Lessons Learned The Hard Way — Week #3: The Standard’s Combustion
From the beginning of this venture, I hoped this would become a weekly thing. And here we are! Week #3 brothers and sisters!
The truth is that no one asked me to write those posts, and probably I would have stopped if it wasn’t for you!
As I wrote in my first post (and it’s almost the motto of the series):
Whether things are good or bad for us (and you), there’s a singular thing that remains common over these weeks, months or years: Knowledge!
It’s a shame all this information staying among us. So, we started using Geekbot in our Slack team, and one of the questions we set for our everyday standup meeting, was “Is there something you’ve learned, that’s worth sharing?”
That’s the reason I took the initiative to share it with you week by week.
By the way, we are launching our first growth hacking course! Make sure to join us. We are starting to build a great community!
I ain’t going to waste any more of your time.
Here’s what we learned during last week:
(SPOILER ALERT: It tends that almost all of the first learnings you’re going to read every week, are FAILS. Don’t worry, we always present at least one WIN)
Nothing should be considered as a standard.
Daily routine makes us soft. Once you get used to doing things in a certain way, a certain lifestyle, meeting the same people over and over; that’s where trouble usually lies.
“How the f*#k am I supposed to build relationships or head towards a goal?”, I can already hear you saying.
Don’t get me wrong! Having a great schedule and great people in your life, is undoubtedly the path to success. But it’s a sneaky one.
I want you to ask yourselves: “ When is the time that life is going to turn around and kick my butt?”;
True story bro/sis:
I ain’t going to say much, as this regards a personal matter; But the story is rather simple and painful.
There’s an obligatory thing that I tried to avoid my whole life. That being said, I planned my life and goals suppressing this “obligatory” feeling in a dark corner in my mind. I thought that I could find a way to avoid it when the time comes.
Apart from that, my life got dramatically better the last 2 years, landing a job that I love, moving in with my girlfriend and having a cute giant dog. These improvements empowered the thought that I expressed earlier- “I can & I will avoid this”
Well, there’s no spoiler here; Last week my world shattered into pieces by a thing I considered as a standard.
FAIL!
Don’t leave important things for last minute.
I guess we all have a busy week schedule. Meetings, operations, reading, learning etc.
The bad thing is that being tired is not a “Friday privilege”. I wish I felt energetic every weekday and dead-tired on Friday night. But, you and I don’t; Right?
Relax, it’s only normal. You do things, you get tired and you miss some balls. Want a piece of advice? Do not leave a vital operation for Friday! There’s a higher chance to screw up and have no time to do something about it.
The minute before the last minute could do the job!
True story bro/sis:
There’s a lot of diversity among the things we do for our clients at GrowthRocks. Growth consultation, growth experiments, contests, content marketing and stuff like that.
Building landing pages is a very common service we offer (as I previously said, we run experiments by the gallon).
Our mate SoberSober, is our graphic designer and also a great front-end developer.
Last week he had to build a bunch of pages, so you can guess he felt a little bit drowned. As a natural outcome, he lost the sense of prioritization. He finally managed to deliver everything by Friday night.
BUT,
One of the pages that mattered the most had a series of glitches (sorry, I don’t know jack about development) which of course had to be fixed.
Not only the poor lad had to get it done during the weekend but also, the client didn’t get what he was expecting.
FAIL!
Think about your customers and focus on events that could trigger email conversions.
I’m not going on a rant about how important Email Marketing is. If you’re reading some stats, you’re already familiar with that.
There’s a lot of email types you should be sending to your email list, but there’s one type of updates that we noticed that can bring results home:
Emails About Current Events!
Of course, I’m not talking about the news. I mean national days, athletic & music events etc.
True story bro/sis:
We’re running an eCommerce project (with an email list of more than 15k), with Emmanouela Coralia being in charge for that. Last week, it occurred to her that the things that this store sells are closely related to modern habits (it’s a fast consumer goods company).
So, she decided to find a relative event and run a dedicated email campaign about it- It was a basketball game. The email was sent 3 hours before the actual game. The outcome?
25% open rate (with an industry Avg. of 12%) & 16% CTR (industry Avg. of 1.4%) and a 9.4% Conversion Rate. Do the math.
WIN!
“I’m afraid that I won’t be able to handle too many customers”- That is a nice problem to have! Let’s talk more when we get there.
I really hate it, when this quote comes to the table. HATE IT! And with sadness, I realize that there’s a ton of people out there, that actually give a damn about it.
But, that’s just me. It doesn’t matter what I think. I know that even though it’s a good problem to have, it’s still a problem. And in case something like this occurs:
a. You’re on the right path.
b. You have to move as fast as hell!
True story bro/sis:
I got some feedback about this series, and someone told me that they feel like it’s too promotional about our company. Well, there’s an old saying that I can’t remember, but it roughly goes:
If you don’t brag about your home, it will crumble and bust your bloody head!
So, now that I made myself clear, with this section bragging about our company, I’ll proceed to the facts.
GrowthRocks is a consulting agency, but with a startup mindset. That means that we have one thing in mind. Growing rapidly!
As the previous week was the last of February, we did our monthly recap meeting, showing that March would be our best month so far (in terms of revenue).
But here’s the catch; that growth rate could destroy our work rate and skyrocket our burn rate (because we needed more people).
Theodoros Moulos managed to keep his cool and instantly built a way for us to be more efficient and found some external associates along with some junior interns, so we could still afford to sleep at nights.
WIN!
What’s done, is done. Move on, concentrate, act!
When I’m talking about human habits and reactions I tend to speak as a representing voice of those similar to me. I don’t mean in any way to generalize things to the point that everyone is the same.
People like me, want to achieve things. They like to try new stuff, be challenged, fail hard and get back on their feet.
And getting back on your feet is the most important thing in the whole process.
True story bro/sis:
This is the second part of my hellish previous week (see the “Nothing should be considered as a standard” above).
As I was saying, my world has been shattered, but that wasn’t the worst part. I became so obsessed and nervous of the fact that I couldn’t do something about, and it finally consumed all of my focus and energy.
The way I dealt with it was simple. During the weekend I did nothing but sleept, listened to music and watched “Gotham” (which btw, is great!).
By Monday, I found myself again. But a week lost, never comes back.
FAIL!
Before You Go
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