👊 Domi's favourite Things - Issue #25

✨ SPECIAL: Everything YOU have to know about GROWTH... 🚀

Read time: 6.40 Minutes (but a MUST READ for your Career…)

Servus Friends 👊 & Chefs 👩‍🍳,

Today I serve you a real Special from my Content-Kitchen. And YES we start straight with the Main Plate today.

A hot & straight served Dish…called Growth.

And YES again, I will tell you the Recipe too. A great Blueprint for your Personal Use.

Every Time you face a Growth Question or Situation in the Future, come back and start here.

I promise if you do that, you will become a Head Chef running the whole Kitchen soon.

Keep Cooking…

The Things we are digging in Today:

  1. 🛠️ The Blueprint for all your Growth Problems 🚧

  2. 📚 The Growth Library: People to Follow & Stuff for Learning 📼

  3. #Twitter-Box: 🐣 How to grow your Socials fast… 💨

  4. #Domi's favourite 5 - Grow like Trees Edition 🌲

# 1 - 🛠️ The Blueprint for all your Growth Problems 🚧

Growth. Some People love this Topic. Some People hate this Topic…

But why?

Maybe because Growth is mostly associated with Marketing and Sales.

And like with every other Skill and Profession, some People are good in doing Sales or Stuff like Performance Marketing. And others don‘t.

This Text will explain you why the Above doesn‘t matter. This Text will explain to you why we all, different in Ideas and different in our Opinions, should care about Growth.

Let‘s go back into the Year 2004. A young College Drop-Out named Mark Zuckerberg started a new Social Network called Facebook.

We all know how this Story of little Mark and his Startup went till today.

But now one Question… Because Facebook faced the same Problem we all have to deal with…

“How can you grow in a repeatable and sustainable Way?”

To solve this Problem, Mark decided to give the Topic of „Growth“ his full Focus.

So Facebook started its legendary Growth-Team. Even today, there are still a lot of mythical Stories told in Silicon Valley about this Team. A Team which invented groundbreaking Methods for attracting new Users…

But what was so Special about them?

Instead of filling it with Marketing Guys and Sales People. Facebook staffed the Growth-Team with their best People and only the Best.

We are talking about Physicists, Harvard MBAs and a lot of PHDs from a wide Range of different Topics here.

If you want a deeper Dive, here‘s the Link to a Forbes Article for the Full Story…

How The Growth Team Helped Facebook Reach 500 Million Users

What are some decisions taken by the "Growth team" at Facebook that helped Facebook reach 500 million users? This question was originally answered on Quora by Andy Johns.

www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/09/15/how-the-growth-team-helped-facebook-reach-500-million-users

With only „Retention“ as Key Growth-KPI and a lot of well thought out Experiments, the Growth-Team grew Facebook to over 500 Million Users in only a couple of Years.

This was maybe the best Growth Result in modern Business History and shows the Power of the right Blueprint in this Major Topic.

But enough Storytime. Let's get into the Specifics and bring you this Blueprint at your Hands. And I promise this works in every Industry…

The right Mindset & the right Focus

First Things First. You need to approach Growth with the right Mindset and Focus. If you not following this Path, you may lose yourself in the Marketing Jungle.

Your first Objective should always be to generate long-term and sustainable Growth.

Everything else leads you to „flashy Stuff“ like getting Press in famous Magazines or getting featured in the Apple App-Store.

This Sounds maybe nice, but gives your Product only a short spike.

I experienced this myself with an Art App I was involved with. Even “f**king” Leonardo DiCaprio himself couldn‘t save us long-term Growth. (→ Read the fun Story here)

Therefore, you should not follow „Silver Bullets“. Instead you should „fire“ a lot of „Lead Bullets“. (different Growth Experiments which lead to compounded Growth)

To be clear. It‘s better to increase your Sign Up Funnel with 5% than try to land the next TV Interview. The Latter pushes your Ego, the Former your Revenue for Years. (decide yourself what is more important for you 🥸)

This is Why you need to Focus. Picking your right „Northstar Metric“ is Key. For Facebook this was „User Retention“ after the Sign Up. Facebook made it easy to find your first 5 Friends fast and give you a Reason to Login again and again.

Another Example is LinkedIn. You may remember that the Platform asked you to connect with your Email-Contacts after the first Sign-In?

That was Genius, because they could notify all of your Contacts that you are now using LinkedIn and made them desire the same.

Last but not least, you have to think in Experiments all the Time. And everything you do to generate more Growth, has to be measured and tested. This Way you can ensure to learn what is working and what not.

That’s the straight Key to Success. And of course I will show you how next…

Thinking in Experiments & How to Rank them

Thinking in Experiments means, that you have to collect all your Ideas for Growth. Therefore you should write down „What you do“, „What is the Objective“ and „How you measure Success“.

Like in the following Example…

It‘s also important to „rank“ your Ideas in Terms of the „Ease of Doing“, the „Likelihood of Success“ and “Cost”.

But please never forget the other necessary Step: Reviewing the Results and adjust through your Learnings after.

A great System to come up with the right Ideas and Channels for Growth, is the „Bullseye“-Strategy of Justin Mares and Gabriel Weinberg.

This straight Forward Method lets you choose 3 promising Channels from their Framework, then test them out and choose the best performing One.

If the Result is good enough, Perfect.

If not, repeat until you find a high performing One with 3 new Channels.

Here is the Framework. It also offers a great Overview of all Possibilities for Growth…

But bear in Mind, the Channel which brought you to 1k Users is maybe not bringing you from 1k to 10k Users.

“Growth is a never ending Hustle.”

So be prepared to adjust accordingly on the Way up…

The supporting Thesis for this Assumption is the „Law of Shitty Clickthroughs“. A Term coined by the Growth-Mastermind Andrew Chen. (we covered him before in this Newsletter)

This Law describes, that every new Marketing Method reaches a Point of decreasing Clickthrough Rates over Time.

That’s Why you see every other Year a new Marketing Trick in the Social Web.

And almost every Company is trying desperately to jump on that Train. (psst… a little secret Tip here… Going into the same Direction as Everyone is running too, is usually always a bad Idea 🫠)

So think more “Intelligent” here. I repeat, “Growth is a never ending Hustle.”

Parting Advice - Be Resourceful

Before you leave, here some Tips you should try to implement in your Growth Thinking:

Achieving sustainable Growth is far from easy. And you have to compete with a lot of other Products and Services out there for Customers. So remember…

„You need to be relentless but patient!“

I also advise you to be lean and resourceful, if you think about Growth Experiments. Most of us can‘t use VC Funds or Budgets like Google has, to stimulate Growth.

So you need to be effective with your Resources.

If you find a Method that‘s working and the Retention of your User is getting higher and higher, then you should go full Force. Not before.

Last but not least, you should think in Warren Buffet’s famous „Compounding Interest“-Idea. Several tiny, but sustainable Increases of Growth are better than to follow a shiny Marketing “Hype-Train”.

Again, you are here for the long Game. And this is where you will find your Success.

So keep hustlin…

Special Announcement: I will try to grow this Newsletter as a Public Experiment start from next Week. Therefore I will use this Blueprint and report you live in the next Issues how it goes.

Hope you excited as I am…

# 2 -📚 The Growth Library: People to Follow & Stuff for Learning 📼

I hope I made you Hungry for more Growth Stuff, because Domi's Kitchen is open for more…

My curated Growth Library for you:

I recommend you to follow all of these Master-Chefs of Growth, if you want to get better. They offer great Resources to help you to win Customers, Sign Up‘s or Followers for Free.

Stuff to Read: (The URL‘s for Books are no affiliate Links)

Justin Mares a D2C-Expert & Gabriel Weinberg Founder of DuckDuckGo - Book (Link)

Traction: How any Startup can achieve explosive Growth

Andrew Chen an Investor at famous A16Z & Ex-Uber Growth Lead - Book (Link)

The Cold Start Problem

Stefan H. Thomke a Harvard Professor for Business Administration & Expert for Experimentation - Book (Link)

Experimentation Works: The surprising Power of Business Experiments

Stuff to Watch: 

Alex Schultz— the legendary Team Lead of Facebook‘s Growth Team & today’s CMO at Meta (MUST WATCH)

Chamath Palihapitiya - Early Ex-Member of the Facebook Growth Team & now Host of the famous All In Podcast

Sean Ellis - Author of Hacking Growth & Father of the Term „Growth Hacking“

This should give you the right Idea to start with your own Growth Experiments. Remember, this is not a Search for the One Silver-Bullet to solve all your Problems at once.

Growth have to be sustainable to work for you in the right Way. Again, think more of Warren Buffet‘s Wisdom of „Compounding Interest“, like I told you in the Text above.

#Twitter-Box: 🐣 How to grow your Socials fast… 💨

We talking a lot about Growth Masters here today, but there are still more to get to know for you:

A true Expert on Growth with some of the best Advise to expand your Reach in the (Social-)World.

Julian was Columnist at TechCrunch (Articles) for Growth Marketing in the past and is Founder of DemandCurve a Growth Agency for Startups. (with a great Newsletter)

And Thank God he lets us being Part of his Learnings through his Blog too. A real Source of straightforward Tips, if you lost in the next Monday Morning Stand Up with your Boss again…

Here is a helpful Tweetstorm, if you haven't got enough Insta Likes last Month…

Julian is a real Franchise Player, when it comes to Growth. So many successful Entrepreneurs are cultivating their Writing every Day they can to grow themself better and better.

It’s a Red Line which is connecting a lot of strong Thinkers and Builders around the World and in every Culture. Maybe you should think about getting into “Writing” as a habit too.

#Domi's favourite 5 - Grow like Trees Edition 🌲

Here some cool Reads to learn more about Growth:

Feedback please! Help me to improve for more fun Stuff.

Click on a link to vote:

Meme of the Week

Don’t get canceled on the Way up, like Will Smith at the Oscars… 🚀

🤣😂 Thanks for reading the 25th Issue.

WOW, a lot of Stuff to think about in this Growth-Special. Hope I gave you some good Leads if you ever need Advise for this Topic in the Future.

Please share with your Friends and have an epic Week.