Millions of entrepreneurs, the unlimited numbers of their ideas and all of a sudden in one’s mind one huge and responsible decision – “Yes, I want to kickstart a startup!; I want to invest my time and energy and try to impress the world with my creativity that will change it.” Despite many differences between startups, the multitude of approaches, visions, and priorities, the core thought is the same. Don’t be afraid and try to impress first of all yourself and then all those who may discourage you and be skeptic about your persistence, creativity, and approach to business. Sometimes, you’ll have doubts and you’ll seek for a piece of advice from those who entered this path earlier and can share some valuable experience with the wider audience. Podcasts are the ideal platform for those who want to have an access to the tremendous source of free expert knowledge; what is more, they may be downloaded on your mobile and listened to when you’re offline. You can switch it on almost anytime and anywhere – when you clean your house or you want to go for a walk which can shed some new light on your upcoming success.
The labyrinth of podcasts is tremendous and it is difficult to make up one’s mind on which one you should listen to find a suitable opinion that would be valuable for a startupper at any stage of proficiency. The article below consists of a list of some well-known podcasts and, on the basis of the certain episode, my aim is to deliver the reader with the useful information that would be an incentive for listening to this particular episode and maybe some more of the same author(s). To make things easier, the graphic below presents a summary of subjects which were covered in detail. Enjoy reading the series of unique list of advice for a startupper; I hope it’ll inspire you to make changes or take a new approach to your business!
In 2008, Pat Flynn was laid off from his architecture position and he decided to set up a website. The goal of it was to share the most important notes regarding the LEED exam, which is a type of the architecture qualification. When Pat started receiving emails where his readers asked him to write an ebook, he didn’t hesitate. He used his blog posts as a solid fundament of it. In October 2008 he launched the document for sale for the first time and it generated $ 7,008.55 income.
Pat Flynn’s successful sale was a direct trigger for him to create his Smart Passive Income blog, where he discusses the strategies that helped him generate the passive income, which gradually became his main source of earnings. Flynn is the main host in “Smart Passive Income” podcast, The Ask Pat podcast, SPI TV and 1-Day Business Breakthrough. The first is the most popular and Pat, with his guests, direct the listeners on making a profitable business. “Smart Passive Income” podcast is a huge source of expert knowledge also thanks to the guests: the successful startup founders like the one in the episode on bootstrapping a startup with Nathan Barry, a CEO in ConvertKit.
Nathan Barry, a founder, and CEO of ConvertKit, shares his method of reaching out to his potential customers and shows how he managed to build his company to be a missing puzzle of a bigger newsletter software jigsaw. His keys to success are: a narrow focus and detailed interviews with his ideal clients; those two factors gave him a whole spectrum of drawbacks that should be fixed in a perfect tool for the professional bloggers that he offers. Listen to this podcast if you’re eager to know how Barry managed the bootstrapping successfully; there are also other useful tips from the SaaS startup founder.
“What I would do is I would get really specific about who you’re targeting, what problem you’re solving. Don’t just solve a problem … For the case of ConvertKit we’re like yeah, we’re solving email for people who need email solutions. That doesn’t give you anyone to target because it’s like anyone who uses email marketing is in our target market. That sucks. Later what we did is we focused on email marketing for professional bloggers. Now as you have that more narrow focus then you can start to get on the phone with professional bloggers or teachers or designers or whoever your target market is. Start to ask them do you have this problem, what frustrations do you have. (…) We start a lot of conversations just by saying hey, I see you’re using MailChimp, is there anything frustrating you about that? They’d be like yeah, here are my frustrations. No product is perfect. That’s a great starting point to see what problems can we solve.”
Smart Passive Income podcast – SPI 244: Bootstrapping a Startup with Nathan Barry from ConvertKit
It’s a Silicon-Valley company founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, a private venture capital company. It specializes in investing in startups in the early, medium, and late stages of their growth.
The portfolio of Andreessen Horowitz’s startups that was granted a financial support includes some of the most popular brands: Airbnb, Facebook, Foursquare, Groupon, Pinterest, Skype, Slack, Zenefits. In their podcast, “a16z”, two famous and highly-experienced professionals invite guests and share their views with those who want to get the firsthand insights on a managing a startup.
In “a16z” podcast called “Pricing Free”, Marc Andreessen talks to a former sales VP, and Martin Casado, a former startup founder, talk to a managing partner Scott Kupor about pricing for startups. They all agree a startup should have their product priced before launching in order to avoid setting the price, which may be harmful to the market. Tune this podcast for incredibly valuable knowledge regarding pricing, the distinction between Freemium and Premium and the importance of setting a price before launching your product.
“If you are entering with a no price to get viral adoption and you’re trying to do something that bottoms up often you start setting the price in the market and that’s very, very dangerous. (….) Knowing and planning beforehand so you don’t mistakenly set the value too low is pretty important.”
“a16z” podcast: Pricing Free
Michael Hyatt is a CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, which is a part of Harper Collins Publishing – one of the world’s largest publishing companies; what is more, Hyatt is an author, a blogger, a speaker and a host of “This Is Your Life” podcast. It is devoted mainly to leadership and productivity.
The title of a podcast suggests the powerful aspect of it – you can influence your life to live it the way you want to. We all struggle to gain more time for our priorities but we may often fail and feel easily discouraged to pursue our personal aims. Hyatt gives a lot of useful suggestions how to find more time for things that matter the most for us.
Hyatt’s advice is especially important in terms of creating the MVP and concentrating on the features of the product that have to be included in its first version.
(..) “identify your must-do’s. This was kind of a game-changer for me when I started it. I use a task manager. I start with a task list every day. I use a task manager called Nozbe. There are plenty of others out there that do a similar thing, whether it’s Todoist, Trello, or whatever you’re comfortable with. The tool is not as important as making a list is, but here’s what I do. I take all of the things I would like to get done that day (usually for me it may be 8, 9, or 10 different things I’d like to do), but then I identify the must-do’s. What are the three things I absolutely, positively must get done today in order to have a win, to be successful and productive? That allows me to focus on what’s really important, because I’m just like anybody else. I get interruptions during the daytime. I get this message from a team member or somebody else asking me to do this. If you’re not careful, the urgent can take precedence over the important.”
This Is Your Life Podcast: “My Top 10 Productivity Hacks”
EntreLeadership is a title of a Dave Ramsey book, a national US bestseller, that since being published in 2011, gives a solid foundation to its same-named podcast. The main subjects of concern of EntreLeadership podcast are tips on leadership and business.
The EntreLeadership podcast, hosted by Ken Coleman, features discussions with top business authorities: Donald Miller, Jim Collins, Craig Groeschel, Tom Rath, Todd Duncan, Southwest Airlines’ Gary Kelly and John O’Leary.
The notion of preserving the core and stimulating the progress is just one of three ideas that Jim Collins gives on making a great company. If you’re interested in the following two, you have to listen to the rest of this podcast. Personally, I think it is the number one podcast every startup founder should listen to. Oh, and you still feel the hunger to be encouraged to this episode, a trait of a great company is also discussed. But now – it’s time for the quotation:
“Preserve the core means you have to be very driven by a set of core values: they’re not open for negotiation, they’re not open for discussion; they’re not open to change. They define who you are. They define what you stand for. (…) No truly great company has as its purpose principally to make money. (…) Money is like blood, food, oxygen, and water; absolutely essential for life but it’s not the point of life (…) to breathe oxygen and eat food. The point of life is to do something useful and significant. (…) Walt Disney didn’t try to make money; he was making money so that he could do what he was really about, which was to make people happy. That was the drive. The other side is to stimulate the progress, which means to be constantly stimulating change and improvement, innovation and renewal (…) consistent with the core.”
“EntreLeadership” podcast #130: Jim Collins—How to Build an Enduring, Great Company
SocialPros podcast is made by Jay Baer of Convince & Convert and Adam Brown of Salesforce, a co-host. The goal of this podcast is to show how to manage your business on social media platforms.
Social media provide the unique opportunities mainly about establishing a relationship with your fans, but also it is a powerful tool in many terms. If your LinkedIn or Facebook account, Twitter website are managed properly, it can surely contribute to your success on a bigger scale. But what does it mean to do it ‘properly’? That’s the answer you’ll get in these podcasts. For example, the customer service is one of the examples of areas that should be run wisely in the social media. A few episodes of SocialPros podcasts were devoted to this matter. The quotation below doesn’t leave any doubts it’s an area that a beginner surely needs guidance. Learn from the best and draw conclusions from the specialists in this field.
“A successful customer recovery, responding and engaging with a customer appropriately and successfully can have 20 times the impact of regular advertising. (…) Customers who have a problem and then that problem is successfully solved they are far more loyal and spend far more dollars that do customers who never had a problem.”
SocialPros Podcast – Why Social Media Customer Service Is the New Marketing
Tim Ferriss is an author, entrepreneur and angel investor to Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Evernote, and Uber. He’s well-known for his book series ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’, ‘The 4-Hour Body’ and ‘The 4-Hour Chef’.
Tim Ferriss invites to his episodes famous people from various areas such as: business, art, investing, sport, etc. He asks them questions concerning used tools, recommended tactics and daily routines that contribute to their success. The list of his guests include: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jocko Willink, Seth Godin, Tony Robbins. The podcast with the last guest was taken under closer consideration.
Tim Ferriss has a two-part episode, in which he talks with Tony Robbins, who is an American life coach, author, philanthropist and motivational speaker. The truly inspirational talk with Tony Robbins gives the whole range of advice on multiple subjects – motivation, finance, life and daily habits. Highly recommended to everyone!
“You are an investor because you are making decisions every day about where you allocate your time, your money, your resources. Whether or not you wanna call yourself an investor, you are an investor. If you make no decision, it’s also a decision. (…) Everybody is a financial trader but most people are making a bad trade ‘cause they’re trading time for money. The worst trade of your life.”
“Tim Ferriss Show” Episode 38 (part 2) with Tony Robbins.
Gary Vaynerchuk, also known as Gary Vee, is a successful investor, entrepreneur, author and internet personality. He’s is a CEO of VaynerMedia, which is a social media brand consulting agency. Gary Vee is an angel investor and advisor to Snapchat, Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Birchbox.
First of all, because he’s got broad knowledge concerning how social media function from the autopsy and how it should be used by small businesses. He grew his family’s wine business from $3 million to $60 million. His main tools to promote his business were: a website, an email marketing, and Google Adwords. It doesn’t sound spectacular nowadays but the thing is his website was launched in 1996; these solutions were used at that time; WineLibraryTV is one of the first e-commerce wine business websites in the USA. What is more, in 2006 he decided to take an advantage from the shortly-released YouTube and created the channel WineLibraryTV. His opinions are sincere and straightforward. Not only Gary Vee gives you advice on how to use social media for small businesses but also he’s a charismatic speaker who will motivate you to hustle and work your fingers to the bones when you follow your visions that are inherent in your aims.
It is worth listening to a specialist who uses the cutting-edge technology to promote his goods online and can boast himself with an overwhelming success. In 2009, together with his brother AJ, he founded VaynerMedia that grossed from $0 to $100 million in revenue in 6 years and now they only work with the biggest companies.
“Search hashtags; take the 6 most important terms. (…) Search those terms on Instagram. I want you to spend between 5 and 10 hours [on Instagram] (…) and look at all that content that’s being produced.Click into the content and look at the engagement, look at the comments and you get an audit and a feel. You’re, like, ‘oh, this kind of photos are over-indexing across the whole Instagram ecosystem’.”
Gary Vee Audio Experience #AskGaryVee podcast “A Q&A For Small Business”
Are you inspired by these tips to make changes in your business? Which one seems the most interesting for you and may have the biggest impact on your startup? Please let us know in the comments below! We plan to write another part of this article and we’d like you to tell us which podcasts should be included in it. We’re waiting impatiently for your opinion!
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