About

I lost jobs, fell out with cofounders & had software products fail because I lacked empathy.

I’ve seen more than my fair share of success too - helping 4 businesses to over £1million.

So I started a podcast to help us all understand different people’s perspectives on software👇

— Jonathan Markwell ⛵️ (@jot) November 19, 2021

I’ve lost jobs, fallen out with cofounders and had my software products fail because I didn’t understand other people’s perspectives.

I really enjoy writing software and tinkering with my own ideas. My comfort zone is not talking to anyone. Unsurprisingly, multiple colleagues have given me feedback telling me I lack empathy.

I’ve spent over a decade struggling with this along with the anxiety, depression and debt that often followed.

I’ve been fortunate to see more than my fair share of success too.

I’ve helped four B2B subscription businesses go from zero to over £1 million in revenue. After spending hundreds of thousands of pounds building the wrong thing, they discovered the problem they should have been solving all along. I can trace the success of each of them to a few conversations where the founders empathised with customers.

Luck played far more of a part than it could have in making those conversations happen.

Welcome to the EmpathyExamples podcast where you can improve your customer interview technique as I attempt to do the same every week.

I’m Jonathan Markwell. Each episode explores a different software product from the perspective of a different user.

I’m being guided by the interview script Michele Hansen includes in her book, Deploy Empathy. I’m primarily focusing on business software products as that’s always been my area of interest. You might hear from people using your competitors' products in parts of the world you don’t yet have customers in.

Hopefully, this will help you to discover new perspectives, make better products and do more customer interviews for your own products.

I’m recording this intro after doing the first two interviews.

I’ve learned about highly valued products I was previously unaware of. I’ve learned why they were chosen by people working in different businesses to my own. I’m hopefully getting better at empathizing with people with each interview - you can be the judge of that.

They’re not perfect, I’m still learning, but I think you’re going to find them as fascinating as I have.