Hello Blink Show: Recent Episodes

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Harris and I are sad to report that we have decided to shut down the Hello Blink Show. We had an incredible time creating the episodes, sharing knowledge about sales and marketing, and meeting amazing new people. We learned a lot from our guests, and we hope you did, too.

We discuss some of the things we could have done better if we were to go back in time and redo the show:

• The name “Hello Blink Show” was a potential SEO miss. While it was a unique name and meant someone would land on our site when searching for that phrase, it did nothing to convey what the show was about.
• We need to find a way to break out of the core group of listeners who either knew us personally or followed one of us on social media.
• Find a way to build a community for technical people building or running their own companies. Chris Gammell’s Contextual Electronics Forum attracts a similar audience, and we would not want to compete with his forum.
• We would want to ramp up our production and marketing efforts to include releasing an episode every week as well as engage people more on social media (e.g. Twitter).

Harris is pivoting his career to go from individualized consulting to building a virtual sales assistant. This pivot grew out of his experience developing Intro CRM. He found that even though Intro CRM provided a simplified set of CRM and sales tools, people were not using it. That revelation led to the idea of creating a productized service to literally help people with sales.

Shawn is pivoting to focus on embedded machine learning and teaching as opposed to marketing consulting. Part of this focus includes doing research with the hope of being published in academic journals or pursuing a PhD.

Hello Blink Show will continue to exist as an archive of episodes, but for the time being, we have no plans to produce future episodes.

Sponsor

We want to thank Twilio for sponsoring this episode! Twilio is a cloud platform that helps developers automate phone calls, text messages, and other communications through their web API. Check out twilio.com/go/helloblink for more information about using Twilio for automated messaging and IOT applications.

List of Resources

Podcast - Pipeline Meeting

Website - Intro CRM

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Nonsense marketing is the seemingly frivolous activities that marketers do that have a chance of “catching on” or “going viral.” For example, Wendy’s often provocative Twitter account is an example of nonsense marketing. It requires creativity and is often experiential.

Christine gives us some other examples of nonsense marketing, such as Ford’s Home of the Future project. The purpose of these projects can be difficult to grasp sometimes if you’re not the intended audience.

Shawn gives the example of Bud Light’s “Whatever, USA” campaign where the renowned beer company rented an entire town for a weekend to host a giant party for contest winners. The winners, rather than being drawn randomly, were selected based on personality and social media engagement, as the event was a targeted way to promote the brand through influencers.

To make nonsense marketing work, companies need to analyze their audience(s) to determine what kinds of authentic messaging works. If the messaging is missing or the content is inauthentic (e.g. using superficial aspects of viral videos without regard to the audience), nonsense marketing will likely fail.

Shawn talks about SparkFun's soldering activities as a form of nonsense marketing. The Badger Hack soldering activity performed much better at SXSW Create (correction: Shawn says “SXSW Edu” in the show, but it should be “SXSW Create”) than the Roshamglo activity at the larger SXSW conference. Christine comments that reaching a critical mass of interest is important and can be more easily achieved in a smaller group.

Harris gives the example of Lulzbot manufacturing 3D printers on the CES show floor one year, which attracted a lot of attention from attendees and the press. This helped drive engagement from distributors, which was the ultimate audience of the marketing effort.

Christine talks about her project of building an Alexa device inside antique telephones. She sold a few of these as a form of art, which caused a buzz among her tech audience.

Sponsor

We want to thank Twilio for sponsoring this episode! Twilio is a cloud platform that helps developers automate phone calls, text messages, and other communications through their web API. Check out twilio.com/go/helloblink for more information about using Twilio for automated messaging and IOT applications.

List of Resources

Podcast - Pipeline Meeting

Website - Intro CRM

Guest Information

Christine Sunu is a developer, designer, and creator who builds emotive interfaces and experiences. Though her main area of focus is the overlap between technology and human emotion, she has worked extensively in product, marketing, and design in both hardware and software. She has often worked with developer education and trending content, appearing in videos for outlets such as BuzzFeed and The Verge and helping to coordinate IoT-related content at Twilio. Among other things, Christine has created soft robots for anti-anxiety, produced trending tutorial builds about sourdough bread, levitated paramecium in giant magnetic fields, and attended half of medical school at Yale. She writes and speaks widely about human motivation and interactivity in hardware and connected interfaces, and she engages an international audience through online open-source tutorials.

Guest Contact Information

Website - Christine Sunu

LinkedIn - Christine Sunu

Twitter - @christinesunu

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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In this episode, we talk to Alessandro Grande and Robert Wolff, who run the Arm Innovation Coffee livestream on YouTube (which you can check out here). They tell the story about how they joined forces about a year ago to create a weekly interview video series during the pandemic.

Alessandro and Robert use StreamYard to help manage the livestream, including green (waiting) rooms for guests, overlays, and live comment pop-ups. They also use Open Broadcaster Software Studio (OBS Studio) to stream their own personal feeds into StreamYard to manage multiple cameras and other overlays.

Livestreams are great for making connections with audiences where people can chat and ask live questions. They offer a different form of engagement rather than a video or podcast where audience members are expected to passively watch/listen to the presenters. This helps humanize a brand by allowing customers (or potential customers) to interact directly with the presenters and each other.

Developer evangelists (advocates, etc.) should consider adding livestreaming to their toolbox as a way to interact with customers and audiences.

The new form of voice-only hangouts (e.g. Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces) offers something similar to livestreaming, but seems to lack many feedback features available on other platforms, such as the ability for audience members to type something into a chatbox.

Robert talks about how to measure success with livestreams, which can be different than many common business metrics. These measurements include brand awareness and engagement compared to the amount of time to prepare and create the livestream (i.e. the return on investment). Alessandro mentions that a livestream should offer something to the audience to keep them engaged.

Sponsor

We want to thank Twilio for sponsoring this episode! Twilio is a cloud platform that helps developers automate phone calls, text messages, and other communications through their web API. Check out twilio.com/go/helloblink for more information about using Twilio for automated messaging and IOT applications.

List of ResourcesArm Innovation Coffee Livestream

StreamYard
Open Broadcaster Software Studio (OBS Studio)

Guest Information

At the time of this episode’s release, Alessandro Grande has left Arm and taken a new position as Director of Technology at Edge Impulse.

Robert Wolff is an Ecosystem Developer Evangelist Manager at Arm.

Guest Contact Information

LinkedIn - Alessandro Grande

LinkedIn - Robert Wolff

Twitter - Alessandro Grande

Twitter - Robert Wolff

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Darian Johnson joins the Hello Blink Show crew for a live brainstorming session. He is working on a low-power, battery-operating LCD digital assistant. He plans to fund manufacturing through a crowdfunding campaign, but he needs help figuring out how to market the device first.

Darian starts the episode by sharing a personal story about how he encouraged his 12-year-old son to build his own TV. Rather than simply buy a TV, he gave his son a Raspberry Pi and a monitor. The son had to install the operating system, connect all the components, and load streaming services.

One of Darian’s recent projects was a set of smart candles made with real wax, which you can read about here: https://darianmakes.com/scent-terrific-smart-candle/. These were turned into a product called the Pyllr.

He asks Harris and Shawn for ideas on how to market his LCD digital assistant. Harris mentions that blogging or sending prototypes to beta testers is a great way to gauge product-market fit. Even if it is not open source, sharing the journey and process is a great way to build an audience. Sites like https://hackaday.io/ or https://www.hackster.io/ offer good platforms for sharing projects and journaling the process.

Since recording this episode, Darian has started chronicling his efforts at https://hackaday.io/project/178328-always-on-low-power-digital-assistant.

Sponsor

We want to thank Twilio for sponsoring this episode! Twilio is a cloud platform that helps developers automate phone calls, text messages, and other communications through their web API. Check out twilio.com/go/helloblink for more information about using Twilio for automated messaging and IOT applications.

List of Resources

Website - Hackaday.io

Website - Hackster

Guest Information

Darian Johnson is a managing director for a large technology services company, where he leads major cloud computing initiatives. Darian is also a hobbyist maker of IoT (Internet of Things) projects. His projects have been featured in numerous publications and won multiple awards. His most recent project, the Pyllr Trio Candle, is scheduled for a crowdfunding launch in the Spring of 2021.

Guest Contact Information

Website - darianmakes.com

LinkedIn - Darian Johnson

Twitter - @darianbjohson

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Description

Sean talks about launching his product, EmotiBit, on Kickstarter. EmotiBit is a wearable biometric sensor used for research, engineering, and maker projects.

Julio discusses what types of products do well in crowdfunding campaigns. For the most part, business-to-consumer, physical products with a price range of $50-$300 do the best.

Shawn asks if crowdfunding should be seen as a way to fund research and development or more of a pre-order system. Sean mentions that he is using Kickstarter to reach a funding goal in order to meet minimum quantity orders for manufacturing. However, Julio talks about how many companies in recent years are using crowdfunding as a launch campaign to sell pre-orders. In addition, he mentions that using it to fund research or development (without a manufacturing plan) does not generally work well.

Julio talks about how small companies should build a community long before launching a crowdfunding campaign, which can involve publicly sharing the project or product being worked on.

Harris sums up how well Sean has learned from and worked within the biometrics community. He mentions that it often takes years of learning and community building to create a successful product and business.

Shawn and Julio provide an overview of the major crowdfunding platforms:

• Kickstarter - Consumer electronics, software, board games
• Indiegogo - Fashion, film
• CrowdSupply - Electronics (dev boards, etc.)
• GroupGets - Electronics (dev boards, etc.)

Sponsor

We want to thank Twilio for sponsoring this episode! Twilio is a cloud platform that helps developers automate phone calls, text messages, and other communications through their web API. Check out twilio.com/go/helloblink for more information about using Twilio for automated messaging and IOT applications.

List of Resources

Website - Launch Studio

Website - EmotiBit

Kickstarter Campaign - EmotiBit

Guest Information

Julio helped build the Design and Technology Community Outreach team at Kickstarter. For several years, he led Kickstarter's efforts to search the globe for designers and entrepreneurs working on innovative and noteworthy products and help those creators successfully launch their creations. While at Kickstarter, Julio worked with hundreds of creators and developed a deep understanding of the crowdfunding ecosystem. Currently, Julio serves as the CEO of Launch Studio.

Sean is the founder of EmotiBit, a wearable bio-metric sensor platform to democratize sensing signals from the body. After finishing his Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Sean created Connected Future Labs, an agile R&D engineering group utilizing research methodologies combined with emerging technology to create 21st century solutions.

Guest Contact Information

Launch Studio

EmotiBit

LinkedIn - Julio Terra

LinkedIn - Sean Montgomery

Twitter - EmotiBit

Instagram - EmotiBit

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Description

We chat with Christine Sunu and Dominik Kundel from Twilio about the importance of developer advocacy in a marketing strategy and how it can help build trust with prospective customers.

One of the keys of successful developer relations (DevRel) is to “meet people where they are” rather than trying to create a community out of nothing. This includes going to events and engaging developers on forums and chat rooms that already exist. However, you must make sure that your company’s offerings align with the demands of the community. Additionally, you must be an authentic participant in the community rather than attempt to sell products.

Dom announces the release of Twilio Insiders, which is an early access program for developers that use Twilio products. Such early access programs can make fans feel like part of a close-knit community as well as provide feedback to product developers.

DevRel is useful if your intended customers or audience are developers. If you are a solo business or find you don’t have time for full DevRel efforts (traveling to events, managing forums, etc.), you can simply blog about what you learned during development of your product. This helps connect you to potential customers as well as act as top-of-funnel marketing.

Sponsor

We want to thank Twilio for sponsoring this episode! Twilio is a cloud platform that helps developers automate phone calls, text messages, and other communications through their web API. Check out twilio.com/go/helloblink for more information about using Twilio for automated messaging and IoT applications.

List of Resources

Video - OK Go Audience Phone Concert at SIGNAL

Book - Ask Your Developer by Jeff Lawson

Site - Twilio Insiders

Guest Information

Christine Sunu is a developer, designer, and creator who builds emotive interfaces and experiences. Though her main area of focus is the overlap between technology and human emotion, she has worked extensively in product, marketing, and design in both hardware and software. She has often worked with developer education and trending content, appearing in videos for outlets such as BuzzFeed and The Verge and helping to coordinate IoT-related content at Twilio. Among other things, Christine has created soft robots for anti-anxiety, produced trending tutorial builds about sourdough bread, levitated paramecium in giant magnetic fields, and attended half of medical school at Yale. She writes and speaks widely about human motivation and interactivity in hardware and connected interfaces, and she engages an international audience through online open-source tutorials.

Dominik is a Developer Advocate for Twilio in San Francisco. He loves tinkering with anything that can run JavaScript, from the front-end over servers to CLIs and coffee machines. You can find him tweeting @dkundel or working on open source projects for CodeExchange and Twilio Labs. In his spare time, he's working on cocktail, food, and photography projects.

Guest Contact Information

Website - Christine Sunu

Website - Dominik Kundel

LinkedIn - Christine Sunu

LinkedIn - Dominik Kundel

Twitter - @christinesunu

Twitter - @DKundel

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Description

Harris opens the show by giving an account of his experiences with implementing good search engine optimization (SEO) practices and what he’s learned. After spending a little bit of time learning about SEO, he says that he was able to grow his organic traffic sooner than anticipated.

Your goal for top-of-funnel content is to rank highly in search engine results whenever someone looks for your target topic (e.g. the topic of your blog post, podcast episode, or video). You can use SERP to measure how well your content is performing and if your SEO practices are paying off.

Shawn gives an overview of 6 good SEO practices that can offer a big impact with relatively low effort:

1. Choose the topic for your content carefully and consider the target audience. Your content needs to educate or entertain the audience. “How to,” “getting started”, or “what is” guides work very well, as those keywords are searched very often. Do not try to sell your product or service in this top-of-funnel content; your goal needs to be to entertain or help people in order to build trust with them.
2. Your title is the most important part of your content piece. Spend some time to figure out what people are searching for. You can do this by searching Google to look at how other, similar pieces of content are titled as well as by using tools like Ubersuggest and Answer the Public to look at search volume. Try to make your title as close as possible to what people are typing into the search field.
3. There is no hard rule when it comes to content length or word count. Look for similar content, and make your content similar length. I usually look at similar content and think “How can I do this better?” which often results in slightly longer content than those lookalike pieces. I aim for about 1200 words in my written blog posts, but that could change based on the subject, the audience, and how the search algorithms operate at any given time. Do not duplicate (copy and paste) content! It will hurt your search rankings.
4. You should care about site speed (for both desktop and mobile browsers). Google will rank fast sites higher than slow sites. You can check your site speed on Ahrefs and Neil Patel’s SEO Analyzer. Many speed analyzer tools will offer you a list of things you can fix or tweak on your site to make it load faster.
5. It’s OK to link out to other, relevant content. Don’t worry about trying to “keep people on your site.” Your goal with top-of-funnel content should be to build trust with your audience. You’ll often find articles (e.g. Wikipedia) or videos outside of your site domain that can help the audience in their journey while consuming your content. Link to those other content pieces, even if they are outside of your domain.
6. Measure your success. It’s hard to improve if you don’t measure how well your content is performing. Google Analytics and Fathom Analytics are good tools for looking at page views, how long people view content, etc.

There are plenty of SEO tips that were not covered as part of these 6, but we feel that the majority of them make only a small difference (which can add up, but you must be diligent about using them!). We recommend using an SEO plugin as part of your content management system (CMS), such as Rank Math for WordPress. These plugins will often give you a checklist while you’re creating content to remind you of the small tweaks you can make (e.g. adding alt text to images).

Sponsor

We want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

List of Resources

Neil Patel - The 10 Most Important SEO Tips You Need to Know

Tool - Ubersuggest

Tool - Google Trends

Tool - Answer the Public

Tool - Ahrefs

Tool - SEO Analyzer

Article - Internet encyclopaedias go head to head

Tool - Google Analytics

Tool - Fathom Analytics

Tool - Rank Math SEO Tool for WordPress

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Description

Sean gives his reasons for moving to New Zealand and starting his company, MagicDAQ. He was inspired to create the MagicDAQ after working for companies where many hours of labor were spent on manual testing. The MagicDAQ automates the testing and data acquisition process by allowing users to script the process with Python.

Sean had success making early sales by cold-calling potential customers on LinkedIn. Specifically, he sought out junior to medium-level design engineers to contact. After selling the first few, he talked to other hardware entrepreneurs to learn how to scale. Specifically, he had success sending free samples to influencers and periodicals, like the Embedded Muse.

The MagicDAQ relies on Python for scripting, and Sean chose that language to make it easier to use.

Harris asks Sean about distribution back into the United States, which is one of Sean’s target markets. Sean says that it’s been pretty simple to sell back into the United States, which involves some extra paperwork. Harris talks about what is required to have the “Made in the USA” label.

Sean discusses what the startup and electronics community looks like in Christchurch, New Zealand. He mentions that the community is small but friendly and collaborative.

Sean talks about pricing his product. Specifically, he mentions that many companies have a threshold of $500-$1000 when it comes to purchasing equipment. Anything above that threshold often requires lots of approvals from management. So, Sean prices his product under that amount to make it easier for his B2B customers to buy.

Being listed with recognized distributors, such as Digi-Key, works as social proof according to Sean. He mentions that sells more directly, but being listed on distributors helps with brand recognition.

Sponsor

We want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

List of Resources

Website - MagicDAQ

Newsletter - The Embedded Muse

Guest Information

Sean Hadley is a New Zealand based entrepreneur and design engineer. He has extensive experience in the medical device industry and has launched products in the US, NZ, and the UK. He is the founder of MagicDAQ, a firm that offers radically simple testing solutions for hardware engineers.

Guest Contact Information

LinkedIn - Sean Hadley

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Description

We start by checking in with Jonathan Georgino, who last appears on the show in episode 5. Since then, he has gotten more sales and more distributors to carry his product (the Binho Nova host adapter).

Specifically, Jonathan mentions that paid ads have not worked well at attracting new leads. However, collaboration with influencers (e.g. Shannon Morse) and appearing on podcasts has worked well. He also mentions that he is starting to see a trickle of new visitors to his site after creating several new blog posts.

Harris asks Jonathan about what tools he uses to help create content and analyze his site’s SEO performance. Jonathan says that he uses a combination of stock Shopify and Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest tool to help brainstorm content ideas.

Jonathan tells the story how he woke up to an email one morning accusing him of copyright infringement. He had used the “Click” name for one of his boards that conflicted with the MikroElektronika Click ecosystem naming. He apologized and took the product page down.

However, he turned the potential legal battle into a collaboration opportunity. He worked with MikroE to create an official Click adapter board for the Binho Nova. In addition, he mentioned MikroE’s design services team was great to work with.

Shawn and Harris check in with Jonathan’s distribution efforts. He mentions that he purposely slowed down getting into new distributors, as he’s quite happy with the current mix and sales have been growing. Interestingly, he also mentions that direct sales can sometimes be easier than dealing with distributors.

Jonathan talks about when it makes sense to become a reseller for other people’s products. Specifically, he resells the Sensepeek PCBite, which complements the Binho Nova’s capabilities. This allows for a better testing experience for the customer (as they can use both products together and order them from one place), and it drives traffic to his site, as Binho is listed as a US distributor on Sensepeek’s site.

Finally, Jonathan mentions that he implemented a simple recommendation that Harris made a few months ago: send a handwritten note with every product that ships. Apparently, many customers reach back out to thank Jonathan for the note, the product, and sometimes let him know what they’re using the host adapter for. This turns out to be a fantastic way to communicate with the end users to get feedback on a product.

Harris talks about doing things that don’t scale, which came from Paul Graham’s blog post.

Sponsor

We want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

List of Resources

Binho Nova host adapter

YouTube Video - Bingo Nova with Shannon Morse

Ubersuggest tool

Click adapter board for the Binho Nova

Sensepeek PCBite

Paul Graham’s blog post - Do things that don’t scale

Guest Information

Jonathan, a passionate hardware engineer, routinely found himself creating tools to assist in the projects he’d been working on for several years. In late 2018, he began to merge several of his personal projects into a single tool and the Binho Nova Multi-Protocol USB Host adapter was born. A veteran of several Bay Area hardware startups, he enjoys wearing many hats and doing whatever it takes to bring high-quality products to market, from proof-of-concept through mass production. Above all, he wants to share his enthusiasm for developing quality hardware products with as many people as possible.

Guest Contact Information

Twitter

LinkedIn

Website

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Description

Daniel Bogdanoff joins as a guest to discuss his experiences creating video content as part of the marketing strategy for Keysight. He noticed that Keysight, like many other tech companies, had essentially 2 options for creating video content: high-budget ads or off-the-cuff webcam shots. As a result, he transitioned into a marketing role to create the Keysight Labs YouTube channel, which has about 80k followers (at the time of this recording).

Daniel believes that companies looking to market to or engage audiences on YouTube should maintain three separate channels: one for community building, one for calls to action, and one for tutorials. Additionally, an inbound marketing strategy should consist of both written and video content, with at least a portion of that being hosted on the company’s site.

Creating videos that target specific SEO terms, such as “What is an oscilloscope?” is a great way to provide a top-of-funnel marketing layer and capture new audiences that may be interested in your products (assuming, for example, that you sell oscilloscopes). These types of concept videos (and blog posts) can be complemented with long-tail searches such as “how to measure current with an oscilloscope” and “ground loops” (which are, once again, related to oscilloscopes).

Daniel recommends adding a level of human connection to the videos by forcing yourself to appear on camera (rather than just doing close-up shots or screen capture). More than likely, it will be awkward at first until you get more practice. Even just using a few seconds at the beginning of every video to introduce yourself can make a big difference!

Developing your own content to build an audience is different from influencer marketing, which involves borrowing their audience. When working with an influencer to reach their audience with your brand or product, make sure you have a very specific topic and call to action in mind, and ensure that it will be relevant to the influencer’s audience.

Daniel recommends looking at number of views, watch time, impression rates, and click-through rates as metrics to determine the success of individual videos as well as for content marketing campaigns in general. You’ll want to create custom URLs to post in the video or description that provides a tracking code so you can measure click-through rates.

Sponsor

We want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

List of Resources

Keysight Labs YouTube channel

Video Creators Podcast

EEs Talk Tech Podcast

Guest Information
Daniel is a Test Gear Geek at Keysight Technologies because he gets to choose his own job title. He loves taking complex, technical topics and making them easier to digest. Proverbially. He has an electrical engineering degree, but fell into the marketing department early in his career and never looked back because quote: marketers have all the fun. He runs the Keysight Labs YouTube channel and the EEs Talk Tech podcast if you want to go geek out with him on nerdy EE stuff.

Guest Contact Information

LinkedIn - Daniel Bogdanoff

Twitter - Daniel Bogdanoff

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Description

How do you get your first customers, and when should you hire help? Natalie Luneva joins us, who runs her own coaching and consulting business for software as a service (SaaS) startups. She talks about how she got started helping small businesses and offers insights into finding initial customers, the importance of joining communities, and the pros and cons of developing technologies that rely on other, larger businesses.

In the second half of the show, Natalie talks about hiring help, whether by contracting or full-time employment. She discusses how time can easily be wasted on menial tasks that can be outsourced and the associated opportunity costs. She ends the show talking about the need to find a good product-market fit.

Sponsor

We want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

One Powerful Quotation

41:23 - Natalie: "You only grow when you are stretched. If you are not stretched, you never grow.”

Key Topics

• 1:15 - Harris asks Natalie about her experiences and how she helps SaaS teams grow, specifically with a focus on marketing over sales. Natalie talks about how she helps clients achieve growth by tackling “low-hanging fruit” issues in marketing and content.
• 3:45 - Shawn asks Natalie to give some tips on how new founders can increase traffic. Natalie responds by stating that a focus on getting initial sales is likely more important than inbound marketing content. Specifically, she says to join and engage with relevant communities (forums, chat rooms, social media, etc. that focus on your market area).
• 7:00 - Natalie talks about how to find and join communities with relevant audiences.
• 8:00 - Harris asks Natalie about how to create content (specifically, podcasts) that gets shared. Natalie shares her strategy of building relationships on her podcast with peers rather than focusing on potential customers.
• 10:00 - Shawn relates by talking about how partnering to create content can be used to provide business referrals rather than making new customers.
• 11:30 - Natalie talks about how a single viewpoint from a successful SaaS founder might be narrow-sighted, as what worked for them might not work for others.
• 12:30 - Harris asks Natalie about using integrations as partners.
• 17:15 - Shawn asks Natalie about creating a company or service tied to a larger company or product (e.g. creating a plugin for Salesforce or an add-on board for Arduino). Natalie recommends creating a plugin or suite of plugins that work across multiple platforms so all your eggs are not in one basket.
• 21:00 - Natalie talks about focusing on one integration initially to learn what works before moving on to support other platforms.
• 23:00 - Shawn asks Natalie to tell her story about getting involved in coaching and consulting with SaaS founders.
• 26:45 - Harris asks Natalie what consulting looks like for her. Natalie talks about how she must combine different efforts to help coach her clients as well as apply good business practices. Specifically, she starts by examining metrics and finding the “low-hanging fruit” issues that will give the greatest return on investment (ROI).
• 31:30 - Shawn recommends the book “E-Myth Revisited” when it comes to hiring help. Natalie agrees and talks about the learning curve of managing people.
• 34:45 - Natalie offers advice on hiring someone full time and figuring out which tasks can be outsourced to an employee.
• 37:15 - Harris talks about why he hasn’t outsourced any tasks yet, and Natalie mentions that the opportunity cost can hinder potential growth. Even if hiring and managing people is scary and uncomfortable, you must stretch yourself in order to grow.
• 42:45 - Shawn mentions the hidden costs of context switching between tasks and why it’s important to maximize time in the “genius zone.”
• 44:15 - Natalie adds that the “genius zone” also needs to correspond to the highest paying task in order to maximize profits and potential to scale.
• 46:45 - Shawn and Natalie discuss blocking time, especially as it relates to engineering and software development.
• 48:30 - Natalie talks about the importance of identifying and understanding the problem potential customers have before building a product rather than the mindset trap of “if you build it, they will come.”
• 52:00 - Natalie shares her contact information.
• 52:45 - Shout out segment: Matt Bradshaw talks about his first product, the DrumKid drum machine, and thanks Shawn for his KiCad tutorials.

List of Resources

Book - The E-Myth Revisited

Book - The Genius Zone

Site - MicroConf Connect Group

DrumKid drum machine

Guest Information

Natalie Luneva is a growth and team performance coach to SaaS founders. She is on a mission to help SaaS companies scale, clarify business priorities, and grow high performance teams. Drawing from her 10+ years of leading marketing teams, she helped over 100 companies implement high ROI opportunities, scale their operations, clarify business priorities and grow high performance teams.

Guest Contact Information

Website - Natalie Luneva

LinkedIn - Natalie Luneva

Facebook - Natalie Luneva

Twitter - @natalie_luneva

Host Contact Information

shawnhymel.com

kennyconsultinggroup.com

LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel

LinkedIn - Harris Kenny

Twitter - Shawn Hymel

Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information

“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Trailer for the Hello Blink Show.

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SponsorWe want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

Key Topics
In this episode, we take a step back to look at how the show has performed over the past year. The Hello Blink Show is almost 1 year old, and we want to thank everyone who listens to the show!

Specifically, we dive into the listener and download metrics to try look for patterns to determine what worked and what did not work over the past year. Harris talks about his new podcast, "Pipeline Meeting," that specifically dives into sales process and teases his new product, Intro CRM. At the end, Harris and Shawn asks listeners to submit their own thoughts to the show about what they want to hear in 2021.

One Powerful Quotation
17:50 - Harris: "I think that we're doing a good job giving people exposure [and] access to what happens in the business side of the shop, which is obviously more important when it's your business."

Key Topics

• 1:20 - Harris talks about the reasons for moving the show hosting to Transistor.fm for the foreseeable future.
• 1:50 - Harris mentions that he has started his own podcast, "Pipeline Meeting," where he talks about the sales process and his own customer relationship management software, Intro CRM.
• 8:15 - Shawn dives into the metrics of the Hello Blink Show over the past year. We grew from only a handful of downloads to over 100 each episode.
• 12:45 - Shawn looks at the episodes that did particularly well, including SEO vs. SERP, how to become an engineering consultant, and IP clauses in contracts.
• 16:15 - Harris mentions that the practical, business-oriented topics seem to do the best.
• 18:10 - Shawn notices that when the guest had a large following, the episode had a larger number of downloads.
• 19:00 - Shawn and Harris talk about working to be inclusive on the show.
• 21:15 - Harris talks about the future plans for the show.
• 23:00 - Shawn mentions that he wants to continue covering the psychological aspects of running a small business, and Harris offers his own personal story regarding raising a family while taking on the risk of working for himself.
• 27:30 - Shawn asks audience members to give their thoughts: what do you want to hear in 2021 from the Hello Blink Show? Reach out to the show via Twitter (@HelloBlinkShow) or email (info [at] helloblinkshow [dot] com).
• 30:25 - We hear from one of our listeners, Nathan Mangar, a maker who runs tecknologg.website.

List of Resources
Podcast - Pipeline Meeting
Intro CRM

Host Contact Information
shawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information
“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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SponsorWe want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

OverviewIn this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn wanted to share their presentation on sales and marketing for Boulder Startup Week 2020. They are joined by Katie Hackos to delve deeper into retaining customer relations but the disconnect between sales and marketing can have adverse effects on these efforts. Listeners will hear their insights on communicating with customers and why marketers and sales people should work together. They explore the dynamics to why these departments operate in different directions and include best practices. This episode is an interactive, mock business discussion as they elaborate on these topics.

One Powerful Quotation

• 36:01: Harris: “...If you’re not creating a culture where everyone feels bought into what’s happening in the sales side of the business, you are not helping that build a culture that’s going to help the company grow in the long run…People need to understand what the sales team is thinking about. How they’re thinking about it. Marketing needs to know what the sales numbers are.”

Key Topics

• 4:25: The episode kicks off with Katie, Harris, and Shawn introducing themselves and their work background.
• 8:15: Shawn is introduced as Chief Marketing Officer of boulder.io as he prepares to meet with the CEO to cover their annual statistics.
• 12:54: Harris is introduced as Director of Business as he shares his reflections of boulder.io.
• 17:15: Shawn and Harris answer questions from viewers and discuss their mock roles.
• 25:46: Shawn continues his talks on why marketing teams should recognize KPIs to discover buyer personas. He also explains the Pareto Principle.
• 33:14: Harris talks about the dysfunctions in sales teams and why this department should not be disjointed with marketing. He also discusses the prisoner’s dilemma as it relates to business strategy.
• 41:40: Shawn talks to the audience about The Hello Blink Show.
• 43:08: Shawn clarifies the Pareto Principle, and Harris/Shawn discuss calculating the lifetime value of your customer base.
• 48:56: Harris and Shawn articulate the most common and costly mistakes they’ve witnessed in organizations for sales and marketing.
• 52:50: Harris and Shawn respond to why there are no chief revenue officers in more organiza-tions. Harris thinks there is a cultural shift in venture capital moving away from having this position.

List of ResourcesWebsite - Bonusly
Website - Boulder Startup Week
Website - Prisoner’s Dilemma
Article - Round canoe syndrome
Website - Pareto Principle
LinkedIn - Ben Travis

Guest InformationKatie Hackos is a high spirited and energetic Account Executive for WonderProxy, a SaaS company, who successfully manages accounts and contains a proven track record of retaining customer relations. Her specialties include: Retaining and building B2B and B2C relations, sales closer, superb communicator across all media platforms.
LinkedIn
Twitter

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Katie Hackos.

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SponsorWe want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

OverviewWhether you have a new product idea or business project, listeners will appreciate hearing her experience with developing and building software applications.

Lola is involved in the Atlanta tech startup scene, where she currently runs Lunch Pail Labs, a digital product studio and consultancy. Her insightful remarks range from being a solopreneur to the trends in risk capital investments.

One Powerful Quotation

• 30:35: “I think the rise of the almost solopreneur I think we’ll see more of in this decade enabled by some of these tools that just enable you to do so much more with your time like the automation tools as a one person business.”

Key Topics

• 2:01: Harris opens the show by asking Lola about no code development.
• 3:27: Lola shares use case examples of no/low code and internal business productivities that can be automated including web flows and domain sites.
• 6:02: Shawn asks Lola about cross app development tools.
• 7:21: Shawn further inquires with Lola about API integration for hardware.
• 8:48: Shawn and Lola discuss custom, no code solutions that have integrated tools for transferring data.
• 9:53: Lola shares her background and the inspiration behind her business, Lunch Pail Labs.
• 11:42: Lola explains how she runs her business and acquires clients.
• 14:42: Lola digresses on this year, how remote work and networking help her succeed, and her thoughts about what it means to be an entrepreneur.
• 18:40: Harris asks Lola about her client base and their type of use case needs.
• 23:07: Lola talks about being a venture scout at Indie.VC and explains the difference of risk capital.
• 27:00: Lola responds to Harris’ commentary on venture capital and the idea behind the “power law” compared to independent risk capital.
• 29:19: Lola adds to Shawn’s remarks that there is a gap in raising capital. One of the trends has been the exchange for equity in business by providing human resources they need to grow and scale their business.
• 32:32: Lola shares another trend in revenue sharing type agreements that invest in people that want to develop and create.
• 34:06: Shawn and Lola talk about networking and how she became involved in the startup scene. Lola highlights how early connections can help shortcut your business growth and create partnerships.
• 37:08: Shawn and Lola further extrapolate on how these partnerships facilitate finding clients/customers.
• 39:27: Harris inquires with Lola about considering building her own product.
• 40:14: Harris wraps up the show and asks Lola to share her contact information.

List of ResourcesWebsite – Lunch Pail Labs
Website – MicroConf Community
Website – Zapier
Website – Integromat
Website – Elementor
Website – Wordpress
Website – Squarespace
Website – Wix
Website – Indie.VC
Website – Adalo
Website – Bubble
LinkedIn – Robert Walling
Website – TinySeed Investment Thesis “Power Law”
Website – Steve Case’s “Rise of The Rest”
Website – Intro CRM: Harris' new project, built with no-code

Guest Information
Lola Ojabowale runs Lunch Pail Labs, which is a digital product studio and consultancy. She works with clients to plan and execute the initial versions of their products with no and low-code development tools. Her background is a mix of product, strategy, and operations, and she has built products for herself and others.

When she's not running Lunch Pail Labs, she's active in the venture and startup community. She is a scout at indie. vc and works with various early teams. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and a native of the Washington D.C. area who currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

Twitter
LinkedIn
Website – Lunch Pail Labs
Website – Personal

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Lola Ojabowale.

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SponsorWe want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

OverviewIn this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn welcome back legal expert and attorney, Mark Tyson. Mark shares some legal advice in negotiating contracts and how to handle particular pitfalls with your employer or contractor.

One Powerful Quotation

• 43:47: Shawn: “Read your damn contract.”

Key Topics

• 3:17: Shawn opens the show by asking Mark about the invention of assignment clause in contracts as a conflict of interest for ownership.
• 7:18: Shawn discusses with Mark about forgoing statutes as an employee. Mark recommends negotiating your contract and understanding all of the terms/conditions.
• 10:20: Harris asks Mark about defining formal employment agreements as an employee with a small company or startup. Mark encourages listeners to be upfront with the employer and the reality behind trying to copyright ownership.
• 12:49: Shawn inquires with Mark about red flags in contracts and when to seek legal advice. Mark highlights what to be look out for in the contract language.
• 15:31: Shawn and Mark agree that everything is negotiable; Mark adds this can leverage your value including compensation, benefits, stock options, etc.
• 18:25: Mark explains his definition of inventions and how they are defined in contracts. He delves into the prior ownership clause and the importance of due diligence.
• 27:32: Mark responds to Harris’ comments on future success and how contract negotiation are formulated.
• 31:14: Mark explains the difference between prior ownership and background technology clauses and their implications.
• 33:37: Shawn asks Mark about disclosing prior inventions or body of works on contracts.
• 37:02: Harris asks Mark how people should approach seeking legal advice.
• 40:45: Mark discusses contract negotiation and reasons you need to ask good questions. He suggests sample agreements and why pricing isn’t always the benefit of the bargain.
• 44:34: Mark talks about the risk-analysis in the value of contracts for ownership.
• 46:48: Harris shares his final thoughts for the episode, and Mark adds that enforcing new contracts is contingent on additional independent consideration and covenants such as noncompetes or non-solicitations.

List of Resources

Example of Invention Assignment Clause

Assignment of Inventions - Research or any other work performed while working on the behalf of CLIENT to CLIENT. You agree that all Inventions, research or any other work performed while working on the behalf of CLIENT that are developed using the equipment, supplies, facilities, or Proprietary Information of CLIENT or
result from or are suggested by work performed by you for CLIENT or are conceived or reduced to practice during your contract term with CLIENT and relate to the business and products, or to the actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of CLIENT.

Example of Prior Inventions Clause

Prior Inventions - It is understood that all Personal Inventions, if any, whether patented or unpatented, which I made prior to my employment by the Company, are excluded from this Agreement. To preclude any possible uncertainty, I have set forth on Schedule A attached hereto a complete list of all of my prior Personal Inventions, including numbers of all patents and patent applications and a brief description of all unpatented Personal Inventions which are not the property of a previous employer. I represent and covenant that the list is complete and that, if no items are on the list, I have no such prior Personal Inventions. I agree to notify the Company in writing before I make any disclosure or perform any work on behalf of the Company which appears to threaten or conflict with proprietary rights I claim in any Personal Invention. In the event of my failure to give such notice, I agree that I will make no claim against the Company with respect to any such Personal Invention.

Example of Background Technology Clause

The parties acknowledge that certain intellectual property developed, acquired, or otherwise obtained by Contractor prior to, or independently of, this Agreement (collectively, “Background Technology”) may be used by Contractor in the performance of Services. Contractor shall not include Background Technology in any deliverable or Work Product without Company’s prior written consent. Contractor unconditionally grants to Company a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, fully-paid right and license, with the right to sublicense through multiple levels of sublicensees, under all of Contractor’s intellectual property rights in any Background Technology incorporated into or necessary for Company to fully utilize and capitalize the Work Product, (a) to reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, digitally transmit, and otherwise use the Work Product in any medium or format, whether now known or hereafter discovered, (b) to use, make, have made, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise exploit any product or service based on, embodying, incorporating, or derived from the Work Product, and (c) to exercise any and all other present or future rights in the Work Product.

Guest InformationMark started his own law firm, Tyson Law PLLC, to help entrepreneurs and small businesses with their legal issues.

TwitterLinkedIn
Website

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Mark Tyson.

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SponsorWe want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

Overview
In this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn interview Matt Liberty. Matt shares his experience with finding contractor work and how you should go about referrals and selecting the best candidate. Listeners will hear his advice as Matt discusses his company, Jetperch, and their tool, Joulescope.

One Powerful Quotation

• 20:47 Matt: “Overall, trying to find better ways to do your job, find better ways to value your work and value the parts and work you have and how to negotiate with local people as well to do it. I found that working through these freelancing sites has helped me figure that out better and be better positioned.”

Key Topics

• 1:31: Shawn opens the show by asking Matt about his self-employment experience as a software consultant.
• 2:06: Matt explains why he developed Joulescope as a way to measure the dynamic range of battery power.
• 5:32: Harris inquires with Matt about his go to market and direct sales strategy. Matt describes how his operations and contract manufacturing work.
• 8:59: Harris asks Matt about his scaleability and why working with distributors is a roadmap to get back to working with engineering.
• 9:44: Matt describes his freelance process discerning that his manufacturers/designers act as his engineers, and smaller projects were relegated to others with varying degrees of success.
• 10:53: Matt notes his success with freelancers has been with designing his logos for Jetperch and Joulescope.
• 12:14: Shawn follows up with Matt on his experience with hiring freelance engineers.
• 14:16: Matt shares what he believes is the biggest challenge.
• 15:29: Shawn asks Matt about his experience with managing freelance, software engineers.
• 17:32: Harris surmises that the risk benefits of freelancing are not worth the hidden and unseen costs.
• 19:06: Matt explains the differences in using Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelance.com for finding artists and freelance engineers.
• 22:47: Matt highlights why finding your community and leveraging relationships can can develop key strategic partnerships.
• 25:16: Matt explains the tradeoffs with screening and hiring, qualified talent as full time employees versus paying freelancers for one time transactions.
• 27:28: Shawn asks Matt his recommendation on a project management framework with freelancers.
• 30:37: Harris asks Matt why you should consider using freelancing for accelerating the growth of your business. Matt encourages listeners to delegate responsibilities to those with the skills you need.
• 34:51: Matt adds to Shawn’s commentary that the scaleability of your business can determine the amount of work to give your partners.
• 36:28: Matt shares the percentage of managing his product engineering and customer service.
• 38:00: Shawn and Harris wrap up the show, and Matt shares his contact information.

List of ResourcesWebsite - Jetperch LLC.
Website - Joulescope
Website - Contextual Electronics Forum
Website - Shopify
Website - Upwork
Website - Fiverr
Website - Freelance
congruentgraph on Fiverr

Guest InformationMatt Liberty is the creator of Joulescope, the easy-to-use, affordable test instrument for low-power design, and also the founder of Jetperch LLC, a software and hardware engineering consultancy. Matt was the primary inventor of Hillcrest Labs' Freespace® motion control technology, and he was granted 27 US patents. Matt has a broad engineering background encompassing digital signal processing, PCB development, FPGA development, and software development in C, C++, and Python.

Twitter
LinkedIn

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Matt Liberty.

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SponsorWe want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

OverviewIn this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn interview electrical engineer, Mihir Shah. Mihir shares his insights into the success of his latest startup and his acquisition by another firm. Listeners will hear his advice as he shares his experience with selling inspectAR to Cadence Design Systems.

One Powerful Quotation

• 9:16: Mihir - “Fundamentally, your business has to make money…And if you don’t understand that this is going to make money, then don’t even bother going to an investor…Investors inherently are not bad people; there’re not sharks; their job is to buy into companies and in many ways help them get to a successful exit so they can get a return.”

Key Topics

• 1:03: Shawn opens the show by asking Mihir to describe inspectAR and how he envisioned the design to debug hardware.
• 3:43: Shawn inquires with Mihir about the inspiration to form inspectAR as a need for the market.
• 9:16: Harris advocates for Mihir to make the case for capital investment.
• 13:55: Mihir tells the story of what he pitched investors inspectAR as a lens for how all interactions and electronics will be done.
• 19:30: Shawn inquires with Mihir about his acquisition and how that changes the process of growing and building a business if it’s your exit strategy.
• 24:27: Shawn follows up with Mihir about VC funding and how it met the needs of his business.
• 27:49: Mihir explains the how and why of his structured acquisition plan.
• 29:00: Mihir delves into the promenade process and his internal champion at Cadence that made his exit strategy successful.
• 35:09: Mihir shares his background and why his work experience was so invaluable to his professional development.
• 46:49: Shawn wraps up the show and encourages Mihir to impart his final advice to listeners.

List of ResourcesWebsite - InspectAR
Website - Cadence Design Systems
Website - Royal Circuits
Website - Y Combinator
Website - Autodesk
Website - Transistor FM
LinkedIn - Justin Jackson
Website - Paul Graham - Don’t Talk To Corp Dev
Website - Axon
LinkedIn - Luke Larson
Website - LaBarge Weinstein
LinkedIn - Colin Wrynn
LinkedIn - Alicia Grant

Guest InformationAn EE who grew up in a PCB Fab. The rest is history! Previously designed hardware at Tesla and Taser. Joined family businesses to help grow and get schooled in how to build an ultra profitable business that scales. Took those teachings to a couple failed startups, and ultimately inspectAR, which I helped co-found and operate as CEO. inspectAR was successfully acquired this month by Cadence Design Systems, just 18 months after being founded.

Twitter
LinkedIn

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Mihir Shah.

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SponsorWe want to thank Cyber City Circuits for sponsoring this episode! Cyber City Circuits is an electronics shop and contract manufacturer based in Augusta, GA. Use the coupon code HELLOBLINKSHOW to receive 10% off your order of electronics or mention that you heard about them on the Hello Blink Show for a 25% discount on the assembly costs of manufacturing.

OverviewWe chat with Lisa Lewis Miller, career coach, owner of Career Clarity, and author of an upcoming book about changing careers (or starting fresh!). Lisa describes the four pillars for career fulfillment that make up the framework she has been using throughout her coaching practice to assist many clients in their journey. She also discusses the importance of finding a good lifestyle fit (even if that means working for a company rather than entrepreneurship) and how a “bridge job” can help make a career transition smoother. Lisa runs her own career coaching service and is releasing a book, Career Clarity, which is due out on November 17, 2020.

One Powerful Quotation

• 8:45 – Lisa: “Phase one of the career discernment journey is: you need to start with who you are, what you value, and what you prioritize, and use all of those data points to then help you generate some hypotheses and some ideas for what could be next.”

Key Topics

• 0:45 - Lisa talks about starting her journey as a career coach and her upcoming book, Career Clarity, which you can pre-order here (due out on November 17, 2020): https://getcareerclarity.com/order/.
• 6:30 - Shawn asks Lisa to describe her “Career Clarity” framework to career coaching. Lisa responds by talking about how someone can prioritize happiness in their life and career to achieve success.
• 8:45 - Lisa talks about doing some self-discovery to figure out what drives a person and makes them happy before trying to find the right job or career.
• 11:00: - Lisa lays out the four pillars for career fulfillment: strengths and gifts, interests and passions, personality, and lifestyle.
• 15:30 - Shawn asks where making money fits into the pillars.
• 20:45 - Shawn asks Lisa to share her views on how much luck plays into career success.
• 24:15 - Lisa talks about finding a “bridge job” to help people transition from one career to another (or to help prepare for entrepreneurship).
• 28:15 - Harris asks Lisa about the benefits of not working for yourself. Lisa mentions that if safety and security are high priorities for someone, they may be better off working for a company.
• 34:00 - Shawn and Lisa talk about “paving your runway,” which involves taking side hustle jobs before jumping into full-time freelance or entrepreneurship.
• 36:30 - Harris and Lisa discuss the risks of working for yourself while trying to start a family.

List of Resources
Career Clarity by Lisa Lewis Miller
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Pivot by Jenny Blake

Guest InformationIf there’s a job out there, Lisa Lewis Miller has probably done it. Lisa is a career change expert and the founder of Career Clarity, a company helping individuals step into the careers they’ve been dreaming of. Her path evolved into coaching after working in digital marketing for nearly a decade at companies like 2U, Edelman, the American Cancer Society, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship and CBS College Sports.

Lisa has been featured in Business Insider, US News and World Report, Fast Company, Refinery29 and more, and received her coaching certification as one of only 7 coaches in the world trained in the Pivot Method. Clients praise her ability to see through their excuses, champion their possibilities, and give resume reviews that are like “purifying hellfire.”

Lisa is based in Westminster, Colorado and received her bachelor’s degree in economics from Barnard College in New York City.

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LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
Podcast
Website

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Special Guest: Lisa Lewis Miller.

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Overview
In this episode, Harris and Shawn chat with David and Chris, owners of Cyber City Circuits. David and Chris are working to expand their contract manufacturing (for electronics and PCB assembly) business and need help reaching new customers. As a result, Harris and Shawn perform a live consultation with them to give advice on how to approach marketing and sales.

In particular, Harris gives his thoughts on best ways to set up a sales pipeline, and Shawn helps brainstorm marketing ideas. Both Harris and Shawn agree that marketing and sales must be approached with a scientific mindset: experiment and learn from the experiments.

One Powerful Quotation

• 58:45 - Shawn: “Everyone thinks marketing is fun colors and shapes and photographs, and while that is a part of branding, real marketing comes down to ‘what do customers engage with?’...you have to take a scientific [approach] to go ‘I have a hypothesis, I’m going to test it, and see the results.’”

Key Topics

• 1:00 - Shawn asks David and Chris to explain what Cyber City Circuits does.
• 3:40 - David talks about how he’s working to ramp up a contract manufacturing business within Cyber City Circuits.
• 4:45 - Harris asks David and Chris about why shipping is a hard problem.
• 9:00 - Shawn talks about automating shipping processes to allow for capacity and time to work on sales and marketing.
• 12:00 - David talks about wanting to find more CM customers to help pay for his and Chris's time and provides some examples about what ideal customers would look like.
• 14:00 - Shawn asks David and Chris to define whether they want to be B2C or B2B.
• 15:30 - Harris gives his thoughts on setting up sales pipelines.
• 18:15 - Shawn asks David and Chris to elaborate where their current customers are coming from.
• 20:30 - David mentions that they currently test 100% all of their boards.
• 21:30 - Shawn and Harris help David define their current sales pipeline.
• 23:00 - Harris gives some advice on setting up onboarding techniques when hiring a salesperson.
• 28:30 - Harris talks about how a good, simple CRM tool can help Cyber City Circuits.
• 32:00 - Harris and David discuss the various ways to position a brand when it comes to sales.
• 33:45 - Harris recommends that David and Chris create marketing and sales personas and then use outbound marketing to validate hypotheses about those personas.
• 36:30 - Harris talks about the customer acquisition process.
• 37:15 - Shawn asks if Cyber City Circuits is seeing repeat customers for their CM service.
• 41:00 - Shawn recommends following Hubspot’s tutorials for developing personas.
• 43:15 - Shawn and David talk about potential problems Seeed Studio’s CM service might run into. Correction in the show: Seeed Studio still offers their Propagate service for low-to-medium volume manufacturing.
• 45:00 - Chris and David talk about why tooling costs are so high for CMs.
• 46:45 - Shawn talks about how to find potential customers outside of an existing network along with how to engage with people on Twitter.
• 50:30 - Harris gives feedback on Cyber City Circuits’ Twitter profile page.
• 54:30 - Shawn talks about what it takes to create good content.
• 58:00 - Harris and Shawn talk about experimenting in sales and marketing.
• 1:00:00 - Harris and David talk about the difficulty in setting up a bootstrapped business. David mentions that he used Shopify to build his ecommerce storefront.
• 1:01:30 - Harris and Shawn talk about how to test and measure various sales and marketing tactics.
• 1:07:00 - Harris and Shawn discuss ways to develop good content and apply search engine optimization (SEO) to appeal to a particular audience.
• 1:12:30 - David and Shawn talk about the necessity of having a good product to start with before being able to market it.
• 1:14:30 - David talks to Shawn about handling poor designs or customers that want things outside of what a CM can provide.
• 1:19:00 - Chris and David talk about wanting to transition to being primarily a CM shop with electronics distribution on the side.
• 1:25:30 - David leaves listeners with some words of wisdom.

List of ResourcesHubspot’s Buyer Persona tutorial
Shopify

Guest Contact InformationDavid Ray and Chris Williamson started Cyber City Circuits to bring our passions for electronics and education together in an effort to make it our full-time job. We bought a full production line worth of equipment to try to pay our bills with and it is kind of working out, but slowly. We would like to find new and innovative ways to contribute to the electronics and makers communities while being able to earn income. We started our store (CyberCityCircuits.com) at the beginning of May and have had several products with varying degrees of success.

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Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Special Guests: Chris Williamson and David Ray.

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OverviewIn this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn interview electronics engineer, Chris Gammell. Chris shares his insights into how he manages his clients and education for his businesses. Chris works as a hardware engineering consultant designing boards for clients as well as teaching through workshops and YouTube videos. He is a co-host of the Amp Hour Electronics Podcast and organizes several Meetups, such as the Hardware Happy Hour in Chicago.

Listeners will hear Chris's advice as he delves into his wisdom from his principal companies, including getting initial clients for consulting, billing, and managing his time.

One Powerful Quotation

• 3:10 - Chris: “When it comes down to it, I usually say you know get your name out there somehow…it could be a YouTube channel, it could be a Twitter account, it could be a wide range of things, but it has to basically be as what I say is who thinks of you as the second person to call…if you can start to build those second connections, that is the most powerful thing you can do.” --

Key Topics

• 1:18 - Shawn opens the show by asking Chris about his background and why he wanted to start his own consulting business.
• 2:36 - Chris goes into how he acquires clients and why he believes you should build that second connection.
• 5:05 - Chris explains his hourly billing and deliverable process. Check out Website - Steve Friedl's Tech Tips: So you want to be a consult-ant…?.
• 6:22 - Chris shares his latest workings with RF/firmware as part of his consulting expertise.
• 7:21 - Shawn inquires with Chris about finding tutors for learning about RF/firmware.
• 9:56 - Harris asks Chris his thoughts about diversifying in the areas of his personal brand.
• 13:43 - Shawn curiously asks Chris how he transitioned himself into managing contract work with his other roles.
• 18:07 - Shawn shares the sentiments with Chris and asks why he avoids academia learning.
• 23:02 - Chris expresses his intrinsic motivation and how he likes to freestyle his work. He also describes how this lead to the creation of the Hackaday Supercon from Maker Faire.
• 29:00 - Chris agrees with Harris’ remarks on the rise of hardware and explains why he believes sensor technology is the future.
• 30:20 - Shawn and Chris discuss designing neural networks for anomaly detection and machine learning on microcontrollers.
• 35:00 - Chris shares how his inbound client leads come from his podcast and referrals. He notes how this process is more open ended and conducive for his business.
• 36:44 - Shawn asks a follow up question to Chris on how often he declines client leads and manages their interests.
• 39:03 - Harris inquires with Chris on if he has experimented with value based pricing for projects. Chris delves into why that strategy is more applicable to software than hardware by proof of the end customer value.
• 43:13 - Harris asks if Chris believes in strategic advising and selling prototype hardware sets the tone for lead generation.
• 55:53 - Shawn and Harris wrap up the show, and Chris shares his contact information to listeners.

List of ResourcesWebsite - The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast
Website - Contextual Electronics
Website - Analog Life LLC.
Website - Steve Friedl's Tech Tips: So you want to be a consult-ant…?
Book - The Start Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career - Reid Hoffman
Website - ABB
Website - Supplyframe
Website - Hologram
LinkedIn - Brock LaMeres
LinkedIn - Thomas Lee
Website - Hackaday Superconference
Website - Maker Faire
Website - Tiny ML
Website - Embedded FM - A Little Bit of Human Knowledge With Daniel Situnayake
LinkedIn - Daniel Situnayake
Website - OpenMV Camera
Website - The Engineering Commons
Book - Value-Based Fees by Alan Weiss
Article - Saas Pricing by Patrick McKenzie
Website - Tindie
LinkedIn - Ryan Cousins
Website - Krtkl
Website - Punch Through
Website - KiCad Forum
Website - Hardware Happy Hour

Guest InformationChris Gammell is an electrical engineer, podcaster and consultant from Chicago, IL. He has over 15 years of experience in the electronics industry, working for companies in the industrial, silicon, communications, and test and measurement space. Chris runs the following ventures:

• Full time consultant for Analog Life LLC, where he creates designs for clients ranging from learning platforms to connected sensor networks.
• Co-host (along with Dave Jones of the EEVblog) of The Amp Hour, a weekly show discussing trends throughout the modern electronics design industry.
• Instructor and owner of Contextual Electronics, which focuses on teaching electronics design skills for beginners to intermediate students.

LinkedIn
Twitter
Website
YouTube

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Chris Gammell.

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OverviewPariss Athena is the creator of the #BlackTechTwitter community and founder of Black Tech Pipeline, which helps connect Black technologists with companies looking for employees. She shares her story of growing and managing an online community and how she is turning that into a business.

Pariss also provides some great tips on steps companies can take to diversify their applicant pool when hiring engineers and developers.

One Powerful Quotation

• 26:00 – Pariss: “If I’m unsure about something, [I] don’t agree to it. Tell people you’ll think about it and get back to them. If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. You don’t have to feel pressured to do things you’re not ready for.”

Key Topics

• 0:40 - Pariss talks about launching Black Tech Pipeline, which grew out of the #BlackTechTwitter community and serves to open more opportunities for Black technologists. The site offers a job board for applicants as well as profiles for companies to be more transparent about their commitment to diversity and inclusion.
• 3:37 - Haris asks Pariss how she keeps her platform to be centered on the job candidate.
• 5:40 - Pariss talks about how she’s working with others to build out the website.
• 8:00 - Haris and Shawn commend Pariss on her social media presence and ask how she keeps an authentic voice on Twitter.
• 9:10 - Shawn asks Pariss about what skills prepared her to launch Black Tech Pipeline. Pariss gives great advice on learning how to say “no.”
• 10:54 - Pariss talks about how interactions with people changed as her Twitter following grew.
• 14:17 - Haris asks Pariss which platforms she used to grow her following. She says that Twitter was her main platform and she got lucky with the timing of the #BlackTechTwitter movement.
• 16:59 - Shawn asks Pariss what companies, especially tech startups, can do to make sure diversity and inclusion are baked into their founding. Pariss recommends that companies engage with various online communities, such as the #BlackTechTwitter community, to build relationships with more diverse groups of potential employees.
• 19:58 - Pariss, Shawn, and Haris talk about how a more diverse design team can create better products. Haris mentions that engineers and companies should reach out to diverse groups of people to test their products.
• 27:10 - Shawn asks Pariss about which other social platforms she uses to manage her community.
• 29:09 - Pariss and Haris talk about their experiences using Basecamp to manage projects..

List of ResourcesBlack Tech Pipeline
Black Tech Twitter

Guest InformationCreator of #BlackTechTwitter and Founder of Black Tech Pipeline.

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Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Pariss Athena.

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Overview
Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) are the pages displayed by various search engines when a user searches for a particular word or phrase. When creating content as part of your inbound marketing strategy, you’ll want to employ various Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to have your page rank higher in search engine results. You can use SERP rankings to measure the effectiveness of your content and SEO techniques.

In this episode, Harris and Shawn discuss how founders and marketers can use SERP as an important metric to measure the performance of content against particular keywords. They begin by talking about the need to understand a product’s niche and audience before moving into various SEO and SERP tips and tools.

One Powerful Quotation

• 30:10 – Shawn: “You employ all of your good SEO techniques to make [your content] rank more highly, and then you use SERP to measure how well your page [performs in search results].”

Key Topics

• 1:00 – Harris and Shawn talk about life events and various work projects. Shawn mentions that he’s working on a collaboration project with @Odd_Jayy and @glowascii.
• 4:20 - Shawn gives tips on how to find time to read books.
• 9:00 - Shawn gives a definition for Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) and why it offers a better metric than Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• 11:45 - Harris asks about good versus bad (trickery) SEO.
• 14:00 - Shawn defines SERP, which is an indication of where your site shows up in search engine results when a user searches for particular keywords
• 16:15 - Harris talks about Google’s new shopping tab
• 17:15 - Harris and Shawn talk about how product search engines within a site (e.g. Amazon’s search) differs from broader search engines, like Google.
• 19:00 - Shawn mentions a recent development where people are receiving random packages containing seeds. It turns out that this is a part of a scam to boost Amazon reviews for vendors.
• 21:08 - Harris and Shawn give their perspectives on running traditional outbound marketing techniques, such as running Google or Facebook ads.
• 23:52 - Shawn recounts his experiences creating content for SparkFun and how successful it was at driving pageviews.
• 25:40 - Shawn talks about creating content to maximize SERP number. Namely, “evergreen” content that continues to draw users for years after posting offers some of the best SERP value.
• 29:53 - Shawn describes how SEO can be used to boost SERP.
• 30:30 - Harris and Shawn give reasons for why they’re using Binho, LLC as an example of how to create evergreen content for a niche audience.
• 31:01 - Shawn describes the importance of patience with inbound marketing.
• 33:20 - Harris talks about reusing and distributing content.
• 34:27 - Shawn talks about why voice and video should (probably) not be your primary content for inbound marketing (at this point in time). Most search engines still prioritize written content, so written content should be your focus.
• 39:03 - Harris introduces his new project: Intro CRM.
• 41:11 - Shawn helps Harris brainstorm ideas for evergreen content that could be created to drive traffic to his new service.
• 49:58 - Shawn mentions that Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest tool can be very helpful for discovering keywords, creating article titles, and analyzing people’s search patterns.
• 51:29 - Shawn introduces the concept of pillar content, which is a collection of related articles that link to each other and all pages link back to a single, important piece of content.
• 56:22 - Harris asks what would be good content if your audience doesn’t know the right words or jargon to use (i.e. they don’t know what a “host adapter” or “CRM” is).
• 1:02:23 - Shawn talks about setting your expectations when competing with content from large companies.
• 1:03:05 - Harris stresses the importance of having a good, differentiated product to start with.
• 1:06:52 - Harris and Shawn talk about how to market products that may not have all the features you hoped for on launch.
• 1:09:21 - Shawn recommends the book The Innovator’s Dilemma to learn about how to create products that serve a niche well.
• 1:11:11 - Shawn talks about the importance of needing to market your product while you’re developing it and recommends the book Content, Inc. to assist in this journey.
• 1:13:50 - Shawn talks about his experiences creating pillar content and measuring SERP. He recommends the tool Serposcope to automatically report the SERP rankings of your site versus various keywords on a daily basis.
• 1:17:34 - Harris asks Shawn about the tools he uses to measure SEO and SERP. Shawn lists Neil Patel’s SEO Analyzer and Rank Math SEO for WordPress in addition to the previously mentioned tools.
• 1:19:29 - Harris talks about his poor experience working with an outsourced SEO firm.
• 1:20:26 - Harris and Shawn talk about the skills required to create good content and why building trust is so important.
• 1:22:02 - Harris and Shawn talk about how to create content that’s relevant to your audience. Shawn recommends the book Youtility for learning how to create valuable, relevant content.

List of Resources

• Rework
• Sapiens
• Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest tool
• The Innovator’s Dilemma
• Serposcope
• Neil Patel’s SEO Analyzer
• Rank Math SEO for WordPress
• Youtility

Host Contact Information
shawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information
“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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OverviewOn this episode of the Hello Blink Show, we welcome Jermaine Murray as our special guest to discuss best hiring practices for a company and how a startup can go about recruiting top talent. We ask Jermaine about his experiences that led to founding his own recruiting firm, JupiterHR, and about his role at TandemLaunch.

Additionally, Jermaine tells us about his personal experiences growing up and how early experiences with STEM can help keep kids, especially minorities, interested in tech.

One Powerful Quotation

• 56:23 – Jermaine: “How you manage your business is how you manage your relationships with your customers, your employees, and with your investors.”

Key Topics

• 1:28 - Jermaine talks about his work as a recruiter.
• 2:27 - Shawn asks Jermaine about TandemLaunch, a startup incubator in Montreal.
• 7:09 - Jermaine discusses running his own business, JupiterHR, and how he focuses on recruiting members of the Black community into tech jobs
• 9:15 - Shawn asks Jermaine about his inspiration for starting JupiterHR
• 12:47 - Jermaine talks about how his experiences led him to helping companies recruit talent and create a more diverse workforce
• 16:08 - Jermaine expresses how education (formal and informal) can help create a safe culture at work and curb microaggressions
• 19:38 - Jermaine mentions that the 2020 goal for JupiterHR is to help 100 Black jobseekers find employment with tech companies.
• 20:47 - Harris asks Jermaine about his thoughts on companies being more deliberate to hire from a diverse pool of applicants.
• 23:31 - Jermaine discusses the need for a better education system for low-income communities in the United States and Canada and how that can help with diversity in STEM.
• 25:04 - Harris and Jermaine talk about the importance of cultivating a safe work culture
• 30:51 - Shawn and Jermaine talk about how accountability starts at the top of an organization when it comes to creating a workplace culture
• 31:00 - Shawn asks Jermaine what companies can do to attract top and diverse talent
• 35:41 - Shawn and Jermaine talk about how a small company can compete with large companies when it comes to attracting talent
• 37:10 - Jermaine talks about his podcast, the “Launch” by TandemLaunch, which focuses on running startup companies
• 40:23 - Shawn asks Jermaine what steps companies can take to get a more diverse set of applicants when posting a job opening
• 42:30 - Jermaine talks about how companies can donate to and volunteer at organizations that help with social causes, such as introduction STEM to low-income schools
• 48:24 - Harris asks Jermaine what smaller companies can do to show that they care about diversity.
• 50:37 - Jermaine shares his experiences growing up and how he emotionally connects to the Black Lives Matter movement and protests

List of ResourcesTandemLaunch
JupiterHR
The Launch podcast

Guest Contact InformationJermaine is a Career Strategist and Talent Recruiter working at a Startup Incubator in Montreal. With a specialization in Technology. Jermaine has helped over 200 people find new employment in the last three years through his company, JupiterHR. Jermaine currently serves on the board for ICON Talent partners, a non-profit, dedicated to helping companies redefine their Recruitment and Hiring process with regards to EDI.

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LinkedIn
Website

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Special Guest: Jermaine L. Murray.

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OverviewWe welcome to the show Kia Roberts, who worked as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn and the Director of Investigations for the National Football League (NFL) and founded her own company, Triangle Investigations.

Triangle Investigations performs third party investigations for companies into allegations of misconduct, including sexual harassment, discrimination, and bullying. Kia talks about why she founded the company, successes she’s had, and what the future of company culture and human resources will look like. We also ask for her opinions on how new and established companies can create and manage a healthy and positive culture..

One Powerful Quotation

• 21:33 - Kia: “Employees are in a position right now where they’re making demands and they’re being heard, and I think at this point, there’s going to have to be follow-through.”

Key Topics

• 0:48 - Harris asks Kia about how her career prepared her to start her own business.
• 2:30 - Shawn asks Kia what the most difficult steps were for her when starting a business.
• 3:00 - Kia talks about using an external marketing firm to help with client acquisition.
• 4:10 - Kia describes how Triangle Investigations works to investigate workplace misconduct, including sexual harassment, descrimination, bullying, etc.
• 6:25 - Kia talks about how her job at the District Attorney’s office prepared her for launching her own business and how she overcame the hurdles of client acquisition.
• 7:15 - Harris asks Kia about how she’s integrating technology, specifically Triangle’s Telli platform, into her work as an investigator.
• 9:54 - Shawn asks Kia how the Telli smartphone app works.
• 11:30 - Kia discusses how her app helps inform decisions in the rest of her company
• 13:45 - Harris mentions how Kia’s app fills a need and then asks Kia how she is funding her business. Kia responds that she is bootstrapping her efforts.
• 15:26 - Harris asks Kia her opinions on what steps someone in a hostile work environment should take to address problems.
• 18:00 - Kia discusses what happens when companies do not address misconduct.
• 23:30 - Shawn asks Kia about what kinds of symptoms might appear if misconduct goes unnoticed or unreported in a company.
• 25:12 - Shawn then asks what might companies do to maintain best practices around minimizing and addressing misconduct.
• 26:04 - Kia mentions the “No Jerk Policy.” See below for a book recommendation.
• 27:00 - Shawn asks how a company can enforce misconduct rules.
• 29:15 - Shawn shares his experience with diversity (or lack thereof) in the tech world.
• 31:09 - Kia and Harris talk about how fighting discrimination needs to be at the top of the list of priorities for CEOs.
• 35:15 - Kia and Harris discuss how Triangle Investigations provides a level of risk management for other companies.
• 36:00 - Shawn asks Kia how she recommends new companies go about establishing a healthy, inclusive work culture.
• 37:51 - Shawn asks Kia for book recommendations. She recommends Book Yourself Solid.
• 38:48 - Harris asks Kia where people can find out more about Triangle Investigations and how they can follow her on social media.
• 40:03 - Kia talks about things businesses should avoid doing and what are proactive steps they can take to address misconduct.
• 42:09 - Harris talks about the effect Glassdoor reviews can have on a company.
• 44:00 - Kia discusses how nonprofits can be affected by negative Glassdoor reviews.
• 45:55 - Shawn talks about how mission statements should include what companies do for their employees along with what they provide for customers and shareholders.
• 47:30 - Harris and Shawn discuss the potential pitfalls of focusing on growth rather than sustainability.
• 48:40 - Harris asks Kia for advice on how people in leadership positions can better hold each other accountable rather than adopting a defensive posture to maintain the status quo.
• 52:22 - Kia tells the story of how a pastry shop in New Orleans had to shut down because of a string of sexual harassment lawsuits.
• 53:44 - Kia shares how she got the idea for Triangle Investigations.

List of Resources

• Triangle Investigations
• Triangle Investigations’ services and Telli app
• How To Manage Workplace Misconduct Issues For Remote Employees
• Book: No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t
• Book: Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling
• Book: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t

Guest InformationI am the Founder and Principal of Triangle Investigations. Triangle Investigations is a group of lawyers and expert investigators performing misconduct (sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying) investigations within workplaces, schools, and other organizations. Prior to founding Triangle, I was the first-ever Director of Investigations for the NFL, where I conducted investigations into NFL players and employees accused of violating the NFL's Code of Conduct. Prior to the NFL, I spent approximately a decade as a prosecutor in the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, finishing my time there as a homicide prosecutor. I received from law degree from Vanderbilt University Law School, and my undergraduate degree from Duke University. I am a native of New Orleans, and currently live in Brooklyn with my husband and our two small children.

Twitter
LinkedIn
Website

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Kia Roberts.

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OverviewIn this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn interview firmware developer, hardware designer, technical writer, and community leader, Kattni Rembor. Kattni shares her insights into how she engages followers and educates her peers. Listeners will hear her advice as she delves into her experience with Adafruit and the process involved with fostering a community on learning CircuitPython.

Listen after the closing credits for an update on CircuitPython and how people have been integrating it into finished products!

One Powerful Quotation

• 36:00: “I think it’s a huge part of growing a community is being open to changes and open to possibilities because, if you are rigid about things and you expect everything to fall within a certain scope, you’re either going to drive people away or you’re going to have a really bad day.”

Key Topics

• 1:03: Shawn opens the show and asks Kattni about her story with working at Adafruit Industries. She mentions how she became involved writing libraries which led to creating communities for teaching and learning.
• 6:00: Kattni shares how she started with no programming/electronics experience and has become a self-taught engineer, developer, and community leader.
• 7:17: Kattni highlights her inspiration for wanting to work with electronics.
• 10:43: Kattni responds to Harris’ commentary on the tangible results produced from one’s work.
• 11:22: Shawn and Kattni discuss using Circuit Python versus Arduino. The two compare its programming application for educating users.
• 17:18: Harris relays a question to Kattni from a listener on her thoughts on the balance between using Circuit Python for education over finished products and how this will change over time.
• 20:45: Harris asks another a question to Kattni from a listener on adding support for RISC-V as a prioritized, developer tool for educational consideration on Circuit Python.
• 22:14: Shawn and Kattni discuss how Circuit Python supports specific development boards.
• 23:29: Kattni gives her perspective on what it means to have a developer community for Circuit Python.
• 26:02: Kattni talks about the forums she uses for collaboration including Discord and GitHub.
• 27:27: Kattni describes the free form structure of their forums with admins, moderators, and helpers that reinforce positive feedback and build better relationships.
• 29:43: Kattni notes that these positions consist of Adafruit employees and members that are active in the public channels.
• 31:26: Shawn and Kattni reminisce about old bulletin board forums and how moderation teams were made up of volunteer members based on their posts. Kattni adds the one difference with their community help is the quality of the member’s contribution dictates their position.
• 33:10: Harris, Shawn, and Kattni openly talk about planning a community and go about creating an environment that is open, safe, and non-toxic.
• 45:11: Kattni answers Shawn’s question on when to restructure your channel setup and curate a community that is adaptable to your audience.
• 46:47: Harris and Shawn wrap up the show and ask Kattni how they advertise and recruit members.
• 50:19 (Post-Show): Harris, Shawn, and Kattni address the commercialization of products using Circuit Python.

List of ResourcesWebsite - Adafruit Industries
Website - Circuit Python
Website - Ardruino
Website - GitHub
Website - Discord

Guest InformationKattni works as an embedded software developer, hardware designer, technical writer, and open source community leader contracting with Adafruit. She is proud to be a woman in tech. Her journey creating things began at an early age in her dad’s extensive workshop in the basement. Kattni’s foray into the world of open source, electronics, and programming began in July 2017 — that her desk has become a mess of wires and circuit boards is still unbelievably exciting. In the rest of her life, she is a maker, creator, programmer, photographer, one-time gardener, and loved partner. She is tolerated by two cats who continue to let her live with them.

GitHub
Twitter

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Kattni Rembor.

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OverviewWe welcome to the show historian and invention lover, Anton Howes. Anton recently released a book, Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation, about how the Royal Society of the Arts encouraged invention and innovation during the Industrial revolution. As a result, we are excited to ask him about his thoughts on innovation culture and the nature of inventions.

Additionally, Anton shares his findings on inventions that appear to occur later than they should have (“behind the times”), such as the popular tabletop game, Dungeons and Dragons, and the role of government in incentivizing invention. We also talk about pirates.

Please note that this interview was recorded on May 4, 2020.

One Powerful Quotation

• 11:15 - Anton: “If you can prove prior art--that you’ve done something before--then if someone takes a patent for the same thing, you’ve got very public proof that they can’t sue you for infringement.”

Key Topics

• 1:00 - Harris asks Anton about how societies and governments can incentivize innovation. Anton discusses his book, Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation and how a similar approach might be used to help people find a cure for COVID-19.
• 7:25 - Shawn asks Anton his opinion on patents: are they good or bad? Anton says that a diverse incentive system is probably the best.
• 10:30 - Anton talks about how an invention prize can be used to both maintain open source as well as legally protect the inventor from having their creation copied or stolen by proof of prior art.
• 12:05 - Harris asks Anton about why some inventions seem to be “behind the times.” Anton theorizes that people get stuck in their ways, and so some innovations and inventions seem to take a long time.
• 16:22 - Shawn mentions a Reddit discussion about Anton’s Dungeons and Dragons blog post. Anton talks about the importance of constraints on invention.
• 18:15 - Anton talks about other inventions that seem to have been created too late, such as semaphore flags and the flying shuttle.
• 21:00 - Anton talks about Britain’s promigration policy to attract inventors during the Industrial Revolution.
• 25:40 - Anton discusses how location matters for inventors to be inspired and work effectively.
• 27:54 - Shawn asks Anton about how inventors flourished during the Industrial Revolution.
• 30:00 - Anton talks about the role of the government to incentivize invention in the Industrial Revolution.
• 32:57 - Anton gives his thoughts on how society can cultivate a culture of invention.
• 36:56 - Anton shares his personal inventors and invention stories.
• 39:36 - Pirates!
• 41:30 - Harris asks Anton if invention is ultimately good for society and humankind.
• 45:07 - Shawn asks Anton to clarify the “promigration” term.

List of ResourcesBook - Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation by Anton Howes
Blog Post - Innovation: Eyes on the Prize by Anton Howes
Blog Post - Age of Invention: Where be Dragons? - Why did it take so long for people to create Dungeons and Dragons?
The Adventure Zone podcast - Inspiration for Anton to write about the invention of D&D
Reddit discussion about Anton’s D&D blog post
Anton Howes’s Age of Invention weekly newsletter

Guest InformationHistorian of invention. Has just written a book on the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Currently writing a book on the causes of the acceleration of innovation during the British Industrial Revolution.

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Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Anton Howes.

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Overview
In this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn interview business banker, Saira Rahman. Saira shares her insights in how she advises her clients.

Specifically, Saira discusses broader topics including why financial management is important and what a bank can do for your business legally.

One Powerful Quotation

• 17:50: “As you grow, you’re going to want to branch out and have multiple relationships depending on what you need…It all depends on what your niche is and what you’re focused on and the level of knowledge that your banker has not only on your specific industry but also on the overall market.”

Key Topics

• 1:05: Harris opens the show by asking Saira about her background.
• 2:14: Saira shares how she became a business banker with Alpine Bank.
• 4:09: Shawn asks Saira about the charter of Alpine Bank.
• 4:56: Shawn inquires if Saira enjoys her role at a smaller bank.
• 6:12: Saira shares how she uses Twitter as a means to discussing important items and acquire information for her work.
• 8:14: Harris asks Saira about her experience with the process of handling commercial clients and the Small Business Administration.
• 11:16: Saira explains the difference between PPP, EIDLP, and small business loans. She describes the process involved and how they are applied.
• 15:16: Harris remarks that small banks have been very responsive to loan grants. In turn, he asks Saira her opinion on why it matters what bank you choose.
• 18:39: Shawn inquires with Saira about protected guarantees with a community bank.
• 20:17: Saira shares what to research for in bank’s financial statements including their balance sheet, income statement, and loan loss reserve.
• 22:41: Harris and Saira discuss how choosing a bank should be a considerate decision and personality fit.
• 25:03: Harris asks Saira about the drawbacks in having only an online banking provider.
• 27:44: Shawn and Saira talk about why you must have a separate banking account from your personal.
• 29:33: Saira explains the benefits of using a business credit card to streamline your taxes and help underwrite business loans. She also encourages listeners to work with a CPA.
• 31:22: Saira notes the value of a business credit card based on the lowest fee and best perk available.
• 33:49: Harris asks Saira her advise on increasing your financing needs based on capital structure and loan/line of credit requests. She also advises listeners to forecast their finances with a branch manager or accountant to plan out their goals accordingly.
• 37:01: Saira remarks why it is important to have a continual conversation with your financial adviser through the up and downswings of your business.
• 38:00: Saira shares what she thinks are the biggest mistakes small business owners make.
• 40:55: Harris wraps up the show, and Saira shares her contact information.

List of ResourcesWebsite - SBA
Website - Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)

Guest Information
Saira worked for an outsource derivatives trade desk for 11 years after graduating from Case Western Reserve with a degree in Finance and Economics. By 2014, Saira had moved to Seattle and was running the west coast trade desks for 8 banks totaling more than $40b in assets, across 7 states. Last year, she jumped ship and joined the world of community banking at Alpine Bank. Now, she spends most of my time helping the greater Denver community and coming up with innovative ways to finance people's dreams.

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LinkedIn

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Special Guest: Saira Rahman.

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OverviewIn this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn interview engineering and programming expert, Michael Dominick. Mike shares his insights on how he operates his business, The Mad Botter, an automation development company focused on making distributed teams and remote work more efficient.

Specifically, Mike discusses his service platform for data analysis. Harris and Shawn talk about his success and ask questions ranging from business development experience to inbound marketing strategy.

One Powerful Quotation

• 8:03 — Mike: “I would say the government is like the biggest, most bureaucratic enterprise customer you could possibly have, but there are advantages.”

Key Topics

• 0:59: Harris opens the show and asks Michael about the foundation for his company, The Mad Botter.
• 2:35: Harris asks Michael about the customer types he serves.
• 3:27: Shawn inquires with Michael about the comparison in business development with military and civilian operations. The two discuss the pros and cons of government contracting and why smaller entities partner with larger institutions.
• 11:20: Mike advises that niche, proof of concept job proposals are the most widely available and act as a good source for referral opportunities.
• 13:28: Shawn asks Michael and Harris if they have experienced backlash from working with government contractors.
• 16:27: Michael describes his product offering Rabbot Automation as a service solution for data analysis among open source platforms. He also discusses his reason as to why he and his team developed Rabbot Automation.
• 20:57: Michael talks about his niche audience and how he pivoted his inbound marketing strategy.
• 24:56: Michael shares why Twitter is his favorite platform for business opportunities.
• 29:07: Michael, Shawn, and Harris share their thoughts on using Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They note how their content creation differs in response from audiences in each medium.
• 36:53: Harris asks Michael his experience with how his business has dealt with working with these types of platforms in delivering their product services.
• 39:50: Michael shares why Apple is the most difficult developer platform to work with.
• 44:54: Michael explains how he monetizes from an open source platform.
• 46:20: Shawn asks Michael why he chooses to use close source applications but offers open source as a library for his audience.
• 51:22: Harris wraps up the show, and Michael shares his contact information.

List of Resources
Facebook - The Mad Botter
Twitter - The Mad Botter
https://themadbotter.com/

Guest InformationMichael is the founder & CEO of The Mad Botter, a software development and consulting company in FL that focuses on software for aviation, aerospace and the agricultural market. He was also the host of Coder Radio on Jupiter Broadcasting for 7 years.

Twitter - Michael Dominick
Twitter - The Mike Dominick Show
Podcast
LinkedIn
Website

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Michael Dominick.

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Overview

In this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn share tips and techniques on staying focused and productive throughout the day. Working from home can offer a great deal of flexibility, but it comes with the added responsibility of managing your own time. Finding motivation can be a tough challenge when family, chores, and social media vie for your attention.

Specifically, Harris discusses the importance of food and exercise over other time management techniques and Shawn weighs in regarding the necessity of rest. The two then give insights on various methods of managing a daily schedule and keeping to-do lists before concluding with some recommended reading material.

One Powerful Quotation

• 26:46 - Harris: “You can use Pomodoro...and whatever other kind of system you want, if you’re not giving your body the nutrients that it needs,...I don’t really care about the system [that you use].”

Key Topics

• 1:15 - Harris opens the show by talking about how he is helping his clients navigate the Coronavirus stimulus and loan programs as well as how he is working with the Make4Covid group in Colorado that is making personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers.
• 3:20 - Shawn discusses his recent machine learning project and making his Arduino course free.
• 7:30 - Shawn talks about motivation to work while at an office versus at home.
• 10:06 - Harris and Shawn talk about the illusion of looking busy in an office environment.
• 12:44 - Shawn discusses the problem with distractions and his own personal experiences in understanding his own daily rhythm.
• 15:31 - Harris gives an account of how he handles motivation throughout the day.
• 17:47 - Shawn talks about the importance of choosing and structuring tasks to keep focus.
• 19:07 - Shawn and Harris discuss how nutrition, exercise, caffeine, and alcohol affect focus and motivation. They conclude that diet, exercise, and sleep is more important than any time management program.
• 28:56 - Shawn discusses supplementing vitamins for helping with focus.
• 34:01 - A discussion about preventative medicine ensues.
• 36:51 - Shawn asks Harris about his experience with a nutritionist and how it might be better than going to a doctor.
• 39:58 - Shawn talks about the importance of getting rest, not just getting enough sleep but also taking time to deliberately abstain from work. Know how your body works!
• 43:25 - Harris and Shawn discuss staying focused on a granular level: hour to hour. They share tips on various techniques ranging from calendar blocking, maintaining to-do lists, reminder apps, and personal Scrum.
• 51:56 - Shawn talks about utilizing ultradian rhythms to be more productive and stay focused throughout the workday.
• 53:23 - Harris and Shawn discuss the various merits and pitfalls of social media in their lines of work and how they affect productivity.
• 55:56 - Shawn introduces two competing schools of thought: should you use the morning to tackle easy tasks or hard projects first?

List of Resources
Make4Covid
Making It podcast
Basecamp
Trello
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland and JJ Sutherland
Michael Hyatt: Why You Should Never Start With Your Most Difficult Task
Brian Tracy: Eat That Frog!
Buffer
Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Work Clean by Dan Charnas
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Host Contact Information
shawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information
“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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OverviewIn this episode of the Hello Blink Show, Harris and Shawn interview legal expert and attorney, Mark Tyson. Mark shares his knowledge and how he advises his clients into incorporating their business while minimizing liability.

Specifically, Mark discusses how he helps entrepreneurs and creators as Shawn and Harris weigh in on the importance of legal counseling. The two give their insights as well as ask questions from listeners on recommended steps.

One Powerful Quotation

• 26:29 — Mark: “What I would encourage listeners to do is to shift your perspective to… see lawyers…really the value you’re going to find is 'okay let’s do some planning, let’s talk through these scenarios. You know, what am I trying to do with my business? Where are the threats coming from?'”

Key Topics

• 1:35: Shawn asks Mark about an appropriate time to consult for legal advice.
• 4:20: Harris asks Mark to share about Tyson Law and how he acquires clients from inbound marketing and flat fees.
• 7:03: Mark talks about seeking consultation and the benefits of having a lawyer.
• 11:23: Shawn inquires with Mark on intellectual property and the cost of having legal representation for filing trademarks or patents.
• 15:19: Mark is asked a question from Twitter on the patent filing process being costly and timely. Mark explains how it depends on the product and market.
• 18:42: Mark shares his thoughts on forming an LLC or corporation. He highlights the differences between them as well as S-Level/C-Level incorporation.
• 21:37: Mark addresses Shawn’s inquiry into the structure of LLCs and corporations having stock or owner interest in another company.
• 23:25: Mark further discusses the tax treatment of a single member LLC from the IRS.
• 24:38: Mark contrasts the legal perspective of how lawsuits are handled with sole proprietorships and LLCs.
• 25:47: Mark comments on the value of having a good business lawyer for mitigating risk.
• 27:05: Harris and Mark discuss how strategic conversations are essential, and Mark shares a personal experience when he tried to hire an accountant.
• 29:23: Mark explains the reasons why most corporations are filed in Delaware. He also notes some of the disadvantages that are associated with it.
• 33:29: Shawn asks Mark his thoughts on the legal barriers in misclassifying workers as employees or independent contractors for a business.
• 36:25: Harris and Mark discuss how treatment of workers and the culture of an organization is essential to any successful business operation. Shawn adds that a mission statement should serve to benefit customers, stake holders, and employees.
• 41:45: Mark delves into the technicality of contracted work including hours, lump-sum pay, and length of engagement that government agencies may clue in on.
• 44:27: Mark reminds listeners they have a responsibility in educating themselves on any legal engagements they participate in.
• 46:17: Shawn asks Mark a question from a friend on arbitration and neutral jurisdiction clauses for intrastate/international business and if legal counsel is needed.
• 50:17: Mark shares his views on interviewing lawyers based on their knowledge, personality, and communication.
• 53:33: Mark suggests the communication style of your attorney should best suit your needs.
• 55:22: Mark explains why legal guidance is the surest way for trademarking intellectual property instead of doing it on your own.
• 59:09: Mark comments why it is important and easier to copyright your medium.
• 1:01:38: Mark details what are trade secrets and safeguarding that information from the public.
• 1:03:26: Shawn and Harris wrap up the show with Mark, and he shares his contact information.

Guest InformationMark started his own law firm, Tyson Law PLLC, to help entrepreneurs and small businesses with their legal issues.

TwitterLinkedIn
Website

Host Contact Informationshawnhymel.com
kennyconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn - Shawn Hymel
LinkedIn - Harris Kenny
Twitter - Shawn Hymel
Twitter - Harris Kenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Special Guest: Mark Tyson.

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OverviewThis week, on the Hello Blink Show, hosts Shawn Hymel and Harris Kenny welcome Joel Murphy to the show. This episode focuses on Joel’s work on the Spiro Wave "bridge" ventilator system that can be widely used in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and how designers/small business owners can contribute to their network.

Note that this episode was recorded about 2 weeks ago. As such, some of the information may not be up to date. Specifically, the Spiro Wave device is not necessarliy completely open source, although there are plans to release parts of the design to help other companies make similar devices. Read all about it in this The New York Times piece by By Steve Lohr.

Joel is an electronics design engineer and startup entrepreneur who has co-founded four startups specializing in customizable interface sensor devices ranging from heart rate and brain computing to hearing aid development and an open source fitness tracker. He presides as a board member at the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) where he organizes hackathons and engages in public speaking seminars. As a designer, teacher, and engineer, listeners will hear about Joel’s latest project and how makers and small business owners can step up to help their community.

One Powerful Quotation

• 35:28: “I think the maker community and the DIY community is really well placed and already has it baked in to share, to help, to give freely, to make a difference and to understand that you can make a difference in ways that may be are not necessarily direct. You don’t have to be the person doing to the magical, wonderful thing. You can actually be contributing a little bit.”

Key Topics

• 1:31: Shawn recaps with Joel about the protocols involved with hospital treatment of COVID-19 patients and the demand around medical equipment needed.
• 4:38: Shawn inquires with Joel about the shortage of ventilators and why they are used.
• 6:18: Harris and Joel discuss the severity of the situation and the risks surrounding vulnerable departments of the world.
• 13:00: Joel talks about his latest project, a makeshift ambulatory bag that is customized to act as a ventilator. Joel explains the difference between the two and how its implementation is used for emergencies.
• 22:13: Shawn asks Joel about his team and if they experienced problems deploying their device across the medical field.
• 26:30: Harris and Joel talk about how the sharing of maker/open source community knowledge with their networks can be leveraged into a formal corporate partnership.
• 33:55: Harris asks Joel about his position and how his flexibility allowed him to take on his most recent project. Joel agrees and adds that the maker/DIY community can indirectly help give back to their network.
• 38:05: Joel shares with how listeners can get involved. He includes associations needing volunteers and being “hyperlocal” in your neighborhood.
• 43:46: Joel gives his final thoughts and why he believes in upholding regulations as a gate-keeper for safety and care.

List of ResourcesSpiro Wave in The New York Times
OSHWA
Tympan
Contagion movie
Open Source COVID-19 Medical Supplies Facebook Group
Make4Covid
MIT e-vent project

Guest Contact InformationJoel's background is in visual arts. He made kinetic sculpture for years before he became an electronics design engineer. Joel taught physical computing at Parsons from 2006 to 2014, and has participated in several successful crowdfunding projects since 2011 when he co-founded World Famous Electronics, makers of the Pulse Sensor: an open source heart rate monitor. In 2014 he co-founded OpenBCI, a Brooklyn based company that makes high quality low cost EEG amplifiers for science and education, and was President of the company until 2018. Most recently, he has created and co-developed Tympan, an Open Source hearing-aid development platform. Joel also owns the technology consulting firm, Flywheel Lab. Joel lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

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Instagram
LinkedIn
Website

Host Contact Informationhttp://shawnhymel.com
http://kennyconsultinggroup.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnhymel/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriskenny/
https://www.twitter.com/ShawnHymel
https://www.twitter.com/harriskenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Special Guest: Joel Murphy.

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One Powerful Quotation

• 1:01:30: “When you’re looking for early customers, you probably don’t have a ton of leverage. You are probably gonna be more open to… changing some features or adding some features… If you’re getting started and you don’t have that leverage in the beginning, and if you really are very focused on bringing money in the door and getting started, that’s probably gonna happen in some form or fashion in the beginning, and then over time, you can adapt and move away from that if you need to.”

Key Topics

• 0:49: Shawn and Harris open the show welcoming listeners. They both comment how well received the podcast has been and what they’ve learned from guests on the platform.
• 2:38: Shawn shares his latest project he’s working on with neural networks and machine learning. He describes how he’s using these to manipulate micro controllers and the challenges asso-ciated with it.
• 6:27: Harris shares his latest workshop on new outbound methods/approaches from small businesses that can be applicable to larger, founder-owned corporations. He notes the importance of a structured, high value, and personalized approach are the keys for generating that sales conversation.
• 9:18: Shawn asks Harris about his techniques he uses to engage his audience when he presents. Harris admits it can be challenging, but the goal is to have an interaction that is resourceful/useful.
• 12:32: Shawn and Harris discuss how influencing your customer is to have them do something for you. Harris explains this and how building trust for your customer to take a series of steps/actions will ultimately make it easier to close a deal.
• 16:04: Shawn and Harris switch topics and talk about formulating your business and creating the first transaction. They offer tips on how to create accounts, limit your liability, and save you money.
• 23:05: Shawn shares the story of how he landed Digi-Key as his first customer. Harris shares a similar story and they talk about the importance in building your network.
• 33:14: Harris mentions another approach in finding your next customer through content market-ing conversations. He and Shawn talk about generating feedback from your audience, handling criticism, and how to monetize it.
• 40:02: Harris illustrates how crowdfunding can be used for projects and how to allocate the funds. Shawn agrees and adds that these campaigns have become more of a pre-order system than for marketing/creating outreach for a project/business.
• 46:40: Harris brings up the importance of cold outreach and how to successfully implement it. He lists critical steps to follow that highlight drawing attention/interest, crafting contextu-al/personal messages, and offering opt-in/opt-outs preferences to customers.
• 56:34: Shawn expands on this topic during his time at SparkFun, and he and Harris acknowledge how to leverage the bridged gap between markets, cataloged audiences, and using distributors. Harris also contrasts the differences between larger, VC backed companies versus smaller, lean operations and what they represent as a medium.
• 1:01:26: Harris and Shawn wrap up the show and give their final remarks.
  Bullet List of Resources:

Additional Links

• Josh Braun - https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-braun/

Host Contact Information
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnhymel/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriskenny/
https://www.twitter.com/ShawnHymel
https://www.twitter.com/harriskenny

Follow Hello Blink Show
https://helloblinkshow.com
https://twitter.com/helloblinkshow
https://www.linkedin.com/company/helloblinkshow/

License Information
“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Show Note
We hope this podcast is of value to the you as the situation unfolds. We wish all of our followers and listeners their health and safety at this time. Please reach out @ShawnHymel or @HarrisKenny if there is anything they can do for you.

One Powerful Quotation

• 26:00 – “If you’re a business owner or you’re a CEO, I think this is an appropriate time to practice good interpersonal management with your people. I would say don’t try to panic people… But in the same sense, be honest. Be upfront. This is a scary situation we are looking at.”

Key Topics

• 1:00 – Shawn and Harris open the show with how they are dealing with their self-quarantine and social distancing. They admit they are fortunate with being able to work from home and mention of how many Americans cannot.
• 4:00 – Shawn and Harris talk about the content marketing strategy from big brands in response to the coronavirus. Shawn says many have taken a bare minimum approach with large email outreaches, and they each give their take on what companies are doing that works.
• 6:50 — Shawn considers making his online Arduino course free for a period of time and the value of offering free learning tools to everyone. Harris agrees with this, and they delve into how some organizations/events have handled this situation better or worse than others.
• 10:40 — Shawn and Harris describe their experience attending the online Open Hardware Summit. They highlight their virtual experience with attendee engagement and how presenters are able to format their activities with polling, online streaming, etc. for future events. Harris notes that presenting this way is a skill set and a great opportunity to grow your business.
• 20:08 — Shawn asks Harris his opinion on what small business can do to alleviate some of their problems. Harris says they should assess their short/long term risk by trying to increase inventory supply and focus on diversifying their offerings such as consulting or starting a new project. He mentions that this is only optimal if cash is available, and your business is in a position to take on more work.
• 22:24 —Shawn and Harris discuss how operators can pivot to using a local distributor/supplier to continue running their business. They offer their opinions on how owners should handle this crisis and implement interpersonal management to everyone.
• 27:16 — Harris inquires with Shawn on how he handles his own personal management at home and with work.
• 29:50 — Shawn and Harris share with listeners their views on how organizations/institutions now have a larger responsibility to give value to others as a sign of empathy and compassion.
• 37:45 —Shawn and Harris surmise that investment opportunities and industry trends will change as a result to the evident economic turmoil.
• 41:30 — Shawn and Harris wrap up the show with their final thoughts to everyone.

List of Bulleted Resources
7:06 - Shawn's online Arduino course:
https://www.udemy.com/course/arduino-programming-and-hardware-fundamentals-with-hackster/

Host Contact Information
http://shawnhymel.com
http://kennyconsultinggroup.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnhymel/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriskenny/
https://www.twitter.com/ShawnHymel
https://www.twitter.com/harriskenny

License Information
“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Overview
This week, on the Hello Blink Show, hosts Shawn Hymel and Harris Kenny welcome special guest, Jonathan Georgino. Jonathan is a business owner and hardware engineer who focuses on working through distribution channels and closing multi-unit enterprise deals with his company, Binho. Listeners will hear from Jonathan about the steps he took to land his first deals, market to early customers, and build a quality product that delights users.

One Powerful Quote23:02 – Jonathan: “I really recommend building your first boards by hand because you will understand if there is any problem whatsoever; if there is anything that can be improved, it will reveal itself when you build them by hand.”

Key Topics

• 1:18 – Shawn asks Jonathan about his business Binho, and Jonathan highlights key points including his team of contractors and going to market strategy. He also explains their product, the Nova host adapter, and explains the many benefits that come from it.
• 6:18 – Shawn inquires with Jonathan about his thought process for wanting to develop and find a product-market fit for the host adapter. Jonathan admits it is wishful thinking but explains how he wanted to incorporate his previous projects into a user experience.
• 8:16 – Shawn follows up with how likely someone will purchase his product. Compared to his competitors, Jonathan explains that his product is sleek, convenient, and low-profile for users. He also notes how functional it can be for teams of developers.
• 12:33 – Harris acknowledges Jonathan’s presence in this space, and they delve into how his experiences inspired him to form a business. Jonathan shares his insights into how he became his first customer and truly understood his competitors. He says advice from his network and addressing these issues early on helped build his team.
• 15:40 – Shawn and Jonathan have a follow up discussion on the influence of Jonathan’s network that inspired him to market and sell the Nova host adapter. Jonathan says this group came from from varying industries that had different projects and use cases.
• 17:08 – Shawn, Harris, and Jonathan have an open conversation about the challenges with scaling a business centered around software and hardware applications. Jonathan mentions how his relationship with a reliable and flexible supply chain manufacturer has set a foundation for his company’s scalability.
• 19:02 – Jonathan shares the process of how his product was manufactured and his success in calculating order demand. He also explains the outsourcing process to China and why it was important to originally keep quality control in the U.S.
• 27:18: Shawn and Harris commend Jonathan on his focus between launching product and business development. Jonathan describes the details used in their website which handles their e-commerce, product features, and support backin.
• 30:30: Shawn, Harris, and Jonathan discuss cold marketing and public relation approaches that helped Binho find their niche audience segment. Jonathan also illustrates what marketing tactics have/have not been successful and explains why.
• 38:08: Jonathan expresses how distributors have been the leading source for sales recently and the advantageous benefits that have come from this.
• 41:56: Harris asks Jonathan about his business model strategy for go-to market and his decision to use distributors. Jonathan highlights that his experiences as a buyer convinced him these platforms could help him as a seller including their marketing and customer outreach value. He also remarks the importance of having direct customers and keeping the end-to-end product cycle relevant.
• 48:10: Shawn and Jonathan discuss the purchasing process for Binho and why Jonathan values this aspect of his operation.
• 51:10: Harris asks Jonathan about his scaleability and multi-unit enterprise purchases. Jonathan mentions that this has recently started to happen and acknowledges that this trend validates that users are solving their problems/challenges better and faster.

Guest InformationJonathan, a passionate hardware engineer, routinely found himself creating tools to assist in the projects he’d been working on for several years. In late 2018, he began to merge several of his personal projects into a single tool and the Binho Nova Multi-Protocol USB Host adapter was born. A veteran of several Bay Area hardware startups, he enjoys wearing many hats and doing whatever it takes to bring high-quality products to market, from proof-of-concept through mass production. Above all, he wants to share his enthusiasm for developing quality hardware products with as many people as possible.

Twitter
LinkedIn
Website

Host Contact Informationhttp://shawnhymel.com
http://kennyconsultinggroup.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnhymel/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriskenny/
https://www.twitter.com/ShawnHymel
https://www.twitter.com/harriskenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Special Guest: Jonathan Georgino.

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Overview
On this episode of the Hello Blink Show, hosts Shawn Hymel and Harris Kenny welcome special guest, Moheeb Zara. Moheeb is a hacker, roboticist, installation artist, and software engineer. He currently works as a Senior Developer Advocate at Amazon Web Services (AWS) where he enjoys crafting new projects and generating content for those interested in learning more about AWS. Listeners will hear from Moheeb as he talks about helping businesses leverage their marketing/content strategy.

One Powerful Quote29:40: “You’re building a better and better product and then you also have a community that’s like, 'Hey, we can also build these tools,' and then, there’s the opportunity for them to build more tools and resources on top of it...when you have those key developers in your community, they become evangelists for you.”

Key Topics

• 1:18: Shawn asks Moheeb about his role and the responsibilities as an evangelist to his product development team. He remarks he has to keep a balance with managing his team and upholding customer interests.
• 5:41: Harris inquires with Moheeb on how he receives consumer feedback. Moheeb mentions various approaches and how his team addresses specific issues.
• 9:39: Shawn and Moheeb discuss how companies provide formal methods to support their internal teams. Moheeb says that it depends on the organization and mentions how AWS operates.
• 14:11: Shawn and Moheeb have a follow up discussion on how companies gather feedback from their users. Moheeb mentions that his favorite are hackathons but notes that corporate driven events take away from the spirit of learning and collaborating. He also notes webinars and talks can be useful tools as well.
• 25:09: Moheeb notes the difference between hackers and business owners and says how the importance of building an inclusive community can be invaluable. Although hard to measure, Moheeb remarks why evangelists can be beneficial to companies.

Guest InformationMoheeb Zara is a hardware hacker, roboticist, installation artist, and software engineer. Currently a Senior Developer Advocate at Amazon Web Services (AWS). In the past he has served on the board of HeatSync Labs, Arizona’s first hackerspace, and helped organize South West Maker Fest’s inaugural events. He is also known for being a founding member of the Autonomous Space Agency Network, a science and space art collective known for “the first protest in space”.

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Instagram
LinkedIn
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Host Contact Informationhttp://shawnhymel.com
http://kennyconsultinggroup.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnhymel/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriskenny/
https://www.twitter.com/ShawnHymel
https://www.twitter.com/harriskenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Special Guest: Moheeb Zara.

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Overview

On this episode of the Hello Blink Show, hosts Shawn Hymel and Harris Kenny talk about content marketing and how the right approach can help your business. They discuss their own experiences with creative marketing and how they go about finding their audience. Listeners will hear Shawn and Harris’s insights on servicing their clients and how to deliver valuable content.

One Powerful Quote

"Make content that’s useful for people and they will continue to engage with you. Do it not to push your product or service on them. Do it from an actual, genuine, authentic way of 'I want to help somebody have a better day.'”

Key Topics

• 0:40: Shawn and Harris open the show with what projects they’re working on. Shawn briefly mentions the latest book he’s reading, “Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell.
• 5:50: Shawn and Harris discuss an overview on content marketing and understanding the difference between inbound and outbound marketing. Harris mentions how businesses should assess their position in the market and determine the necessary steps to learn about their audience.
• 13:00: Shawn inquires with Harris about the suggested expense for marketing. Harris says that, although it depends, he recommends that a realistic business should only spend what is available considering production costs. He also adds that consistent presence in industry events and free PR stunts can alleviate the costs.
• 19:02: Staying on the same topic, Harris asks Shawn if business owners should be responsible for creating and promoting inbound marketing. Shawn agrees with this but isn’t opposed to outsourcing a partner to truly represent your brand in discovering the right audience.
• 22:00: Shawn and Harris delve deeper into finding your audience segment and offer their perspectives for the important questions to answer such as identifying your audience and maximizing content channel delivery. They also note the common pitfalls some business owners may have with their marketing strategy.
• 39:44: Shawn recommends the book Youtility by Jay Baer for its outlook of, “If you sell something, you make a customer today; if you help someone, you make a customer for life.” It summarizes why outbound market is failing and how authentically helping others will build you a loyal following.
• 42:13: Shawn asks Harris his success using HubSpot as a customer relationship platform.
• 48:50: Shawn and Harris sign off with their final overview thoughts on content marketing.

List of Resources
https://www.gladwellbooks.com/
https://www.youtilitybook.com/

Host Contact Information
http://shawnhymel.com
http://kennyconsultinggroup.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnhymel/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriskenny/
https://www.twitter.com/ShawnHymel
https://www.twitter.com/harriskenny

License Information
“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Overview
On this episode of the Hello Blink Show, hosts Shawn Hymel and Harris Kenny welcome friend and innovator, Kitty Yeung. Kitty has lead extensive positions as a research scientist, hardware engineer, and user experience designer at Intel and Microsoft. With her degrees in Applied Physics and Natural Sciences from Harvard and Cambridge University, Kitty is passionate about integrating technology, science, design, and art into her fashion brand, Art by Physicist. Listeners will enjoy hearing Kitty’s perspective on building a sustainable, eco-friendly business as she and Shawn/Harris discuss the essentials into launching your next start-up.

Kitty currently works as Senior Program Manager at Microsoft Quantum Systems on quantum computing education and enjoys her many roles as a physicist, artist, maker, fashion designer, and musician. She frequently gives talks reflecting her personal passion and career experience in the wearables industry, digital transformation, quantum computing, and internal startups. If you are interested in seeing her work, check it out at: www.artbyphysicistkittyyeung.com

One Powerful Quote“I think there’s some culture differences between the engineering community and fashion community that those two industries haven’t been helping each other enough and for 100 years we’ve been developing very separately. Fashion hasn’t benefitted from the latest tools that we developed as engineers. It created all these huge problems, global problems, and it doesn’t support the individuals at scale to do more creative work.”

Key Topics

• 1:43: Kitty shares what inspired her to start her own fashion brand and how it transformed into a full-fledged business. She mentions she was always curious about the industry and how she could solve its many complex issues.
• 6:00: Harris asks Kitty her thoughts on the balance between operational and environmental impact over demand and efficiency. Kitty shares that designing and manufacturing processes do not have the tools to streamline their operations; they are only concerned with cheap, mass produced items.
• 12:27: Kitty expresses her concerns in working with foreign partners and manufacturers. She says this was when she started using 3D printing for on-demand production and adds the many benefits associated with it.
• 21:34: Shawn and Kitty discuss the advantages in descaled production for boutique owners and the disconnect between engineering and business operators.
• 25:07: Harris comments on the difficulty of each stage for Kitty’s business. She agrees and suggests that there must be an ecosystem that aligns these procedures; her biggest challenge is in the design process.
• 29:42: Shawn inquires with Kitty about the profitability of her business. She says that, although she is not concerned about that financial aspect, she would like to donate the profits to environmental impacts and STEAM education.
• 35:41: Shawn and Harris wrap up the show with Kitty. She shares her contact information and what Art by Physicist is about.
• 39:19 (Post Show): Kitty asks Shawn and Harris their sales and marketing advice for her business. They include tips on networking, business development, and content creation.

List of Resourceshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kittyyeung1/
https://artbyphysicistkittyyeung.com/

Guest InformationKitty Yeung is a physicist, artist, maker, fashion designer and musician based in Silicon Valley, California. While working on quantum computing in her day job, Kitty is passionate about integrating technology, science, design and art. Her fashion brand, Art by Physicist (shop.kittyyeung.com) creates unique and timeless science- and nature-themed clothing and accessories. Using her paintings printed on fabrics through eco-friendly processes and 3D printing on-demand production to achieve sustainable and STEAM fashion.

Kitty's early career had been conducting research in condensed matter physics while pursuing artistic endeavors through painting, music and graphic novel creations. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University (thesis: Engineering Plasmonic Circuits in 2-Dimensional Electron Systems) and a M.Sci., B.A. and M.A. in Natural Sciences from University of Cambridge. After grad school, Kitty worked as a research scientist, hardware engineer and user experience designer at Intel, and Manager of the Microsoft Garage program in Silicon Valley. She now works at Microsoft Quantum Systems on quantum computing education.

Kitty frequently gives talks reflecting her personal passion and career experience in the wearables industry, digital transformation, quantum computing and internal startups. See her work on www.artbyphysicistkittyyeung.com.

Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn
Website

Host Contact Informationhttp://shawnhymel.com
http://kennyconsultinggroup.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnhymel/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriskenny/
https://www.twitter.com/ShawnHymel
https://www.twitter.com/harriskenny

License Information“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Special Guest: Kitty Yeung.

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Overview

Welcome to the Hello Blink Show. This week, hosts Shawn Hymel and Harris Kenny introduce listeners to the podcast and what key themes will be discussed. Shawn Hymel is a technology marketing strategist and content creator specializing in technical content and product development for clients. Through content creation and in-person workshops, he is passionate in creating memorable experiences for his audiences. Harris Kenny is the principal of his own consulting group which focuses on providing sales and marketing services for helping businesses grow. He has helped close deals with numerous businesses, schools, and government institutions based on their aligning goals and objectives.

The duo wants to share this platform as an inspiration for those who may be considering starting their own business and what that entails. Listeners will enjoy their views on what that means, their words of advice, and upcoming interviews with those who have done the same.

One Powerful Quote

"This decision to start your own business or start a project that you think could really become something bigger is a mental and emotional journey first, and then, it proceeds to those more practical things."

Key Topics

• 0:55: Shawn and Harris talk about their latest works. Shawn discusses his recent contract project with security cameras and having to learn the features of C++. Harris mentions his work and how networking at events helps his business.
• 4:23: Shawn asks Harris how he acquires clients and the specifics behind it. Harris shares that some events he attends are with early-stage companies he may advise for distribution and product development. Shawn compares events he attends that have successfully earned him clients.
• 6:33: Shawn inquires with Harris about why he values working with hardware companies. Harris says this is because the constraints forces owners to align their offerings closer to their customer. Shawn agrees that he also enjoys the tangible and manipulative use of hardware.
• 9:32: Harris and Shawn openly discuss the nature in finding their audience and advising them to start their own business. Shawn expresses the disconnect in corporate environments for engineers and the necessary steps to help them launch their project or business. Harris agrees this was a one main reason why they formed the podcast. Shawn and Harris both express that it will be an open platform to help those with business and marketing expertise.
• 17:30: Shawn explains the name of the Hello Blink Show.
• 20:00: Harris and Shawn express how to be in the “driver seat” of your business. They mention what that means and the responsibilities associated with it. Shawn adds how certain inefficiencies inhibit people from taking the next step; Harris suggests asking tactical questions.
• 30:00: Shawn and Harris discuss the pros and cons of independent work. They mention important factors to consider such as time, compensation, and effort needed to be your own boss. Shawn and Harris hypothesize that humanizing the experience and collaboration are more beneficial compared to working in the corporate environment.
• 36:06: The book Shawn could not remember is Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. You can read a summary about the airline crash incident here: https://aplusala.org/best-practices-center/2018/05/03/how-to-create-a-great-culture-within-your-organization-or-team/. Shawn is also working on correctly pronouncing “aileron” from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/aileron.
• 40:00: Shawn offers his advice on the planning needed before leaving your regular job and how to prepare before launching your own brand. Harris adds how service support can help navigate this process.
• 49:52: Shawn and Harris preview their work background and how this overview will be incorporated into the show.

List of Resources
Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Host Contact Information
http://shawnhymel.com
http://kennyconsultinggroup.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnhymel/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriskenny/
https://www.twitter.com/ShawnHymel
https://www.twitter.com/harriskenny

License Information
“Hello Blink Show” by Kenny Consulting Group, LLC and Skal Risa, LLC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Intro and outro song is “Routine” by Amine Maxwell is licensed under CC BY 3.0