The 5 Ingredients of Winning Startups

In boxing there’s a common saying that ‘styles make fights’. If i’m being honest, I know little (technically) about boxing. If I was put in a ring, whilst i’m a fit athletic guy I would most likely throw a spray of punches into thin air and end up on the ground concussed (for the third time in my life… that story is for another time).

The Manifesto and the Method

Southpaw Startups is about using unorthodox and nontraditional methods to achieve exponentially better success in business and other projects. There are 5 ingredients that I have noticed after years of reading hundreds of thousands of books, blogs, articles, and other content about entrepreneurship. If you can hack these 5 ingredients in ways that others don't, you will guarantee your success.

1. Growth Hacking: The ability to have a system that accelerates growth and reaches new audiences. In the next 10 years we will see the rise of the career growth hacker whose skills span across all areas of the business to find efficient ways to build bigger and be better.
2. Creative Innovation: Innovation is no longer a buzzword, but a new way at diving deeper into problems and futurevision. It uses design thinking principles, reframing briefs, and transdisciplinary lenses to bring ideas together from across industries in order to create something the world has never seen. If you can master apply these skills creatively you make yourself or your company different from the competition.
3. Full Stack Marketing: In startups you’re strapped for cash and resources in comparison to established business, hence being a ‘social media expert’ or a ‘PPC guru’ is not as valuable as someone who can execute across all marketing areas. To succeed Southpaw’s have the following FSM skills: copywriting, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, PR, content marketing, A/B testing, LPO, customer service, funnel hacking, and the list goes on!
4. Story-selling: Thats right, not story-telling, story-SELLING. The ability to tell an engaging and emotive story, to capture the imagination and attention of an individual or a huge group of people is a skill that translates directly into the profitable success of a venture. The two most important functions of a business is sales and marketing, and the rest support them.
5. Product Development: What business succeeds without knowing the customer well and building something that speaks to them? Even if it’s selling ice to eskimoes, you need to understand the narrative and motivators that will drive them to buy or value what you make. Building good products is important, knowing WHY you develop a product is a necessity. You can definitely hack product development into your favour in many ways, however most people see this is a laborious or unnecessary part of a startups lifecycle.

The above five ingredients is what this blog is about, and all posts will relate in some ways to my thoughts about them, or musing on Unorthodox Methods that can tilt each ingredient more in your favour than your competitors.

My Entrepreneurial Journey

My name is Sam, I like sports, I like mojito’s, I like succeeding at whatever I do. Why listen to me? I sat down a while ago and mapped out who I am as an entrepreneur and what my skills are. The above list of 5 ingredients is what defined me and my past successes. A startup fan since the age of 15 i’ve read nearly every blog under the sun about entrepreneurship and have dug deep into the lives of the worlds best hackers and business builders. My first business I started at 18, a platform designed to hack the sales process of education institutes selling courses to students from personal training to beauty therapy. I worked for two years on an app for fitness influencers and celebrities to monetise their social fanbases and create more intimate connections with their followers. I’ve provided marketing and growth consulting to many entrepreneurs and their startups, and am most proficient in pitching and public speaking, or telling engaging stories that speak to an audience. I fucking love what I do, and thought it’s about time I build a community of entrepreneurs that take the unorthodox and little know road to success.

Help Me Shape Your Journey

Welcome along for the ride, and if there’s any topics you’d really like me to touch on please leave a comment below. I’ve got a heap of experiments, projects, and methods prepped and planned to help the world understand the unorthodox path to success of a Southpaw entrepreneur.