The actual traits of successful entrepreneurs
* Humility * Curiosity * Helpfulness * High frustration tolerance * High uncertainty tolerance * Effectuation * Prudence * Self-forgiveness * Self-trust * Flexibility
Archive
A collection of 34 issues
When the goal of your sales pitch is to get to "No"
There are 8 billion of us on this planet, with an estimated 5.44 billion of those online. All of us potential buyers for something. But that doesn't mean you want any specific individual to buy your thing. I often tell my students that the goal of a
Editing for brevity, in 151 words
Brevity is the soul of wit. — William Shakespeare, as Hamlet's Polonius I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time. — Blaise Pascal, personal letter Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. — Henry
19 unstoppable opportunities in the AI wasteland
In no particular order… 1. Connection 2. Curation 3. Guidance 4. Opinions 5. Values 6. Judgment 7. Feedback 8. Deep expertise 9. Deterministic results (always the same output for the same input) 10. Accuracy 11. Clarity 12. Transparency 13. Trustworthiness 14. Sustainability 15. Being & going offline 16. Honesty 17.
Learning about sales copy with Sea Monkeys
Aside from software, books, workshops, and packaged consulting engagements… I also sell, you know, stuff. Things. Objects. That's how I got my start in business at the age of 12 and it never gets old! There's just something fun about selling physical goods. It's
Let's dissect Apple's terrible iPad ad and see what it says about understanding your customers
Yesterday, Tim Cook (forever Tim Apple to my mind) shared the ad for the new iPad Pro. It went over like a lead balloon full of kittens in a hydraulic press. Somehow Apple — one of the last tech cos people still like — managed to conceive, storyboard, create, and hit Publish
How to piss off your entire audience in one simple step
Benji Smith, owner of Shaxpir — a cutely named and decent-looking writing tool for novelists — has (metaphorically) died by the sword. At first glance, he was doing the right thing: He created a wide and deep ebomb for his audience, a tool in fact (bonus points for interactivity) and it really
We're rebooting our brand in 2024… here's why
After all the hits our business took in the last few years (SO MANY fn hits!) and a significant decline in revenue, I believe: * that problems are opportunities * and setbacks are education * and never let a crisis go to waste So here's how Alex and I are going
"The boom times are over."
The boom times are over. Executives know it. Wall Street knows it. And the story that we’re in a revolutionary moment of technological transformation will run out of gas soon. So the bosses are using that moment to do what Silicon Valley wound up doing when its other big
Relaunching, & rebranding, our top pillar content after 7 YEARS
Before I announce the thing we've been working on, I need to explain it, and to do that, I gotta drop some deep history on 30x500: Many many years ago — wayyy back in December 2009 — I hosted a little 3-hour teleconference talk about everything I'd learned
Reading the Tito's Vodka origin story
There's nothing like a good, old-fashioned entrepreneur origin story! The real kind, not the ones you'll find in Forbes or FastCompany, workshopped to death by PR and probably mostly if not entirely fake. It's why, despite the man himself being an entire trash barge
The Reverse-Frankenstein will help you pump up your flabby writing
Together, Alex and I have coined The Reverse-Frankenstein: You RF when you've created a single large piece of content that has too many competing goals and content "tracks," so you hack it apart at the joints to produce several standalone pieces which are stronger, crispier, &
Discipline is finite. Excitement is infinite.
"Discipline" is like "cost-cutting" — a subtractive approach that can only go so far and, if taken further, undermines and destroys the very thing you're trying to create. Excitement is like investment: it's additive, it grows, it expands, it builds more potential, and
Case Study: Launching an Audible-like business for digital comics
A few of the businesses owners that I work most closely with are unique in that I don't (or can't) really share much about their businesses due to owner privacy. But one of them is just too damn interesting to not talk about, so I'
Your newsletter emails are a series of twisty passages, all alike
As part of my Leverage Year, I'm segregating my email inbox and moving all my newsletter subscriptions over to Newsletterss. And… it's ROUGH. I just want to change my email address. Most newsletters I get only offer an option to Unsubscribe. Then when I get to
LinkedIn talk, part 3: The complete slides
Phew! It's done. Now I just have to get a good night's sleep and give the talk tomorrow morning to a handful of complete and utter strangers who don't even read my blog! Adventure!! My rural internet's been spotty the last hour
My first LinkedIn talk, part 2: The content
Last time I wrote about the framework for my first LinkedIn talk: 1. Proper introduction of me & who I am/why I'm giving this talk, what Noko is 2. Business advice HEAVILY BLENDED WITH where did Noko come from, what Noko is, where it’s going, WHY,
My first LinkedIn talk, part 1: Planning
So the title of my very first LinkedIn talk* is Profitable Project Prioritization — because who doesn't love a little alliteration, amirite? (* I'm canceling the word 'webinar' in 2023; it's time) Talking things over with my LinkedIn coach, he explained that I shouldn&
The #1 reason you'll fail as an entrepreneur
Let's skip all the intro palaver and get straight to it: The #1 reason you'll fail as an entrepreneur is you don't really want to be an entrepreneur. Hold on, hold on — I can actually hear your spine straightening through space and time (it
Building leverage: Tab hoarding edition
a major part of my goal for 2023 is to fix the systems that lead to mental clogs and stagnation and so… i just closed, like, 100 tabs 😩 — Amy Hoy (@amyhoy) January 2, 2023 For my New Year's resolution, I said I wanted to build leverage, and that
"Discipline" is overrated
What does discipline mean? Webster's dictionary defines it as… just kidding. When people say "you need self-discipline," they mean you need to get good at making yourself do something you don't want to do. But if you ask me, that's a losing
My New Year's resolution
I had an absolutely awful 2022; I lost nearly the entire year to a series of illnesses, infections, medication mishaps and deprivations and withdrawals, surprise glutenings, a major accident and tragedy, two surgeries, and rocky recovery. So first and foremost my goal for 2023 is to… not. Not do all
Don't make this domain name mistake!
Try. Get. Use. Send. Let's. Do not put these words at the beginning of your domain name in order to secure the dot com. Just don't do it! Take it from me, who had one of those domains for over a decade. And one who regularly
It's working!
December 2022 was the first month in a long time that Noko time tracking ended with more customers than we began with. November we had 517 customers. December we had 518 customers. We've reversed the downward slide! In one sense, it's a tiny step — wow, one
Updating the Sales Safari System for 2023
Way back in 2010 (or so), in the earliest days of us teaching entrepreneurship to creators, Amy invented "Sales Safari" as technique for high-quality ethnographic audience research. You can listen or read about the origins in this inteview. Over the years of teaching the process in our flagship
Maybe the best antidote for fear is fun
So, that thing. You know… the thing you're putting off because you're scared of it? Scared of what'll happen if it goes wrong? Even more scared of what happens if it'll go right? What if they don't like it? What
🚀 Launching during the holidays
I don't know about you, but to me, the last 6 weeks of the year are a weird time and attention dilation. Stress, attention, and time are all expanding and contracting in weird ways that don't quite match the rest of the year. So it'
Tracking Trials
It's a little thing, when you look at the absolute numbers, but Noko Time Tracking growing twice as fast in December than we did in November, and significantly more so than any of the previous 5 months. And December is not really a big time for folks to
"Don't borrow trouble"
I remember clearly the first time I heard the phrase, "Don't borrow trouble." It was fall 2018, I had the flu, and I was all burrito'd up in a blanket, binge-watching a silly show for tweens called The Nine Lives of Chloe King. And
🎶 I wanna go where the people are… (a LinkedIn story)
Get this: I'm using LinkedIn. Wait, wait, before you hit unsubscribe (or call in the hostage negotiators)… hear me out. This is about growth, for Noko time tracking. We've always grown by content marketing (ebombs) → word of mouth. Bottom up. So we'd get large
Life lesson: Warm up that list
Last time I wrote about relaunching Freelancember, an ancient bit of content marketing we run every December to bring notice to Noko time tracking. Reuse is great! But there's a catch. When you haven't emailed folks in a year — especially a year like this one — you
Life lesson: Don't throw away your "old" marketing content
Reduce, reuse, recycle… your work product. I can't deny that I'm as afflicted by Shiny Object Syndrome as the next person, if not more so. I love working on new stuff! There's nothing better than the blank slate. Projects are my love language. But
Starting Up: What is a customer, anyway?
A customer is someone who pays you. Not somebody who used to pay you, but stopped.* Not somebody you've talked to a whole bunch and it's looking positive, but who hasn't paid you yet. Not somebody who's thinking about paying you. Not
Starting Up: What is a business, anyway?
You want to start a startup, bust out a side hustle, launch a business… excellent! But what, exactly, does it entail? What, exactly, is a business? Easy… It's the simplest most complicated thing in the world. Business with a capital B is nothing more complicated than the exchange