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Real Entrepreneurs Get Back Up. The Mark Jeffrey Interview
I asked Mark Jeffrey for an interview because I knew he’d be open with me about the periods in entrepreneurship when things fall apart and you feel like there’s no way out. Mark helped launch 4 startups, including SuperSig, which was a disaster and Mahalo, a rising star.
Network by evangelizing
In the mid-90’s, Mark was just another guy working at Time Warner, but he loved the project he was working on, an avatar-based chat community called “The Palace.” He evangelized it to anyone who would listen, that’s how he made connections with people in the industry.
He knew that a behemoth like Time Warner was no place to grow an innovative startup. So he tapped his connections and got Intel and Softbank to buy pieces of The Palace and let him grow it. Within 3 years of launching, The Palace was sold and Mark was a superstar entrepreneur.
“There’s no joy in my life”
His followup venture was SuperSig, a service that let users personalize their emails’ signatures. Raising money was easy because he was a superstar and the dotcom market was hot. But then the dotcom bubble burst and he lost his investors’ and his own money.
He remembers telling his partner at the time, “There is no joy in my life right now except when I’m asleep.”
SuperSig closed down, but he fought till the end. When it was over, Homer Luther, Mark’s investor, sent him a note congratulating him for fighting long after everyone else gave up. If you’re ever in Mark’s office, ask him to show you the note. When you read it, you’ll feel the pride of putting up a strong fight.
The bust made us better entrepreneurs
I’ve interviewed a few entrepreneurs here on Mixergy who told me that the dotcom bust of 2000 made them better entrepreneurs. In Mark’s case, it taught him to cut costs to the bone.
His next startup was ZeroDegrees, an early MySpace. He launched it with ZERO outside investment. He ran it lean and sold it to InterActiveCorp. It gave him a big victory and financial freedom.
Today he’s working on his latest startup as the CTO of Mahalo. If you listen to the interview, you’ll notice that he’s as proud of the way it’s capitalized as he is of how cool a company it is. I feel like our generation of web startups was improved by the bubble’s burst the way the World War II generation was fortified by their reaction to the Great Depression.
“Being broken in half allowed me to write”
Aside from being a better entrepreneur, going through the dotcom bust helped Mark start writing books.
Right click to download FULL interview!
ProBlogger Darren Rowse On How To Get More Traffic. Video Tip.
I asked Darren Rowse, founder of ProBlogger.net, how I can get more traffic to my site.
He told me to keep asking this question over and over again, “Where are my potential readers already gathering online and how can I participate in that space?”
Brian Clark Of Copyblogger Suggests You Read A Book. Video Tip.
When I asked Brian Clark of Copyblogger how we can write more interesting and helpful blog posts, he suggested we read more books. Too many bloggers read and comment on each others’ posts. The way to stand out is to bring in some new ideas.
Jesse Stay On How To Raise Your Profile Online. Video Tip.
I asked Jesse Stay, Cheif Community Officer at i.tv, to teach us how he raises his profile online. His answer is similar to the one that Robert Scoble gave me. He interacts with people on social media sites.
I’ve watched Scoble pull out his cell phone in between conversations with people and start chatting on social networking sites. I’ve seen Jesse on sites like FriendFeed, Twiiter and Facebook so often that I image he does it at every possible moment too.
So here’s the question that I have: is it really possible to spend that much time chatting online AND build a successful business at the same time?
How Jeremy Schoemaker Became “Internet Famous.” Video Tip
When I interviewed him, Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker told me that the reason he’s “internet famous” is that he writes like the regular guy who learned how to make money and is willing to tell other people how he did it.
He said, “I’m just a regular dumbass. I used to be 400 pounds, $50,000 in credit card debt, and yet I was able to do it. I’m not charging you anything. I’m just showing you how to do this.”
(Shot at Blog World Expo thanks to Rick Calvert, who I interviewed on Mixergy.)
Why Does John Chow’s Personal Site Make $30,000+ Per Month? Video Tip
John Chow has been saying that the reason his site keeps growing is that he gets his readers to subscribe.
As you’ll hear in this video, he’s a big believer in aweber mailing lists. His success with mailing lists is one of the reasons why I interviewed Justin Premick, aweber’s instructor about how to build and grow a mailing list.
(Shot at Blog World Expo thanks to Rick Calvert, who I interviewed on Mixergy.)
Do You Text While Driving? - The Laurence Gonzales Interview
Suppose you’ve been texting while driving, and it never caused an accident. Wouldn’t you start believing that it’s safe?
What if you had a few close calls but you managed to still avoid accidents. Wouldn’t that reinforce your belief that you’re safe?
Of course, you’d be wrong. It’s not safe. And your past success is making you stupid.
Haven’t you seen similar examples in business?
To learn why we make such seemingly obvious mistakes and how to avoid them, I interviewed Laurence Gonzales, author of Everyday Survival, a book about “Why smart people do stupid things.”
Download this interview to get insight into how your mind works.
Right click to download the podcast interview
Community Before Cash - The AJ Vaynerchuk Interview
Over the past year, bloggers and entrepreneurs have studied Gary Vaynerchuk so they too could build killer online businesses and maybe even become famous.
AJ Vaynerchuk has been studying Gary since he was a little boy. Now AJ is using many of the social media techniques that his brother developed to build PleaseDressMe, a tshirt search engine. I interviewed him to see how those techniques could be used to grow a startup.
Here’s some of what I learned. (Download the full interview for much more.)
Community Before Cash - I asked AJ over and over about making money and being rich. He clearly has a business model for PleaseDressMe and revenues are coming in, but he kept telling me that cash is not his focus right now. It’s all about building the community.
Answer Every Email - Years ago I sent Seth Godin an email and got an instant response. I couldn’t believe it. He’s a guy who’s running business and has a large fan-base and he responded to my email right away. It was a personal touch and it won me over. Gary has given speeches about responding to every email. Now AJ does the same thing at PleaseDressMe. Test him if you want.
(Listen to this interview that I did with Mark Hurst to learn how to rip through your emails quickly.)
Make It Sharable - The first time I went on PleaseDressme, there wasn’t much on the site–but every single tshirt had a “share this” button. If you want people to talk about your site, you need to make it easy for them to share it. I don’t know why bigger sites like the GAP don’t have “share” buttons on their clothes.
Use Every Social Site - Did you see the video I did with Ted Murphy? He said the same thing. Let your audience talk to you on any site they want. AJ tried doing live videos on ustream and his customers gave him an idea for selling more tshirts.
Give Bribes Gifts - AJ gives people a chance to win free tshirts if they become fans of PleaseDressMe on Facebook or if they message his site on Twitter or if they participate in his community in some other way. We talked about this technique a little at the Mixergy Viral Forum. It seems to be an under-appreciated, but powerful catalist for community-building.
Shock Customers With Service - AJ links to tshirt sites that don’t pay him a referal fee. If you can’t find a shirt on his site, he might Google it for you and send you a link to another site. He shocks people with customer service. Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com’s CEO, told me how he built a billion dollar company on this kind of customer service.
Right click to download the FULL interview
Tips For Successful Online Marketing - Ted Murphy CEO of IZEA
I asked Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA, for tips on successful online marketing because he’s running a well-funded company that specializes in social media marketing.
His tips:
- Participate in every single social network that you can.
- Be very active on other people’s blogs.
- Be active on your blog.
- Keep producing content
(Shot at Blog World Expo thanks to Rick Calvert, who I interviewed on Mixergy.)
Do you have any other tips for marketing online? Add them to the comments.
How to Increase Conversions - The Olivier Chaine Interview
To learn how to increase conversions, I spoke with Olivier Chaine, the CEO of Magnify360. I knew he’d make a great teacher because his company is in the business of increasing conversion rates. Magnify360 offers a software-as-a-service platform which enables Web sites to adapt in real-time to the behaviors of individual visitors
Download the full interview to hear more, but these are some of my notes from the conversation.
You know so much more than you realize
Olivier showed me that even if a user has never been to your web site, you can still predict what will appeal to her. You can tell, for example, if she uses a Mac or PC. If she uses a Mac, you might make your page look more cutting edge. If she uses a PC, you might make your landing page look more official.
Other things you can easy know include: time of day, where your user is, and what she did just before she came to your site. If you take each of those factors into account, you can deliver the perfect pitch to each user and increase your conversion rate.
Why should anyone do anything?
You need to give people a compelling reason to take the action you want, or they won’t do it. I asked Olivier to look at CauseCast.org and tell me what they could to increase conversions. After complimenting them on their use of celebrities and user testimonials, he noticed the registration process and wondered why anyone should register. He suggested they give a strong, clear reason to join and more people will register.
Check out how goodreads does that on their homepage.
You want people to tell you all that?!
Another way to increase conversions is to ask fewer questions. We looked at qtask.com. Olivier loved their use of images, but when he saw the registration form, he said it might overwhelm users. Also, the optional fields aren’t clearly marked “optional” so the form seems even longer.
Do you know any ways to increase conversions? Add them to the comments!
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Recent Interviews
