I’m sure most of you know Mike Taber, from Startups For the Rest of Us, the popular podcast he co-host with Rob Walling.
Mike had quiet a journey these past few years through his career. We really touched on a lot of it, so even if you are a fan of Mike, his podcast, or met him at MicroConf, the conference he helps organize, I think you’ll learn a thing or two about his backstory, ins and outs of how things started, the early days of him working with Rob at the Micropreneur Academy and the Startups for the Rest of us podcast, and how that grew over the years.
We went also just a bit on his work on AuditShark and now the launch of his company Bluetick.io, which is all about doing sales followups from your email, with some fancy automation builtin. It’s really interesting to see how Mike took lessons learned from previous steps along his journey and put them to see real results in the past few years in terms of traction, validating a new product, getting paying customers and moving the ball forward at a much faster clip.
Enjoy!
Episode Notes
[2:00] Mike introduces Bluetick.io, his newest SaaS product.
- “Others are one-to-many, Bluetick is one-to-one automation at scale.”
[5:20] Why Mike can be the US President and the Japanese Emperor at the same time. Mike’s desires to get into the video gaming industry and first experiences after a Computational Engineering degree at RIT.
- “Over the years I came to realize it’s kind of difficult to both write code and run a business at the same time.”
[12:00] Mike’s side businesses. Experiences in the video game industry, marketing games, building computers for flight simulator gamers, and ending up selling groceries online.
[22:00] The story of how Mike connected with Rob Walling, and started Micropreneur Academy. The progression to Startups for the rest of us and MicroConf. How profitable a conference can be.
- “I realized that if I was to make any money, then I really need to be the founder of a business.”
- “Compared to a blogpost, it is much easier to get on a podcast and just talk to somebody about what you are doing, and it resonates more with people.”
[35:27] AuditShark in retrospect. The concept of product-founder fit. How Mike came up with the idea of Bluetick. Doubling audience by asking for a referral. The power of comparative marketing and why he is integrating Bluetick in the sales process of his clients.
- “If you are not comfortable selling a piece of software in the way that most people are comfortable buying it, you’re not going to be able to change the world.”
Links
- Mike Taber on Twitter
- Mike Taber’s new software, Bluetick.io
- Mike Taber’s blog
- Startups For The Rest Of Us Podcast
- Big Snow Tiny Conf
- MicroConf
- Joel Spolsky from Fog Creek
- Rob Walling’s blog
- FounderCafe – ex Micropreneur Academy
- Jason Cohen’s blog (A Smart Bear and WPEngine)
- Mike Taber’s “21 Days Before My SaaS Launch”
