6 Insightful Takeaways From My Interviews With Entrepreneurs

My favorite part about doing my podcast, Bootstrapped Web, is the segment at the very end of each episode.  I call it the “Key Takeaways” section.

After I finish recording the interview, I take some time to pick out the most impactful ideas or actionable advice that resonated with me.  I usually come up with two or three of these “key takeaways” and spend a minute talking through them at the conclusion of each episode.

These takeaways are what make interviews so rewarding — whether you’re just tuning in or you’re the one asking the questions.  I believe the best way to learn is by doing and making mistakes yourself.  But the next best way to learn is through the lens of others’ experience, and that’s why I love the interview form (when done right).

Rather than parse through an entrepreneur’s life story (which is often very instructive and insightful, as seen on shows like Mixergy and Product People), what I try to do on Bootstrapped Web is focus on what my guests are working on right now in their business, and try to extract key learnings while they’re fresh and developing in real time.  For example, Dan Norris joined me twice (episode 2 and 11) in two months to tell me about how his business took a 180 degree turn.

Here’s a recap of some of my favorite takeaways from my first batch of entrepreneur interviews.  These are my interpretations of them (not direct quotes).

Rob Walling on the (hidden) benefit of building an audience:

It isn’t so much about building a large stream of customers for his apps.  The real value of building such a large audience is it gives him an incredible network.  He can look to his network to build an early access list for a new app, or he can look to his network to find a new hire, or get feedback.  This really brought to light one of the biggest hidden benefits of building an audience.

Adii Pienaar on the mistake of trying to run 2 companies at once:

Adii stressed the importance of focusing primarily on one business at a time.  He described how in the past he tried leading 2 companies simultaneously and it resulted in what he calls a failure.  But now, with PublicBeta, he has stepped back from his role leading WooThemes to focus almost exclusively on PublicBeta.

Nathan Barry on how achieved a $10k+ book launch with only a couple of blog posts:

What really stood out to me about Nathan’s story was when he talked about the lead up to the launch of his first book.  All it took was just a few high quality tutorials on his own blog, which linked to his landing page for the book, and that was how he built a pre-launch mailing list that helped him do over $10,000 in sales on the first day.  He didn’t have a massive audience at the time, but the launch was still a success.

Brennan Dunn on how he never goes for a “hard sell” in his emails:

Brennan shares only genuine, helpful, educational content to his newsletter list.  There are no hard sales.  No emails where the sole purpose is to present an “offer”.  He uses only “soft sells”, which are relevant mentions of his books and products, sometimes placed in the PS line of the email.

Pippin Williamson on throwing lots of ideas at the wall to see what sticks:

My favorite takeaway from my conversation with Pippin was this:  He throws lots of ideas at the wall and sees what sticks. This approach seems frowned upon by many in the startup community – the idea that every idea must be validated before being built. This is one of those exceptions to the rule.

And I love seeing “rules” being broken. Forget the rulebook and trust your gut and see what happens. Just do it. My kinda thinking.

Dan Norris on relying on his entrepreneur skill set when he needed it most:

This idea of entrepreneurship as a skill.  Did you guys catch the part of the interview where Dan said he was basically losing $1500 per month and he had only one month left before he wouldn’t be able to sustain it?  So what did he do?  He went and launched a brand new idea, validated and attracted paying customers.

Sure, WPCurve is a great idea, but you know what, Dan has tons of ideas and he could have made any of them work.  Why?  Because he has built his skill set as an entrepreneur, and he can carry that with him through any new idea and any new chapter in his journey.  Entrepreneurship is not about hitting on a single golden idea. It’s about knowing how to create value again and again, and Dan truly demonstrated that with his launch of WPCurve.

For those of you who have tuned into Bootstrapped Web, thank you!  If you haven’t already, you can subscribe in iTunes here and if you enjoy it, I’d appreciate a 5-star review 🙂