We covered so much ground with Eric Dobson that we had to break it into two episodes. Listen to Part 1 first and then jump into this one.

Here’s a quick rundown of the topics we cover in the interview:

• knowing your exit before you start,
• how to appeal to companies that might want to acquire your startup,
• how the word “exit” means different things to different groups of people,
• why entrepreneurs do what we do,
• the right way to use outsourcing, and
• how to build a founder team.

Specifically regarding working with investors, Eric tells us:

• what to expect as a realistic time line to getting funded from pitch to check,
• how important it is for founders to have skin in the game, and
• whether or not to ask for money capital than you need.

Why would someone want to buy my company?

There’s a new school of thought in startup financing based upon a book called Ultimate Exits by Dr. Tom McKaskill. You can download the Ultimate Exits e-book and it’s accompanying workbook for free from Dr. McKasKill’s website. (He’s also got a ton of really great e-books on Amazon.)

Eric Dobson summarizes the book’s key themes for us:

“[Entrepreneurs have] been taught our goal is to create shareholder value and [to the contrary] the book says in the short run you need to create acquirer value. The reality is if you create certain products that fill a known obvious niche for a big player you may get a speculative bump on your valuation that may far exceed anything you can drive in revenue.”

Filling an obvious niche is very much like listening to your customers to learn what they want to buy.

Eric thinks this viewpoint is full of great lessons for founders.

“If you are going to build something, build something with a need in mind. Understand who the acquirers are. Be able to names names. [For example, approach an investor and say,] ‘Here are three companies that need what I do and they would be interested in me because I’m going to do this [specific plan] and I plan to liquidate in 3-5 years.’ Just have a solid plan to [take that approach].”

Most importantly:

“You can always change your plan, but do it out of opportunity not out of duress.”

Listen to the full episode part 1 and part 2.

If you don’t know where you are going, it’s hard to know when you’ve gotten there.

Eric Dobson starts us out with a simple, yet profound statement, “If you don’t know where you’re going it’s hard to know when you’ve gotten there.” What’s more, he focuses in on his role as an angel investor.

“There’s nothing more impressive than an entrepreneur who knows the plan: ‘I’m going to accomplish this [specific thing] and I know who I’m going to sell it to.’ [I love this approach because] it shows maturity. It shows the kind of planning that you need in today’s market to get a company from its inception all the way through its growth pains and into a marketable form where someone else is going to buy it and create new wealth.”

We’re reminded of the old adage that “failure to plan is planning to fail.” What’s interesting is this runs in the face of some other advice that says “just get out there and do it.” Too much planning can cause analysis paralysis, while too little planning can leave you without a rudder. In a theme we see over and over again, being a founder is all about balance.

Listen to the full interview part 1 and part 2.

In this packed episode with David Meerman Scott we covered such a broad list of topics that we had to cut it into two episodes. Start with the first one and then jump in here.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we discuss throughout the two episodes:

• How and why getting fired from his corporate gig was a gift
• How going on your own is less risky than working for a single corporate entity
• Why job #1 is creating content assets no matter where you are in your career
• How content marketing is largely free and gives you a huge advantage
• Who you should hire (personnel and staff) to tell your story
• Whether experienced business people from industry are better entrepreneurs than scrappy 20-somethings
• Why you should say “no” to the wrong investor
• Is a self-employed consultant a “real entrepreneur?”
• How to setup with an advisory role at another company

John Lee Dumas talked about the fear of going out on his own as impostor syndrome, and how his mentor got him over it.

“I think staying in the corporate world is much more risky because you don’t have multiple revenue streams. [Having multiple revenue streams] spreads your risk much like an investment portfolio. That’s much less risky than if your entire revenue is based on one job or the whims of one boss. You can go from 100% revenue to 0% in one second. I might go up and down but I have other sources to make up the difference. Even now, I can make up domestic speaking engagements with international speaking [which adds international diversification when domestic speaking slows down].”

Talking about entrepreneurship like a collection of revenue streams make it sound more like a life investment strategy. Any investment advisor will tell you to diversify your holdings, and any insurance agent will tell you to mitigate your risk exposure. What David is really talking about is entrepreneurship as a life and career strategy. It can be daunting to keep a number of paying projects in the air at the same time. That’s why we often talk about success habits that help our guests (and will help you) be more efficient and successful. No wonder David thinks “getting fired was a gift.”

David Meerman Scott recalls, “I jumped into my own thing 14 years ago after being fired from a corporate job for having too many radical ideas. Today, I deliver speeches, write books, and serve on advisory boards for startups.” It doesn’t take a deep thinker to realize that sure does sound like a better gig.

Listen to our full interview with David Meerman Scott (part 1 and part 2).

The tried and true playbook doesn’t work.

David goes about his career by “trying to not do what everyone else does.” He thinks by business people fail themselves by focusing on what everyone else does while it’s been his experience time and time again that “the tried and true playbook doesn’t work.” Instead, he advises founders to “go agile, do things differently. Focus on what’s interesting to your buyers, not what’s interesting to your venture capitalists.”

“Focus on your buyers” is a very similar message to what John Lee Dumas told us about “listening to your audience.”

David notes how many VCs might have built up their money 20 years ago and since they were successful in that way they think the business playbook hasn’t changed. David knows from his own experience that simply isn’t the case and he challenges founders to be nimble and get out there and not use the old playbook.

I focused on what worked, not what someone wanted me to do.

David tells us, “I kept getting fired from the corporate world. I would focus on what worked and not what someone told me to do. In the early days of the Internet [1995] I was trying to shift budget spending from print and direct mail to online marketing.”

“[My boss and I] had a difference of opinion and in that organization they valued the boss’ opinion more than the people who were actually doing the work. I like organizations where bosses listen to people who have tested their opinions and know what they are talking about.”

“I thought for sure I’d be a corporate guy for another 10-20 years. Getting fired was the best gift I was ever given in my professional life. I did think in the back of my mind that I could go out on my own.”

David tells us his wife and one of his trusted colleagues made the difference for him and encouraged him to get out there as a professional speaker. We’ve heard similar messages about using mentors to push you forward. “They supported me to live on my own wits and that made it a little bit easier.”

I hustled business from my parents’ friends.

Going back to the earlier days in his life, David recalls cutting grass, raking leaves and shoveling snow for neighbors.

“I hustled business from my parents’ friends; I negotiated prices. What that taught me is that I could live by my wits.”

It’s a great lesson for founders. Many of us can think back and realize we always were entrepreneurs with lemonade stands, mowing grass, or “hustling” business like David recalls.

It might be terrifying to leave that corporate gig, but if you do the right planning, build your content footprint, and keep plugging away at telling your story, you’re very likely to be able to make it.

John Lee Dumas is the Founder and Host of EntrepreneurOnFire, a business podcast that interviews today’s most inspiring and successful Entrepreneurs 5-days a week. EntrepreneurOnFire is a top-10 business podcast generating over 450,000 unique downloads a month in over 140 countries, and his lineup includes Barbara Corcoran, Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Guy Kawasaki, and hundreds more.

EOFire was nominated for BEST BUSINESS PODCAST by @Stitcher! Will you help us beat Ramsey by voting daily? http://t.co/SLEhaGl0a3

— John Lee Dumas (@johnleedumas) January 6, 2014

Maddox flies solo for the interview and Ledge swings in later to do the show notes.

This episode covers a ton of great topics including:

• leading with value,
• the importance of getting a mentor,
• listening to your audience, and
• how to profit now AND save for later.

Can’t wait and just want to dive right in? Check out these nuggets of wisdom culled straight from the interview.

What’s your best business advice?

“Just start. You will never be ready to launch in your mind. Get it out there with an MVP into the hands of your ideal customer. Get your feedback, pivot and approve.”

What’s your most important success habit?

“My alarm clock goes off at 5AM. I do a power-walk around the [San Diego] Bay, then I shower and sit down with coffee and crank away starting at 5:30AM. I get an incredible amount done before 9AM. I get to 9AM having already accomplished a ton of work, having set the plate for tackling what I have coming up. Because I have already had a longer work day by 9AM than most people have all day it allows me to develop my audience and my income.”

What would you have done differently if you had the chance?

“One thing I would do is I would break myself away from the mindset of being herded into a certain path. Going into college, the Army, law school, corporate America…You are the author of your own biography. As soon as I came to that realization that’s when amazing things started to happen to me. I wish I had come to that mindset shift at an earlier time.”

John cites “creating profit” as the key for his business success and he’s very transparent about how he does it. In fact, he shares all of his income reports each month on his website so other entrepreneurs can learn from his successes and failures.

We ask John where all the money is going.

“Most of it is going straight into our bank account.” John says he’s happy to invest money back into his company at the right time and on the right things. He’s a big believer, however, in living “below your means” so you can “use your savings as a runway for 6-12 months in order to focus on the quality of the service.” John says he’s ready to “weather the downturns and invest when the time comes.”

We loved his closing comments about entrepreneurship and how he manages his business.

“The entrepreneurial journey is a roller coaster. There are ups and downs. We’re preparing to be agile when the time comes that we need to be flexible. We make mistakes and we learn from them. We share that in our monthly reports. Our mistakes and failures are right there in print. A lot of people find that valuable. We project transparency. Other companies are doing the same things. Transparency connects you to your clients right away in a meaningful way. Share it all and people will feel like they are growing with you: an intimate connection that you can’t achieve in any other way. If you can’t create a connection with your clients you are setting yourself up for failure.”

Listen to the full episode!

John Dumas, who we interviewed in our first episode, took up this cause right away with his business, focusing on leading with value first and monetizing second.

In fact, he determined to provide as much value to his audience as possible without considering how to monetize that audience until six months after his launch. He believes focusing on value first allowed him to enjoy income that looked more like a “waterfall instead of a drip” when he did start to monetize (something you can see forthright in his transparent income reports).

John tells entrepreneurs to “go pull the trigger” and “let things go where they go.” While being “a person of action,” he’s also adamant that each of us invest in ourselves in terms of education and in the belief that our goals are possible. Given the chance to take a shot, John believes we should take it even if we’re scared.

How scared? John has an answer for that, too, when he tells us about the value of mentoring.

Listen to the full episode.

John’s podcast and its offshoot businesses leverage his listener base to create revenue and profit. John tells us that his listeners were asking him “how to create products and services.”

His answer is simple: “Listen to your audience and [they] will tell you the services and products they need.”

John cites his recently launched Mastermind group, Fire Nation Elite, which is a closed Mastermind group with 100 members. The mastermind group generates $13,500 each month. It’s a major revenue source for EOF with expenses under $5K month. He started it because listeners were telling them wanted to interact with other elite entrepreneurs. So he opened the group and capped it at 100 members — and sold out in less than a week!

In another example of listening to his audience, John tells about how people were seeing the EOF success and asking how to create their own podcast. They’d ask him, “How do I rank better? What are the tech specifics?” So John started Podcasters’ Paradise, a community where you can create, grow and monetize your podcast as a member. Providing tips, tools and tactics for podcasters in a tight community has grossed more than $115K since October 2013. It’s already a 6-figure product and more people are joining every day.

Key take-away: “Listen to the pains of the listeners and followers and then create something to solve it for them.” The same can be said for lean startup founders creating an MVP. Don’t overbuild and listen to the users who will ultimately spend the money you need to stay in business and profit. They might have the same needs and wants as you, but they also might now. Be attentive and listen carefully. Most of all engage!

Listen to the full episode!