Rob Fitzpatrick is an entrepreneur of 14 years and has written three books about his learnings along the way, including the best-selling handbook for doing better Customer Development, The Mom Test: How to talk to customers and figure out if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you. In 2007, he dropped out of grad school to go through YCombinator with his first startup, and has been building products and businesses ever since. Beyond software, he has also kickstarted a physical card game, built an education agency, and more.
Notes:
The 3 simple rules of the Mom Test:
Talk about their life instead of your idea
Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future
Talk less and listen more
How to run better meetings:
Focus on who will be in your meeting and how to maximize the value they receive while there
Think about learning outcomes - How will you (as the leader) help them be wiser by going to your meetings
[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Text-- learners to 44222 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You also will have the opportunity to become part of my book launch team for my upcoming book, The Pursuit of Excellence. I am pumped for this, and I'd love to have your support. Text-- learners to 44222. Now, on to tonight's feature. We are the great Rob Fitzpatrick. He's been an entrepreneur for 14 years, has written three books about his learnings along the way, including the best-selling handbook for doing better customer development, the mom test, how to talk to customers, and figure out if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you. During this conversation, Rob and I discuss the three simple rules for receiving more useful feedback. And then the difference between a good question and a bad one and then a better way to run all of your meetings. You could implement these ideas immediately. Ladies and gentlemen, it's the great Rob Fitzpatrick. All right, Rob, I told you before I've been just downloading basically everything you ever written to my brain. And it's pouring out of me now. But I just want to say welcome to the learning leaders show. It's great to see you, man. Thanks so much for having me, Ryan. I'm excited. So I was reading the mom test, one of your books. And I flipped to the very back, which I usually do. And in the acknowledgment section, you thanked your mom and your dad for gently planting the entrepreneurial seed through encouragement and their own collection of insane startup and shipwreck stories. And so I'm curious, first, where did you grow up and what did your parents do? grew up in Florida. And the reason being that my parents were a ship captain and ship crew, respectively, from my mom and dad. And they ended up getting more or less stranded in Florida
