Bootstrapped Stories

Justin Welsh is the indisputable “King of LinkedIn” — he’s grown to 300K+ followers and more than $2M in online income, in just 3 years.

His business is built like a machine — he’s set up systems for himself that allow him to consistently publish content, lead an audience into his newsletter, and generate revenue through a variety of different channels.

Best of all? He does it all by himself, as a one-man-show.

In this episode, we chat with Justin about his content strategy, his business, and his marketing funnels. There’s a lot to unpack in this episode — get ready.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Justin:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinwelsh/

How do you balance being a high performer and not burning out? What is burnout, anyway? How do you know if you’re burnt out and how can you prevent it?

Sherry Walling, clinical psychologist and author of “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together” talks to us about mental health as an entrepreneur and high performer.

We speak about balancing working hard and resting, how to prevent burnout, how to understand your capacity, and balancing family life and entrepreneurship, especially with kids.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Sherry:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sherrywalling

How do most people get content marketing wrong? How can you differentiate yourself and do it in the right way?

Rand Fishkin from Sparktoro talks to us about his unique mindset of publishing content online, what he thinks about the accuracy of attribution, and what he thinks of before deciding a distribution strategy for a piece of content.

We also talk about his thoughts on fundraising vs. bootstrapping, why the press doesn’t cover bootstrapped businesses, and what he thinks of Elon Musk buying Twitter.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Rand:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/randfish

As a four time entrepreneur over more than 15 years, what are the biggest lessons learnt in management, levelling up as a founder and coming up with business ideas?

Jason Cohen from WP Engine talks to us about why he decided to raise funds after bootstrapping successfully in the past, and how he comes up with business ideas.

We also talk about evaluating your managers, how managing your executive team is very different from managing other members of the team, how the role of a founder evolves over the years and the different ways that you can level up as one.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Jason:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/asmartbear

How do you grow through word of mouth? How can you get customers to recommend you to others? Can you get enterprise and mid-market clients through this?

Muhammad Younas from vFairs talks to us about how his company grew to $30M through word of mouth, even during the pandemic, and being fully remote from day 1.

We talk about the importance of customer satisfaction, the similarities between online events and weddings, and how you can structure your support team to make sure that customers are happy.

We also speak about managing a 260+ person company while being fully remote, and the biggest challenges he faced while building the company.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Muhammad:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/younas/

How do you build a strong culture among a team that’s fully remote? How do you make sure people are motivated and goal-driven? What do you need to look for when hiring a coach for your team? What is non-violent communication and why is it important?

Nicolas Vandenberghe from Chili Piper is a serial entrepreneur, and he’s been there and done that. In this episode, we discuss all of the above, and also talk about their acquisition channels, raising money as a bootstrapped founder, and challenges faced by solo entrepreneurs.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Nicolas:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nvandenberghe/

What happens when you realise you need to change your pace, and want to hire someone else to run your company? Can you really hire someone to run the company as well as you can? What do you need to have put in place to be able to do that?

And then, what happens when that person wants to leave and you need to either find someone else or do it yourself?

Noah Kagan, cofounder of AppSumo, a daily deal website for software, has been there and done that. In this episode, we talk all about it.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Noah:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahkagan/

What are the challenges of acquiring other companies? What has to change as your company grows from a startup into a scaleup? What are the mistakes to avoid?

Ross Andrew Paquette is the CEO and founder of Maropost, a company that grew from a 20 person lifestyle business to a 300+ person business doing $60M in ARR, acquiring 2 other companies in the process.

In this episode, we get all the learnings and challenges that Ross faced during this time, and the things he’d do differently if he could go back.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Ross:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossandrew1/

Is a good user onboarding really that important for your SaaS product? What are the most common mistakes to avoid in creating one?

In this episode, we speak with Esben Friis-Jensen from Userflow, a no-code user onboarding builder for product-led tools. We learn about the importance of onboardings, the mistakes most SaaS tools make when designing one, and what goes into creating a good onboarding.

We also get what it means to find your “Aha!” moment, and how that can greatly help with designing your onboarding for success.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Esben:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esbenfriisjensen/

Can you scale your SaaS with ads? How useful are affiliate programs and how do you set one up for success? Should you offer lifetime deals for your app?

Joey Xoto shares with us everything he’s learnt while scaling Viddyoze. We talk about about affiliate deals, his thoughts on lifetime deals vs. monthly subscriptions, we learn about the different PPC sales funnels that Viddyoze uses. Joey also shares his thoughts on scaling and then cutting back on team size.

⏱ What you’ll find and when:

00:00 Intro

🔗 Connect with Joey:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeyxoto/

Viddyoze: https://viddyoze.com/