Newsletter: Referrals / Thanksgiving
Our November 2015 newsletter highlights referrals, which we define as an introduction inspired by your ability to help the prospect with a problem or need.
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Thanksgiving 2015: Bootstrappers Potluck and Rainbow Shiny
A recap of the Bootstrappers Potluck Thanksgiving 2015, and an essay by Rich Mullings that we appreciate Thanksgiving like a rainbow, knowing it won’t last
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As We Grow Older
As I grow older I have gained a full appreciation for Laurie Anderson’s observation: “When my father died it was like a whole library burned down.” It’s now 97 months since my father’s death from a heart attack on October 23, 2007 and I still feel the loss.
Tips For Entrepreneurs On Surviving The Holidays
Surviving the holidays can be hard for entrepreneurs. If you visit family or see old friends few if any may understand what you are doing or going through. You may face a variety of suggestions that essentially treat you as unemployed–strictly speaking it’s an accurate assessment for many early stage bootstrappers–and possibly unemployable–again, strictly speaking, it’s
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Don’t Let LinkedIn Become a Time Sink
LinkedIn allows you to post a professional profile and accept professional recommendations, and perform searches of the professional profiles of others you are considering doing business with. But with groups and posts it aspires to host content and be your first stop every morning. The risk is that it can become a time sink.
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David Telleen-Lawton Presents at Lean Startup Conference 2015
If you missed The Nitty Gritty of Setting Up Customer Discovery Meetings by David Telleen-Lawton at The Lean Startup Conference 2015, he shared the down and dirty details of setting up meetings for Customer Discovery. Having set hundreds of B2B and B2C discovery meetings over the years, Telleen-Lawton tells how to reach out and set these
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The Unreasonable Entrepreneur
Unreasonable entrepreneur is almost redundant. By definition entrepreneurs want to change the status quo, offering better products and services as substitutes for established and successful ones. This often requires an unreasonable amount of effort and persistence, sometimes to the point of stubbornness, in the face of not only opposition but also a concentrated lack of
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TaroWorks 4.2 Launches
TaroWorks announced version 4.2 with this overview video and has scheduled a webinar on Wed-Nov-18-2015 at 10am ET to provide more details and answer questions. Key improvements are the ability to specify context-specific menu options and richer validation of free form input, including bar code scan values.
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George Murray’s Glimpse Offers a Wealth of Aphorisms
George Murray offers a wealth of aphorisms in “Glimpse.” 409 to be exact. It’s a fantastic collection, and definitely worth reading
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Newsletter: Customer Discovery Interviews
SKMurphy Newsletter for October 2015 This blog post summarizes our October newsletter, you can subscribe to the monthly SKMurphy newsletter using the form at the right Customer Interviews Customer Discovery interviews are key to discovering whether or not a market exists for your product or service and the skills and questions you hone in the early
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Lessons Learned From 9 Years Of Blogging
I started this blog in October of 2006–3 years after incorporating SKMurphy, Inc. in August of 2003–so this month represents the start of my tenth year of blogging. In the last nine years I have published 1552 posts, which total 871,535 words of writing or the rough equivalent of a dozen novels. What follows are some
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Seven Aphorisms From James Guida’s Marbles
James Guida published a hundred page collection of aphorisms in 2009 called “Marbles.” Here are seven that I think entrepreneurs will find thought provoking, by reminding them of an old mistake or helping them to recognize a current shortcoming.
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–October 2015
You can follow @skmurphy to get these quotes for entrepreneurs hot off the mojo wire or wait until they are collected in a blog post at the end of each month. Enter your E-mail address if you would like to have new blog posts sent to you. This month features a flurry of quotes from
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8 Tips For Bootstrapping A Service Business
Michael J. Riordan is a certified public accountant who has been in business in San Jose for more than 35 years. He gave a crisp briefing on “Bootstrapping a Service Business” at the Thursday Oct 8 PATCA meeting. He gave a great set of tips, here are my notes:
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Making Tea
In the last decade I have switched to drinking tea from coffee. I came across a neat process description for making tea by George Orwell in “A Nice Cup Of Tea” that mirrored what I do–except for adding milk or cream to my tea. I was struck by how often we think we have come
Roderick Huiskamp: Five Ways to Explore Pricing
Roderick Huiskamp (@RoderickH) is a Strategic Marketing Analyst with Fedex in Belgium. In this guest post he offers five ways to explore pricing, with three additional suggestions for the special case of professional services.
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Adeo Ressi: Don’t Lose Your Purpose In A Pivot
Adeo Ressi (@adeoressi) is a serial entrepreneur and currently CEO and cofounder of the Founder Institute. At Startupfest 2015, he gave a keynote with the theme: “What you do with your startup is your life’s work, ideally your destiny, and you don’t pivot on the purpose of your life.” Here are four key excerpts from his talk with
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Scaling Up To a High Reliability Organization
Randy Cadieux, founder of V-Speed LLC, started to post some interesting articles in the Lean Startup Circle Group on LinkedIn in June of this year, in particular his “Working on the Edge of Failure.” The high reliability organization as a lot to teach startups so I decided to reach out to him to compare notes. This led
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–September 2015
You can follow @skmurphy to get these quotes for entrepreneurs hot off the mojo wire or wait until they are collected in a blog post at the end of each month. Enter your E-mail address if you would like to have new blog posts sent to you.
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Newsletter: When and How to Seek Investment
SKMurphy September 2015 Newsletter This blog post summarizes our September newsletter, you can subscribe to the monthly SKMurphy newsletter using the form at the right When and How to Seek Investment This month’s issue addresses when and how to make the transition from bootstrapping to seek investment. I am not against looking for investment when
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