The AudioBook Guide

The AudioBook Guide

By The Money Business PodcastEducationSelf-Improvement
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The AudioBook Guide episodes

  • How to build a career in digital marketing step by step.
    Sponsors: https://www.linker.ee/unitynarrator. T. There’s a stereotype out there that tech companies only hire developers and programmers. Are the essential? Absolutely. But as someone who was assumed she’d never work for a tech company because frankly, I haven’t been able to connect my printer to my computer since 2003. I can say with absolute certainty: you can build a career in tech without learning Java. If you’re looking for a creative role in tech that les you make big picture plans, write clever copy, and even spend some days chatting with fans on Instagram, digital marketing could well be the ideal career for you. That’s why we’ve got an all-encompassing guide to building a career in digital marketing, one step at a time.
    11 min
  • #3 The Coding Bootcamp Trap
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    Despite graduating college with a degree in engineering, James could only find employment in the service industry. While continuing to search for technical positions, he noticed job postings for a company called Revature. The company, which calls itself the “largest employer of entry level software engineers,” advertises positions in states like Kansas and Alabama, as well as in Texas where James was living at the time.
    “One day someone is going to ask you where you got your start,” read one Revature job posting. “This is IT!”
    As James — who asked that his real name not be used in this article due to the confidentiality clauses in his contract — looked more closely at Revature, he realized the company wasn’t recruiting for a typical job. Instead, it was recruiting college graduates from all over the country to participate in a three-month training program, which prior to the pandemicwas held in person at one of Revature’s six campuses. During this training period, Revature provided associates housing and paid them $8 an hour — although housing costs were deducted from that wage. After students completed the program, successful graduates were placed on a tech project for a Revature client. The idea was that if all went well, that client may hire the Revature associate to a full-time position.
    For James, participating in Revature’s program felt like a last resort. “I was looking for somewhere I could start working immediately,” he told OneZero. He applied, and after a quick interview process, received notice he’d been accepted.
    Half training program, half staffing firm
    Revature, which was founded in 2016, is two businesses rolled into one: a training program and a staffing firm. Many of the current and former associates interviewed by OneZero praised Revature’s training as being more practical and job-oriented than the education they received during their undergraduate studies. Revature advertises its training as tailored to the needs of employers, and it develops custom programs in specific technologies to meet employer demand.
    But many Revature associates also expressed concern about Revature’s practice of hiring former associates as instructors, including in some cases hiring associates immediately after they had completed Revature’s training themselves, something confirmed by three instructors interviewed by OneZero.
    Phillips defended the practice of hiring former associates, telling OneZerothat “gifted software engineers who took our training themselves are often in the best position to teach from experience.” Phillips added that Revature gave its instructors “extensive additional training to teach our program, including in-depth development of enterprise grade digital applications.”
    After the training, Revature lines up interviews for associates with its client companies. If successfully placed, the associates will go work for the client company and Revature will pay their wages. Revature pays associates between $45,000 and $55,000 in annualized wages during their first year of working for its clients, depending on whether they are placed in a high-cost city such as Chicago or Boston, according to documents reviewed by OneZero. Wages will increase to between $60,000 and $70,000 a year during the second year, and to more than $75,000 a year during the third year.
    11 min
  • Here Are 5 Growth Marketing Case Studies From The Last Decade

    Growth has been a term coined by Silicon Valley as a way for companies to scale at huge rates both organically and paid. Initially, it started with finding ‘hacks’ to find opportunities to scale quickly by experimenting quickly and efficiently.

    Although experimentation is surely still a part of growth, it has moved more away from hacks and into more focused approaches and mentality than finding a quick, easy way to success.

    From infamous examples like Dropbox’s free storage giveaway and Hotmail’s “Get Your Free Email At Hotmail,” we have since moved on to a new decade of growth marketing tactics. In this article, instead of exploring the older famous and popular case studies, I wanted to look at some more recent examples in the last decade from startups and businesses.

    1. Robinhood

    Robinhood has been the poster child for all retail investing during 2020. With many people confined at homes, many people, especially millennials, started paying more attention to the stock markets.

    Robinhood was attractive, especially for millennials, with its “no commission fee” structure, which has generally put the younger audiences off trading.


    2. Zapier

    Zapier was founded in 2011, just hitting a decade of operating.

    It helps web applications ‘talk’ to each other and creates automations between apps. With no-code/low code startups growing, Zapier has been on the top of the list people are giving attention to. Many clones are also coming into the market, with many similar startups popping up to compete with Zapier.

    3. Tinder

    Everyone knows Tinder.

    It’s known as the application that pushed millennial online dating into an application that was easy to use and simple to understand.

    No more long profiles, just simple right and left. Apart from its genius design and user experience, we also have to take a quick look at how Tinder grew.

    Like Airbnb (host and guest), Tinder works when two distinct user groups are present on the platform and grows from this network effect.

    In this case, it’s guys and girls, but obviously, to grow the application, they needed attractive girls already on the application for guys to come and sign up (as shallow as it sounds!).


    4. Canva

    As an Aussie, I had to include an Australian entry into the list.

    What better startup to talk about than Canva, the design software with millions of users that took on Adobe.

    I decided to include Canva because it’s an example of a startup that leveraged a multi-channel growth strategy rather than relying on one source.

    What’s even more amazing is that in its first two years of operating (launched in 2012), it managed to get 3600 sign-ups every day and reached 2 million users.

    Canva grew by leveraging all levers

    To go through the entire strategy of Canva could take 100+ pages, so I wanted to summarize its growth by focusing on a few areas.


    5. Aviation Gin

    I wanted to include this one just because it shows how genius creative branding can be.

    Before Ryan Reynold’s even took over the brand, Aviation Gin was a big brand but not growing at the rate that Reynold managed to help grow the spirit’s company.

    12 min
  • #1 How Compass Became the Bane of Real Estate.

    The high tech real estate boasts SoftBank Backing, a $1.6 billion war chest, and plenty of skeptics. Now it’s cashing in on the pandemic real estate boom.

    None of us knows how long this crisis will last,” pleaded Robert Reffkin in a letter to Nancy Pelosi and her Republican counterpart Kevin McCarthy in March. Reffkin, CEO of real estate startup Compass, was urging Congress to include independent contractors like real state agent— some 2 million of them in the United States, according to the National Association of Realtors — in its economic stimulus package. In his plea, Reffkin cleared up any misconceptions about the professionals: They were entrepreneurs and small business owners who represent the backbone of the U.S. economy, personify the American dream, yet typically only earn less than $41,800 per year. “We do know that for real estate agents, the economic pain will last even longer than it will for those in many other professions.”

    The heartfelt missive on the plight of his industry during a pandemic — he even mentioned his mother, who works as an agent for his firm — came during a particularly bleak moment for Compass and its more than 11,500 independent contractor agents who depend on it. With the backing of $1.6 billion in venture capital, including a $450 million infusion from SoftBank in December 2017, Compass had been on a growth streak, grabbing market share in the nation’s most expensive housing markets and becoming a major player in high-end residential real estate. But as everything, including real estate sales, ground to a halt in late March, it left a commission-dependent workforce desperate for signs of life.

    28 min
  • Why Stick Shifts Are Going Extinct.
    Die hard drivers love manual transmissions, but they are disappearing from the auto market. Well under 2 percent of new cars sold in 2019 came with manual transmissions, and companies continue to drop stick shifts from their lineups, even in categories popular with serious car enthusiasts, such as supercars.
    In 2006, 47 percent of the 305 car models sold in the US offered standard or optional manual transmissions. But that number fell over time. One decade later, only 27 percent of new car offered manuals. By 2020, the number was just 13 percent.
    There are a few holdouts of course, and there are still a few sports cars, muscle cars, trucks, and even some cheaper vehicles that still can be bought with a manual. But as automatic transmission technology continues to improve, fewer drivers seem to be seeking out manuals.
    Some die-hard enthusiasts cry foul and say the there really is nothing like the feeling of control and connectedness one gets with a manual transmission. They say auto enthusiasts are being underserved by this shift.
    While the internal combustion engine is expected to be around for awhile, the small but growing popularity of electric cars stands to further marginalize manual transmissions.
    14 min
  • Pfizer and Moderna Could Mark the Start of a New Era in Vaccines
    Last week, drug maker Pfizer and Biotech partner Biontech announced that their Covid-19 vaccine was more than 90% effective in a clinical trial, sparking hope that an end to the pandemic may soon be achievable. More good news came this week, with an announcement from Massachusetts-based biotech form Moderna that its vaccine was 94.5% effective. Not to be outdone, Pfizer released more data on Wednesday, showing 96% efficacy. Stocks of thr companies soared on the news. Anthony Fauci, MD, director pf the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the results very impressive and said 20 million Americans could be vaccinated against the coronavirus by the end of December or beginning of January. If the Food and Drug Administration authorised their use, they would be thr first vaccines of their kind on the market.
    7 min
  • When the Arceibo telescope Is Demolished, It Will Take an Era of Space Exploration With It
    When news broke that Puerto Rico’s famed Arceibo radio telescope was going to be demolished, it sent the scientific community into the kind of mourning typically reserved for its most beloved human heroes and pioneers. For many, Arecibo wad more than the world’s second largest radio telescope and a key instrument in our efforts to probe the cosmos and canvas the universe for extraterrestrial life-it was an iconic monument to the last 50 years of astronomy, to science, even human achievement. Now, it is a death knell.
    4 min
  • 20 Things Most People Learn Too Late In Life
    Life is a journey of twists and turn l, peaks and valleys, mountains to climb and oceans to explore. Good times and bad times, but always, life is a movement forward. No matter where you are on a journey. In some ways, you are continuing on-and that’s what makes it so magnificent. One day, you’re questioning what on earth will ever make you feel happy and full-filled. And the next, you’re perfectly in flow, writing most important book of your entire career. What nobody ever tells you, though, when you are a wide eyed child, are all the little things that come along with growing up.
    8 min
  • Finding about what kind of startup founder you are ?
    When it comes to getting a new venture off the ground, a sense of collective ownership in their teams. In this podcast, I have talked about a research that looked how different types of leaders attempt to cultivate a sense of ownership in their people, ultimately concluding that a careful balance between delegation and dictation is most likely to be effective.
    9 min

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