Growth Hacking: A Practical Guide To Growing Your Business with Anuj Adhiya

You gotta test and you gotta test fast and learn fast because that is really the only growth hack there is. And you know this and I'm sure some of your audience knows this. Tactics will run out and strategies are fine, and campaigns, yes, all of that is great. But at the end of the day, if you don't learn faster about what works for your customers than your competition, you're going to lose.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build $1 billion business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic Hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger, so that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

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Yeah, no, I'm stoked to be on this. Like, just seeing all of the amazing guests and shows you've done so far, it's amazing to be on.

Amen. Well, the fact that you are the man when it comes to growth hacking. You wrote the book, you know, Growth Hacking for Dummies and everything. I mean, you've done more than just that. But it's, you know, the fact that we're chatting here, I know the audience listening. Tons of business owners, people. There's, there's founders, startups. I'm, I'm, I'm actually an advisor of one of them, Delphi. I got a shout out. My friends over there and they're just kicking stuff off and it's like growth hacking. There's so many people that are just curious, like a, what does it mean? How do I do it? There's just so many questions, I think, around that topic, unless you've dove into it. But you're the man, so that's why we're here. We're chatting.

Let's get it good.

But you're more than just growth hacking. You know, we were just chatting right before this about your philosophy and I'd love to start here. Like, let's bring up the book that you were just sharing with me and this philosophy of saying yes.

So the book is called Surely you're joking, Mr. Fenman, which is written by Dr. Richard Fenman, who worked on the atom bomb with Oppenheimer. And he's got the. The most amazing story of life. And you'd think, like somebody who's an astrophysicist would be a super boring person and this. Or, you know, and this guy, his whole life was all about trying things out, right? And he had this just natural curiosity about things, just as many scientists do, and he didn't want to just try them out, he actually wanted to get good at those things. But the first step was, does this even work for me? And people would suggest things to him and he would. And he'd have these interests which were outside of science as well, and he'd just try them out. And he got really good at many, many things, including he started to learn about biology and got so good at it, he gave a lecture in which Einstein was in the Audience like, yeah, crazy stuff, right? But the entire philosophy came down to, you know, hey, try anything once, right? What do you have to lose? And that what do you have to lose Bit was what resonated most with me, because at worst, you find out it doesn't work for you, which is learning. And I think so many of us, you know, go through life without really knowing what we really want to do, what our purpose is, what's the thing that gives us life every day. And we just get stuck in these things without actively thinking about it. And we're just sort of going with the flow and it's comfortable, that sort of thing.

Right? And so this whole what do you have to lose? Bit was great because, hey, now it's pointing you in another direction, which is radically different from what you know and what you're used to. And you try that other thing out, and who knows? Maybe that thing will work for you. And, you know.

We weren't chatting about this when we were chatting earlier, but the very reason you and I are talking right now is because. And I remember the date, because that was the date my life changed was on September 30, 2013. Sean Ellis, the godfather of growth hacking, tweeted just once, hey, launching this thing called Growth hackers, Come check it out, right? And of all the tweets I could have seen that day, I clicked on that one, found out it was a community of growth people. Trying to understand what this whole growth hacking thing is. How do you do it, what's new, all of that longer story, we can get into it later, but two years later, I'm the most active member on the community. Get asked by Sean to run the community that I was a part of, get to work with him, get the opportunity to write the book, get the opportunity to work with startups, get to talk at conferences. Come November, I'm at a conference, I meet somebody who says, I'm having a dinner. There's somebody there I know you want to. You're gonna love to meet. And I say, sure. I walk up to this dinner, I meet Kenan, who you referenced Keenan, and I hit it off. He's like, there's somebody you have to talk to.

There's that email to you, bada bing, bada boom.

We're here because I clicked on that tweet. I said yes to everything and just tried it out, following the philosophy in that book. And that's the reason we're having this chat.

Oh, I love it, man. And that it's the philosophy of yes and I love it because it's. And I think this is part of your growth hacking philosophy when you're working with startups as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but product market fit is knowing the people and like really finding your place within. Obviously the thing you're bringing out to the world and finding your people out there and really probably don't know until you start trying things, throwing things at the wall and, you know, iterating. Iterating, testing like crazy and learning.

That's all it is, right? And again, this is full credit to Sean for inculcating this mindset as well. His whole thing was you got a test and you got to test fast and learn fast because that is really the only growth hack there is. Right? And you know this, and I'm sure some of your audience knows this. Tactics will run out and strategies are fine and campaigns, yes, all of that is great. But at the end of the day, if you don't learn faster about what works for your customers than your competition, you're going to lose. And so everything else people can copy, people can buy, people can replicate. But what they cannot replicate is what you have learned faster than them. Because if they try to copy you, they'll always be two steps behind because they can only see what's in front of them. And they don't know what you already know, which is what keeps you ahead of everybody else. And even if people come and steal your customers and your users, they'll find out very quickly, oh, these people aren't quite in sync with me like you were, and they'll come back. Yeah, that's really all it is, is how do you construct this company wide, however big or small your company is, culture of really rapidly iterating, testing and learning about what works so you can get pointed in the right direction. Right. And you know where you find your yes faster and the customers find their yes faster for you.

I think that's a great way to put it, is find your yes faster because yes builds momentum and it builds, yeah, it builds like this flywheel effect. I feel like there is this maybe.

Misconception with some people that, oh, this growth hacking thing, it's this thing these Silicon Valley startups do. And yes, it is something they do, but the fundamental principles apply across the board. And I've literally had these conversations with somebody, other people as well about, yeah, you can apply to growing your own brand because.

The questions are exactly the same whether you're a company of Google size, some small startup, one person, because all of us are trying to answer a similar universe of questions. It's just which question we focus on is different based on the stage and state we're in. Right? But the questions are all similar in that we're all trying to find people to find out about us.

If they find out about us, we're all trying to give them a great first experience with us. If they have a great first experience with us, we'd want them to come back and have more of the goodness with us. If they come back and really love us, maybe we can start to make a living off that, right? So how do. And if that starts to happen, you know, that's a signal that they really like us. Maybe they'll tell others about how much they love us and that they should try us out too.

The universe of questions, that's interesting. I like that. And I know asking questions always opens up next steps, you know, so when you're. Let's dive into the universe of questions.

So again, so let's use the example you used. Somebody's trying to grow their personal brand, right? And the first thing part of growing a personal band is like finding people who resonate with the kinds of things you're about. So that means, you know, you could be testing a lot of things about, hey, what are even things I love talking about and how should I talk about them? Where should I talk about them? What formats might I use? Right? Just within that much, there's a bunch of assumptions that you can put hypotheses to that says, hey, if I talk about growth as growth, hacking for seed state, startups on Twitter, using videos, that's like, you know, a set of hypotheses that you can string together and say, hey, does this kind of thing work? Or is it. Is Twitter the wrong thing? Is it LinkedIn? Is it video? Is it text? Should I even be talking about growth using fancy words? Or should I dumb it down to something, you know, more like, these are universal questions everybody has to answer, right? And so there's that first step of, you know, how do I get people to resonate with me and find out about me and want to come check me out once they've happened, right? What's. What's that thing that makes the light bulb go off in their brains? Like, oh, my God, this is the thing I need. I've been missing this thing, I've wanted it, I now see it in front of me, right? And so that thing may be a call to action, to sign up for something, try something out. Hey, get a free email Course. Come check out my YouTube channel. Come check out my podcast, right? And it's not just come check out my podcast here. Come check out my podcast, my very best podcast. And maybe it's not even that. Maybe, hey, check out this 30 seconds, which is the best 30 seconds ever of my seven years of podcasting, which will change your life. And that's the thing that says, oh my God, is this the kind of thing they're about? Like, I gotta get in on this like right now, right? So there's this. So getting people to find out about you is one thing, but then the light bulb going off is sort of the next thing you want to think about as what's going to make that happen for people. And if that happens, that you, it's, it's almost like you want to open up the sort of channel of thirst, right? It's like, give me more, give me more of the goodness. Yes, right. I need more of this. Right? And so, okay, it's like, hey, you liked this. You know, here's another minute worth, here's another full on episode here. Here's an extended discussion. Here's something else these people have done that relates to this sort of thing, but something that, you know, opens the channel for repeat value delivery for people, right? So it's like, how do I get you to come back? Because it's on a scale of effort, it's much easier to get somebody to come one time to check you out than it is to get them to come back.

That's true.

And again, the best example I've thought of this and raising my hand preemptively guilty of this is how many apps have we downloaded that we opened once and never opened again?

Too many. Yeah, very guilty here.

Might even have paid for some of these. So this is hard stuff, right? How do you get people to come back is an existential question. Because all growth relies on people coming back and getting the goodness again and again. Because only if that happens does that start to open out the opportunity. So how do you deepen this relationship to a point? And if you're thinking about it as a business right now, all right, is there a way to monetize this in some way? And I don't want to use monetize as this ugly word for to be transactional. Right? But you know, if you're in business, you're in it for a living, right? But the purpose of business, and I think this is an under talked part about growth, is making money. Yes. Businesses are clearly all about making money, right? But you only make money when you deliver value consistently. And that's what true sustainable growth is about.

Lifetime value. Yeah, it goes up.

There has to be. You have to have some thought about, okay, if I'm bringing people back, like, at some point, what is that trigger that says, okay, there's now so much value, I have to start paying for this thing to get even more of it. And that in itself is a great signal. As people are continually paying you, I think you can safely make an assumption that they really like you. You're important part of their existence, professional or personal.

In which case, if they're really happy with you and like you, they should have no problem telling other people about, hey, look at this awesome thing I found that's making me a rock star. And so this is ladder of events that growth is dependent on, which starts with, okay, let's. Yes, let's get people to find out about you. How do we do that? Okay, they found out about us. Can we give them that awesome first experience that makes them realize that you are what they need? And for some people, they may see that and say, not for me. And that's fine. That's the purpose you're not supposed to be for everybody. So how do you get them to find out about you? How do you get them to the light bulb to go off about you, that you're the thing they need? And then how do you build the habit for yourself, for them to keep coming back and getting more of that value? And if that happens, how do you get them to then start paying you? And if that's happening, then how do you get them to talk about you with others? So that that loop and that flywheel that we talk about, that's just. It restarts again with all of these new people that show up. And again, you can apply this construct to literally any size of business, any type business.

It makes perfect sense because when you have this framing, like what you just said, what, that's five steps or so right there. So it's pretty much like, figure out what's the place, where are they hanging out and what's that medium, the modality, you get to show up and express whatever it is you got. And then, yeah, you're finding them where they're at. You're not trying to go upstream. And then you're essentially getting them to take some kind of action with you initially, where it's that light bulb moment, like you said, it's like, whoa, okay, boom. And then give them a little bit more, you know, it's like, all right, now you get them. Maybe you have them join an email list or something like that, or follow you. And it's like, yeah, you feed them more. A deeper conversation, deeper piece of value. And I love the fact, yeah, monetizing every business, it's. That transaction is just. It's almost like a validation of the business. Like, we're going the right direction, we're going the right way. There's more value here, I think Naval Ravikant, I forget his quote, but that's essentially how he frames money and revenue to a business is like, yeah, it's a lifeblood, but it's like, you're doing the right thing. Keep going. And then, yeah, bring him back. It's like, that's probably the piece that most people maybe struggle with is like, what's the. Maybe it's referrals. What's that word of mouth that, like you said, the flywheel that causes this thing, that now. Or network effect even. Right. Like, it causes more of this thing. Let's. Let's amplify this. Three more people. Each person that comes in, you know, brings an extra, let's say, whatever number of people in the door and all of these things.

Like, if it sounds simple. And I don't want to say that everything is as simple as it sounds, but I think it's just. It's the framing to make it sort of clear as to where do you think your biggest problem is? Right. Because depending on where it is, because you may have no problem getting people to you, but they just may not be taking that next step. So maybe that's where you need to focus. Or they may. The light bulb may go off, but they're just not coming back. Or they're coming back, but you haven't figured out how to make them pay and what you want to make them pay for.

And it's not always easy. Sometimes you get lucky, but most of us don't. And it's just. That's the point where you say, okay, this is the biggest choke point. And that's what I need to focus on, because if I can unlock that piece, then everything downstream gets easier from there as well. Right. And that's really what a lot of this entire growth methodology is focused on, is understanding, you know, what the math looks like of people flowing through this journey with you and where are they getting blocked and zooming in to understand more. But why might that be happening? And that may mean conversations with people, as many conversations with people who've actually gone through to understand, hey, why did you go through and maybe talking to people who didn't like what was in your way and what was different there? And that can help you put together some smarter hypotheses about okay, I think these kind of people are not seeing X and I need to do something differently to make them see X. So let me, you know, try that out as a little bit of a test to see if that helps move the needle at all. Right. And that's the entire process over and over till you see the needle move. And you know, it's that entire thing of, you know, trying to get to your. Yes, you'll get a lot of no, no, doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work kind of works. Oh, great, there's a signal there. Let me, let me do more of that. Like, oh, it kind of works only till here. Fine. Let me try, go back, let me try something else. No, no, no, no. Oh, yes. Oh, there's something else. Let me try that. Right. And that's where the whole philosophy of, you know, you just got to rapidly get this learning loop going.

And I'm assuming you probably start, I guess everyone starts more or less at the top of that, right? Or is there, because there's different ways I would think to approach this potentially this learning loop.

So. Yes. So let's take a giant step back, back to when should you do this growth hacking stuff that determines a lot of where you start. Right. And so if we use the common startup sort of jargon, you have pre product market fit startups and you have post product market fit startups. Right. And the pre product market fit startups who still haven't figured out sort of if there's something, if there's a there there, the process they would follow is exactly the same as what a post product market fit startup would do in terms of there's still a lot of rapid lear learning about what works and what doesn't work. The big difference is that because you have very little information pre product market fit, because there's so many unknowns, you have to open out your surface area of learning into everything.

I almost like to think of them as, think of it as two inverted triangles sitting on top of each other.

Okay.

So there's one upside down triangle and that's the pre product market fit startup where there's a lot of things to be tried out to understand to getting to pre product market fit is the bottom of that triangle because that's the thing that works. Right? And you're trying to find your way to the. To. That's the thing that's validated this entire thing. Right. And once. And a lot of that is a function of finding people, trying to understand what patterns are amongst people and needs and pains to narrow it down to a very discrete set of characteristics of people and problems that match to say, yeah, you know, this is like, people can't live without this thing. These kinds of people can't live without this problem being solved this way. Right. And that's what you're trying to get to. But if you do that, right, that is when you're ready to grow. And this is a big mistake, I think a lot of startups make is they try to grow.

Before they figured out what this. What the thing they're trying to even grow is. And so that's what leads to a lot of this fuzziness, wasted money, wasted time, frustration. Right. Because you don't know anything. Or you think you know some things, but it's not enough.

Or your ego might be getting in the way, your perceptions of something, how it should be.

Yeah. Or, you know, or some influencer said something, you read something. Oh, TikTok is where it's at, like, whatever. Right. And because that may or may not apply to you, you don't know. It's not that silver bullet for you. And, you know, spoiler alert, there are no silver bullets for anything.

Thanks for saying that.

It's only when you get to product market fit and you found that one thing, that's the other triangle at the bottom. Now you're taking the one thing and exploding it out. It's like, how many of these people can I now find anywhere and everywhere.

Right? So it's always. Which is why I like to think of inverted triangles. You're getting to the one thing. You're just trying to find the one thing. Now you're trying to explode the one thing out to a massive audience. Right? And that's the growth play. Right. And that's when you want to try out. Oh, I want to try TikTok. I want to try podcasting. I'm going to. Where are all the places I can find people like this? Because now I know how to talk about the problem. I know how to talk about, you know, the promised land of if that problem is solved, I know who I'm going after.

Right. I know how to describe the primary value of everything. So now I just need to find where all. Do all of these people exist in the world? Right. And so to your point, that may be the first thing I do that. I have to test across the how do I get people to show up? Or you may be in a situation where, oh my God, God, you know, I somehow managed to get a part. I already have a podcast on the HubSpot network like you do, right? And it's working. It's already working like gangbusters for me. I'm just gonna double the heck down on this thing. And so the problem may not be finding people at all because they're already pouring in and it just may be, okay, how do I make them take that next step? How do I truly blow their minds like the first time these people encounter me? And maybe that's where the problem is. And that generally is the place where I found for a lot of post product market fit startups. You know, it's this, you know, having them understand that when you got to product market fit, all you really did and all you validated was that I have a problem worth solving and I have value. What you have not yet discovered is the best way to deliver that value. And that's where that's the beginning of all of this growth stuff. And the best way to understand how to deliver that value is starts with now. How do I give them an awesome first experience? How do I make that to be so personal, so relevant to them that they go, oh my God, I just have to have more of this thing? And that's what sets up this. You know, the steps for them to come back and say, oh no, I just need more of this stuff. It's only when you can solve for that. You know, I can predictably get a certain percentage of people who look like this, who behave like this through that amazing first experience. Can I have some validation of, okay, there's a certain percentage that will get through and keep engaging? So now I have some mathematical validation that says if I put hundred people through this experience, 20 people will stay.

Now I can do some back math over, okay, now I want to focus on a particular channel, I want to do mobile podcasting, I want to do Facebook ads, I want to do TikTok. Great. Now I can start to better do the math behind, okay, what is that going to cost?

Because time is also money. So whether you're actually paying for it in one way or the other. But you can better do the math of, okay, if I spend this amount of time and money, maybe I can get 1,000 people through. And I know that if I get 1,000 of these kinds of people through, I can use my past experience of okay, 20% of these people reliably get through this experience. Right. Is that 20% going to be enough for me to, you know, take a stab at, to ask them to pay? And if I do, how many of those 20%, you know, will even pay? Is it 10%? And okay, if it's 10% and I need to make a thousand dollars by the end of the year, right. And I've got Now let's say 100 people, okay. The math is pretty easy. I need to get them, you know, to pay me 10 bucks and then I can make thousand, you know, at least a thousand bucks, if not more. Out of each of these people you.

Have a benchmark at least established that you can build from.

Correct. And most people don't build that and they go straight to the product market.

Fit growth. Right?

Let's do it's, you know, everything everywhere, all at once kind of thing happens. But you haven't done that setting the stage for sustainable growth piece for yourself. And so you don't quite know what to expect when people get through that first experience of yours and what that will mean for your business in terms of retention, in terms of monetization and anything else that comes after. Right. And so it's that next step piece, which I find is where most early startups should focus on. Many don't. But that setting the stage to really go full hog is a super critical pre step before you do everything else. Like 80 to 90% of startups fail. Like why do they fail? It's because they built something nobody wants. Like they, or they built a nice to have. Right. And the best example I, you know, I've come across of nice to haves versus must haves was when we all got locked down during COVID You know, the one thing that became a must have during COVID toilet paper. You didn't think of it as an essential. No, you decided it was just one of those things. And so, and a lot of other things people just said, nope, not gonna do those things, doesn't matter. So context matters a lot in each of our situations. What is important is dependent on what else is happening and what's important to you at this point in time. Right. And so this whole idea of must haveness is the key to product market fit. And, and a lot of startups don't even get to really strong product market fit. One of my favorite examples with early founders is to ask them, imagine you have a pen in your hand and it fell into a toilet with some really nasty stuff in it. Would you put your Hand in to pick out that pen.

A lot of them say no. Some say, yeah, I might. I'm like, okay, now imagine Your brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max also fell into that same toilet, right? Which one are you getting first? And I think distasteful as the image might be to some people, I think you want to be the kind of product that people will put their hand in a nasty toilet for because you are so critical to them.

That's a great analogy. It's memorable. And you're right, it's. You're not thinking about anything else other than the thing in front of you that they, whatever the agenda is, like the thing you just gotta get, gotta do, gotta have your hands on literally in that sense. It's like gotta get your hands on this thing.

Right?

Wow.

And people will jump through hoops for stuff that is super critical to them. And I think this is also sort of a key point that I think a lot of people struggle with. They think they need all of this, oh, it's gotta be look pretty and fancy UX and you know, all of this stuff. Like yes, it's important, but it's not as important as actually solving the problem.

And for a lot of people, if you have really strong product market fit and a product that's worth growable.

You have to have something that they are willing to put up with a lot of nonsense for because their status quo, which is they're stuck at zero because they can't do this thing they really want to do is untenable. And you don't have to go from zero to hundred with all of the fancy bells and whistles, you can go from 0 to 10. And for the right kind of people who have this desire for your thing, 10, mathematically everybody will agree is better than zero. Yes, right. And you will take it because that's how bad the problem is for you.

And if you're at a zero, you're already light years ahead of the competition or the market in general.

And you can get from 10 to 100 iteratively, but you don't have to get out the gate with that. You want to solve enough of what's really bad and what's not working and then learn more about what does the rest of the 90 look like. And that's all the fancy growth stuff you hear about is that's that piece.

It's almost like the. Yeah, the growth is. It's obviously not downplaying at all, but that's like the sexy piece that people just want to jump into. Right.

100%.

Right.

Because who doesn't like to have a TechCrunch article that says 1 million users, you know, in 30 days, you know, fastest growing app ever. You know that. You know, your ego loves this stuff, right? You want to send that to your family and your friends. You want to post that on LinkedIn. So honored to be featured in this TechCrunch article.

I made it.

It's like, no, no.

And that's where, I mean, we're all shooting. Not all of us, but like, a lot of people shoot themselves in the foot. Like you said, what, 80, 90% of startups fail. And that probably extends to businesses in general, for the most part. I mean, maybe even businesses, I don't know what the stat is. They probably, you know, small businesses fail, probably even more often because they're probably not backed by advisors or people that are hopefully steering them in the right direction. Hey, I just want to pause this episode really fast and shout out a podcast that's Also on the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. This one's a podcast that's hosted by someone I followed for years. The name is Donald Miller. His whole story, brand, book, and all the different stuff online. He hosts the podcast called Business Made Simple. The premise is to basically take the mystery out of growing your business. And he recently had on. One of the other guys I follow is Alex Hermosi. And right at the beginning of the year, they're talking about facing uncertainty in your business. And Alex and Donald, they talk about different ways, four different ways to basically shore up your business, to. To ride the uncertain times that inherently are the ones that we're living in in 2024. So make sure to go check that out. Go listen to Business Made simple, that episode with Alex Hormozi, but also the other ones, wherever you get your podcast. If you're looking to unlock more income and freedom, then I want to tell you about Kartra. It's the ultimate all in one business platform for online success. Now, with Kartra, you can create stunning pages, funnels, automate your marketing, and even launch online courses. There's a ton more. It's all in one place and it's one affordable price. So Kartra has every tool you need to scale. It's very simple to use. Now, right now, you can get started for a free 30 day trial. Plus you could take off 20% off your first payment when you go and visit www.hustleandflight flowchart.com Kartra Again, that is hustleandflowchart.com K-A-R-T-R A I'm glad you brought.

Up small businesses because you know what I think, because small businesses, to the point you were making earlier, are not sexy, right? But there are a lot of things to learn from small businesses because they are so small, they're not backed by founders, advisors. All they have is, is all they have, right?

Could be one person by themselves.

And so, you know, there is a lot of true grit with people who own small businesses to just make it happen every day and figure it out. And these may not be your, you know, exponentially growing 10% week over week type businesses, but these are steady, sustainable businesses, some of which have been going on for generations. And there's a lot to learn from. Like how did you take advantage of whatever little resource you had? How did you make that work for yourself? That is something founders can learn, right about. How do you really be scrappy given limited resource? Getting venture funding is not the answer to everything.

Yes, I've heard that. I've been there too for a couple projects.

I think it's that mindset of, you know, this is the reality of the situation. If I don't figure it out in the next five months, it's game over, right? How do I make this happen, right? With me? And I think a lot of that has to do with, you know.

Learning really fast, for sure, right? But I think it also has a lot to do with, you know, just belief, you know, and self confidence. And then people don't talk a lot about that because it feels really squishy and, you know, soft skilly to talk about that sort of stuff, right? But I think it also has to do with, you know, I think a level of maybe even shamelessness that you've got to develop, right? And say, you know, what if I don't make it happen and I don't have that uncomfortable conversation, you know, or I just don't go tap that stranger on the shoulder. It's like, you know, nobody's out there looking out for you. Like, it's all you. There's a lot of these things we can learn from small businesses, you know, that I think just get overlooked because it's so easy, like you said, to get caught up in the shiny things. Oh, look at, look at our growth rate, look at our ltv, look at our number of signups, look at our downloads, look at our funding.

It's like, yeah, right, so much noise, right? Like the older business, like, I genuinely respect the Previous generations of business owners, because they didn't have the freaking noise. They had their own version of it. But let's be honest, it was probably just a handful of people. Maybe they had a mastermind, maybe like, you know, thinking we're a rich style, but it's a few friends, you know, coming together. But at the end of the day, yeah, now each of us have multiple platforms on this thing, on our phones, dinging everything, and it's just noise. And that takes us. That. That puts us. It's like, okay, what's the comparing game like now? That's happening all over the place. And you don't know what's like, to your point earlier, you don't know what they're thinking, what their roadmap is, where they're headed. All you're doing is kind of looking like, why not me?

And something you said is really important, right? It's because of all of this noise. What tends to happen is that makes you lose two things, focus and priority. And that is the key to growth, right? Because for almost every business, right, if you go back to that, those five universal questions somewhere in there, right, is only if you focus deep within that place will you find your answer. Which means you have to have intense focus and zoom in on that problem. Only because that is your choke point. And if you don't solve that, it's game over. You can do all these other TikTok podcasts, blah, blah, blah. You can do all that. It's not going to work because that's not going to move the needle as much as that one thing, right? And so it requires a very different mindset, not only of founders, but of teams. And which also means you have this big culture that allows for all of these other fires to burn. They don't. Yes, they're there. We agree they're there, but they don't matter. What matters is the thing. And if all of us every day are not doing things that help us either move the needle on the thing or learn more about how to move the needle on that thing, we are all working on the wrong thing. Even within there, if we don't have this very explicit understanding of not only are we working on this thing, of all the things we could be doing to impact this thing, are we actually doing the most impactful thing today, right now, every hour, every minute, to move the needle on that thing?

Because that is how companies grow.

Is when everybody is focused on the thing and doing in their individual roles the most impactful thing for that thing. That's how speed and momentum happens, how.

Do we track that? Like, Is that a KPI? Right. It's one or maybe a handful of KPIs. I would assume a metric that we can now measure change up or down.

Absolutely. And so which is why for a lot of these growth teams, so they'll have these focus area metrics or objective metrics and they'll say, hey, number has to move from X to Y in Z days. And that's all we're trying to do today and for this month and for the next quarter. I think it's fair to say, if you ask the leaders or the CEOs of this company, do you actually have confidence that everybody in your company is actually focused on that thing and is doing the most impactful thing in their role to move that thing? I don't think you will get a majority of answers that say, yeah, I'm completely confident that that's what's happening.

Yeah, because we're dealing with humans again and like we talked about, everyone's getting noise, distracted, ego's in the way. So it's this management of or it's, it's, it's a coming together around a shared vision and a goal. It seems like, you know, in this thing it's, it can't be flying blind, assuming especially working remote, as most people are now. It's like needs to be a coming together around the metrics, around the mission, the vision.

Totally right. And so this is sort of, you know, I think in a very underrated part of all of this fancy growth stuff you hear about. In fact, if you go back, anybody in your audience and even you, if you just think back, think about everything you've ever read about growth, it almost always has something to do with a process. It has something to do with a specific tactic, it has something to do with a channel. Something like that is the majority of what you will read. But you know, the tactics are the tactics and the process is the process. Like there's no secrets here, right? What is the secret sauce are the people that will execute on the process and that will do the tactics. Right. And why they will do all the things they will do. And so there's this whole people part of growth which I think is very underrated and not talked about as much because again, people, for whatever reason don't have.

A more objective way of talking about people, a more data driven way of talking about people as they would about AB testing or conversion rates or KPIs. Those are solid things people can focus on. But when you say this, people think, culture think. Oh, no, no, I don't know.

That just feels very qualitative.

Yeah, but it doesn't have to be. Right. You can and should be taking as rigorous an approach to building out the team that will execute on growth as you do on the processes that you execute on for growth.

On the people side, like what are some of the fundamental pillars that you would, or principles, I guess you would guide founders on? Or even just someone who has a small business and a small little team.

Talk about it through the lens of a cliche for startups, let's say.

In fact, there was this article Paul Graham wrote really early back called Startups Equal Growth. That's a very famous article worth reading. But what's implicit in there is it's actually about speed. Growth is a function of speed. There are certain kinds of people who are naturally attuned to moving faster and some who like to reflect and take a little bit of time. There's nothing wrong. We're all good in our own context.

But in a startup context, speed is paramount. And so I think it's incumbent on founders to stack their team with more of the kinds of people that are naturally attuned to moving faster and being slight rule breakers.

The yes people, right?

Yeah. Like just gonna go ahead and make it happen kind of people. I'm sure if anybody listening in, you, you, you think about people in your orbit, you, you, you can pick off 4, 5, 6 people already in your mind, you're like, oh yeah, that person's just like that.

I'm, I'm one of them. And, and something you can do is take the Colby assessment, K O L B E, and you have a fast action taker. Yeah, I'm one of those. Less of a lesser on the fact finding because like, to your point, the fact finder, it's like there's a balance that's probably more of a COO or someone like that.

Totally. Exactly. Right. So my favorite one is the predictive index, behavioral assessment. Same thing. Right. But I think it allows you to get a much better objective insight into sort of how people operate in environments where there's a lot of uncertainty. And you can ask people, you don't even need to take assessments and stuff, just ask people. Tell me about a time you were in an environment with low certainty and explain, like, walk me through that situation, how did you respond? Right. And that will tell you a lot about how people behave. Right. I mean, talk to them about, hey, were you ever in a situation where you had to challenge the status quo. Tell me about when you broke the rules. Tell me about, you know, when Covid hit and all the rules and everything you knew as true was not true the next day. How do you respond when things change on a dime? Right. So I think you can ask questions like these as well, which are good proxies to help you understand how do people operate in these kinds of environments where a lot of people would get whiplash, you know, a lot of people would say, oh no, I need more information or I'm not comfortable. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. You're just a better fit in a slightly different context, maybe in a later context. Right. And that's fine, but that's not what an early stage company needs.

Oh, that's great, man. Because the people aspect, and I see it more and more, you know, I'm assembling teams to, to do some rapid development right now. And it's like, it's very clear, like when you have fast activators, you need to get moving, but there's a nice balance on the other side and there's a whole approach and a time and place, you know, and like you said, it's, it's probably even freeing for someone who hasn't thought about themselves in this context, you know, if you're trying to drive it all yourself, like, well, maybe that's when you need a partner, you know, who's more fast activator if you're a little bit more fact finder.

Right. And this is why, you know, when I hear all these stories of people getting let go from early stage startups, you know, I am almost convinced that it wasn't as much, you know, this you'll hear, you know, in back channels, oh, they just weren't performing well or they were. I'm like, no, that was just a symptom of them not being the right fit for your, for that role at that stage. They would have been great if they were at a slightly different company at a slightly different stage. I don't think it's as much the fault of the person that was let go as much as it is the fault of the hiring team for not being more intentional about who they hired and having a better understanding of the kind of people they needed.

Fair. Yeah, I think it lets a lot of people off the hook too, because I know of other people and I saw, I think, a recent tweet of yours too, talking about there's a lot of people getting let go and growth positions especially, you know, that, that Is a role that happens a lot. And yeah, I mean, but startups in general, obviously just the nature of a startup. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of turnover or obviously the whole thing can just go down. Yeah, it's. Yeah. I think this can free up a lot of people mentally in terms of like, you know, if you're running a team or even yourself if you find yourself in that position to start even giving yourself these questions to understand how you operate.

Totally. And again, no shame in, you know, if you understand that, you know. Okay, I'm actually not right for startups. I'm okay at a 10,000 person company that likes to be more deliberate, that moves much store, that is way more process oriented, likes to dot every I and T. Awesome. You found the fit for you. Right? Like double down on that.

I love it, man. Well, Anuj, like I want to as we like wrapped it and like we could tie a bow around this. I want to talk about like you because you, I mean talk about what science. Like you did a lot of this. Getting into this. I'm curious what even got you into the growth space and what was like your light bulb moment.

I had this, you know, mad moment where I thought I was going to start up as well. And caught up by all of these articles I was reading in Fast Company and TechCrunch, I'm like, hey, looks like starting up is the quick path to riches. Like I'm going to do this as well. All right. And I'm somebody who has degrees in chemistry and biochemistry. I knew jack about the startup world. I knew there was this thing called marketing and this thing called sales, you know, but not really much beyond that. I, you know, and so but started to learn about these things and realized, oh, this marketing thing is important, you know, I guess that's how it's not just ads, it's how people find out about you. Amazing. And this was like 2012ish. And you have all of these listicles of top 50 people to follow on Twitter sort of thing. And that's how I started following people like Sean and that's how I clicked on that tweet. And so it's been these sort of just serendipitous sequences of events that leaned in on a need that I had initially of just wanting to learn more.

Right. And as a consequence of just learning more even. And I think people, I think underestimate the impact of just focusing because all I did and this happened organically for the next year. Like the growth hackers website was the first thing I would see every day. And I read every article that would show up and read every conversation that was happening to the point where, as somebody who knew nothing about growth, could connect the dots between completely different concepts that people who weren't spending that time focusing could not, even though they had more experience than me.

You're immersing, merging yourself into it. Yeah. And I did the same for a long time, years back when I first. When Growth Hackers came on my radar too.

Yeah. So I would do that. So if anybody, if you ever read those weekly emails from Growth Hackers, I curated those emails. Right. Because. And I had to read like three to 400 articles that showed up every week and conversations that happened every week to curate it down into the top 10 of the week. And so again, I just had to read a lot of stuff. But it was only through all that reading that I understood that this knowledge is really theoretical. But I was adding so much value back to the community that Sean felt like I was almost a quasi member of the team. And after two years, it just got stupid. And it's like, why don't you just join the team? Like, we already think you're part of us. Like, people in the community thought I was on the team. But I think that was the key lesson is you got to get your hands dirty. Which is also part of the reason, after a few stints post Growth Hackers.

I decided to take a slightly different approach and do stints at companies and try a hand at consulting. Because I wanted to test out whether all of the principles I'd learned and immersed myself in while I was at growth hackers for 4ish years, do they hold true in other contexts? Like, where does this fall apart? And yes, there are some places it does fall apart, but that was good learning for me. I mean, there were a lot of things I had held dear to me that, you know, I had to rethink, which is, again, it's growth.

You had the theory, but now you're applying it. Right.

You know, I have to give full credit to Sean because I was really scared when he first offered me the role. And my thing to him was like, look, you do know I'm somebody who has a science background, right? I know nothing about this world.

And you're like, Mr. Growth Hacking. This is scary for somebody like me who's not from this world. And his key insight was that he would rather hire somebody with a science background, you know, than somebody with an MBA or a traditional marketing background. Because all growth is. Is Applying the scientific method to product and marketing. And he was like, so you already know this. He's like, if there's one thing a person with a science background comes from, right? And with is an experimental mindset and saying, and that's what I need more than anything else, right? And he's like, the second thing I need is that when you run experiments in a lab, you actually take a very holistic view of the environment you're running the experiment in. So you're not just thinking about it as a point thing. You're thinking about it where does. What's the context in which. In which it exists, which is very different from just throwing campaigns over the wall week over week and, you know, hoping for something to happen. And he's like, those are the two things I want is an experimental mindset and a holistic view of the system within which experiments are happening. And he's. I think I would hire people with science backgrounds any day, all day.

Makes sense. Yeah. You're taking this, like, what, this very quantitative approach, but it's. Yeah, like you said, holistic. That's a little bit more qualitative. But you're seeing like, where does this affect something down the line? It's all connected at the end of the day.

And the thing that struck me after that was that whether you come with a science background or not, all of us actually know this because we all went to school and went to chem lab, right? And we all did those experiments where we put one liquid into another liquid and the changed color.

And you know how those experiments went is you do it like one milliliter at a time and see, okay, oh, it changes between 5 and 6. Great. I'm going to redo it and see where exactly between 5 and 6, right? So you do it. 5.1, 5.2, 5.3. Great. It changed color. What are we doing with all of these growth experiments? Right? We're trying things out to see where is the signal? Literally, where is the color changing for us? And okay, there's the signal, right? And then we're doing more of it, right? Because now we're trying to find where's that 5.3. How do we, like, really grow that signal and optimize the signal, right? So all of us actually know how to do this growth stuff. We've just either forgotten we know it, or we're getting caught up in all this fancy language and jargon and thinking it's something different than this fundamental truth of the scientific method we learned in school all those Years back.

I mean, that's, it's great to hear and I love how you're putting the context in because we can get lost in all of the technicals, the tactics, the, oh, I'm not ready for this because I haven't tried. It's like, well, just understand theoretically where you, where you're at. And then also the fact is just, it's perspective, right? And then it's just applying the right thing and the right focus.

And literally my first experiment doc at Growth Hackers was the one I used in high school, right? The same one. You know, aim, hypothesis, materials, method, observations, results, conclusions, next steps. And I'm like, holy shit.

This actually works.

I do that for any growth experiment you do, literally.

So again, we can all do this. I think the only thing we want to keep in mind is that we just want to do this rapidly. Just accelerate your pace of learning. And the one question I've started to key in and on, off late for every team I'm working with is every Monday. Just ask yourself, are you smarter this week than you were last week? Because if the answer is no, you're learning too slow.

It's a good point. In an age right now with AI and so many abilities to rapidly learn and consume content and explain it like I'm five kind of thing. It's like you can take a very wide concept, dumb it down to whatever level that you want. And I don't say that in a negative way at all because I do it for myself all the time. And then you build up from there.

Smarter every week and you know, you will be ahead of the growth curve than everybody else.

And Anuj, I think we will be doing follow up session. I don't think I know. Maybe you'll be doing the host as well.

Any day. Any day.

I love what you're doing too. And so yeah, give us a couple of like breadcrumbs here where people can follow you along on some of these cool projects you're doing.

I'll give you an example of a company I'm working with right now. Sweet. It's a company called Hunt Club here in Boston. And this is a company that's working on making the relationships you have with people more actionable and provide more business value to by truly unlocking the potential in all of these relationships whose information is currently distributed across email and CRM and calendar and LinkedIn and Slack and all of these places. So you don't really know who you know and how well you know them and who you can actually reach out to for help. Right. And the.

It's the same sort of issue everywhere. It's like, where is that key thing that everything turns on that everybody can start to.

You know, understand how to take more control over their relationships? Because there's 10 things you can focus on. Like what is the thing? Is it just understanding who you know? Is it understanding more information about who you know? Is it understanding the depth of that relationship? Is it just being able to create lists of people.

That you can share out with other people? Because I'm sure you get asked all the time, hey, I'm hiring for a new marketing person. Like, do you know somebody in this place? Right. And I'm sure many of us have lists in airtable or sheets or something, or we'll send a quick email. But that's just a lot of. We're relying on some legacy info, not on what's current. So what we're even sharing may or may not be the right list. We hope we think. Right. And so there's all of these conversations about what's the right focus area and what's the point to start with before we can start to explode it out into the thing. But clearly no startup exists in a vacuum. Right. And so you have all these other competitors showing up. And I know everybody likes to say, don't think about the competition. Like, you know, think about your customers. Yes, right. But you can never not think about when you go talk to somebody, there's a possibility of the question of, so how are you different from those people? Why would I use you versus them? And so it's almost like this. 80, 20, yes, focus on the customer, but start to focus to understand how to talk well about yourself. And so this whole idea of the language of the user, I think is such a key concept of growth. Because if you can't articulate a problem or a solution the way somebody thinks about it, they will not understand that you are the thing for them.

Yeah, you want to get inside their minds. And so they understand, okay, this is the person for me.

And this is also one of those foundational pieces that gets sort of shunted off to the side or not given enough importance. So I think that's what I find myself doing a lot of with early companies is let's try and understand the language, the problem and how they describe it and how they describe themselves. Because people like them will describe and feel the problem a certain way. And if you can get those two pieces of information that allows you to find more people like them and give them the very same message. Which then makes more light bulbs go off, which makes them say, I want to try it, but. And then you can get the entire flywheel rolling.

That's right.

So no matter who I'm working with, and this has been true, like, I tried this out. I don't even work at this company anymore. I use their mugs. I worked at this DTC company. It's called Jamber. Best mugs ever. And everything else is stupid after this. But it's the same idea, right? Like, who would want something like this? Who would not think this handle is the funniest looking handle?

Oh, that is a cool handle. Yeah. I didn't even see that part of it.

Right.

So there's everything boils down to like, can you articulate it the way they think about it? Right. And have them describe themselves to you. And I promise that will unlock so much. It'll be like a cheat code. It'll almost feel like, like, really? That's all I got to do is ask them, hey, are you X kind of person? And here I have something that does blah, blah, blah, and be like, oh yeah, that's it. Like, what the hell? Like.

It'S like, how are you in my head? Yeah. And you're kind of. You could do this through like sales would be like pre framing and you know, really maybe using some of their language or. And understanding enough of it. So yeah, you're getting them to nod their heads to be like, okay, yes. And it's the more of the yeses. Right. You're getting the yeses faster because that's how we started this thing. So, hey, so leave us with where's the best one place or a handful of places people can go follow you? Reach out if they want to continue the conversation with you.

Totally. I'm on LinkedIn every day. I think I'm the only anujadiya on there. If there's others, I'm the better one.

The most active one and better.

Yeah, definitely, Definitely. Also on X, if people are still on there. But I still have faith.

Me too. I do. I'm holding out.

Totally, totally. So definitely on both of those places. Happy to nerd out. Reach out anytime. And I'll repeat what I said at the start. Like, I'm all about saying yes. I accept almost every LinkedIn invite other than the super spammy, obviously spammy ones.

I will engage in all sorts of conversations if we want to nerd out.

You never know where things go, so bring it.

Well, you're a wealth of knowledge and go Check out Growth Hacking for Dummies as well. I mean, I'm sure you'd recommend picking that up, so go find it on Amazon or wherever. I mean, pretty easy to find. So, Anuj, I appreciate you, man. You're a wealth of knowledge. You're a blast to hang out with and just. Just nerd out. So we'll do it again. Appreciate you so much, man.

Done. Thank you, man. This was. This was wonderful.

All right, all right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But, you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, and I will see you next time.