Podcast Review: Mixergy

Are you an entrepreneur or do you want to become one? Wouldn’t it be great to hear success and failure stories from one-off or serial entrepreneurs that started companies like Wikipedia or Wine Library TV? If you like to be a sponge and learn tips and trick, be inspired and entertained by these stories, this podcast review is just for you.

First of all, indulge me in a little rant. I have had several requests from people who just started a new podcasts for a review write up of their show. Let these people remain nameless, but perhaps they will read this review and take a few notes. If you want to create a podcast please think about the content first. You cannot just record your conversation with friends and publish that to iTunes. Well, you can, but no one except for your friends will be interested in what you have to say. I listened to so many podcasts where people ramble on, litter the speech with ahh’s and mmm’s for an hour long session. It takes great skill to interview someone or to rant on “radio” and only a few that do it well should do it!

The podcast that I would like to review today is Mixergy with Andrew Warner. Andrew is an entrepreneur himself, having started a successful internet business in the past. He is now “paying it forward” to others who are interested in doing the same.

Andrew Warner is a successful business man. He started a successful internet business with sales of $30+ million and then sold it. He knows a thing or two about the process! He and his brother started Bradford & Reed, an online greeting card directory. Selling it years later, he started Mixergy, which went through several iterations before becoming what it is now.

The Mixergy mission is to convince you to follow a vision so big and important that you can’t do it alone. Then they want to give you a mix of wicked-smart people who will help you achieve it.

Andrew is a good public speaker, but even he still needs to clean up his interviewing skills. Nonetheless, he possesses the greatest quality for an interviewer in my opinion – shut up and let your guest talk. And his guests have something to say! Imagine hearing first-hand how Jimmy Wales started up Wikipedia! What about Groupon founders? Andrew is a machine, popping several podcasts per week with guests ranging from small-time internet upstarts, having created some digital goods store, to the likes of Tim Ferriss, a self-made business man and an author of The 4-Hour Workweek.

Andrew knows the right questions to ask. He does a formidable amount of research prior to each interview, to ensure he does not go in blind. He then uses a well-crafted path to get the guests to talk about how they started, how they failed, how they succeeded. Andrew conducts each interview as if he is an idea hungry entrepreneur himself (which he no doubt still is), about to embark on his first business venture. He asks candid questions, some of which the guests do not always feel comfortable answering.

Bottom line: There are many podcasts out there that interview successful people. There is This Week in Startups (if you can endure the large-than-life personality of Jason Calacanis for more than ten minutes) that covers the same spectrum, Triangulation from TWiT that concentrates on technology and WTF With Marc Maron that includes interviews with all sort of people from the show-business field. However, in my opinion, Mixergy with Andrew Warner is the best podcast for ambitious upstarts who are eager to learn everything there is to start their own business on the internet. Do definitely give it a listen!

Homepage: http://mixergy.com/

Subscribe on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mixergy/id307744935