Today’s episode is for everyone who struggles to summarize their startup in a sentence. We lay out a framework to do this well with help from a sticker on the street, a hedge fund, and a Vietnamese coffee shop.

• Tacklebox
• Idea to Startup Newsletter

00:33 One Sentence Marketing
01:10 Train to NYC
03:04 The best marketing Brian’s seen in a while
06:42 Smooth Jazz
07:28 Choosing a Customer and the Knowledge Spectrum
08:54 Air Quality Idea
13:07 Inflection Points + The Conference Exercise
14:09 The End - Vietnamese Coffee

Today, we'll teach you how to name your startup. This is from No Whisper Ideas, a post sent every Sunday by Brian. 

• Customer Interviews Workshop (Starts Sep 15)
• No Whisper Ideas Weekly Post 

Today, we build a machine to help you actually run customer interviews.

We’ll use AI to tackle the big blockers—accountability, CRM setup, outreach, transcription, and even how to pick your first customer. You’ll hear the idea Brian is testing with the interview machine, and we’ll walk through exactly how AI can make the process faster, more uncomfortable (in the right way), and a lot more effective. Plus, a bit on creativity and being human.

• Tacklebox Customer Interview Workshop (starts 9/15)
• Claude
• Calendly
• Granola

00:00 Intro
00:30 Avoiding Criticism
04:08 The Job of Customer Interviews
09:12 Smooth Jazz
09:30 Whisper Ideas
11:35 The Idea:
15:35 The AI Interview Machine
17:34 Accountability
19:13 Top of Funnel Outreach
21:18 Interview Execution
22:39 Synthesis
23:43 The End

Today, we talk through a 4-part system to generate ideas - one that'll tap into your brain's natural ability to develop novel solutions rather than just waiting (hoping) inspiration will strike. We'll do it with a little help from a baseball training facility, a corked wine bottle, and an MRI startup. 

• The Tacklebox Customer Interviews Workshop - Sept. Session is OPEN
• Idea to Startup Newsletter
• Fermenting Ideas
• Pod: Customers speak Problem
• Pod: How to Create a Strategy for your Startup
• Readwise
• Idea to Startup Bot

00:26 Idea People
02:47 A Baseball Training Facility
04:45 Inversion
07:46 Smooth Jazz
9:24 Part 1: Identifying the Problem
12:34 Part 2: Collecting
17:22 Part 3: Chewing
20:14 Part 4: Testing
21:37 The End + How to Start

Today, we'll help you tackle the big question for entrepreneurs with startup ideas and jobs - when's it time to quit the job and focus on the startup full-time? You should think about this question the second you start working on an idea, and you should use the Skeptical Startup framework - a goal of $8k per month in 10 hours per week - as a guide. The Skeptical Startup framework is magical, and Brian will show how it'll help you focus with an example startup.  

• Tacklebox
• Idea to Startup Newsletter
• Idea to Startup Bot
• Farnam Street - Surface Area
• The Alchemist
• Natalie Imbruglia - Torn

00:30 When to Quit Your Job
03:25 Life Expenses Excel Sheet
04:05 The Skeptical Startup Framework
06:25 The Idea: Home AV Improvements
07:44 Smooth Jazz
08:22 The Logistics of $8k
11:26 An AV Marketplace
12:46 Reduce the Surface Area
15:27 The Search
16:30 A Lead for the AV Startup
19:16 The End - Your Goals
19:26 A Goal Framework

Today, we talk about the difference between Entrepreneur Brain and Normal Brain. Normal Brain is out to sabotage your startup. We teach you Entrepreneur Brain to make sure that doesn't happen. 

• Tacklebox 10-Day Customer Interview Workshop
• Ali Abdaal - The Good Student vs. The Good Entrepreneur Mindset (text, Ali's email signup)
• Graham Weaver - How to Design a Winnable Game
• Daina Trout Episode

Timestamps:
00:30 Entrepreneur Brain vs. Normal Brain
01:50 The $2 Million Dollar House
05:30 Customer Interviews Workshop
6:06 Situation #1: The Overwhelming To Do LIst
10:57 Situation #2: When Things Don’t Work
13:09 Situation #3: When You Feel Unprepared
15:48 Situation #4: When You Are Low On Resources
18:17 The End: Lotto Tickets

Today, we'll help you get two months of work done in a weekend. We break down a four-part sprint framework that is actually realistic and manageable for founders with full-time jobs and families or dogs or other responsibilities / dense, unpredictable lives. We also show how a sprint helped launch Habit Kangaroo, one of Brian's side projects, a few years back. The framework covers goal-setting, preparation, creating urgency through "hooks," and how to rely on people to stay happy. 

Share it with a potential cofounder and get to work. 

• Tacklebox Customer Interview Sprint Workshop
• Graham Weaver

00:26 - Three Things: Thing One: A Weekend Sprint
01:30 - Habit Kangaroo
04:37 - Feedback Loops
09:45 Smooth Jazz
10:10 - Sprint Structure: Goal, Prep, Hook, Reliance
10:15 - Goal
12:36 - Prep
14:56 - Hook
16:53 - Reliance
19:38 - The End - Happiness

Today, we'll help all the non-storytellers tell a compelling story about their business. We've got a framework that'll walk you through the ingredients of a compelling story, and a mise en place-inspired approach that'll help you get to story market fit. We've got some rules, some variables, some accelerants, and an example about a service that helps Airbnb hosts launch their own interior design businesses.  

• Tacklebox
• Idea to Startup Newsletter
• Building a Story Brand
• Your New Life Will Cost You Your Old One
• Work Clean - The Life-Changing Power of Mise en Place
• How to Write Essays that Spread

00:30 Storytelling for your startup
03:24 The Two Reasons for the Barefoot Son Story
07:09 Smooth Jazz
07:37 The Three Ruls of Good Storytelling for Entrepreneurs
08:45 Rule 1: Good Stories Are About Speed
10:44 Rule 2: You Don’t Matter
11:39 Rule 3: A Good Story is Earned
12:22 Mise En Place
14:10 The Ingredients of Your Story
17:09 The Accelerants
19:24 Airbnb Interior Design
23:23 The End: Montaigne

Most startup advice says you need to be "maniacally focused" on one thing. I disagree. You need to balance your focus with some good old fashioned floundering. This episode is about the balance - when to focus and when to flounder - and how to build each skill. We even built a framework to help you out - The Four Rules of Floundering. 

• The Let's Actually Run Customer Interviews Workshop - a 10-day program that'll help you actually, finally, run proper customer interviews. This will kickstart your business. $150 through July 31 with code "EARLY"
• Flounder Mode
   

0:00 Let’s Run Customer Interviews Workshop
01:12 Mailbag
02:44 How to Flounder
03:56 The Idea: Community Investment Circles
07:11 When is it time to become “maniacally focused”?
10:35 The Four Rules of Floundering
15:26 Floundering’s real value: longevity

One of the most-listened and shared episodes of 2024 - an episode that multiple people reached out months later to say "this single episode helped me launch my business." So, that's cool. It's on standing out in a crowded market, and it's on mice. Specifically, the guy who got rid of ours. 

There are four lessons, a framework, Customer Journey Mapping and the Feature Fold. 

• Tacklebox
• Idea to Startup Newsletter
• Idea to Startup Bot
• Sugar (but it stinks)

00:30 Intro
02:00 We’ve Got Mice
05:15 The Mouse Man’s Funnel
07:50 Smooth Jazz
08:21 One - Build Your Funnel to Match Customer Emotion
11:45 Good Questions For Your Funnel
12:30 Two - Contrast from the Feature Fold
14:30 Saving your Customers a Decision
15:53 Three - Take Yourself Seriously
19:14 Four - The Things Other People Stink At
22:14 The End
22:50 Recap of the Four Lessons