Learn From Proven Entrepreneurs

Andy Liu is the guy that past Mixergy guests recommended I interview because he helped them build their businesses.

When I interviewed Ben Huh, he said that Andy recommended that he buy ICanHazCheeseBurger.com, and that Andy both invested in the business and helped him strategize. Neil Patel told me that Andy isn’t just his business advisor, but a life mentor too.

In this interview, you’ll…

I think we entrepreneurs can learn a lot from companies and partnerships that fail. That’s why I always give entrepreneurs who’ve gone through hard times a safe environment to talk about the problems they faced and tell us what they learned.

Today, I’m openinly inviting Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan of FusionGarage to an interview about the end of CrunchPad, the tablet computer that Michael Arrington has been trying to release, and that he today said Chandrasekar snatched from him.

…What I think you’ll see in this interview is how strongly I believed that building a successful company was going to undo everything that was crappy in my life. Since I dressed like a dork in high school, I was going to build a business that was so profitable that I could hire someone to dress me properly. Since I felt like an outsider who couldn’t fit in, I was going to build a business that forced the in crowd to pay attention to me….

Here’s what needs to be fixed/improved on Mixergy.com.

If you know how to solve these issues, let me know.

This interview is full of stories of successful entrepreneurs because Jerry Colonna has invested in or worked with some of the best of them. As I listened to Jerry tell stories of the people he worked with, I kept noticing that the founders who made it big were building companies that were a part of [...]

As you listen to this interview, ask yourself if you could have stood up to the challenges that faced Naomi Simson when she launched RedBalloon, a site that lets you give experiences as gifts.

Her first big challenge came before she even launched. The designers that built the first version of her site wasted all her seed capital. Then …

Early in his career, Craig Donato worked for Excite, a pioneering search engine. When I asked him, “Why do you think Excite didn’t beat Yahoo?” his answer was, “Because we didn’t dare to play a different game….We were just trying to out-Yahoo, Yahoo and that just doesn’t work.”

Now Craig is the CEO and Co-Founder of Oodle, the ambitious underdog that’s building an online classifieds business is a world dominated by Craig’s List. As you’ll hear in this interview…

The Harvard Business School Case Study on Heidi Roizen talks about the dinner parties she hosts for tech leaders like her personal friend, Bill Gates, and how people skills helped her build one of the most admired careers in Silicon Valley.

I invited Heidi to Mixergy so we can learn how she builds relationships. I know you guys like specifics and examples, so this program is full of lessons you can use.

Every niche has its celebrities, people who aren’t well-known to the rest of the world but are heros to a passionate few. We’ve heard past Mixergy entrepreneurs mention that they actively cultivate their niches’ celebrities to grow their reputations and their sites’ memberships. Wil told us how he got top investors to be members of goBIGnetwork. Otis [...]

What I admire about Shira Lazar is that she’s too much of a go-getter to wait for the perfect TV gig to come to her. I’ve watched her build her reputation and fan-base using new media tools like Qik, Wordpress and Twitter. As a result, she’s been a host or guest on mainstream media outlets like CNN, Fox and CourtTV. And she currently hosts shows on Yahoo! and CBSNews.com.

I asked her to teach how she the techniques she uses to build her personal brand and career.

If you haven’t heard of Otis Chandler it’s because he spends more time coding his site, Goodreads.com, than promoting himself. But without much fanfare — or outside funding — he built his community of booklovers to 650,000 members. That gave his business enough traction to raise money from investors and take his business to over 2.6 million members.

You’ll learn how he did it in this interview.

When my friend Wil Schroter builds web sites, he’s more concerned with attracting revenue than eyeballs. When we get together in person, I like talking to him about how he builds revenue-generating sites like goBIGnetwork.com, because he’s so methodical about it.

For example…