Build Your Skills, Connections and Cash With TextExpander Creator Greg Scown (138)

Life Skills That Matter | Create Work That Works For You

English - August 24, 2017 08:00 - 36 minutes - 33.9 MB - ★★★★★ - 140 ratings
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Greg Scown believes starting a business is all about taking the time to build your skills, connections and cash.
The post Build Your Skills, Connections and Cash With TextExpander Developer Greg Scown (138) appeared first on Life Skills That Matter.

If you are interested in working for yourself, what have you done to prepare? Working on your own isn’t a split-second decision. It requires planning and investment. Greg Scown, believes starting a business is all about taking the time to build your skills, connections and cash.

He’s the founder of Smile, a boutique software development company that creates productivity software for Apple products.

Some of you might already be familiar with its most popular application, TextExpander. For those of you who are less familiar, it’s a typing time saver that enables you to type words, phrases or sentences using just a handful of characters.

This is one of those episodes where there are a load of great lessons packed into our conversation including:

Why after 18 months of working on a software product Greg decided to abandon it.
How taking a job working for a community website for teen girls helped build his war chest and helping him meet his future business partner.
Focus on solving a problem when starting your business. Then keep taking action.

Life Skills That Matter In This Episode

Build community.
Align habits with your purpose.
Self-directed learning.
Build your skills.

How Greg Works and Thinks

Wake up time: 5:30 – 6:00am
Core work activities + habits: 1) Responding, being on top of communications. 2) Paying attention to the money. 3) Keeping an eye on where the business is going.
Ideal work environment: Working from home, being able to get up from the desk and still be productive around the house.
Superpower: Being able to juggle things.
Book recommendation: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
Favorite productivity tool: 1Password and Launch Bar
90-day goal: Continue to grow TextExpander and build out the sales funnel.

Inspirational Quotes

“I decided if I was going to be an individual contributor, I’d rather be contributing to myself.”

“I seriously remember jumping up and down when the first sale came in.”

“I don’t feel like I have all the skills for everything and I feel like a certain amount of complementarity is necessary.”

“Keep doing.”

Coaching Advice

Want to shift toward working for yourself? Greg shares this advice:

Look into the Service Corp of Retired Executives (SCORE).

It’s a great way to build your mastermind network and learn from others who have gone down similar paths before you.

Resources + Bonus Materials

TextExpander

Greg’s blog Code. Cook. Read.