Episode 671 | Working on What Matters, Left-handed Threads, and Being Lucky (A Rob Solo Adventure)

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In episode 671, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he covers a variety of topics. First, he shares an example of why successful founders move the needle rather than staying in their comfort zone. He shares an anecdote about discovering left-handed threads and how it applies to startups, and wraps up with some thoughts on the role of luck in audience building. Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America. They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running. When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week. And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups Topics we cover: 1:56 – Moving the needle rather than staying comfortable 11:10 – First time discovering left-handed threads 19:15 – Building an audience doesn’t require luck Links from the Show: MicroConf MicroConf Connect The SaaS Playbook Episode 670 | Relying on Luck, Avoiding Burnout, and Bad Player vs. Bad Instrument (A Rob Solo Adventure) Joel Spolsky (@spolsky) | Twitter TinySeed How to Build SaaS from Scratch in 8 Simplified Steps If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google

Transcript

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0:00.0	People ask me often, what makes an entrepreneur successful across the, I don't know, I think the number's got to be 300 now in terms of founders across the 151 companies I'm invested in.
0:10.0	And people say, what's the difference of those who succeed in those who don't?
0:12.8	And one of the things I say is those who succeed generally work on things that move the needle.
0:35.7	Welcome to this week's episode of Startup for the Rest of Us.
0:36.9	I'm your host Rob Walling.
0:42.9	This is the show where I talk about bootstrapping and mostly bootstrapping tech companies, software companies, software as a service. It's funny to think back 10, 11, 12 years where software as a service
0:48.7	in SaaS was a term that was around, but it wasn't obvious that it was going to take over the world.
0:54.1	And these days, and obviously for the past 5, six, seven years, we've really focused on that.
0:58.9	It is the best business model in the world. I have like half a chapter in my new book all about
1:04.4	why SaaS is so amazing. And really, it starts with recurring revenue. And that drives everything
1:10.1	else.
1:13.0	Today we have a Rob Solo Adventure.
1:20.6	I'm going to start by looking at what it looks like to work on the right things versus the wrong things,
1:26.3	and specifically what it looks like to work on something that moves the needle versus something that you're comfortable with. And I have a startup SaaS-specific example of this.
1:29.8	Then I'm going to talk a little bit about left-handed threads.
1:33.7	And I'll leave that as the teaser for that segment.
1:36.4	And then I'll talk about how your choice of words matters.
1:41.9	And how using the word luck in a sentence can be an indicator of how you view the
1:47.4	world and an indicator of why you're not succeeding yet. And then if we have more time, I'll dive
1:53.6	into more topics after that. So the first topic for today is about working on what will actually
2:00.0	move the needle rather than what you're comfortable with.
2:03.8	And so I know a couple startup founders,
	...

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