In the last 12 months I've spoken to 1,500+ companies about their plans for remote work in 2021

Here are a few 'request for startup ideas' based on what I've heard

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍

⭐️ Personal Branding: The best companies in the world will empower individuals to create and grow their personal brands

Companies who elevate their people will dominate in talent attractions and retention

🤖 Personal RPA: Robotic process automation will transform work for individuals.

No-code tools that enable workers to build bots that automate menial parts of their roles will be huge

🎮 Gamify Work: Tools that help people remain more engaged and empower them with a deeper feeling of achievement as they make progress and complete tasks

Teams will be rewarded as they progress and contribute more frequently due to faster feedback loops

🧘‍♂️Health & Wellbeing: Worker burning out due to overworking is going to be a big problem of remote work

Companies are looking for products that help workers avoid this by taking care of themselves better & being more mindful

What's the simplest marketing you've done that's made the biggest impact?

3 email sequence
$20,000
1 week
A SUPER happy client

What did I do?

It's funny, I only changed one small thing

And my client had a face palm moment

But they knew that my "outsider's perspective" was what they needed

Here's what I did...

This client of mine was selling a high-ticket offer ($5,000 program)

They were having TERRIBLE click through rates on their emails

The product was super cool and their results were amazing

The emails didn't SUCK that bad

So I knew it was a strategy issue, not a copy thing...

These were the steps of the funnel:

Step 1: Email
Step 2: VSL
Step 3: Phone call
Step 4: Purchase

After digging in, this is the fatal mistake I found:

They were selling step 4 before they got to step 2

They used their emails to talk up the product before they ever got the prospect to the VSL

I took a few steps back

Revamped their emails to sell the click to the VSL

And all metrics went up 2x in just one week

We didn't continue working together so I don't know how much more money they made

But I know it's a lot based on the first week of data I received

SaaS Marketing: Getting your first 10 and 1000 paying customers

So you've identified a problem and built a SaaS product. What's next?

Finding customers of course!

Thread 👇

👉 What is SaaS marketing?

Marketing is the set of activities you perform or strategies you execute that help build awareness of the problem you solve and the solution you provide in the minds of your target audience.

Lol, that's a boring definition.

Marketing is when you tweet, when you post on LinkedIn, when you wear your company's branded t-shirt before going on a podcast or video, when you run Google or Facebook ads, or if you write an article answering the specific pain points and questions faced by your target audience.

In the context of SaaS marketing, what you need to understand deeply are

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Lifetime value (LTV)

If you are selling a $50/mo SaaS product, should you spend time or money equivalent to $300 to acquire 1 customer?

It depends on LTV:CAC ratio.

If your average customer stays with you for 1 year, then $300 is a perfectly fine CAC.

Marketing experts have figured out that having a 3:1 ratio of your LTV:CAC is perfect, but in the early days you just need to know whether you are spending less than you are earning.

1 - Why do I care about new customers when my industry obsesses with catering to best customers via omnichannel theory?

Good question!

It goes back almost 30 years.

2 - Ok, I was working at Lands' End in 1991. One of your Circulation Managers had a challenge. She had two segments of customers she mailed, and one she didn't. She knew how the mailed segments performed, but needed an estimate for the segment she didn't mail.

3 - Estimating segment performance for an un-mailed segment was easy ... I had done this work at the Garst Seed Company in the late 1980s. So I performed the exercise for her.

4 - And my results were accurate enough that I was asked to analyze other issues.

We had a division that mailed 2 catalogs in a quarter. What would happen to the two catalogs if a third catalog was mailed?

I recommended a strategy ... an A/B test.

5 - Say the first catalog generated $5,000,000 in sales and the second catalog generated $5,000,000 in sales. What would happen to the 2 catalogs if a 3rd catalog was mailed, and how much would the 3rd catalog generate?

1. “Why Would This Ad Appear On The Front Page Of The Irish Times On January 23rd 2020” ? 🧵1/18 🕵️🔎

Just looks like a regular ad, doesn’t it. Well it isn’t 👇

2. If I was looking at this ad for the first time I wouldn’t pay much attention to it unless I wanted to test drive a Ford. Something then jumped out at me. 201 Event. Swap it round and you get Event 201. A test drive for Event 201 🤔

3. Just in case you don’t know what Event 201 is and when it took place. Event 201 took place on October 18th 2019 in New York. It was attended by the WHO, WEF, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation & John Hopkins Center for Health

4. The John Hopkins Center for Health Security who ran the event receives funding from WHO, BMGF, FDA, Homeland Security and The Rockefeller Foundation to name but a few.

5. Please read this (Part 1) to understand what happened at Event 201

*Thread* - Influencer Bundles

How to sell a book & hoodie for $500

People buy the name first

The price point of designer is because of the name associated with the product

Influencers poorly utilize the asset of their brand

Only leveraging the attention aspect to point to offers instead of leveraging the power of their name/reputation

Example: Fitness & Lifestyle YouTubers/IG Influencer

Can create a limited edition VIP bundle

Limited to 40 units

Posting on their story for social proof/scarcity as each gets sold

"12 left, Welcome, @ (tagging/shouting out people who order)"

Example of a Bundle

1) Signed print on demand leather version of their ebook including 4 secret chapters not available in the ebook edition

2) Hoodie or necklace/bracelet with a symbolic meaning to the vibe/slogan of the brand

(preferably not just your name plastered on it)

^ for example with YousXP the 'XP' has meaning so something XP related

Or a slogan/key quote from the influencer

3) 30 minute phone call with everyone who purchases the bundle

4) Exclusive invite to the inner circle, invite only $24.99/month private group chat & weekly call

Storytelling is a superpower.

A key to unlocking growth in your writing, startups, marketing, business, or career.

THREAD: 10+ principles of effective storytelling (that you can start using today):

Clarity of Purpose

The best storytellers always define a clear purpose prior to crafting their story.

What is the story trying to achieve? What does success look like with this story?

Commit to answering these key questions before doing anything else.

Define the Audience

Every great story begins with a well-defined audience.

Who is the audience? What do they consciously (or subconsciously) want from the story?

Be deliberate with this exercise.

Be honest with yourself. The audience may look different than you expect.

Establish Structure

“People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.” – Steven Spielberg

Stories need structure.

Clear narrative arcs (like Pixar’s “hero’s journey”) work well.

The Story Spine

Playwright Kenn Adams created a neat framework - “the story spine” - for establishing structure:

Once upon a time there was [blank]. Every day, [blank]. One day [blank]. Because of that, [blank]. Until finally [bank].

Fill it in and watch your story take shape.

THREAD: Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. It’s 6pm on a Friday evening, everyone is sat around a table at a nice restaurant in London. The head of Marketing from some big company is sitting down with his agency who invited him down to talk things over.

They insist on paying the bill, it’s a casual thing they say. Just a chat about ideas.

Wine starts flowing and jokes too. Everyone has a good time.

Especially the agency, they just signed a new client retainer for £5,000 a month.

Easy pickings.

Too often we see Marketers signing agency contracts because of a few casual chats, usually following some conference waffle sales pitch about how everything in Marketing is dead now and only they have the solutions in this “new world”.

The point here is that turkeys won’t vote for Christmas.

They won’t sell you the best option, they’ll sell what’s best for them.

But the problem isn’t the agencies, its Marketers.

Agencies will try to sell you what they sell, of course they would. Marketers of all people should be aware of this. It doesn’t really matter if you get on really well and they paid for your meal and they are young, millennial, white and middle class and do digital.

NLP

Subliminal psychology is mental influence that passes beneath the limits of normal human perception. A subject will not notice they are being exposed to a subliminal stimulus.

a great deal of it is used by marketing and the Media

▪Thread

People who you can use subliminal psychology tactics on

-People you need a favor from e.g superiors in work
-Seduction
-Stubborn people in your life
(coworkers, roommates, partners)
-Hypnotize yourself to accomplish something

You can make life easier as you bypass the power struggles and effort it takes to get people to like you and to do what you want.

Down below are subliminal tricks you can use in your relationship

When you establish dominance and submissiveness, you end the need for fighting because one person delegates all decisions to the otherThe subliminal secret to gaining dominance is to make a power move that floods your partner’s subconscious mind with respect and awe.

The way to do this is to use leading and pacing.

Practice mirroring of eachother. Then you can start making some small movements of your own to see if your partner mirrors it back.

THREAD:

Machiavellianism in Different Professions

SALES:

It has been said that a con-man is just a salesmen without a product, but this is a lie; a salesman is just a con-man with a product.

Your job is to persuade people to buy product, regardless of whether or not it is in their best interest to do so.

Charm and Persuasion are your tools.

Keep in mind that Charm fuels Persuasion, in the sense that many people will buy from you simply because they like you, not necessarily because they are in love with the product itself.

Zero sum negotiation (an intrinsically machiavellian domain of performance) is a key job function within sales; you will have to negotiate price and deal terms.

Notably, zero sum negotiation is also common within Law and Finance.

How complex the manipulations you must engage in for the sake of persuading a target to buy product will vary from one industry to another.

As a door to door magazine salesmen, simply being good looking and hyping up the product by being extroverted may be enough.

I promised threads about recruiting for the next week. Here's the first one on referrals. In growth/marketing speak: referrals are your organic growth, inbound is your brand, and outbound/sourcing is your ad spend. You want to growth-hack your referrals. Here's how. 1/n

2/ Referrals (people on your team referring candidates into your recruiting pipeline) is great because it scales with your org size. They also convert higher since one of their friends is trying to convince them to join, plus they are generally not interviewing at many companies.

3/ The main disadvantage is that they tend to re-enforce your current team makeup. So if you have a diverse team, referrals will continue that diversity, but if you do not, you'll be entrenching your existing makeups which can have some real cons.

4/ A common tool for incentivizing referrals is the referral bonus (the coolest version of which is in equity IMO, although $ works well too), but I think you can do a lot more by leveraging process (referral parties) and culture (creating real pride about your referral culture).

5/ Referral parties are about making a game out of referrals by (virtually) locking 2+ teams in a room for 60 minutes and asking them them to go all out putting together a referral list. Here's how to do it.

GrooveFunnels Affiliate Program: Earn $1000 Recurring Commission per Week
https://t.co/fY1Dab6lZH

Recently Mike Filsaime, the Co-Founder of GrooveDigital and GrooveFunnels, released a new video about the GrooveSell, GrooveFunnels JV, and Affiliate Program.

The Ballad of Paul O'Neill:

Get a cup of coffee.

Today, I will talk about one of the brilliant management stories I have ever read. Let's get started.

1/

It was the year 1987, where a bunch of analysts and investors have teamed up to meet the new CEO of Alcoa.

Alcoa is one of the largest aluminum manufacturing firms where employees work in a dangerous environment. Millions have invested in the stock.

2/

Recently management has made missteps letting competitors take away profits and market share.

It was a sign of relief when investors heard about a management change.

The new CEO is Paul O Neill, who is a former Govt bureaucrat.

3/

AGM has started. Paul entered the stage. His only emphasis is *worker safety* He aimed to bring down worker injuries to zero.

He talked nothing about firm profits, capital ratios, taxes.

The investors were confused. They thought he is crazy and sold their shares.

4/

But to their surprise, the firm market value has increased from $ 3 billion in 1986 to $ 27.53 billion in 2000 while net income improved from $ 200 million to $ 1.484 billion.

What's more, all the growth occurred while Alcoa becoming one of the safest firms in the world.

Here are 6 things you need to know before applying for a remote marketing job...🧵

In 2015 I was offered a remote contract from a guy I’d met in an airport bar. 🍻

No joke. If my best friend wasn’t sitting beside me during that layover, I’m 100% convinced that everyone would think this was completely made up.

He’d overheard me talking about an SEO portfolio site that I’d recently made & that I was going to start looking for new side projects.

After a quick conversation and a week to think things over at the beach,🏖️ I flew home and took the offer. 😬

Working remotely in marketing has helped me grow personally and professionally in ways I never could at an office.

I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned and everyone who has helped me along the way.

I hope sharing a few tips I’ve picked up will help you on your journey. ✨

1) Make it real by making an action plan. Start by taking baby steps.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

When you first sit down to frame out what you’re looking for, it’s important to set clear goals and make a solid plan.

1/13

Successful enterprises do not relish in the faults of competitors.

They relish in competition.

They relish in a market with multiple use cases.

Rising tides lift all ships.

I am ashamed of the ETH community today.

2/13

We fault the close mindedness of Bitcoin maxis, but then mock any project that takes a new approach and hits a snag?

If you want to mock rip off grifter scams like Tron, that’s one thing.

3/13

If you take pride in “dunking on” legitimate projects who have differently philosophies and approaches to our industry then you are now better than the foaming-at-the-mouth BTC maxis you denounce.

4/13

Worse still you forget the faults we had along this journey. The times ETH went down, the times we had forks.

We sit high and mighty on some judgmental ivory tower, when most of you have never worked on consensus problems or chains.

5/13

I do not own any SOL, but I recognize that there is room in this industry for a range of products with different use cases and different trade-offs.

This blind cultish commitment to one implementation is childish and short-sighted.