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We're going on a quick break, but this episode includes a sneak peek at what's coming up next. Thanks for a great season, and for all of the positive comments. If you love the show, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts: https://lovethepodcast.com/stackingbricks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
I recently joined friend Jonathan Stark on his podcast "Ditching Hourly" where he typically talks about business strategies and best practices for helping freelancers and consultants escape hourly billing. And we talked about that world of business quite a bit, including how people often copy the wrong parts of the successes they've seen. But as a self-published digital author himself, Jonathan also wanted to grill me on exactly how we launched The Tiny MBA and sold thousands of copies without a...
This week I'm talking customer research with Eteinne Garbugli. Eteinne is the author of a book called Lean B2B , and after learning that his book included our Sales Safari customer research framework , I offered to talk with him and answer some of his remaining questions about the methodology. In the next 30 minutes, you'll hear Eteinne and I talk about: - the surprising origin of Sales Safari itself - what we really mean when we say "customer pain" and the many forms it can take - why strategic...
This week I'm stopping by The Cognitive Bias Podcast with David Dylan Thomas to riff on a topic we're both very passionate about: the intersection of ethics and capitalism. Dave is one of the best people I can think of to talk to about this because as a designer and a strategist, He spent a lot of his career thinking about the implications of bias on our work as creators. And one of the things I've heard Dave talk about over and over and over is how so many of the ethical problems we face in bus...
This week I've got a quick brick for you today, on the topic of bosses. One of the things I don't think we talk about enough is how the bosses we've had inform the bosses we become, and that includes becoming our own bosses too. A few weeks back I had the chance to sit down with Lauren Williams from Workplace Harmony and the host of a very fun show called "Caffeinated Convos and Horrible Bosses" where she asks her guests to share their best stories about the worst bosses they've had, and try to ...
This week The Tiny MBA podcast tour comes with a twist! Isn't there always a twist? Is it still a twist if you know a twist is coming? I guess M Night Shyamalan would say so.... ANYWAY. I'm bringing you an episode from a brand new show called " Grow the Show " by my friend Kevin Chemidlin and his podcast company, Cue 9 productions. As you might imagine from my repetition of the word "show" this is a podcast about...podcasts. More specifically, it's FOR podcasters. Ya see, Kevin is a professional...
This week we're taking a break from the Tiny MBA podcast tour to bring you a very special conversation with a very special guest: Nilofer Merchant . Nilofer comes with some serious credentials: She's worked as an executive and strategic consultant at massive companies like Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, Nokia, and many more She's shipped 18 Billion (with a B!) dollars in products across her 25 year career She's famous for (but not always known as the source of) the phrase "sitting is the smoking of our...
Over the last few weeks, I have been visiting podcasts all across the internet, talking with entrepreneurs and creative people, just like you. And this time, I took a virtual trip to India to visit to my friends Mayur and Shai-zada on the Remote Explorers Podcast where they talk about remote work and more generally, the culture of work. In the full episode that you can find on their podcast feed, we talked a lot about the current and future state of coworking, but here on Stacking the Bricks I p...
Over the last few weeks, I have been visiting podcasts all across the internet, talking with entrepreneurs and creative people, just like you. And this time, I paid a visit to Will Toms and the REC Philly community here in Philadelphia. REC - which stands for "resources for every creator" - is a pretty incredible community and resource center geared towards helping artists, musicians, and other creators turn their creative skills into real business opportunities. Just last year, they opened an a...
Over the last few weeks, I have been visiting podcasts all across the internet, talking with entrepreneurs and creative people, just like you. We'll not necessarily JUST like you, because you might have noticed that these last few conversations have been visits to podcasts hosted by dudes! Thankfully, I was able to end this white-male-podcast-host streak by visiting with Colleen Schnettler and Michele Hansen on the Software Social Podcast . Among a sea of white dudes talking about how awesome th...
Over the last few episodes, I've been visiting podcasts all across the internet, talking with entrepreneurs and creative people just like you to talk about some of their favorites tidbits from my new book, The Tiny MBA. In THIS episode I visited with Tony Lopes on the Self Made Strategies Podcast , where he explores modern collaboration, craft, and persistence. In this shorter excerpt from the longer conversation you can find on his site, we talk about: - The biggest hurdles and challenges in pu...
Over the last few weeks, I've been visiting podcasts all across the internet, talking with entrepreneurs and creative people just like you to talk about some of their favorites tidbits from my new book, The Tiny MBA. In THIS episode I visited with Matthew Arnold on the Iowa Idea podcast , where he explores modern collaboration, craft, and persistence. We talk about: - Why businesses - especially agencies - get distracted by awards - What it means to "flintstone" your work - And what people get w...
Over the last few weeks, I've been visiting podcasts all across the internet, talking with entrepreneurs and creative people just like you to talk about some of their favorites tidbits from my new book, The Tiny MBA. In today's episode, I visit with Brendan Hufford from the SEO for the Rest of Us podcast to talk about some of his favorite lessons from The Tiny MBA. We talk about: Learning and feedback loops Building in public The valuable knowledge that's often locked up behind closed doors In t...
Over the last few weeks, I've been visiting podcasts all across the internet, talking with entrepreneurs and creative people just like you to talk about some of their favorites tidbits from my new book, The Tiny MBA. And today I'm sharing an episode from a live stream that I did with Ken Rimple and Becca Refford at Chariot Solutions, an enterprise tech consulting firm right here in Philadelphia. Chariot is a big force in the Philadelphia tech community, doing lots of great things for technologis...
Hope you're safe, hope you're well, hope your loved ones are well, hope you're finding ways to stay sane and of course, finding ways to keep stacking the bricks to build your own product business. Over the coming weeks I'm going to be adding new episodes to the Stacking the Bricks feed to highlight conversations that I've been having across the internet with creators and entrepreneurs. Why have I been having these conversations? One: I'm stuck at home, just like you! But two: I have a new book, ...
Nathan Johnson left a corporate gig to bootstrap an affiliate business to 100,000 users. But to get it any bigger - and profitable - he would have to give up the very thing he left his corporate gig for: freedom. Ouch. Find out how he changed course to build a different business that DOES let him travel and spend more time with his family, while helping his growing audience of professional photographers. Links & show notes Nate's website: http://natephotographic.com/ The Film Guides that sta...
I've been wanting to do an episode with Brennan Dunn for a LONG time. He's one of our most successful students, having built an empire of resources and products for freelancers at doubleyourfreelancing.com. But freelancing rates aren't the only thing Brennan has figured out how to double...now he's mastered the art of personalizing on-page content to boost conversion rates, often 2x or more! Brennan has come a long way since he joined 30x500 with the idea to build and AirBnB for homecooked meals...
Dave Ceddia knew how to ship, but none of his projects had ever made a sale. Today, $15,000 in sales of his book "Pure React" later, he knows how to create new, bigger products for his loyal and growing audience. In this episode, you'll find out how he stopped thinking of himself as a "lifer" at a cushy job to being in control of his professional future. And - YES - the Stacking the Bricks podcast is officially back! Links & show notes Book recommendation: Personal MBA by...
Donovan picked up JFS in December. Read it over Christmas. By the end of February, he'd grown his mailing list to 1,500 people. He created a landing page and JFS'd an email course on CSS animation, with a price tag of $49. In the first 7 days, he made 50 sales — for a total of over $2,000. NICE. To learn more about how Donovan did it — including specific techniques for getting traffic to his blog posts — listen in right now… Show Notes Donovan's blog - http://hop.ie/ CSS Animation Rocks Course -...
Here is the double-edged sword of the software business: All the “features” in the world will not matter if you don’t have the customer pipeline. It is better to lose many customers over a missing feature than spend a month on a feature that people say will make them sign up. Yet there really are features you’ll require in order to get and retain your best customers. OK, so maybe it’s a triple edged sword. Or maybe a citrus reamer. Shut up. I understood this in an intellectual sense, and I tight...
In this episode we talk about the second of five things I wish I’d known when I started Freckle , things that would have made my life so much more profitable and pleasurable. Missed Part 1? Listen here. Adding people - partners, employees, contract staff - is one of the hardest parts of growing a business. It doesn't get talked about enough, and partly, because it's hard to talk about openly. In this episode we talk about the reasons why working with people falls apart so often and some things w...
2015 was the best ever for Amy's SaaS business Freckle, with $625k of gross receipts, and so far we’re on track to hit close to $800k annual run rate (ARR) before this year is out. Those are some big numbers, but we didn’t start out there, and it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. In this episode we talk about the first of Five things I wish I’d known when I started Freckle , things that would have made my life so much more profitable and pleasurable. Up first is "There is always another infle...
When Kai Davis sends you an email, there's a good chance he's asking for something. Amazingly...he does it without looking like a total jerkface. Is he some sort of wizard of persuasion? No, no. He has a process. Kai is an outreach consultant - which we'll let him describe in this "live masterclass." But you're going to want to listen to this episode because unlike prior Masterclasses where Amy and I coached one of our students, Kai is actually coaching ME (Alex) through building an ou...
Let us show you how most of the "risk" in starting a business isn't really risk at all. Related Links Just one instance of infamous tweet mentioned in this episode: https://twitter.com/amyhoy/status/699722679788703744 (notice the replies) "Petting puppies with Peter Drucker" also mentioned in this episode <3 Amy & Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Got 5 minutes? Then let Amy give you a swift kick in the ass. Learn why "accountability" doesn't work the way you think it does, and how to change your mindset to get more done. Need another swift kick in the ass from time to time? Subscribe to Stacking the Bricks for more and join our spam-free email list for more stories from the trenches of building our businesses, interviews with real entrepreneurs like us, helpful ( and free ) how-to resources, and a whole lot more. Hosted on Acas...
Got 5 minutes? Then let Amy give you a swift kick in the ass. Listen to this quick, bite-sized episode of Stacking the Bricks to learn why business is unlike any other game you've ever played. Need another swift kick in the ass from time to time? Subscribe to Stacking the Bricks for more and join our spam-free email list for more stories from the trenches of building our businesses, interviews with real entrepreneurs like us, helpful ( and free ) how-to resources, and a whole lot more. Hosted on...
Last year was dedicated to renovating 30x500, and it's already paying off for our students and for us. Yayyyyy! But if we're honest...some of the most crucial parts of our business are a mess. A mess that makes money, but messy still: Our website isn't optimized to help new readers and listeners - it's kind of a miracle that people can find anything at all We barely have a marketing funnel And our launch strategy needs to be revamped now that 30x500 Academy is a self-study course. So for the res...
Amy has talked about starting Freckle. Alex has talked about starting Indy Hall. But NEITHER of these were our first brushes with business. To get our true origin stories, you'd need to see what we were doing to earn money while we were still in grade school. And it wasn't from babysitting... Jump into a time-traveling DeLorean with us to go back, back back in time and learn how our EARLIEST experiences with business, making sales, and understanding customers and their behaviors shaped the busin...
Scott Hurff - who you met back in Episode 2 of this show - just released a new hit book through O'Reilly called " Designing Products People Love ." But Amy and Alex aren't interviewing Scott about his book or his launch in this episode. In fact, the opposite. In this episode we turned the tables and Scott interviewed us, digging REALLY deep into our combined backgrounds in business and how we do research, conduct "Internet Ethnography" a.k.a. Sales Safari, and how we build le...
Hey brick stackers, Amy here. Last time we talked about resolutions (which are easy). Now let's talk about motivation (which is hard). Realtalk: How many times have you started a project with a burst of motivation and dream and then it just… fizzled out? Not with a bang, but with a whimper? (Or dreamt about it and planned it, but never started it?) Believe me, I'm not wielding the Scepter of Snooty Judgment here. I used to be a total creative flake. My Someday Maybe file was so thick it could ha...
