mike2477

So is writing 4,000 word articles that ideally help other entrepreneurs. That's a pretty important caveat to include. But hey, I'm biased :)

So this isn't entirely true either.. Here's my take:

What I did wrong - I didn't run the quotes by Pieter before publishing. I was on a tight deadline, and I simply skipped this step. That was a mistake, but not unethical. Journalists are not required to run quotes by their sources. I only quoted from what Pieter told me. Those who want to verify can hear the whole interview here -- https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8k8VS_zkdqYVGx3U01JU0xaYXc...

- I simplified Pieter's story to fit the narrative I thought I saw. I was blinded by what I thought sounded like a good story. So when Pieter said he had stopped traveling temporarily, I simplified that to "He stopped being a nomad." While he had stopped traveling when I spoke with him (he was in Holland when I interviewed him), he didn't intend to stop traveling forever. When Pieter reached out (and called me lots of pretty harsh names), I emailed the editor and we issued a revision. You can see this in the story.

What I didn't do wrong - For the last couple months Pieter has tried to tell everyone that will listen on Twitter what a shitty person I am. He's called me harsh names. He's questioned my ethics. And he himself has simplified a story: that I'm a clickbait seeking journalist with no experience and no morales. This has obviously been pretty hurtful. I've gone to sleep shaking with anger and sadness (partly because I know I made mistakes in my first-ever published story and I'm insecure about that, and partly because reading Reddit threads where people call you a fucking idiot just hurts). I don't believe I was unethical in any of this. As I mentioned, I used direct quotes and told the story that I heard over Skype.

- Pieter implied in this comment that I didn't write the truth and that I am embody what is wrong with journalism today. He compared my story to "fake news." I think this is a stretch. Again, I could have written a more comprehensive story if I had more than 800 words and 48 hours. But I don't think any of this can be compared to "fake news." My intent wasn't malicious, and I sought to tell the right story. None of what I wrote was untrue. Pieter just felt that it wasn't the entire story. This is common with profiles.

- Pieter also mentioned that I did this for "clicks" but this story was written at a time when I was taking time away from marketing and business. I had no vested interest in the page views my story on Quartz got. I don't even know how many it has. Again, I think this is an oversimplification of a complex human being.

I've tried to reach out to Pieter before, but he blocked me on Twitter. So because I know you are reading this here's my message: "Shoot me an email (mthomas dot denver at gmail) if you want to chat. I feel bad about the mistakes I made. But I don't want you always lurking over my shoulder ready to tell the Internet what a shitty person I am. I made mistakes that anyone new to a field could make. I had no malicious intent, and tried to correct the story when you asked. Please stop writing mean things about me and making me feel bad. I'm a human being with feelings and emotions."

Over and out.

Hey! This is a great question and one raised by others. I plan to write more on this (totally spaced it on this article somehow).

If you CTRL + F search "The short version" you'll see the short version of my answer to this question. More to come!

That's a great point! I'm really glad you mentioned it. My hope was that this could be as useful to someone pitching their company is it is to aspiring writers.

Hey thanks friend!

That makes my day to hear that! And you're telling me -- I'll never be #1 on Google.. :(

In a thread above I listed the story I wrote for Quartz. I used to write on these blogs too:

http://www.michaelthomasblog.com/ -- my angsty young person writing, and fiction

http://www.getsimpledata.com/blog/ -- my last company

http://www.insatiablefox.com/ -- more journalist writing

I'm working on publishing in one place going forward for obvious reasons haha :)

To answer your question, I found that helpful in organizing pitches by day. But I agree it can be helpful to organize by publication. I guess a perfect tracker would be easily sortable and have numbering to tell how many times you've pitched a publication.

Appreciate the kind words and question!

Thanks :)

You're totally right. I forgot one of the most essential parts of the process which is tracking down the right editor.

The short version is this: find the most relevant publication, then search for the most relevant section (politics, business, etc). Then look on their masthead (you can google {publication} masthead) to find this for every magazine. There you'll find the editor of the section you want to write for. Then you can do a quick google search on them to find their Twitter or email.

In terms of process I usually tweet them first and ask what the best way to send a pitch is. They'll usually include their email. Then I send an email with subject line "re: twitter" (that gets opened everytime). In that email I include my pitch.

More in-depth story on this to come. Appreciate the idea!

Hey, thanks so much for this feedback. I really appreciate it :)

You're right, I definitely missed some important stuff. I sorta took for granted the fact that emailing people has always been second nature for me. Will do a follow up on this since it's just as important.

In the meantime, here's The Atlantic and Quartz story. Two more FastCompany stories on the way :)

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/spacex...

https://qz.com/775751/digital-nomad-problems-nomadlist-and-r...

Ah that's a great point, haha. Sometimes I forget to do the most obvious things :)

I linked to them, but right now my CMS isn't underlining links (WTF, right?)

Hey, thanks so much for saying this. It means a lot :)

I agree that spreadsheets are an awesome way to organize life. I've become obsessed with Google Sheets. This year I learned the power of all the plugins. For example, I built a stock tracker that pulls live data from Google Finance (with no programming background). I also built a custom dashboard for my business to track revenue. It worked better than anything else up to $30k / mo in revenue.

Some great resources on this Zapier post -- https://zapier.com/learn/google-sheets/best-google-sheets-ad...

Oops! The link was there but my formatting is set up so it doesn't underline. Bug I need to fix.. thanks for the heads up

I'm confused how $900 in my first week isn't closer to sustainable? What would be?

That's certainly one way of looking at it.

I calculate conversion rate based on the number of people that hit the course page. That's industry standard. My goal was to test how many people that read about my course signed up. The blog post drives traffic to the home page, but I don't count blog readers if they don't hit the home page because that wouldn't be testing the right metric.

Conversion rates vary by business. A media company tracks the number of readers that click an ad. A mobile app tracks the number of visitors to the home page and download the app. This was the metric I picked to see if people were interested.

No problem! Happy to answer any other questions.

I can chime in here :)

I'm validating demand for the course before actually recording lectures. If only 1 or 2 students signed up and subsequent tests failed I would have refunded them their money. But so far it looks good so I'm planning on recording courses in late January.

You can learn more about the course here -- upupgrow.com

I think it'd work really well for that vertical. One data source you could try is LinkedIn's job search, or Indeed search. Filter by the job title that your buyer would be hiring for, and then have VAs build a list of the companies hiring for those positions.

For example, if you sell onboarding technology for developers, then you could build a list of companies hiring for engineers and then reach out 30 days later once they've theoretically hired the person.

Let me know if I can elaborate more on that for ya!

Good question.

I think content marketing and cold email work at different stages of the company and for different product offerings. In general, cold email is going to be faster to ROI and quicker sales cycles so it's good for startups. And on the flip side content marketing can take months to really return the money (without getting lucky). So it's good to start with cold email to acquire the first 100 and then have content marketing getting going as soon as that channel begins to tap out.

Cold email also really only works if your product is more than $500 LTV. Anything less and it's hard to get the ROI if you're hiring a sales rep to do the work. So it's good for SaaS companies with large LTVs and annual contracts but not consumer apps or SMB plays.

Hope that helps!

I found a site that listed all the stock tickers and threw that in Google Sheets. But I forgot the exact site. Definitely missing a few stocks (especially Canadian ones) at this point..

Ha! As a similar investment strategy I've heard of folks investing in Scotts Miracle Grow. But also heard from a guy in the grow op industry that no one uses their products so it's mostly hype.

Hey there, author of the post here. If anyone else gets this can you let me know? Wondering if it's the image size on the header..

If you know how to debug let me know as well :)

Hey, thanks for the feedback! We've got a simple landing page up right now where you can sign up for early access -- cannectcapital.com

I'm trying to build a tool for analyzing cannabis stocks and choosing an investment strategy. But in the meantime I've got a Google Sheet I'm using to track them - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X2cwnwmzgdRfuy0yiPo6...

Would love your feedback! And happy to answer any questions about it.

I think it's a little outlandish to suggest that Bill Gates started the Gates Foundation in order to make more money or save on tax breaks.

Did he do it for his ego? Maybe. But it'd be hard to find someone who has done great work who didn't do it for their ego.

Being a skeptic in an internet forum is easy. Solving problems that The Gates Foundation has set out to solve isn't. I'll continue to lionize those who do the latter.

Unfortunately I don't think that data is available. But from what I understand it has led to more giving. See this article - http://fortune.com/2010/06/16/the-600-billion-challenge/

Definitely needs some work! Appreciate the feedback. Just launched the blog two weeks ago. Working out the kinks :)

Amen.

It's worth noting that governments contribute far more than private organizations to things like AIDS research. I should have mentioned that in the article.

See this article (fig 1) - http://www.avac.org/sites/default/files/resource-files/Resou...

But he's promised to give it all away within 10 years of his death. So this is a null point.

Hey there, data geeks!

I am doing research on the rise of social entrepreneurship and got sidetracked by what a badass Bill Gates is. I found out that his foundation is 4x larger than the next largest private foundation in the US. And if you add up the wealth pledged as a part of The Giving Pledge it is 10x larger than that.

I compiled The Giving Pledge data on my own by researching net worths of each pledgee. Planning to put the data on the Wikipedia page shortly.

I found the other data from the following sources (see direct links in article):

Foundation Center The Giving Pledge NP Trust GBD Compare AVAC

Happy to answer any questions and would love feedback.

gknoy thanks for commenting! i bet you have a talent that you can turn into a business. it's not always the most obvious thing and sometimes it takes some searching. shoot me an email at michael@getsimpledata.com if you want to chat about it!