Lucas Carlson's Blog, page 4

Podcast 18: Deep Strategy for M&A and Venture Capital with Tim Porter

Entrepreneurs are perpetually interested in M&A and Venture Capital topics, but often have little direct experience themselves. The math behind this is pretty obvious: if an entrepreneur starts 3 or 4 startups in his career, there are only so many opportunities that an entrepreneur gets to learn about these kinds of deals.

On the other hand, the people who work inside of Corporate Development (those who do M&A deals as their job) and Venture Capital see hundreds of opportunities a year. To an entrepreneur, it is a big deal. On the other side of the table, it is just another day on the job.

This week on the podcast we talk to (@tmporter), managing partner at Madrona Venture Group and former investor in my startup, AppFog. Before that, he worked at Microsoft doing M&A and Corp Dev which gives him a lot of perspective that many entrepreneurs don’t have. We pick his brain and try to learn as much as possible this week.

Audio Podcast

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Pre-Show Talk

Lucas and Eliot discuss some of the strategies in Tony Robbins’ new book MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom. There is the All Seasons method, which ensures if one area is crashing, the other areas are safe. There is psychology behind the All Season method. If you manage your own psychology and minimize losses and maximize profit, you will do better.

It is similar to the Barbell method, where it is designed to minimize losses. It caps your downside risk. Lucas shares some of his own personal strategy to buy stocks, and although he is not a stockbroker, he really gets into the way he sees it.

VC Decisions (14:30)

VC funds last about 10 years. They only make a couple of bets a year, so there is a big difference in how they do things. He shares a story of an entrepreneur he spoke to in Canada, who had a deal fall through last minute. It’s important we understand the psychology behind the decisions VC’s make.

Tim Porter Introduction (18:30)

This interview is very personal for Lucas because he quit his job a few months before his first child was born and Tim Porter was the first investor that wrote him a check and believed in him.

Tim said that it was an easy bet to make to invest in Lucas. Tim has been with Madrona for just over 8 years now. He focuses on investing in enterprise and b2b software, fog computing and infrastructure and analytics. Before that he was with Microsoft for three years and M&A he worked with predominantly the server and tools division. It continued the theme of B2B software and info structure.

Earlier in his career he worked almost 5 years at a startup. He was one of the early employees that met a company called Teledesic. It was a broadband satellite company that wasn’t highly successful. He learned a ton about working at startups and being an entrepreneur.

Madrona Venture Group (21:20)

Madrona is a classic venture capital firm that invests in early stage technology companies that are predominantly in the Pacific Northwest. They have been around for 20 years now and have invested in companies as well known as Amazon. Broadly speaking, they invest in software, mobile and internet companies; both enterprise and consumer. They have about a billion dollars under management. They do series A investments and will invest between $2-5 million dollars and they do seed investments where they will invest less than a million dollars.

They try to partner closely with the entrepreneurs they back, become part of the team and help them grow their business. One of the first investments they made was Amazon.

Madrona’s Investment Model (22:55)

Madrona has been consistent with their model over the past 20 years. They think that the strongest returns, in early investing, (which can be seed or series A investments), is: for each seed investment, they try and see which milestones they can work together to hit, over 9-18 months. Once they hit those, they invest in the next round. They invest in a really high percentage of follow on rounds in their seed deals.

Madrona believes: “Don’t over capitalise companies and every dollar matters.” They put in just what they need to, and then collectively say, “lets take the next step and then work hard to be able to do that together”.

A Week In The Life Of A VC (24:23)

Mondays are generally spent working internally. They prioritise which new investments they are going to spend time on and then make decisions. Then they go over the existing portfolio companies and discuss the things going well and not going well.

The rest of the week is split between; working with the companies he is on the board with or working with and looking at new companies. Some weeks he spends 80% of the time working on existing companies, and then the next week he can spend 80% of his time working on new companies. He gets a minimum of 3-5 pitches a week. A heavy week he may get 6-8 not including all the entrepreneurs he is fortunate enough to interact with and get emails and things that lead up to a pitch.

They spend a whole bunch of time getting to know the ones they will ultimately invest in. They discuss recruiting, strategy, product and all those things. They generally make the investment decision in about a month and then spend the next 6-10 years working with them.

“The biggest part of the engagement comes after you invest, not before.”

How Many Pitches Do You Commit To In A Year? (26:35)

If Tim gets 3-5 pitches a week, that is hundreds of pitches a year. He personally invests in only 1-2 a year. He tells us it is on average closer to 1 a year. This is the hardest part of the job for him, because there are so many people that have good ideas.

Eliot asked if that 1 investment includes his seed deals. Tim tells us yes and no. They tend to spend as much time on a seed deal in many cases as they would with with a ‘venture’ deals. There could be a situation that they do a smaller seed deal and have room for a larger deal as well.

What Are Entrepreneurs’ Biggest Misconceptions About Raising Money? (27:50)

It’s different among different entrepreneurs. He generalized and told us that they can tell the investor what they think they want to hear. For example, how fast they think the investor wants it to grow. Tim says: “Be Authentic and honest with your business.”

He tells us that if your business is not a good fit for Venture Capital it can still be a good pursuit of time. There are other methods of funding; bootstrapping, angel and family funding to name a few. He tells us that you need to have a good narrative for how it all fits together, why you hit on a pain point and how you are going to solve it, how big you are going to get and how you can defend against competitors.

A Message To Entrepreneurs Before The Pitch (30:00)

To Tim it is all about customer symetriciity and really knowing and thinking about your customer. When you think you know enough about your customer, go get more. Making sure you really understand your customer, are really passionate about your customer and solving their pain point.

How Do Big Companies Evaluate Startups? What Do They Care About In Terms Of Acquisition? (31:14)

Tim says your goal should never be acquisition. The best businesses are ultimately bought and not sold. The best are ones that you create that are long term, stand alone businesses that can be self sufficient and profitable.

If you do this, you will probably have opportunities along the way, and you will have the choice to sell or keep it.

You should be strategic about you ecosystem; Who will be your competitors? Who are your partners? Who might be your acquirers? What decisions can I make today about product, technology choices and market choices that might align me best with people that may someday be interesting acquirers?

If you don’t you may make some mistakes that may box you in down the road. That is different than building it to be acquired.

So there are three things that acquirers are looking for. They are buying a team, technology or customers and revenue.

What Drives An Acquirer To Buy One Company Over Another? (35:05)

The fear of missing out is a big one. Tim tells us that you shouldn’t let that drive you. Relationships matter a lot; things that drive them to acquire a company are they see the relationships already in progress. They can see your business already running.

It is rare that someone will acquire a company without knowing how it runs first. Tim tells that 9/10 companies have had some pre existing relationship before it was acquired.

Investment banks are helpful if you already have some interest. Aqua hires need to have relationships before hand as well. Entrepreneurs often think they can sell the company if something goes wrong, but these relationships take time.

Elephant Traps Entrepreneurs Go Through Their First Time Going Through An Acquisition. (41:04)

M&A is a fickle thing. Lots of things can throw a deal off so don’t get distracted and don’t assume it is going to happen until it is done. Keep doing everything in business, because if you put all your eggs in one basket and it falls through, it is very hard to put the pieces back together.

What Do You Look For In An Entrepreneur? (42:12)

They look for someone that is smart. They have a saying, “You hope to be directionally right because you are almost certainly specifically wrong.” They look for someone that is super high in integrity, someone that has strong emotional IQ, customer centric and has the right balance about creating a big company and they blend it with the right amount of pragmatism.

What Is The Biggest Pitfalls You See Entrepreneurs Make? (44:16)

Thinking you have understood the customer the customers requirements when you have not. Investing too much in sales and marketing before you have that product market fit. Hiring too fast and too slow. Running out of cash. You need to be able to sell, by talking to customers, employees, sell the vision and sell the product.

What Is One Of The Most Counter Intuitive Lessons You Have Learned Personally? (46:47)

When you are making an investment most people in investing say it comes down to the team. It is the person or the people that you are investing in.

What Is It About Startups? (48:20)

Tim gets fired up by new creative innovations that solve problems for people and for customers. Using technology to solve problems, maybe those solutions are making the world a better place, you are curing pain points for folks and he thinks that is really exciting.

He gets to see that in a different variety and different places every day. The excitement is being inspired by all these great people and ideas, the frustration is always being more like an inch deep and a mile wide as opposed to going as deep as these entrepreneurs go into a problem and building their companies.

Because he works with so many entrepreneurs he can kind of be the eyes and ears for the entrepreneur in the market, friend, psychologist and many other things.

Tweets

This investors philosophy: “don’t over capitalise companies and every dollar matters.”

VC funds are 10 years long. They only make a couple of bets a year, so there is a big difference in how they do things.

“The biggest part of the engagement comes after you invest, not before.” Tim Porter

The best way to get this investor to see you; ”Be Authentic and honest with your business.”

A message to entrepreneurs before they pitch Venture Capitalists.

Do you really know your customer?

The best businesses that you create that are long term, stand alone businesses that can be self sufficient and profitable.

Three things that acquirers are looking for: they are buying a team, technology or customers and revenue.

Podcast 17: Eliot Peper’s New Startup Thriller: Uncommon Stock 2 Power Play

Eliot Peper is pioneering the idea of startup fiction and has just released his second novel in the Uncommon Stock series. This week we get an exclusive behind-the-scenes view into the life of this author and his inspirations and motivations.

Uncommon Stock: Book 1
Uncommon Stock: Book 2 NEW JUST RELEASED!!

Audio Podcast

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Why He Wrote The Book (2:23)

He worked in tech and startups for quite a while. He is a voracious reader and reads all across the spectrum, from biographies to crazy science fiction. He read a lot of business books, by leading CEO’s and Investors that shared a lot of knowledge and best practices, but felt there wasn’t much fiction. There was something missing there. He found a need. He noticed you could fill libraries with non-fiction books, both good and bad. Fiction allows you to get inside the head, and experience life alongside the character.

All of the Craftsman Founders know that startups are ripe with drama. It is a very rich texture on canvas on which to paint, he thought it would be such a perfect setting for adventure.

Do You Think There Is More Entertainment Growing Around Entrepreneurship? (5:06)

Eliot agrees. There are shows and books and so many more stories coming out of this world than ever before. He has heard producers are really hungry for Silicon Valley stories. Imaging Steve Jobs biography, it is open to such a wide variety of readership.

Fictional Characters (7:00)

The protagonist, Mara, is very different from Eliot. She lives in Colorado. Eliot has never lived in Colorado. Lucas asks if things happened to Eliot like they did for Mara? Eliot tells us that every character is, in the middle of fiction and an amalgamation of all the people he has met and what’s inside himself.

He never lived in Colorado but did in Boulder. Eliot spent 6 or 7 years working in the startup world in San diego. They are both like satellite startup echo systems to Silicon Valley.

He learned what it is like to startup a company and raise money in a place that isn’t the tech centre of the universe. He found this very appealing to the story.

What Drew Eliot To Go To The Tech Centre? (8:33)

Eliot and his wife took a 9 month sabbatical. They traveled all over the world, climbed mountains in the Himalaya and traveled all over.

His wife took a job in The Bay Area of San Francisco, so they moved back. He grew up there so he knows it well.

Has Moving Back Changed How You Feel About Writing? (9:16)

It makes him happy to be an author. The Bay Area is going through an economic boom in technology now. It is very exciting and so many good things are happening. Eliot started working in startups in the recession, so now it seems like everybody he meets has a startup. Being an author is different now.

What Did You Learn Writing Your First Novel You Can Apply To Your Second Novel? (10:21)

What a huge question, Eliot could fill more than one conversation. He uses beta readers on versions of the book as he tried to make it the best story for his readers. Lucas helped him and his advice was implemented.

There was no timeline for his first book, but he had readers emailing him asking when book two was going to be released. He made his own deadlines, and went to the publisher and told them when he wanted it done by. He gave himself about 4 months. He got married in June, so it was really about three months.

Lucas tells us that Stephen King says, you should write a book in three months. It may seem like a short time to new writers, but it can be done. They talk about National Novel Writing Month, where people write a novel in a month. Eliot compares it to a mud run! You sign up, do your training and everyone gets together and runs through the mud. Alot of people have a concept that you have to work on a book for a long time for it to be good. Some authors take 10 years to write a book. A misconception is that a writer spends all day everyday writing.

A Day In The Life Of Eliot Peper (16:45)

Eliot shares everyone probably writes 2-3 books worth of email every month. It is not this insurmountable goal. Instead of writing about a project you are supposed to do, you are making up a story.

Eliot hears other authors share they have an extremely organized writing process. He interviewed a writer that runs his writing process like a software program. It is really impressive. Eliot is not like that. He does try, and has made efforts to set goals but it hasn’t worked. He writes when he time blocks to write. He has developed some rough rules. If he writes for less than an hour, in a given time period, he doesn’t really have to warm up. If he writes for more than three hours in a row, his brain melts!!

Somewhere in the middle is where that magic happens and he is productive.

If he writes less than a thousand words in a sitting he is sort of disappointed. If he writes more than three thousand, he deserves a cocktail or a truffle!

He listens to instrumental music, works with a new desktop, full screen, with twitter off, and has a deadline to be successful. He doesn’t need the product development milestones, he has a goal to have the story done. This helps him to have an intuitive feeling inside to know where his characters are in their journeys.

Lucas tells us authors spend 1-2 hours writing. Stephen King spends 4 hours a day working on his books. Some programmers write on the side an hour or two a morning. Lucas has little kids and stays up a couple of hours a night later to write. Being a programer, he is naturally a night owl.

Alot of people that write, and have a day job, don’t work in writing. They work in a flower shop,do manual labour, construction whatever works.

If you can not watch one or two hours of tv a night, you can write a book. Eliot meets so many people that want to write books, and now is the time, there are so many tools available to use nowadays.

Eliot says, cancel Netflix and write your damn book”! Then you can go back to it and be successful. Stephen King writes because he loves it, it is a hobby to him. Most writers write because they love it, and do it as a hobby around their job.

Do You Have A Day Job? (26:31)

Eliot advises a number of Technology Startups. He does two to three at a time. They are usually between the seed and series c stage on finance and strategy. He used to work as an entrepreneur in residence in a venture capital firm. He was like a drop in operator and he would go in different startups and help them accelerate past their next growth mile.

That is what he is doing when he is not writing.

Elevator Pitch For The Story (27:11)

Uncommon Stock is a tech startup thriller about a pair of college students in Boulder, who drop out of City Boulder to start their first company. Their company is called Mosaic, and they are building a piece of software that is basically spell check for financial fraud. They could apply their analytical software to say the data The Bank Of America has. Enormous big huge piles of financial data and transactions from around the world.

Mosaic goes through and using some advanced machine algorithms, highlights unusual activity that may be fraud. Once this product is released into the world it creates problems. They get involved in money laundering conspiracy with a bunch of super shady investors.

This is sort of the whole series, it is a trilogy. If they were a garage startup in the first book, in the second they have an office and a team. They are starting to work with some large clients and are wrestling with all the tough challenges that entrepreneurs face and at the same times the stakes are rising.

Lucas enjoyed how Eliot has weaved great startup advice as part of the story. The second book was more of a page turner and had more thriller aspects.

If you are halfway remotely interested in startups, you will want to pick up this book.

You can contact Eliot by visiting his blog http://www.eliotpeper.com/ or @eliotpeper

Eliot tells us that the characters in the series really grow through it. It is like a HBO series rather than a CSI. You will want to read the first book first.

Tweets

Everyone probably writes 2-3 books worth of email every month, it is not an insurmountable goal.
Cancel Netflix and write your damn book!
If you are halfway remotely interested in startups, you will want to pick up this book

My 34 Best Books of 2014

This year I was blessed to be able to read a book every single week of the year. Not all of them were good, but many of them were great. Since Amazon has a deal right now to get 30% off any book if you put the word HOLIDAY30 in the checkout process (WARNING: THIS DEAL ENDS TONIGHT) I thought I would share with you my favorite reads of the year.

Also, if you need to get some holiday book gift shopping done, here are some ideas for you.

THE BEST NON-FICTION BOOK OF 2014
Zero to One by Peter Theil

This book is the best business book I have ever read in my life. And I don’t say that easily. It is full of deep business wisdom, thought provoking ideas, and surprising opinions. As far as I’m concerned, this should be required reading for anyone interested in any kind of business.

THE BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2014
The Goldfinch by Donna Tart

One of my favorite novels ever, Donna Tart only writes one book every 10 years, and this one is incredible. It won the Pulitzer Prize and is just a beautiful story of a young man growing up. I didn’t want it to end and I could identify many of the characters in it with people that were in my life as well.

LIVING A GOOD LIFE 
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

This is a difficult read, but an important one. A first-hand account of life in the Auschwitz concentration camp from the point of a view of a psychologist who survived through it.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

This book teaches you how to live from the perspective of a man about to die. I can’t recommend it enough, short and sweet and full of great perspective.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The most motivational and inspirational book I read all year. Also a very short read, but for anyone struggling with creating anything (code, literature, movies, anything) this book will help you through the tough times.

The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday

A modern take on stoic philosophy. The perfect gift for any stoics out there.

A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming by Dylan Tuccillo

This is a great read with a lot of practical advice that worked for me. Lucid dreaming has not been written about extensively, but this book really does a good job of giving techniques anyone can start using today.

MARKETING
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions from a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday

If you want one book that will transform the way you see the world, this it it. You will never look at media the same after you read this.

Contagious by Jonah Berger

Ever wondered why some things go viral on the web while others just get a few views? Jonah’s studied the sociology behind this and created a fascinating book.

Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

This is a definitive guide for the 19 proven ways to get traction for any product or startup idea. This is the real deal and they have done a great job centralizing this information.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk

If social media still confuses you, pick up this book. It will explain how to effectively engage with your audiences on any of the major social networks out there.

Your First 1000 Copies by Tim Grahl

Planning on publishing a book next year and want to figure out how to sell your first 1000 copies (whether self-published or traditionally published)? Start with this book. It’s fantastic.

Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich by David Garfinkel

Have you been blogging but unable to write posts that people share to their friends on social networks? Chances are the headlines for your blog posts suck. But don’t worry, this book has a bunch of templates for proven headlines that get people to click. You just need to fill in the blanks like madlibs.

Platform by Michael Hyatt

If you want to learn how to build a massive platform that reaches thousands or millions of people on a regular basis, start with this book.

Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday

Traditional marketing techniques are becoming less and less effective every day. So what do you do about it? If you haven’t heard of Growth Hacking, this is the book to start with.

MEDITATION
Taming the Tiger Within by Thich Nhat Hanh

This is one of the books I have gifted the most this year. If you have ever struggled with anger and anxiety, this is a simple and deep book that can guide you through these difficult emotions.

Happiness by Thich Nhat Hanh

The elusive search for happiness is easier than most people think it is. This book is a great way to remember that all you need in life is right here and right now.

Training in Compassion by Norman Fischer

These Zen teachings on the practice of Lojong (Tibetan Buddhist practice that involves working with short, easy to remember phrases) is a great book. I have printed out many of the phrases and pinned them to my wall as reminders.

Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Sometimes life seems like a constant struggle of “what’s next?” and “where is it all going?” This book does a great job of reminding us that life is never in the future but right now. It helps you appreciate the present moment.

Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana

For anyone interested in meditation who is looking for a great starter book, this is it. No other book is as practical and approachable as this one.

WRITING
The Anatomy of Story by John Truby

This book blew my mind. It dissected many of my favorite stories (The Godfather, Casablanca, A Christmas Carol, The Wuthering Heights, Ulysses, and more) and it explained what sets them apart from the rest. This book inspired me to write my novel. For anyone interested in telling better stories, this one is a must.

Write. Publish. Repeat. by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant

The self-publishing industry is taking off and this book explains how many people are figuring out how to make a living writing books and self-publishing them. It’s a fun read and packed with great information.

On Writing by Stephen King

Half memoir and half how-to-write-a-novel, this is a classic from Stephen King. Whether you are interested in writing novels or you are just interested in Stephen King, it’s a great book if you haven’t read it yet.

Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Albert Zuckerman

This book is written by one of Ken Follet’s literary agents who helped him break through with writing The Man From St Petersburg. He shows you some of the early outlines from The Man From St. Petersburg which is SUPER interesting.

FICTION
The Circle by Dave Eggers

A great dystopian novel about what would happen if Google merged with Facebook and Twitter and took over the world. Like 1984, but one where we have created and opted in to our own self-created Big Brother.

Uncommon Stock 1.0 by Eliot Peper

Ever wonder what it feels like to start a company? Eliot wrote a startup thriller that gives you a peek behind the curtain. This is a fun read full of great advice.

Uncommon Stock 2.0 by Eliot Peper

The sequel to Uncommon Stock, this book will be released this week. I was one of the beta readers and it takes the startup action to a new level.

The Man From St Petersburg by Ken Follett

This is one of my favorite novels of all time. The book haunted me for weeks after I read it. I absolutely loved the twists and turns and the ending was absolute perfection. An inspired novel that sold millions of copies in it’s day but is pretty much forgotten today to his more popular Pillars of the Earth series.

Eye Of The Needle by Ken Follett

Another pre-Pillars classic World War II Ken Follett thriller. I don’t love it as much as The Man from St Petersburg, but it is still great and lots of fun.

Inferno by Dan Brown

Dan Brown is one of my favorite storytellers. It may not be the best fiction, but I love how he tours people around famous cities and makes the cities an integral part of his stories. This novel is mostly set in Florence and Venice, two of my favorite cities in the world.

Carrie by Stephen King

Stephen King’s first novel is a bloody fun read. I was inspired by how the story was told from many different perspectives (ala Seven Samurai) like the newspaper clippings and police blotters.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

The recent sequel to The Shining, this book takes the young child who can see ghosts from The Shining and shows us what happens to him as an adult. This is a wonderful story and I highly recommend it.

The Firm by John Grisham

Grisham’s breakout novel is a classic that I finally got around to reading this year. It masterfully builds in tension and suspense page after page and has a MUCH better ending than the movie.

Podcast 16: Managing Your Fears of Asking for Money with Espree Devora

Espree is very honest about her fears of asking for money in this show and we discuss ways to manage and conquer that fear.

In the pre-show, Lucas and Eliot discuss Tony Robbins and wonder if he has any fears before his big talks. Tony Robbins just interviewed some of the worlds top money managers all around the world. He spent hours recording interviews, taking notes and learning from them. He asked their secrets and asked what the common person can do, when it seems the whole deck is stacked against you. He talks about what he learned in Tim Ferriss Show with Tony Robbins (View on iTunes) about his new book, Money: Master the Game. Lucas and Eliot discuss investment portfolios and talk about the book. Don’t miss this episode to hear all of the money conversation.

We then discuss the importance of investing in yourself. It can be through education (reading, courses, mentorship) or even by writing books. Monetizing books doesn’t have to be directly be selling them, the simple fact that you wrote a book could change your career. Most people underinvest in themselves after college is over. Having a bachelor degree is not a competitive advantage anymore.

Investing in yourself allows you to have some control into whether it achieves success or not. If you own Google, you can’t control how well it does. But if you start a business making sculptures and sells them on Etsy, and invest the money you would have spent on Google stocks into your own business, you would have some level of actionable input into the success of that venture.

Eliot’s first book, Uncommon Stock, came out last March, it is a thriller novel about a startup company. He doesn’t have huge checks coming in but has met some amazing non monetary benefits. He has met tons of leading startup CEO’s because they read it and enjoyed it. By investing in himself, it opened so many doors that would not have opened without it.

One thing unique to our generation is that the tools needed are a lot cheaper than ever before. There is a TED talk, J.J. Abrams: The mystery box where he talks about how you can make a movie like Star Wars, with a computer that a highschool student may throw away today. The tools are so much more accessible now.

Audio Podcast

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2 Resources To Invest In Yourself (18:41)

James Altucher’s book, Choose Yourself! Tucker Max, Book In A Box (mention Lucas and receive a discount!)

Storytelling (19:38)

Eliot feels that people are still trying to figure out how to leverage audio and tell powerful stories with it. He asks Espree what some of the lessons are she has learned about storytelling.

She takes podcasting very seriously but always remembers to try and be herself. She tells us that so many people try to be someone else. She tells us that she heard that Tim Ferriss had terrible episodes for the first two, and maybe because he tried so hard to be the perfect podcaster. In the past, Espree has struggled to be the perfect entrepreneur. She tells me that she listens to her own podcast over and over again to learn from it.

She knows that she should not expect to be at the level of the podcasters she loves that have 15 years experience, overnight. Espree would like for you to take away from this show, to trust yourself and be yourself. She likes to really put herself out there and really struggles with the notion of making money from your art. There is this whole debate out there about if you can really make money off your podcast. She just opened a Patreon page, and it is not live yet, and she watched a really great TED talk by Amanda Palmer, the question is not about how to make people make money of music but how to let them pay for music.

Espree has been a bridge to help entrepreneurs with start ups and now she is starting her own podcast. She has fears about how to create a podcast and she has given herself a runway with has savings so she can really give this her all. She has never reached out to sponsors in her life, and has a lot of great questions about how to do so. She is so honest, and so passionate that you are going to want to watch the show to catch the whole story.

Lusas shares with us that there are two podcasts that he is a huge fan of that talk about this. One is Joanna Penn and the Creative Penn and another is Entrepreneur On Fire, with John Lee Dumas. He has a free resource guide for podcasters to help them with all these questions.

Eliot tells us that we don’t want to ask for money and people don’t like to be asked for money. People do like to be included, so if you can make them feel included somehow, that is a good place to start.

How Do We Get Past The Fear? (32:35)

Eliot gave her an off the cuff idea that she could perhaps sell tickets for people to view her recording the podcast. She asks, and the core of it is, how do you get past the fear? You need a ticket page,to set a price and then send it to someone you know. That is really hard to do.

Espree tells us that Lucas raised a ridiculous amount of money and asked Lucas if he had any mental blocks about whether he was worthy of that money. He tells us that everyday, he woke up scared and had an internal track in his head that told him it was a stupid idea and he needed to stop trying.

He was three months away from his son being born, when he quit his job. His wife didn’t work and he had no income or health insurance when his son was born. He didn’t get the money as quickly as he hoped, and it was three months after his son was born before he could start paying himself any salary at all.

It was the most scary time of his life. That moment was the most rewarding as well because that is when he realized that you can hear those things in your head and then decide. He tells us it is like standing on a rock and thinking about jumping in; you can think of two million reasons why you shouldn’t jump in. At some point, you give up on that soundtrack and do it anyhow. At some point you have to trust yourself and just go for it. You realize that the soundtrack playing is not a call to action but a recording on repeat; you close your eyes and jump in!

You will never convince yourself that it is a good idea to ask for money is because it is probably never going to be a good idea.

A lot of product entrepreneurs love AB testing their products. They have never thought about AB testing your life?

Espree learned early on that people can think that your product is not very good if it is free. She thinks that she will launch her page and talk about it with her audience. Maybe she will split test them, maybe it will work and maybe it won’t.

She asks, what is the worst that happens? She shares a story about a kickstarter cooler that never made it the first time. It was put on again, the cooler never changed but the way it was presented changed and they got something like a million dollars.

Podcasting has come up many times, but this information applies to all entrepreneurs. There may be a handful of people that don’t feel fear, but most of us do.

Espree tells us that Lucas and Eliot are doing this show because they feel passionate about being an entrepreneur and they want to share that passion.

There is so much passion, vulnerability, honesty and energy in this interview that you are going to get a lot of value from watching it.

Contact (46:10)

Twitter: @espreedevora and @WeAreLATech

Website: WeAreLATech.com

Tweets

How about AB testing your life?
It is never going to be a good day to charge for your product?
The fear that is part of being an entrepreneur.
More ability invites your audience and listeners into your own mind and soul.

Podcast 15: Outsourcing for Entrepreneurs with Espree Devora

This week’s interview is with Espree Devora. She is doing amazing work in LA helping startups get off the ground and we talk about one of her specialties: outsourcing.

It is also a landmark episode, because it is the first show with co-host Eliot Peper. Eliot was on the second episode of this show. He is an awesome guy, a great thinker, a lot of fun and he writes startup fiction thrillers. He is about to come out with his second book. Lucas and Eliot have a fiction bond with each other and it goes a lot deeper.

We discuss a book that has really caught my imagination lately: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I herd of the book before, but after hearing an interview with James Altucher, it really drew me in to finally pick up the book.

Audio Podcast

Here is just the audio for those who are interested in listening:

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Antifragile (6:40)

What’s the opposite of fragile? Many people think it is durable or flexible; like a pair of 15 year old jeans! This is indeed the dictionary meaning, but it is wrong.

Resilient is neutral, but not the opposite of fragile. The opposite of fragile, is something that takes stressors and becomes stronger.

Fragile is like a tea cup: it shatters under stress.

Anti-fragile is like a muscle; where the more you rip it the stronger it grows.

With jobs as well, there are fragile, resilient, and anti-fragile jobs. A sales person is a fragile job because if you insult someone or say the wrong thing you can get fired.

A bouncer may be a resilient job; you can say what you want and you can punch people out and you won’t get fired. It doesn’t help your job or make it better or worse.

There are antifragile jobs that benefit from chaos. An author or artist is an antifraigile job because if you say or do something that gets media attention it may cause you to sell more books.

Small Giants (15:40)

Eliot recommends a book called, Small Giants, by Bo Burlingham.

It focuses an profiles companies that are extremely successful and choose to remain small. They have all had the opportunity to expand but choose not to.

In Indonesia there are tuk tuk drivers. Eliot has been there a number of times. The streets are chaos, it is a war zone, there are industrial trucks driving alongside cyclists and it is a permanent traffic jam.

There are thousands upon thousands of Tuk Tuk drivers yet the one he had was so friendly. He would talk to people, give them treats and just because he focused on the human connection, he ended up having more referrals, that he never had enough time to serve them all.

Eliot can only imagine the lessons he has learned about humanity from building and operating that.

Espree Introduces Herself (20:45)

Espree is excited to be on the show and tells us that there are the most authentic and transparent conversations. Lucas is so real and has no bs, he shares his raw and honest insite with the world.

Espree started being an entrepreneur when she was a teenager. She feels she was born one and did things she liked. She didn’t know she was a producer, entrepreneur or podcaster. Everything she discovered she was really passionate about, she was already doing before she became it.

When she was a teenager she learned a lot of hard lessons. Espree spent tens of thousands of dollars on consultants,raising money or getting an expensive law firm. She thought that it was really cool to have an expensive law firm and the assumption would be to her getting venture capitalist money. She wanted to be the, “google” of action sports.

She made a lot of assumptions that were not accurate that led her to being passionate to moderating panels. Her experience was that she thought there was only one way, but she shows entrepreneurs that there is more than one way.

She feels her intuition is her oricle. She is afraid every day and every day takes a step forward no matter what. She loves moderating panels, connecting people, (although not being paid for it), and the world of startups.

She asked how she could combine all of those things together. When she found podcasting it brought it all together. She found packages of podcasting equipment for ten thousand dollars and realized she didn’t need that. She made that mistake before and bought a $25.00 mic. She uses fiverr to help her as well.

Tim Ferriss has a great podcast: The Tim Ferriss Show.

Time management is a big topic and everyone has a lot to do. If we prioritise our time and group things together we have time for the things that matter to us. All day long we make choice to put yourself in the place that we are in.

Too busy to read? Warren Buffett, is said to spend something like 80% of his time reading and is committed to ongoing learning.

Espree’s Podcast (36:48)

Espree’s podcast is called, WeAreLATech. It his #2 across all categories in Itunes new and noteworthy. She didn’t even know how to look that she was #2 and when she found out she took a bunch of pictures.

She created the podcast because it was an extension of moderating panels. A lot of investers follow ProductHunt and she uploaded someones app she never knew, and they made it to the main page and were able to get investors.

It was so awesome to be able to help with something so simple and make a difference in someones life. On her podcast, people can listen everywhere, and an investor may hear something they are interested in. She sees the podcast as a connector and wants to create exciting episodes.

Espree started with no knowledge and has learned it all. She has spent a lot of time on editing so she can take out all the boring moments. She doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time and just wants to add value.

She was able to meet with Alex Blumberg, who has a podcast called, StartUp. She tells us it is an amazing podcast and he is a master of storytelling. She was able to meet with him and learn about being a good storyteller.

The most valuable thing she has learned from the podcast startup, is that it occupies brain space. She likes that people think about her all week because she is occupying someones brain space in an amazing way. It is far more valuable than email or phone numbers, because it leaves a lasting impression.

Outsourcing her love life (42:40)

Tim Ferris gave a talk about how he outsourced his love life. She thought that was awesome and wanted to give it a try. She viewed dating as a distraction and wanted to focus on her company. Now she is openminded and hired a virtual assistant, who messages people, on behalf of Espree, and reaches out to people.

She does all the leg work, and Espree just shows up for the date. She never seen their picture and is very open minded towards getting to know them. She loves outsourcing her love life, and decided to take it to an extra level. She created a site for facebook using Striking. You can see her page.

She has found it difficult to meet people through all the things that happen to set up dates but she has had great success. She met a man she had an incredible connection with that was in the military but he had to go back. He didn’t want to put a burden on her and didn’t know how long he had to go for. She has taken a break from outsourcing her love life for a while, to focus on her podcast as well as she randomly met someone she is going to see where it goes.

Lucas asked if it could work for others, and she said if you are not fixating on looks, job, cars and money. She looks for integrity, communication, to laugh, ambition, drive, compassion, she is looking for things that are more important and permanent than money. Money can be lost and people’s look age.

How Do Assistants Filter For The Qualities She Needs? (50:00)

Espree tells us that it starts with hiring her team. She looks for the same qualities in the people she hires as the people she dates. They are pretty good at spotting the qualities as we attract what we are.

She has a site she shares about outsourcing your love life.

Espree appreciates and shows gratitude for the people she outsources to. It is really important to her, that everyone knows, behind outsourcing there is a person. She doesn’t feel it takes away jobs, but gives the opportunity for people to work up to a level of high paying jobs.

Please don’t outsource if you are not able to see the person behind.

Fiverr (52:05)

She outsources her audio, artwork, she got her intro done with music laid behind it. She had a video on fiver with epic parque.

She used oDesk before and views them as her teammates. She asks them what their goals are in their life. She helps others find them so they can make additional income.

Lucas uses fiverr for his show notes and will pass on the link. Espree writes her own and it takes over an hour.

Espree credits all of her assistants at the bottom of her show notes. It allows her to have more time to eat healthier, exercise, and get all the things she needs to get done.

Next week we will continue the conversation.

Credit

Photographs by Modern Apparel

Audio mastering by Fiverr’s ariacreative

Show notes written by Fiverr’s ginakane

Podcast 14: Ryan Orbuch, A Teenage Startup Prodigy

Ryan Orbuch’s not your ordinary teenage kid. Ryan built Finish, an iPhone app used over a million times. It is known as “the to-do list for procrastinators” and was featured #1 in productivity in the app store. 

After he received an Apple Design Award in 2013, it was covered on New York Times, TechCrunch, Forbes, CNET, The Huffington Post, and more. Ryan was also featured on Bloomberg TV and Fox News.

Ryan gave a TED Talk and was hired at Techstars Boulder. He is also deeply passionate about education reform. This week we get into his mind a bit and get to know what makes him tick and what gets him excited.

Audio Podcast

Here is just the audio for those who are interested in listening:

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What Motivates You to Build Your Ideas (6:13)

Ryan tells us he didn’t have much to lose by trying. If he wanted to stop, he could because he didn’t have money into it. He never thought it was going to be a big thing.

People systematically overestimate risk in some areas and systematically underestimate risk in others. If a person is supporting a family it may not make sense to take the same risk that a student in high school could take.

Ryan’s TED Talk (8:50)

He was going to do a TED Talk “What you suck at is awesome.” Ted said they liked him but , “No”. Well they didn’t say, “no”, but they asked him if he was sure he didn’t have anything better.

Ryan tells us there is a difference between sucking at something or being fairly self aware that you suck at something.

How He Built a Company by Accident (11:00)

Ryan thought it would take a month to build the app and it would magically work. In the early stages, the business plan was to sell it at $0.99 and sell 2 million downloads and buy a new laptop.

The process; they started off 10th grade finals week. He was struggling with studding, procrastination and what he knows now as the metacognition week.

His friend Michael was engineering, Ryan considers himself 90% designer. They played around with it in the spring, and he kept wondering if it was going to become one of those ideas that you decide was a bad idea. It never became that, so he kept going.

By the way, he did buy a new laptop after they launched.

The Social Side of Ryan (19:00)

Ryan likes to stand back and watch a while when he first arrives at a social event. He shares how it is interesting to watch how general grouping trends happen all over the place. As example, he shares a dance; no one knows how to dance, so they start jumping. Then they start grinding and everyone is grinding.

He talks about statistics of high schools. There are 19 million high school students in the USA. +-1million depending on how you count them. A fairly significant percentage don’t show up every day. He mentions that we seem to be ok with that.

You have a say about where you work, you have options more so than at a school. He joined the board of a non-profit called, Student Voice. They realized there is surprisingly little reason for students to be self aware, and if they were aware, there is very little place for them to go with that energy.

Student Voice feels it is a problem, that about 36% of high school students feel like they don’t have a voice in the decisions that impact their lives and their education. They are doing a lot of fun things to help. They have lots of partnerships with big brands like Dell, Microsoft, Skype and lots more.

Ideas to Fix the Education System (24:15)

Ryan has been consulting with Ed Tech innovators and investors in San Francisco. The pure lack of actionable student perspective in decisions of education is very little.

There are a couple of companies that are building platforms to help. There is a lot preventing it from getting close.

The core idea is to fix high school by trying to utilize the self awareness of students towards something useful.  All these high schoolers are so close to the problem, and they know how to fix it but no one seems to care.

Finish (29:00)

Finish is an initial experiment to Ryan, he asks, “What can we do with high school students that are motivated and how can we build software and technology to help them be or stay or take resources.”

Finish is used by many successfully. Ryan built it knowing it would work for high school. He thinks it may have been wise to allow the marketing to be more than high school only.

Advice for 16 Year Old Self (32:55)

What you’re worrying about right now are probably not the right things to be worrying about, so stop worrying and start doing.

How to Contact Ryan

Twitter: @orbuch

Tweets

Why 36% of high school students feel like they don’t have a voice in the decisions that impact their lives and their education.

Can we fix high school by trying to utilize the self awareness of students and use it  towards something useful.

Credits

Audio mastering by Fiverr’s ariacreative

Show notes written by Fiverr’s ginakane

Podcast 13: Hiten Shah, Product Genius Shares Secrets to Success

A few weeks ago, we interviewed online marketing guru Neil Patel. This week I talk to his other half, product guru Hiten Shah. Together they are responsible for epic great tools like KISSMetrics and CrazyEgg, and Hiten’s focus is on growth hacking and product engineering… how to create a great product.

Hiten just started a weekly newsletter that covers SaaS topics: SaaS Weekly that you should totally check out. In the mean time, here’s my interview with this great man.

Audio Podcast

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Introduction (1:42)

Hiten Shah started all 3 of his internet companies, with Neil Patel, the first a consulting business in 2003. They took all the money they made, and tried to dump it into building products. This is how they met Lucas in a way. His really good friend worked with them at Crazy Egg, launched in 2005. It helped you see where people were clicking on a page with a heat page. This they self funded. While they were building that they decided to build KISSMetrics and get it funded. They have seen both sides of funding a project and getting funding for a project.

Advice To Find A Co-Founder (3:26)

Hiten’s situation is rare, however, you need to find someone that complements you. You know within a short period of time. If you’re not good at feeling people out, start working with someone and you will know if you get along.

How Do You Work With A Cofounder In A Different Location? (5:02)

There is a lot of things in writing, form email, google docs and other apps. They talk on the phone or skype several times. It is about communication, Hiten tells us.

How do you split up responsibilities? (6:10)

They split up some things, and share the things they both deeply care about. The things they split up, they do what they are good at and have specific tasks to complete, some of which they love doing.

Hiten’s Earliest Traumatic Memory (7:21)

This a great question for early startups or interviews. This a great question for anyone. If you ask it as a first question in an interview and they are not comfortable, they can be a little bit inappropriate or off putting. Hiten has a way of making people feel comfortable by trying to quickly understand them. You can just talk to them and try and understand how they think about things, and then decide if the question is worth asking.

Hiten’s earliest traumatic memory could have been when they lost about a million dollars on a product that never launched. However, he thinks the earliest traumatic moment was really when he was 8 years old, his mother passed away. She had a terminal disease, from about the time he was 2, therefore he was prepared, and he never cried that day. It never really registered as traumatic from an outward physical standpoint, but from a mental standpoint, he can’t think of anything worse.

Why Do You Do Startups? (9:50)

Since Hiten was 5 years old his Dad told him he shouldn’t work for anyone. He told him to get married early, and these are the two things he listened to. Hiten really believes everyone has the potential to start something, he likes to help them and it is really awesome that he can.

His motivation is that he likes seeing things grow. He has a fascination in manipulating plants, and he has a couple a year he experiments with. He read up a bit, and has a garden in his backyard. He learned if you shake a plant vigorously, it causes the hormones of the plant to go all over the shoots. It works, and he gets a lot of little peppers that he wouldn’t get otherwise. He likes that you can influence them, and help them grow. If you notice plants in windy areas, they do better in windy areas and you only have to do it a few times. It gets him up in the morning, watching things grow.

SaaS Weekly (13:30)

He had a domain, Hiten.com that was just sitting there. He has always been good at finding links and likes to share them. He curated the links and put them into a newsletter. He wishes there was more content when he started his businesses. Now he feels there is so much, it is helpful to know where to find good information. He uses curated.by to run his newsletter. That product saves him 1-2 hours a week.

How To Do A Great Product Launch (16:20)

Hiten tells us that Lucus may be able to answer this question! Some advice Hiten gives us about having a great product launch; build a list of people that are interested in what you are doing early, validate the problem and build that email list. The more people that are interested or even have tried the product the better. For Crazyegg they had 23,000 emails people on an email list. They had spent some money on adds, it was more difficult years ago to get those people on your list. Sending people weekly emails to keep them updated and keeping them involved is helpful in a product launch. Find out how you can have people come along on the journey with you.

Lucas had an idea for a product and he started blogging about it and receiving emails 10 months before the launch. The entire time they were developing it and engineering it, they were working on the launch.

Top 3 Mistakes Founders Make (19:10)

They build things people don’t want. They don’t asses the market need and figure out if people care about it. They have an idea, they have a pain or a problem they want to solve and they don’t take the time to see if anyone else gives a shit. Talk to people about themselves, and look for pain. Don’t talk about your product, just listen and make sure enough people have the same pain. Ideas are just a solution, you need to appreciate the problem. People think they need money. Money won’t solve peoples problems. People don’t understand what scaling a business looks like. How do you figure out who you need to hire, how to grow it as fast as you can. Ask yourself where the biggest bottlenecks are. Figure out how to hire the people you need.

How To Hire Great People (23:40)

Hiten shares his advice on how he hires. He emails everyone on a directory related to his business and chose the one that seemed able to help solve the problems.

What really matters, is that your team can work with them. Some companies do trial periods, or have a project to work on together. You need to hire people that your employees get along with.

Best Advice Hiten Has About Starting A Company (26:23)

Just do it. Start anything: start a blog post, start an email letter or start tweeting about it.

Growth Hacks (26:56)

Growth hacking is an evolution of marketing. Growth teams are teams focused on growth. A Growth hacker is very early stage, when you need someone on the ground working on a product. Growth hacking, is a combination of improving your product, optimising conversions and marketing. growthhackers.com is a site with a ton of stuff. It is a great way to think about marketing more from a technology perspective and how technology and your product can help you grow or do marketing.

It is what Hiten calls engineered marketing, with an end goal of growing the business, no hacks from him today.

Inspiring Books Hiten Has Read (30:45)

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward B. Burger (Author), Michael Starbird (Author) He loves to google things, no more plant books! Forester marketing pdf is a great resource as well.

Next On Hitens Journey (34:00)

He wants to keep growing his businesses and get better each day.

Contact Information (34:20)

Twitter @hnshah

SaaS newsletter

Website

Twitter

How you can get people to along the journey with you, while launching a product with @hnshah #CraftsmanFounder

Just start anything; start a blog post, start an email letter or start tweeting about something. @hnshah #CraftsmanFounder

Credits

Show notes written by Fiverr’s ariacreative

Audio mastering by Fiverr’s ginakane

Podcast 12: Joanna Penn on How To Be an Indie Author-Entrepreneur

Joanna Penn, NYT Bestselling Indie Author and popular podcaster, has a masters degree in theology from Oxford. Joanna then spent 13 years working in IT consulting. She would implement accounts payable into large corporates.

Like many cubicle slaves… she was paid well, traveled lots, had what you are “meant to want” in life and was miserable.

She tried everything to get out of IT. Like starting a scuba diving company in New Zealand (which tanked). She did property investing in Australia, which she couldn’t care less about. She tried lots of things and always went back to her day job.

Three years ago she left her day job to become a full time author and professional speaker.

Audio Podcast

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LEAVING YOUR JOB (4:37)

Joanna was earning very good money as a freelance contractor in IT, and the tradeoff was massive. She was miserable every day and needed to make a chance.

They decided to make a number of choices that would enable her to make the  change and would like people to understand, “There is no point in earning super, super huge amounts of money if you’re miserable.”

Joanna thought of it as she had climbed one ladder for 13 years, she was starting to climb another ladder. She is 3 years into that now, and in 10 years she will be earning way more money than she was.

There was fear, because when you go from the top of one ladder to the bottom of the next ladder, your self esteem drops, your income and the way people perceive you. She blogs every year about  the things she learned. She found a new community, twitter is great for that. She moved from Australia back to London, and that was a big change.

She got to a point in her life, that if she wasn’t going to try to make herself happy, it was just a downward spiral.

LUCAS SHARES A PERSONAL STORY (6:29)

Lucas came up with an idea to create a wedding registry for other stuff, when a couple is already set up. He tried to sell his idea to vendors, and the couples were the ones that would have been interested.

He never asked himself, How do I get noticed by wedding couples? Instead, he tried to sell to the vendors because he knew how to find them and talk to them. So he asks this question next.

HOW DO YOU GET NOTICED? HOW DO YOU BECOME A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR?

“Whatever you do, you have to learn whatever it takes.”  Joanna did not did not have any background with marketing or the internet. She spent 3 years,(while working full time),  getting up at 5 am, and would write the book stuff in the morning. In the evening she would blog, do the podcast, professionally speaking, doing interviews and meeting people in America, reading books and learned internet marketing.

You can read her blog. All of this in in The Creative Penn archives blog. She tells us that it is about seeing the long term view. She won’t ever sell her business, The Creative Penn. She is not under a deadline to write 50 books by the end of the year, however it is a goal of hers to write 100 books by the time she is 50.

Joanna coaches you to think in terms of the Olympic periods. Every four years there is an olympics and you generally remember where you were at that last Olympics, at what point in your life.

She had pretty much nothing in one, and then a business and her books in the next. You have to take it one day at a time. She had to carve out the time, and learn new skills to make these changes.

As long as you have an attitude that you can learn this, and you can play, you can do it.

RESOURCES THAT HELPED JOANNA ALONG THE WAY

Joanna wrote a book, How To Market A Book, that encapsulated everything she learned over the years. Marketing is different for fiction and non-fiction. Ask yourself, Who do you want to be like?  Who can you look at and model? Different ways of social media and different types of marketing work for different people. Random advice may not be helpful or matter. Do what you enjoy, Joanna is on episode 200 of her podcast, and it doesn’t really pay, but it is marketing, she gets her book out, and it is fun.

Reframe getting noticed, put out useful and valuable content and integrate it into your life.

WHAT CAN ENTREPRENEURS LEARN ABOUT ABOUT AUTHORS, ESPECIALLY SELF-PUBLISHING AUTHORS AND THE RISE OF THE SELF-PUBLISHING INDUSTRY?

Joanna thinks it was the other way around. Very few authors were entrepreneurs, most relied on a publisher and agent to do most of that stuff for them. The indie authors that are making the money, don’t wait for permission. They are bootstrapping it themselves, and keeping all the money for themselves.

They have all the control about what they write, when it is their own money, they don’t have someone telling them what to do.

They can have multiple streams of income. The manuscript can be turned into e books, audio books, print books, translations, and there is more than one way to make money.

PUTTING IN EFFORT TO MARKET YOUR START UP WITHOUT RELYING ON LUCK (19:09)

A lot of self-published authors are dropping out of the game because they don’t want to do all this stuff. Joanna is an author and an entrepreneur. She believes that you are an entrepreneur if you are doing all those things to promote your book, otherwise you are just an author.

WHAT IS THE MOST SURPRISING THING ABOUT BECOMING A BEST SELLING AUTHOR?

The more fiction you writes, the more ideas you get. Many authors have a hard time getting it all down fast enough. She has about 9 or 10 books at the moment she wants to write. The question is how fast can she get them all down.

Joanna now has an editor that really works well for her. She has booked her with a retainer, and they can do this on an ongoing basis. She never believed that would happen several years ago.

She didn’t always believe she was creative. She came upon a book, The Success Principles, by Jack Canfield.  It suggested using affirmations, and one of hers was, “I am creative, I am an author.” This was in 2005, she was so crushed from corporate life that she couldn’t even say it outloud.

A year later she came up with her name,  http://www.thecreativepenn.com. Then it started snowballing, and she started talking to other people, opportunities come up like doing Spanish, German, The Frankfurt Book Fair. She never could have seen all these opportunities coming up, and the most surprising thing is how much exciting stuff there is out there.

She never would have given up her job if she didn’t believe that she could have made money. She is a businesswoman and it is important to her. Now she can see where it is going and it is all exciting.

MYTHS ABOUT BEING A PROFESSIONAL, SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHOR

The biggest myth is that you do it all yourself.  

You should pay a blooming good editor for a start if you want to take this seriously.

Joanna doesn’t like the term, “self-published author”, and that would be the myth. She has 11 contractors, that she pays almost every month. She finishes the manuscript, then sends it to her designer. She has a cover designer, transcriptionist, bookkeeper, virtual assistant, and all kinds of people that help her in her business.

Another myth is that you can just stick it up there and make millions. We all know that you need to put the work in.

THE BEST THING ABOUT THE AUTHOR/ENTREPRENEUR BUSINESS (26:00)

Freedom. Tony Robbins said to come up with one word you use to evaluate everything. Her word is Freedom. She controls everything; she doesn’t have to listen to anyone, she is responsible for all of her income, she works wherever she wants, she is free.

WOULD YOU RAISE VENTURE CAPITAL FOR YOUR NOVEL IF YOU COULD?

Joanna wouldn’t take funding at first because it would take away her freedom. Once her book is out, she will take funding to get her book put out into the world. She wants to create from the space of where she is, then it is great to work with lots of people all over the world.

As an example, she would love to sell her rites to a Chinese publisher, and have her books out in China, like Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code. Her books are Dan Brown meets Lara Croft basically.  She has a goal, to be the first female, to write the James Bond novel, in the James Bond estate.  She would be willing to write that one under the guidelines that it would come with.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Joanna’s Website
Joanna’s Twitter @thecreativepenn
How To Market A Book

Tweets

“There is no point in earning super, super huge amounts of money if you’re miserable.” @thecreativepenn #CraftsmanFounder

“Whatever you do, you have to learn whatever it takes.”  @thecreativepenn #CraftsmanFounder

“Reframe getting noticed, put out useful and valuable content and integrate it into your life.” @thecreativepenn #CraftsmanFounder

Credits

Show notes written by Fiverr’s ariacreative

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Podcast 11: How to Build a Brand with Jeremiah Gardner and Brant Cooper

Brand building isn’t just for big companies. Any time you are interacting with a customer or user, your are building your brand. If you aren’t doing it intentionally, then you are doing it implicitly. Jeremiah Gardner and Brant Cooper just wrote a book The Lean Brand, that gives you step by step instructions for how to build a great brand for yourself or your company. Learn their secrets in this week’s podcast.

Here is just the audio for those who are interested in listening:

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Show Notes

What does brand mean? It’s a suitcase word. It means a lot of things to many people. It’s how people feel about a company, it’s a promise. In the book, we lay out like 20 definitions of what people mean when they say brand. What everyone is really trying to get at is that brand is the relationship that an organization creates with an audience. You don’t have relationships with a brand, the brand is the relationship.

Why should an entrepreneur think about branding? Isn’t “brand” something bigger companies need to think about instead of startups? All companies are already doing branding. It’s just a question of whether you are intentionally doing branding or just doing branding on auto-pilot. Communications channels used to be only one way: was TV, radio, billboards. An organization really could just project their brand one way. But now not only has social media expanded brand to become an active conversation, but lowered the price to enter. Now anyone with a Twitter account should be thinking about their brand strategy.

Do you have an example of a startup that ignored brand development? A startup we knew started out talking only about their features. The initial traction went nowhere because the conversation and debate was only about features. All they could do was debate about why or why not they had a certain feature. They missed out talking about the reason they built it in the first place. They were trying to make something valuable for people, but they were not communicating it.

What’s in it to spend time thinking about brand? You get to create a positive feedback loop with customers. You can also create passionate users by doing this. Spending time branding can set your product apart. Zappos sells shoes. That’s not breakthrough or revolutionary, so brand is a differentiator that drives passion. Passionate customers are the ones who promote you on social media and email.

How do you build a great brand? Ask yourself a few questions: what type of relationship do you want? Who is this for? Why do we believe that? How can we measure that and test it? The idea of lean brand development is to measure test and improve your brand over time.

What experiments should you try when building your brand? Try wacky crazy experiments. They will differentiate you and give you the best learnings. Get away from a focus-group mentality and go out an try things.

How do you do demographics profiling for branding? Demographics can be cold and sterile. Look at them like humans. Woman that are 35-45 and drive an SUV and go to soccer once a week is not a useful way to think about people. You have to look at their hopes, dreams and aspirations.

What are some common branding pitfalls? People focus too much on the wrong thing: logos, business cards and tag-lines are not very important. Just start somewhere and measure and iterate. Google’s logo isn’t amazing. Step 1 is to understand that brand is a relationship, stop thinking about the artifacts like logos. Step 2 is to ask yourself why you are starting this business. Step 3 is to figure out the value of your product, what is the satisfaction you are going to deliver to your users. What will make people passionate about your company?

What’s a big branding misconception? There is no product in the world that absolutely everyone needs. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Focus on a small segment of people who will be most excited by your product and over-deliver to them.

Podcast #11: How to Build a Brand with Jeremiah Gardner and Brant Cooper

Brand building isn’t just for big companies. Any time you are interacting with a customer or user, your are building your brand. If you aren’t doing it intentionally, then you are doing it implicitly. Jeremiah Gardner and Brant Cooper just wrote a book The Lean Brand, that gives you step by step instructions for how to build a great brand for yourself or your company. Learn their secrets in this week’s podcast.

Here is just the audio for those who are interested in listening:

iTunes
Stitcher
RSS Feed

Show Notes

What does brand mean? It’s a suitcase word. It means a lot of things to many people. It’s how people feel about a company, it’s a promise. In the book, we lay out like 20 definitions of what people mean when they say brand. What everyone is really trying to get at is that brand is the relationship that an organization creates with an audience. You don’t have relationships with a brand, the brand is the relationship.

Why should an entrepreneur think about branding? Isn’t “brand” something bigger companies need to think about instead of startups? All companies are already doing branding. It’s just a question of whether you are intentionally doing branding or just doing branding on auto-pilot. Communications channels used to be only one way: was TV, radio, billboards. An organization really could just project their brand one way. But now not only has social media expanded brand to become an active conversation, but lowered the price to enter. Now anyone with a Twitter account should be thinking about their brand strategy.

Do you have an example of a startup that ignored brand development? A startup we knew started out talking only about their features. The initial traction went nowhere because the conversation and debate was only about features. All they could do was debate about why or why not they had a certain feature. They missed out talking about the reason they built it in the first place. They were trying to make something valuable for people, but they were not communicating it.

What’s in it to spend time thinking about brand? You get to create a positive feedback loop with customers. You can also create passionate users by doing this. Spending time branding can set your product apart. Zappos sells shoes. That’s not breakthrough or revolutionary, so brand is a differentiator that drives passion. Passionate customers are the ones who promote you on social media and email.

How do you build a great brand? Ask yourself a few questions: what type of relationship do you want? Who is this for? Why do we believe that? How can we measure that and test it? The idea of lean brand development is to measure test and improve your brand over time.

What experiments should you try when building your brand? Try wacky crazy experiments. They will differentiate you and give you the best learnings. Get away from a focus-group mentality and go out an try things.

How do you do demographics profiling for branding? Demographics can be cold and sterile. Look at them like humans. Woman that are 35-45 and drive an SUV and go to soccer once a week is not a useful way to think about people. You have to look at their hopes, dreams and aspirations.

What are some common branding pitfalls? People focus too much on the wrong thing: logos, business cards and tag-lines are not very important. Just start somewhere and measure and iterate. Google’s logo isn’t amazing. Step 1 is to understand that brand is a relationship, stop thinking about the artifacts like logos. Step 2 is to ask yourself why you are starting this business. Step 3 is to figure out the value of your product, what is the satisfaction you are going to deliver to your users. What will make people passionate about your company?

What’s a big branding misconception? There is no product in the world that absolutely everyone needs. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Focus on a small segment of people who will be most excited by your product and over-deliver to them.