Every Sunday, I send a newsletter with ideas on business and life. You can sign up below and read this edition from February 21, 2021.
Hey my friend,
Welcome to The Grind, a newsletter sharing the best ideas and insights on business and life I’ve learned each week.
Let’s dive in.
Ideas and Inspiration
This week, a large portion of the country was hard hit by huge a winter storm. We hope all of our readers are staying safe and warm out there! While this week has been extremely challenging for those in the affected areas, Sam Parr (CEO of The Hustle) was able to find the silver lining of being snowed in for 3 days in an apartment with 5 friends. Check out this thread of investor insights he gathered from fellow storm-weatherer and known investor, entrepreneur and blogger, Andrew Chen.
Perseverance is the key to success.
As an entrepreneur, this is one of those non-negotiable qualities you have to have to really make it. If there’s one thing that’s certain as a founder, it’s that you will face challenges—and lots of them. No matter how well you plan or how much experience you have, this journey will test you. Whether or not you are able to navigate hardships and keep trying again and again, despite failure—this is what will determine your success. Jonny Price shared Wefunder’s investment volume by month over the last 8 years—an incredible example of what can happen when you stick with it. As Gale Wilkinson of Vitalize shared this week, there will always be people who tell you that you can’t—but the only person who truly determines whether or not that is true is yourself.
Be 1st in a category and you’ll stand out
As the 2nd law from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (recommended by Tim Ferriss) explains, if you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in. For example, who was the third person to fly over the Atlantic Ocean solo? You probably don’t know—yet you do. It’s Amelia Earhart. But she isn’t known for that. She is known as the first woman to do so. Li Jin is a great modern example of this as she launches Atelier Ventures, a new VC fund that is dedicated to advancing the passion economy. She saw “an opportunity to build a firm that rises to the top of founders’ minds when they think of starting a company in a particular category, and that has a clear mission and worldview” – and is making a name for herself and Atelier in a unique space. Congrats, Li!
Lean into the discomfort of cold outreach.
While it can undoubtedly feel uncomfortable to put yourself out there in this way, what do you really have to lose? You certainly aren’t gaining any customers by not reaching out. Ultimately, frame cold outreach (and almost anything that feels vulnerable) this way—what will happen if it goes well?
The accredited investor rules are outdated and exclusionary.
Imagine the SEC relaxed their accredited investor definitions from:
– Annual income of $200K per year or
– Net worth exceeding $1 million
To:
– Annual income of $100K per year
It would be a total GAME-CHANGER in the best of ways. How can we make this happen?
Check out this conversation started by Natasha Mascarenhas of TechCrunch, discussing the best communities being built in edtech right now!
Add it to your Calendar
Edtech and Future of Work Pitch Event—with John Danner, Matthew Greenfield, Jomayra Herrera, Jennifer Carolan and Deborah Quazzo. Every Thursday at 4pm PST this group of edtech investors representing over $1b assets under management will listen to pitches from founders in the edtech and future of work space.
This Week’s Just Go Grind Episodes
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Erik Jacobson is the Founder and CEO of Lemonpie, a full service podcast PR and production agency. Erik first saw the power of podcasting after working with podcasters like Tim Ferriss. With Lemonpie, he now helps companies like FreshBooks, HubSpot, and Four Sigmatic use podcast strategies to build awareness and drive revenue. He also recently launched Hatch, which offers unlimited podcast editing. You can get deep-dive case studies, expert interviews, and all of Erik’s podcast strategies on his weekly show, Brands That Podcast.
Eric Shoykhet is the Founder and CEO of Atom Finance, a modern financial knowledge platform empowering investors to make informed investing decisions with best-in-class research, software, and data. Eric founded Atom to fill a white space he identified in the market. As an institutional analyst at Blackstone and Governor’s Lane, Eric had access to enterprise platforms like CapIQ and Bloomberg. He quickly identified the massive information gap between those platforms and what was readily available to retail investors via Yahoo! Finance, etc. Eric founded Atom Finance in 2018 to bridge the gap and provide the same market research resources traditionally available only to Wall Street professionals into the hands of any investor via a powerful and intuitive platform that works anywhere.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter and I’ll see you next week Sunday. Have a wonderful day!
Much love,
Justin
P.S. Who am I? I’m the founder of Just Go Grind, host of the Just Go Grind Podcast, and the Director of Marketing & Community at Vitalize Venture Group.
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