John Sechrest

John Sechrest helps startups tell their stories. By managing the narrative around their startup idea, founders can improve their odds of raising money, attracting the right talent, and - most importantly - connecting with the right customers.

John and I talked about:

the importance in of startup founders telling an effective story and living it

how content strategy is the art of managing a startup's story

how neglecting your narrative leaves you "wallowing in the swamp"

how multiple content strategies help a startup:

manage the emerging company culture

manage the relationship of the components of the company

manage the relationship between the customers and the company

set and define the startups brand

how going from 2 guys in a garage to $50 million in revenue happens by attracting the right people and getting the market to care - both require a narrative, and that narrative is at the root of your content strategy

how "doing a startup is an inherently stupid activity" - takes lots of time, presents multiple opportunities to fail, puts everything at risk - so startup founders really need to know their "why"

why you need a "Mission from God" ("Blues Brothers" movie) - an overarching why:

why potential employees should work for you

why investors should fund you

why customers should engage with you

but interesting stories don't lead with the why -  they start with relationship-based conversation that shows the why

there's a why at the genesis of a startup - and you'd better be able to articulate it (Elon Musk, e.g.)

have to have a loud and clear content strategy to be heard over the noise of the journalists who are focused on the sausage making

journalists will always find the problems, that's what they do - so can be hard to talk about the successes - steer conversation back to mission from god

the importance of building an audience as early as possible - 7 billion people know nothing about you - need to sort out who might care, who'll never care, and who need you right now

using Reddit to start to validate the problem you're trying to solve, and professional forums to find industrial folks to start conversations with

sometimes need to tell the story of the problem when it's not clear yet (but you see it) and that's a terrible place for startups - enterprise yes - so get a big enterprise to talk about the problem for you

how a startups content strategy is not only about today but as much about "the business that you intend to be tomorrow"

importance of adapting your narrative to the stage you're at

John's Bio

John Sechrest is Founder of the Seattle Angel Conference, Co-Organizer of the Lean Startup Seattle, and Global Facilitator for Startup Weekend.

As an entrepreneurial collaborator, he focuses on entrepreneurial and innovation efforts as a way to develop new projects and companies. His efforts are focused on building the tools, skills, and processes that enable people to make a positive impact on the world.

John also organizes the Seattle Startups Open Coffee and Eastside Startups Open Coffee meetups.

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/kimbGyMA31g

Transcript

Larry:

Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 35 of the Content Strategy Interviews Podcast [my bad: I re-branded the podcast to "Content Strategy Insights" between the time that we recorded this and the publication date]. This is the first episode of season number two of the podcast, and I'm really happy today to have with us John Sechrest. I know John as the most knowledgeable, generous, helpful person in the Seattle startup world,