If you’re a diehard GrowthHackers.com fan…

Then you’ve heard Sean Ellis and many others talk about the process of growth hacking.

As GrowthHackers.com struggled to grow back in January of 2015, they used their own knowledge of this system to start high-tempo testing, which led to a massive increase in traffic to their website. This is all presented in a well documented case study.

In the process of organizing and implementing so many ideas, they developed their own internal tool for tracking and reporting of all these growth tests.

This tool, now called “Growth Hacker Projects,” has officially been released. And I have been lucky enough to get a demo from the legendary growth hacker himself, and take Projects for a test spin.

[Tweet “.@GrowthHackers just released their newest tool for growth teams. Check it out:”]

Who Should be Drooling Over This New Tool?

The broadest answer is: anyone that considers themselves a growth marketer. A real growth marketer… You know, a data-driven marketer that runs tests and reports on results on a weekly basis.

More specifically, this tool is perfect for growth teams of 3 or more people, who are running 5 tests a week or more.

If you are doing less than that, you may be fine just using a spreadsheet and some Google Docs. But any larger and this tool quickly solves a bunch of organizational issues, and will save your head of growth a few hours a week.

Do You Have a Clearly Defined Growth Model?

When I demoed the product with Sean, it became clear that many early stage companies are not ready to start testing.

Before beginning, you need to fully understand your growth model:

All slides were lifted from this GrowthHackers Slideshare: Using Your Growth Model to Drive Smarter High Tempo Testing

And you need to have your team agree upon your North Star Metric (also known as The One Metric That Matter):

Once you’ve got that part taken care of it’s time to bring in as many team members as possible…

Preparing Your Team For The Brain Dump

Now, I’m assuming you haven’t already done a brain dump…

If you’ve already got all of your ideas organized in your spreadsheet, then I have great news, you can import it to projects with just the click of a button, and you can skip this brief section.

If this is your first brain dump, clear the schedule for the entire team (maybe even company) for about 2 hours some day about a week from now.

Have people prepare ahead of time by having them answer these question and bringing their answers into the meeting (bonus points if you can get them to input the ideas into projects all on their own):

What can we improve in our product or business?

What problems are our customers currently facing and how can we solve them?

What opportunities might we have to expand or improve any stages of our funnel (acquisition, activation, referral, retention, revenue)?

The entire purpose of this meeting is to unleash every obvious, non-obvious, and hidden idea inside every team member, employee, or heck, even customer. Try to avoid saying “no” to any idea, no matter how bad. We want creativity, and “no” will slow that down.

But it does have to meet these two criterion to make it on the board:

1. It has to be measurable — We need to make sure we can conclusively learn something from it.
2. It has to have a set end date — We need to finalize and report findings at some point. If it works, it will be moves out of testing and becomes a feature, or an ongoing campaign, or the like.

How to Brain Dump All of Your Ideas Inside Projects

Now, you’re going to use the ideas dashboard to collect and organize the brain dump:

This dashboard allows you to quickly input your idea and add it to the board. Then you can come back later and:

1. Add more about the specific strategy
2. Choose the stage of the funnel it effects
3. Do your ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) rating

You can also add tags, favorite the one’s you like, nominate them (handy for large teams, useless for small teams), share it with others, and activate the test when ready.

Running Your Tests

Once you’ve got your tests into the dashboard, and set each ICE, you can have everyone vote on the biggest opportunities facing the company, and take your lowest hanging fruit and move them into the testing phase.

Before moving an idea into the testing phase, you are required to write a hypothesis (I love this step). This is essentially the assumed goal or outcome, like “2 signups/week” or “5% increase in user retention.”

Without a hypothesis we don’t really know what we are hoping to find. And even if it seems obvious, we need to set specific values to measure our own estimation abilities (and hopefully refine those as well). And don’t worry, if you only achieve 4% retention, and not 5%, you can still label it a success (I won’t tell anyone).

We’ve now got approved tests, active tests, and concluded tests — which are ready for analysis and reporting.

The best thing to do when running a growth test is to assign a lead, or project manager. This is most often the person who created the idea. They will be responsible for organizing a team around the test, executing on the test, and reporting the findings back to the team.

(Oh yeah, and did I mention this can integrate with Trello, Slack, Optimizely, and a few other sources? And I’m sure they will be adding more integrations soon.)

Concluding Your Tests and Adding Them to The Knowledge Base

Once you’ve ran a test, you move it into the ready to analyze board and click add test results:

And start ranting on the results of the test, including whether it worked, didn’t work, or was inconclusive:

Within a few months of high-tempo testing, you should have made significant progress in your knowledge base.

The findings will help shape future tests, prevent massive mistakes, and improve the employee onboarding process. Next time anyone has an idea, they can search the entire project to see if anyone’s put it up on the idea board or already ran it.

Gamifying Your High-Tempo Testing Process With Leaderboards

Over time your team members will start to conclude tests and you can track their successes and failures (both can and should be embraced equally) on the leaderboards:

As you can see, I am crushing it. :-D

This feature is kinda cool, but I’m not sure how beneficial it will actually be to the long term value of Projects. The leaderboard tends to favor the head of growth and data analyst, as those are the two people on the pulse of the tests and will naturally come up with the most ideas. (That is the job, after all).

What’s the Power of Projects

As I’m going through the demo with Sean, I stopped him at some point and said, “What makes this better than Google Sheets?”

The answer was simple: this saves growth teams time by organizing tests better than Sheets, it encourages a growth mindset (which has been proven over and over again to be a major indicator of success) by setting up a simple leaderboard system, and it saves the company in wasted cost by organizing all of the findings in an easy to access knowledge base.

The value proposition of this tool increases as you:

1. Increase the size of your team
2. Increase the frequency of the tests you run

There’s also one secret ninja benefit I discovered…

All projects are public, so anyone can see what you’re up to, unless you pay to make your project private. With public projects you will eventually be able to create a test that other people can copy over to their board and run, and vice versa.

You getting what I’m saying?

Sean Ellis just smashed together growth testing and “the sharing economy” to give growth marketers a massive database of proven strategies to grow their business from. Essentially commoditizing ideas, which we can all agree are generally worthless… But sometimes a well structured idea might be worth $10 to save setting up yourself.

[Tweet “Find out how Sean Ellis is working to commoditize ideas. #GrowthHacking”]

Pretty genius move if you ask me. Can’t wait to see how that plays out.

How Much Does Projects Cost?

As alluded to, it’s free to use, so long as you are comfortable sharing all of your ideas openly with the world.

As companies grow, testing increases, and proprietary findings become more valuable, this incentivizes you to pay the $125 / month to make your dashboard private.

When I questioned Sean on the pricing, because it did seem steep, he stood pretty firm and felt confident it would save growth teams at least 5 hours a month, which makes it worth it.

That may be true, but I’m not convinced the price is appropriate just yet.

Maybe if there was a catalogue of 1,000 tests waiting for me in a testing library…

We will see how it shakes out.

Final Thoughts

I’m personally a huge fan of transparency in business. But, with my history as a high stakes poker player for 10 years and one of the first online poker coaches, I can tell you that sometimes giving away all your secrets away now does actually cost you money in the long run. There’s a fine line to walk somewhere in here.

This tool is likely to make growth marketers better, which actually means that marketing will become tougher, and competition will be fiercer than ever before.

[Tweet “Why is growth marketing only going to get tougher and how to stay on top:”]

Ready to sign up? Here’s the link.

So, what do you think? Are you going to start using projects? Or do you still need help setting up your growth model and team? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Derric Haynie — @SixPeppers — is Head of Growth for Rebrandly — a link shortener making it easier to brand, share, and track links. You will see him speaking and blogging anywhere he can about growth and marketing.

This post was originally published on the Growth Marketing Conference blog.

GrowthHackers “Projects” is a First of It’s Kind Tool for Growth Marketers was originally published in Startup Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Karl Benz was born in 1844 in Mühlburg, Germany. The premature death of his father, a locomotive driver, left his mother striving to raise and educate him. Karl studied Mechanical Engineering and, since his early years, envisioned a pioneering vehicle that would change the way people move. The horseless carriage.
Bertha was born in 1849 in Pforzheim. She would prove herself a brilliant investor, entrepreneur and marketer.

In 1871, Karl joined the Iron Foundry and Mechanical Workshop in Mannheim, which went bad! Really bad! Bertha invested in the failing company (she was allowed to do so by the German law — because she was not married). Eventually, Karl and Bertha did get married and that turned out good for the couple but bad for business. She could not act as an investor anymore (because now she was married) and he had to turn for help elsewhere.
During that time, Karl Benz patented the speed regulation system, the ignition using sparks with battery, the spark plug, the carburetor, the clutch, the gear shift, and the water radiator.

Still, the company failed!

Karl, along Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eblinger, built his own manufacturing venture, Benz &Cie, financed on their own means (mainly Bertha’s that is). And the first horseless carriage came to life in December 1885.

The horseless carriage

Karl was now officially an inventor. The Motorwagen was the first automobile entirely designed to generate its own power! Confident of his success, he went on to sell it. He attended one meeting after another, explaining all the nitty-gritty technical details to investors and buyers. The Motorwagen was great! It had electric ignition, differential rear end gears, water-cooled internal combustion engine, gas or petrol 4-stroke horizontally mounted engine, rack and pinion steering, speed at 13 km/h (8.1 mph), 3 wheels and a nice tubular steel frame! Impressive Specs!

Did they bring customers crawling to his company, waiting in line to get their own Motorwagen? Not even close!

Karl was crushed. His dream, his horseless carriage, was never going to sell. He was, with no doubt, certain this was something people needed. They just didn’t know it yet.
Bertha realized what had never crossed Karl’s mind. People were by nature reluctant to embrace change. They needed to be convinced. It was time for marketing! She arranged a huge public demonstration for the Motorwagen and took care of everything: setup, attendance, message … Once again, failure!
The prototype crashed on a wall because of instability. Karl became a target of laughter and bitter jokes. Trying to fix the problem, he updated the original car, making version two, three … no one seemed to want it!

Bertha

Bertha couldn’t see Karl falling apart. On August 1888, she took her two sons age 13 and 15 and, without Karl’s (or even the authorities) knowledge, she drove the newly constructed Motorwagen a whole 106 km (66 mi) distance from Mannheim to Pforzheim, to visit her mother. What a journey that was! Having no gas tank, she had to make constant stops for ligroin (sold only in pharmacies). Used her garter to repair the ignition, a long, straight hatpin to clean a fuel pipe, a blacksmith helped her mend a chain, she installed leather in the brake pads because they were failing, machine’s water supply had to be filled at every stop …
But in the end, Bertha reached Pforzheim. She notified her husband of her successful journey by telegram, proving the feasibility of using Motorwagen to travel and generating great publicity. The rest is history.

Conclusion

A vision, a pioneering idea with the potential to deeply impact people’s life, does not come easily. Having both that vision and the ability, the expertise, to bring it to life, is a rather unusual combination. One would think that combination could be the ticket to success. No such luck! Karl was an exceptionally brilliant engineer, one ahead of his time. Where would his legacy be today if it weren’t for Bertha, the investor, marketer, growth hacker even?
Karl’s and Bertha’s story brought a different light to my own experience building Blendo. The ups and downs, the everyday triumphs and petty disasters, the million things that go sour at the exact moment you feel you’ve walked out of the woods…. And then there’s the comforting thought; there are not many setbacks that a little bit of marketing cannot fix. That or a person’s insight and persistence.

The epic startup story of Karl and Bertha Benz was originally published in Startup Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Personally, I don’t think that this is a bubble at that level, but the macroeconomic conditions right now are not conducive for entrepreneurs and start-ups to raise a lot of capital. The economy in the U.S. has been negatively affected by global conditions in China and Europe which has investors feeling skittish. VC’s are being pickier about who they fund and want more equity in return. The valuations in NYC and SF for start-ups have dipped tremendously and the IPO success rate in 2015 was abysmal.

My view is contrary to what might be popular opinion as I believe these are all great things for founders to deal with. With less capital available and investors wanting to see real results (i.e. profit) before even talking about early stage funding, this is now an environment for entrepreneurs to truly test their mettle. They are now forced to create businesses that are actually viable with a track record of acquiring real users and showing that they are on track to scale.

The “wantrapreneurs” will be weeded out, just as they were in the early 2000s where they went from running companies valued in the $100 millions to working in a cubicle at Bain or McKinsey. That’s right some founders might have to take real corporate jobs again instead of spending their weekends on the slopes or flying first class on island getaways. The contraction in the market is going to leave blood in the streets, but those still left standing will emerge with battle tested businesses that they can leverage into further growth and eventually an IPO that holds real value.

Remember that everytime you receive funding from an Angel or VC, you are in essence giving away part of your company. An environment with little to no funding available for the average Joe, will force them to sink or swim when creating their business, but the success is substantially greater for them as more revenue will go directly back in their pocket. For those who do “sink”, there’s nothing wrong with getting a real job like the rest of the 99% and working on developing tangible management skills within the structure of a corporate environment. Heck, you might even find you’re better at it than dealing with all of the nuances of running a start-up or small business. In 18–24 months, it will be interesting to look at the landscape of “unicorns” today and see who is left standing.

Adi Raval is a digital marketing consultant, entrepreneur, and tech enthusiast in Baltimore, MD

Will the Tech Bubble Burst? Why That Might Be a Good Thing was originally published in Startup Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to understand Snapchat. Not just how to work the app technically, but also what makes it so popular. Why do people (Millennials) love it so much? And through my process of discovery, I began loving it myself. In the past there were times when I’d wish someone would explain the ethos of the app to me. Now that I’m starting to grasp it, I thought I’d share it with those that are in the dark like I was.

More Than Narcissism —

On the surface, Snapchat seems very narcissistic. Why would I broadcast myself so much? And especially why on that platform where I can’t edit it and it disappears anyway? I thought of Snapchat as a megaphone for self-absorbed people. My mistake was not realizing that as humans, we are all self-absorbed, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But Snapchat turns out to be more. It is a window into your life that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Snapchat is real life. The value it brings is authenticity. The sort of authenticity that is hard to find on Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram where everything is edited and polished.

Snapchat’s core value is real face-to-face authenticity.

It is hard to see that value from the outside. And for those of us over the hill, it’s hard to develop the habits and mannerisms (selfies and 10 second videos) required to engage inside the app.

It feels foreign and weird and the interface only amplifies those traits. The app opens as a camera rather than a content stream, encouraging you to engage immediately. Taking a selfie video is literally like talking to yourself in the mirror out loud. It’s a tough adjustment to make — talking to your audience when all you see is you.

From Consumption to Creation —

Since it was too intimidating initially to create content, I began by consuming content. At first I watched my own friends’ stories. Then I began following more public accounts. Here are my favorites —

DJ Khaled — djkhaled305 — This guy epitomizes the ethos of the app. He puts out quality content daily, including snapping meetings with famous people, snapping from the stage whether he is the DJ or the keynote speaker, and even snapping while he exercises on an elliptical fittingly dubbed “elliptical talk”. If you don’t know who he is, here is a primer:

The Old People’s Guide to DJ Khaled

Gary Vaynerchuk —garyvee — Gary is the reason I got into Snapchat in the first place. He convinced me that the platform would become a crucial marketing hub in the next few years. Gary snaps a lot from airports and you really get a better sense of his hustle mentality. He also wrote the definitive guide to Snapchat’s history:

The Snap Generation: A Guide to Snapchat’s History

Mike Vacanti —mikevacanti — Gary’s personal trainer and fitness guru. He is fun to follow because he is obsessed with living and eating healthy and you can learn a lot by watching the guy.

Ebony Kenney —ebony_kenney — A model and professional poker player, who also happens to be a friend of mine. Her stories are usually positive and uplifting. She is not shy about sharing her life including her love for her family, her dedication to health and fitness, and even behind the scenes of her photo shoots.

Ebony Kenney, official website

Wayne Collie — kountry_wayne — This guy is super funny. I’ve been following him for a while on Facebook and I think he is just getting started on Snapchat. I look forward to seeing more of his content.

If you want to surround yourself with the people you admire, and they are hard to reach, Snapchat is as close as it gets.

Keep in mind that you also have friends that already use Snapchat. If these celebrities don’t entice you, watch your own network to get the hang of it.

The Default Camera —

Once I started using Snapchat as a camera, I never went back to the iPhone or even Instagram camera. Snapchat is unique because it allows you to write, draw, filter, and annotate your photos and videos on the go. The utility is too good to pass up especially since you can save your content and post it to Instagram and Facebook anyway.

The funny thing is that it’s a one-way street. You cannot import Facebook and Instagram content into Snapchat stories directly, so Snapchat becomes your default content source.

As a camera with an integrated editing tool, it offers a lot of room to get creative.

It helps that they keep adding cutting edge features. You’ve probably seen their facial recognition software that imposes 3D imagery over people’s faces. They recently began offering advertisers their own 3D imagery that integrates with the content the users create.

Brands will soon line up in droves to be featured in this content because it is the closest that virtual can get to literal. I can almost taste those Skittles!

The Liberating Feeling of Forgetability —

As I began to create more content I noticed something unfamiliar but comforting. Everything I posted was gone in 24 hours!

The knowledge that it would disappear removed my apprehension about posting more often. It was liberating. It mimicked real life in that the moments came and went. Thus, my content became more authentic. I became more authentic. Imperfection no longer mattered because it was temporary, like memories. And like memories, the best ones could be saved.

The Evolution of Media —

If you examine the history of media, you will notice that it is evolving quickly. Only 200 years ago writing was the only way to communicate through long distances of space and time. Then radio allowed for audio communication which revealed nuances in tone. Then television allowed us to see the nuances in body language. But it was all still contrived. It was scripted and planned. Then reality shows emerged where even more authenticity was offered and consumed. Now, Snapchat is the natural next step, whereby the content is as easily discarded as it is consumed, making it more natural and authentic as a result.

It is the closest thing to how humans communicate face-to-face. You could argue that Facetime, Periscope, and Meerkat are closer, but those are like phone calls in a world where everyone prefers text messages.

The Authenticity Revolution —

This shift towards authenticity will only expand. Just take a look at the massive support from young people for the 2 most unlikely presidential candidates: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Whether you like them or not, you know they are who they say they are, and not some contrived version of themselves. That authenticity is their appeal.

Imagine Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio putting out content, real unedited, unrehearsed content, on a daily basis on Snapchat. Would they dare? It’s hard to imagine because we don’t know the real them. It’s not hard to imagine Bernie or the Donald though.

Snapchat is teaching kids how to see through the fake bullshit and the fake people. It is delivering authenticity at scale. It is ushering an authenticity revolution where the real wins and the fake loses. That is a future we can all look forward to, and that future is here.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. Please add me on Snapchat!

Snapchat and the Authenticity Revolution was originally published in Startup Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For years, Snapchat has been thought of as a place where teenagers send each other nudies (which is true), but I am making the bet that it is more than that.

Before DJ Khaled started blowing up on Snapchat, I rarely used the network other than when a friend sent me something to check out. After Khaled started blowing up, I found myself checking it out a lot more. I just wanted to see what the hype was about (FOMO is real).

Still I rarely posted on the platform. But recently Gary Vaynerchuck helped open my eyes. If you follow Gary, you have noticed in the past few weeks that he has been all about Snapchat. I believe in him; therefore, I have decided to follow his lead by actually posting on Snapchat (follow me here). In doing so, I have started a series on the platform called “#SalesSnaps,” where I make short videos giving sales advice. This has really helped me see the benefits of the platform. I found other people that follow Gary, other people interested in snapping about business, and people that needed help with sales. This made Snapchat awesome for me!

Soon I ran into Morgan Brown (morganb180 on Snapchat). His message was similar to mine, but his “26+ Growth and Startup Marketers You Can (and Should) Follow on Snapchat” really changed the game for me. Overnight I have gained over 50–100 followers on the platform. Now I am really seeing the power of the network. For that reason, I have decided to write an article of my own.

Below are some of my favorite business Snapchatters. I hope this helps you find more value on the platform.

Gary Vaynerchuck — @GaryVee: There is no way I can not start with this guy. He is the person that made me see the business application of Snapchat, and I am following his lead. His channel has the same message that he has been preaching for years. Entrepreneurship, intelligent marketing, and hustle! He has been preaching this for years, but his Snapchat really shows just how much he believes everything he says. I highly recommend following. If nothing else it will help get you off of your ass, if you really want to achieve something.

Morgan Brown — @Morganb180: Another person that had to make the list. I have known about Morgan since I started learning about growth marketing on Growthhackers.com, but through Snapchat we have became internet friends. After he wrote his post, “26+ Growth and Startup Marketers You Can (and Should) Follow on Snapchat,” I grew my followership by more than 50 people and knew I had to write a similar post myself. Morgan is a consummate marketer and drops marketing gems all day every day on his snap. One of the coolest things to me about his snaps is how much they relate to sales, as well as marketing. I bet if you asked him, he would agree with me that the two departments should be way more aligned than they seem to be in most organizations.

Justin Kan — @JustinKan: I have no clue how I found Justin, but I love his snaps. I honestly didn’t even know who he was when I followed, but to find out he is the founder of the legendary JustinTV was pretty cool to learn. His Snapchat is filled with all kinds of gems from him reviewing products to him building his own product (Jukebox). But all in all, its good fun, and you feel like you know him.

Kelsey Humphreys — @Kelseyhump: She doesn’t believe in the power of Snapchat, but she’s sure good at it. Everyday Kelsey drops a bit of entrepreneurship knowledge, ranging from advice about productivity to ideas about goal setting. The great part about her advice is that it’s fun and comes off very genuine. We all follow people that simply repost motivational quotes on the same pictures — Kelsey’s Snapchat is not that. She makes her advice very applicable and helps you rethink the way you approach your business.

Henry Johnson — @Talktohenryj: Ok #shamelessplug, this is me. Does it make it any better that I actually do watch my own story on occasion? Probably not :(. Either way, my Snapchat is riddled with gems as well. I do a daily advice session called #SalesSnaps, I talk to people on the side about how to grow their businesses and show my daily life. Come get to know me better :)

If you find this list helpful, please hit the recommend button to help more people find smart business folks on Snapchat.

Jay Acunzo — @Jayacunzo: My fellow Bostonian is killing it on le snap. I have been following Jay since he was at Hubspot and running BosCon, two awesome platforms that helped launch his career. Now Jay is up to something else (DJ Khaled voice), he is putting together a podcast called UnthinkableFM, and he is building it in public. This is great to watch. Anyone thinking about putting together a narrative podcast, I highly recommend watching Jay’s snap.

Everlane — @Everlane: I almost forgot to include Everlane, but how could I write a post about business people to follow and not include at least one actual brand. The easy answer is not too many brands are doing Snapchat well. But there is at least one, and its Everlane. If you’re not familiar with this company, number one, they’re awesome, and number two so is their product. I highly recommend you follow them on the Snap and go check out their clothing!

Everette — @Everettetaylor: I watch Everette’s snaps every day, just hoping his sound is working. You heard that right, his sound isn’t working, but still he is killing it on the snap. Every day Everette drops major marketing 🔑s via text and stories of his life. It’s great to learn from such a well-established growth marketer, but he also does a great job using Snapchat in the way it was designed to be used (even without sound).

@YesJulz — This one will surprise most people, because she doesn’t fit neatly into the “business” world that the other people mentioned here do. Julz is a party promoter, but that doesn’t make her any less a business person. In fact, in many ways, she’s even more of a hustler #NeverNotWorking. I highly recommend you check her out, especially if you are interested in music, what real hustle looks like (cc. Gary Vaynerchuck), pretty women and/or partying!

Matt Mazzeo — @MMazzeo: If you’re wondering who this is, I assume it’s because you’re not big into the venture capital world. But if you know who it is, I am sure following is a no brainer. Matt is half of the Lowercase Capital team that invested in unicorn companies like Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Slack and many more. On his Snapchat, he drops gems on his story every once in a while, but his office hours are where the wisdom is really laid out (those go down in the DM).

Mike Vacanti — @Mikevacanti: I almost missed Mike on this list, but I have to say I love his Snaps. And he replies to all of his messages, so that adds to his greatness. Most of Mike’s snaps are about fitness, but as an online fitness coach it is great to see how he is building his business (blogs, Snapchat, etc.). But what may be even cooler is watching him help his friend, Chris, grow his following. This is great if you are working to build your own personal brand. It may be a different topic than you are building your brand under, but I bet you it’s a great use of your time.

Other people I thoroughly enjoy following:

Mark Suster — @Msuster

@UnMarketing

Chris Sacca — @Csacca

Jay Baer — @Jay.baer

Michael Stelzner — @Mikestelzner

Noah Kagan — @Noahkagan

David Rock @Drock

Marcsense Torschon — @wisemecca

@CADsAcademy

I hope this list helps you further enjoy your time on Snapchat. I don’t know everyone there is to follow, so please let me know if I am missing anyone in the comments. I am always looking to learn more and continue to grow.

19 Business People I Love Following on Snapchat (Are You Missing Out?) was originally published in Startup Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers.
- Steve Wozniak

A lot of words have been used to describe Steve Jobs:

Egomaniacal. Brilliant. Visionary. Stifling. Perfectionist.

The stories around him are so familiar to most that they need not be repeated in this context. However, what does merit some exploration is how a small personal electronics maker became the most valuable company in the world to the tune of over half a trillion dollars in total, $200bn more than the next closest runner up.

What does this value even represent? If you sell 200 million widgets a year at $500 to $1,000 each, you are bound to make a fair amount of money. But is that really all there is to it? Apple is worth $300bn more than Exxon Mobile, nearly doubling the value of the largest oil and gas company in the world, a company that literally fuels the mechanical activity of the entire world.

What resource, natural or otherwise, could Apple possibly be harnessing that makes them worth twice as much as the most successful purveyor of the most valuable natural resource in the history of the world? This mysterious resource at the core of Apple’s valuation deserves closer inspection.

Like In-N-Out, Apple is aligned on a single purpose, sending a clear message to its customers: “You deserve this magical device.” Furthermore, like Jiro, Jobs’ obsession with perfection is well-documented. However, whereas Jiro relied on the signals in his customers’ eyes, Jobs zeroed in on the sensations within his gut as his primary source of feedback. In eschewing the direct feedback of his customers, Jobs took a Ben Hogan-like strategy to new heights. Commenting on this, Jobs famously stated that “it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Indeed, the secretive process of developing prototypes with limited consumer input continues to be a defining trait of Apple today.

During product development, Jobs made no secret as to when something was out of tune with this internal frequency. He observed every minute detail of the prototypes put before him. He was astutely knowledgeable about his competitors and the opportunities that they overlooked. He pushed his employees to iterate feverishly until something approaching his ideal was met.

Amidst this manic cycle, it may be difficult to identify a strong positive intent. However, amongst Jobs many industry-churning achievements, his greatest accomplishment was not tied to a specific device or service. His greatest achievement was in reminding the world that quality in design matters. For those that may be too young to remember, there was a time when computers were viewed as strictly utilitarian. Design, which can be a form of empathy for a user’s experience, was previously viewed as a waste of capital. Nobody cared what a computer looked like or how it felt as long as it worked. The result was generation after generation of grey, beige and black boxes. Jobs saw this trend and made it his life’s work to reverse it.

Today, it seems odd to think of a consumer device without at least some degree of “fake hustle” exhibited in the design department. Given the central role these devices now play in our daily lives, it’s not hard to imagine how much more banal our lives would be if no attention was ever paid to product design. The world is better off having been reawakened to the importance of quality work.

That said, is this $600bn worth of quality work? As important as quality is, a master woodcraftsman can also create unrivaled quality. What makes her work only worth a tiny fraction of what Apple produces?

To answer this, we need to go back to the words that are used to describe Steve Jobs. There is one word that is conspicuously missing.

Creative.

Steve Jobs was creative. However, while creativity can be found in a variety of individuals, something else set Jobs and Apple apart: creative intent. Distinct from creativity, which can be a result of unconscious activities, creative intent is marked by a sense of purpose. Creative intent is applied creativity with the desire to actualize. Could this be the missing driver of $600bn worth of value?

Let’s break it down. The iPhone itself is a product of world-class industrial design. But what is its single most important feature? Answer: the App Store. One million plus apps have become deeply interwoven into how we live our daily lives. The best of these apps represent countless hours of applied observation, knowledge, iteration and positive intent. Their reach is unprecedented, spanning the globe while also settling into our living rooms and daily routines.

Steve Jobs was creative, yes. But above all else, he was the creator of a quality platform which in turn has allowed millions of other individuals to actualize their own creative intents, spawning their own billion dollar enterprises. It is this resource that Apple has harnessed in order to generate $600bn, i.e. capturing and channeling creative intent. And if there was ever a more definitive proof that focused creativity is the world’s most valuable resource, look no further than the $300bn difference between Apple and Exxon Mobil.

However, here is the other thing about creative intent. Like any natural resource, unless it is nurtured and replenished, it can also be exhausted. Now that the app ecosystem has matured, the creative energy that it once inspired has begun to reach a plateau. In its place, a new impulse fills the void, the anti-matter to its matter.

Consumptive.

When the iPhone was first created, it was a curiosity. It captured our imagination as to what was possible in a handheld device. Then, as millions of users adopted the iPhone as their daily driver for phone calls, internet access and music playback, it became a tool.

Beyond that, as the concept of apps gained ground, the value of the iPhone multiplied a hundred-fold. It was not only a phone, but a streaming media device, a social media command center, a beacon for car services, a navigation device, a gaming device and so on and on.

As the initial burst of creativity founds its way into the lives of millions of users around the world, newfound relationships were established between high quality sources and their users. So valuable were these newfound relationships that several new billion dollar industries have blossomed from the app economy. The iPhone had become a platform.

But unfortunately that is not where the story ends. We now find ourselves in another chapter. While the iPhone generated an initial burst of creativity from its developers and in turn a step change in productivity from its users, this initial explosion is beginning to wane. As usage reaches a saturation point, smartphone growth will slow. For example, IDC research predicts that smart phone growth will slow to single digits by 2017 (down from nearly 40% year over year in 2013).

In addition to the maturation of the market, the profile of usage is also shifting as evidenced by the most popular apps today. 46 of the top 100 free apps in the app store are either games or intended for music/video consumption.

Finally, the evolution of the iPhone’s impact may best be observed as we go about our daily lives; in lines at the coffee shop, waiting in the airport, wherever there is dead time, you will see the now familiar posture of smartphone consumption, i.e. phone up, head down.

Consumption and creativity are two stages of the same cycle just as inhaling and exhaling are two halves of the same breath. Consumption is a natural counterpart to creativity. However, when consumption of things, even those of high quality, becomes one’s reason for living, it leaves no room for creativity, because, as with breathing, you simply can’t inhale and exhale at the same time.

Gradually, insidiously, as more users look to the iPhone as a source of time-wasting diversions, the platform that Steve Jobs built becomes less a channel for creativity and more a channel for consumption. When this happens, the beautiful network effect at the core of the iPhone’s app economy, where exceptional creative intent in turn inspires more creative impulses, will begin to slow and ultimately reverse.

With this reversal, Apple’s most vital resource will begin to seep outside its control. This will not result in a fateful crash but it will be no less dangerous to Apple’s future. To avoid this fate, Apple must refocus on what made it great, building platforms that inspire and empower others to realize their creative intents. The fact that even Apple, a product of a legendary creative force, can face this challenge at the apex of its success highlights the difficulty of sustaining this impulse. Long-term creative intent requires constant mindfulness and attention no matter whom you are or what you have achieved.

Afterword.

Every human activity, whether consciously performed or not, falls somewhere on the spectrum of creation and consumption. In addition, forms found in nature are constantly created, consumed and transformed. However, there is a vital distinction between our actions and those found more broadly in nature: intent.

Humans uniquely share the ability to direct our intent towards one impulse or the other. Do you force yourself to sit down and write a short story or do you binge on Netflix? Do you practice your violin or do you snapchat for another hour? Indeed, the constant struggle between the instant gratification of consumption and long-term fulfillment of creativity is one of the most fundamental choices that makes us human. And the stakes have never been higher.

Over time, how each person approaches these minute to minute decisions informs where they fall on this continuum. This wavering balance, the constant interplay between creative and consumptive intent, is at the root of where humanity progresses going forward.

I am a firm believer that people are inherently creative. From a very early age, our minds begin to wander as to the possibilities, the what if’s and the why’s. Walk into any preschool in the world and you will see a wealth of imagination. Somewhere along the line, it’s not that the creativity dies, but its intent gets dispersed or redirected towards unrewarding ends.

Our problem isn’t progression, it’s location and direction. We move, but with no intent. We stand, but with no context. Today, if we are geographically lost, we look at our smartphones. If we are existentially lost, we are not so lucky. If only there was a compass or a map in this respect…

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My next milestone in my business is to become operational, which translates to be able to accept money as a legal entity. I laid out all of the steps that I have to follow in a previous post. One of the key steps is to open a business checking account. This is where I am stuck.

I am stuck here because the lady who I am working with at the credit union is not super efficient. I took all the necessary paperwork up there Monday to open the account, and it looks like it is not going to happen until Thursday.

I have no control over the speed at which another person works. Sure I could complain and take my business elsewhere, but this is just one person. It could be just a rough week for her, or maybe she moves slow and makes less mistakes than others. It doesn’t matter why it is taking so long.

What matters is that I do not waste my time worrying about it. Instead, I spent my time checking off the other things on my to do list. Here’s what I’ve done since my last post —

• Finished and audited the website including the FAQ. http://www.featherlaundry.com/
• Created an admin email — hello@featherlaundry.com.
• Created an Apple ID with that email and switched one of my iPhones. (This took a while but now they function as they should, one phone is for personal and one is for business)
• Changed the Mailchimp admin email to match the new one.
• Created a Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/featherpremium/
• Created a budget spreadsheet and updated all of my expenses so far. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C3mIywC5aD5AejlYvzIBPPAywlALS-f4aclWEu5fDCs/edit?usp=sharing Yes, I’m keeping my budget public for now.
• Created a Square account and completed all the steps up to the point of linking the bank account.
• Talked to a screen printing company about printing on nylon laundry bags. Decided on a test run and ordered the test bags.
• Created an Instagram account. https://www.instagram.com/featherlaundry/
• Created the first piece of promotional media using Canva. (The title image for this blog post, also going to be put on Instagram and Facebook).
• Wrote this blog post!

Basically my point is that I didn’t let the slowness of another person hold me back from doing things that need to be done anyway. The old me would have been frustrated. Of course other things are pushed back but I’m satisfied with the amount of work I’m churning out.

My next update will be Sunday and hopefully I will have accomplished some of these goals:

1. Create a Google Drive account and folder for the business, move all current business documents and files to this folder and organize them.
2. Create a Twitter account.
3. Create a Mailchimp landing page.
4. Create a Xero account for bookkeeping.
5. Create a Table of Contents for this series.
6. Create a summary blog post for January.
7. Open a Business Checking Account.
8. Update budget to match the checking account.
9. Test the square reader, link square to checking account.
10. Order checks.
11. Order stickers with the logo.
12. Take test bags to the screen printing company and test screen printing on nylon bags.
13. Audit the customer experience by conducting dry runs with friends as customers.

Also, I want to begin keeping track of blog post ideas here.

• Auditing the customer experience.
• Creating the customer acquisition funnel.
• Social media marketing strategy.
• Measuring fundamentals daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
• Capturing leads before launch.

In the meantime, I’m going to get back to work. Have a great rest of the week! As always, get more of the story on Snapchat.

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What To Do When Others Slow You Down was originally published in Startup Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A deep look at our businesses failures and successes over our first year.

When you see a startup…

You usually see the glory of success.

In fact, the very nature of a business failing means that not enough people were interested.

So naturally you never hear about failure, and people don’t much like to talk about it.

I’m not afraid…

I want to give you a glimpse into the real struggle of our first year of business, and hopefully give you some insight, and maybe a little bit of hope, for your own entrepreneurial future.

I’ll show you some relatively big financial mistakes, when we made a crucial pivot, and what traction channels we’ve been using to establish our business.

Pre-Journey Sidetrack

It’s worth mentioning that until March of 2015 I had been playing poker professionally for over 10 years…

Yes, I was a professional poker player.

Just like in Internet Marketing, anyone can claim to be a professional poker player, but I was a pretty damn good one.

I wrote a book, coached thousands of students through a few online training sites, and had a regular column in Cardplayer magazine.

That’s all I have to say about that right now, but I am writing a book called, “Play Your Business Like a Poker Player,” which should be out in early 2016. Pre-release signups will be available soon.

The Start of the Journey

About 18 months ago, in June of 2014, I started helping a local casino build a new website and try to drive some business online.

I didn’t know much, just enough to get me into trouble.

But to them, I was an internet guru, simply because I knew how to build a website in Wix (that’s right, I was using Wix! #fail).

So I built them a terrible website, and drove AdWords and Facebook traffic using my relatively new understanding of those platforms.

It wasn’t the worst…

But it certainly wasn’t the best idea.

In the end, I do believe my efforts had a positive impact on their business.

We saw a lot of people interested in “casino san diego” click through, and their casino foot traffic went up during that time..

However, I hadn’t tracked anything and couldn’t prove the boost in business was due to my efforts… in any way, shape, or form.

And it turns out, business owners like to take credit for any results (uh, any positive results, of course…) that their business sees.

Aside from my failures in tracking my efforts, I was also dealing with extremely antiquated business practices.

No customer management software.

No marketing budget or team.

Not a strong managerial structure.

Really no strategies other than, “We have a casino license, so we will just print money.”

So needless to say, my first client wasn’t my best client, and we decided to completely part ways with them after we realized that some businesses, some people just can’t be helped.

(And I do appreciate them and their business, they aren’t bad people, it just was never going to work out.)

So the beginning of a digital marketing agency was born. Little did I know what it would morph into over the upcoming months…

Time elapses…

In November of 2014, I’ve been gaining some experience and have grown a much deeper understanding of a plethora of digital strategies.

I’ve taken a handful of online courses, gotten certified in all the traditional places (AdWords, Analytics, Hootsuite and others) and I am ready to officially form the company.

That’s when I brought in my wife, as she has great creative talent, as an artist and graphic designer.

We decided we would try to help small businesses in San Diego grow their “online presence.”

Hence Splash — Online Presence Management was born.

We thought we could help mom and pop shop owners really turn their business around using the power of the interwebs.

Again, we were wrong…

Our business tagline for those first few months was actually:

“A San Diego Digital Marketing Agency”

I mean how terrible is that?

We picked up a few clients through some referrals and a stroke of luck and start plugging away for them.

I would say my skills back then — Jan - Feb of 15 (literally 10 months ago) — were pretty good, but not great.

Funding

I knew that in order to invest in the right tools and education, and take my own personal skills and brand, as well as my businesses to the next, I would need to quit playing poker and focus on this business full time.

And to do that, I would need money.

Now, I made a lot of money playing poker, too much really… As I ended up spending it about as fast as I made it, leaving me in a relatively weak financial situation.

This isn’t uncommon in poker and is one of the reasons I advocate not becoming a professional in my upcoming book, “Play Your Business Like a Poker Player.”

So, I went over to a friends house — a successful email marketing company owner — to play some cards and drink, as well as pitch my business idea and lock in an investment.

We got a little sauced…

I believe there were many beers and a few scotches on the rocks…

Then we headed into the hot tub, where I began my pitch.

Very professional, I know.

I was seeking $50,000 for 5% equity in our relatively new / nonexistent business that had very little in the way as a differentiated strategy.

I knew I was mainly pitching myself, and my wife — 2 hardworking entrepreneurs driven to succeed.

But if you look at me on paper, I was/am a smart guy that wasn’t an expert at internet marketing (maybe I was calling myself an expert, but only to people who had trouble logging into their email).

I didn’t have any experience working for other agencies or success in the field in any way.

I didn’t have a network in an industry outside of poker.

And I’ve never held a corporate job (and never will).

Sounds like a joke really, but trust me, I’m good at what I do, and more importantly, I am GREAT at learning what I need to do (a great talent I picked up from poker).

So, we are sitting in the hot tub, and we’re all pretty sauced up, and my potential angel investor, Seth, countered with 15% for $50k.

He said he doesn’t like the business idea all too much but he believes in me and that I would figure it out.

I knew enough to not make a decision on the spot, so I pondered the decision through til the next day, when I had a wicked hangover…

Early the next morning, I talked it over with Seth, said there would have to be some stipulations about being able to use his expertise and network and some time requirements on his part, and we made a deal.

I went straight from the handshake to the bathroom and puked for about 20 minutes…

And that’s how we were able to get enough funding to really start a strong push.

Lean Startup for an agency?

I got my seed, or possibly even pre-seed investment and really thought of this time (around Feb-Mar 15) as my time to implement all the strategies I learned from Eric Reiss, Brant Cooper, Steve Blank, and Jeremiah Gardner.

I got customers.

I had a working MVP/MVS.

I implemented the services and listened to my customers needs, then adjusted.

I think it was a relatively strong interpretation of lean methodology used for slightly different purposes than the traditional “tech-lean” business.

Side note:

Just yesterday, I was at the American Marketing Association conference: The Art of Marketing, where Jeremiah Gardner, creator of Lean Brand and Lean Entrepreneur, said something that really stood out to me.

It went something like:

“We are all [speakers, experts, leaders] still figuring this out, no one has figured it all out.”

This was particularly true for me in the early days, where I knew just enough to help other people, but also knew there was a lot more to learn.

Early Days of my “Expertise”

So how about an example:

With one of our early clients, I was able to use pretty simple tactics to massively increase their on-site conversions.

The simplest one was adding a “contact us” button on a “dead end” product page, to massively email inquiry conversion.

After implementing that, I then drove traffic via remarketing campaigns, AdWords campaigns, and Facebook campaigns.

They were low-budget campaigns, so not a ton of traffic, but were converting like mad.

So I was excited.

I grabbed their past years data for comparison and wrote what I thought was a “game changing” report.

I showed them that conversions from last year to this year have doubled! Or more!

(It’s a cyclical business so we compared to the month of the previous month)

Here are the actual numbers (scrubbed for spam and other false positives):

We started helping them in late January

Game changing right?

So I give them the report, and we set up a meeting in the office to talk about next steps and…

I get politely let go…

I got fired for the first time in my life (or at least the agency equivalent of getting fired).

They believe the uptick in results was unrelated to my efforts (despite me being able to tie conversions directly back to Facebook and AdWords campaigns).

So what did I do wrong?

A lot.

Most importantly, I didn’t set how I was going to get credit for results.

I should have said, regardless of anything that happens, for every conversion I track, I get $X of “credit.”

I was actually in the process of setting up better tracking and attribution in the talk in which I got let go (so I knew my error and was trying to correct it, but it was too late).

Another thing I did wrong was try to help them all the way through to sales.

I wanted to track my efforts by $ROI, when I should have just kept it at “here’s a list of email addresses I got you.”

Another mistake stemmed from the fact that I had learned internet marketing from internet marketers…online. The form of lead collection I was used to was just an email address and typically drove people to an “awareness email funnel.”

This client didn’t have an awareness stage to their funnel set up and they really only wanted screaming hot leads to come in. Leads that give you their name, phone number, dimensions of their fireplace, and info on what they are looking for.

I was able to remedy that one pretty quick after having a better understanding of what they wanted, but again, another error of mine that speaks to my incredible ignorance at the time.

Now looking back, it’s a no-brainer — email collection vs qualified lead collection…

Moving On

So, as we moved forward, we struggled to prove any sort of traction for these small businesses. We weren’t utterly failing, but we weren’t getting amazing traction.

It felt like the problem was with the type of business we were working with, the type of business owner we were working for, and the misalignment between our strengths and our clients.

All the while, during this time, I am starting to get more heavily involved in the startup scene.

As a lifelong entrepreneur, I’ve loved startup life / startup culture for a while and really enjoy the community here in San Diego.

So it clicked.

Why am I working with mom and pop, when I can work with young and hungry rockstars in startups?

I’d get to do more of what I love, be involved in a community I love, and make a difference for companies that are constantly on the verge of either greatness or utter failure (companies just like mine!).

“Truly nothing makes me happier than when something I say unleashes a spark inside another entrepreneur.”

-Derric Haynie

The Pivot

The idea became a goal, and the goal became a list of tasks.

We had to rebrand, change our voice, our message, how we got customers…Everything.

We moved from being a generic Digital Marketing blog to calling it a Growth Marketing Blog — SplashU.

We got a better business tagline.

SplashOPM — helping entrepreneurs start something.

We gave our blog its own tagline.

SplashU — know how to grow.

We changed our content marketing strategy and keyword goals.

We got a new event banner to match our new message.

We stopped being generic!

Thanks to Content Marketing World 2015 and the great Ann Handley, we were really able to unleash our voice, define our content tilt, and push forward in a new direction.

We partnered with Startup Socials — a global events company — to run local events here in San Diego designed to foster the startup community.

We took over a ~1400 member collection of Meetup Groups — San Diego Digital Marketing Experts — and started running weekly events.

We stopped focusing on local small business strategies and dove deep into growth marketing strategies, traction, and the problems of early entrepreneurs (which we technically are as well).

The Winning Moments

There were a few key moments in the last year that changed our business for the better.

Foundr Mag Podcast interview — this happened back in April or May, but didn’t air for almost 3 months, which was after we had pivoted our business ironically. Talking with Nathan Chan and Matthew Michalewicz helped me shape my 1 year business goals and give great insights into what it would take to reach those goals.

Startup Socials Partnership — taking over Startup Socials SD has allowed us to become a real pillar in the startup community. We are positioning ourselves as a leading agency for helping startups and soon we will be the go-to for SD based startups.

Growth Marketing Conference — our partnership allowed us to get to know Vasil and Startup Socials better which led us getting a booth at this conference, which will get us a ton of exposure directly in front of our target audience. This event, on Dec 2–4 will likely determine the outcome and direction of our business. We will be sure to give you a breakdown of what happens next month.

Rebranding — My wife and I really dove deep to get the best message and brand that we could out there. We wanted to be ourselves, but still identify with our audience, and we think we bring a unique approach to digital marketing and growth marketing with our blog, the way we talk in our emails, and in our videos. We received a truly great honor at our Startup Socials mixer when a startup founder came up to us after reading our new event banner and said, “It’s as if you are talking directly to me.” That’s when you know you’ve got a solid brand message.

Taking over SD Digital Marketing Experts — meeting Josh Fechter and the gang at 22Social was huge for us. They are amazing contacts, rockstar marketers, and great people. Josh had built quite a following with this group, but couldn’t dedicate the time to it anymore, so he handed it over to me. Acquiring an audience is much easier than building one, let me tell you. We were honored to be able to further his mission of keeping San Diego a source of great digital marketers.

Funding — obviously locking in funding was crucial to getting the business off the ground. While some businesses may favor the “no-strapper,” (agencies are generally in this category), there isn’t a single early business that couldn’t benefit by starting with an extra $50k. You need to invest money to make money, and in the early days, those long term investments are what get you to success faster.

Digital Marketer — this site made us phenomenally better digital marketers. Both the Content Marketing course and the Customer Acquisition course really took us to the top of the game. We used to walk into a room and be slightly above average digital marketers, but now it seems like we are on the cutting edge of everything.

Which brings me to my theory of learning sidetrack and minor brag:

If my estimations are correct, you can see that I was able to go from just above novice to a pretty advanced expert in digital marketing in about 6 months time.

Now, for other people this will likely take longer. I learn FAST.

And I went all-in on learning — spent $1,000s on courses and conferences, read 20+ books, 100+ blogs and 1000+ blog posts, and I spoke with experts on a regular basis to pick their brains.

I actually explain the process a bit more in detail in this talk I gave on How to Become a Digital Marketer in One Year (sorry for the poor lighting).

What probably helped the most was that I was actively teaching just as fast as I was learning, sometimes even teaching on subjects I had learned in the same day.

Over those 6 months, I went from hearing great advice and saying, “I should be doing that,” to hearing great advice and saying, “Yeahp, been doing that for 3 months now.”

And now, I rarely hear anyone mention a digital marketing or entrepreneurial best practice that I’m not actually using on a regular basis. That isn’t to say that there aren’t more things to learn and get better at, just that it will happen less frequently than before.

I like to think that I went from about 25% to 95% in the last 6 months, and if this is anything like poker, that last 5% is extremely hard to obtain. The people in the top 1% are the real gurus, the guys that have been doing it for years and have massive followings.

And in order to stay in the top 1%, you have to be learning and practicing every single day.

So my goal is still to get to that stage, but it will take a lot longer to progress than it did to get to where I am at right now.

The Big Mistakes

When anyone gets a bunch of money, they have a tendency to spend it.

I have a lot of experience in this and knew that I needed to invest my money as best as possible, yet I still fell into this trap quite a bit.

My goal with the money was to:

a. Attend a lot of events / take a lot of courses for education and networking opportunities

b. Establish myself in the local community as a white-hat agency owner

c. Drive strong online traffic to our website and blog to “drink our own Kool-Aid”

d. Test all sorts of online tools and services that could further our business, find out what works for us and our clients and use them

I wouldn’t say anything went wrong. When you’re running a bunch of different tests, you are bound to run into some failures, but here are some mistakes I could have avoided and I hope you can avoid yourself.

Wordstream.

This is a service that improves your AdWords campaign keyword strategies.

In the beginning, I thought I would just pick up a ton of AdWords clients and run $5k-$15k in campaigns for them.

This wasn’t what happened.

I liked the service and saw some value with it, but jumped into a 6 month contract for $350/month WAY too early.

This was almost a complete waste of money…

It cost $2800 to be exact (or almost 6% of my pre-seed capital).

That’s $350/month for 6 months, and an additional $700 because of the way they formed their contract, they were able to milk more money out of me.

And, worst of all, I wasn’t even running a single AdWords campaign for a decent portion of those 6–8 months, let alone logging in and using their service.

I’m still fighting those charges right now and believe what they did is just a terrible business practice… milking startups out of money and structuring contracts in a way that nearly guarantees an additional month be billed.

Getting locked into a contract killed me, and it might kill you to. So the moral of the story is “avoid vendor contracts.” This should be your businesses best practice.

Eventually you will have to do a contract with someone, but avoiding the contract should be your go-to move.

Conferences

We spent nearly half of our investment on going to conferences and events. I don’t think this itself is a mistake. We made invaluable contacts, learned cutting edge strategies, and came away better people every time.

But…

We should have spent a little bit less.

There were a couple of events that we shouldn’t have gone to. Maybe they were outside of our industry, too much in travel costs and hotel, or just too much of a hassle.

We needed to lay out a conference budget and strategy ahead of time, only attend the leading conferences in our core competencies, and lay out detailed networking agendas for each conference.

This is all obvious looking back, and we couldn’t have known that some of these events would be mistakes, but in hindsight, they were. I don’t want to bad mouth any conferences, since they were all truly valuable. It’s just that I should have been a little bit more strategic with where I spent my time and money.

Moral of the story: spend a little more time up front strategizing about your conference strategy and you will save a little more time and money in the long run. Really this just goes for anything, conferences, content marketing strategies, online advertising strategies, whatever.

Vetting Prospects

Your time is very valuable, and so is mine.

People start to realize just how valuable it is and may want some of it for free from ya.

Giving free advice is my specialty, but when you start giving someone an hour phone call that will drastically change the course of their business, your giving a free consultation, which is OK every once in a while, but should probably be paid for most of the time.

I had more than a few people who contacted me and said they were interested in my services.

Before vetting them as a qualified lead, I booked meetings or phone calls with them.

This led to a waste of time, most often for both parties.

While I was always able to give away some great advice in the meetings, I could never do business with these prospects, they just weren’t ready.

Moral of the story: vet your prospects, even when they are telling you they want your services. Develop a method for determining their current needs and budget (!!!), and then determine how you can best help them. Your time is valuable, especially when you are on a runway towards broke.

While there are some other mistakes we made, those are the biggest 3 by far.

Traction Channels and Strategies

In the beginning, I don’t think we had any clue how we were going to get customers. We figured we would build a blog, drive traffic to our website, etc. We are digital marketing experts after all.

But we hadn’t yet identified our channels.

In the beginning they were:

Local marketing

Referral

Networking events

But after our pivot, they are:

Live Self-Hosted Events

Conferences

Inbound Marketing at our Blog — Splash-U

We find that when combining these together, you get a powerful personal and local connection, amplified by the internet to build a bit more of a national audience.

The first two aren’t highly scalable, but they get us to the next level, at which point we will likely change to:

Webinars

Heavier inbound marketing

Speaking at events

So for the various stages of our business, we’ve got a pretty solid strategy on how to gain the traction we need to get to that “big-time” level in a couple of years.

The Results

Well, it’s too early to say it’s been a great success, but since moving to a slightly different category, improving our messaging and writing style, and really becoming ourselves, we’ve seen significant increase in on-site sign ups, website traffic, and all the generally good key metrics.

Also, we’ve picked up some consulting work and potential clients.

I truly believe it’s the start of something powerful, and it took us about a year to get there, which is why I would say now looking back, that $50,000 investment was a pre-seed investment into us finding ourselves. Thanks Seth for believing.

We aren’t big by any means. I’m about to show you some pretty poor numbers… but we are still proud of them.

And by this time next year, I promise to have some impressive results.

Email subscribers to date: 121

Lead Magnet Downloads: 25

Meetup subscribers: 2029 (we don’t “own” their data)

Startup Socials SD Members: 225

Straight from our balance sheet year to date 2015:

Revenue: $19,321.57 Expenses: $52,948.94

Profit: -33,627.37

Some notes:

About $12,000 was spent on software, web hosting, tech, and I think conference costs are tied into this somehow as well.

We had to start taking a reduced salary in July, just to keep the lights on, so far we’ve taken $15,000 in salary.

We’ve got over $30,000 in personal and credit debt accrued over the last 12 months due to no or little income while we get our business going.

We just hit over 1,000 unique monthly active visitors.

The Good News

We’ve scaled back expenses and are closing in on a profitable business.

Whether we reach profitability before we run out of money remains to be seen, but we are confident we can always reach out for another investment if needed, and may even lock in some capital for scaling up employees and web traffic in the near future.

We’ve got fans and friends supporting us. Entrepreneurs are identifying with us and the community we have been trying to build is really taking off.

Our email list is growing much faster than before and people seem to be resonating with our new brand and direction.

We’ve launched some small products and services and will be filling out a whole slew of offerings within the next few months, hopefully this leads to having very solid inbound marketing funnels setup long term for the business.

So while we made countless mistakes and have yet to prove profitability, the destiny of our business is hanging in the air (seemingly) over an upcoming conference.

We remain confident in our success, both personally and professionally, and are looking forward to growing together with you, and our entire community.

So, what do you think? Not impressed? Me neither?

I hope my struggles and insights can help you become a better entrepreneur. Feel free to reach out with any (non-trolling) comments and feedback.

Derric Haynie

My Struggling Startup Bears All: First Year Recap was originally published in Startup Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thinking about starting a new venture can be overwhelming — there are so many things you could think about that it can be difficult to know whether it’s a good idea and where you should start.

Here are three key questions I find useful for cutting through the clutter:

1. Can we provide something customers really need/want? (Product/Need)
2. Can we serve a customer profitably? (Unit economics)
3. Can we reach customers? (Distribution)

These may seem obvious but I’m often surprised by how many people have started working on something and don’t yet have plausible answers to these questions.

1. Can we provide something customers really need/want? (Product/Need)

Without something people really want you have nothing. Sometimes it can be tempting to think that people should want something, but when it comes to it you may find that they don’t or that they don’t want it enough. You can often get an indication of this by analogy (they currently buy X and we can do the same but much cheaper), talking to your intended customers (‘X is a real pain for us I wish we had something to solve it’), or making early/test sales — but the definitive answer usually comes later. It can be useful here to really dig into who the customer is, what their situation is, what their needs are and what alternatives they have.

2. Can we serve a customer profitably? (Unit economics)

This is key for your business to be sustainable. One guy I spoke to was happy with progress because people were using his new service but didn’t realise that he would have big challenges ahead because he hadn’t worked out that the prices he intended (and needed) to charge didn’t leave any room for him to make money. It’s really important here to think about the cost of acquiring customers (including resources spent on those you don’t convert) as well as the cost of providing your product/service. Ultimately, per customer you need to make more money than you spend.

3. Can we reach customers? (Distribution)

If you can’t reach customers you can’t sell to them. Sometimes you can figure it out as you go, other times it’s clear that it’s a no go (e.g. it would be way too expensive to acquire the volume of customers you need) or that this highlights a key challenge (e.g. reaching your audience is going to require partnerships with some other companies and that whether or not you can get them on board will be the real test).

Originally published at blog.rjones.net.

Three questions for new ventures was originally published in Startup Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How to know if you’ve really made something people want

You’ve started a new business and things seem to be going well — you’ve acquired a number of early customers and your team is excited — but how do you know if you really truly have something customers want?

I think retention is a pretty good measure. It can be too easy to think that just because you acquired some customers (perhaps using unscalable channels), you must have fulfilled this criterion. But if they don’t actually go on to use your product substantially — and in most cases come back for more — you can’t be sure that you’re really providing something that they want/need and adding value. And if you don’t add value you will struggle to build a meaningful business. Seeing strong ongoing usage and repeat orders — not just a failure to stop paying a subscription — is a pretty good indicator that they’re getting value from what you have to offer. Conversations with customers can help to verify this too.

First published at blog.rjones.net.

Retention is key was originally published in Startup Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.