Howard Kingston

  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Clients
    • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Work With Me
X
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
clarity.fm

How I Got Clarity from Speaking to the Best

clarity.fm

It’s midnight as I’m writing this post.

I’m a little excited.

I rarely (read: never) write blog posts late at night but this is cause for a special occasion. (warning: before you read anymore of this post, if you were in any doubt that I am a complete startup nutter, then you will soon have all the confirmation you need to send for the guys in white coats)

This evening I got an opportunity to speak to two of the greatest minds in entrepreneurship.

Eric Ries and Andrew Chen.

I got to speak to them personally – one on one, and they answered questions to help me with my business. I did this from my bedroom. These are all good things 🙂

Further down this post I’m going to tell you exactly how I spoke to them, and tell you exactly how you can too.

But before I do, firstly let me explain why this is so awesome.

Eric and Andrew are generally accepted as two of the greatest minds in tech startup scene. Eric for starting the Lean Startup movement and Andrew is pretty much the world expert on viral marketing.

This evening I spent about 10 minutes, solid one on one time, speaking with both.

  • Eric gave me advice on the key next steps he’d recommend for an iPhone app startup I’m working on (will divulge more on this soon). I told him the concept & asked what he’d do in my shoes – he recommended 2 key actions I should take:
    1. See if they care: Go and get 10 people you don’t know to install the Beta version of the app, see if they use it
    2. Find out where the hardcore tribe of my potential users hangout – immerse myself with them. These will be my early adopters
  • Andrew and I spoke bout the correct equation for measuring viral co-efficents (k-factor). Something if you follow my twitter, you’ll know I’ve been working on this week for the social game I work for. There’s a hell of a lot of conflicting equations for K-factor on the web, so I thought I’d speak to the leading expert in the world to clarify things. I’ll do a full post on this later this week to explain my findings.

For me, this advice was invaluable. Yes I have read Eric Ries’ book and yes it probably does tell me the same advice in it. But there is no substitution for asking an expert where you are right now with a problem and them advising you exactly what you should do.

Speaking to the best people = you getting the best advice = you doing the best/correct actions = you increasing your chances of success.

How did I do it?

I spoke to Eric Ries, Andrew Chen (as well as 4 other startup experts who were awesome) through a new service called Clarity.fm that launched yesterday.

Clarity is a new startup launched by Dan Martell (up there with Eric and Andrew in legendary status) that allows you to get expert advice when you need it. You can get early access by following this link.

Sign up, find people you’d like to get advice from and call them. Any charges go to charity.

From what I can see, there isn’t any search functionality on the site yet – which brings the question: how do you find the profiles of the people you should call for advice?

Well, I’m sure the search functionality is coming soon – but before it does, the best way I found to find people is by searching the #clarity hashtag and you’ll see people’s recommendations and availability pop up.

However, this lack of search functionality also presents an opportunity for theearly adopters amongst us: A path of little noise.

There are rock-star advisors on Clarity right now (i.e. Dan Martell, Eric Ries and Andrew Chen) who are available for calls because most people don’t know they’re there.

But do you know how to find them? I did. Here’s how:

I figured linking to their profiles would make it too easy but I’ll tell you exactly how to find them yourself. (hint: it’s just like if you were trying to guess the email address of a large company’s CEO).

  1. Establish how the profile urls are built: https://clarity.fm/#/howardkingston
  2. Make a wishlist of the world’s most amazing people you’d like to speak to (Silicon Valley based tech entrepreneurs have highest probability of success)
  3. On the Clarity profile url above, change my name for the person you’d like to speak to, using the same format as above

Viola!

Apply the same principle here.

Happy chatting – I hope this posts gives you some clarity as where to find some great advice. 

Let me know how you get on & spread the word 🙂

Primary Sidebar

Work With Me

Join My Next Event

Join my Next Webinar

  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
Barry Shaverin: Founder and CEO of Zip World London
Barry Shaverin: Founder and CEO of Zip World London

Most obviously, Howard is great marketer. He knew which channels we should try, when we should try them, how we analyse and how to react to them….as a result we sold a lot of tickets. Which was obviously great for us.

Joel Burgess, Founder and CEO Nutrifix
Joel Burgess, Founder and CEO Nutrifix

Escape Velocity was a game changer for us. The biggest impact on us was that it gave us clear direction of what we need to achieve. It has really massively impacted on my life and given me the clear direction and the sort of tools to manage my business.

Julien Deslangles-Blanch, Regional Director, UK & Germany at General Assembly
Julien Deslangles-Blanch, Regional Director, UK & Germany at General Assembly

Howard has been with us in the past five years and has taught thousands of students. I can say he is a fantastic instructor. Honestly, students just love him.

Jakob Modéer, Entrepreneurship Program Manager, Swisscontact Worldwide
Jakob Modéer, Entrepreneurship Program Manager, Swisscontact Worldwide

Our program consists of Macedonia's top performing startups (some already doing millions in revenue $). When I asked the teams who they would like me to bring in to coach them on growth, Howard's name was proposed. Howard came in and made an overwhelming positive impact and has helped our entrepreneurs grow their businesses to the next level.

Jennifer Maerz, Editor in Chief & Program Chair, The Lean Startup Co
Jennifer Maerz, Editor in Chief & Program Chair, The Lean Startup Co

Howard gave a fantastic keynote at Lean Startup Summit London 2017. His talk blended strategic thinking with practical takeaways that engaged the audience throughout.

Popular Posts

  • 10 Productivity Tips Every Entrepreneur Should Know
  • What Great Goals Are you Working Towards (and what’s holding you back?)
  • Entrepreneurs: Stop Wasting People’s Time!
  • How to Hit 4 million Users in 6 months – A Startup Case Study
  • How to Turn Setbacks into Success, Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

25+ Essential Tools to Grow Your Business (includes $1k+ of Free Stuff)

Download free
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • Work With Me

Footer navigation

  • © Howard Kingston
  • Terms
  • Privacy Policy

Subscribe to get my Growth Newsletter & get instant access to the Growth Toolkit, for Free




Your Privacy will always be protected

[thrive_leads id=’1689′]

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.AcceptRead more