Process = Progress: How I increased revenue 300% by doing “dumb” things in a smart way

The right process can be the key to unlocking exponential growth

Actors love to talk about their creative process. Hang out with enough actors and you’ll hear crazy stories about big stars going out into the desert for days or burning all of their costumes after finishing up on big projects.

That sounds dumb, weird, and flaky. But it’s actually genius.

You Have to Gamble to Hit the Jackpot

When I got to Playdom to run marketing for their new website, my main job was to supervise how we spent money on paid acquisition.

We ran display ads, TV ads, YouTube ads — and where we got small gains, we would double-down on them. It made a little difference in the amount of traffic we got and money we made, but not that much.

Then I decided to branch out. I researched all the different marketing tactics available to me, and then chose to concentrate on the ones that required the least investment.

SEO came first. It gave us a 35% bump in traffic, but I wasn’t looking for linear gains.

Then I decided to optimize some of our landing pages. I plugged in Optimizely and came up with a bunch of dumb ideas to try. Some of these infuriated our Art Director because they were hideous. Some surprised our VP because they were ideas that had been proven not to work elsewhere.

But I took a risk and tested them against 10% of our traffic anyway.

Suddenly, we were getting huge jumps in signups and revenue — like 65% improvements in a day. And I could do other experiments that would build on those, for exponential growth.

Soon, revenue was up 300% over the same period last year. Unique traffic was up 600%…all from my dumb ideas.

Jackpot.

Process is Personal

That’s the road actors follow, too. How does the guy who plays a Newsie play Patrick Bateman and then go on to play Batman?

He goes and tries some weird crap on his own, then he reports to the set and never drops character. And he does it for every role. That’s his process. But it wouldn’t work for everyone. Because, to be successful, to be better than other people around you, you have to be different from them.

How can you be more different? The only thing you can do is come up with your own process to figure out dumb ideas that somehow work, and then repeat it.

A How-To

Make some room in your day to figure out dumb ideas to try. Then give one a shot. If it fails — discard it. It was a dumb idea anyway.

If it works — time to backtrack. What were you doing when you had the idea? Were you in a group brainstorm? Were you by yourself? Were you in the shower? Were you drunk?

Whatever you did, do it again. And take the ideas that come out of that session that work, and do those again.

Room for Risk

Keep in mind; you won’t be able to do this anywhere. There needs to be more room for weirdness in business. If your boss or board is a bunch of control freaks, they are going to hold you back.

So try to create a space that’s good for weirdness. Do small experiments with your dumb ideas at first, without telling other people. Share your info as soon as they start working.

With the wind at your back, you can buy enough credibility to try even-crazier ideas…and then — hey—one day, you could be talking to 60 Minutes about your future drone army, and people would call you a promotional genius for getting great buzz for your company right before the biggest shopping day of the year.

Conclusion

Dumb ideas are your best friends in disguise. Nurture them, promote them, and create a process that will attract more.

Special credit goes to my old boss, Rick Sanchez. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever worked with. Anything smart I’ve done in the last couple of years has been all his fault.

Like this article? Have something to say? Hit me up on Twitter: @asharfin