Episode 28: Teach Everything You Know w/Nathan Barry

This Episode Sponsored By:
RECORD & RELEASE: Learn How To Podcast In Just One Day
Podcasting can help you gain status and notoriety as a subject-matter authority, and effectively build an audience by reaching your entire market.
More details

convertkit-nathan
Today’s guest is Nathan Barry, founder of ConvertKit and author of several books. His career has spanned from anonymously doing client work to becoming a highly-visible and well-respected author, speaker and founder.

In this episode, Nathan talks about his journey, including early struggles, professional epiphanies, hard-learned strategies for growing his Saas app, and why “teach everything you know” is so powerful for marketing.

Bootstrapped Product Talking Points

  • Growing a Saas app
  • Why your heroes are no different than you
  • How to position yourself as an expert
  • Why it’s important to get customer feedback
Hi there! To help Chasing Product grow, please take a moment to visit iTunes and give the show a 5-star rating. Thanks!

 Show Notes:

ConvertKit – Email Marketing For Professional Bloggers
Authority – A step-by-step guide to self-publishing
Designing Web Applications – Nathan’s guide to web app design
The App Design Handbook – Nathan’s guide to iPhone/iPad app design
How To Cheat At Online BUsiness – Nathan’s article about audience-building
Chris Coyier – Writer, CSS Tricks
Jason Fried – Marketing By Sharing

Episode 2: Delegating Your Bootstrapped Product Efforts w/Ruben Gamez

Hi there! To help Chasing Product grow, please take a moment to visit iTunes and give the show a 5-star rating. Thanks!

Ruben Gamez of Bidsketch joins me on this second episode.  We discuss his journey from freelancer to day job and on to product. We learn what Ruben did right from the very start.  We also learn what practices he’s developed over time.  There’s also some frank talk about the importance of delegating.

Bootstrapped Product Talking Points

  • giving yourself time to develop your domain expertise, be it design or development
  • what it takes to become good at delegating and outsourcing, and what you gain from it
  • respecting your own value, and asking for the money
  • the most important thing Ruben gained after acquiring a competitor
  • how to pick the right writers for your content marketing efforts
  • why “marketing first” was the right approach for Bidsketch

And more, including how Ruben would do pricing differently, and why he avoided letting his personal identity get too deeply imprinted as the public face of his company (here’s a hint: can your business stand on its own if you’re not there?).  

The theme of letting go & delegating comes up throughout this episode.  It’s a practice that benefits Bidsketch as a bootstrapped product startup, and Ruben clearly feels strongly about it.

Bidsketch – Ruben’s bootstrapped product; create professional client proposals in minutes
The Business of SoftwareEric Sink‘s book that inspired an entire generation of bootstrappers
Patrick McKenzie – author of many fantastic and educational marketing blog posts over at Kalzumeus
Peldi’s blog – founder of Balsamiq, all-around nice guy and fantastic marketer

Episode 1: From Freelancer to Bootstrapped Product Launch w/Rob Walling

Hi there! To help Chasing Product grow, please take a moment to visit iTunes and give the show a 5-star rating. Thanks!

I’m so grateful to announce that the first episode of Chasing Product is now live.

In this episode, Rob Walling shares what he’s learned while making the transition from freelancing to launching bootstrapped products. We spend a bit of time talking about the mental game of a bootstrapper, then move on to marketing for engineers.

Bootstrapped Product Talking Points

  • Rob’s take on how long it took for him to “own” his bootstrapper-ship,
  • finding people to support & understand your endeavors,
  • coming to understand marketing from an engineering background,
  • why your freelancer marketing skills probably aren’t good enough even if you have some,

and more, including the story of how Rob acquired (not built!) HitTail (a must for any aspiring bootstrapper who considers buying a bootstrapped product instead of building one) and what’s going on with his latest bootstrapped product, GetDrip.

We finish off with concrete, can-do action items for your own bootstrapped product launch. Would you like to walk away from this podcast with nuts-and-bolts actions you can take to move yourself closer to being able to validate or launch a bootstrapped product? Then hold on all the way through to the end, you’ll definitely learn something.

Proper show notes will be up later.

  • Cogeian.com – my consulting firm
  • SmallSpec.com – my bootstrapped product. Painless functional specs in minutes, guaranteed.
  • SoftwareByRob.com – Rob Walling’s bootstrapped product blog
  • StartupsForTheRestOfUs.com – Rob Walling’s bootstrapped product podcast
  • GetDrip.com – Rob Walling’s current bootstrapped product. Use email to convert more visitors to customers.
  • HitTail.com – Rob Walling’s other current bootstrapped product. Guaranteed to increase your organic search traffic.

Getting this first episode out the door has been a lot of work, and I’m thankful to every guest who agreed to come on & record a show. Look forward to more great guests with more wisdom about releasing a bootstrapped product in the coming weeks.