The Knowledge Shop

The Knowledge Shop

By Tori HansonBusinessEntrepreneurship
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The Knowledge Shop episodes

  • Be the host, challenges mean you are doing something and... Brandon the Lego guy! Episode 41

    Skipped a week, was editing and getting things together, but it was so worth it!!!!

    Today we meet Brandon Wetzstein aka Brandonthelegoguy.com

    We hear about:

    • His founder journey, a transition from retail to startup life
    • The struggle for finding your ideal customer
    • Tips to keep you going aka Broadway matinees for the win, The Knowledge 
    • And how he helps startups and create culture and problem solve.

      • Things you should look up, because we talk about them.....

      • Lego serious play - https://seriousplay.training/lego-serious-play/
      • His website - Brandonthelegoguy.com
      • Knowledge Project - Shane Parish - https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/
      • Science of Happiness (although technically called Wellbeing) - https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being
      • Broadway show inspiration - todaytix.com

        • You also hear me:

        • Struggle with startup challenges - but taking it as a win, as it means I have done something.
        • Learning from Jason Calacanis on the This Week in Startups podcast to "Be the host". Ie it allows you to talk to more people, learn from others, become the expert and build a great community around you.
        • Building out the MVP continues, but at least it is moving (ish)


          • My ask....ever hosted eg Airbnb / Eatwith etc?

          Would you consider hosting a coworking event in your home, office etc? Could be 4 people, could be 40 (up to you).

          If yes, or open to it - ping me and lets chat.


          22 min
        • 40 - The tension of believing something something will succeed, with the fear of what happens if it does

          I graduated! Whoop whoop.

          You can see random photos of me in my grad garb here.

          Today:

          • Moving forward with workWITH (but do i continue with The Knowledge Shop brand)?
          • Feedback for my straplines - what do you think about these...

            •  a) Cowork with people, not just next to them

             b) A new work family every day

             c) Office friends for when you don't have an office

            • The excitement of speaking to developers to start building out the concept.
            • The stress of what happens if it succeeds? The fear of falling foul of rules / regulations (even though i know Airbnb and & Eatwith have overcome a lot of these already).



              • 9 min
            • Want to boost your odds of startup success? Build a marketplace, Saas or Transactional business - thank you Y Combinator for these insights. Episode 39

              Learnings from YC Startup School.

              If you want to stack your odds build a:

              • Market place eg like Airbnb, Opensea
              • Transactional biz eg Stripe / Coinbase or a
              • Saas biz like Zapier, Twilio

                • Together they make up 67% of YC's Top 100 performing companies.

                And my pivot into the world of marketplace / directory type business.

                Think what if Airbnb and Wework had a baby, but overindexing on the importance of community, but just an empty space.

                11 min
              • Building & testing quickly, incorporating and interview with Anita Kirkovska, the CEO of Microportal an ODX startup. Episode 38

                So many tools / resources shared in this episode, so here goes...

                • Registering as a company - so much different perspectives, but....
                  • But been recommended Zenbusiness and https://www.corpnet.com/learning-center/
                  • Building my website (again). Using a mixture of webflow, canva, unsplash, Carrd and photopea (hosting, image and editing)


                    • From the interview with CEO, Anita Kirkovska of https://www.microportal.io/

                    Key takeaways:

                    • The importance of Self reflection
                    • Just ship it, perfection is bad
                    • No code allows you to find PMF faster, by getting a proof of concept (which you can also iterate on quickly too) out quicker, allowing you to gather customer feedback faster
                    • Know anyone in Saas sales? Anita would love to talk to them, contact her on Twitter.

                      • Social Media

                      • Anita's Twitter - https://twitter.com/anitakirkovska
                      • Marina's Twitter - https://twitter.com/marinatrajk

                        • Resources

                        • ODX fellowship - https://www.beondeck.com/x
                        • No code fellowship - https://www.beondeck.com/no-code 
                        • Bubble - https://bubble.io/
                        • Apollo - https://www.apollo.io/ (Lead Gen / prospecting)
                        • Meet Alfred - https://meetalfred.com/ (Linkedin lead gen automation)



                          • 21 min
                        • Boom & Supersonic planes, our first guest - Jen Auh and Happy Birthday to the Pod | Episode 37

                          As discussed on this episode...

                          YC Startup School: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/announcing-startup-school-2022

                          Lessons from former YC founder Blake Scholl - https://boomsupersonic.com/.

                          “Collect credibility”

                          • Ie know your stuff, speak confidently, build your advisory board
                          • Ship stuff, so they can see you have done things.
                          • Go bigger - tackle BIG problems!

                            • Courage is not being fearless, but acting in spite of it.

                            My take away:

                            If someone can convince somebody they are able to build a supersonic plane with just a Balsa wood model, anything is possible.

                            Our first ever guest .....

                            Jen Auh - https://www.jenauh.com/

                            After a 20+year career working for Macy's, Bliss and Two-faced cosmetics etc, Jen took the entrepreneurial journey to become an image consultant. Today she provides personal branding / style advice for men, to boost their confidence / stand out amongst their peers.

                            Her book helping fellow image consultants grow their own businesses is coming out in August.

                            Check out:

                            • If you know a man in need of style advice... - https://www.stylekonsult.com/
                            • New Chip accelerator - https://newchip.com/
                            • Y Combinator's Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg
                              • 16 min
                            • 500 members, notion and research insights! Episode 36

                              Whoop Whoop!!

                              The NYC entrepreneurs Coworking Group surpassed 500 members

                              And over 125 people are already signed up for the next event on July 29th

                              The community is on fire too - sharing across Whatsapp and Slack. Someone even a few days ago posted "I love this group already” (saving that for when i am having a down day).

                              Research Learnings

                              Content management is a big challenge for people less organised in life, but it seems that managing content  you just stumble upon / save for later is a big challenge for everyone, regardless how organised you are.

                              Learnt more about Notion - what an incredible tool. Does so much, BUT I think that is why some people are put off by it - too intimidating? Or insufficient product marketing (they think it is interchangeable with Google Docs). 

                              Going to look into this more too, to see if its a tool i can use for the group to help with resource management.


                              12 min
                            • Now you see me. Customer interviews and the power of community - Episode 35

                              Recording this on Riverside.fm (thanks to Ahmad for the idea) - this is my first video. Lets see how this goes….

                              The Knowledge Shop 2.0: Exploring how people discover and manager content? The different approaches people take online vs social vs private channels like Slack / Discord and then how do they re-find the content again? 

                              User Interview Research Learnings:

                              • People want to get to the source of truth / experts as quickly as possible. Need to cut through the noise in knowledge discovery. Google isn’t cutting it, and I quote its a load of “SEO Bullshit”
                              • Linkedin is great for finding / contacting experts, using hashtags can be very useful
                              • Managing content is easy for target research - ie when you are actively looking for a specific resource, but hard for the “Stumble upon” content. Ie the stuff that will be useful in the future, but that you don't need it right now

                                • The NYC Coworking Community:

                                • We are becoming a real community. Members are supporting each other, asking for help and being vulnerable. This is really special.
                                • Slack is taking off too - if you havent joined, sign up here
                                • Now at 450 members, let's celebrate at 500. What should we do.....

                                  • My first guest appearance on a podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOVG0Azk-i4, that was fun. Now go follow Ahmad talks too.

                                  11 min
                                • Antler, leaning in, and my first newsletter - Episode 34

                                  The power of observation:

                                  At a recent event i held, it was immediately apparent how different people act differently in the same situation. 

                                  Some rush in, and others sit and observe, before acting (note i didnt say lean back).

                                  It's important to realise that to make the most of opportunities, you need to do both, and recognise when to switch from one to the other. It's very easy to over index in your comfort zone area, and not push yourself in the other.

                                  NOTE TO SELF - do more self advocating and pushing forward, alongside the community building and listening. 

                                  Resources:

                                  • For all things startup and random NYC and online events subscribe to my newsletter list - email me and I'll add you
                                  • To talk content sharing (either how you do it, or what you would like to gain from it) email me at
                                    • Antler’s in-person summer residency in NYC at https://www.antler.co/nyc
                                      • 15 min
                                    • Have you missed me? Aka the founder who got a bit lost | Episode 33

                                      After a brief hiatus to complete my MBA and regroup on what's next, I am back.

                                      If you haven't yet come to one of the meetup events, join now - the group is growing 😁

                                      https://www.meetup.com/nyc-entrepreneurs-coworking/

                                      Thank you to Ahmad, who i met at the last event, for having me be on his podcast (my first ever podcast guest experience)!! 

                                      He asked me to share my founder journey and some of the ways we can better support entrepreneurs. I'll let you know when my. episode is live.

                                      14 min
                                    • Advisors, Advisors and doorbells

                                      So many people talking advisory boards at the moment, so thought i'd share some of the learnings from this week. Including notes from a great session that Ed Kang gave for Startups.com

                                      You can watch it here.

                                      Key takeaways....

                                      Advisor Compensation Levels:

                                      • Consider how much responsibility will they have?
                                      • 0.25 - 2% typical advisor level (2% is really high. Has to be making a BIG contribution / moving the needle).
                                      • Advisor’s relevance can change over time. So just because they are valuable now, doesn’t mean they will be throughout. (Hence need to not overweight in early days).
                                      • Ensure there is a vesting schedule (with a cliff).

                                        • Purpose: The board should round you out, especially if you can’t find a cofounder / employee with those skills.

                                        Avoid:

                                        • Crossover between above characteristics. It gets cumbersome.
                                        • Get people to join, who will give you genuine advice / add value (not to make your pitch deck look good / help you raise).

                                          • Recruiting Tactics:

                                          1. Network, treat it like another other recruiting process
                                          2. Build advisor pool slowly.
                                          3. Find relevant people to ask their advice from first - approach like business research
                                          4. Assess the chemistry.
                                          5. Qualify their advice, how valuable is it?

                                            6. Formalising things:

                                            • Ask them if they’d be open to formalising the agreement
                                            • You can use the “Founder Advisor Standard Template” if its a straight forward arrangement (just make sure to get a lawyer to check it first). 


                                              • 15 min

                                            About The Knowledge Shop

                                            From the publisher's feed

                                            A podcast following my journey launching and building a startup - the highs, lows and the many many challenges on the way.