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Problem: Wants to avoid making grave mistakes
Desire: Wants to learn from successful entrepreneurs
Growing a startup can be hard, you feel lost 92% of the time – the highs and lows are brutal. Every day comes with its own problem(s) that you’re always tempted to quit
Here are 27+ growth lessons from @agarwal__gaurav
- Focus on Storytelling: Humans buy emotions, not the product; build a story around your product/startup.
Sell the story
- Fail fast: Marketing campaigns fail and it’s okay, it’s better to fail early than later.
Fail fast and iterate.
- Data is the fuel: You need data to measure the success in marketing, never depend on assumptions. You’re dealing with people you’ve probably not seen before so never assume their likes, dislikes, wants, or needs.
Measure everything in and out.
- Mix up Experiments: Some experiments take time to show results. While some bring rapid results but it is advisable to have a mix of both running along.
- Define the outcome before planning: Decide the end goal before deciding “How”. Once you have a number in mind, plan how to reach that. “When the WHY is strong the HOW will be easy”.
Most people do the opposite
- No Secret Sauce: There is no proven formula or template in business. You’re the formula, you can only learn from a successful business. You need to work hard to create your own formula. Remember the world is waiting for your manifestation.
- It’s always about THEM: People don’t care about you, or how you solve their problem, people only care about themselves and follow whoever meets their needs. Make your users the HERO
- Work on strengths: Everyone has a unique strength; you need to figure out yours. Work on your strength rather than working on your weakness.
The world rewards outlier excellence and not all-around mediocrity.
- Prioritize things: You cannot do everything at once; you need to start to prioritize tasks and work accordingly. Distinguish between Urgent, not so urgent, and priority
- Take risks: You can never know what will work until you try and test. Trust your guts and take calculated risks. And learn from every mistake. Practice successful failures
- Consistent efforts: Things will take time, no matter what things will take time. Be consistent with your efforts, results will show up. No one remembers what you did yesterday, they only care about what are currently doing. Remember Consistency is Key.
- Focus on customers: Optimize for your customers always. Not for your investors, competitors, or yourself. Your Customers are your first investors. They gave you your first profit. Your business won’t exist without them.
- Curiosity is greater than skills: Skills can be gained but curiosity can’t. Be curious to learn new things. A curious person can learn anything and everything.
- There’s no perfect plan: No matter how many plans you make execution matters more. Spend more executing than planning. So many (brilliant) ideas have gone into oblivion because the conjurer lack the will to execute
- Get feedback: No one can be perfect; be open to positive criticism, taking constant feedback is the only way to improve. Be direct on what area you need feedback. Feedbacks from customers help you identify your weakness and help you channel your energy accordingly.
- Practical learning is more productive than theoretical learning: No matter how many books you read you can only learn by making mistakes. The internet is full of deep knowledge but its application is rare.
- Accept Uncertainties: No plan can go as planned, the result is always uncertain accept that and take gut decisions. Plan for uncertainties, Things will never go as planned know this and know peace.
- Time vs. Results: Marketing takes time. Decide the time in which you want to get results.
More time: Organic marketing
Less time: Paid marketing
Paid and Organic traffic are both important, never put all the eggs in one basket. Analyze the stage of the product, if you want to scale go for paid but always focus on organic along the side.
- Choose the right platform: Choose according to the target audience who hangs out there
Genz= TikTok
Millennial: Instagram
CEOs, Founders & VCs: Twitter and LinkedIn
once you choose the platform create the content accordingly.
- Measure the right metrics: People often fall for vanity metrics, measure metrics that add up to the revenue. Focus on the visit to conversion ratio
- Customer Retention vs. Customer Acquisition: The balance between both is crucial, but if Retention is less than Acquisition then something is wrong and needs to be fixed asap.
If retention is less then focus on:
- Customer support
- Product features
- Customer feedback
- USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
- High LTV (lifetime value) and Low CAC (Customer Acquisition): If your CAC is high and LTV is low your business can’t survive. Know how much a customer value will be over the course of a lifetime, by that, you can make smarter decisions about what to spend to acquire a customer.
- Keep Learning: You can never know everything, find something to learn every day. Be a student for life. You start dying the day you stop learning.
- Analyze Mistakes: Write down all the “WHYs”. If an experiment failed, what were the reasons? Reflecting on mistakes is the best way to grow.
- Ask For Help: If you get stuck, do not shy away from asking for help. Everyone is figuring it out.
- Never Quit Marketing efforts compound. It might be tiring at the start but things will get better once you start getting results. Marketing is all about delayed gratification.
- There is no one way: Marketing = Constant experiments. What works for others might not work for you, keep all the doors open.
This was sourced from the best entrepreneurs out there you can’t afford to learn this yourself if you are indeed serious about growth.
Remember I’m rooting for you my friend!