More Lessons from Media Entrepreneurs
March 30, 2010
I chatted yesterday with Laurel Touby, founder of Media Bistro. We talked over Skype since Touby’s currently in South Africa — one of the several countries she’s hit on her tour of the continent. (You can follow her adventures here on Twitter.)
Touby was great to talk to because she’s candid, funny, and has thoughtful advice for aspiring entrepreneurs — (and for entrepreneurs at various stages in the game). The biggest takeaway point I gained from the interview was: always listen to your customers. That isn’t as easy as it sounds. It means continually asking your customers for their criticism, thoughts, and feedback. It means staying aware of their needs and always asking them what they want to see, what they want to do, and what could make their experience better.
She also reinforced something I keep hearing from many entrepreneurs: Find out what you love doing, what you’re passionate about, and build your business around that. For Touby, her business grew organically out of something she was already doing just for fun. (More on that in the next post.) Once she realized that she was enjoying what she was already doing and that there was a market for it, she started a website. That’s how Media Bistro was born.
