Andrew Warner is a unique entrepreneur who interviews other entrepreneurs. He is the founder of Mixergy.com. Through Mixergy, Andrew interviews successful entrepreneurs who can offer their advice to other budding entrepreneurs. Some of these entrepreneurs include founders of big tech companies such as Sun Microsystems. Mixergy is an enormously useful web resource both for entrepreneurs who are starting out as well as for seasoned entrepreneurs who are looking to add to their wealth of experience. The site boasts well over 900 interviews categorized into specific themes and topics and provided as focused course content (e.g. “How to grow your sales using database marketing” and “How to profitably launch a web app”).

Warner is a seasoned entrepreneur. Mixergy was the result, not of a “light bulb” moment, but of several years of learning from experience. Prior to Mixergy, he started a highly successful internet company called Bradford & Reed with his brother Michael. Following the success of Bradford & Reed, he sold this business and took a break, after which he decided to start something closer to his passion – emulating his business mentors and spreading their message. For Andrew, Mixergy involved years of effort that required repeated attempts of trial and error for the purposes of understanding his own motivations, getting closer to his passion and the message he wanted to convey to his audience, while refining his business model.

In this interview, Andrew talks about various aspects of his business. He offers some excellent useful and inspiring words of wisdom.

(1) Have a good knowledge about your preferences and strengths as well as your limitations. Use your strengths to your advantage.

Given the need to do regular interviews, Andrew does not pride himself of showmanship skills. However, his strength is being detail oriented and having a keen interest in understanding specific methods that his interviewees have used as entrepreneurs for obtaining specific outcomes. For instance, how did someone get their first customer, and follow it up with the next hundred customers? What were the steps someone used as a nobody to speak to a highly influential person? What are the things someone did to learn from their customers?

(2) Be open to the idea of putting yourself out there and taking risks, so that you can learn from your mistakes and become better at the services or products you offer. While mistakes can sometimes be expensive, one cannot improve or succeed without making any mistakes.

(3) Advertising is a necessary component for any business, but content is critical. While advertising is essential for spreading the word about our business, the content offered by our products and services is what can retain customers. Therefore, it is necessary for us to provide value to our customers through content.

(4) Our business model should not just be about revenue. It should be about the message. If our business model helps in making the message stronger, it enables other people to share this message. In Andrew’s case, he had an enormous curiosity to know and learn how successful entrepreneurs became good at what they did, so that he could share this message with others.

“Entrepreneurship is a great leveler,” “The wonderful thing is that money is not the sole currency when it comes to starting a business; drive, determination, passion and hard work are all free and more valuable than a pot of cash.” – Richard Branson

by: Sohini Bhattacharya (Co-Founder & Partner, Allegoro Communications)