Run With It

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Nuggets:

• Being new to an industry can be an advantage. It allows you to follow a template without getting distracted.

Action Steps:

1. Target mid- to top-tier writers and offer to create a high-end podcast for them
2. Court former clients of Book in a Box as your clients and create a success story from one of them.
3. Contact business organizations like YPO and present lectures on “How to Start a Podcast” and/or become their preferred referral partner
4. Create a basic DIY version down the line

Links:

• VezTek - Hire Freelance Developers from the Top 5%
• Podcast in a Box by Podcast Press
• Scribe Media | The Leader in Professional Publishing
• How Much Does It Cost To Make A Hit Song?

Sani Abdul-Jabbar is co-founder at VezTek USA an innovation consulting firm that partners with smart entrepreneurs to get great ideas off the ground.

Love a part of the show? Did we get something completely wrong? Let us know at [email protected].

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Nuggets:

• The USDA offers grants and special loans for first-time farmers
• You can often succeed in an old industry (e.g. restaurants, hotels) by simply following modern best practices
• Don’t underestimate the value of employing amazing people in the hospitality industry

Action Steps:

1. Research best practices for starting a hotel
2. Search for employees in the hospitality industry
3. See if you can get a beginner farmer grant or loan
4. Locate existing farms and offer to install cabins on their property
5. Locate existing Farmhouse rentals on AirBNB and offer to optimize their business model

Links:

• Dominic Monkhouse: Business Coaching
• ‎The Melting Pot with Dominic Monkhouse
• F**k Plan B: How to scale your technology business faster and achieve Plan A
• Cabana - Mobile Hotels
• Avrame
• The Road to Less Stupid
• Kiss the Ground
• Featherdown Farms
• AirDNA
• The Ruby Slipper Cafe
• USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher Loans

Dominic Monkhouse is a business coach, scale up expert, host of the Melting Pod podcast and author of F**k Plan B: How to scale your technology business faster and achieve plan A.

Love a part of the show? Did we get something completely wrong? Let us know at [email protected].

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Nuggets:

• “Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.” -Charlie Munger

Action Steps:

1. Determine what niche you are going to sell in first
2. Optimal co-founders might be content and SEO experts
3. Build an in-house SEO team 
4. Fundraise
5. Get people on the site through advertising the site itself and the products
6. Develop the audience, then pitch vendors to partner with you
7. Expand beyond your initial niche

Links:

• Purple Orange PR
• Visably - Improve your brand's visibility in search
• Chris Dickey on LinkedIn
• uberzon
• rebatekey
• outdoorgearlab
• US ecommerce grows 44.0% in 2020

Chris Dickey is the founder of Purple Orange PR and Visably, a new software to manage your brand’s visibility in search.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Nuggets:

• Content creators aren’t satisfied with social media platforms owning their distribution channels

Action Steps:

1. Partner with a Twitter influencer looking to monetize their brand through email marketing (search for users recommending Mailbrew).
2. Presell the product to validate it.
3. Integrate between Twitter and Mailchimp. Look to a service like Mailbrew for inspiration on how to deliver content via email.
4. Augment your product with add-ons that offer templates and assistance with email marketing.
5. You might even partner with third party brands and mimic the “dynamic ad insertion” model of podcasts within email.

Links:

• Exploding Topics
• Mailbrew
• MailerLite
• Stackla
• Social Board

Josh Howarth is the co-founder of Exploding Topics, an analytics service that surfaces rapidly growing topics before they take off.

Love a part of the show? Did we get something completely wrong? Let us know at [email protected].

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Nuggets:

• Almost half (40-60%) of the overhead is creating and selling carbon offsets is legal compliance, accounting, auditing
• “The world’s first trillionaire will be made in climate change.” - Chamath Palihapitiya
• Climate tech investing is growing 5X faster than overall VC from 2013-2019 ($60 billion of early-stage capital)

Action Steps:

1. Investigate how Nori works and learn from their mistakes
2. Research the current costs and details involved in carbon credits
3. Decide on one niche of carbon offsets (e.g. planting trees) and pair that with one industry with easy to measure emissions (e.g. airlines)
4. Determine the economics around trading climate on the blockchain - what would make people want to do it?
5. Learn the ropes by contacting businesses potentially interested in offsetting carbon and helping to facilitate as a consultant
6. Raise an ICO
7. Get involved in addressing climate change any way you can - it’s a giant problem that will take many smart people to solve

Links:

• Nori
• tristanpollock.com
• Eco Coin
• Podcast: Reversing Climate Change
• Podcast: Carbon Removal Newsroom
• Air Mining
• SRECs: Understanding Solar Renewable Energy Credits
• Carbon Fee and Dividend Policy and FAQs

Tristan Pollock is an entrepreneur, founder, and startup investor, among many things and is currently building cto.ai. He has invested 30 million dollars into over 200 startups.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Nuggets:

• You need some protectable “secret sauce” if selling components in a big industry (like flying cars). Otherwise, manufacturers will continually drive down your pricing by forcing you to compete with copycats for their business

• Creating networking events can launch you from novice to industry expert rapidly and provide a foundation for a powerful business.

Action Steps:

1. Begin with a profitable strategy that sells shovels to the miners. E.g. start by hosting and organizing flying car conventions so you can meet key players, understand the industry, build your future team and build your future strategy.
2. Aim high for your first clients. Court wealthy individuals who want to make aspirational purchases.

Links:

• Atakama | Multi-Factor File Encryption Software
• Larry Page’s flying cars
• Ford Flivver
• When Will Airplanes Be Electric?
• World eVTOL Aircraft Directory
• The Interchange Podcast: Electric Aviation Is Coming

Daniel H. Gallancy is the CEO of Atakama, a NYC based software company and uses his deep experience with blockchain tech to help companies manage security.

Love a part of the show? Did we get something completely wrong? Let us know at [email protected].

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Nuggets:

• We’re again reminded that you don’t need to solve the problem for everyone. Different people will have different goal setting tools & tactics that resonate with them. Helping a small percentage of those struggling with goal setting could still be massively valuable.

Action Steps:

1. Research habit and goal experts and offer to partner with them on development of a goal achievement app
2. Pursue the enterprise market: contact sales teams and offer to help them meet their sales quotas for free. Get a case study and charge for the next team.
3. Start by shadowing one sales team that has sales objectives of $50K+ per month. Ask for a token $50 per month to validate the app value.
4. After a month or two of noting how objectives get set and achieved and what leads to failure and success, document the systems that seem to help and start to implement them. 
5. Raise a couple hundred thousand in investment to fund development of your basic app, test and iterate with your existing group and add 4 more.
6. Raise 1M more and launch to a wider audience within a year or two.

Links:

• Virtual Assistants for entrepreneurs and professionals
• The Hard Work Myth - the new book that explains why working harder is a waste of time | How to achieve more, without working harder | Timeetc
• Spar
• Stickk
• Coach.me | Instant Coaching for Any Goal.
• Noom: Stop dieting. Get life-long results.
• Blogger Maneesh Sethi hires woman to slap him when he procrastinates

Barnaby Lashbrooke founded Time etc in 2007 with the idea of giving entrepreneurs the help they need to be successful without the cost and hassle of employing a full-time assistant. He is also the author of The Hard Work Myth which uncovers how the world's top entrepreneurs achieve so much, despite working less than the average business owner.

Love a part of the show? Did we get something completely wrong? Let us know at [email protected].

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Nuggets:

• Great businesses often start with an urgent demand that people are asking to pay for. You just have to notice it and double down on the niche.

• As baby boomers retire, there is a big opportunity in modernizing “sweaty startups”

Action Steps:

1. Contact the owner of the Urban Lumber Co and see if he is interested in franchising his model
2. Become a member of the Urban Wood Network for $50 to learn how to build an urban wood business
3. Network with the local wood economy and become an intermediary between lumber collectors, furniture makers and firewood users in homes and restaurants.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at [email protected]. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• The Sketch Effect
• @williamcwarren
• William Warren’s personal website
• Ironwood Mills Phoenix | Ironwood Mills
• @michaeltoret
• iDry Kilns
• Woodpreneur Podcast
• Joe’s Premium Firewood on Youtube
• Urban Wood Network
• The Expensive Water Bottle with Jeff Proctor

William Warren is an entrepreneur, illustrator, and writer who has spent his career using visuals to help communicate ideas in an effective and enjoyable way. He is the Founder and CEO of The Sketch Effect, a Visual Communication agency that helps make ideas understandable and actionable through animation, live event sketching and graphic design. The Sketch Effect’s client list includes top-tier brands such as Marriott, Walmart, Microsoft, Chick-fil-A, P&G, and Delta in addition to premier consultancies including Boston Consulting Group, Bain, Ernst & Young and Accenture. The Sketch Effect has sketched for thought leaders such as Steve Wozniak, Brene Brown, Malala Yousafzai, Sheryl Sandberg, Peyton Manning, and more. William lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife Monica and young kids, Liam and Gracie.

Michael Toret has been a professional carpenter and woodworker for over 10 years. Most recently, he’s built unique furniture and household items out of large live edge slabs of wood at Ironwood Mills, an urban sawmill in Phoenix, AZ.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Nuggets:

• Out of work travel and tourism specialists in vacation spots can be hired cheaply to build a business
• You can build a 300K / yr business starting with a spreadsheet and a private slack group
• If you think that buying property in other countries would be a headache, you’re right.

Action Steps:

1. Contact Pieter Levels of Nomad List and pitch him a collaboration on this higher-end service.
2. Smaller travel services are hurting. Pitch someone like “Scott’s Cheap Flights” a JV to help bolster his income.
3. Get to one customer and do things that don’t scale to iterate on the product itself. Word of mouth marketing would be super effective.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at [email protected]. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Under30Experiences: Group Travel for Young Adults
• The Millennial Travel Guidebook
• Nomad List
• Selena’s Hostels
• Run With It Episode 23 with Jules Schroeder
• Live Different Podcast with Matt Wilson

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Nuggets:

• Simple tip to increase your meeting effectiveness: stop 5 minutes early and ask “who will do what by when?”

• Generally easier to sell to a profit center than a cost center (listen to Aline Lerner episode for more on this)

• The hard part of this idea is building something users will stick with. Focus more on reducing friction and making the app a joy to use and worry less about back-end bells and whistles.

• Look for teachable moments within an industry as the foundation of content marketing for your business or even for the foundation of your app’s functionality.

• Note-taking is a necessary step in many industries (e.g. financial service, corporate governance) and non-compliance with note taking can come with serious penalties.

Action Steps:

1. Decide on the niche you want to serve. Will you go broad and seek a large user base for a low LTV per user or aim for less users in a more profitable niche (e.g. lawyers, financial services)
2. Start with a simple integration that triggers emails to the user 10-15 minutes before the meetings in their calendar. The user can reply with their notes. Store them in an organized database for review.
3. As your user base grows you can add premium features, like integrating with CRM or other note tracking app.
4. If you have niched down you can customize your app to serve your chosen niche. For example create custom notifications and note templates that facilitate note taking for corporate compliance.
5. A healthy long term vision might aim for 50,000 users at about $5 per month, grossing around $3 million a year in revenue.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at [email protected]. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Less Annoying CRM | Simple Contact Management for Small Businesses
• Scheduling Platform for Business | Cronofy the scheduling experts
• Measuring the ROI of Hiring Funnels with Aline Lerner
• Nathan Latka on Buying and Monetize Chrome extensions
• Notion
• Market size of the growing note-taking industry

Tyler King is the Co-founder and CEO of Less Annoying CRM. He's a proud bootstrapper and is passionate about starting and growing sustainable businesses for the long term.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run