The Boring Startup

One of the most amazing effects of the internet was it's ability to wrestle power and influence from a concentrated group of gatekeepers. The barrier to entry for so many creators is as low as it's ever been. But with the teardown the internet also enabled a new generation of gatekeepers. Some standing at the gates of real value and some that are just looking to earn a quick buck.

In this episode I talk about an experience with a specific site that has positioned itself as a gatekeeper in the hopes of getting some of your money. 

In this episode I give you an inside look into what hiring a PR firm looked like for me. I cover the pros and cons and discuss whether I felt like it was worth the $585 or not.

In this episode I do a play by play of trying to solve a problem called "the end of the hockey season". Sometimes it gets ugly on the tech side of things and this episode is no exception. Basically I'm a terrible person and take the cheater's way out in the end but you can follow the process of how I got there.

In this episode I break down a comment I got on a recent Facebook ad I ran. The product I've created is something people have never seen before. That's making for some interesting perceptions of what it is based on static images. Listen as I talk about why it's my fault and how I can make it better.

Here's a link to the image I referred to in this episode.

http://www.ultrafeel.tv/wp-content/uploads/image/humor/hightech/steve-jobs-ipad-4-iphones.jpg

In this episode I talk about what product/market fit is and how I'm grappling with that concept currently. 

In this episode I dive deeper on my thoughts around messaging the business in both B2B and B2C contexts and how maybe it's time to start tweaking that messaging as part of improving the Kickstarter support. It's a hot brain dump of what I've been considering the last few days as to why people may be misunderstanding the Smart Puck.

In this episode I talk about how trying to be a little better every day at all the things involved in trying to market and grow the business. Learning something new or finding a productivity hack in using hashtags. Little things that will help push me and the business in the right direction.

A recap of all the in-the-dirt work I did today to get more exposure for The Smart Puck. It's a grind and I'm in it for the long haul. One of the things I started today was implementing the $1.80 strategy from Gary Vaynerchuk. If you're not familiar with it I highly recommend you check it out. The biggest lesson learned today is that this is on me. I don't have a boss or middle level manager to blame failure on. If this doesn't work it's because I didn't make the right decisions. It's on.

Day 2 of the Kickstarter campaign saw a very steep drop off in backers. This doesn't really come as a surprise but in this episode I talk about why it happened and what I'm going to do to try to address it. I cover the different data sources I'm looking at to target advertising for the project and present some ideas I'm going to move forward with to right the ship.

Today I launched the Smart Puck on Kickstarter. In this episode I talk about some of the things I experienced, where I landed at the end of the day, and what comes next now that the project is live.