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🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• Currently there is more aluminum stored in landfills than in the mineral where aluminum is sourced in nature. 
• Not all landfills are created equal. Landfills near industrial areas contain more metals like steel, aluminum, and iron. 
• Jevons Paradox could be leveraged: The paradox occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, but the rate of consumption of that resource rises due to increasing demand.

Action Steps:

• Find ways to intercept potentially valuable materials before they end up in the landfill. 
• "Bank" salvaged material for future use
• Reach out to explore partnerships with existing companies like Terracycle

Links:

• https://www.algiknit.com/
• https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/

Aaron Nesser is the founder of AlgiKnit, which creates eco-conscious, renewable yarns for the circular economy.

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Action Steps:

1. Investigate current revenue split for concert venues  
2. Search for the managers/decision-makers of concerts at large venues  
3. Contact them via a cold call, email, or LinkedIn message  
4. Offer to run a trial event which you can help them presell a live stream of their upcoming concert  
5. If enough fans buy in, then produce the first event (keep a production budget of under $10K)  
6. Ask the venue to keep your equipment installed and sign them on as a partner  
7. Find more partners and offer a subscription service to fans  
8. You could offer a number of credits per month that could be used for various concerts  

Janne Tamminen is the co-founder of Howl Live, a cutting edge live concert streaming platform built for the music industry.

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Nuggets:

• Many investors who buy a business trip up over simple operational details (e.g. forgetting to renew a domain name). Michael has seen this happen time and again.

Action Steps:

1. Generate your opportunity to break into the space:
   1. Start a podcast
   2. Host an event
   3. Connect with recruiters who can source talented business managers
   4. Buy an existing business with the audience you want to serve
2. If you’ve connected with a recruiter you can understand their fee structure, add a profit margin and use this information to sell this service to your first Investor clients
3. You can begin charging a commission as soon as your make your first connection, probably 5-10%, or you can just get a testimonial and case study from the deal
4. Once your more established in the space your can start to build out your platform for connecting Business Investors and Talented Operators
5. You might reduce your commission slightly once the business requires less manpower and runs more on automation
6. One way to build your client base is to buy an existing business that has a similar audience.

Links:

• https://www.domainmagnate.com/
• https://domainmagnatecapital.com/
• The Domain Magnate Show
• The White Coat Investor

Michael Bereslavsky is the Founder and CEO of Domain Magnate, a micro private equity firm that acquires and operates online businesses.

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Nuggets:

• The next wave in creative domains is often defined by those who master the tech that disrupt what’s already being done

Action Steps:

1. Start by offering AI services that assist writers in tweaking their content (e.g. “overcome writer’s block!”)
2. Then offer a contract to some of the best writers for a publishing contract
3. Optimize not only the writing but also the marketing using AI resources
4. Eventually transition to offering some content that is entirely AI generated.

Links:

• www.kennygould.com
• https://www.instagram.com/hopcultureken
• The Brewing Cloud: A Book of Short Stories
• https://www.hopculture.com/
• https://openai.com/
• Opinion | Did a Human or a Computer Write This?
• https://booksby.ai/
• https://nextglass.co/

Kenny Gould is currently the Creative Director at Next Glass the company that bought his beer-loving culture brand, Hop Culture. He’s currently working on the Untappd Beer Festival at the Padres stadium in San Diego, which will be happening in October 2021.

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Nuggets:

• If you are entering an industry with long sales cycles, hiring a salesperson with experience and relationships in the industry can move you forward a lot quicker.
• You can leverage already approved cloud service agreements to short circuit the enterprise sales process

Action Steps:

1. You have a few avenues to pursue and each has its own first steps;
   1. Start creating your own pre-recorded training content and posting to YouTube
   2. Become a consultant (similar to what Zoom already offers)
   3. Start engaging with larger companies and be willing to endure a longer sales cycle (5-12 months)
2. Regardless of your starting point, you’ll probably want to ultimately sell services to larger companies and work towards understanding and integrating more deeply with their needs.
3. Once you are integrating with large companies, focus on beating their existing content. It will need to be less boring than competitors but also make sure that it’s boring enough to fit within company standards.

Links:

• TrackStar.ai – Predictive Credit Technology
• A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload
• The State of Video Conferencing in 2020 [50 Statistics]
• Zoom Online Event Consulting Services
• Requests for Startups

Clint Lotz is the founder of TrackStar.ai which Provides Machine Learning Technology to Lenders that Uncovers Future Borrowing Patterns Within Their Existing Data leading them to untapped revenue opportunities.

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Nuggets:

• The total addressable market for this idea is over 16 million individuals in the U.S. alone. 

Action Steps:

1. Partner with member of the community 
2. Research applicable grants 

Links:

• https://www.packupgo.com/
• https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html
• https://skift.com/2017/11/16/airbnb-buys-accessible-travel-business-accomable-in-its-latest-acquihire/
• https://www.freedomshowers.com/blog/small-business-funding-for-ada-accessibility-compliance/

Lillian Rafson is the founder of Pack Up + Go, a surprise travel agency. 

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Nuggets:

• Parenting is a secure market! Over 3.5 million births in the US and 140 million worldwide will continue each year.

Action Steps:

1. This is a great business idea for an aspiring entrepreneur without an idea but that’s nervous about supporting a growing family.
2. Start with a cohort of expectant parents and partner with a handful of high-profile child development, mindfulness and parenting specialists.
3. Aim for a subscription service that provides one-step-ahead advice on mindfulness and activities to make parenting easier, less stressful and more fun.
4. Consider a custom consulting add-on that matches parents with 1-on-1 professional consults on-demand.

Links:

• https://www.nami.ml
• The Wonder Weeks - app that tells you the "stormy" periods
• Baby Care Products Market to Touch US$ 109.13Bn by 2026

Dan Burcaw is currently Co-Founder & CEO of Nami ML, a service that helps you launch, scale, and optimize your mobile app subscription business. He's been an entrepreneur at the forefront o tech since high school. But today he's bringing us an idea about.

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Nuggets:

• Dave's Cardinal Rule: Always Be Adapting (ABA)

Action Steps:

1. Look at user feedback from poorly reviewed competitors in the app store
2. Spend only a few hundred to a few thousand dollars developing a Chrome extension 
3. Collect user feedback
4. Expand to other channels like LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter

Links:

• Kindlepreneur: Book Marketing for Self-Publishing Authors
• LinkedIn Loses Appeal Against Data Scraping Startup
• Colin Powell's 13 Rules of Leadership
• Publisher Rocket: Sell More Books and eBooks on Amazon

Dave Chesson is the founder of Kindlepreneur, which helps authors reach new levels with their book marketing. He created Kindlepreneur as a free resource with the sole goal of giving writers everything they need to take action, and see results.

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Nuggets:

• When you build a business realize that your community of clients may be more valuable than the money they give you. You can always build additional products and services that they need. But without an audience, you have no business.
• It’s okay to provide different amounts of compensation to co-founders based on their needs at a given time, but it’s also useful to start with an even share of the company.
• Communications add-ons for LinkedIn is still an underserved niche.

Action Steps:

1. Choose to focus on a very simple product first: LinkedIn Inbox integration with Gmail.
2. Create a landing page and collect emails of interested folks.
3. Connect with technical co-founder(s) (or sales and marketing co-founders if you are technical)
4. Start building with a small equal share investment from your co-founders
5. Realize you are building an audience as you gain users. Focus more on the relationships and building it than monetization and your initial idea.
6. Add features and build relationships with team members at LinkedIn to make sure you  are not stepping on their strategy and to seed the prospect of acquisition by LinkedIn at some point.
7. Grow your users and grow your features through feedback and rapid iteration.

Links:

• lemlist: Your Go-To Cold Email Software & Outreach Automation Tool
• Contact Center Software Market Size Report, 2021-2028
• Front - Customer Communication Platform | Team Email
• TechCrunch Twilio confirms it is buying Segment for $3.2B in an all-stock deal
• Paul Graham on Earnestness
• Territory Foods
• CookUnity: A Chef Collective

Guillaume is the Co-Founder and CEO of lemlist, a personalized cold email sequencing software. In 3 years, lemlist went from 0 to $8 million ARR and 10k+ customers worldwide, without any funding. His mission is to help 1,000,000 entrepreneurs to build a profitable business by 2025.

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Nuggets:

• You can often dominate a local business niche by implementing current marketing and technology (e.g. residential cleaning)
• People often get excited about new tech (drones, 3D printing, etc…) but their enthusiasm wavers before the breakthrough tech makes a sizable impact on the real world. There’s plenty of opportunity implementing tech from five years ago.

Action Steps:

1. Contact Lucid Drones and get pricing for leasing one of their cleaning drones
2. Investigate permitting in your local city
3. Pre-sell window cleanings to several property managers (they often sign yearly contracts)
4. Your selling point is that your clients will never have to talk to you again after signing up. You take window cleaning off their plate so they can focus on other things.

Links:

• MaidThis
• MaidThis Franchise
• Aurum property management is implementing drone window cleaning
• Tim Byrne Almost Live Podcast
• Don't Forget, Window Washing Is a Lot Safer Than Driving a Taxi
• Cleandrone
• How will drone window cleaning change your business? | INTERCLEAN
• Lucid Drone Tech – We build drones
• Window washing drone takes flight

Neel Parekh founded MaidThis, which helps short-term rental owners and homeowners meet their cleaning needs quickly, easily and affordably. He also founded MaidThis Franchise, which helps remote owners achieve financial independence via MaidThis.

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Nuggets:

• Plant a lot of seeds in the early stages of your business and see what grows. You may be surprised by the results.

Action Steps:

1. Sell the vision to large companies (think IBM, Google, Amazon) in order to get a sponsorship
2. Ask school teachers in your area to send you students that that are selling things to their classmates
3. Recruit entrepreneurs to mentor students, both for pay and as volunteers to test which works best.
4. Setup opportunities for students to start businesses and learn key lessons, like the nuances of how to fail toward success and how to build a support network of other entrepreneurs.

Links:

• Versus Game
• VCs Are Pouring Money Into the Wrong Education Startups
• The Thiel Fellowship
• Smart Face Masks - Way Beyond Air Quality
• Best Countries for Education | US News Best Countries

John Viti is the CEO of VersusGame, a pop-culture gaming app that lets users bet on trending topics. They've granted over 16 million in cash prizes to over 7 million players. VersusGame is a global entertainment pop culture gaming app where users can put money on trending topics about celebrities, pop culture, sports, entertainment, food, and more. This app is the first of its kind to bring power to the masses and allow consumers to capitalize on their knowledge of mainstream culture. Since its launch in 2019, VersusGame has grown significantly, with over $16 Million in cash prizes ($4 Million of that during the “COVID-19 Era”) to more than 7 million players.

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Nuggets:

• Startups like Uber and GreenPal succeeded by giving the common person a top-tier experience

Action Steps:

1. Get a job as a concierge in a luxury hotel and note the ingredients essential to a smooth, positive and remarkable check in experience
2. Discover ways to automate the most remarkable check in experiences. You could implement an app that senses location, includes pre recorded audio and video content, and tightly coordinates concierge behaviors.
3. Partner with some mid range hotels, get paid as a consultant while testing your idea within their ecosystem. Sell them on the fact that customer satisfaction can dramatically be increased with lower wait times: a 5 minute wait to check-in lowers guest satisfaction by 50%
4. Create a metric like lowering check-in times just 30 seconds and raising customer satisfaction to five stars

Links:

• GreenPal
• How Check-In Wait Times Impact Hotel Guest Satisfaction

Bryan Clayton is CEO and cofounder of GreenPal an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local lawn care professionals. 

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Nuggets:

• Aside from the hype, there are many smart people excited about the practical potential of blockchain and NFTs
• Steveblank.com offers an incredible resource for entrepreneurs
• There are multi-billion dollar opportunities for companies that help crypto “cross the chasm,” making it more accessible to mainstream audiences

Action Steps:

1. Get your own crypto security and succession plan in order
2. Stay up to date on the latest developments in estate planning and password management as it applies to crypto assets
3. Use a site like aytm.com to “Ask Your Target Market” about what type of product will serve them best.
4. Consider a relatively lightweight solution to digital estate planning (e.g. set up smart contracts that automatically distribute assets to your family if you don’t log in every six months)
5. There could be various niches within this broader category to build businesses in.

Links:

• http://edgeofnft.com/
• https://wearecanopy.com/
• https://steveblank.com/
• Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes
• Wallet Recovery Services
• https://safehaven.io/
• AYTM Market Research: Online Market Research
• Territory Foods | Healthy Meal Delivery

Jeff Kelley is a serial entrepreneur, investor, creator, and graduate of West point with a Yale MBA. Josh Kriger is a serial entrepreneur from Boston now staying warm in SoCal who has launched and consulted with businesses across a variety of industries.

Jeff and Josh co-founded Territory Foods, a national ready-to-eat prepared meal delivery company utilizing a unique network of distributed chefs. They also founded Canopy, a sustainability-focused apparel company that connects fans with what they love through collectible interchangeable patches.

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Nuggets:

• Successful businesses are incredibly focused. This often manifests as simplicity.
• When you’ve got high volume you can negotiate credit card fees down to 1%

Action Steps:

1. Contact political candidates and pitch them on the benefits of a more transparent fundraising and spending platform
2. Be simple with your strategy. Create a simple platform to collect donations and a simple ledger of categories politicians must report on.
3. Take 5-10% of the money raised through your platform
4. Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be

Links:

• SkinX Funding Platform
• Nicole Guerrieri Loftus - Founder & CEO - SkinX
• GiveWell | Charity Reviews and Research
• Blueprint: your home for strategic political giving
• WinRed Pricing
• Political advertising on Google
• HR1 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): For the People Act of 2021

Nicole Loftus is a seasoned entrepreneur who has previously made it to #8 on Inc 500’s fastest growing companies. She’s now built SkinX, a tech-enabled ecosystem that is ready to launch and get every American in the game investing in entrepreneurs, innovators and job creators.

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Nuggets:

• There’s no need to partner with a developer if you haven’t already built a relationship.
• Agencies encounter great app ideas all the time but don’t have the bandwidth to pursue them.
• Hire the most expensive resource you can afford.
• Shopify is rapidly expanding their API access; now is a great time to build an app there.

Action Steps:

1. Search Reddit, Quora, Facebook groups, etc… for pain points from Shopify store owners
2. Speak to Shopify agency owners to collect more pain points
3. Wireframe a solution
4. Follow Shopify’s free app development to learn to build your solution
5. (If you’re non-technical,) find a cofounder that “you would marry” and pay as much as you can afford

Links:

• Electric Eye
• Honest Ecommerce
• GuruHotel
• CartHook
• Charge Me Later

Chase Clymer is the Co-founder at Electric Eye where he and his team create Shopify-powered sales machines from strategic design, development, and marketing decisions. He is also the host of Honest Ecommerce, a weekly podcast where we provide online store owners with honest, actionable advice to increase their sales and grow their business.

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Nuggets:

• If an idea is doomed to fail, it’s best to find that out as soon as possible. You don’t want to get stuck in the uncertain middle ground

Action Steps:

1. Research what happened to defunct trip planning apps (WorldMate, Google Trips, Kayak Trip Huddle)
2. Talk with unsatisfied users of TripIt
3. Create programmatic landing pages for “Napa trip itinerary” etc...

Links:

• Topic: The Best SEO Content Optimization Tool
• Air Travel Forecast: When Will Airlines Recover from Covid-19?
• US Travel Answer Sheet
• WorldMate's Retreat Leaves Itinerary-Organizing Rivals in Dogfight
• How I Started A $450K/Month Travel Agency That Curates Surprise
• Guruhotel: official hotel websites optimized for ecommerce
• Guruhotel on Indie Hackers

Nikhil Aitharaju is co-founder of Topic, a software which helps writers research and create search optimized content. Their AI analyzes the top results in Google, extracts key topics to cover, and provides an interactive editor to allow writers to grade their work. Topic is great for those writers looking to get actionable suggestions to drive higher traffic and get real results.

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Nuggets:

• The competitor software you create for early adopters may appeal by solving a specific complaint they have about the dominant solution. Later other’s will join just to join the crowd.

Action Steps:

1. Investigate why people log in to LinkedIn; prioritize those functions in the new platform
2. Conversely, research what are the biggest complaints people have about LinkedIn
3. Research economics of Steemit
4. Choose a niche hungry for connection
5. Experiment with the incentive structure and pivot as necessary

Links:

• clarity.fm
• QuickMail
• Steemit

Jeremy Chatelaine a software developer that quit his job in 2014 and started his own successful SaaS business from scratch. That platform is QuickMail.io, a 7 figure business and a leading platform for cold email automation today.

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Nuggets:

• You can license an expensive domain name, if you need it for SEO or marketing but don’t have the capital in your business yet.
• If a client takes advantage of you or your idea gets stolen consider the odds of it happening again before wasting time on reparation or retaliation.

Action Steps:

1. Brainstorm incentive structures with a behavioral economist
2. Wireframe the app and shop it to JetBlue, Delta, etc…
3. Research economics around credit card companies’ partnership with airlines
4. Search for existing flight tracking apps. Offer to buy one for cheap. Add this idea to it.

Links:

• Swag.com
• Air Travel Forecast: When Will Airlines Recover from Covid-19?
• thoughtbot
• Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast
• Chad Pytel on Run With It
• Sani Abdul-Jabbar on Run With It
• [Inside the Business] AwardWallet with Alexi Vereschaga
• Track frequent flyer reward programs and plan your travel
• The Man Who Turned Credit-Card Points Into an Empire

Jeremy Parker is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a serial Entrepreneur. He is CEO and co-founder of swag.com. He has also successfully exited a startup called Tipped media.

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Nuggets:

• Being new to an industry can be an advantage. It allows you to follow a template without getting distracted.

Action Steps:

1. Target mid- to top-tier writers and offer to create a high-end podcast for them
2. Court former clients of Book in a Box as your clients and create a success story from one of them.
3. Contact business organizations like YPO and present lectures on “How to Start a Podcast” and/or become their preferred referral partner
4. Create a basic DIY version down the line

Links:

• VezTek - Hire Freelance Developers from the Top 5%
• Podcast in a Box by Podcast Press
• Scribe Media | The Leader in Professional Publishing
• How Much Does It Cost To Make A Hit Song?

Sani Abdul-Jabbar is co-founder at VezTek USA an innovation consulting firm that partners with smart entrepreneurs to get great ideas off the ground.

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Nuggets:

• The USDA offers grants and special loans for first-time farmers
• You can often succeed in an old industry (e.g. restaurants, hotels) by simply following modern best practices
• Don’t underestimate the value of employing amazing people in the hospitality industry

Action Steps:

1. Research best practices for starting a hotel
2. Search for employees in the hospitality industry
3. See if you can get a beginner farmer grant or loan
4. Locate existing farms and offer to install cabins on their property
5. Locate existing Farmhouse rentals on AirBNB and offer to optimize their business model

Links:

• Dominic Monkhouse: Business Coaching
• ‎The Melting Pot with Dominic Monkhouse
• F**k Plan B: How to scale your technology business faster and achieve Plan A
• Cabana - Mobile Hotels
• Avrame
• The Road to Less Stupid
• Kiss the Ground
• Featherdown Farms
• AirDNA
• The Ruby Slipper Cafe
• USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher Loans

Dominic Monkhouse is a business coach, scale up expert, host of the Melting Pod podcast and author of F**k Plan B: How to scale your technology business faster and achieve plan A.

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Nuggets:

• “Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.” -Charlie Munger

Action Steps:

1. Determine what niche you are going to sell in first
2. Optimal co-founders might be content and SEO experts
3. Build an in-house SEO team 
4. Fundraise
5. Get people on the site through advertising the site itself and the products
6. Develop the audience, then pitch vendors to partner with you
7. Expand beyond your initial niche

Links:

• Purple Orange PR
• Visably - Improve your brand's visibility in search
• Chris Dickey on LinkedIn
• uberzon
• rebatekey
• outdoorgearlab
• US ecommerce grows 44.0% in 2020

Chris Dickey is the founder of Purple Orange PR and Visably, a new software to manage your brand’s visibility in search.

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Nuggets:

• Content creators aren’t satisfied with social media platforms owning their distribution channels

Action Steps:

1. Partner with a Twitter influencer looking to monetize their brand through email marketing (search for users recommending Mailbrew).
2. Presell the product to validate it.
3. Integrate between Twitter and Mailchimp. Look to a service like Mailbrew for inspiration on how to deliver content via email.
4. Augment your product with add-ons that offer templates and assistance with email marketing.
5. You might even partner with third party brands and mimic the “dynamic ad insertion” model of podcasts within email.

Links:

• Exploding Topics
• Mailbrew
• MailerLite
• Stackla
• Social Board

Josh Howarth is the co-founder of Exploding Topics, an analytics service that surfaces rapidly growing topics before they take off.

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Nuggets:

• Almost half (40-60%) of the overhead is creating and selling carbon offsets is legal compliance, accounting, auditing
• “The world’s first trillionaire will be made in climate change.” - Chamath Palihapitiya
• Climate tech investing is growing 5X faster than overall VC from 2013-2019 ($60 billion of early-stage capital)

Action Steps:

1. Investigate how Nori works and learn from their mistakes
2. Research the current costs and details involved in carbon credits
3. Decide on one niche of carbon offsets (e.g. planting trees) and pair that with one industry with easy to measure emissions (e.g. airlines)
4. Determine the economics around trading climate on the blockchain - what would make people want to do it?
5. Learn the ropes by contacting businesses potentially interested in offsetting carbon and helping to facilitate as a consultant
6. Raise an ICO
7. Get involved in addressing climate change any way you can - it’s a giant problem that will take many smart people to solve

Links:

• Nori
• tristanpollock.com
• Eco Coin
• Podcast: Reversing Climate Change
• Podcast: Carbon Removal Newsroom
• Air Mining
• SRECs: Understanding Solar Renewable Energy Credits
• Carbon Fee and Dividend Policy and FAQs

Tristan Pollock is an entrepreneur, founder, and startup investor, among many things and is currently building cto.ai. He has invested 30 million dollars into over 200 startups.

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Nuggets:

• You need some protectable “secret sauce” if selling components in a big industry (like flying cars). Otherwise, manufacturers will continually drive down your pricing by forcing you to compete with copycats for their business

• Creating networking events can launch you from novice to industry expert rapidly and provide a foundation for a powerful business.

Action Steps:

1. Begin with a profitable strategy that sells shovels to the miners. E.g. start by hosting and organizing flying car conventions so you can meet key players, understand the industry, build your future team and build your future strategy.
2. Aim high for your first clients. Court wealthy individuals who want to make aspirational purchases.

Links:

• Atakama | Multi-Factor File Encryption Software
• Larry Page’s flying cars
• Ford Flivver
• When Will Airplanes Be Electric?
• World eVTOL Aircraft Directory
• The Interchange Podcast: Electric Aviation Is Coming

Daniel H. Gallancy is the CEO of Atakama, a NYC based software company and uses his deep experience with blockchain tech to help companies manage security.

Love a part of the show? Did we get something completely wrong? Let us know at update@runwithit.fm.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• We’re again reminded that you don’t need to solve the problem for everyone. Different people will have different goal setting tools & tactics that resonate with them. Helping a small percentage of those struggling with goal setting could still be massively valuable.

Action Steps:

1. Research habit and goal experts and offer to partner with them on development of a goal achievement app
2. Pursue the enterprise market: contact sales teams and offer to help them meet their sales quotas for free. Get a case study and charge for the next team.
3. Start by shadowing one sales team that has sales objectives of $50K+ per month. Ask for a token $50 per month to validate the app value.
4. After a month or two of noting how objectives get set and achieved and what leads to failure and success, document the systems that seem to help and start to implement them. 
5. Raise a couple hundred thousand in investment to fund development of your basic app, test and iterate with your existing group and add 4 more.
6. Raise 1M more and launch to a wider audience within a year or two.

Links:

• Virtual Assistants for entrepreneurs and professionals
• The Hard Work Myth - the new book that explains why working harder is a waste of time | How to achieve more, without working harder | Timeetc
• Spar
• Stickk
• Coach.me | Instant Coaching for Any Goal.
• Noom: Stop dieting. Get life-long results.
• Blogger Maneesh Sethi hires woman to slap him when he procrastinates

Barnaby Lashbrooke founded Time etc in 2007 with the idea of giving entrepreneurs the help they need to be successful without the cost and hassle of employing a full-time assistant. He is also the author of The Hard Work Myth which uncovers how the world's top entrepreneurs achieve so much, despite working less than the average business owner.

Love a part of the show? Did we get something completely wrong? Let us know at update@runwithit.fm.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• Great businesses often start with an urgent demand that people are asking to pay for. You just have to notice it and double down on the niche.

• As baby boomers retire, there is a big opportunity in modernizing “sweaty startups”

Action Steps:

1. Contact the owner of the Urban Lumber Co and see if he is interested in franchising his model
2. Become a member of the Urban Wood Network for $50 to learn how to build an urban wood business
3. Network with the local wood economy and become an intermediary between lumber collectors, furniture makers and firewood users in homes and restaurants.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• The Sketch Effect
• @williamcwarren
• William Warren’s personal website
• Ironwood Mills Phoenix | Ironwood Mills
• @michaeltoret
• iDry Kilns
• Woodpreneur Podcast
• Joe’s Premium Firewood on Youtube
• Urban Wood Network
• The Expensive Water Bottle with Jeff Proctor

William Warren is an entrepreneur, illustrator, and writer who has spent his career using visuals to help communicate ideas in an effective and enjoyable way. He is the Founder and CEO of The Sketch Effect, a Visual Communication agency that helps make ideas understandable and actionable through animation, live event sketching and graphic design. The Sketch Effect’s client list includes top-tier brands such as Marriott, Walmart, Microsoft, Chick-fil-A, P&G, and Delta in addition to premier consultancies including Boston Consulting Group, Bain, Ernst & Young and Accenture. The Sketch Effect has sketched for thought leaders such as Steve Wozniak, Brene Brown, Malala Yousafzai, Sheryl Sandberg, Peyton Manning, and more. William lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife Monica and young kids, Liam and Gracie.

Michael Toret has been a professional carpenter and woodworker for over 10 years. Most recently, he’s built unique furniture and household items out of large live edge slabs of wood at Ironwood Mills, an urban sawmill in Phoenix, AZ.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• Out of work travel and tourism specialists in vacation spots can be hired cheaply to build a business
• You can build a 300K / yr business starting with a spreadsheet and a private slack group
• If you think that buying property in other countries would be a headache, you’re right.

Action Steps:

1. Contact Pieter Levels of Nomad List and pitch him a collaboration on this higher-end service.
2. Smaller travel services are hurting. Pitch someone like “Scott’s Cheap Flights” a JV to help bolster his income.
3. Get to one customer and do things that don’t scale to iterate on the product itself. Word of mouth marketing would be super effective.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Under30Experiences: Group Travel for Young Adults
• The Millennial Travel Guidebook
• Nomad List
• Selena’s Hostels
• Run With It Episode 23 with Jules Schroeder
• Live Different Podcast with Matt Wilson

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• Simple tip to increase your meeting effectiveness: stop 5 minutes early and ask “who will do what by when?”

• Generally easier to sell to a profit center than a cost center (listen to Aline Lerner episode for more on this)

• The hard part of this idea is building something users will stick with. Focus more on reducing friction and making the app a joy to use and worry less about back-end bells and whistles.

• Look for teachable moments within an industry as the foundation of content marketing for your business or even for the foundation of your app’s functionality.

• Note-taking is a necessary step in many industries (e.g. financial service, corporate governance) and non-compliance with note taking can come with serious penalties.

Action Steps:

1. Decide on the niche you want to serve. Will you go broad and seek a large user base for a low LTV per user or aim for less users in a more profitable niche (e.g. lawyers, financial services)
2. Start with a simple integration that triggers emails to the user 10-15 minutes before the meetings in their calendar. The user can reply with their notes. Store them in an organized database for review.
3. As your user base grows you can add premium features, like integrating with CRM or other note tracking app.
4. If you have niched down you can customize your app to serve your chosen niche. For example create custom notifications and note templates that facilitate note taking for corporate compliance.
5. A healthy long term vision might aim for 50,000 users at about $5 per month, grossing around $3 million a year in revenue.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Less Annoying CRM | Simple Contact Management for Small Businesses
• Scheduling Platform for Business | Cronofy the scheduling experts
• Measuring the ROI of Hiring Funnels with Aline Lerner
• Nathan Latka on Buying and Monetize Chrome extensions
• Notion
• Market size of the growing note-taking industry

Tyler King is the Co-founder and CEO of Less Annoying CRM. He's a proud bootstrapper and is passionate about starting and growing sustainable businesses for the long term.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• It’s inevitable that micro-mobility apps consolidate in the next 5-10 years. Look to examples from other industries (e.g. hotels and airlines) to see that this can be done.

Action Steps:

1. Partner with smaller players who are running scooter sharing services
2. Bring clients to them through your app and take a percentage of revenues
3. Move on to creating partnerships with larger players once you have built a foundation
4. Consider ways to add value through this aggregated service (e.g. pay $10/month for someone to bring a scooter to your location)
5. You might even entertain a bigger long-term vision... Facilitate a future in which transportation is seen as a utility. This business could eventually integrate public transit and other ride sharing platforms and incorporate government subsidies.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Soundtrack Your Brand: Background music that works
• Scooter app wars begin, and Lime isn't happy about it
• How the novel coronavirus is speeding the scooter apocalypse
• Uber reports $2.9 billion quarterly loss during pandemic

Ola Sars is a Stockholm based serial entrepreneur active in the music-tech space.

He is the Founder and CEO of Soundtrack Your Brand, the world's fastest growing music-platform for B2B, which he co-founded together with Spotify back in 2014.

Before founding Soundtrack, he was the co-founder and COO of Beats Music, acquired by Apple and transformed into Apple Music, as well as the co-founder of Pacemaker, the world's first DJ driven music platform.

Ola’s driving force behind his repeated efforts in transforming the music market comes from his conviction that music is undervalued as an art-form and that the music industry offers significant opportunity for value improvement and growth. Through his multiple start-ups in the music-space, he has focused on unlocking that intrinsic VALUE, both in B2C and now in B2B.

Ola has been featured in Rolling Stone, Billboard, Bloomberg and is a regular in music and technology publications.

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Action Steps:

1. Show validation through initial users in a small, local market. 
2. Leverage social networks as early distribution channels. 

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• The Founder's Manual

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• Launching a great product can also build your email list

Action Steps:

Podcast Dashboard

1. Start by creating an info and/or coaching product to help podcasters manage and grow their shows
2. Understand the pain points podcasters are experiencing
3. Create software to solve said pain points (listen to episode 15 with David Hauser for more details)

Teach programming to start a business

1. Find the type of programming jobs that are boring to experienced coders, but still valuable to end users
2. Develop a systematized approach for novices to learn and deliver upon this type of work

Bundle indie creator content

1. Find independent creators who have a sizeable audience but aren’t huge; want them to both benefit from and contribute to your launch list
2. Pitch these creators
3. Consult with JV and Affiliate specialists

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Indie Hackers: Work Together to Build Profitable Online Businesses
• @csallen
• Humble Bundle
• Sahil Lavingia on the Indie Hackers Podcast
• codecademy

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• This idea is so exciting because it’s a platform that expands both sides of a marketplace; it makes it easier for fitness instructors to get their content out, and easier for people to work out remotely
• Don’t forget about the incredible power of puns in branding and marketing.

Action Steps:

1. Create a business overview/plan including the product, points of differentiation, value proposition, etc...
2. Create a financial model with some basic assumptions to ensure that the idea will be profitable
3. Validate product/market fit (before spending serious money or seeking investment dollars)
4. Create a basic landing page with the value proposition and run Facebook ads to it
5. Use the data collected from ads to inform and iterate on the financial model

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Sheets & Giggles
• Startup Financial Modeling via Startup Rocket
• ATHLEAN-X
• Six Pack Promise
• Nike Run Club App

Colin McIntosh is Founder & CEO of Sheets & Giggles, a pun-based, eco-friendly bedding brand that launched in May 2018 on Indiegogo with their first product: lyocell bed sheets made from eucalyptus trees. In their first 6 months in business, they received over 6,000 orders and nearly half a million dollars in revenue. They won first place at Denver Startup Week 2018, have since gone on to make and raise millions of dollars in revenue and venture capital.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• If you notice many open-source projects with lots of followers on a single problem, it’s probably a good opportunity; open-source projects are rarely as good as those with commercial resources

Action Steps:

1. Build a list of SaaS companies using Shopify
2. Search for Shopify apps that enable SaaS companies to use Shopify; consider buying them to jumpstart your customer base
3. Contact Venture Capital organizations and pitch them on partnering
4. Engage with aspiring SaaS founders on sites like Indie Hackers and offer this service with the caveat that you plan to productize it

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• OneSignal
• Shopify's Tobi Lütke on Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman
• Connecting Independent Software Vendors and CRMs with Steve Benson
• Can Shopify Compete With Amazon Without Becoming Amazon?
• The Toaster Project

George Deglin is Co-Founder & CEO of OneSignal, the most widely used mobile/web engagement platform. With over a decade of experience engineering software products, George was previously CTO for Uversity, a college social networking startup backed by Founders Fund and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• You’re not going to end homelessness worldwide. Don’t do nothing because you can’t do everything.
• Sometimes a non-profit model opens more doors for those who want to invest in a project.

Action Steps:

1. Interview homeless people, social workers, and shelter employees to qualitatively understand this problem
2. Read The State of Homelessness in America to quantitatively understand this problem
3. Understand sources of funding, like HUD in the US or benefactors that have overcome homelessness themselves.
4. Contact the founder of Samaritan and ask to pick his brain
5. Learn how typical homeless shelters are financed
6. Start small - determine how to best help a handful of people

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Simplero
• The State of Homelessness in America
• Samaritan
• Kiva
• How Not to Die (startup advice by Paul Graham)
• Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1 by Neale Donald Walsch

Calvin Correli is the founder of Simplero, the all-in-one platform for online educators. He started it in 2009 to run his own business of teaching spiritual tools, like belief, emotions, love, and life purpose, to other entrepreneurs. It has since grown into a multi-million dollar business serving entrepreneurs all over the world, on a mission to simplify lives and raise the level of consciousness on the planet.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• If you have a regular job, your employer might love you starting a business that serves the company
• Build credibility on the internet with people you might like to serve before you’ll need it

Action Steps:

1. Build trust on the internet by creating helpful, intermediate to advanced content for SaaS business owners.
2. Build list of $1M+ revenue businesses
3. Contact owners offering to split-test their pricing pages
4. Once it’s clear your strategy adds to the bottom line, start charging a percentage, perhaps 10-50%
5. This is a service that might make itself obsolete to a given client within a year, so build a pipeline of other clients or offer other services after getting a foot in the door.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Tuple
• thoughtbot
• Art of Product Podcast

Ben Orenstein co-founded Tuple, a multimillion dollar company that allows coders to work simultaneously on a project remotely.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• If Aline were building another business, she would avoid selling to a cost center rather than a profit center

• When pricing your products and services inquire what your prospects’ discretionary budget is and price packages within that to get your foot in the door more easily.

Action Steps:

1. Reach out to engineering managers that pay Lever or Greenhouse at least 5 figures a year.
2. Offer consulting to companies promising to analyze their hiring data and optimize their process
3. Try to price your services within their discretionary budget to avoid facing the approval process involving a chain of command.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Greenhouse
• Lever
• Jobvite

Aline Lerner is the founder and CEO of interviewing.io, an anonymous technical recruiting platform where companies like Facebook, Uber, Dropbox, and Snap have hired great software engineers.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” - Lao Tzu
• How stressed can you really be about losing some money if you planned on giving it all away anyway?

Action Steps:

1. Brainstorm a prototype both alone and also collaborating with designers
2. Consider partnering with
   1. A successful inventor like Dyson
   2. Someone with an existing following (e.g. have previously launched successful design concepts via Kickstarter).
3. Create a Kickstarter to test the idea
4. Create funnels.
5. Create Instagram ad and funnel to Kickstarter.
6. Take a successful Kickstarter campaign to investors and plan production
7. Partner with Influencers.
8. When you find a marketing strategy with consistent conversion rate double down on it.
9. Design your product and your marketing to take advantage of virality. (make it highly remarkable and shareable).

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Acadium - Kickstart your digital marketing career for free
• Moe Abbas’ Instagram

Moe Abbás is the CEO and co-founder of Acadium, a platform that matches digital marketing apprentices with business owners. They’re disrupting the education system by providing relevant and free training opportunities to apprentices while helping business owners grow at very little cost. Moe started from nothing and bootstrapped himself from selling landscaping services door to door as a teenager to growing his Housing Contracting Company to 10 million dollar a year by his mid 20s. And now he’s building Acadium, and changing the future of education..

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1. Look within your own network and find a jeweler to partner with
2. Run Google Ads to develop brand awareness
3. Reach out to local influencers to develop a partnership

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Society Service
• LabTika
• Can You Tell Which Diamonds Are Lab Grown?
• Lab-Grown Diamond Jewelry | What are Synthetic Diamonds? | GIA

Marike Van der Velden is a Dutch entrepreneur who runs Society Service, a high-end escort service. 

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• It’s easier to pivot after starting than to get started, so just start.
• Management tip: to avoid over or under managing, work with your direct report to get started and then let them drive their own ship.
• Move fast and don’t look back: things that you think are important early on will seem trivial later so don’t sweat.
• Being a great curator of content can be just as valuable as creating content, especially in an increasingly noisy information space.

Action Steps:

1. Start with a very minimal module (1 week) of management training
2. Incorporate this into blog or newsletter as content for readers to apply
3. Consult a lawyer to check whether it’s ok to share curated ideas in a paid newsletter
4. Target middle-level companies of 50 employees or less to begin

Links:

• Laudable
• The Long-Term Effects of Management and Technology Transfer: Evidence from the US Productivity Program
• Google re:Work
• Lesson Plans as a Product with Rob Fitzpatrick
• Looking For Syllabus 2.0
• We Need a New Science of Progress

Angela Ferrante is the founder and CEO of Laudable, a startup making it easier (and more affordable) to create video content by doing it all remotely. Laudable is out to kill the boring B2B marketing archetype (cough, the PDF case study) and bring human stories to life through video. Angela was previously the founding CMO at Sparkfund, a venture-backed energy technology company. Before Sparkfund, she started the alternative energy group at a Boston-based insurance company.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• Don’t ask friends and family whether they like your idea. If they’re good friends, they’ll lie to you. Instead, ask them about their personal experiences.
• Listen with an open mind when hearing things you think you already know. Oftentimes, there’s much more depth to the idea than you’ve internalized.

Action Steps:

1. Answer Joe’s guiding questions to understand what you really want from a business
2. Choose your niche based on your interest and connections
3. Talk with 30 members of that niche to understand their pain points
4. Brainstorm solutions and ask prospects to pre-pay for them

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Ajax Union
• Joe’s LinkedIn profile (mention Run With It and he will accept your connection)
• Evyrgreen (LinkedIn lead generation)
• Lesson Plans as a Product with Rob Fitzpatrick
• Getting Things Done
• Think and Grow Rich

Joe Apfelbaum is the CEO of digital marketing agency Ajax Union. He is a public speaker, certified Google Trainer, and published business author. Joe enjoys speaking and writing about a broad range of business topics in his seminars, webinars and articles. Joe is the host of the popular podcast CEO Mojo and the producer of GrowTime.tv. In 2016 Joe was named the King of Kings County Brooklyn for his contribution to the business community in Brooklyn. Joe is proud of all his accomplishments, but most of all he is proud of his beautiful amazing kids.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• The most important asset an entrepreneur has is her persistence; don’t start until you’re ready to “sleep like a baby” (stay up all night crying)

Action Steps:

1. Identify the problem
   1. read US Department of Justice Study on Identity Theft
   2. understand where the $25 billion per year losses are going (i.e who is getting hit the most)
   3. speak with these organizations to learn more about the challenges they are facing
2. Develop the solution
   1. create a business plan of how one would solve this problem
   2. close the gaps needed to achieve this solution
3. Persist

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Avail
• U.S. Department of Justice Study on Identity Theft
• Black Mirror episode White Christmas
• Credit Karma
• Stripe

Ryan Coon is the co-founder & CEO of Avail, an all-in-one software solution designed for do-it-yourself (DIY) landlords that is used by more than 600,000 landlords and tenants across the United States.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• If you desire power, you shouldn’t pursue it (paraphrased from Plato’s Republic)

Action Steps:

1. Create a marketing plan for growing Roscioli Wine Club and community.wine

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Roscioli Wine Club
• Wine Tasting Rome
• community.wine
• The Flywheel Effect
• Gregg Popovich is a wine connoisseur

Lindsay came to Italy 5 years ago when she was studying wine in the US, came to Rimessa Roscioli to do Alessandro's wine tasting, left in awe, fell in love in every sense did a U turn to get back.  She now is a partner in the business and manages the Roscioli wine club along with partners Alessandro and Mattia.  

Alessandro Pepe has done it all - documentaries, theater, opened multiple wine bars in Dublin then returned back to Rome and ultimately was the mastermind behind Rimessa Roscioli, a wine bar and restaurant in Rome, and the created the Roscioli Wine Club and Community.wine.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

Nuggets:

• Pick a business that you can grit through
• Sometimes grit is less intense and more zen. A reserved but committed approach can help you maintain energy on your project for the long haul.

Action Steps:

1. Create a simplified Process Flow Diagram (PFD) for how recycling is done today
2. Research values of each stream in the PFD
3. Target the points at which you can amplify the most value.
4. Incorporate some hard numbers in your research. Who pays for raw recyclable material, how much do they pay, and why?
5. Research companies that incorporate recycled materials in their products or packaging. Find out the price points they pay. How do they make it profitable?
6. Start a small local project where committed recyclers can contribute to special recycling containers and be tracked and get credit for their contributions.
7. Raise some funding on the merit of the idea to test feasibilities. “Do good” projects like this may attract funders who strive to make a difference and care less about short term profitability.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• JustReachOut (Dmitry’s PR connection company)
• Criminally Prolific (Dmitry’s personal website)
• Terry Gross interview with Kate O’Neill
• Allbirds (more sustainable shoes)
• Pela (eco-friendly phone cases)
• Method (eco-friendly soap)
• Recycle More E-Waste with Anders Ankarlid
• A Good Company

Dmitry Dragilev is the founder of JustReachOut- a platform which has helped 5000+ brands and small businesses pitch journalists and get featured in press all on their own without the help of PR firms.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• A Software as a Service (SaaS) needs to be so easy your grandma could use it
• If you’re in a fear mindset, make a plan. No matter how great the plan is it will help you get into action, which is a much better state.
• If you want your business to grow, expect your marketing budget to expand ahead of growth. A stable marketing budget reflects a stagnant business.

Action Steps:

1. Start with a plan. Understand the basics of why and how this business would work before moving forward.
2. Create a mock up by getting bids from UI designers.
3. Invest in creating a product that you can launch to a small group of enthusiastic clients.
4. Aim to use your first clients as evangelists that can spread the word to others on the benefits of the product. Create compelling case studies and document customer stories.
5. Once you’ve dialed the product in and garnered effusive praise from your evangelists, start selling to other business owners.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• JB Kellogg’s Website
• Marketing360 (Madwire’s marketing platform for small businesses)
• Paul Graham’s Do Things That Don’t Scale
• Ray Dalio’s Principles

JB Kellogg is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Madwire® which he started when he was 28 years old and, with the help of a championship team, grew the company to over 100MM+ in revenue and 500+ employees in under 10 years.

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• The first step is often to build your self belief and overcome your fears
• U.S. business travel is a massive market ($1.6 trillion); business travelers took 462 million trips in 2013

Action Steps:

1. Find a similar product and try to sell it to one of your appropriate connections—a frequent traveler—using the marketing and branding you intend to ultimately use.
2. Get feedback via forums that business travelers use; ask what they think about the shower experience.
3. Connect with an engineer on Upwork and hire them to design a prototype
4. Utilize a Kickstarter or landing page to fundraise and test out your marketing ideas. Try mimicking a humorous & successful brand like Dollar Shave Club.
5. After proving and tweaking the concept, build a larger market through giveaways, social media and influencer marketing (e.g. trade a tool for reviews or photos of influencers using it).
6. Settle on a price point at which it will be “impossible to say no.”
7. Develop more extensive distribution channels and make your way to airport gift shops and luggage retailers.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• The Creator Mindset
• nirbashan.com

Nir Bashan is a world-renowned creativity expert. He has taught thousands of leaders and individuals around the globe how to harness the power of creativity to improve profitability, increase sales, improve customer service and ultimately create more meaning in their work.   Nir has spent the last two decades working on a formula to codify creativity.  

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• This idea is so exciting because it’s a platform that expands both sides of a marketplace; it makes it easier for fitness instructors to get their content out, and easier for people to work out remotely
• Don’t forget about the incredible power of puns in branding and marketing.

Action Steps:

1. Create a business overview/plan including the product, points of differentiation, value proposition, etc...
2. Create a financial model with some basic assumptions to ensure that the idea will be profitable
3. Validate product/market fit (before spending serious money or seeking investment dollars)
4. Create a basic landing page with the value proposition and run Facebook ads to it
5. Use the data collected from ads to inform and iterate on the financial model

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Sheets & Giggles
• Startup Financial Modeling via Startup Rocket
• ATHLEAN-X
• Six Pack Promise
• Nike Run Club App

Colin McIntosh is Founder & CEO of Sheets & Giggles, a pun-based, eco-friendly bedding brand that launched in May 2018 on Indiegogo with their first product: lyocell bed sheets made from eucalyptus trees. In their first 6 months in business, they received over 6,000 orders and nearly half a million dollars in revenue. They won first place at Denver Startup Week 2018, have since gone on to make and raise millions of dollars in revenue and venture capital.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• James Dyson approached incumbent vacuum manufacturers with his idea for a bagless vacuum cleaner. They shot him down because “they sell bags”
• Even if your business is starting small, imagine the pitfalls you may encounter if it must rapidly scale.
• Be obsessed with your customers. It will arise from natural curiosity and even a bit of natural insecurity.

Action Steps:

1. Find co-founders who complement your skill set; can save a ton of money over hiring everything out in the beginning
2. Talk with home printer users to learn what matters most to them and how you can service them better than incumbents; build a list of potential customers from these conversations
3. Create a Kickstarter campaign to presell the idea to your list
4. Get a better printer designed and prototyped
5. Find a manufacturer who will make your product
6. Raise money as needed to fund manufacturing (that will likely be the expensive part of this idea)

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Built to Sell
• The Automatic Customer
• Everyone’s favorite Office Space printer scene
• RV Snap Pad
• Kent’s LinkedIn

Kent Wilson is the co-founder and CMO of RV Snap Pad  He is in charge of all key growth marketing strategies and tactics, such as conversion rate optimization, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and brand messaging. 

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• There is a rich “non-adulting” economy wherein you can make money helping the continually youthful avoid or manage actual adult take so they can focus on other stuff.
• Homeowners typically spend 1-4% of their home cost on maintenance every year
• The existence of products like “Home Warranties” demonstrates a need for homeowner support for caring for their home.

Action Steps:

1. Decide on what basic tasks you can start with.
2. Find out what contractors charge for the tasks on your list.
3. Create revenue projections.
4. Decide on what your company’s fee would be: 15-30%?
5. Piece the technical aspect together.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Dawn’s Light Media
• Money Plane
• Jason’s LinkedIn profile
• jasoncherubini.com

Jason Cherubini is the founder of Seraphim Associates International, a management consulting firm focusing on technology based startups, and a founding partner of Dawn's Light, a media production and financing company. He has held multiple faculty appointments in the United States and Europe, and is an avid proponent of the EdTech industry.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Most of the tax code is there to help citizens save money by incentivizing behaviors that would benefit our society

Action Steps:

1. Find experts to partner with who are already providing advanced tax strategies for their clients
   1. industry conferences
   2. authors
   3. forums
   4. ask business owners for recommendations
2. Be willing to pay for high-end tax strategy and accounting specialists on your team
3. Bootstrap from a simple system that implements simple, cheap, accessible technologies like Asana, Artable, and basic CRMs to create a client flow.
4. Aim for ~$5-6K annual average customer value
5. Scale to 100 customers
   1. Run Facebook ads to a landing page offering this service
6. Raise money (approach VCs and offer 20% for $5 million, for example)

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Boostopia
• Wealthfront
• Betterment
• Hasan Minhaj Patriot Act episode on taxes

Justin Winter exited his prior company after growing to $22 million in annual sales to focus on a new problem. Boostopia is an all-in-one support operations platform that unlocks the power of your support data inside your support ticketing system to transform both your team and customer experience.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Pursuing socially responsible business ideas can be quite lucrative - A Good Company is doing over $220k/month in revenue
• When you want to change someone’s behavior, positive reinforcement is much more effective than chiding them

Action Steps:

1. Investigate how waste is currently processed
2. Find out what value is involved and to whom value is added or extracted in the waste management process (e.g. are governments financially incentivised to minimize the amount of waste they have to process.
3. Research the value of raw materials present in common e-waste items
4. Research human behavior and how positive reinforcement may play a role in modifying consumer behavior.
5. Research Best Buy’s e-waste recycling program
   1. Why are they doing it?
   2. Are they making money?
6. Are there creative ways to manage this process, like adding rfid chips to electronics for identification during disposal. Can you fine or reward consumers to incentivise proper disposal?
7. Research similarities to CO2 cap and trade proposals and map how a similar system could work for e-waste
8. Speak out against companies who are making it difficult to recycle and/or reuse their electronics

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Agood Company
• Starter Story interview
• Citizens Climate Lobby

Anders Ankarlid is CEO of A Good Company, a serial e-commerce entrepreneur, and a father of three. He has worked in e-commerce for more than a decade and he’s an activist against mindless consumption.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• The key leverage point of blockchain is the decentralization of valuation.
• Millennials value experiences over things.
• Don’t implement emerging trends unless they’re necessary.
• Many great ideas sit around waiting for the right time to flourish. If you get in too early, there may not be infrastructure to support them.

Action Steps:

1. Understand social currencies
2. Research social currency issuers (Roll)
3. Find out the use cases that would apply. Who would want to issue social currency? All individuals? Influencers and celebrities? Small businesses abandoning punch cards for social currency?
4. Find out how market makers work on traditional exchanges. (The individuals that set the buy and sell prices of various stocks).
5. Engage with a platform like Steemit that currently use blockchain to exchange value for user created content

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• FestivalPass
• Ed Vincent’s LinkedIn profile
• Roll
• Steemit
• Rapper Akon Shares Whitepaper for Upcoming Cryptocurrency

Ed Vincent is an entrepreneur with over 25 years business, technology and management experience including 6 years banking and valuation experience. He founded an e-commerce business in 1999 which was sold to a competitor in 2001. He’s a Repeat Founder including the businesses SimplyEngage, myProducer, & Predict Ventures. He is Currently the Founder & CEO of FestivalPass.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

1. Offer performance-improvement consulting services to businesses in order to figure out a system that works for this idea
   1. validate that a boilerplate process will work for different businesses
   2. determine pricing
2. Draft a business plan around the idea
3. Create a no-code version of the performance review system

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Cory's Personal Website
• Saas Pegasus: The Django Powered SaaS Template
• Toggl
• Jason Cohen on Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business
• Patrick McKenzie

Cory Zue is a software developer and entrepreneur. These days he mostly works on SaaS Pegasus: the Django SaaS boilerplate. He also made Place Card Me—which is becoming the best way to make printable place cards on the internet. 

Jason Cohen on Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Like the real estate market, there are franchise brokers to facilitate deals. But you can also do the legwork by approaching franchise owners yourself. In the midst of pandemic, many of them are likely onsite. 
• A typical franchise cost is nominal (somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000). But many franchises, like McDonalds, will not sell to you unless you have a minimum of five years operating costs. 

Action Steps:

1. Research rent costs for commercial spaces with the best walkability in your area. 
2. Walk into a prospective franchise location and ask the owner about his or her experience within the franchise. 

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• SGIC Consulting 
• Lucas’ Instagram

Lucas Root is the founder of SGIC Consulting which helps clients build and implement a high-performance strategy to achieve the maximum growth potential possible.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Only two missing pieces can stop you: mindset and skill. Find out which one you need and fix it. You can tackle anything.
• Learn Erin’s three levers for growth in ecommerce: Traffic, Conversion Rate, Average Order Value.
• Always highlight your most popular and highest selling items. Don’t try to push your less popular products on clients up front. 
• Throw in the towel only when you’re working on something that conflicts with your higher order goals.
• Find the opportunities during moments of great change. Where are people changing their habits and how can you turn that into a business opportunity?

Action Steps:

1. Document Erin’s system for ecommerce growth
2. Pitch ecommerce owners on implementing the system for free for one month
3. Experience is the best teacher: create your own ecommerce business to test out these principles
4. Partner with a master of ecommerce and sell their system as part of your agency model

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Bailey's Blossoms
• Peyton Bre
• Conquering Chaos (Erin’s Podcast)

Erin Hooley, President and Founder of Bailey's Blossoms a brand that reimagines infant and toddler fashion. She also founded  Peyton Bre, a clothing company for tweens and teens with a call to empower young girls to feel confident and beautiful. She’s also a motivational speaker and a mom of six!

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Find out the behind the scenes relationships building and negotiating sometimes necessary for successful software entrepreneurship.
• Social media is the new TV after work. If you want to start a business, delete all your accounts.
• Going the extra mile on business development often pays off big.
• Balancing a freemium model is tricky: listen to the episode to hear how Alexi thinks about it
• Use a B2B2C model to get other businesses to sign up your new clients.

Action Steps:

1. Alexi’s biggest pains are
   1. managing business development and marketing (these are not his strengths) and 
   2. managing relationships with big corporations, specifically 3 big airline companies.
2. Use this information to consider what kind of businesses could support him and help his business thrive.
3. Do you have business development skills or business and userbase growth skills? Maybe you could join Alexi’s team and fill in a central gap.
4. Do you know someone that could fill that role? Is there a business in understanding what startup companies need out of additional team members and then finding the right match for them?
5. Do you have an understanding of how to manage business relationships between small startups and large corporations? Do you know how to make it a win-win? Again, perhaps you can fill a role on Alexi’s team or help find the right new team members to fill in the gaps.
6. Email ideas for what Alexi can do to address the concerns raised during the episode

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• AwardWallet
• The Travel Secret
• The Points Guy
• One Mile At A Time
• Auto Slash

Alexi Vereschaga is the co-founder and leads the development efforts of AwardWallet, which he launched in 2004. AwardWallet provides a free service that helps you manage your reward balances and travel itinerariesFrom its inception, Alexi has been AwardWallet’s product visionary. He is focused on continual improvement of AwardWallet to meet the needs of its 651,000+ global members and to respond to the evolving rewards program landscape, which is reflected in AwardWallet’s recognized leadership in rewards management.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Stalwart staffing companies are doing ~$25 billion in revenue annually
• VCs are looking for great teams moving really fast toward the critical assumptions of their business
• Great two-person teams are often formed from one person with industry experience and the other with technical know-how
• If you’re a nontechnical founder, one of the hardest parts of starting a company is finding a phenomenal technical cofounder and get them to leave their terrific job to come work on your idea
• Build a product that gives users a much better experience than 

Action Steps:

1. Estimate Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) for both sides of the marketplace
2. Brainstorm/research what customers will want, what their engagement would look like, and estimated churn

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• 1984 Ventures
• Aaron Michel on LinkedIn
• PathSource
• Indie Hackers interview re Key Values
• Test Interviews 
• TrustedHealth
• Toolbox

Aaron Michel is a partner at 1984 Ventures, a seed stage venture capital firm in San Francisco. He was selected earlier this year as one of venture capital's 40 under 40 by Venture Capital Journal. He's a Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School alum and sold his last company, PathSource, in 2017.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Successful businesses are started by people just like you; they go home and watch Netflix with their significant other, etc...

Action Steps:

1. Compile list of ISVs from Salesforce App Exchange
2. Contact ISVs to validate this idea (listen to David Cristello or David Hauser episode if you need more help with this step)
3. Raise Angel money and/or apply to Startup Accelerators
4. Hire ~4 software engineers
5. Build MVP

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Salesforce
• Insightly
• Zoho
• Mulesoft
• Kloudless
• Cloud Elements
• Quickbooks
• Badger Maps

Steve Benson is the founder and CEO of Badger Maps. After receiving his MBA from Stanford, Steve was Google Enterprise's Top Sales Executive in 2009. In 2012, Steve founded Badger Maps, a software company that helps Field Sales People optimize their routes and schedules to save time and be on time so they can sell more. Steve is also the host of the Outside Sales Talk podcast where he interviews industry experts on their top sales tips. 

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• The best things in life come on the other side of fear (Will Smith speech)
• It’s incredibly difficult for business owners to be competent at their core skill AND marketing, delivery, etc…think of ideas that allow business owners to focus on their core skills
• Don’t underestimate the power of checklists as a foundation for a business or application
• Business Plans are hard to pivot away from, write out a vision document instead.

Action Steps:

1. Talk with local business owners about this idea. Start with a geofenced location and businesses you know or spend time in normally.
2. Presell business owners $99 for lifetime access.
3. Find a technical co-founder.
4. Brainstorm a business plan: put every thought you have on paper then come back a few days later to organize it.
5. Local marketing: join local business and community groups. Throw flyers in the local stores. Use local mailers with an odd shaped piece of mail. Facebook marketing. Needls.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• Needls Media
• Justin’s LinkedIn
• jh@needls.com
• allrecipes.com

Justin has always had an entrepreneurial mindset. When he was ten years old, he worked at an outdoor lifestyle store that his grandparents owned in the small city outside of Kingston, Ontario. While working at the store, he made it his mission to sell as many backpacks as possible. He found it thrilling to identify a person’s needs and find the perfect solution for them even at that young of an age. Justin is an internet visionary that has pioneered markets, he has more than 18 years of startup and exit experience. Previously, he founded the first brokerage for online businesses. During that time Justin brokered $100 million in transactions to Fortune 1000 companies, PE firms, family offices and venture funds. 

His plethora of experience making visions turn to reality makes him a known and respected player in the industry. There’s nothing he loves more than fixing problems. Justin sees himself as more of a leader and a mentor rather than a boss, he creates teams of meticulously picked industry specialists to help achieve his goals. 

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Once you have ideas take action, always push the train forward

Action Steps:

1. Contact friends who might be interested in having some videos edited
2. Contact wedding or event videographers and hire them to do the editing
3. Consider/test pricing strategies
   1. offer free or $99 for a 60 second video teaser
   2. upsell to a $300-$500 3-5 minute video
   3. offer a rebate of $100-$200 for sharing on social with a link to your service
   4. find more partners and offer a subscription service to fans
   5. offer a number of credits per month that could be used for various concerts
4. Create a video editing course and have students edit videos for free that are shared socially to build your audience
5. Find an event or a venue that might be good for videos
   1. if enough fans buy in, then produce the first event (keep a production budget of under $10K)
   2. ask the venue to keep your equipment installed and sign them on as a partner

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• The Travel Secret (David’s company)
• Acadium (useful for finding digital marketing apprentices)

David Adler, Founder and CEO of The Travel Secret. David is a seasoned entrepreneur who has had extensive experience in travel, e-commerce, telecom, hospitality, and international business.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• The value of the product goes beyond its functionality; for two equal quality products, the one that makes consumers feel better about themselves will win
• The snob effect is a documented phenomenon wherein a higher price point can actually increase the demand for a product or service.
• During a tumultuous time people who want to be perceived as doing okay may be a market for your products
• Some Craft Distillers are making bank by producing hand sanitizer instead of spirits
• Networking to develop one business can lead to other opportunities

Action Steps:

1. Build a list of distillers who are currently making hand sanitizer.
2. Contact your list and see who would list a product online and allocate stock to you.
3. Act as an affiliate and drop ship the product.
4. Hire a designer on Fiverr to create branded mockups for post-pandemic sanitizer packaging and marketing so you can help distilleries make this work.
5. Market through the existing channels of the distilleries, through bars and restaurants.
6. You might donate a portion of your proceeds to support a relevant cause.

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• https://jimsesh.com/

Australian Podcast Awards Finalist, Economist and Accidental Festival Owner, James Henderson develops audio brands with his businesses, Aych Media and CBD Entertainment in the Media and Music industries, respectively. His holding company commits to a broad philosophy to 'elevate universal consciousness'.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• This session features Anthony Sarandrea, Josh Elizetxe, and Anthony Mink

Anthony Sarandrea

Anthony is recognized as one of the top customer generators in the world, specializing in the financial services space, running a team that drives over 1 million customers each year.

Anthony is recognized as one of the top lead generators in the world, running a team that specializes in driving thousands of inbound phone calls daily across a number of verticals including health, finance, legal, and education.
He is consistently featured as one of the top “under 30 year old” entrepreneurs and was featured along side Snapchat’s founder Evan Spiegel as one of the “Entrepreneurs that are changing the world”.

Josh Elizetxe 

Josh Elizetxe is the founder of Snow and an Internet advertising veteran and successful serial entrepreneur. Last year, over 100,000,000 people interacted with websites and brands owned by Josh’s parent company. He serves on the board of the Phoenix Coding Academy and the Fleischer Scholars Program. Josh is a sought-after company advisor and Angel Investor in the software (SaaS), e-commerce, and advertising technology industries. With an uncanny focus on data-driven strategy, his work has resulted in over $1 Billion in proven enterprise value tracked since 2009.

Anthony Mink (Mink)

Anthony the co-founder of Live Bearded. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, hunting and fishing is a way of life and growing a beard is the rule, not the exception. Anthony comes from a long line of beardsmen including his father who has lived bearded for over 30 years!

Anthony has always had a desire to live life on his own terms, to not be confined by the system, or anyone in it so in 2011 he quit his "job" and started his own company so he could fulfill his dream of being his own boss, answering to no one, and traveling the world!
Since Anthony has built and sold 4 successful online companies and has traveled to 41 countries! With a deep passion for business, beards, and brotherhood, Livebearded.com is more than just a beard grooming company for Anthony, it’s a passion project and a way of life!

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• This session features David Denny

David Denny is the Co-founder and a Partner at Carpe Diem Developers which is a renewable energy industry leader that provides development services for commercial and utility solar PV projects nationwide. They partner with business leaders, landowners, and utilities to develop and execute profitable solar projects. With over a decade of experience in solar project development, Carpe Diem Developers has the expertise to create projects that generate long term revenue streams and reduce carbon emissions.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• This session features Sam Davidson and Matt Verlinich

Sam Davidson is a serial entrepreneur and professional speaker who has written three books. He is currently the CEO of Batch, a gift and retail company that makes it easy for people to find or share a taste of their favorite southern city.

Matt Verlinich was the founding General Manager of TechShop Pittsburgh and a founding member of the Protohaven makerspace. He’s also the founder of Clear Ice Rocks, where he invented, prototyped, crowdfunded, and mass-produced a system for creating completely clear ice at home. Matt is now a part of the Innovation Works team, where he works with early stage hardware companies to guide them through the design and manufacturing process.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• This session features Peter Corbett and David Kosciusko.

Peter Corbett:
As the child of a single mother with 3 kids, Peter learned to hustle at an early age to afford a better life. He bootstrapped a digital agency, grew it to 100 employees and sold it to WPP, the world's largest publicly traded ad agency holding company. He retired two years ago and since then has been training in hospice at Brooklyn hospital, working directly with people who's family members are sick or dying. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, and continues to help others in their entrepreneurial journey.

Dave Kosciusko:
Dave has a couple of cell phone repair stores in Rhode Island. They buy and sell electronics for repair and resale on eBay and he also has a digital product teaching others how to profit from reselling phones the way he does.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Have customer discovery conversations in a casual setting to get real feedback; otherwise people will naturally try to placate your ego
• Design products (including education and workshops) such that attendees are energized at the end, not drained
• The key to sales is having a more expensive product; selling a $1,000,000 is within an order of magnitude as easy as selling a $1,000 product

Action Steps:

1. Choose a topic you are interested in and curate a lesson plan
2. Find educators who are teaching that subject and offer it to them for free
3. Watch how users respond to the plan and use that feedback to improve it
4. Fall off your bike

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.

Links:

• @robfitz on Twitter
• The Workshop Survival Guide
• The Mom Test
• Union Square Ventures Looking for Syllabus 2.0
• Y Combinator

Rob Fitzpatrick is an entrepreneur of 13 years (his first business was funded, the rest have been bootstrapped). He's the author of The Mom Test, a book about how to talk to customers and figure out if your business is a good idea. He went through YCombinator in 2007. He describes himself as a techie who eventually learned sales. He currently lives in Barcelona, Spain.

🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run

• Successful businesses are started by people just like you; they go home and watch Netflix with their significant other, etc... 

Action Steps:

1. Investigate current revenue split for concert venues  
2. Search for the managers/decision-makers of concerts at large venues  
3. Contact them via a cold call, email, or LinkedIn message  
4. Offer to run a trial event which you can help them presell a live stream of their upcoming concert  
5. If enough fans buy in, then produce the first event (keep a production budget of under $10K)  
6. Ask the venue to keep your equipment installed and sign them on as a partner  
7. Find more partners and offer a subscription service to fans  
8. You could offer a number of credits per month that could be used for various concerts  

Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.  

Links:  

• CROSSNET  
• 1,000 True Fans  
• Twitch  
• Music Hall of Williamsburg  
• Terminal 5  

Chris Meade is the co-founder of CROSSNET, the world's first four-way volleyball game. CROSSNET combines elements of the childhood game four square and volleyball in a competitive game to 11, win by 2. CROSSNET is now available at Walmart, Target, DICKS, Academy Sports, Amazon, and 20+ other retailers.

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