Someone recently asked me how I choose guests for the NNL podcast. It may seem like I’ve hosted quite an eclectic group of people, ranging from developers to CEOs to consultants to sex-tech innovators.
The question caught me off guard. I realized I was just using my gut to decide who to invite on the show. But I had never really thought about how my gut was deciding.
I think I’ve figured it out. Continue reading
I was really into zines when I was in high school. I spent almost all my time on alt.zines, spent way too much time hunting for old issues of Urban Hermitt, and constantly found myself browsing the fantastic zine section at Tower Records. Almost all my money went to Microcosm Publishing.
But whenever I’d browse Microcosm Publishing, one number always caught my eye: the wholesale pricing. It was so much less than the full price. I wanted to pay that price, not retail.
I launched my own zine distribution, Deranged Distro, and stocked only the zines that I wanted to read. Selling copies more than made up for the cost of the issues I bought myself. It was a perfect situation.
My guest today is Bobby Gill, founder of BlueLabel Labs. BlueLabel Labs doesn’t just build apps for other people, it spends half its time working on its own mobile applications. Bobby has a passion for apps and some fantastic business insights. He even shares the reason why his new iOS game is only available in Canada.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:21 — 36.5MB) | Embed
I love talking to programmers who no longer spend majority of their time writing code. Having a background in software development bring such a unique and analytical perspective to even project, and that’s definitely true of this week’s podcast episode.
My guest is Lis Hubert, the user experience consultant behind Hubert Experience Design. She was writing Java when she got her first information architecture job offer, and her career has blossomed from there. I talk to her about her experiences in the field and she even shares was it was like to hire two interns at her one-woman UX operation last year.
Entrepreneurship is about working for yourself, and that’s exactly what Lis is doing. There’s great information in here if you’re looking to do the same.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:31 — 36.6MB) | Embed
The Novice No Longer Podcast is getting meta. This week’s guest is the talented Steve Young, post of the Mobile App Chat podcast. I’m so excited to have another podcaster on the show because we get to talk about one of my favorite topics ever: podcasting. Steve walks you through, step-by-step, how to create your own podcast. He’s got so many tips and tricks that I’m now completely changing around my podcast processing process!
He also talks about his new membership site, App Masters, which has a ton of great courses to help you build a business around your apps. We also talk about mastermind groups, which have been instrumental to Steve’s success. I’m now totally inspired to start my own.
This episode was just plain fun to record. I’m sure you’ll be able to tell.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:23 — 35.7MB) | Embed
You probably have an idea for an app or website, and you think that people would use it, but how can you find out what will really happen when you put your product out into the world? The field of user experience is about way more than laying out websites so they’re easy to use — it’s a combination of design, psychology, and science. You have to do research, create a hypothesis, test your hypothesis, and change accordingly. You have to figure out what the user really wants to do.
This week on the podcast, I talk to Mona Patel, the founder and CEO of Motivate Design and UXHires. We talk about what it’s like to found and run a UX agency and what entrepreneurs can do to instantly improve their user’s experience. We even peer out into the future a little, and Mona shares why she thinks virtual reality will completely change the way people experience the world. She says something I have never even thought about that completely blew my mind.
This episode will help you stop building products and start building products that people will actually use.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:48 — 38.2MB) | Embed