520: Encore episode – How to Worry in Business

Explicit content warning

07/21/20 • 23 min

Today on The Startup Chat we talk about worry. We get lots of questions about things that are rooted in worry. Worry is a useless emotion that just paralyzes action and problem solving. There are 2 different problems people worry about.

The problem you can’t do anything about.
The problem that you will never have.

Worry can be helpful in business because it tells you there is an issue that needs to be addressed. A worry should be short term and dealt with in a matter of hours not days or weeks.

Here are some observations we had about worry:

What exactly is a worry
The 2 questions to ask yourself
Problems you will never have
The difference a little experience makes
Hiten’s helpful hack for worrying
The productive way to worry vs. the unproductive way to worry

Learning how to worry is key to keeping your business running smoothly. Problems should be dealt with quickly, when a worry creeps up, be proactive.

We invite you to join our Facebook group. It’s great to have such an incredible group of entrepreneurs out there making it happen every day.

We’d love to hear from you; please feel free to join our Facebook group and share your experiences, challenges, and motivation with us and the rest of Startup Chat community.

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As always, you can hit us up on Twitter @Steli or @hnshah, #thestartupchat.

The post 520: Encore episode – How to Worry in Business appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

The problem you can’t do anything about.
The problem that you will never have.

Worry can be helpful in business because it tells you there is an issue that needs to be addressed. A worry should be short term and dealt with in a matter of hours not days or weeks.

Here are some observations we had about worry:

What exactly is a worry
The 2 questions to ask yourself
Problems you will never have
The difference a little experience makes
Hiten’s helpful hack for worrying
The productive way to worry vs. the unproductive way to worry

Learning how to worry is key to keeping your business running smoothly. Problems should be dealt with quickly, when a worry creeps up, be proactive.

We invite you to join our Facebook group. It’s great to have such an incredible group of entrepreneurs out there making it happen every day.

We’d love to hear from you; please feel free to join our Facebook group and share your experiences, challenges, and motivation with us and the rest of Startup Chat community.

As always, you can hit us up on Twitter @Steli or @hnshah, #thestartupchat.

The post 520: Encore episode – How to Worry in Business appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Previous Episode

519: The HEY launch: Pick a fight to get attention

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about The HEY launch.

Basecamp launched their new product, HEY, recently and have succeeded in creating a lot of buzz and a huge waiting list in the process.

In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how HEY was marketed before it launched, how the launch of HEY was a campaign, the unique position of Basecamp as a company and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About the topic of today’s episode

00:41 Why this topic was chosen.

02:04 One thing about Basecamp that a lot of people don’t realise.

02:48 About HEY.

03:47 How the launch of HEY was a campaign.

05:00 Another interesting thing about the HEY launch.

05:53 The unique position of Basecamp.

07:38 How Apple is a very principled company.

08:30 How Basecamp has found a middle ground.

10:03 About Basecamp’s marketing strategy.

3 Key Points:

The team about basecamp is that they’re not as strategic as you might think. They just have principles that have worked for them for over 20 years.
They don’t need to make privacy the enemy when they launch.
Who starts a battle with Apple?

[0:00:01]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

[0:00:02]

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.

[0:00:04]

Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat we’re going to talk about something that we usually never do, which is a recent product launch, HEY, and maybe the concept of beef as marketing. I don’t know. We’ll see. But during the last couple of weeks, there’ve not been many really impactful business product launches, I think, or at least if there were any-

[0:00:26]

Hiten Shah: I mean we don’t really talk about news on here. That’s really what you’re going after, right?

[0:00:29]

Steli Efti: We never do that. Yes.

[0:00:30]

Hiten Shah: We don’t do that, but we’re going to talk about news today.

[0:00:33]

Steli Efti: Yeah, we are, because it’s sort of fun. To me, at least, it’s been fun to observe the Basecamp folks launched a new email product. It’s called HEY. They teased it for a long time, they had a waiting list, and then they launched it. And even before they launched it, actually, they spent a good amount of time, critiquing privacy in email, which was kind of curious, interesting. They always like to fight battles, especially when they have products in the battle in some way, but they always want to stand for some bigger idea, go after some big evil thing that needs killing, and make it a cause. And so at the beginning I thought it would be privacy. They would just shoot at all these email providers that don’t respect your privacy. I thought that would be the big battle, but it turns out the big battle’s with Apple, which is even more fun.

[0:01:28]

Hiten Shah: So here’s what’s interesting. So these folks at Basecamp launched hey.com, and part of their marketing campaign prelaunch was privacy. Post-launch, it’s not even that it’s a battle with Apple, because I really don’t think they expected it, frankly speaking. I think a lot of people think they’re that smart or strategic, but they’ve even come out and said, “We didn’t expect this.” I think one thing about this company that people don’t realize is they’re very straightforward, and not as strategic as you might think, because they just have principles that have worked for them for 20 plus years, and they follow those principles, and they’ve written all those principles. In their Getting Real book, they have a section called pick a fight or choose an enemy. I mean back in the day their enemy was Gantt charts. I don’t know if you recall at all, but with Basecamp, original Basecamp, it was Gantt charts. And they’re like, “The enemy’s Gantt charts.” I mean now, with HEY, here’s what I’m thinking. They don’t need to make privacy the enemy when they launch because it is identified in their product. Every time you get an email that has an open tracker or a click tracker, I think it’s specifically around open, if I’m not mistaken, which is a lot of email you get, basically all the marketing email you get has open tracking, they let you know. Dude, Steli, they don’t need to talk about it. Just use the product and you know. You just know who’s tracking you, and they call it out, and they don’t need to do anything else. They don’t need to talk about it anymore. I think prelaunch it was the one thing they could get everyone riled up about, and get some momentum in their direction after forever and a day of not laun...

Next Episode

521: The Power of Encouragement

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the power of encouragement.

Running a business is difficult. Every entrepreneur knows this. Difficult times are going to arise and sometimes, all we need is a bit of encouragement to get over these difficult times.

In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about the concept of encouraging others, why it’s so powerful, why some people are better at it than others and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About today’s topic

00:39 Why this topic was chosen.

02:03 An example of a fascinating Muay Thai trainer.

04:36 Hiten’s thoughts around encouragement.

05:07 How humans can be really insecure beings.

06:05 How humans are terrible at recognising when someone needs encouragement.

07:17 How talking things out can give us encouragement.

08:15 How encouragement is an interesting concept.

08:50 Why it’s important to become aware when someone needs encouragement.

09:32 The importance of encouraging each other.

3 Key Points:

Sometimes I can be quite critical with people and with myself.
I think anyone can use encouragement, in both ways.
Become aware when someone needs encouragement, and when you need it as well.

[0:00:00]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

[0:00:02]

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.

[0:00:04]

Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about the power of encouragement. And here’s the reason why I want to talk to you about this, Hiten. Well, there’s many reasons I want to talk to you about this. I think recently, I just saw something on social media that talked about, it doesn’t cost you a lot to be encouraging, but you could change somebody’s entire life. And there was some story attached to that that was beautiful, inspiring. And it made me think, how powerful encouraging others can be and how that’s still something that, in some ways I do a lot of in my life, but in other ways, I always feel like I’m not doing enough of, right? And sometimes I even have a difficult time because I can be quite critical with people as I’m with myself. So, just wanted to talk about this concept of encouraging others. Why is it so powerful? How do you do it and how do some people do it so well? I’ll give one other example that kind of has been lingering in the back of my mind. I think that plus seeing that story connected the dots in a way that made me think, I want to talk to Hiten about this. I’m sure he has something incredible to say and we’ll have a great discussion and I’ll learn a ton of things. So, people know that I’m crazy about martial arts. I’m a huge fan of Muay Thai, which is kind of the Thai-style Kickboxing. And so, there’s this guy, there’s many old legends of Muay Thai in Thailand, these older gentleman that used to be in the sixties, kind of the Muhammad Alis and kind of the superstars of the sport. There’s one of those guys, his name is Dieselnoi, who was a legend, unbeaten, this crazy legendary figure, but then sort of became forgotten, right? Because it’s not like with boxing, where it’s a worldwide audience and if you’re a superstar, everybody in the world knows you. And so in Thailand just kind of became forgotten and eventually a Westerner that I’m friends with, she kind of discovered him and started training with him, bringing him into gyms, promoting him heavily, creating video content around him, sharing kind of who he is with the world and kind of helped him rise up again in status in Thailand. And all these Westerners come now to train with him and he’s making a ton of money and he’s getting recognition and he’s living a much happier life. The one thing that I found really fascinating about this guy is that when you see him train people, and this is something that people also shared about and talked about that had trained with him multiple times, they would describe him as the type of coach and trainer that is incredibly intense, very, very demanding, but when he tells you to do things, he says it with such passionate belief that you can do them, that you want to live up to that, that you want to please him. And he apparently never gets tired of it. They were like, the first day would tell me, “Throw the knee this way.” And five days later, he’s still, for an hour, is screaming with passion to throw the knee that way. And at no time, does he ever seem deflated, cynical or giving up on me. He just never gives up on people. He’s just intensely screaming at them to do this with a passion of a man that believes they can, no matter how long it takes them to learn it. They were saying how this kind of intense encouragement, how powerful that was as a training concept. When I heard ...