When a newsletter expert shares their most impactful insight, I listen. And Louis Nicholls has something to teach you about audience-building no matter if you have an email list already or not. After this video, you will want to start one — and you’ll know how to do it.

I’ve been talking to experts every week for a few months now. Remotely. Through the internet.

This week, I got on my first post-COVID trip and headed to Denver, Colorado for MicroConf 2023.

It.

Was.

Awesome.

Unsurprisingly, being in the same room with 250 other bootstrapped SaaS founders is one of the nerdiest things you can do. And it was as enlightening as it was nerdy. I just arrived back home in Canada a few hours ago, so I took the opportunity to share my insights from the conference on my podcast: video/audio.

Let me highlight a few things from the conference here. I was fortunate to be invited to give a talk, and it was a smashing success. MicroConf generally is a great place to be honest with each other —there is no pretence among bootstrappers, we all know how hard it is to make money— and I got to tap into this. I shared several of my most traumatic founder experiences and got everyone in the room —250 people!— to share their own stories among each other.

It was a wonderful experience to see people visibly relax after sharing the darker stories of their founder lives. Too often, we only get to see people’s “highlight reel”, the good stuff, the successes, but rarely do we have insights into what didn’t work and how it affected them.

Well, for an hour or so, the founders in Denver opened up, and what came out was commiseration, a shared sense of belonging, and a palpable atmosphere of respect for being vulnerable.

I mean, how awesome is this? I got a group of largely introverts to share deep emotional trauma with each other.

It’s a testament to the founder community that this was possible, and I am still in a slight shock that it actually worked.

If you’re a SaaS founder —or an entrepreneur of any kind— I highly recommend coming to this conference or at least joining the MicroConf Connect slack.

It is so worth it.

I swear this isn’t a marketing play, but this week’s sponsor played an active role in my talk. A long while ago, I supported Pipdecks in their kickstarter and got the deck. It traveled with me to Denver where I used it the night before the talk to structure and rehearse the narrative that allowed me to get my audience to open up with each other. Here’s more: ​ 54 timeless storytelling recipes in a high-quality, large format deck of cards that help you influence and inspire. ✅ Kill boring PowerPoints ✅ Get your audience leaning in ✅ Have your message remembered Built on a system, you'll never get stuck as each card always has a next step to follow. With Storyteller Tactics you'll instantly upskill yourself into the top 10% of storytellers because it gets you "doing" right away. ​ ​ ​ Get 20% off Storyteller Tactics today only with code ARVID. ​ ​ ​

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So yeah. I guess I am now officially a “speaker” — and it took just 209 podcast episodes to get there ;)

I really recommend listening or watching the podcast episode above. You’ll get a feeling for what the conference is like, what the other speakers talked about, what a Meowulf is, and why “the hallway track” is a feature every conference should actively provide.

One thing I want you to walk away with is knowing that community matters. We all share similar challenges, and we understand what it means to struggle as a founder.

If there’s anyone who will help you overcome your “internal” issues, it’s your peers who are going through the same thing.

Find community. And be community to others.

Talk to you next week.

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Indie Hacker community-recommended tool of the week: Justin recommends Trends.vc Pro by Dru Riley. I read these reports the day they come out, as they're incredibly well-researched and insightful. A free version exists as well!

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