Brian Rhea is an entrepreneur who grew up watching his mom and dad grow their business from a desk in the kitchen, to the garage, to a new office building in his hometown. Brian has been building websites since 1994. He has used Photoshop 3.0 on a Macintosh Quadra 650 and wrote code in BBEdit for Netscape Navigator.The point is: He has been doing this for a while. He has had enough successes (executive member of an eight-figure acquisition) and made plenty of mistakes to have learned a thing or two about building successful businesses online. Knowing how to build something is easy compared to knowing what to build. The customer-centric (Jobs to Be Done) approach Brian uses will ensure you won’t waste time chasing bad ideas. With years of experience navigating the competing priorities of engineering, product, sales and customer support, he likes to help companies ship profitable software.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried Co-founders of Basecamp
When business started difficulties overcame:
“the mental fitness and the mental health that is absolutely required and overcoming the doubts that I think almost all entrepreneurs face. And you have to ask yourself this question of my experiencing these doubts because I am rational person and I am observing here hate this may not be a good decision or am I having these doubts just because that is the rational thing to do.”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us Book by Daniel H. Pink
- Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application Book by Jason Fried and Heinemeier David Hansson and Matthew Linderman
Favourite Quote:
- “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Winston Churchill
- “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Seneca
Recommended Online Resources:
- Farnam Street helps you understand how the world works, make better decisions, and live a meaningful life Our topics span history, philosophy, science, mental models, and more
- Send to Kindle Send news articles, blog posts and other web content to your readers’ Kindles so they can read them anytime, everywhere on their Kindle devices or reading apps.
- MegaMaker Club Private community for solopreneurs who want to earn an independent living from the things they create – digital products SaaS, apps, downloads
- Daniel Pink: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“build up savings to give you a margin for failure because you will fail along the way. Things are going to come up that you can’t control. Just go for it is really terrible advice and just increases the likelihood that you will have to give up on your dreams. So yeah be bold. Going into business yourself is already very very bold, you are already being brave. But be thoughtful and patient about it beforehand so that when you do make this leap you have actually more room to to be even more daring, more crazy, more risky”…[Listen for More]
More About Brian Rhea:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks
Other Quotes From the Chat with Brian Rhea:
- “we cannot prevent ourselves from making mistakes but we can sometimes stand in the way of learning from them”
- “everything is a mix of hard work, skill and luck. Have total control over hard work, you should always apply yourself. And in terms of improving your skills it’s hard to overvalue reading and being an avid reader whether that means literally sitting down with a book or whether you do audiobooks while you’re at the gym or on your commute. That’s one major advantage that we have is the ability to combine that leisure time or monotonous in the car time with an activity that really does contribute to our betterment. Then in terms of luck I certainly do believe that some things happen that you can’t imagine or couldn’t have prepared for and so there is certainly an element of luck however chance favours the prepared. Put yourself in a position to be looking more often”
- “don’t wait for your offering to be perfect before sharing it with the world. Don’t let your imagination be wounded by that imperfection, don’t be timid, don’t be afraid of imperfection and the criticism that is going to accompany it”
- “try to do the work, get it out there and make progress one little step at a time”
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