Deal Breakdowns

I live in Seattle. My girlfriend’s brother has a lot of expertise in the roofing industry and wants to start a business with me. Heres the catch – he doesn’t have citizenship so he would need me to form the business, get insurance, run the administrative side of things, and set it all up. I […]

Show notes from podcast episode 37. What is content marketing? The practice of creating articles and videos designed to be helpful and of genuine interest to your target customer without explicitly promoting your services or products. This is a case in point example of my favorite business principle of all time – adding value first. You […]

5 years is plenty of time to design the life you wan’t. You don’t need to work 45 years just to retire to then finally get to design your schedule and do what you want to do. Five years from now, if you have the best 5 years of your life from today forward, what […]

It’s dangerous to depend on someone else’s platform to market and sell to your customers. We’ll start with a few stories. Facebook first. In his awesome talk on content marketing, Joe Pulizzi told a fascinating story about Starbucks and their Facebook following. They spent 10 years spending big money each year, I’m guessing 10s of millions […]

Show notes from podcast episode 36. I recently read The Dip by Seth Godin. A short book (about 75 pages) that took me just a few hours to read. I took some notes and did some thinking and writing. Let’s talk about how it relates to entrepreneurship. Everything in life has a dip. At first […]

Show notes from podcast episode 38. I talk a lot about doing the important but not urgent work it takes to be successful as a business owner. I believe it takes a certain mindset to know what the hardest work is or even exists and needs attention. That’s the type of work that separates the […]

Doing this while you have a full time job is the perfect way to start. More on that here. Step 1: Do a quick and dirty market study – start searching and calling competitors. Use trends.google.com to find out which company in your town is the largest (most search volume) and study them. Are they doing digital marketing? Are they putting […]

1. Add value first Gain trust by providing something of value first without expectation. This gets you very far with customers and personal relationships. Don’t squeeze your customers for every penny, especially early. Too many people are tight lipped with helpful advice. Share it. Gain trust and thus loyalty and profit later. 2. 80 percent of your […]

Wine sommeliers often can’t tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $2,000 bottle in a double blind test. The food at the $20/person restaurant and the food at the $200/person restaurant. The beer at the top rated brewery or the guy brewing in his basement. In a double blind test – who has […]

Ego is good early on. The confidence. The drive for status and image. It gets us far. It gives us the courage to disregard the anxiety and fear of failure. The lizard brain that tells us to run for cover when things get scary. We all agree that you don’t need to be a superhuman […]