MBA1343 Must Read: Explosive Growth by Cliff Lerner

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Cliff Lerner started a dating startup, Snap Interactive and shares the ups and downs of his journey. Throughout the book he shares his growth strategies and tips and boy does he know a bit about growth. Having built an app with over a hundred million million users. Let me be totally honest, when I saw the title of this book, Explosive Growth, I really wasn't intrigued. I really wasn't thinking, oh, this is going to be an amazing book because it's quite a generic title. It's also a pretty bold promise but a few of my friends recommended the book, talked about the book on Twitter and I thought hey, let me give it a shot. Let me see if it's a must read and lo and behold, it is. And that's why I'm sharing its insights. In today's episode, I'll be sharing how Cliff was really struggling at the start, how he was about to lose everything and close for business until he put all his chips on the table for one idea that paid off big time, as well as how he achieved explosive growth and saw his stock price skyrocket 2000%. This is a compelling and inspiring story that I can't wait to share with you. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's must read Explosive Growth by Cliff Lerner is more of a biography or a story of Cliff's failures and successes and what he learned along the way. He actually shares growth strategies or tips along the way, so you'll hear like growth strategy number 46. And there are little insights, little hints or tips that you need to store in your head and make sure you can refer to them in the future or in the present. So it's not a straight up how to book. It's not going to show you how to have explosive growth, but he's going to share with you his story and how he did it in his business. This is not to say that this book is not practical. Like it can help you out. It can definitely help you out. It's definitely given me a lot of clarity into our business, how to move forward, especially if you're in a business and you feel like you've plateaued a bit when it comes to your user base or your revenue growth. He's been through all those stages and can help you navigate out of it. I can't share everything that this book reveals or talks about, but I'm going to share with you the overall takeaway as well as some really big insights. So Cliff takes us on his journey of starting Snap Interactive, which is basically the parent company of his business, which creates different apps. The main app he creates is a dating app called are you interested? But the first kind of takeaway I got is that it took a lot of iterations to get to are you interested? He actually created several different dating apps beforehand before he figured out how to create one that people actually like and want to use. One of the things he really emphasizes is that you need to be very clear about the problem you're solving for your customer. In his case, the problem he was trying to solve is that it was really hard to get a date quickly. In the dating apps that were available at the time, it would take maybe a week to actually Set up a date with somebody instead. He wanted you to be able to get a date for tonight, this evening. He actually shares the story, how he came up with the idea before he even started the company. He was working in an office, and two women that sat next to him were saleswomen. And the days they would have to take clients out for lunch, they would dress up and wear their favorite dresses. But sometimes those meetings fell through and never happened. So the women were kind of like, hey, we're all dressed up. Let's try to get a date for tonight, since we're already dressed up after work. He found out that it was really hard for them to do that with the current dating sites at the time. So he was like, this is ridiculous. How can two attractive women not have the tools, the abilities to get a date on the same day? And that's where his idea was born. And he says that every great business idea comes from solving a problem. Every. And this gets reiterated over and over and over in his story, in the actual book. And it's all about, if the pain is not painful enough, it's not worth solving. Some of us try to build products for pains that don't really exist in the minds of the customer or the user. So make sure whatever you're building, whatever you're offering your customers, you're solving a pain. And it's a pain that's strong enough to make people want relief to that pain and willing to pay for that pain or actually spend some time or some effort to relieve that pain. The other thing that Cliff is really good at, and he shares in the book, is what are the challenges your business has, in particular, your business. And his challenge as a dating app is getting enough signups, enough profiles, new profiles. Consistently, dating apps become old and stale if every time you visit it, week after week or month after month, it's just the same people. So he had to find a way to kind of really supercharge his growth so you can have more profiles on the app so more and more people would use it and continue to use it. It's a real big problem, if you think about it. Most products or apps don't have this problem, but dating apps do. Now, Cliff had the foresight to see Facebook up and coming. Facebook just came out to the public recently. They're starting to grow. They're not just available for college campuses. They're available to anybody with an email address. And he saw the power and the growth of Facebook and how fast they were adopting people. And he was like, that's a bullet train. I need to hitch a ride on that bullet train. Somehow he didn't fully understand how yet, but he recognized that there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people on Facebook. There's people that are spending a lot of time on Facebook. How do I utilize that to help my problem, to solve my problem in terms of getting more profiles and more people signing up to my app? He discovered he can create a Facebook app for his dating app, basically linking his website or his app to Facebook. That way it's easier for people to invite other friends that they have on Facebook already to the app and therefore exponentially growing his user base. Where can you solve your company's biggest problems or challenges? Are there companies that already have that solved that they can help you out through some sort of partnership or some sort of integration? Even if you're a mom and pop store, even if you are a doggie groomer, let's say, for example, you groom dogs for a living. Who has the volume of dog owners or customers like yours that you can hitch a ride on? How about pet food stores or dog breeders? Create some sort of partnership with them, some sort of mutual relationship, mutually beneficial relationship so that you can get their customers. You're non competitive. They don't groom dogs, pet stores, that is, or breeders. Nor do you do their actual expertise. So they're happy to make use of their audience, their existing customer base if they're going to get a kickback. Who has your audience, who has your customers already in some other way, how can you partner with them? Another insight is that Cliff shares that the app at the start made its money off ads. So people would sign up for free to are you interested? The dating app. And he would make money off ad revenue. The problem was is that ad revenue is not totally up to him. He's not in total control. He was working with another company that was selling the ads to the advertisers and paying him to put it on the app. That relationship fell through because of some unknown reason. They were not being paid the money they were owed. And he realized that moment that his whole business is contingent on this company paying him. One company. And he realized this is not going to work. We got to make sure that we diversify our revenue streams. We diversify the way we make money. So he encourages you to take a look at your business. How do you make money? You might make money through ads. You make money through memberships, through add ons, through services. He's saying offer as many as you can build one at a time, but offer them because they. If one for some reason fails, one of them doesn't do as well as the other. That is, you have a bad month, you can rely on other revenue streams, you diversify your portfolio, so to speak. He learned a big lesson there when he was not getting paid $90,000 for that last month of ad revenue and decided we need to diversify and started charging for memberships as a premium member. That way, if for any reason he doesn't get paid through ads, he still has other revenue coming in. They also had in app purchases that they launched virtual gifts that you could send to somebody that. That you may be interested in dating. Like a virtual bouquet of flowers that would cost, you know, 10 or $20, and the recipient would see how much you paid for that and be like, oh, that's really nice of them to do. That sounds cheesy, Sounds corny. It worked for him, and it diversified the revenue. But one of my favorite things that Cliff shares in the book are his regrets, the things that he would do differently if he had a chance to do things over. And he's very honest about this, which was surprising to me. He talks about some decisions he made, some things that he decided to do at different points in the business and his career that really weren't smart decisions. And he said, if I go back, I'd probably do it differently. But he says, I have to make my peace with the fact that I thought that was the best decision at the time. And I love this attitude of like, hey, you have to make a decision. So he made a decision, and at the time, he thought it was the best. Now, having grown older and wiser, he realized maybe they're not the best decisions. And by sharing that, he's helping other people. So it's not regret. It's more like, I'm sharing with you. Hey, I'm not perfect. These decisions I made in the past, they're not so great. I would have done them differently. And I love that candor and I love that honesty for the sake of the audience so the audience can learn and get better. He also talks about growing a fantastic team. After the company got a huge injection in valuation, they went from 14 employees to 50 in under a year. He talks about how you should only hire people you'd be happy to have a beer or drink with after work. There's no point in working with people you don't enjoy their company. And it's an interesting point because it talks about the company culture that you've built as the CEO, you don't have to love everybody, but you have to at least be able to tolerate their company and that says a lot about their ability to adapt and to be a team player. The other thing it says is that if you have players on your team right now that you wouldn't rehire, meaning you can go back in time and hire again, then you should fire them immediately. It's probably best for them as well, not just for you. And the team says it's one of the worst wastes of resources when you keep people that should not be on your team. And it's an interesting exercise. Looking at your team, who would you rehire? In a heartbeat? Yes, I would definitely rehire this person. They turned out to be amazing. How many people would be on the fence? How many people would be a hell no. He says firing is hard and it's difficult and it's not it's so fun, but it's better to be honest about it and just get it over with.

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That's a wrap up today's lesson. Explosive Growth is a great read. It's actually a very easy book to read. I actually listened to it on audible. Great narration, super fast, super interesting and I recommend you pick it up. There's so much he covers in this book. I couldn't get to today's episode, but I want to leave you with a couple more gems. 1. He talks about being prepared for success. Cliff has a lot of confidence and he had a lot of confidence in his app and his and himself and how successful he could be. One of the things he talked about is that when he became successful and his company was worth over $100 million, he was hypersensitive to how he acted in the office and made sure that nothing changed, the values and the priorities of the business were the same and that he projected that at work and people appreciated that and it helped his team. On the flip side, on his personal life, when he was dating and getting to know women because he was in the news and because he was well known for the value of his company. You would be unsure about why these women are interested in him. Was it for his wealth? He actually shares a story about a woman that he was interested in for some time that finally agreed to have a date with him. And on the date she bluntly asks him, hey, I heard that you're worth $100 million. Is that true? And he says, you know, on paper, technically, yes. Later in the date, she invites him back to her place, but he kindly refuses because he's totally turned off by the shallow question. And that experience can obviously make it hard to just be normal around people when they know you're quote, unquote successful or quote unquote rich. One of the things he talks about in the book as well is making sure that you are unique, that you still have a unique selling proposition throughout the lifespan of your business. Sometimes we start our company with a great unique selling proposition. We do something very, very well, better than the competition and we grow, grow, grow and we do great. But a few years down the road we forget there's competition and other companies sprout up and they do the same thing that you do and you forget to innovate and you forget to make sure you still have a usp. So he says, check in with your business. Make sure. And one of the best ways to make sure is to ask your customers or look at your reviews, any kind of customer reviews. See how they describe your company. What is the title of the review that's usually your unique selling proposition or the main reason why people use your product. That wraps up today's must read episode. Explosive Growth by Cliff Lerner. Highly recommend this book. Check it out. If you have a book recommendation that I have not covered on this show as a must read, let me know. Email me@omar00mba.net I'm always looking for great reads. Often I will have to read several books before I hit a must read. So if you have a recommendation, I'd love to hear it. If you love the $100 NBA show hit subscribe right now so you can make sure that when the next episode is available, tomorrow's episode, it is available right on your device. It's downloaded and ready so so you can listen immediately. You can also leave us an iTunes rating and review and let us know what you think. And of course share the show with your friends and family. It's the best way to give back and show your love for the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. My biggest takeaway from this book has to be the fact that Cliff failed so many times in his journey. He had so many lows and just a few highs really. But in the book you realize he learns through these failures. He figures out how to do things right. He iterates until he hits what is right before he actually gets to that point. He's not afraid to fail. He's not afraid to try things out and he figures out low cost ways to do that. Building side projects and small apps on the side to see is that something we should incorporate in our business. Failure is a rite of passage and it's a gateway to success. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care of.

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