a tierlist for growth channels. Have you heard of tier lists? They’re very common in gaming world. Influencers like to put together lists ranking characters, items, or selections and opine on them. I had a quieter week as I work through a project exension and thought: Do you know what the world needs? A tierlist for growth channels for startups. But not just any tierlist, but grabbing and ranking the channels from the book Traction. Written in 2015 Here’s the channels from the book: •...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
doing the work. “So you’ve done the work…” I met Mel Greblo through my work in the impact space. She does a number of amazing things, including founding Banksia Academy. A destination for helping women create their own employment pathways to help remove themselves and recover from domestic violence. She now leads Humans of Purpose. “Oh yes, I have.” If you read into the question literally - you can ask things like: what work? in what context? is it this or that? what kind of work? But if...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
the human element. A popular online writing teacher stopped his course 4 months ago. His name is David Perell. He is young, taught a course called “Write of Passage” for 6 years, and the AI boom has “set off an existential crisis” in him. There’s a certain irony in an influencer who has benefited from AI (Twitter algorithms) becoming challenged by AI (LLMs). If you’re a non-fiction writer - it’s going to become near impossible to perform better than AI. This means we’re going to have to work...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
cutting edge. I share principles in this newsletter for a reason. The tech changes. A shiny thing will fade. Fast tactics are trumped by sound strategy. I work with tech startups and have done this for a long time. So it’s only natural people want to know what is happening on the edge. Today I’m going to indulge that curiosity - and let you know that the principles are more important. Things like the below only work if you understand the principles. So here’s what I’m seeing: AI-trained video...
2 months ago • 2 min read
more from every bite. I learned this from working with nonprofits. Squeeze more value out of everything. The way we think about selling is linear. Create offer Pitch offer Make sale But next to nobody in the real world (where our customers live) thinks like this at all. In nonprofit land, budgets are scarce. You HAVE to do more with everything because there is nothing extra. So you become thrifty. Let’s say we’re selling graphic design services. Here are all the ways we can stretch what we’re...
2 months ago • 1 min read
fist in the air... Here’s your next evergreen campaign idea: Pick a regular time. Fabricate a playful reason for marketing. Run it into the ground. Think about it. There’s already Mothers Day, Black Friday, Valentines Day, Movember… These are all marketing gimmicks. In Japan, on Christmas Day, it’s tradition to purchase a bucket of KFC. I wish I was lying 😂 So rather than “fight the system” go ahead and break the system. In the digital wilderness we’re all bucking against generative AI....
3 months ago • 1 min read
the growth stack. A common question I hear after speaking: “Would you recommend tool X?” Sometimes it’s a popular one.Sometimes it’s one I haven’t heard of.Sometimes it’s an exploitative POS. I answer on the spot.Give my impressions and what I think about.The questions move on. But “the tool” is the wrong question to ask.I’ve agitated on this a lot.The best growth people are tool agnostic. This means they’re not a Salesforce guru.They’re not a Zapier wizard.And they’re certainly not reliant...
3 months ago • 1 min read
know your numbers. I’m often surprised. By how quickly things can be dismissed. Growing a venture takes time. Growing a business takes time. Growing a side-hustle takes time. People miss this. A certain amount needs to happen against time. Numbers + time = desired result. The numbers are what people miss. A founder has launched a new offer. It’s brave. It’s putting themselves out there. 80 people have been to the page. 30 have clicked through to the buy now button. No sales. Does this mean...
3 months ago • 1 min read
how I reflect. I love this time of year as a writer. There’s a natural prompt that comes as the end of the year arrives that gets the juices flowing. At the start of the year - this was a newsletter about AI. We’re now at the end of the year - and it’s a newsletter focused on early growth. The reason for that change was simple - it’s closer to my business. But a bigger reason is a general uneasiness about what’s happening with AI, the world, and what’s going to stand out in the future. So...
4 months ago • 3 min read
