Sean Ellis. He’s the founder and CEO of GrowthHackers.com, he coined the term “growth hacking” in 2010 after using it to ignite growth for Dropbox, Eventbrite, LogMeIn and Lookout. He also founded and sold customer insights company Qualaroo, growing it to millions of dollars in recurring revenue.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Peep Laja Favorite online tool? — The Calm App Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished my 20-year old self knew things are going to be pretty good”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:25 – Nathan introduces Sean to the show 02:03 – Sean speaks at The Capital Factory in Austin, Texas 02:07 – Sean’s talk was about viral coefficients and why it’s important to decrease the time of the original share to really drive growth 02:50 – If you don’t have a lot value at the foundation of the growth, it’s hard to make your business sustainable 02:56 – Sean tries to understands the value of the product first, then goes backwards from there 03:16 – Sean used the referral program for Dropbox 03:30 – Sean, together with the group, came up with the idea of giving away free storage for referrals 03:45 – Sean’s friend tested a double-sided referral program prior to Dropbox 03:53 – Sean’s friend is James Siminoff, founder of Ring and the previously the CEO of PhoneTag 04:45 – Sean provides advice on viral coefficients 04:55 – In the case of DropBox—“Referrals were strong before the referral program went in place” 05:12 – Understand what the motivation is for people to do refer 05:18 – Think about every step in the process; for example, what’s the prompt that gets people to share? 05:42 – Optimize all the steps of the referral process 05:47 – The more you have qualitative and quantitative insights about what’s happening, you’re going to be more informed in the tests that you are running 06:41 – Eventbrite didn’t have an incentive, but just a natural viral product in itself 07:18 – Eventbrite helps companies sell tickets 07:30 – Eventbrite doesn’t only offer a convenient experience but also good SEO, social integration, and other factors that will help you sell tickets 08:00 – Sean worked for LogMeIn’s marketing for 5 years 08:05 – LogMeIn is now a $5B company 08:07 – “Natural word-of-mouth was huge with LogMeIn” 08:10 – By the time Sean left LogMeIn, 80% of the users were coming in through word-of-mouth 08:15 – LogMeIn was spending more than $1M monthly with a 3-month payback on acquiring customers 08:21 – “Value drives word-of-mouth” 08:35 – At first, the majority of LogMeIn’s users didn’t really use the product 09:25 – The CEO and whole team worked together to find out the problem with the customer experience 09:55 – LogMeIn has always been cash flow positive 10:13 – Look up how Sean runs questionnaires in his Youtube videos and slideshows 10:31 – Qualaroo is about customer insights 10:45 – Sean acquired Qualaroo in 2012 10:49 – Qualaroo was acquired from KissMetrics 10:53 – Qualaroo was a side business and Sean was an advisor for it 11:08 – Sean built Qualaroo to millions of dollars of recurring revenue and sold it last year 11:45 – Sean bought it for less than a million dollars 12:00 – The revenue of Qualaroo was less than a hundred thousand dollars 12:25 – Qualaroo was acquired by Xenon 13:01 – Jonathan Siegel owns Xenon 13:14 – Sean wanted to sell Qualaroo and wasn’t trying to get top dollar for it 13:57 – Sean had a 7-figure advance on the book, so he’s not losing money 14:09 – Sean has signed with Crown Business 14:29 – Sean has self-published a book before 14:49 – Sean’s background and Growth Hackers allowed him to get a great deal with Crown Business 15:00 – Sean is the guy who came up with the term “growth hacking” 15:09 – There are already a lot of publishers who approached Sean to write a book about growth hacking 15:22 – Morgan Brown is Sean’s co-author 15:47 – Morgan and Sean hired an editor to write the proposal 16:10 – Sean’s agent is Lisa DiMona 16:30 – The process is getting an agent to invest in your book, they help you with the proposal and they pitch your book 17:21 – Sean’s plan to make the book a successful one 17:26 – First is to gain momentum to get on the New York Times’ Bestseller List 17:43 – The weekly sales is what will determine whether you make the list 18:05 – “If you get on the list, then it’s a lot easier to stay on the list” 18:32 – People’s perception on growth is often a bit flawed 18:45 – Growth hacking is more about testing stuff and doubling down when something works 19:04 – Sean has some copies of his book for his Microsoft presentation 19:20 – Sean also has some copies for different companies 19:31 – Sean offers ticket bundles for Growth Hackers Conference in May, in LA 19:37 – Growth University’s growth master training course has bundled with book sales 19:43 – Sean is running bundled ads, too 19:51 – Sean is getting sub $50 sales on their course with the book bundled 20:51 – Sean is currently at a ConversionXL conference 21:05 – Peep Laja was on Episode 620, and he is the founder of ConversionXL 21:37 – Sean didn’t commit to buying any books 22:35 – Why should people buy this book rather than the other growth hacking books? 22:39 – “Ryan Holiday’s book was awesome to bring attention to growth hacking” 22:47 – There hasn’t really been a guide book to what do you do as a team, especially for bigger companies who want to replicate what Facebook or Uber has done 23:12 – Marketing isn’t that hard, but you need cultural change, cross-functional coordination, and collaboration 23:31 – Hacking Growth has the methods for what you need to drive growth at its foundation 23:44 – It is powerful and people need help 24:06 – Crossing the Chasm provides observations regarding the growth process 24:20 – The main difference between this book and Sean’s is that it doesn’t tell you how to organize your team to exploit that growth situation 24:32 – “We’re not just telling you the fundamentals of how growth works, we’re telling you how to run a growth process across a team...” 25:02 – “You need to have a very integrated coordinated team and the best time to build it in your business is early, when the culture is malleable to do it” 27:20 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Regarding viral coefficients, the more you have qualitative and quantitative insights about what’s happening in the referral and sharing process, the more informed your tests will be. Growth hacking is more about testing stuff and doubling down when something works. You NEED a very integrated, coordinated team—the best time to build this into your business is early on, when the culture is still malleable.
Resources Mentioned:
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOWShow Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
