The Entrepreneur Ethos Blue Wire, Jarie Bolander

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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Andrei Zinkevich, cofounder of FullFunnel.io. 
Andrei, the son of a salesman, started playing soccer when he was four. When his soccer career was cut short by injuries in his teens, Andrei decided to follow in his father's footsteps. After five years in sales, he'd found success, largely through networking and building personal relationships. But this was a strategy that didn't scale well. Andrei moved into marketing, where he tried to keep the focus on personalization. Andrei began a blog sharing what he knew, offering courses and publishing a book. Eventually his recognition grew to the point where he was being invited to speak at conferences, like the one he attended in Spain. This is where he met one of his followers who had taken his first course. Vlad, a software engineer and musician, eventually joined him in cofounding FullFunnel.io. 
With FullFunnel, Andrei helps sales and marketing teams be more effective. He offers a lot of content online, mainly through LinkedIn, in addition to courses from his site. He focuses on helping companies grow by playing the long game. Growth hacks can help early on, but growing companies need more sustainable strategies. Andrei credits his training in sports with instilling in him the discipline needed to consistently continue to generate content, which helps him to connect with others and get noticed. Andrei advises businesses to think beyond sales and to continue to ask for feedback and nurture relationships with existing customers. He also stresses the importance of being able to withstand losses and failure, of knowing there will be some bad days, learning from them and moving on.
Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights

Losing is part of the game. When you have a loss or failure, treat it as a lesson to teach you how to do better next time. 

It takes time and practice to build skills. Don't expect to be able to immediately apply and see results when trying a new strategy. This is a common mistake he sees people make. Take the time to learn and cultivate skills and experience.

Build relationships. As much as possible, personalize your interactions. Vet the people you work with. 


 Links to Explore Further

Andrei Zinkevich on LinkedIn

Fullfunnel.io 

Andrei on Twitter

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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Pete Huang, co-founder of The Neuron, a daily newsletter dedicated to the latest news about artificial intelligence. 
Pete started writing online when he was a teenager as a copywriter. After college he worked as an analyst at McKinsey then with a number of startups in tech. Throughout the interview, Pete expressed how exciting and interesting he found working in tech, and is particularly excited to see what will happen as AI becomes mainstream. 
How, ultimately, will AI affect business and entrepreneurship? Pete's not sure yet, but he's excited to see what happens next. Some of the questions and thoughts he shared in our talk:

A new wave of businesses where AI comes first will emerge. 

AI has the potential to change how fast businesses evolve and adapt. Pete wonders if it might be possible to shorten the cycle of founding to exiting from 10-15 years to under 10. 

Think of ChatGPT as an "a very smart intern who doesn't know anything." People will need to "teach" ChatGPT before it can make a difference in how we work. 

Companies will have to come up with their own strategies and models for the use of AI. 

For now, Pete recommends a "wait and see" approach; at the same time he recommends companies who want to incorporate AI tools be nimble.


Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights
If you're interested in building a business around AI:


Know that it's still in the early stages. Be willing to try, to experiment, and to fail. This is a long game, not a shortcut, though Pete thinks things will become clearer in a matter of months. 

To help get you through the uncertainties of this moment, consider adopting Pete's attitude: he finds everything that's happening fascinating, and expresses gratitude for getting to be part of a moment that will likely radically transform what our future looks like.

Be willing to be part of the conversation. Know that there may not be answers yet. 

 Links to Explore Further

Pete Huang | LinkedIn

The Neuron (theneurondaily.com)

Pete's Web3 Pals (pallet.com)


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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Bryan Clayton, CEO and cofounder of GreenPal, an app that connects homeowners with lawn care specialists. 
Bryan has been in the lawn care business since he was a kid mowing lawns for his neighbors. He eventually grew his lawn-mowing business into a successful landscaping company that he eventually sold — a rarity for that industry. His next venture was to figure out how to harness tech to help both service providers and their customers. As someone experienced in the field, he understands the challenges providers face, from finding customers to getting paid, but starting a tech company was new to him. He started by focusing on building a roster of service providers, and then went about finding customers to use the app. With some trial and error and lots of feedback, GreenPal has grown over the last 11 years to being recognized as the "Uber of lawn care" and runs thousands of transactions daily. 
While Bryan understood the lawn care business, founding a tech-based company was definitely out of his comfort zone. In this episode he explains how he had to "go back to kindergarten" and realize there was a lot he still didn't know. One critical action Bryan and his cofounders took was asking for feedback on their app when they first developed it, so they would know how to tweak and change it. They also had to work on themselves and "level up" alongside learning how to build the company.

Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights

Having experience working in the field you're trying to serve can give you an edge in helping you understand the problems you'll be helping to solve. Don't discount the experience of "blue-collar" work.

 "The least sexy your business, the greater your chances of success," Bryan says. Because there is less competition in fields like plumbing and contracting, if you find the right problems and the right solutions, you'll have a shot. 

You need to be willing to do whatever it takes early on, and you'll need to be a generalist until you can build up an infrastructure of people around you, getting good enough in areas like marketing, sales, and other basics of running a business.

 Links to Explore Further

Bryan Clayton on LinkedIn

GreenPal

GreenPal on Facebook


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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Jordan Crawford, founder of Blueprint, helping businesses scale by improving their outbound outreach. 
Jordan didn't really find his "thing," until 2016, when he started working on helping businesses grow. In this episode Jordan provides a lot of insights into his strategy and how he uses data. 
Jordan's approach is to focus on problems, not personas. He uses data about people to identify the problems his client is trying to solve. For this he culls data from LinkedIn and looks at people in relevant roles to figure out what the pain points are.
He then uses this critical information to help businesses compose outbound messages to target potential customers. Jordan says that there are a lot of great tools that can help businesses, but what it comes down to is figuring out what to say to someone and how to say it - something only a living breathing person can do. 
Ultimately, Jordan says, a business's understanding of the market must match what customers in the market actually want. To do this, Jordan recommends getting into discussions with customers to really understand what their pain points are as well as using the data.
One unique thing about Jordan’s data is that he looks at job openings. This is a clear sign of a problem or pain point that a company wants to solve because they are willing to spend money to solve it. 
Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights

According to Jordan, AI and other martech tools can be helpful, but they'll only take you so far. You need to be able to have dialogues and to use critical thinking to get the information you need to craft a message that will lead to sales.

The most important questions to ask are: "What can I say that none of my competitors can't? What is unique about me and what counter-intuitive insight do I have about the problem?" Then do research to figure it out and get a clearer picture of what your potential customers struggle with. 

Research and use keywords. Keywords can help you figure out the pain points and how to best craft your message. Potential customers are looking to solve pain points and the faster you understand their pain, the easier it will be to get them to talk to you.

 Links to Explore Further

Blueprintgtm.com

Jordan Crawford on LinkedIn

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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Jeff Greenfield, a serial entrepreneur who has worked as a magician, chiropractor, and product placement guru, among other roles. His current venture is Provalytics. 
Jeff started out wanting to be a magician when he saw one perform at Disney World when he was just five years old. And that's what he did, putting on shows while he was still in grade school. 
He went to college for biochemistry and while he considered trying to be a magician professionally, instead he became a chiropractor. He had a thriving practice until an injury forced him to find another career. This gave him the opportunity to dive into professionally performing as a magician, getting gigs on college campuses. 
At the time, the internet was in its infancy, but he realized the importance of having a website in order to market himself. After trying to hire someone to build one who failed to do so, he figured out how to do it himself in a weekend. Before he knew it, he was being hired to build websites for other businesses. The next step was to figure out how to get businesses on the web to rank higher, which led him to develop an understanding of how SEO works. He worked with a developer to create an automated SEO platform. 
Though he'd found success and was having fun, Jeff wasn't content to stay where was. He worked in product placement and branding, but soon his projects led him to ask how to better measure the efficacy of the marketing he was doing. The result was C3 Metrics, a platform that's worked with companies like JP Morgan, Hertz and Nestle.
Jeff next tried joining a company's management team, but while he learned a lot, it didn't suit him. He realized that new challenges in the area of marketing measurement brought about by new regulations was an untapped opportunity. So Jeff founded Provalytics to help companies find new ways to approach marketing analytics without the benefit of cookies and other tracking tools. 
Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights

While he earned an advanced degree to become a health professional, Jeff clearly has not let anything stop him from learning the information and tools he found he needed. By jumping in and learning new technology, he made himself invaluable to others while being at the forefront of innovation. 

Jeff sees opportunity where others might see difficulties. Rather than lamenting his injury, he built a business instead. When that wasn't satisfying, he pursued his passion in magic. More recently, seeing what was happening with marketing metrics, he jumped in to help figure out how to respond.

Jeff has many accomplishments, but it's clear he values family time. He spoke of wanting to be with his wife and daughter, and making choices so that he could do so. He found ways to build the kind of life he wanted, even when unexpected events forced him to jump tracks. 


 Links to Explore Further

Jeff Greenfield on LinkedIn

Jeff Greenfield on Twitter


Provalytics

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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, John Li, cofounder of PickFu, an online tool for market research. 
John and his cofounder met as college students and both got jobs in high tech, but they were always interested in starting their own business. Two businesses they started were Menuism, a place where restaurants can offer menus, and Wedding Lens, a place where participants and attendees of weddings could share pictures. In the course of starting these businesses, they developed PickFu on the side to help them with market research. The business grew out of a need to get better feedback about products and marketing. As they saw it grow, they decided to turn their attention to building it as their central business. 
PickFu is built on existing consumer research panels to provide users with fast feedback on business collateral like websites, logos, and ads and products sold on ecommerce platforms. While they started out with providing ways for businesses and entrepreneurs to ask open-ended questions, PickFu has built a resource of templates and best practices businesses can use to create polls. Through the use of such feedback, businesses can gain valuable insight and validate ideas and strategies. 
In this episode John and I talk about the importance of market research and consumer feedback when building a business and how PickFu can help entrepreneurs quickly and easily get the feedback they need. 

Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights

Small things can make a difference. PickFu is good at helping you figure out decisions about seemingly minor things like website design and colors and logos. 

Use what's there. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, John is interested in finding ways to integrate already existing systems in place. They've used an existing framework and system, drawing on tools for consumer and political polling. They have built on top of these platforms to offer a fast, easy service.

Always ask for open-ended feedback. Providing space for the people you are asking to give comments, other than simply answering a poll, can make a huge difference in the insight polling provides.

 Links to Explore Further

Pickfu.com

Sample polls

Which product insert flyer would make you want to signup and give your email the most? | PickFu online consumer research

This product is a premium anti-aging & skin beauty supplement. Which image do you most connect with and would convince you to purchase? Why? | PickFu online consumer research

John Li on LinkedIn


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