ScaleUp Magazine Issue 6 by ScaleUp Magazine

contents

Journey 32 Growth of DrumUp.io

WITH THE FOUNDERS VISHAL & SOPHIA Growth Interview

13 MEET NIR EYAL Cover Story

change your story to change your life Life Hacking

07 How to Set

Goals You Will Actually Achieve Personal Growth

27 START RIGHT NOW Productivity

38 Hacking email list

growth With Dave Schneider Marketing

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habiT” - Aristotle As rightly pointed out by Aristotle, habits define us and makes us successful or lead us to failure. That’s the precise reason why we talked to Nir Eyal who is the author of widely popular book Hooked - How to form habit forming products. All great products whether physical or virtual like iPhone, Facebook, Gmail have something in common which has led us to use them again and again. Essentially now we are in the habit of using them day and night. Nir in this issue 6 of ScaleUp magazine shares the secrets of habit forming products and how we can use them to build world class products.

In addition, Sophia from Drumup. io will share her entrepreneurial journey with his entrepreneur husband Vishal. You will also find tips to find peace, happiness and success from the likes of Leo Babauta, Steve Pavlina. We also have some great deals on softwares and tools for your business growth. We hope that you will like the issue as much as we like it while designing and conceptualizing the issue.

Editor-in-chief PETE WILLIAMS

Contributors NIR EYAL STEVE PAVLINA LEO BABAUTA DAVE SCHNEIDER SOPHIA SOLANKI MICHAL STAWICKI

Image Credits flaticon.com, freepik.com unsplash.com, pexels.com

The Editor

Pete Williams

U p Scale

Design

THE CREATIVE CHIMNEY

(www.thecreativechimney.com)

ART DIRECTOR KANIKA GUPTA

LIFE HACKING

Change Your Story to Change Your Life - Leo Babauta

henever we undertake new change in our lives — whether it’s starting a new job or business, or changing a new habit — we tell ourselves a story about it. We’re the hero of our story. Unfortunately, it’s not usually a very good story — it involves the hero not believing he or she can do it, wanting to give up and give in to the easy route. Imagine if the great stories of all time went along the lines of our stories: • Harry Potter doesn’t fight Voldemort because it’s too hard and anyway, he just wants to play games and go on Reddit. • Odysseus decides not to make the journey home because he knows himself — he’s just going to give up, and anyway, isn’t the siren’s call of Facebook/Instagram too strong? • Don Quixote never ventures out for adventure on his brave steed Rocinante, because he doesn’t think he can do it, and instead stays home with his books of romance. • Frodo heads back to the Shire, because he believes he doesn’t have enough discipline to stick with something very long. These would be horrible stories, wouldn’t they? Who would root for these dudes? The story we tell ourselves goes

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of an ordinary character who probably would give in to the donuts and Netflix when things got hard?

What image did you see in your head of yourself? Was it a brave hero triumphing over all odds, never to be deterred by the forces marshalled against him by the cold harsh universe? Or was it of an ordinary character who probably would give in to the donuts and Netflix when things got hard? along these lines. They’re different for each of us, but if we’re not succeeding at something, it’s quite probably because we are telling ourselves the wrong story. Try it now: think of a habit change you’re trying to make or that you’ve tried but failed at in the recent past. Maybe exercise, meditation, writing, defeating procrastination, etc. Now think about what story you told yourself about yourself. What image did you see in your head of yourself? Was it a brave hero triumphing over all odds, never to be deterred by the forces marshalled against him by the cold harsh universe? Or was it

Maybe you can’t hear the story you’ve told yourself. Instead, try to sense what feeling is in your heart as you think of yourself conquering this new habit change or life change. Does it feel full of doubt, anxiety, fear, dread? Or is it full of joy, triumph, deep caring? The song you’re singing to yourself (unnoticed by you) is of that note, that chord that you’re feeling in your heartstrings. We fail because of this story. It stands in our way, more than the actual thing we’re facing. When things get tough or uncomfortable, we tell ourselves: it’s OK to quit, it doesn’t matter, we’ll do it next time, we’re not disciplined enough, we suck at this, we can’t do it, it’s too hard, it would be nice to take a break, life is too short to struggle, we

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deserve a reward, just this once won’t matter, we’re going to fail, it’s better to fail quietly, we just don’t feel like it right now, let’s not think about this, hey a squirrel! So what can we do if our story is working against us? Change the damn story. Create a song to sing about yourself as the epic hero of your dreams. Sing this song daily, and be proud of it. Go after the dream, fight the forces of distraction and dullness and self-doubt, rise up to be your best self. You are the writer of your story, the composer of your song, and every moment is a chance to rewrite it, a new draft ready to be crafted into something better. Or drop the story. See that without the story telling you that you can’t or shouldn’t do something … there’s just the physical reality of the world around you, no quitter and no hero. Just you and this moment, and it’s a good moment, and without the distraction of a story, you have a basic underlying goodness and love in your heart. That’s all you need: just take this love in your heart and be happy, and do the things that are compassionate for yourself. The struggles you’ve been up against can all go away if you relax them and turn to the goodness of this moment, and take a loving step.

About Author: Leo Babauta is a former journalist and creator of the popular Zen Habits blog, author of numerous books and courses on habits, simplicity and mindfulness. 03

PERSONAL GROWTH

How to Set Goals You Will Actually Achieve

major obstacle that prevents people from enjoyably achieving their goals is that they set their goals incorrectly to begin with. This problem occurs because people don’t understand the nature of time well enough. When people consider a particular goal, they often worry about the time commitment: If I start my own business now, it could take years to make it profitable. I’m so overweight it could take years for me to get in shape. If I break off this unfulfilling relationship, it could take years to get back on my feet again. Such thoughts are clearly demotivating, but more importantly they reveal a total misunderstanding of the nature of time.

Discipline is not the real issue, however. The issue is a misunderstanding of time. We tend to think of time as a resource that we spend, just like we spend money. To complete a one-hour task is to spend an hour on it. How are you spending your day? Where do you want to spend your next vacation? How will you spend the rest of the year? Time is money, a disposable resource.

This is a silly and inaccurate way to think about time, however. Time is not a resource. You cannot spend time. Time spends itself. You have no choice in the matter. No matter what you do, the time is going to pass anyway. It doesn’t matter if you do one thing or another for the next five years. Those five years We value our time, so we have a natural will pass no matter what you do. tendency to be expedient. And we also want to enjoy the present moment. In reality you are never in the past or Consequently, we’re disinclined to set future. You exist only in the present goals that will take a very long time moment. Even when you remember the to achieve. Who wants to toil for years past or envision the future, you’re still in order to reach a potentially better thinking those thoughts in the present. someday? Most of us simply don’t have All you really have is right now. And that’s the discipline to do that, even if there is all you ever will have. You can’t control a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. the passage of time, but you can control 43 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 6 07

your present moment focus. That’s all. No past. No future. Just right now. So if the only thing that exists is the present moment, then what sense does it make to talk about long-term goals? How do you actually achieve anything? First, understand that you can only achieve anything in the present moment, and you can only enjoy those achievements in the present moment. You can’t achieve anything or enjoy anything in the past or future because you’re never there. That’s obvious, isn’t it? But too often people act incongruently with this fact. It’s very difficult to achieve a goal that’s based on an inaccurate model of reality — such a goal will surely be an uphill struggle. The purpose of goal-setting isn’t to control the future. That would be senseless because the future only exists in your imagination. The only value in goal-setting is that it improves the quality of your ISSUE 6 | SCALEUP | 44 08

PERSONAL GROWTH

Think about starting your own business and imagine how great it will be when everything is running smoothly. Now stay in the present and consider how this goal can improve the quality of your life right now.

PERSONAL GROWTH final outcome is actually achieved. Treat goal-setting as a way to enhance your present reality, not as a way to control the future.

Suppose you set a goal to start your own business. You imagine some future point where you’re enjoying being your own boss, doing what you love, and making a great income. Nothing wrong with that. Then you think about how much work it will be, the risks you’ll face, and other discouraging thoughts. You’ve left the present and are dwelling in the future, which is only an illusion. Bring yourself back to the present and realize that none of those things have happened. You’re just making them up. How silly it is to make up things you don’t even want! And your imagination present moment reality. Setting goals isn’t accurate anyway. can give you greater clarity and focus right now. Whenever you set a goal, Now try this: Think about starting your always ask yourself, “How does setting own business and imagine how great this goal improve my present reality?” it will be when everything is running If a goal does not improve your present smoothly. Now stay in the present and reality, then the goal is pointless, and consider how this goal can improve the you may as well dump it. But if the quality of your life right now. Not a year goal brings greater clarity, focus, and from now. Not five years from now. Not motivation to your life whenever you even tomorrow. Right now this very minute. What does the goal of starting think about it, it’s a keeper. your own business do for you here and Many people set goals and then assume now? Does it give you hope? Does it inspire the path to reach the goal will require you? Does it promise solutions to some suffering and sacrifice — a recipe for current problems? Allow those thoughts failure. A better idea is to set a goal and to churn through your consciousness pay attention to the effect it has on for a while. Consider how the goal of your present reality. Set goals that yield starting your own business improves a positive effect on your life whenever your life right now. And of course if you you think about them, long before the can see no improvement, then drop the goal and consider a different one. 43 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 6 09

Think about some goals you might have set if not for the imaginary obstacles you focused on. Do you want to lose a certain amount of weight? To enjoy a new relationship? To enjoy a more fulfilling career? Stop imagining doom and gloom on the path to get there, and simply focus on how each goal can improve your present reality. What does the thought of physical fitness do for you right now? What does the thought of finding your soulmate do for you? What does the thought of a fulfilling career do for you?

naturally drawn to take action as you keep bringing your focus back to the present. When you think about a goal in a way that motivates you right now, it’s only natural that you’ll begin taking action congruent with the goal. When you set goals that increase the quality of your present reality, then what does it matter how long it takes to achieve the final outcome? Whether it takes one week or five years is irrelevant. The whole path is fun and enjoyable. More importantly, you feel happy and fulfilled this very moment. This drives you to take enjoyable action, so you’re productive too. Whatever goal you set, you have the option of envisioning a path of sacrifice and suffering by focusing on the illusion of the future, or you can allow the goal to inject your present reality with new hope, enthusiasm, and motivation. Even though it seems like you’re setting goals for the future, you’re really setting goals for the present. The better you understand this, the more easily and enjoyably you’ll achieve your goals.

As you think about how your goals improve your present reality, eventually you’ll feel motivated to take action. At the same time, you’ll begin attracting resources into your life that will help you achieve your goals. There’s no need to force yourself — you’ll find yourself

If you adopt this goal-setting mindset, you’ll find yourself setting different kinds of goals. The size and scope of the goal will cease to matter. The most important factor will be what effect the goal has on your present moment when you think about it. When you really grasp this concept, you’ll begin to adopt a lifelong mission instead of just a collection of disjointed goals and references. It doesn’t even matter if ISSUE 6 | SCALEUP | 44 10

PERSONAL GROWTH your mission can be achieved in your lifetime. What matters is the effect it has on your present reality. So you can feel free to adopt a really enormous mission, even one which may be unachievable in your lifetime, as long as that mission inspires and motivates you. If the mission is so big that it disempowers you, dump it. But if it really inspires you, go for it. I recommend you abandon the concept of SMART goals. SMART = specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, time-bound (there are many variations on this too). This model sounds intelligent, but it’s based on an inaccurate understanding of time. Instead of thinking of your goals as time-bound projects, consider each goal in light of its effect on your present reality. I know this is a very different way of thinking about goals, so it’s only natural that you may have some resistance to it if you’re deeply ingrained in a time-bound model of goal-setting. So ask yourself this: How well is your current goal-setting model working for you? On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your performance at setting and achieving meaningful goals? I’d be surprised if you’re higher than a 5. Pushing yourself to get better isn’t the solution. The whole paradigm is broken to begin with. It’s like trying to push a cart with square wheels. You don’t need to push harder — you need a cart with round wheels. The squarewheeled cart looks really slick, and from a certain perspective, it seems like it should work OK. But reality itself is the ultimate judge.

About Author

Steve Pavlina is widely recognized as one of the most successful personal development bloggers in the world, with his work attracting more than 100 million visits to StevePavlina. com. He has written more than 1300 articles and recorded many audio programs on a broad range of self-help topics, including productivity, relationships, and spirituality.

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ir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection he really wanted to do was to figure of psychology, technology, and business. The M.I.T. Technology out how to apply the same techniques Review dubbed Nir, “The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology.” to his own businesses and hopefully to help others utilize these techniques to Nir founded two tech companies since 2003 and has taught use them for good. How to use them for at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso all kinds of ways that can help people Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. He is the author of the bestselling live better lives with these techniques. book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. This led him to write his most popular book Hooked: How to Build HabitIn addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, Nir’s Forming Products. writing has been featured in The Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Psychology Today. Nir spent several years in the gaming and advertising industry. These are Nir is also an active investor in habit-forming the two industries that are really technologies. Some of his past investments dependent upon mind control and so include: Eventbrite, Product Hunt, Pantry, at these two industries that he learnt Marco Polo, Presence Learning, 7 Cups, Pana, quite a bit about how to change people’s Symphony Commerce, Worklife (acquired by behaviour and the techniques that are Cisco) and Refresh.io (acquired by LinkedIn). used in these two Industries. So what he really wanted to do was to figure Nir attended The Stanford Graduate out how to apply the same techniques School of Business and Emory University. to his own businesses and hopefully to Nir spent several years in the gaming help others utilize these techniques to and advertising industry. These are use them for good. How to use them for the two industries that are really all kinds of ways that can help people dependent upon mind control and live better lives with these techniques. so at these two industries that he This led him to write his most popular learnt quite a bit about how to book Hooked: How to Build Habitchange people’s behaviour and Forming Products. the techniques that are used in these two Industries. So what ISSUE 6 | SCALEUP | 44 14

Why we do certain things like checking emails or Facebook unconsciously? According to Nir, it’s really all about the Hook Model that he detailed in the book. It’s a four step process of 1. A Trigger 2. An Action 3. A Reward and 4. An Investment “Its through successive cycles through these four steps of hook models that a behaviour is shaped by these products and our tastes are formed and are habits take hold”

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In a candid talk with the ScaleUp Magazine team, Nir talks about the hook model, challenges faced by entrepreneurs and his productivity secrets.

HOOK MODEL DEMYSTIFIED There is this trigger which starts with an external stimuli which tells us what to do next so some kind of notification, a call to action, some kind of something that tells a user what to do next with some piece of information. Then there’s this action itself so this is where the behaviours manifest, the checking, the opening, the scrolling whatever the behaviour is that starts a habit. Then the variable reward which is where the user is getting what they came for a bit. There still is a bit of mystery around what they might find the next time they engage with the product and then finally the investment phase. In the investment phase, the user put something into the product that improves it with use and so what they do what he calls storing value in the product so that it becomes better and better and better the more they use it. So that there is successive cycles through the hook that they began to associate that products use with what he calls an internal trigger which brings us back full Circle through the hook. Creating internal triggers is the ultimate goal because

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than the product cues us to action without any kind of prompting, without an advertisement, without a spam message, we use the product on our own unprompted.

HOW TO IDENTIFY HOOKS

for a new product? Not all products need to form habits. So the idea is if you have a product or service that needs to become a habit and your business model depends upon forming a user habit, well than what you should do is to first start up on making sure that you have a hook. So it’s a matter of asking yourself if you have a hook in your product and service and if its efficient and if it doesn’t form a hook then you should figure out how to change your product accordingly. So it’s a tool to help you design the hook and to modify one if you have one which is not working.

“So it’s a matter of asking yourself if you have a hook in your product and service and if its efficient and if it doesn’t form a hook then you should figure out how to change your product accordingly”

Best time to use the hook model? The best place to use the hook model is in the very early stages before you’ve committed any code, before you spend money on designing anything. 43 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 6 17

To very quickly ask yourself these five fundamental questions associated with the hook model that Nir details in the book and that will help you determine whether your product can ever become habit forming in the first place and then that’s the best place to use it. The other best place to use it is after the product is in market and for whatever reason it’s not habit forming and people are not engaging with it. In that case the hook model can help you diagnose why it is not very effective for one reason or another, it will help you identify if it is the trigger, is it the action, is the reward that they are missing, or are you not asking for an investment at the right time and place. So in that case it can be a diagnostic tool.

hook model as mvp to lean start ups ! The hook model fits hand in glove with the lean start-up methodology. Nir used the lean start-up methodology at his last company and it worked really well. According to him, the challenge they always had is the hardest part of the lean start-up methodology (the 3 steps outlined by Eric Ries and

The hook model fits hand in glove with the lean start-up methodology

COVER STORY Steve Blank which are Build, Measure, Learn). The hardest part of building, measuring and learning is the building . The building is where all the blood sweat and tears and money all go. So what he proposes is when you figure out, what do you build that’s the most important question you can ask, and if you answer that question incorrectly, you are wasting a lot of time and money. So his recommendation is not just to build what the venture capitalist say you should build but what even your customer say you should build. You should build based on some good scientifically backed psychology research that helps you understand how people behave, what makes people click, what makes people tick better than they understand themselves and if you can do that, if you understand really what drives human behaviour you can increase your odds of building the right thing sooner so you still have to do build measure learn, the hook model will help you understand what do you build first, second, and third.

Habits don’t have to be daily, they have to be at least weekly. So what the research tells us is that the behaviours that occur more frequently, are more likely to become habits. So you really get to focus on behaviours that can occur with sufficient frequency at least within a weeks’ time or less. Very difficult to form a habit of the behaviour that does not occur within a week time. It doesn’t have to be a day but if it’s more than a week you are in trouble. 43 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 6 19

COVER STORY

gamification &

the hook model Gamification is just one tactic. There is nothing wrong with gamification. Nir is not the biggest fan of gamification because people tend to do it incorrectly. The biggest problem with gamification is that, it doesn’t actually scratch people’s needs. People think if they put points, badges and leaderboards on things that’s going to make them suddenly interesting and engaging. It is just not true because what we tend to do is watch someone have called chocolate covered broccoli, i.e. when you take something delicious and you put on top of something gross and expected to all of a sudden be tasty and it doesn’t work that way. And the reason it doesn’t work that way is because fundamentally when we give people reward they have to scratch the users itch, so gamification works really well if the internal trigger what he calls the internal trigger is boredom, that’s great and gamification works really, really well because it entertains. But if the internal trigger is, stress or anxiety or loneliness then gamification is not necessarily going to be effective. So the key is not to do gamification or do gamification, the real question should be what’s the best way to scratch the users itch.

EXAMPLES OF good product designs... Nir thinks the most famous examples are Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or Snapchat, or Slack. Any of these companies have habits at their core and it’s no coincidence. Mark Zuckerberg before he dropped out of Harvard had two majors, Computer Science and Psychology, Kevin Seistrom the founder of Instagram was a Symbolic Systems major. Symbolic Systems is again intersection of Computer Science and Psychology. These folks know what they’re doing it’s not chance. They just didn’t get lucky, they understand human behaviour very, very well. All of these company like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, LinkedIn are masters of human behaviour.

Nir spent years writing this book and it took up a huge amount of time and he really wanted it to be as easy and possible for entrepreneurs to get up to speed without doing all the work he had to do, so in the bibliography of his book, he has given tons of resources and citations if someone is interested to go deeper. ISSUE 6 | SCALEUP | 44 20

COVER STORY

How to solve chicken and the egg problem of content? The chicken and the egg is a very common problem for any community platform. The fact is that nobody wants to be at a party where nobody else is partying and so there’s only two ways he has ever seen to solve the chicken and the egg problem. The first way is to seed the network. You can invite people to bring their own audience who can use the platform. That’s one technique you can use. So if you look at what Twitter did, they invited the Silicon Valley Technorati people like Robert Scoble and people who had their own audience and that’s how the people started using Twitter. So you need to seed the network. The other technique is to make the product useful in single-player mode, meaning can you make the product something that people will want to use even when nobody else is there. The best example is Pinterest. So when Pinterest started out, Ben Silbermann would go to conventions of interior designers and graphic designers and he would show them what Pinterest could do. So people started using it for storing collections of their interesting pictures even though they didn’t care if anybody else was going to see them. Now of 43 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 6 21

COVER STORY course once they started doing that then the fact that other people started to join as well made the product better and better. But it was always useful on its own. So these are the two techniques.

1. Either seed the network OR 2. make the product useful in single player mode.

Metrics to check the Hook model CHECK LIST

to the hook model and see what it does to the key metric of user retention. So you need to come up with a metric for what a habituated user would look like, is it checking the app once a day, once an hour, once a week, whatever makes sense for your product. Find out what a habituated user would look like and how frequently would you expect them to engage and then once you have that you know what percentage of your users are using that product to that degree. So let’s say you have a product that has a 5% of habituated users or 10% habituated users, then you figure out how to improve the product. How to make the hook better by coming up with new hypotheses and testing those hypotheses according to the lean startup methodology and then of course all you want to do is to see by cohort, is the percentage of users who are habituated to the product increasing.

challanges for founders... The best metric at the end of the day after you have figured out whether you have the 4 steps of the hook inside your product like that’s the very first step an ounce of strategy is worth a pound of tactics So you need to make sure that you understand strategically that you have the four basic steps of the of the hook model in your product. The Next Step is to then implement those ideas, implement your hypotheses according

There are tons of challenges. Where the hook model fits in is to one of the three factors that make for a great product and service which is engagement. So every product needs these 3 things of growth, engagement and monetization. He calls it the GEM framework and so growth is important but not sufficient, engagement is necessary but not sufficient and monetization is necessary but not sufficient. So as a founder you have to have all 3 inside your product and where habits fit in is the one way to bring back people, one way to keep

people engaged. Even if you have users who are very engaged with the product but you only have 10 of them and you can’t figure out how to get more, you can’t figure out how to grow or you can’t figure out how to monetize, then you don’t really have a product. So engagement is only one of the three component of the puzzle.

HIS SUCESS SECRET

I always have a book on my nightstand as well and of course read for academic research as Well. Nir sticks to pretty basic routine and training right first thing in the morning that’s the hardest thing he does during his day. So he leave that time available. He drinks a lot of coffee and get himself time to think. A lot of people don’t give themselves enough time to think to process and he think that’s a luxury that he has and he don’t claim that everyone has the time to do that. Something that benefited him greatly is just getting himself the space, the permission to do nothing but thinking. ISSUE 6 | SCALEUP | 44 22

COVER STORY He doesn’t think he is particularly smarter than most people. He just think he give himself the time to process information more than most people do and he think that there’s a lot of useful insights that come with people just sit and ask themselves these questions. He hear from founders who just want to be told the answer and he think that’s a critical mistake. You don’t want to be told the answer, you want to figure out the answer for yourself and he really think that the secret to success is not being satisfied with just learning how to do something but actually learning the fundamentals of first principles around how things work in the world is a huge advantage.

Nir says that “I think far too many people start companies because they want to get rich. I wanna make a lot of money and I think that is a terrible idea. That’s a terrible reason to start a company because if you start a company to get rich, you just bad at math because the odds of you getting rich starting a company are horrible and it is really really bad.”

Most people for most jobs would do much better off by just working a 9-5 job then starting a company because the percentages of companies that fail is huge. That’s not a good reason to start a company. A good reason to start a company is because you want a product to exist. You believe that this thing you He is constantly reading something. He want to build needs to exist in the world is always either listening to audio books for you. or reading lot of articles. He uses a great The biggest mistake he see people app called Pocket where he save articles making is when they build products that appear on the web and then he for somebody else without really either listen to those articles while understanding the other person. So working out or walking or driving from the best thing you can do to increase place to place. So he read a lot of books. your odds of success is to scratch your own itch, is to build a product that you want to see in the world, that gives you the kind of unique insights that no one else is going to be able to have. “I think there’s a fundamental Facebook, Google, Instagram, all of these question that’s often times missed companies were founded by people who which is we get so into ok how do I fundamentally wanted their product to grow, how do I move, how do I expand exist for them and then if people loved my business and I think a question it great!

ADVICE CORNER for entrepreneurs...

that I would have wished I would have spent more time asking myself was this question of am I working on the right thing.” 43 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 6 23

The Power of Habit Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

n The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation. Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death. At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key

to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

The Author

harles Duhigg is a reporter for The New York Times. He is also the author of The Power of Habit, about the science of habit formation, as well as Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Productivity in Life and Business. He has worked at the Times since 2006. In 2013, he was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for a series about Apple named “The iEconomy”. Before that, he contributed to NYT series about the 2008 financial crisis, how companies take advantage of the elderly and national violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

abson College’s performed an extensive research on their graduates. This longitudinal study went for 13 years to determine how many of college graduates launch a business and what differentiates them from their peers who didn’t. The study concluded that success in business comes down to just two essential things: get going and keep going.

That’s the recipe for success any area. Both the

above elements are tricky. They are found to be simple in theory, but not easy to execute. Part of my personal philosophy is the belief that if I don’t try, I won’t know the results. I will always wonder, “What if?”

Start Right Now to Expand Your Possibilities. When I started thinking about writing, publishing and getting paid for my work in this area, I had no idea that such a thing like Amazon even existed. For a few weeks I played with the idea of writing. Then I wrote my

Start Right Now - Michal Stawicki

first blog post. After that I continued blogging for 2-3 months and realized that writers write. I decided to write every day. I started writing fiction in my native language. After my short story was criticized on the literary forum I reconsidered the course of action I took. I was encouraged to write s e l f - help content in English. The rest is history. In a bit more than two years tens of thousands of people read my books. When I started writing I had no idea that big pages, like The Good Men Project, even existed. Yet, my first article on that site was published on the 2nd of July 2015. It wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t post that first blog post of mine. I had no idea that it would serve as a launching pad for my future success. I was recently offered a new job. After the first interview I met with the director of the department. He was trying to sell me the idea of taking the responsibility for the whole project as a team leader. But I didn’t need any convincing because I was ready for the challenge. He spent a great deal of time and energy trying to picture how easy and manageable this project would have been for me. He was prepared for counterarguments. Well, for the last couple of years I was hellishly busy expanding beyond myself. I want to change the world. Such little things like managing a small project and small team of people no longer scare me.

Pshaw, I organized online book events with self-published authors. It was like herding cats. Jim Rohn said that if you learn to herd cats, you will be compensated more than adequately, because it’s a very rare skill. If I wouldn’t have started my personal development business in September 2012, I wouldn’t have these experiences and I wouldn’t have been ready for that proposition.

Avoid RegretS AFTERWARDS It’s true that the start opens those distant possibilities. One step led to another, but without that first step nothing would have happened. You are not getting any closer to your goal, whatever it is, by standing in place. You need to move, you need to gain the momentum. The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. Examine the five common regrets of the dying. See what Kimanzi’s father told him before death. At the end of life you will regret things you had neglected to do, not the things you had done. That’s why it’s crucial to start right now. Each second you let to pass away may finish with remorse. This time is wasted and time is the only resource you can NEVER reclaim. As my mentor Aaron Walker says, “You can always make more money. Nobody makes time.” Think about it, you cannot add one little millisecond to your day. The longer you wait, the less experiences you will be able to collect. You should always live your life to its fullest. ISSUE 6 | SCALEUP | 44 28

In reply to the question: “What do you wish you would have done differently?” successful people repeatedly answer: “I wish I would have started earlier.”

Target YouR EXCUSES Don’t listen to your doubts and fears. They prompt excuses to keep you dormant in your comfort zone. You know them well. Here are a few common ones: • I don’t have time (wait and you will have even less time) • I am not ready yet (this comes in variations: I need to learn more/ train more/ plan more etc.; (surprise: you will never be ready, the experience comes from doing, not learning) • It must be perfect (God is perfect; are you Him?) • I have to wait for… (no you don’t; even if you really lack something, you can start now from a different angle) •I can’t succeed (that’s debatable; until you actually start doing something you just don’t have enough data to determine whether you can succeed) Ditch Your Doubts Those excuses differ only in details. They are very easy to disarm. Just use the four questions to rebut them: • Is is true? Your mind usually prompts a swift answer: of course it is. Your goal is to question this excuse, so use additional questions: Is this belief beyond a shadow of a doubt true? Is it possible that there is at least one person on the planet that could prove this wrong? • How does this excuse make you feel? For example: thinking that I don’t have time makes me feel helpless. I can’t do 43 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 6 29

anything if I won’t dedicate some time to it. • What would the opposite of this excuse be? For example: I have 24 hours a day, exactly as much time as the richest people on the planet. • How does that opposite belief make you feel? For example: I feel empowered to act now. Even the smallest step forward is better than waiting for miraculous multiplying of my time.

Start right now. Don’t waste your most precious asset!

YOUR TIME. well started is half done.

About Author Michal Stawicki lives in Poland with his 3 children. He has been married for 15 years and been a church community member for more than 19 years. He cannot resist the urge to make this world a better place; first of all through self-improvement, by focusing on my personal growth, and then through the absolute transparency of my progress. He writes regularly on his blog www. expandbeyondyourself.com

GROWTH INTERVIEW

Growth Journey of DrumUp.io WITH THE FOUNDERS VISHAL & SOPHIA What aspect of your business keeps your team awake? Like we mentioned previously, growing a business sustainably requires constant focus on business fundamentals, your customers and finding innovative, inexpensive growth hacks constantly. This poses quite a challenge, and we ishal and Sophia are the co- experiment with a lot of ideas regularly founders of DrumUp.io, is an to figure out what will work best and integrated powerful social give long term ROI. media, content marketing and employee advocacy platform. Vishal has over 13 years of experience being an entrepreneur and a business and technology consultant. Earlier with Sophia, he co-founded Godot Media and has been heading these ventures for over 8 years now. Sophia was previously a business consultant. She has over 12 years of experience.

What challenges have you faced while growing Godot Media and now DrumUp? The biggest challenges havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been the initial momentum in either businesses this is something we managed well with both businesses. The real challenges kick in when you try to scale bootstrapped. You have to constantly strike a balance between push for growth and ensuring business sustainability - often a tight walk rope. ISSUE 6 | SCALEUP | 44 32

GROWTH INTERVIEW What are the key metrics that you focus as a SAAS startup? Registered and paid users are most important. In addition, we track a bunch of usage and activation metrics. We have internally developed a measurement dashboard and use that. Tell us about your product development process. We prefer working with in-house team, and have so far completely relied on all software development in-house. We use an open-source stack for development and Bitbucket for development management. What is your hiring process look like? For us, a cultural fit on team is critical, so we focus very much on this aspect when hiring. People stay with you if they enjoy working with you - so in our experience, the work quality and regular appreciation of top employees keep them motivated to stick around - all other incentives are secondary. How do you keep a tab on competition? Social and Online listening. We keep ourselves abreast with how competition is moving by monitoring the news flow. More importantly we like to keep a tab on the pulse of the social media managers and marketers, as to what pain points they want solved urgently. 43 33 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 6

GROWTH INTERVIEW You have scaled Godot & now Drumup to thousands of clients across globe. How did you find your early customers and subsequently scaled it? We have so far always used pull marketing through online channels. Even our early beta users find us online. We are in the business of making content marketing easy and use content marketing ourselves too, to find both early users and scale. What do you do to acquire customers? We rely heavily on inbound marketing through content. Content marketing has been the driver for our customer acquisition, and we do this across channels - blogs, social media, communities and industry publications. SEO is a tough cookie if you are targeting global market, so relying on it to click is not a smart strategy, in our opinion. If your content marketing is strong and aligned to SEO best practices, then over time, SEO should ideally kick in for traffic too if the competition in the space is moderate. Paid marketing works well for some businesses and not so much for others. It’s important to ascertain the ROI of paid marketing before investing too much in it. For us, it’s a great strategy for Godot Media, but we are still divided on how it fits in with DrumUp. How do you manage work life balance as spouse and business partners?

What advice would you give to couples looking to start business together.

whatever incentives you can offer at the time.

What works really well for us is the understanding we’ve built between ourselves working together for over 7 years now. Our work streams are separate and well-defined, which keeps things running smoothly. We also don’t carry work home often, so there’s a clear delineation between work and personal life. Works very well for us!

Running a business is stressful and full of uncertainties. How do you guys manage? Any productivity hacks you would suggest?

Our advice to couples working together would be to decide clear roles early on, while working together. The second advice would be to keep office in office and find quality time doing other things together in personal life. How did you manage finance for both of your businesses? Did you bootstrap or go for outside funding? We have bootstrapped both businesses so far, and things have gone very well. We focus on business basics and sustainability at all times, even if that means growing a little slower than we’d like to. If bootstrapped, what tips would you give to keep expenses low? Get full-time, driven people on your team to work with you. Seems like opposite of keeping expenses low but if you don’t have a team and you try to do everything yourself, then you’ll never get it done. So get more like-minded people on the team, with

By not taking unnecessary stress, and finding quality time pursuing other interests in personal life. Productivity hack - take a chill pill, and go travel when under stress. You start again much better after the break. Here’s a post Sophia wrote about it https://blog.drumup.io/blog/travelis-therapeutic-5-ways-it-can-helpyou-be-more-productive-at-work/ What is your vision with DrumpUp.io? Our vision of DrumUp is an integrated powerful social media, content marketing and employee advocacy platform Advice for entrepreneurs looking to start business in general and SAAS startup in particular. Choose a problem and solution that you are passionate about - life is too short to do things that you are not excited about. Study your target market carefully avoid solutions for overcrowded spaces or very very niche markets. Otherwise the marketing battle will get very tough. ISSUE 6 | SCALEUP | 44 34

n the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.

as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.

The Author

aniel Kahneman is an IsraeliAmerican psychologist notable for his work on The impact of overconfidence on the psychology corporate strategies, the difficulties of judgment and of predicting what will make us happy decision-making, in the future, the profound effect of as well as behavioral economics, for cognitive biases on everything from which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel playing the stock market to planning Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences our next vacation - each of these can (shared with Vernon L. Smith). His be understood only by knowing how the empirical findings challenge the two systems shape our judgments and assumption of human rationality decisions. prevailing in modern economic theory. In 2011, he was named by Foreign Engaging the reader in a lively Policy magazine to its list of top conversation about how we think, global thinkers. In the same year, his Kahneman reveals where we can book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which and cannot trust our intuitions and summarizes much of his research, was how we can tap into the benefits of published and became a bestseller. He slow thinking. He offers practical and is professor emeritus of psychology and enlightening insights into how choices public affairs at Princeton Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s are made in both our business and Woodrow Wilson School. Kahneman is our personal lives and how we can use a founding partner of TGG Group, a different techniques to guard against business and philanthropy consulting the mental glitches that often get us company. He is married to Royal into trouble. Society Fellow Anne Treisman. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review 32

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MARKETING

Hacking email list

growth

with Dave Schneider

funnelling people into their email list and engaging them with weekly content. They also have various drip campaigns depending on a few different factors. “if someone signs up from the blog they get a 5 day email course on blogger outreach along with an invite to sign up for free trial of tool”

At NinjaOutreach, they primarily use Drip to build email list, as well as SumoMe’s Welcome Mat and an Exit Pop Up. In addition they have various opt ins on the blog/website. Drip is used to keep in touch with our newsletter NinjaOutreach is a blogger outreach subscribers and Intercom to keep in touch software for digital marketers. It is a with our customers. full prospecting and outreach CRM. They also offer Done For You blogger outreach They keep on working on building some teasers to make it more compelling to sign campaigns. up. “Email is one of the best marketing channels David outlines his simple formula for due to its low cost and high engagement” building email list fast David says that they use email aggressively to build their list, engage users with content 1. Generate Traffic 2. Work on converting that traffic and convert them to customer. 3. Engage people in the list so they remain Their email marketing strategy involves active. avid Schneider is the cofounder of Ninja Outreach. He writes about business and entrepreneurship, and enjoys travel.

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MARKETING

However he cautions that each step of list building itself is complex and it is best to read specific articles and case studies about how to do each. He also adds that it is difficult to manage multiple email lists for customers, trial sign ups, and blog visitors. Similarly having individual and relevant communication with various list members creates further challenges. They have grown their email list to 11,000 people in last 1 year and get about 80 sign ups a day now. With healthy open rate of 45%, email list is driving appreciable revenue for NinjaOutreach. They try to push open rates high by re sending email to non openers with an altered subject line. These experiments have resulted in pushing openers from 30 to 45%. Talking about the email design strategy, he shared that they have a standard format and template which is filled in every week that covers the blog post, new features, and the podcast. They rely on Dripâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s built in split testing feature for sending emails. As they publish content on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday, so emails are sent on Friday with no fixed time slot. Email subject lines are kept catchy and relevant to announcement or blog post. They ensure all the best practices are followed. David sign off by recommending GrooveHQâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s email newsletters for design inspiration.

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