One of the highlights of Bos2010 for me was discovering Rob Walling. He was in the Lightning talks competition in 2009 where we both did a talk but I did not really take in what he said – his mind was on towels and I was totally focussed on kittens (and dinosaurs and asteroids). He made the ‘mistake’ of doing a totally serious talk while I played if for laughs. No hard feelings I hope 😉
This year I had chance to listen to him more closely and he did the most fantastic talk on how to setup a mailing list, strategies to use, keywords to avoid (‘extra inches’ is definitely going to see your emails in trash). Like any good speaker or teacher, he left me wondering with hindsight why it was ever difficult to understand.
If you missed his talk, then he does a blog (which I have become a devotee of) and a podcast – this week he is is actually recounting his thoughts about Bos2010. He has written a book called Start small, Stay small about running a startup (although it also has lots of good ideas for established small businesses). We used it as a checklist to review what we were doing well and what we could improve.
The best thing about Rob’s advice is that it is that it very clear (he makes things obvious without being condescending), easy to implement and it is all meticulously researched – he tells you exactly what various experts say and then what he has found in practice.
So I hope you check out his sites, and sorry Rob about the towels/kittens thing in 2009.
Thanks for the shout out – it was great catching up again this year at BoS. And of course, no hard feelings about the towels/kitten thing 🙂
I had to spend an extra hour a day talking to prospective customers since I started following your advice. Luckily I also listened to your podcast on saving time.
(http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-13-twelve-ways-to-add-hours-to-your-day). Especially liked the ideas about watching everything time-lapsed so you can fast forward the ads and not feeling compelled to finish every book I start!