awefulBrown Goes To AZ Startup Week February 2016

aweful Journey To Development: Creating A Career As A Front-End, Back-End or Full-Stack Developer

This is the first post of the first podcast.
Watch me grow.
This episode is about my experience at AZ Startup Week, the new and old acquaintances I met at the events, and the wisdom they blessed me with.

aweful & awefulBrown logo

Below you'll find a loosely written script of the podcast:

awews Podcast Session 0001

Music fades in.

Anthony's script

Hello listeners and welcome to the first AwesomeWebStore podcast hosted by your Humble Narrator, awefulBrown.

The goal is to document my journey. Share the blessings of lessons learned, wisdom shared, and encouraging stories and words to help you show grit and ingenuity through your journey and with the challenges you face. I hope you do the same with me and for others you encounter. On this journey I'll be working on becoming a professional developer, creating The Elementary MBA, monetizing the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription so that it pays for itself, and becoming the better me.

Every podcast will have two files. The first file will have the links, contact info for the people and firms encountered, and info they shared with me. The second file will include that info delivered in story form and much longer.

Here we go.

Greg Head’s The 7 Lessons to Grow Up Your Startup in Arizona.

Here they are:

1. Solve A Problem

2. Find A Problem

3. Focus

4. Sell or Die

5. Be A Fanatic About The Important Things

6. Get Great Help

7. Manage Your Head Game

8. It's Hard

His current mission is:

To Help 10,000 entrepreneurs And Small Business owners create a better business and a better life.

You may sign-up for local free workshops & Mentoring Opportunities

@

GregHead.com/azworkshops

Darryl Keeton of Black Diamond Business Solutions:

Don’t try to create something that already exists. Use what exists. If it doesn’t exist, find talent that’s passionate about your cause and allow them to make it. Don’t waste time learning how to make it.

Mario Martinez; Angel Investor:

if you’re into EdTech (Education Technology)

checkout Picmonic and Sokikom Games S-O-K-I-K-O-M Games

Jake from I’m Tipsy:

You may use Facebook API to obtain the demographic info on any brand/page/group on Facebook and then target more users like that on Facebook.

---

Hello listeners and welcome to the first AwesomeWebStore podcast hosted by your Humble Narrator, awefulBrown.

The goal is to document my journey. Share the blessings of lessons learned, wisdom shared, and encouraging stories and words to help you show grit and ingenuity through your journey and with the challenges you face. I hope you do the same with me and for others you encounter. On this journey I'll be working on becoming a professional developer, creating The Elementary MBA, monetizing the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription so that it pays for itself, and becoming the better me.

Every podcast will have two files. The first file will have the links, contact info for the people and firms encountered, and info they shared with me. The second file will include that info delivered in story form and much longer.

Here we go.

I'll discuss my experience at the closing ceremonies at Phoenix Startup Week in this episode.

Startup Week is much different than Startup Weekend. I participated in Startup Weekend in November of 2015. It was a learning experience. I want to thank The Elementary MBA Team, the original members and those that were there after we were politely asked to split into smaller teams. Including RezTech, Preetham & Phyo. It's the only team to leave the weekend with a product. The rest had ideas or business plans at best. Lots of great ideas. It was good to learn how the competitions actually work. I went into it thinking that you pitch what you produce that weekend.

You pitch to win! I should've known better.

The future. But first the recent past.

Startup Week is a week of workshops and networking for those audacious enough to attempt to create a startup.

What's a startup?

A startup is a company that plans to grow very quickly. That's my understanding of a startup. I gathered that from my interactions with those in the community and from what I experience in the world. Therefore every new business isn't a startup and shouldn't aim to be a startup. You should research it yourself. It might not be the right path/journey for you. By the way, a startup doesn't have to be a NEW company or idea. The key is growth.

What did I experience at the few events that I attended at Startup Week?

First I'll tell you which events I attended. I attended the closing talk by Greg Head. The former Chief Marketing Officer of Infusionsoft. My former employer. A company I loved and a position I loved and hated. I wasn't a good fit for that role and that spelled my demise from the jump. I'll get more into that in a future podcast. Remind me.

I attended the bar crawl that followed. Ran into a bunch of familiar faces before the bar crawl, during the bar crawl, and more after the bar crawl. Bar crawls tend to do that.

I went to the happy hour that followed. Then went home.

The talk Greg gave was entitled The 7 Lessons to Grow Up Your Startup in Arizona. I counted more than 7 lessons. That's not a complaint. Just an observation. The problems weren't numbered and I could be wrong.

Here they are:

1. Solve A Problem

2. Find A Problem

3. Focus

4. Sell or Die

5. Be A Fanatic About The Important Things

6. Get Great Help

7. Manage Your Head Game

8. It's Hard

If you want details on those reach out to Greg Head @gregHead on social media and greghead.com online.

for those that want to know more about what Greg Head and his current mission:

To Help 10,000 entrepreneurs And Small Business owners create a better business and a better life.

Local free workshops & Mentoring Opportunities

@

GregHead.com/azworkshops

In the lobby, I ran into Brittany of CoPlex. She's awesome. She invited me to attend the November Startup Weekend. The event that played a pivotal role in this journey I'm documenting. Spoke with Darryl Keeton. We met during Startup Weekend in November. His team won the event. Look out for MainGoit @maingoit on twitter. They have a great product/idea. Well deserved. He blessed me with some quality advice that afternoon.

Don’t try to create something that already exists. Use what exists. If it doesn’t exist, find talent that’s passionate about your cause and allow them to make it. Don’t waste time learning how to make it.

After our talk I spoke with Kevin, Greg (keynote speaker) and Lindsey, all former Infusionites, before getting on the trolley to the bar crawls.

I have a bad habit of not carrying my wallet on me and got to the bar without money nor ID. I'm thankful I didn't get carded and I'm Tipsy bar app gave us drink tickets. And that the people I was with tipped the bartender. The drinks were great.

Also, I met one of the founders of I'm Tipsy. Jake, I believe is his name, shared some useful information with me.

You may use Facebook API to obtain the demographic info on any brand/page/group on Facebook and then target more users like that on Facebook. I wish I'd gotten his contact info. He's on his way to an aerospace career with Boeing.

Go Devils.

While waiting at the bar, not to be mentioned because they didn't card me, Kevin and I met Mario Martinez and Robert. Robert's gonna be competing next week in Phoenix and Vegas. Best wishes to you both and thanks for the support, warm wishes and great intel you blessed me with that evening. I'll be following up with you both. Mario offered to introduce me to some individuals in the EdTech arena. Help me get the Elementary MBA moving. Robert has some good contacts for me as well. I quickly put both of their contacts into my library using the Snap App that links to my Infusionsoft account. The firms in EdTech they mentioned are; Sokikom Games and Picmonic.

After that Elio and I got caught up before I met the eco enthusiast communications specialist Veronica. And that's when Jake led us to the closing Happy Hour at Pedal Haus.

Bad news, I missed the macaroni and cheese. I spent too long catching up with great people.

Ran into Eric Walker a talented database guy & my former neighbor Dr.Telpriore Tucker of Sirius-E-Bikes

Chatted with the awesome director and fellow Sun Devil Brad Hasse.

Go Devils. We talked about his texting hat that you should buy at textinghat.com. Met his buddy Justin Katz with Flock of Pixels. We laughed. Shared some entertaining short stories while I ate cheese and olives.

Then I jogged back to my car because the trolley was done running. Then drove home sober and full of good food.

Don’t Be Good. Be Great. Be Grateful.