EIX is featuring interviews that explore the principles outlined in Steve Blank and Bob Dorf's book, "The Startup Owners Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company." This interview with Max Fergus, founder of Live Undiscovered Music Inc. (LÜM), focuses on Chapter 2, The Path to the Epiphany: The Customer Development Model.

Ch 2 Max Fergus

In this Podcast, Professor Mat Hughes looks into the debate about managing entrepreneurship. It is a contradiction to try to manage entrepreneurship? No. Good entrepreneurship requires good management! Entrepreneurship needs to be managed effectively to get the most out of its efforts. Entrepreneurship and good management are both key components of execution intelligence. Many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial initiatives fail. That is an inescapable reality. But most do so because of not bringing together the skills and capabilities they need to sufficiently advantage on opportunities.


Managing Entrepreneurship

Professor Mat Hughes talks with Ryan Chute, the Wizard of Ads, about the value of great marketing for small businesses. We talk about how messaging and strategy are far more important than the channel, the importance of being relational not transactional, and crafting an identity customers can empathize with. 

The Value of Great Marketing for Small Businesses

Professor Mat Hughes interviews Ryan Chute, the Wizard of Ads, about his journey from his family's furniture business to becoming his own entrepreneur as a leading strategic marketer and the Wizard of Ads. We talk about his formative experience in the family business, the pivotal moments in his journey, and what makes a good entrepreneur and a good manager.

From Family Business to Entrepreneur

Professor Mat Hughes speaks with Bob Chernow, the former vice chairman of the World Future Society created to ignite the exchange of ideas about the future to understand and respond to our changing world. A stockbroker for 49 years, Bob managed 750+ million USD in assets until his retirement in 2023, and was named seven times by Barron’s Magazine as one of the top 1,200 financial brokers. Bob successfully predicted events and trends that have had a major impact on business and society. Bob is an avid supporter of the valuable insights that can be gained from thinking like a futurist and works to help individuals and organizations become more visionary in their approach and try to anticipate what could happen in the future.

How to Think Like a Futurist

The World on Time

Professor Mat Hughes interviews Dorothy Francis MBE about her experience as a social enterprise pioneer and thought leader. Dorothy Francis MBE has dedicated 38 years to the cooperative and social enterprise sector, driven by a passion for transforming lives and communities through social business, being named Business Woman of the Year twice, honoured with the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion, an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Leicester, and an MBE.

Business with Purpose: The Social Enterprise Journey with Dorothy Francis MBE

Professor Mat Hughes speaks with leading, serial tech entrepreneur Ed Johnson, recognized in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for Social Impact in 2022, and CEO and Co-Founder of uRoutine. We look at look at the journey to becoming a serial entrepreneur, from starting a venture to selling it and then starting another business straight away. 

From Sold to Start-up: The Leap into a New Venture

Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange is a free resource dedicated to helping startups, entrepreneurs and business owners be more successful. Visit us at EIX.org.