The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Every morning of every day, Sujan Patel starts his day by getting out all of his creative energy onto paper.The process is relatively simple. He starts by recording himself talking about whatever topic he wants to write about as a way to order his thoughts. He'll then send this recording to a transcriptionist and when he gets it back he'll spend around an hour cranking out a 1,500-2,000 word blog post. For Sujan, this is the secret to being one of the world's best and most prolific content marketers today.Just 10 years ago, content marketing just wasn't a thing. Sure, blogs existed but they were rarely used in marketing. Today, content marketing is one of the go-to strategies for businesses everywhere. But with everyone eagerly jumping onto the content marketing bandwagon, simply having a high-quality blog just doesn't cut it anymore.In order to really harness the power of content marketing and see some tangible results, you're going to need a little out-of-the-box thinking."Everyone's writing content for their customers, their existing customers, or who they think their customers are. What I like to do is, I don't even talk about any of that stuff. I talk about content circles. And what a content circles is, is [the] content that circles your industry."As the founder of ContentMarketer.io, the ultimate tool for content marketers, Sujan is one of the most knowledgable people around, and he shared a ton of his wisdom on the subject with us.In this week's episode you will learn: The best way to generate ideas for articles that your audience will love Just why content marketing is so powerful and why everyone is using it How to create content that generates you leads and customers What to do when you find yourself with writer's block How you too can start writing for places like Forbes, Inc. and Fast Company & much more!

During a creative career filled with awards and recognition, it took Alex Bogusky a while to realize that none of it mattered unless he loved the work.“You could win the Grand Prix at Cannes—the next day you’re going to go into your office and look at the same dude across the office and try to think of something. It doesn’t feel any better; it didn’t make you any smarter; it doesn’t make anything any easier,” Bogusky says.He did, in fact, win the most prestigious award at Cannes Advertising. Actually, under his leadership, the firm Crispin Porter + Bogusky won in all five categories, and became the world’s most awarded advertising agency. Bogusky himself was named Creative Director of the Decade by Adweek magazine, and Fast Company has called him both the Steve Jobs and the Elvis of advertising.Looking over his many endeavors, Bogusky is a hard person to pin down. There’s a friendly, surfery quality about him, but he’s also gained a reputation as a perfectionist and ferocious supervisor. He’s worked for both car companies and Al Gore’s climate change initiative. He’s overseen iconic ad campaigns for junk food, and the most successful youth-focused anti-smoking campaign in U.S. history. Having left the agency six years ago, he’s now focusing on work with a social responsibility component, supporting multiple creative agencies and a startup accelerator.But for all of the goals he’s achieved, Bogusky says the happiness he’s found in his career comes from loving the journey—that practice of sitting down with other people and thinking really hard to solve a problem.“I’ve found that I had to learn to love the process and forget all the goals. Because the goals, as you achieved them, they didn’t really change anything.”In this interview you will learn: How to embrace change and use it to fuel your creativity Why you need to listen to voices outside your startup and what it could mean for you When and where advertising and branding comes in for a business How to find opportunities to upset the status quo How you can start loving the journey regardless of its highs and lows & much more!

The future of media, if not the present, probably looks a lot like The Next Web, which is odd considering co-founder Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten says it’s not even really a media company.The Next Web instead thinks of itself as a tech company, firing on multiple cylinders at once, including international conferences, ecommerce, online courses, and of course, one of the most influential and trafficked news sites on the web. Soon they’re even opening up a brick and mortar space in Amsterdam that will serve as hub for technology startups.“For some people it’s sort of weird, ‘What, you’ve got a conference and a website and now you’re opening a space? That’s a totally different thing,’” Veldhuijzen van Zanten told Foundr (we’ll just call him Boris from now on).“For us, it’s a logical next step, instead of losing focus or branching out into different areas. They’re all connected by the brand and a curiosity in technology and the future of technology.”The Next Web actually started as a conference host. Its annual event in Amsterdam draws some 20,000 international attendees.However, the company is probably best known for its tech news site. That branch of the business is staggering, drawing up to 8 million visitors a month. But with its conferences expanding, its growing online marketplace, and Boris and his partners always looking for the next opportunity, the most impressive thing about The Next Web is how it merges such a wide range of services to meet the needs of its loyal community. And they do it all with a relatively small staff and a squad of remote contributors.“Everything is part of a circle that is growing stronger over time,” Boris says. “Part of our revenue comes from advertising on the sites with all the traffic we have, an important part is the conference, and now the ecommerce part is growing stronger.”Next could be research, consulting, video, anything within reason that the people who have come to love and trust the company might want. And that’s the secret to The Next Web’s success. It’s not a company that makes a product—it’s a network of people.In this interview you will learn: The subtle details behind what makes a great event that everyone loves How to conduct the best interviews with notable influencers Boris's number one tip on generating amazing content The tools that every startup should start using The key to keeping everyone in your company aligned to the same vision & much more!

No one ever "gives" an entrepreneur a job, they make one for themselves.Entrepreneurs don't ask for permission, they just do. And no one exemplifies this better than Ryan Holiday who has made an entire career out of refusing to play by the rules.As a writer he started off by dropping out of college to apprentice under Robert Greene as a research assistant. To date he's published 5 bestselling books, his first book now being taught in colleges around the world. As a marketer he got his first job as the Director of Marketing at American Apparel by starting off as a marketing consultant and catching the eye of founder Dov Charney.Today, he works as a world-renowned media strategist he can count among his list of clients the likes of Tim Ferriss, Tucker Max and Linkin Park just to name a few. So how did he manage to achieve so much all before turning 30?For Holiday it's a mastery of two things: the media and your own self-development."I found that the more that I go out and learn stuff on my own, the more opportunities I create through me, then the better I am at my job," he said.We speak with Ryan as where we talk everything from his process to media strategy to his advice on how to always keep learning in order to be successful.In this episode you will learn: The secret to getting driving attention to your business with social proof How to pitch journalists, bloggers and reports from major media channels The importance of self-reflection and humility in order to succeed What works and doesn't work when it comes to successful PR Where to go and what to do when you need a mentor & much more!

In 2012 James Beshara and his co-founder officially launched Tilt, a platform that aimed to make crowdfunding not only more personal but to make the process as easy as possible. But if you ask the Y-Combinator alum himself, he'll say that Tilt was created years before it even launched.Originally starting off as an offshoot of an earlier startup that he was working on, he soon found himself working on Tilt more and more. It was then he realised he was onto something."For every young entrepreneur out there, starting, or building, or founding something. It always sounds like it just starts one day in February or starts one afternoon when you get hit with inspiration. When in truth I think it is the amalgamation of just always starting things, doing things, trying out ideas and one of them just starts to get pulled from you, and you start to spend more time on it."Ever since it's inception Tilt has been on a tear.In just four short years Tilt is now valued at $500 million and has crowdfunded some of the world's most memorable campaigns in recent memory. Like sending the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Olympics to raising over $180 thousand for several campaigns providing relief to the victims of Hurricane Sandy.Along the way though James has learnt some very valuable lessons on what it means to be the CEO and co-founder of a fast-growing startup. We chat with James today and he reveals his personal methods and strategies on how to build a startup that not only scales, but scales quick. In this episode you will learn: The importance of waiting for the right co-founder How to get out of your own head and move fast, all while developing the best product possible Why the smartest people in the room might not necessarily give you the best advice How to design and build a product to grow as fast as possible The two key things every entrepreneurs needs to focus on if they want to succeed & much more!

Something that most entrepreneurs struggle with the most is coming up with an idea for a startup. They'll study business forecasts and look at unique trends trying to find the next big thing. What most entrepreneurs forget though is that the most disruptive startups in the world were created to solve a single problem.Which is what exactly Polina Raygorodskaya was looking to do when she founded Wanderu, a platform that allows you to find, compare and book bus and train tickets anywhere within the United States. In just 4 years Wanderu have grown their database to over 5 million users. It turns out there were other people that were facing the same problem as Polina.A long time entrepreneur Polina came across the idea for WanderU while constantly commuting back and forth in New York. Often having to travel by bus or train she quickly found out, to her surprise, that there was no single database to allow commuters to easily find and book bus and train tickets.Sensing a startup opportunity she closed down her PR firm and began to build Wanderu.Despite having little experience in the travel industry Polina was undeterred and together with her co-founder they built North America's leading ground travel search platform. Today, Wanderu is now partnered and works together with the leaders of their industry like Greyhound, Megabus, and Peter Pan Bus just to name a few.In this interview you will learn: Tips on how to get started in the travel industry, even if you don't have any experience Importance of finding the right team that shares your vision How to find and connect with the best advisers and influencers to help you build your startup When to sacrifice profit for growth Secrets to creating a valuable network that'll sustain your business in the long run & much more!

There are no shortcuts when it comes to good online marketing, something that Dave Hobson knows all too well.As the resident expert on all things marketing at Foundr we give you a very special episode today about Dave from how he came to be at Foundr to his thoughts on successful online marketing.Funnily enough, it is entirely possible that Foundr would not be around if Dave had not cold-called Nathan nearly four years ago. At the time Nathan had only just started Foundr and Dave was at a job where he had to cold-call people and try to make a sale over the phone. Instead of making the sale the founder of Foundr and Dave got to chatting and they eventually became friends.In order to understand why Foundr may have never existed without Dave Hobson you first must understand his role at Foundr. Essentially he's Nathan right-hand man, the go-to guy whenever a discussion needs to be had about marketing, strategy or the future of Foundr. Even before he started officially working at Foundr, Dave has always been in the background helping Foundr out with his advice.Today we're very lucky to count him as one of our own and as Foundr's Business Development and Product manager.In today's episode we show you a little of what's going on behind-the-scenes at Foundr, but more importantly we have Dave divulge the tactics and strategies behind one of our best sale channels: webinars.Webinars are an amazing tool and they've become a staple in the online marketing world and no one knows that better than Dave Hobson, who knows all the ins and out behind what makes a successful webinar.In this episode you will learn: Dave's story and how he came to work at Foundr Why webinars are so powerful and why almost every business in the world can use them All the tools you'll need to start doing a successful webinar The structure every great webinar needs if you want to make sales How to choose the right webinar topic for you and your audience & much more! If you want to learn more about webinars, then check out our FREE guide on webinars at https://foundrmag.com/webinarguide!!

The term "unicorn company" describes a startup valued at over $1 billion that managed to get there in a relatively short period of time. Usually when we talk about unicorn companies, we're dealing with Silicon Valley and the cutting edge of the tech scene. Companies that are disruptive in the sense that they've created something totally new.Rarely, however, do we find a unicorn company that started out in an overcrowded and declining market. Yet somehow, despite the odds, Tom Bilyeu, co-founder of Quest Nutrition, turned a fledgling startup into a powerhouse in just six years.When Quest Nutrition first hit the scene with their protein bars, they were told by almost every expert in the space that it was insane and that it was guaranteed to fail. Yet Bilyeu and his co-founders persevered and tackled the problem in a way that no one else had thought of before.First they focused on their customers, to empower them and actually help them make healthy and positive changes in their lives. In short, they treated their customers differently than their competitors.The result was explosive, growing by 57,000% in their first three years and cracking the $1 billion mark three years later.We were lucky to sit down with Bilyeu and have him give us the breakdown and strategy behind Quest Nutrition and how they became the unicorn company they are today.In this interview you will learn: The challenges of managing a hyper-growth company and how to overcome them How to navigate the classic entrepreneurial debate of profit vs. growth Why you need to evangelize to your customer whenever you can How to build brand loyalty and have your audience believe in your vision How to crack the notoriously difficult and crowded health and nutrition market & much more!

When Hal Elrod was 19 he was involved in a car accident with a drunk driver that left him with brain damage, 11 broken bones, and doctors telling him that he'd never walk again. While many people would understandably give into grief or anger or any other whirlwind of emotions that come after such a traumatic event, Elrod instead made the conscious choice to be at peace with himself.He knew there was nothing he could control about his situation, but he could control how the situation affected him. While he accepted the fact that he might never be able to use his legs again and was at peace with it, he was also determined to find a way to walk again.“I’m going accept the worst-case scenario, while I focus on the best case scenario.”Three weeks later, defying all odds and expectations, he began to walk again.Since then, he's called upon his life story and lessons he's learned along the way to become a highly sought-after motivational speaker and bestselling author of the book The Miracle Morning. Through his book, Elrod has touched the lives of millions of people with his simple philosophy and has guided them to become more productive, happier, less stressed, and at peace with themselves.In this interview you will learn: How you too can start becoming a better entrepreneur, and a better person overall, every single morning Why the most successful people in the world take their mornings very seriously When to accept the worst and how to turn that into a weapon What your potential is and how to reach it What it truly means to put mind over matter and how to do it & much more!

Brian Scudamore, an entrepreneur who built a multimillion-dollar business empire from junk, talks about his journey of building a service-based business empire and the challenges he faced. He shares strategies for getting your first customers, building a successful international franchise, and the importance of hiring for cultural fit. He also discusses recovering from the subprime crisis and his plans for reaching a billion dollars in revenue by 2020.