "The Almanack of Naval Ravikant." In this conversation, we discuss Eric's book, the process he used to write it, the lessons he learned, and what he hopes the impact will be for readers around the world. ============================== Athletic Greens is an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. Even with a balanced diet, it’s difficult to cover all of your nutritional bases. That’s where Athletic Greens will help. Their daily drink is like nutritional insurance for your body that’s delivered straight to your door. You can get yours at https://athleticgreens.com/pomp ============================== Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. That exchange, EQUOS, has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using equos.com/pomp ============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com
In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Eric Jorgenson about the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Eric Jorgenson is a product strategist and writer. In 2011, he joined the founding team of Zaarly, a company dedicated to helping homeowners find home service providers they can trust. His business blog, Evergreen, educates and entertains more than one million readers. You can find all of his projects and other writing on EJorgenson.com. Five Good Questions: 1. This is a very unusual book--how did this project come about? 2. What was your favorite section to work on? 3. What does Naval say about ego, identity, labels and habits? 4. What changes have you made in your own life since compiling this book? 5. What are some common ideas or themes that connect the various advice throughout the book?
On this episode of The Friday Habit, Ben and Mark talk with Kevin Urrutia, co-founder of Voy Media in NYC and many startups along the way. Kevin went to school for computer science and started a web development consulting business by generating leads through Craigslist. When he graduated, he got a job in Silicon Valley working for Mint.com, but he knew within a month that this 9-5 structured work culture was not what he wanted, so he jumped ship to work for a startup called Zaarly. This was the perfect situation for him and he was even able to continue working remotely when he moved back to New York until he realized that his heart wasn't in it anymore. All this time, he had been building startups with varying levels of success and now that he was back in New York City, he and his buddy decided to put all of their experience to work building a cleaning company organized by online scheduling. They hired their own maids from Craigslist and paid them only when they had work for them, and this model has worked great for them over the past 5 years. They have expanded to several different areas of NYC as well as Chicago and Boston. Kevin explains that their keys to success were having a phone number, having local web pages, and optimizing their SEO. They have also acquired smaller companies to give them more market share.Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of our conversation with Kevin! Connect with Kevin:https://voymedia.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/urrutiahttps://twitter.com/danest Connect with us:https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/ https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/
Podcast Notes Key Takeaways Be aware of the multiplying by zero effect: One bad variable that can ruin the whole experience Ex: You might own a beautiful restaurant with amazing food, but if the bathrooms are filthy and overflowing, you’ll have no customerEx: You have your dream job and dream company, but if your manager is a jerk and hates you for no reason, you’ll hate working there“Impatience with action, patience with results” – Naval RavikantDo that workout or write that blog post today, but don’t expect huge results right away “Hard work matters but it’s not the most important thing” – Eric JorgensonYou need to work smart and build some sort of leverage. Otherwise, you’re just working hard and going in a circle.Naval is a fan of the iron prescription: Follow the most rigorous piece of advice and if you do it, you’ll be a level above everyone elseEx: Read the foundational books in your field, such as Darwin’s Origin of Species if you’re studying evolutionEx: Read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham if you’re studying finance“I’m going to make it through this thing and it’s going to be hard but once I do, I’ll be much more capable of kind of whatever comes next” – Eric JorgensonRead the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgMy guest today is Eric Jorgenson, a Product Strategist at Zaarly and the author of the Almanack of Naval Ravikant: a guide to wealth and happiness. The book collects and curates Naval's wisdom from Twitter, podcasts, and essays over the past decade. Naval is the founder of Angel List, an angel investor who has invested in companies like Twitter and Uber, and the man behind one of the most popular Twitter accounts in the world. He's known for his thoughts on startups, investing, crypto, wealth, and happiness. This is a conversation about that book. We began the conversation talking about Multiply by Zero Effects, which comes from a short e-book Eric wrote called Career Advice for Uniquely Ambitious People. Then, we moved onto the Almanac. We talked about the differences between Charlie Munger and Naval Ravikant, building specific knowledge, and how operating companies influenced Naval's philosophy of life. At the end, we also jammed on what Naval would say to the owners of Joe's Bar-B-Que, Eric's favorite restaurant in Kansas City. ____________________________ Show Notes 2:28 - Why Eric wrote his new book, and what he regrets not putting in it. 6:15 - What Eric thinks Charlie Munger and Naval Ravikant would disagree on most. 9:34 - Why people like Naval and Munger often give advice as the "Iron Prescription" to solve a problem or learn in a field. 12:13 - Why so many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were on track to be an academic but then split off. 13:20 - What entrepreneurs can learn from how comedians develop their voice and leverage their following. 15:57 - What knowledge Naval has that is unique only to him in his field. 19:36 - How to maximize leverage and value as an entrepreneur and in your career. 23:26 - What defines a startup, and what Eric has learned from Nivi through his writings on VentureHacks. 25:37 - How Naval uses Twitter as a repository for his ideas and findings and as a forge to test them out. 31:22 - Naval's view of hard work and how it has changed over time. 34:40 - Why it took multiple rereadings of his book and years of observation and experience for Eric to start fully understanding Naval's idea of "productize yourself". 36:11 - What about Eric's own book did he start to resent by the end of creating it. 40:01 - How the message of the book changed as Eric was compressing and cutting the source material down. 43:10 - Why Eric could not have done this book without loving Naval's work as much as he does. 46:19 - What advice Naval would give to Eric's favorite restaurant, Joe's Barbecue. 48:45 - Why David has never forgotten Eric's comment on how "owning a home is a never-ending battle against water" and what he means when he says that. 50:20 - How writing this book gave Eric "more clarity, confidence, and peace through all aspects of life."
Podcast Notes Key Takeaways Be aware of the multiplying by zero effect: One bad variable that can ruin the whole experience Ex: You might own a beautiful restaurant with amazing food, but if the bathrooms are filthy and overflowing, you’ll have no customerEx: You have your dream job and dream company, but if your manager is a jerk and hates you for no reason, you’ll hate working there“Impatience with action, patience with results” – Naval RavikantDo that workout or write that blog post today, but don’t expect huge results right away “Hard work matters but it’s not the most important thing” – Eric JorgensonYou need to work smart and build some sort of leverage. Otherwise, you’re just working hard and going in a circle.Naval is a fan of the iron prescription: Follow the most rigorous piece of advice and if you do it, you’ll be a level above everyone elseEx: Read the foundational books in your field, such as Darwin’s Origin of Species if you’re studying evolutionEx: Read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham if you’re studying finance“I’m going to make it through this thing and it’s going to be hard but once I do, I’ll be much more capable of kind of whatever comes next” – Eric JorgensonRead the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgMy guest today is Eric Jorgenson, a Product Strategist at Zaarly and the author of the Almanack of Naval Ravikant: a guide to wealth and happiness. The book collects and curates Naval's wisdom from Twitter, podcasts, and essays over the past decade. Naval is the founder of Angel List, an angel investor who has invested in companies like Twitter and Uber, and the man behind one of the most popular Twitter accounts in the world. He's known for his thoughts on startups, investing, crypto, wealth, and happiness. This is a conversation about that book. We began the conversation talking about Multiply by Zero Effects, which comes from a short e-book Eric wrote called Career Advice for Uniquely Ambitious People. Then, we moved onto the Almanac. We talked about the differences between Charlie Munger and Naval Ravikant, building specific knowledge, and how operating companies influenced Naval's philosophy of life. At the end, we also jammed on what Naval would say to the owners of Joe's Bar-B-Que, Eric's favorite restaurant in Kansas City. ____________________________ Show Notes 2:28 - Why Eric wrote his new book, and what he regrets not putting in it. 6:15 - What Eric thinks Charlie Munger and Naval Ravikant would disagree on most. 9:34 - Why people like Naval and Munger often give advice as the "Iron Prescription" to solve a problem or learn in a field. 12:13 - Why so many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were on track to be an academic but then split off. 13:20 - What entrepreneurs can learn from how comedians develop their voice and leverage their following. 15:57 - What knowledge Naval has that is unique only to him in his field. 19:36 - How to maximize leverage and value as an entrepreneur and in your career. 23:26 - What defines a startup, and what Eric has learned from Nivi through his writings on VentureHacks. 25:37 - How Naval uses Twitter as a repository for his ideas and findings and as a forge to test them out. 31:22 - Naval's view of hard work and how it has changed over time. 34:40 - Why it took multiple rereadings of his book and years of observation and experience for Eric to start fully understanding Naval's idea of "productize yourself". 36:11 - What about Eric's own book did he start to resent by the end of creating it. 40:01 - How the message of the book changed as Eric was compressing and cutting the source material down. 43:10 - Why Eric could not have done this book without loving Naval's work as much as he does. 46:19 - What advice Naval would give to Eric's favorite restaurant, Joe's Barbecue. 48:45 - Why David has never forgotten Eric's comment on how "owning a home is a never-ending battle against water" and what he means when he says that. 50:20 - How writing this book gave Eric "more clarity, confidence, and peace through all aspects of life."
Eric Jorgenson is the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, a book collecting and curating Naval Ravikant’s wisdom from Twitter, Podcasts, and Essays over the past decade.Release Date: September 15th. Eric is Product Strategist at Zaarly and a writer. His business blog, https://medium.com/evergreen-business-weekly, has educated and entertained more than one million readers since 2014. Website: https://www.navalmanack.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricJorgenson ABOUT THE PODCAST Hi, I'm Tobias Carlisle. I've launched a new podcast called The Acquirers Podcast. The podcast is about finding undervalued stocks, deep value investing, hedge funds, activism, buyouts, and special situations. We uncover the tactics and strategies for finding good investments, managing risk, dealing with bad luck, and maximizing success. SEE LATEST EPISODES https://acquirersmultiple.com/podcast/ SEE OUR FREE DEEP VALUE STOCK SCREENER https://acquirersmultiple.com/screener/ FOLLOW TOBIAS Firm: https://acquirersfunds.com/ Website: https://acquirersmultiple.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Greenbackd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycarlisle Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiascarlisle Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias_carlisle ABOUT TOBIAS CARLISLE Tobias Carlisle is the founder of The Acquirer’s Multiple®, and Acquirers Funds®. He is best known as the author of the #1 new release in Amazon’s Business and Finance The Acquirer’s Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market, the Amazon best-sellers Deep Value: Why Activists Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (2014) (https://amzn.to/2VwvAGF), Quantitative Value: A Practitioner’s Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors (2012) (https://amzn.to/2SDDxrN), and Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World’s Greatest Concentrated Value Investors (2016) (https://amzn.to/2SEEjVn). He has extensive experience in investment management, business valuation, public comp
My guest today is Eric Jorgenson, a Product Strategist at Zaarly and the author of the Almanack of Naval Ravikant: a guide to wealth and happiness. The book collects and curates Naval's wisdom from Twitter, podcasts, and essays over the past decade. Naval is the founder of Angel List, an angel investor who has invested in companies like Twitter and Uber, and the man behind one of the most popular Twitter accounts in the world. He's known for his thoughts on startups, investing, crypto, wealth, and happiness. This is a conversation about that book. We began the conversation talking about Multiply by Zero Effects, which comes from a short e-book Eric wrote called Career Advice for Uniquely Ambitious People. Then, we moved onto the Almanac. We talked about the differences between Charlie Munger and Naval Ravikant, building specific knowledge, and how operating companies influenced Naval's philosophy of life. At the end, we also jammed on what Naval would say to the owners of Joe's Bar-B-Que, Eric's favorite restaurant in Kansas City. ____________________________ Show Notes 2:28 - Why Eric wrote his new book, and what he regrets not putting in it. 6:15 - What Eric thinks Charlie Munger and Naval Ravikant would disagree on most. 9:34 - Why people like Naval and Munger often give advice as the "Iron Prescription" to solve a problem or learn in a field. 12:13 - Why so many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were on track to be an academic but then split off. 13:20 - What entrepreneurs can learn from how comedians develop their voice and leverage their following. 15:57 - What knowledge Naval has that is unique only to him in his field. 19:36 - How to maximize leverage and value as an entrepreneur and in your career. 23:26 - What defines a startup, and what Eric has learned from Nivi through his writings on VentureHacks. 25:37 - How Naval uses Twitter as a repository for his ideas and findings and as a forge to test them out. 31:22 - Naval's view of hard work and how it has changed over time. 34:40 - Why it took multiple rereadings of his book and years of observation and experience for Eric to start fully understanding Naval's idea of "productize yourself". 36:11 - What about Eric's own book did he start to resent by the end of creating it. 40:01 - How the message of the book changed as Eric was compressing and cutting the source material down. 43:10 - Why Eric could not have done this book without loving Naval's work as much as he does. 46:19 - What advice Naval would give to Eric's favorite restaurant, Joe's Barbecue. 48:45 - Why David has never forgotten Eric's comment on how "owning a home is a never-ending battle against water" and what he means when he says that. 50:20 - How writing this book gave Eric "more clarity, confidence, and peace through all aspects of life."
In this episode of Infinite Loops we spoke with Eric Jorgenson, Product Strategist at Zaarly, and author of the Almanack of Naval Ravikant. We discuss: Who is Naval Ravikant? The key lessons from Naval’s writing and career What made Eric want to write this book? Wealth, happiness, and leverage And much more… You can follow Eric on Twitter (https://twitter.com/EricJorgenson ) and learn more about his new book here (https://www.navalmanack.com/).
Eric Jorgenson is a product strategist, writer and (rarely) an Angel investor. He is on the founding team of Zaarly, and has been publishing online since 2014. His business blog, Evergreen, has educated and entertained over a million readers. He's also the author of the soon-to-be-released "Almanack of Naval Ravikant", a book of Naval's most valuable thoughts, tweets, and pieces of wisdom from the past decade. He and Asher discuss how he came up with the idea of writing the Navalmanack, his first experience writing online with Evergreen, and reflecting on lessons learned after nine years with Zaarly. [1:01]: Dropping out of school to join Zaarly in 2011 [2:34]: Why Eric would work for Bo Fishback—the founder of Zaarly—in a McDonald's [4:02]: Narrowing Zaarly's focus to home service providers [5:44]: How Eric's role within the company has evolved over time [6:42]: Reflecting on 9+ years at Zaarly [10:40]: How the idea for the "Almanack of Naval Ravikant" was born [13:47]: Eric's favorite pieces of advice from Naval [16:25]: Curating timeless business advice at Evergreen Library [21:06]: Course Correctly and Eric's next project after he finishes the Navalmanack [24:45]: Eric's love for "Poor Charlie's Almanack" and "The Systems Bible" Eric's Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricJorgenson Navalmanack Website: https://www.navalmanack.com/ Evergreen Library: https://medium.com/evergreen-business-weekly Course Correctly: http://coursecorrectly.com/ Eric's Personal Website: https://www.ejorgenson.com/
My guest today is Jeff Morris Jr., the Director of Revenue at Tinder. We begin this episode talking about the future of education. Jeff recently completed an MBA at UCLA and wrote his thesis on the future of Lambda School, the San Francisco based education startup. We talked about the transition from marketing funnels to marketing loops and how Tinder is growing its average revenue per user. We also explore Hollywood's transition from movies to television, and the letter Jeff received from legendary UCLA college basketball coach John Wooden. We also explore some career strategies for sparking serendipity. I hope you enjoy our conversation. SUBSCRIBE TO MY “MONDAY MUSINGS” NEWSLETTER TO KEEP UP WITH THE PODCAST. Where to find Jeff online: Twitter Website Tinder Other links: Ryan Holdaway Lambda School K-factor by Andrew Chen Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari RigUp Brian Nogard Show Notes: 1:18 What Jeff learned from working with Lambda school on their Outcomes team, why the incentive structure for traditional colleges is broken, and why Jeff got an MBA despite believing in the future of education looking like Lambda school? 7:43 How Jeff had to scale himself up by becoming a lot more quantitative as the Director of Revenue at Twitter, how marketing at startups has changed from funnels to loops, and the cultural power of the Tinder swipe. 12:54 How average revenue per use has come up at Tinder over the last two years, how to build a successful social product that is low in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and how Tinder balances perceived coolness and utility. 18:11 The historic geographical limitations of dating, the evergreen trends in dating, and what has Jeff learned about compatibility between people through his time at Tinder 23:17 How Jeff thinks about inequality in the Tinder ecosystem, how movies and TV have set up a false idea of how people meet, and what Jeff learned about romance from film school. 30:08 The switch from Hollywood to TV for film school graduates, why TV is uniquely suited to the subscription model, and why David thinks that exporting cool is LA’s core competency 44:34 Retraining in the Lambda school era, high growth jobs that are easy to retrain for, and dynamics of proving competence and expertise 52:26 Why Jeff sent a letter to John Wooden and other celebrities, what he learned about outbound emails, and how to find the ‘underpriced assets’ when it comes to talent 1:00:55 How Jeff got a job at Zaarly ahead of hundreds of other candidates, how that experience expanded his worldview, and what you can do to set yourself apart in the job search process 1:04:47 David and Jeff give the listeners a challenge, what Jeff learned from Brian Norgard about products, and how Jeff thinks about disruption 1:17:17 The verticalization of LinkedIn and other incumbents, and why Jeff thinks being on Twitter is the reason for his high growth career SUBSCRIBE TO MY “MONDAY MUSINGS” NEWSLETTER TO KEEP UP WITH THE PODCAST.
What are you waiting on? Jeff Morris Jr. is one of the top voices on building products as the director of product revenue at Tinder and investing in them through his own VC fund. But less than five years ago he couldn't get high potential startup companies to give him a second look. So he decided he'd learn to code through a General Assembly program.Only issue was the program didn't start for a few months... so he needed something to do. He thought he'd put this extra time to work and try to build a few things *without* knowing how to code. Over the next two months, those little mini-experiments resulted in him launching three #1 rated products on Product Hunt. Oh and he never wound up taking that coding bootcamp. On our fascinating conversation (as you'll hear, I am a huge huge fan of him), Jeff and I talk about our time together at Zaarly, Inc, his transition through the startup ecosystem and how through it all he's found a way to create his own path rather than waiting for someone to give him permission. #creatorinstitute #entrepreneur #content #podbean #podcast #spotify #itunes #podcasting #soundcloud #youtube #podcasts #stitcher #podcastlife #applepodcasts #radio #podcaster #radioshow #radiopersonality #googleplay #podcasters #music #tunein #tinder #dating #app #venturecaptiral #vc #creatorinstitute hashtag #product hashtag #vc hashtag #dating hashtag #producthunt
In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, I'm in Los Angeles talking to Brian Norgard and Jeff Morris Jr., both of whom may be indirectly responsible for a generation of “Tinder babies”. Brian Norgard is an entrepreneur, investor, and Chief Product Officer at Tinder. He has worked on a number of other products and was Tinder's first acquisition. He collaborated with Sean Rad on an earlier app called Chill, which we discuss on the podcast. Brian is also an investor in Lyft, SpaceX and AngelList. Jeff Morris Jr. is the Director of Product for Tinder's revenue initiatives. He previously worked at Zaarly and has created a number of products, including one stretch over three months where he built and launched three products, reaching the top of Product Hunt. He is also an investor in Lyft, CryptoKitties, Particle, Brat and others. In this episode: The joy of turning online connections into real-world connections. Jeff is great at this. He once went biking with Lance Armstrong in Hawaii after reaching out to Armstrong on Twitter. How seemingly minor design decisions, like adding a subtle animation to a play button, can “nudge” users into a new pattern of behavior and make products more enjoyable to use. Brian and Jeff discuss the design of Tinder Places, including the thoughtfulness that went into the privacy features of the product, and how they took inspiration from Foursquare. We get nostalgic and discuss some of our favorite products from the past, like Chill and Highlight. They leveraged location on mobile in an attempt to merge the online and offline world. Jeff tells the story of the time he reached out on Twitter about a job opportunity and less than 48 hours later had moved from San Francisco to Kansas City. Why Product Hunt has gained a reputation as a positive, fun, and upbeat community and how subtle, very intentional design decisions — like our ridiculous Google Glass-sporting cat — contribute to the community and brand. Of course, we also chat about some of their favorite products, including messaging apps, trivia games as well as a couple of now-obsolete apps that were onto something at the time but didn't end up taking off. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support.
How do we make sure that when our kids grow older, they're happy and successful in life? To help answer this question my guest today is Professor Eric Koester. Eric is an entrepreneur, a professor at Georgetown University, a lawyer, a dad of two girls and a writer. After having more jobs that he can count, Eric has discovered a new philosophy - listen to the show to find out what it is. Listen and read online: Professor Eric Koester on Rad Dad
Jeff Morris Jr. is the Director of Product Management & Revenue at Tinder. Jeff got into tech after seeing a tweet late one night for a position with Zaarly. The next day, he had to move from California to Kansas City, Missouri - if he wanted the job. Jeff quickly made a name for himself and became one of the first few city managers. Following his time building the marketplace, Jeff began consulting, before working on several of his own projects - like Slack Chats, a directory of popular slack channels that grew to over 80,000 users. Jeff then joined the team at Tinder to work on increasing retention and engagement through the product and marketing channels. Today, Jeff also works with the team of engineers, designers, and marketers to create, build and launch new, paid features for the platform. Jeff joins us to share his story, how he started his career in tech, what it was like growing a massive marketplace at Zaarly, what it was like joining the team at Tinder, how he approached Product Management, how he’s approaches working on monetization over the last year, and much more!
Shane Mac, a Silicon Valley transplant from his hometown of Pekin, Illinois, is a master of building authentic relationships based on trust and personal connection. In fact, he’s so good at winning people over with his honest Midwestern brand image, that he’s learned how to raise capital without ever asking for money. I met Mac a few years ago at the Big Omaha conference in Omaha, Nebraska, and he’s consistently blown me away with his ability to grow funded companies ever since. He’s worked on the Gist and Zaarly teams, and he now runs Assist, a free-to-use travel and shopping chatbot for SMS and Facebook Messenger. This interview was recorded early last year, shortly after Mac closed a $5.5 million Series A round for Assist, which he achieved based on the strength of his professional relationships alone. Mac believes relationships are the backbone of any business venture, and he’s a devoted practitioner of what he preaches. In our interview, he shares counterintuitive but proven strategies for creating authentic connections and gaining interest in your business. He believes in closing fundraising rounds by consciously refraining from making a direct ask. He also regales me with a too-crazy-to-be-made-up story of how he closed Assist’s $500,000 seed round in five days—over a holiday break. If you like the wit and wisdom Mac shares in this interview, be sure to check out his podcast, ask., as well as his very unique and enlightening business book, Stop with the BS. Mac is very active on social media, so feel free to reach out to him on Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere @ShaneMac. In this episode with Shane Mac, you’ll learn: Why the best way to raise money is to avoid asking for it (5:16) Step-by-step strategy for attracting investors, including one crazy success story (9:18) How to build authentic business relationships based on trust (20:07) Asking someone to tell their story is the best way to get them interested in you (30:36) Why humility and gratitude are the keys to an outstanding pitch (37:45) Actionable tips for making potential collaborators like you (47:20) ---- Download show notes and transcripts at www.powderkeg.com This episode of Powder Keg is brought to you by DeveloperTown. If you’re a business leader trying to turn a great idea into a product with traction, this is for you. DeveloperTown works with clients ranging from entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 companies who want to build and launch an app or digital product. They’re able to take the process they use with early stage companies to help big companies move like a startup. So if you have an idea for a web or mobile app, or need help identifying the great ideas within your company, go to developertown.com/powderkeg. Thanks again to everyone who has shared an episode of Powderkeg, subscribed to us on iTunes, or left us a review. It’s the only way we’re going to spread this message and reach new people and we could do it without you. We’re coming out with new episodes every Tuesday, so make sure you subscribe on iTunes or at powderkeg.co/itunes
There is a common misconception that most great entrepreneurs are college dropouts. On the contrary, many of the greatest entrepreneurs start their businesses after years of invaluable experience at existing organizations. In this fascinating episode of The IVY Podcast, Eric Koester enables us to explore how we can take an entrepreneurial path within our existing companies, and how to lead colleagues in a way that enables them to hustle and succeed in an entrepreneurial way. Currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Georgetown University, Eric Koester has built and exited multiple companies including Learn that Name which was acquired by Blackberry in 2010. One of his earlier ventures, Zaarly, was named by Fast Company as one of the Fifty Most Innovative Companies in the World. Koester's latest company is Main Street Genome, a new technology startup developing tools for the small business economy. Koester was named one of Washington DC's “40 under 40” and has written several books on startups and technology, including The Green Entrepreneur Handbook and Starting a High Tech Business Venture. Eric also devotes considerable time to building the startup community, including as a board member of UP Global, Startup Weekend and the DC co-chair of Enstitute. Please enjoy our conversation with Eric Koester. And remember to visit IVY.com to enjoy access to a lifetime of learning, growth, and impact through in-person collaborations with world-class leaders, thinkers, and institutions. Live from Blender Workspace
Shane Mac is the co-founder & CEO of Assist, bring the best services to your favorite messaging apps. Shane got into startups and tech through music with gigs as a DJ. This lead him to building sites, widgets and more for himself and his friends. He’s worked on products within startups like Gist (acquired by Blackberry), Zaarly, and is now in the super hot messaging space with Assist. Shane joins us to share his story, what motivated him to get into tech & startups, why he’s always been curious about innovation, creativity & building lasting companies, how he approaches raising funding, what he thinks is most exciting about the messaging space right now, and much more!
This is the twenty-fourth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with David Spinks (on Twitter @ DavidSpinks), the founder and CEO of CMX Media, the hub for the community industry. David has been building communities around startups and ideas his entire career, including Zaarly, LeWeb, uDemy, and SeatGeek. He also co-founded Feast, a cooking class for people who would never go to a cooking class that got accepted into 500 Startups. He talks about the importance of building valuable communities around existing behaviours and people, what common mistakes entrepreneurs make when building communities, and more!
Joining host Kelly Scanlon is Bo Fishback, co-founder and CEO of Zaarly, the online marketplace for high-quality, vetted home service providers. He’ll share his story on how Zaarly has evolved as a small business and what’s next for the company. As the former vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation, Bo is passionate about small business. He created Zaarly to help bring communities closer together and to highlight the products and services of the small businesses that are the fabric of that community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
March 4, 2014 New Way to Publish w Ken Dunn & Zaarlys Eric Koester
Google. Tumblr. Twitter. Zaarly. They’re all successful companies, but where in the heck did their names come from? When determining the name of your startup, there are a lot of things to keep in mind. Do you want one of these “whacky” names that mean virtually nothing, or do you want to keep it simple […]
On this week’s podcast Engauge’s Rene Smith and Chad Elkins speak with Adam Hoffman, Director of Marketing and Community Development at Zaarly, Inc & Maria Joyner, a Zaarly User. Zaarly is a proximity based, real-time buyer powered market or a virtual bazaar. Buyers make an offer for … Continue reading →
This week on PrairieCast we turn the model on it's side! Andy and our guest Tej Dwahan of Startup City Des Moines are live in our studio in the Midland Building and I join via skype from the Kauffman Foundation's headquarters in Kansas City. Dwahan's incubator project is close to launching and he shared lots of details on what they have in store. Additionally, we're giving away two tickets to Startup Weekend Iowa City this weekend! The person who won the live show giveaway can't make so two are still up for grabs. The first two people to leave a comment on this post will get the tickets. Topics this week include Thinc Iowa, Call Me Meeting, TwilioCon, Zaarly, Dwolla, Ad Age Digital West, BetaBlox, T8 Webware, Finovate, Iowa Business Plan Competition
For show notes please visit http://www.thebit.tv/episode11
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