TMBA 690: Talking Content, Data Driven Decisions and Growth with Steph Smith

White Orchid in tropical garden

Podcast 52:26 | Download | Spotify| Stitcher | iTunes

When starting a business or advancing your career, or even just seeking to increase your public profile, it’s a savvy move to build momentum through content, and specifically by focusing on a particular channel. Today’s guest is an expert at doing just that.

Steph Smith is the author of ‘Doing Content Right’. She’s also the host of the a16z podcast and ‘The Sh*t You Don’t Learn in School’. Steph talks to Dan about the opportunities being a creator opens up, tips on how to choose the right channel for what you’re trying to achieve, and why being data driven is so fundamental to achieving growth:

“If you are doing a good job with growth, data should rule the day. You should be able to clearly say, ‘here's an aspect of our funnel that we want to run a test on, because we believe it has this upside’. And you run the test …. I've gone on to other companies that were way less data driven. That's honestly something that I really struggle with because when you are in situations where you are having to kind of say, ‘hey, let's do this project, I think it'll maybe have some impact’. It's just not compelling to me. I think most things at a company should be pretty data driven”.

Listen and learn:

  • How to select the right North Star metric

  • The importance of a data driven approach to content creation

  • Building a bedrock audience

  • The Power of SEO v Twitter

Want More TMBA and Lifestyle Businesses?

Join the conversations happening all over the interwebz:

TikTok
YouTube
Instagram
@AnythingIan
@TropicalMBA
Join the Dynamite Circle

Mentioned in the episode:

Before the Exit – Our New Book
Partner With Us
The Dynamite Circle
Dynamite Jobs
Post a Remote Job
Tropical MBA on YouTube
Dynamite Jobs – Remote Recruiting Sales Page
Doing Content Right
The Sh*t You Don’t Learn in School
The a16z Podcast
The Hustle
Trends
HubSpot
My First Million
Sam Parr
Shaan Puri
Gumroad
Toptal
Venkatesh Rao
Marc Andreessen
MrBeast
Product Hunt
Glimpse
Starter Story
The Hacker News
Ahrefs
Nerd Wallet

Enjoyed this podcast? Check out these:

TMBA 69 (LPB 69): 6 Unorthodox Blog Content Strategies
TMBA 310: A Conversation About Writing Books
TMBA 598: Winning with Twitter and Writing for the Web with David Perell

This week’s sponsors:

The logo for Remote First Recruiting

Don’t Get Held Up While You’re Trying to Scale Up. Experience the ease of remote hiring with dedicated experts by your side. Book a call at https://www.remotefirstrecruiting.com/

Listening options:

Subscribe via iTunes.
Listen on Stitcher Radio.
Android users can grab our RSS feed here.
Right-click and “save file as” for direct download.
Or click here to get sent to the top of the page where the on-site player is.

Have comments about the show?

Do you have ideas for things you’d like Dan and Ian to discuss on future episodes?

Our producer Jane would love to hear from you at jane@tropicalmba.com or leave us a voice message using the record button below.

Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Thursday morning 8AM EST.

Cheers,

Dan & Ian

Previous
Previous

TMBA 691: Making Things Incredibly Difficult and Pointlessly Complicated

Next
Next

TMBA 689: Re-visiting Our Conversation with Seth Godin