Robert Carroll, leader of award winning product and marketing teams and a successful entrepreneur, talks about the differences between managing physical products and software, interface design, and why it's important to know what you want to achieve when you start a business, in this episode of the Fortune’s Path podcast.

Slaying your dragons doesn’t always mean having the courage to do what you love. Sometimes it means having the courage to do what you don’t want to do, but know needs to be done. Dragons are imaginary, but they still take courage to overcome. Less than 1% of all the things I worry about have happened, yet the fear is just as real as if I’d stepped into dragon slobber.

What makes for good design? How do you pursue your education when you hate school? What’s the key to becoming a beloved brand? These are some of the questions we ask Gavin Ivester, Creative Consultant, Strategic Advisor, veteran of Apple Computer and for three + years the Vice President of design at Bang & Olufsen.

Thanks to the good folks at nContracts for joining Tom’s talk about customer interviews. Here are the highlights.

What is performance marketing, and how do you incorporate data into your marketing? What are the jobs of marketing and sales? What’s it like to enter the workforce during an economic downturn? These are some of the questions we ask Joshua Oakes, Creator and Founder of the Who First Framework, an audience understanding, product development, and customer acquisition process for executives, investors and entrepreneurs.

The Brand Deck by Scott Thomas a/k/a SimpleScott is a great example of a product we love.

A good way to examine how well your product features fit market needs is to do a features to buyer needs analysis.