The Early Days Podcast by DULO

DULO

Welcome to The Early Days Podcast - a show about the hustle, the excitement, the doubts, the successes, the failures, the ups and downs of building a business from scratch. We interview fellow entrepreneurs about their experience of starting businesses. As we are building our own apparel company and documenting our early days, we wanted to go behind the scenes with other entrepreneurs and find out what their early days, weeks, months, and years were like.

  1. The Best Way to Learn Facebook Ads | The Early Days (S3E6)

    04/16/2019

    The Best Way to Learn Facebook Ads | The Early Days (S3E6)

    Learning Facebook Ads, building an agency business, firing your clients and much more with Mojca Zove from Super Spicy Media THE DULO PERFORMANCE SHIRT: ▼ https://weardulo.com Mojca Žove is a Facebook ads expert and founder of Super Spicy Media - a digital marketing agency. In our conversation with Mojca we talked about what it was like for her to start a digital agency business, the realisation that a full-time job is never 100% a sure thing, and the biggest obstacles to starting. As an expert Facebook advertiser, we asked Mojca to share how she learned Facebook Ads, the resources and methods that helped her master the craft, and how she deployed this channel when attracting clients for her agency. We also talked about email lists, webinars, balancing content creation and client work, burnout, firing clients, and much, much more. Complete notes and links: https://weardulo.com/blogs/the-early-days-podcast/facebook-ads Topics: 01:55 - Who is Mojca and starting Super Spicy Media 03:25 - Getting fired from a marketing agency 05:30 - Taking the leap to build her own business 06:30 - What was the biggest obstacle to starting earlier? 07:28 - Learning Facebook ads 08:37 - The best way to learn Facebook ads 11:33 - The biggest mistakes people do when starting with Facebook ads 13:07 - Learning to get clients 16:16 - The origin of the name "Super Spicy Media" 17:15 - Learning and doing outreach with cold emails 18:22 - Deploying Facebook ads to building a client list 19:42 - Working on retainer vs project-based projects 21:03 - Using content as a driver to earn new business 23:17 - Promoting content to drive awareness and grow an audience 25:11 - Building an email list 27:22 - How to host and promote a webinar 28:59 - Strategies for cleaning up and keeping your email list up-to-date 31:40 - Upcoming shifts in attention across social media and helping people online 34:48 - Balancing content creation and client work 37:14 - Sharing personal and professional content on Instagram Stories 38:18 - Firing clients and choosing what to work on 41:33 - How to deal with burnout and take a break 43:30 - Building an online course 46:40 - Future plans and projects 47:47 - Links and resources

    51 min
  2. Evergreen Marketing Principles | The Early Days (S3E5)

    04/04/2019

    Evergreen Marketing Principles | The Early Days (S3E5)

    Discussing how adding value, asking questions, and listening to the customer can help grow a business, with John D Saunders. THE DULO NON-IRON DRESS SHIRT: ▼ https://weardulo.com John D Saunders, founder of 5four Digital is an experienced serial entrepreneur who excels at marketing. After selling several online stores, and a career as an advertising executive for the automotive industry, John decided to start his own marketing agency. The need to learn more and provide more value to others were the main principles behind his decision to take the entrepreneurial route.  In our conversation we go through a variety of topics and John mentions a lot of resources which you can start using today in your own business. Some of the things we covered - working in a remote environment, constantly learning new things and sharing those with the world, building a business on core principles such as adding value, asking questions and listening to consumers. We also dived deep into strategies for social media marketing and growing e-commerce stores. Complete notes and links: https://weardulo.com/blogs/the-early-days-podcast/marketing-principles Topics we cover in this episode: 01:35 - How John started his life in advertising 03:10 - Starting 5four 03:40 - Working with a remote team 04:13 - The transition from working on the side to full-time entrepreneurship 05:40 - Taking a leap of faith and having a contingency plan 06:30 - Finding 5four's first clients and the importance of networking 07:30 - Educating yourself and sharing everything new you learn 08:22 - Add value, ask questions, listening to your consumer 09:08 - Getting used to being your own boss 09:53 - Being a facilitator rather than a boss 10:25 - The process of self-improvement and self-education 12:37 - Balancing learning with execution 14:34 - Project and task management tools 16:40 - Starting 5four solo - the good and the bad 17:24 - Standard operating procedures (SOPs) and collaborating with others when scaling your efforts 17:56 - Having the confidence to hire your first full-time employees 20:22 - The benefits and disadvantages of working with a remote team 22:56 - Balancing time for internal marketing and business development 24:46 - Moving into a marketing manager role and out of the project manager role 25:37 - Social media platforms and content strategies with the highest ROI 32:40 - Tools and apps to have when starting an ecommerce store 35:34 - Recommendations for building out the Product Description Page on your store 37:10 - Documenting your life online 39:28 - Plans for the near future 42:10 - Links and handles

    45 min
  3. Say "Yes" first, figure it out later | The Early Days by DULO (S3E4)

    03/28/2019

    Say "Yes" first, figure it out later | The Early Days by DULO (S3E4)

    Discussing how to building a design agency from scratch with Matt Ellis, founder of Honcho Agency THE DULO NON-IRON DRESS SHIRT: ▼ https://weardulo.com Matt Ellis is the founder of Honcho, a design agency specializing in web design and development.  Matt’s built Honcho from scratch and without knowing much about the agency world. He simply learned to dive into new opportunities head first and figure out how to do things as he’s going along. It’s a piece of advice he shared a few times during our conversation. We also talked about hiring first employees, pricing strategies, finding clients, running a remote company and much more. It’s an episode rich on resources and tools that will help a lot of you to automate and facilitate processes around your own businesses. If you work at a small agency or run a remote team, this is a very useful episode to listen to. Topics we cover in this episode: 01:50 - Who is Matt Ellis and what does he do 02:34 - How Matt got into web development 05:49 - Saying "Yes" to things even if you don't know how to do them 07:23 - Learning to do web development properly 08:30 - From freelancer to founder of a design agency 10:30 - Learning how to build an agency 11:40 - Hiring the first employee at Honcho 12:55 - Freeing more time for learning and business development 15:40 - Finding clients in the early days and financial security 17:18 - Balancing a financial forecast with hiring 19:00 - Switching from a product focus to a sales and business development one 20:30 - Tools to help with automation to free up more time 23:30 - How to choose which prospects to approach 29:55 - Where does conversion happen 31:00 - Pricing strategies: project-based vs. retainers 35:00 - Providing more value to others by learning more about your own business 35:20 - Working remotely 36:20 - Running a remote company - the process and tools 40:10 - Fluid processes and trust 41:50 - Getting new clients 42:46 - Acquiring new clients through Adwords 44:10 - Future plans for the Honcho agency 48:05 - Links and handles FULL LIST of Useful Resources and Links: https://weardulo.com/blogs/the-early-days-podcast/say-yes-first-figure-it-out-later

    53 min
  4. Lessons on launching, funding and marketing a startup | The Early Days by DULO (S3E3)

    03/21/2019

    Lessons on launching, funding and marketing a startup | The Early Days by DULO (S3E3)

    Sharing stories and lessons from two decades of building startups with Diane Tarshis, founder of Startup Distillery (S3E3) THE DULO NON-IRON DRESS SHIRT: ▼ https://weardulo.com Diane Tarshis is an experienced startup consultant who started her career in the middle of the dot-com boom and is now the founder of Startup Distillery, where she works with companies to help them navigate the muddy waters of their early days. With two decades of experience from the entrepreneurial trenches, working with founders from all walks of life and industries, we wanted to talk with Diane about the messy beginnings of small businesses. We covered important lessons around launching a startup, such as the importance of having a roadmap and doing extra homework in preparation, we discussed the pros and cons of self-funding versus raising venture capital and when is it a good time to rely on each. We also touched on the topic of marketing and messaging - a topic near and dear to us, since we are in the middle of figuring out how to talk to our target audience. Topics we cover in this episode: 01:53 - Who is Diane and what she does 04:56 - How Diane approached her first clients 06:36 - How to figure out what to charge 09:20 - The most common problems startups get stuck on 11:05 - The importance of having a roadmap before launch 12:55 - How to convince a stubborn founder to change direction 16:00 - There's always another way 17:21 - Bootstrapping versus Venture Funding 20:32 - The argument against going all-in on building a business from the start 23:33 - The myth of stress and the blessing of constraints when bootstrapping a side-business 27:20 - The DULO journey so far 33:05 - What to do when your business plateaus 37:41 - Can you apply lessons from one business into a new one 43:27 - The need to appeal to the head and the heart when marketing your business 45:34 - The importance of a clear and succinct message 49:10 - Future plans and project 54:29 - Get in touch with Diane FULL LIST of Useful Resources and Links: https://weardulo.com/blogs/the-early-days-podcast/startup-lessons

    56 min

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About

Welcome to The Early Days Podcast - a show about the hustle, the excitement, the doubts, the successes, the failures, the ups and downs of building a business from scratch. We interview fellow entrepreneurs about their experience of starting businesses. As we are building our own apparel company and documenting our early days, we wanted to go behind the scenes with other entrepreneurs and find out what their early days, weeks, months, and years were like.