ScaleUp Magazine Issue 2 by ScaleUp Magazine

ScaleUp

ISSUE 2

A Magazine for Growth Seeking Entrepreneurs

HOW TO

BUILD WORLD CLASS PRODUCTS & ACHIEVE SUCCESS IN LIFE

FREE

SOFTWARE PERKS WORTH $300

Six Ways to Improve Your Health and Productivity at Work

PRODUCT

GURU PUNIT SONI

ScaleUp ISSUE 2 GROWTH . BUSINESS

PRODUCTIVITY .

MOTIVATION

Contents â&#x2013; ISSUE 2

ScaleUp ON THE COVER

25 | THE PRODUCT GURU

Learn To Build World Class Products & Achieve Success In Life With Puni Soni

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Contents ■ ISSUE 2

3 Actionable growth hacking tactics for your startup ■ GROWTH HACKING

In conversation with Growth Hacker Tiffany Dasilva ■ GROWTH INTERVIEW

The only way to become amazingly great at something ■ PRODUCTIVITY

Free software perks worth $300

■ PERSONAL GROWTH

■ GROWTH QUERIES

The power of clarity

Six ways to improve your health and productivity at work ■ HEALTH

■ DEALS

12 tips for managing a high-performing sales team ■ SALES

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The first two rules of leadership : Don’t be stupid. Don’t be a jerk. ■ LEADERSHIP

Ask GrowthMonk

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR “I want to grow. I want to be better. You grow. We all grow. We’re made to grow. You either evolve or you disappear.” ― Tupac Shakur In the last 1 month, we had been busy meeting a lot of entrepreneurs and growth hackers around the world. In every conversation that we had with these successful people, they all talked about the importance of personal growth and learning and its impact on their business and career. A great example of this personal growth mindset is reflected in the cover story of this month’s ScaleUp magazine issue. Punit Soni came to the U.S. with nothing but dreams and vision for a great life. He worked hard his way to do M.S. from the University of Wyoming and later M.B.A. from Wharton. He kept on pushing his limits at every stage of his career, whether it was working for a risky startup after his M.S. or leading mobile initiatives at Google and Motorola and most recently leading product strategy at Flipkart which is a $11 billion e-commerce behemoth in India. He is a master of product management who continues to take risks and eventually learn from every opportunity or failure that comes his way. You will get to learn a lot from him about product management, leadership, and personal growth. In addition, this issue also has a lot of resources on business growth and productivity from the likes of Jeff Goldenberg, Tiffany Dasilva, Steve Pavlina. As they say, health is wealth, we also have some great advice from Leigh Stringer on improving health at your workplace. We hope that you will like the content as much as we like it while designing and conceptualizing the issue. We are glad to have you as part of GrowthMonk Tribe and are always there to help you find growth in your life. The Editor Pete Williams

MEET OUR TEAM Editor-In-Chief Pete Williams Contributors Jeff Goldenberg Leo Babauta Gabriel Luna-Osteseski Puni Soni Steve Pavlina Leigh Stringer David Cottrell Tiffany Dasilva Design Anna Heather Image Credits: Flaticon.com, Unsplash.com, FreePik.com

Scale Up Magazine: www.scaleupmag.com/magazine Letters to The Editor: editor@scaleupmag.com Advertising: advertising@scaleupmag.com Partnerships: partnerships@scaleupmag.com General Inquiries: info@scaleupmag.com

Copyright © 2016 ScaleUp Magazine. The content of the magazine are fully protected by copyright and nothing may be reprinted without permission. The publisher, editor and ScaleUp Magazine accept no responsibility in respect to any products, good or services that may be advertised or referred to in this issue or for any errors, omissions, or mistakes in any such advertisements or references. The mention of any specific companies or products in articles or advertisements does not imply that they are endorsed or recommended by this magazine or its publisher in preference to others of a similar nature which are not mentioned or advertised. Published articles do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of ScaleUp magazine.

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3 ACTIONABLE GROWTH HACKING

TACTICS FOR YOUR

STARTUP

GROWTH HACKING 5

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THE LANDING PAGE HACK

GROWTH HACKING

How to validate any idea in under an hour

The Hack: “Hello…hello? Snap out of it!” Yep, it’s easy to sit back and imagine your latest, greatest idea becoming an overnight success. But before you start dreaming about being the next Angry Birds, maybe it’s time you flew out your chair and out of the building! That’s right, outside. You know, where the customers are. Your job is to get out there and mingle, talk to them, listen to what they have to say and learn. Thankfully, with the Internet at your disposal, you don’t physically have to pound the street anymore to gather opinions. That’s what landing pages are for. This hack will teach you how to quickly launch a landing page that will allow you to test your product concept, collect email addresses and gain valuable customer feedback. And when we say customers, we mean real customers. Asking your mom and sister doesn’t count! With a landing page, you can send customers to your site, ask for feedback, collect email addresses and validate your offering. You can even buy a little bit of traffic and test your concept in front of actual customers, and not just your mom.

Now Hack It: • Start by getting your act together! Write down your value proposition, your target markets, your features and benefits and collect up your creative assets such as photos, videos and text. If you don’t have good photos, visit startupstockphotos.com to get some. • Set up a free account with Unbounce. • Select a template based on your objectives for the site. For example, if you want to generate leads, use a template with a prominent lead generation form on the homepage, above the fold. If you’re really picky (and sometimes you should be) you can browse through literally hundreds of templates for sale at ThemeForest. net. Choose a template which works for you aesthetically, suits the target market and matches the assets you’ve collected. If you don’t have great imagery, don’t select a photo-heavy template. • Drag and drop. Use the landing page creator to customize every aspect of your page. Don’t panic if this seems difficult at first. By the time you’ve customized your first template, you’ll be a pro. And in the off chance you do hit a major roadblock, Unbounce has great customer service to sort you out. • Buy a great website domain for your product and have them forward the domain (with masking) to your unique landing page link. That way, the landing page will look like your homepage and not a subdomain of Unbounce. • All that’s left is to start sending traffic and measuring! Measure click through rates and conversion rates from each traffic source. This may sound like a lot, but trust us, all this squirreling of data will come in handy later on.

Pro Tip: Stop. Rebuild. Repeat. Once you’ve kicked off your first landing page, take some time to build a second version. Only this time, tweak a few variables. You could add a new value proposition, juggle around with the price or even just try out a snazzy new layout. Send 50% of your traffic to each version and see which one leads to more conversions (email addresses, signups, purchases etc.). 6

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THE TESTING HACK

GROWTH HACKING

How to conduct simple but effective A/B tests on your landing page

The Hack: A/B testing is like the cool fraternity on campus - everyone wants in. And if you hope to make it big in the start-up marketing world, you should want in too. That’s because A/B testing has the potential to uncover extremely valuable customer feedback. If you conduct just one A/B test per week, you’ll accumulate the results of 50 tests over the course of a year, which could yield 12-15 significant improvements. Like always, the key to getting good is getting started. A/B testing used to only be nerd cool - mostly IT people and coders. For the rest of us non-technical marketers, our thrills came simply from getting ONE website launched, let alone testing multiple versions. Now companies such as Optimizely make A/B testing really simple to install, execute and analyze, creating opportunities for marketers to constantly experiment with their messaging, user interface, offer and much more. Simply put, define an experiment by identifying an important website variable, create multiple website versions to test that variable, and split your traffic over the two test versions. Whichever version produces the better response, implement that one immediately and move on to the next test!

Now Hack It: • Sign up for a free account at Optimizely.com. • Carefully follow the instructions to add the Optimizely code snippet to your website. This is very easy and only needs to be done the first time. From now on you’ll be able to run experiments without touching your website’s code. • Create an A/B testing spreadsheet. Here you will keep a running list of hypotheses that you want to test. Keep the list prioritized, so the top test is the one you want to conduct next. This way you’ll ensure that you’re focused on the most promising hypothesis at all times. • Use the Optimizely visual editor to set up the versions and create the test.Once you get a hang of the interface, this becomes incredibly easy. Determine how you’re going to measure the performance - usually by defining a conversion and measuring the conversion rates (a sale, a completed lead form, a newsletter sign-up, an ebook download, etc.) • Track your results and select a “winner” when the data is meaningfully better. Don’t worry, Optimizely will clearly tell you which version performed better and whether the results were significant. • Keep track of your results in your spreadsheet - this will become an exceedingly valuable reference as you execute tests.

Pro Tip: It’s estimated that 2-3 out of every 10 tests will results in a significant learning, so consistency is the key. If you run one test a week for an entire year (and assuming you’re prioritizing the tests correctly), you’ll run 50 tests a year and gain 12-15 meaningful results! 7

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THE DECOY EFFECT HACK

GROWTH HACKING

How to use psychology to help determine your optimal product pricing

The Hack: What do we really know about what we want? Psychologists believe - not that much. And our minds can be easily tricked into choosing options that aren’t often in our best interest. Sometimes these choices may even be detrimental to maximizing utility for us as consumers. For example, let’s examine the concept of “value.” Value is a relative term and, logically, it has no absolute worth. It’s a proven fact that a “fair” price can be different for the same product or service depending on circumstances and context. As a growth hacker, you need to use this psychological loophole to maximize the perceived value of your SaaS subscription plans. Here’s a neat hack to help you achieve this with minimal effort

Now Hack It: • Psychologists call it the “decoy effect” and it is a pricing hack than can really help you to increase sales of your premium plans, if done right. • In fact, you would’ve seen it used in the pricing of many goods and services but probably never gave it too much thought. • The basics of this pricing technique are that, instead of having two pricing plans - say, an entry-level one and a premium one - you add a third, “decoy” plan. • Say, you charge $20 per month for your no-frills, starter plan and $50 per month for your everything-and-thefounder’s-kitchen-sink one. The majority of your users will typically end up going with the starter plan. We’re all cheap skates... • By introducing a third “mid-tier” plan, you make the choice less obvious. Let’s say, you price your new plan at $30 per month and allow users to gain access to most of the features of your premium plan, except couple. • Now users are more likely to go with the mid-tier plan due to their having an additional comparison point. See, value IS a very relative concept. • Try it, and watch your revenue grow... • Still don’t believe us? Next time you’re in your local cafe, pay attention to which of the three cup sizes people usually tend to go with. • Growth hacking is all around you!

Jeff Goldenberg is a startup entrepreneur with 15 years of experience. He started his career in the dotcom bubble and since then has launched 6 consumer facing businesses and learned a lot about the proper way to launch a business. He recently co-authored a book called The Growth Hacker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is a marketing recipe book for non-technical marketers. The goal of the book is to empower non-technical marketers and help them think like a growth hacker, so they can achieve rapid growth in their own businesses. 8

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THE ONLY WAY TO BECOME AMAZINGLY

GREAT AT SOMETHING P R O D U C T I V I T Y

“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.”

– Albert Einstein 9

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PRODUCTIVITY

ery often you’ll see blog posts or books teaching you to “master” a skill in only 10 days, or 3 days. In fact, it used to be 30 days but the time frame to master something seems to be shrinking rapidly.

I’ve even seen tutorials claiming to teach a skill in just a few hours. Pretty soon we’ll be demanding to know how to do something in seconds. Unfortunately, the reality is something a little less magical. Or maybe that’s a fortunate thing. There’s only one way to become good at something:

First, you must learn it by reading or listening to others who know how to do it, but most especially by doing.

Then do some more. At this point, you’ll start to understand it, but you’ll suck. This stage could take months.

It takes anywhere from 6-10 years to get great at something, depending on how often and how much you do it. Some estimate that it takes 10,000 hours to master something, but I think it varies from person to person and depends on the skill and other factors. Want to be a great writer? It’s possible to be great within a few years, if you have the God-given talent of Fitzgerald or Shakespeare, but most of us toil for over a decade and are still trying to get better. We’re still learning, to this day, and if we look back on our first few years of writing - of any kind - we’ll tell you we sucked (for the most part) back then.

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3 4

Do some more. After a couple of years, you’ll get good at it. Do some more. If you learn from mistakes, and aren’t afraid to make mistakes in the first place, you’ll go from good to great.

Want to be a great blogger? Same deal. I’ve been doing it for almost three years, and I’m still only competent. Gruber’s been doing it for, like, 7 years and he’s still only, well, he’s pretty great by now. You have to do it, make mistakes, learn, really begin to understand it, and someday, if you stick with it, you’ll be great. There’s no one who is great at his profession who hasn’t been doing it for at least 6 years - no designer, no programmer, no carpenter, no architect, no surgeon, no teacher, no musician, no artist … you get the point. I dare you to name one. Most have been doing it for over a decade, and are still looking to improve.

PRODUCTIVITY

It takes desire, it takes drive, it takes lots and lots of doing. So here’s the thing: don’t get discouraged if you’re just starting out. Have fun, like we all did in the beginning. If you have fun, you’ll learn to love it, and THAT’S when it clicks. When you love something, you’ll want to do it all the time, sometimes late at night and often, you’ll jump out of bed and want to do it before you move your morning bowels.

THAT’S how you get great. By loving it so much your morning bowel movement takes second seat. “Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.” – George Lucas Find that desire. Do it, don’t just read about it. Don’t buy a single product or book or magazine that claims to teach you something in minutes, hours, days. They’re lying to your face, with a hand in your pocket at the same time. Do it, keep doing it, then keep doing it some more. It’s the only way to get great, but the good news: anyone can do it. It just takes some time and some doing.

When the world says, “Give up,” Hope whispers, “Try it one more time.” ~Author Unknown Leo Babauta is the author of The Power of Less and the creator and blogger at Zen Habits, a Top 25 blog (according to TIME magazine) with 200,000 subscribers — one of the top productivity and simplicity blogs on the Internet. Babauta is considered by many to be one of the leading experts on productivity and simplicity, and has also written the top-selling productivity e-book in history: Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System. It has sold thousands of copies and has reached tens of thousands of readers.

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You could spend a lifetime trying to sift through and digest all the blog posts, podcasts, guides, and case studies that exist online about growth hacking - or you could start taking action today. These 100 growth tactics were compiled based on strategies and techniques that Sujan Patel and Rob Wormley have used to help hundreds of clients move the needle and actually grow their businesses. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get to read about examples of real companies and people that have or are currently using these growth strategies to get ahead in their industries. www.100daysofgrowth.com RECOMMENDED READING

Sujan Patel is a marketer and entrepreneur. He is currently the VP of Marketing at When I Work, and previously founded Single Grain, a San Francisco-based digital marketing agency. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s helped companies like Sales Force, Sony, Mint, & hundreds of others acquire more customers, build brand awareness, and grow their businesses.

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Rob Wormley is a content marketer and writer. Over the past seven years, he has developed digital marketing strategies and content for best-selling authors, Hall of Fame speakers, and brands all across the country. He currently works as a content marketing manager for When I Work.

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. Tony Robbins

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12 TIPS FOR MANAGING A HIGH-PERFORMING

SALES TEAM

â&#x2013; SALES 16

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f you are the Founder of a company poised to become the next Facebook, Google or Salesforce, you have stepped into the driver’s seat of a racecar with potential for 750 Horsepower, capable of going +200 mph. You can hire the best mechanics to build the engine and the world’s greatest pit crew to give you advice along the way, but if you don’t know how to drive the car, you will crash!

Knowing how to read the dashboard and get the most out of your sales engine is essential for competing in the highvelocity world of tech. Managing any team is a challenge, but until you have managed or been on a sales team building revenues at +20% MoM AT SCALE, you may be in for a swift and rude awakening. These 12 Tips are based on real knowledge gained from building companies from 0 – $100 Million, from world renowned sales leaders:

“Be results driven”David Baga

Hire people with drive and determination and create an environment that is very transparent and metric oriented. Ultimately, when you put competitive people together in a transparent environment, it drives the entire organization up and to the right. Make sure that you emphasize outcomes to prevent people from confusing activity with productivity.

“Identify where you are and what you need” - Aaron Ross

Identify which category your potential hires fall into, builders vs. growers. Builders grow from scratch. They start with nothing. Growers grow once everything is in place. Most people are not good at both. Know what stage you’re in and what type of sales person you need, and ask questions to separate the builders from the growers. Aaron is the #1 best-selling author of Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce. com, and the Founder of Predictable Revenue Inc. consultancy. He is a former sales guru at Salesforce. com, where he helped increase their revenues by $100M.

“Manage expectations accordingly” Navid Zolfaghari

You want to get your team excited and do whatever you can to support them. I think everyone knows what over-performance looks like, but not very many have defined what underperformance looks like. Are you comfortable with a sales person that consistently performs at 90% of quota or one who can be at 150% one month and way under the next? Navid is the Founder of Pinpoint Mobile, formerly the Founder of TriFame online talent discovery site, and an early member at Wildfire Interactive, which was acquired by Google in August 2012 for over $400M.

David is SVP of Revenue & Operations for Rocket Lawyer where his team has grown revenues from $2 million to over $40 million in just four years. David spent seven years at Oracle, building and leading sales teams that delivered record-setting results.

■ SALES 17

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“Coachability is key” - Mark Roberge

You have to make sure your hires are good at taking feedback. Gauge this by doing a role play in which they actually conduct a demo for your product. Then ask them how they think they did. Then give them feedback. Grade them not just on how smoothly the demo went, but how open they were to selfassessment, taking feedback and applying it. Mark is the Chief Revenue Officer of the HubSpot Sales Division. HubSpot ranked #33 on the Inc. 500 list of Fastest Growing Companies for 2011, and Mark was ranked #19 in Forbes’ Top 30 Social Sellers in the World.

“Set the bar high” Andrew Riesenfeld

When there’s a high goal, there is something worth pursuing and your group needs to believe that anything’s possible. If you achieve only 70% of a stretch goal, you’re doing better than achieving 100% of a mediocre goal, as long as there is a collective nirvana about what’s being built that is fueling your success. Andrew is currently VP of Field Sales at GuideSpark and the former VP of WW Sales Development + Pipeline at Responsys, where he helped lead the company to an acquisition by Oracle for $1.6 billion.

“Incentivize your team” - Arjun Arora

For example, invest in a few screens around the office displaying a live feed of deals closed and current monthly dollar value, or deals closed for each person. This creates transparency across the organization and team, and a sense of urgency and motivation. Arjun is the Chairman of the Board and Founder of ReTargeter, where he bootstrapped the company to be in the top 100 of the Inc. 500 list of Fastest Growing Companies for 2013.

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“Training matters” David Baga

Make continuous learning part of the culture; emphasize and invest in training and professional development. Every successful sales organization should have a regular cadence of training that is consistently developing the fundamentals of product knowledge, competitive intelligence, prospecting, opportunity management, territory planning and professional communications.

“Use the volumeversus-value ratio” Aaron Ross

Your highest value people (most expensive) should be spending time on the lowest volume (but highest importance) activities – like building relationships, securing referrals and partnerships. Your lower value people should focus on higher volume activities, like turning prospects into leads. This holds true for leads, too. Go after fewer, but better prospects.

“There is no onesize-fits-all solution” Navid Zolfaghari

You have lots of different personalities working for you. Your role is one of mentor and enabler. You want to shield your team from internal politics, make it easy for them to focus on the job at hand and be more successful. Different people need to be managed differently – figure out what motivates each of them and push those buttons to develop better sales people overall.

■ SALES

“Specialize early to grow sales” Mark Roberge

“Think through how you distribute accounts” Navid Zolfaghari

Don’t treat all your sales people the same. Group them by their preferences and strengths – do they prefer to go after large pieces of business or are they better rapport builders with small businesses? Do they understand certain sectors better than others? Segment your prospects and segment your sales team to address them, especially as you grow.

“Design a transparent organization” David Baga

Transparent means that your peers, managers, everyone, should know how you’re performing. The best sales organizations should know each team member’s goals and their progress against them. For example, the number of calls made every day, the amount of time spent on the phone, what each person’s pipeline looks like – these should be available for everyone to see. Your work ethic should be on display.

Gabriel Luna-Osteseski is the founder of Upshift Partners, a growth stage sales accelerator, which help companies bridge the gap between validation and scale. As an advisor and angel investor, he has helped numerous It’s only natural to want to give your best opportunities companies launch and navigate growth and scale. This to your best salespeople but you also want to balance article first appeared on that with a system that is fair. You want everyone SalesHacker.com to feel that there is a good opportunity for them to succeed, so make sure you invest in your new talent and give them a chance.

You can now read monthly ScaleUp magazine for free. It will be delivered to your Inbox every month. Learn from the wisdom of world’s leading authorities on business and personal growth.

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I attribute my success to this:

I never gave or took any

EXCUSE. Florence Nightingale

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Ask GrowthMonk

Ask GrowthMonk is our free virtual mentorship program where you can ask your business and personal growth queries. Our expert panel members will answer your questions and provide valuable insights. You can learn from their vast experience across multiple business domains. The best answers will be featured in next issues of ScaleUp magazine. Submit your questions by clicking the button below and your GrowthMonk will answer them soon.

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HOOKED by NIR EYAL

HOW DO SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES CREATE PRODUCTS PEOPLE CAN’T PUT DOWN? Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model - a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior.

www.hookmodel.com

Hooked is not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior. Hooked provides readers with: • Practical insights to create user habits that stick. • Actionable steps for building products people love. • Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products. 23

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RECOMMENDED READING

COVER STORY unit is one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s top most product management professional who has been instrumental in building products like Google Magazines, Google Newspapers, Google Buzz for Mobile and widely popular mobile phones like Moto X, G and E series at Motorola. His expertise in mobile product development has led to the creation of an early version of all Google Apps like email, chat etc. Most recently he was the chief product officer of Flipkart which is Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest e-commerce company with an estimated valuation of $11 billion.

little-known engineering college in India and later did his masters from another lesser known school in the U.S. There was nothing special about him which could help him get an admission in a good MBA college.

In order to change his story and make it appealing for the MBA application, he decided to distinguish himself from the rest and work on the overall personality. His sole purpose was to get into the best business school in the country. He started taking child psychology classes and mentoring kids, he got interested in mountaineering, running and started Punit graduated from an engineering college (NIT training for marathons. Soon he was doing all sorts Kurukshetra) in India in 1998. He wanted to pursue of interesting things so that he could round up his higher studies so he gave GRE and moved to the U.S. personality. He had fun doing all these things and for his masters. He did not want to take money from so he got genuinely interested in them. At the end his parents so he ultimately got a scholarship from a of the second year, he again got rejected from the relatively lesser known school which is the University business schools. However, he kept on working on his of Wyoming where he did his MS in electrical personality. Finally, in the third year, he applied to the engineering. He was lucky enough to graduate during best schools in the country and got into almost all of internet boom days and got good opportunities to them. He ended up going to Wharton and there was a work in the bay area which is the Mecca of technology. critical shift in his career path. He started with an entry level QA engineer job at a company called Avanti Corporation. He worked there for few months before moving to Softface Inc. which was an early stage risky startup. He was fascinated by the internet boom and by the fact that people were starting their own companies everywhere, so he took a risk to work at the startup. He was one of the early employees at Softface. The company soon got acquired by Ariba and he subsequently moved to Cadence Design Systems. At Cadence, he worked for almost 5 years across multiple roles and projects. During this time, he decided to go to a business school. The first time he applied to a few of the top 20 schools in the U.S., he got rejected from all of them. According to him, he was an ordinary guy who graduated from a

PRODUCT

GURU PUNIT SONI

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[

“the process of applying over three

years probably taught me more than what I would have learned from the business school itself.”

]

Until now he was following a linear path with few shifts in between. Like everybody else, he did his engineering but moving to the U.S. for M.S. was a shift in his path. He then started his job in the Silicon Valley and was slowly moving up the corporate ladder which was another linear path. Going to Wharton was a shift in his linear path. After MBA he got interested in venture capital and he even did an internship with Intel Capital. However soon he realized that he was not the right person to do venture capital. He was still learning to build companies and he was a player and also he did not get into best VC firms. So he ultimately decided to spend time operating rather than going to venture capital. “the trend line is invariably trying to achieve something which I was not getting so as part of achieving that you end up learning more than what you would learn when you actually got it”, he says. He joined Google and worked with the search group and led to the development of products like Google Magazine, Google Newspaper etc. However, he was not satisfied with what he was doing and wanted to do things at an even bigger scale. Somehow he knew that mobile would be big soon but at that time, mobile had little or no focus at Google. Luckily during that time,

COVER STORY Google acquired a company in Canada which was the seat for their mobile apps group. He was asked to go there and help build the group out. His team ended up building the first or second version of all Google apps like email, chat etc. Mobile over the years grew at Google and he led bigger and bigger roles in the company. Later he led the Google+ Games initiatives at Google, which was a failure despite their hard work, good strategy and great infrastructure. He did that for a couple of years and ultimately decided to leave Google. They asked him to take a break, clear up his mind and decide what he wanted to do. Luckily Google acquired Motorola during that time and he was asked to come in and help run software products at Motorola. He was ultimately successful in turning around things at Motorola and under his leadership, products like Moto X, Moto G, and Moto E were launched. Punit shared an interesting story about Moto G phones. The phone was designed by optimizing Android heavily so that the performance was similar to a high-end phone but the cost was only one third. They worked with Flipkart to sell the phone online exclusively in India. Initially, people laughed that who would buy the phone online in India. But everyone was proved wrong, as the phone became the bestselling phone in the history of Motorola which led it to the path of profitability over years. Flipkart found a new way to boost GMV by selling lowcost phones online and he discovered India and later decided to join Flipkart as its Chief Product Officer.

Secrets to building world class products Punit shared some of the secrets to building world class products. He said that as a product owner you should have the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the user and think about what matters to them. Your job is to be the voice of the user, not the voice of the company, partners, not the voice of anybody else except the user. If you can do this with a clean heart and good strategy then it will solve your problems of building good products. 25

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“

COVER STORY

It is fashionable to say that go and build a really great product and then the users will come but a really great product is the product that you just want, the starting point of all great products is adoption, user needs and go to market” Punit further says that there are two ways to build products. The first way is to build something and throw it at the wall and see what sticks. After that you hustle and then ultimately over time you will really create something that users will want. However, you need a lot of appetite to hustle and persevere. Companies like Facebook, when started, looked entirely different from what they are today. These companies started with a hustle and very little user insights. The second way is to first identify a need or hole in the market and figure how to serve that need. This approach is usually taken by seasoned entrepreneurs and has a higher rate of success. But it also requires a lot more experience and analysis. He himself favors the second approach and used it to build almost all products in his career. Building a product is just one part of the problem, but tracking the growth metrics is another important aspect of solving the consumer problem. You need to define right set of growth metrics depending on your domain and product. The best way to create a metric is to keep in mind the customer satisfaction and happiness. For an App, it could be retention, engagement and in e-commerce, it could be return rate or SLA etc. “If you have a high GMV but if your customer satisfaction is low then you know that is not going to last for too long” 26

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On leading big teams, hiring potentially who can code a little, and scaling people strategy emotional intelligence as you need to He recommends having A player on the team. If you have B players in the team then you will end up having a C team. There should be no compromise on the quality of people. Manager’s biggest job is to hire good people who are better than her. If you can hire people who are better than you and if you can give them space and opportunities to grow, you will ultimately end up scaling your teams with little or no micromanagement. Another important thing is to provide clear direction to the team with appropriate vision and mission. You should put a right framework for the communication so that they can make quick and right decisions and also provide vision so that people understand what they are aiming for. Most people get insecure and don’t hire people who are better than them. Your aspiration should be to always hire people who can think better than you.

[

“If

you find a right person, create a space for her, find ways to accommodate her and her aspirations”

]

In addition, you have to let people drive the agenda lot more as smart people don’t like to be told. You need to give space so that people can be creative and think of things which will drive innovation within organization. A great product manager has good communication skills and one who can articulate well. She must have broad prospect over the industry, proven management skills, really understand technology deeply,

deal with a lot of people so that you can make sure they all move in right direction.

Advice to entrepreneurs looking for growth First of all, startups are hard, they are very complicated piece, and no matter how hard you work, there are some things on which you will not have control, 1. Work very hard and be very passionate but there is some aspect of luck and timing that you can’t control that plays a role often. So don’t beat yourself too hard on these things, you can’t control everything. 2. Before writing a single line of code, do market research and get user insights. Identify the consumer needs and find ways to serve them. 3. Your unit economics should be very strong, if that does not make sense, your company will die no matter what you do. 4. You should be thoughtful about the kind of team you are building, people you hire, culture you create in the organization, to be honest, the biggest asset of any organization is its culture that holds it in thick and thin, 5. Put a right set of advisors, investors on board who can work with you and help you move ahead.

COVER STORY

â&#x20AC;&#x153;In the early part of your career you move from paycheck to paycheck, in later part of your career you move from project to project, when you get to higher level or higher evolution of your career, you move from adventure to adventure, so faster you can start moving from adventure to adventure, you are better off.â&#x20AC;?

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COVER STORY

How to achieve personal Growth in life? Punit says, “we all take ourselves too seriously, and worry that we will probably somehow, end up failing completely and be on the street but we are not going to, for most of us we have good education, we understand technology, we have built stuff, nobody is going to go on streets, nobody is going to be completely broke, or that your children will not have something to eat or will not go to school, in many ways you have the privilege that with the benefit of your education, you will figure out a way to actually be somewhat successful. Now all you have to do is to push yourself to grow”. He further says that his story is not that great as compared to other people, all he did was to go to the U.S. and study and that he would figure it out, then in the U.S. he decided to go to Bay area after only 3 months into his job without H1B visa and joined a very early stage

risky startup, by the time he got out of Wharton, he was broke with quarter million of debt on him, but at every step along the way, whether joining Google or doing mobile or social or even Flipkart and heading to India when he could have picked up a very good job in valley doing CXO job with one of the big companies here, he took risks and had leaps of faith. Sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed, and almost all the time you grow, and what he has realized is, that there is really no failure because even if you fail materially, you will probably learn a lot and more importantly almost always even bigger opportunities will show up in front of you. “You know the more you risk and try to create anything the more interesting and amazing opportunities which are bigger and even exponentially big starts showing up. So I guess if there is anything that I have learned from that about personal growth is

that do whatever you want to do whatever that makes you happy and don’t be conservative, take huge risks, it will almost always work out if you have the brain and education to navigate the world.” Punit follows what he preaches. These days he is busy working on his next business venture after leaving Flipkart. As per him, he is on a break to clear his mind and figure out what’s the next thing he is passionate to work on. He is starting again from scratch and spends most of his time meeting people, helping entrepreneurs and brainstorming with his partner on new business ideas. He suggests taking some time during the day to reflect on how things are going because as a busy senior executive, people hardly get any time to think beyond running between meetings and working with clients, team, bosses etc.

Product he is proud of building in his career MotoG

Favorite Books • The Famished Road by Ben Okri • Murakami Books • Books by D. H. Lawrence, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry • Loves reading Victorian books

Source of Inspiration Parents and Grand Mother

Hobby Spending time with wife and kids, running, hiking

Leadership Style Mix of participative, delegative & authoritative 28

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I love the smell of possibility in the morning #ScaleUp

PERSONAL GROWTH

THE POWER OF CLARITY

L. Hunt, a man who rose from a bankrupt cotton farmer in the 1930s to a multi-billionaire when he died in 1974, was once asked during a TV interview what advice he could give to others who wanted to be financially successful. He said only two things are required. First, you must decide exactly what it is you want to accomplish. Most people never do that in their entire lives. And secondly, you must determine what price you’ll have to pay to get it, and then resolve to pay that price.

Clear Goals Are Essential Clear goals and objectives are essential to the success of any business, and this is no less true of building your own career. If you don’t take the time to get really clear 31

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about exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish, then you’re forever doomed to spend your life achieving the goals of those who do. In the absence of a clear direction for your life, you will either meander aimlessly or you will build a career that you don’t feel good about. You may make some money, and you may do some interesting work, but the end result will not resemble anything you ever made a conscious decision to build, and ultimately you will be left with the sinking feeling that maybe you took a wrong turn

somewhere along the way. Do you ever look at your career and think to yourself, “How on earth did I get here?” If setting goals is so critically important, then why is it that so few people take the time to define exactly where they want to go? Part of the reason is a lack of knowledge about how to set clear goals. You can go through years of schooling and never receive any instruction on goal setting at all. A failure to understand the immense importance of establishing clear

PERSONAL GROWTH goals is also common. But those who truly know what they want often outperform everyone else by an enormous degree. A frequent deterrent to goal setting is the fear of making a mistake. Teddy Roosevelt once said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” Setting virtually any goal at all is better than drifting aimlessly with no clear direction. The best way I know to guarantee failure is to avoid making clear, committed decisions. Every day is already a mistake if you don’t know where you’re going. You’re probably spending most of your time working to achieve other people’s goals. The local fast food restaurant, TV advertisers, and the stockholders of the businesses you patronize are all very happy for that. If you don’t decide what you really want, then you’ve decided to hand your future over to the whims of others, and that’s always a mistake. By taking hold of the reins yourself and deciding where you’d like to go, you gain a tremendous sense of control that most people never experience in their entire lives. Many people assume that because they have a direction, they must therefore have goals, but this is not the case and merely creates the illusion of progress. “Making more money” and “building a business” are not goals. A goal is a specific, clearly defined, measurable state. An example of the difference between a direction and a goal is the difference between the compass direction of northeast and the top of the Eiffel Tower in France. One is merely a direction; the other is a definite location.

Define Goals in Binary Terms 32

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One critical aspect of goals is that they must be defined in binary terms. At any point in time, if I were to ask you if you had achieved your goal yet, you must be able to give me a definitive “yes” or “no” answer; “maybe” is not an option. You cannot say with absolute certainty if you’ve fully completed the outcome of “making more money,” but you can give me a definitive binary answer as to whether or not you are currently standing on top of the Eiffel Tower. An example of a clear business goal would be that your gross income for the month of April this year is $5000 or more. That is something you can calculate precisely, and at the end of the month, you can give a definitive answer as to whether or not your goal has been achieved. That is the level of clarity you need in order to form a goal that your mind can lock onto and move towards rapidly.

subconscious mind can lock onto a clearly defined goal only if the goal is defined in positive terms. If you put your focus on what you don’t want instead of what you do, you’re likely to attract exactly what it is you’re trying to avoid. Phrase your goals as if they are already achieved. Instead of saying, “I will earn $100,000 this year,” phrase it in the present tense: “I earn $100,000 this year.” If you Be Detailed phrase your goals in future terms, you are sending a message to your Be as detailed as possible when setting goals. Give specific numbers, subconscious mind to forever keep dates, and times. Make sure that each that outcome in the future, just beyond your grasp. Avoid wishy-washy of your goals is measurable. Either you achieved it, or you didn’t. Define words like “probably,” “should,” “could,” “would,” “might,” or “may” your goals as if you already know when forming your goals. Such what’s going to happen. It’s been said that the best way to predict the words foster doubt as to whether you can really achieve what you are after. future is to create it. And finally, make your goals personYou cannot set goals for other Commit Goals to Writing al. people, such as, “A publisher will publish my software by the end of Goals must be in writing in the form the year.” Phrase it like this instead: of positive, present-tense, person“I sign a North American retail pubal affirmations. A goal that is not lishing contract this year that earns committed to writing is just a fanme at least $100,000 by the end of tasy. Set goals for what you want, the year.” not for what you don’t want. Your

PERSONAL GROWTH

Objectify Subjective Goals What if you need to set subjective goals, such as improving your own level of self-discipline? How do you phrase such goals in binary terms? To solve this problem, I use a rating scale of 1 to 10. For instance, if you want to improve your self-discipline, ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate your current level of self-discipline? Then set a goal to achieve a certain specific rating by a certain date. This allows you to measure your progress and know with a high degree of certainty whether or not you’ve actually achieved your goal.

Goal Setting Is an Activity Setting clear goals is not a passive act. It doesn’t happen automatically. You must take direct conscious action in order to make it so. Everything counts, and nothing is neutral. You are either moving towards your goals, or you’re moving away from them. If you do nothing or if you act without clarity, then you are 33

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almost certainly a victim of “being outgoaled.” In other words you are spending your time working on other people’s goals without even knowing it. You are happily working to enrich your landlord, other businesses, advertisers, stockholders, etc. Each day you spend working without a sense of clarity about where you’re headed is a step backwards for you. If you don’t actively tend your garden, then weeds will grow automatically. Weeds don’t need to be watered or fertilized. They just grow by themselves in the absence of an attentive gardener. Similarly, in the absence of conscious and directed action on your part, your work and your life will automatically become full of weeds. You don’t need to do anything at all to make this happen. And when you finally get around to taking a serious look at where you are and where you want to go, the first thing you’ll have to do is pull out all those weeds.

success, only to realize too late that it was leaning against the wrong building? Just pick a point in the future, whether it’s six months from now or five years from now, and spend a few hours writing out a clear description of where you want to be at that time. I know many people who aren’t sure where they want to go, so they avoid committing anything to writing in order to “keep their options open.” What would happen if you pursued that attitude to its logical conclusion? If you always kept your options open and never made any firm commitments, then you’d never get promoted, start your own business, get married, have a family, move to that new home, etc. except to the degree that someone else made that decision for you.

I used to have a friend like this, who still hasn’t decided what he wants to do with his life. He yields control of his life to others without even realizReading this article will do absolutely ing it, simply because he’s unwilling nothing for you unless you turn it to take the time to define a vision for into some form of physical action. his own life out of fear of making The best thinking unfortunately the wrong choice. His life is ruled gives you zero results. In reality, you by others who push their goals onto won’t even be paid a penny for your him, which he accepts by default. thoughts. You can have the most Ask yourself if you’re in the same creative idea in the world, but ideas boat. If a friend of yours became themselves are utterly worthless. You totally committed to getting you to only get results from the physical change something in your life at ranactions you take, never for the ideas dom — your career, your living situyou have. In order to get any kind of ation, your relationship, etc. — could tangible results at all, you must act s/he do it just by being absolutely on an idea. You must communicate certain and committed that it’s the it, build it, implement it, and make it right thing for you? Could a business real. associate come along and radically alter your plans for the week without you ever deciding consciously that Clarity Is a Choice such a change is consistent with your goals? We all suffer from problems If you’ve been running your career in an unfocused manner, just waking like these to the degree that we fail to set clear goals for ourselves. There is up each morning and seeing what happens, then it is absolutely crucial a big difference between recognizing that you take the time to decide and and acting on a true opportunity and being knocked off course without write down exactly where it is you making a conscious decision to shift want to go. How much longer will gears. you continue to climb the ladder of

PERSONAL GROWTH Waiting for something to inspire you and hoping that the perfect outcome will just fall into your lap is nothing but a fantasy. Clear decision making doesn’t happen passively; you actually have to physically put in the time to make it happen. If you don’t have clear goals simply because you don’t know what you want, then sit down and actively decide what you want. That sense of knowing what you want isn’t going to just come to you in a form of divine inspiration. Clarity is a choice, not an accident or a gift. Clarity doesn’t come to you — you have to go to it. Not setting goals is the same thing as deciding to be a slave to the goals of others.

progress and adjusting its heading again and again. Goal setting works the same way. Maintain a clear list of goals not because that’s actually where you’ll end up but because it will give you tremendous certainty in deciding what you need to do today. When someone contacts you with an “opportunity” out of the blue, you’ll know whether it’s a real opportunity or a waste of time. The long view sharpens the short view.

what’s really important to you. When you end the day with a feeling of regret or loss, you gain the awareness to try a different approach the next day.

You’ll see a measurable difference in your life the very first day you establish clear, committed goals, even if your first few attempts aren’t perfect. You’ll be able to make decisions much more rapidly because you’ll see how they’ll either move you towards As you begin moving towards your or away from your goals. On the goals, you’ll gain new knowledge eve of his death, Walt Disney had a along the way, and you’ll have to reporter crawl into bed with him so adapt your plans as you go. You he could share his vision for Disney may also change your vision if you World, six years before its compleget partway there and decide it’s tion. When Disney World finally not quite what you really want. Illopened, another reporter commentClear Goals Sharpen formed goals are still far superior to ed to Walt’s brother, Roy, “It’s too Present-Moment no goals at all. bad Walt did not live to see this.” Roy Decisions I was once told by someone that I replied, “Walt saw it first. That’s why should end each day by crossing it we are seeing it now.” Clear goals Your reality will not match your off my calendar and saying out loud, allow you to achieve the first half vision exactly. That’s not the point. “There goes another day of my life, of H.L. Hunt’s success formula. By The point is for your vision to allow never to return again.” Try this for deciding exactly what you want to you to make clear daily decisions that yourself, and notice how much it accomplish, committing it to writing, keep you moving in the direction sharpens your focus. When you end and reviewing it on a daily basis, you of your goals. When a commercial a day with the feeling that you would bring your goals into reality with the airliner flies from one city to anhave lived it the same if you had the power of your focus. other, it is off course over 90% of chance to repeat it, you gain a sense the time, but it keeps measuring its of gratitude that helps you focus on 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. Steve has been quoted as an expert by the New York Times, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other publications.

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If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful. Jeff Bezos

HEALTH

SIX WAYS TO IMPROVE

HEALTH AND PRODUCTIVITY YOUR

AT WORK

Looking for ways to be healthier at work? Try these six approaches to help you and your team increase engagement, productivity and health! 36

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HEALTH

Build flexibility into how, when and where you work. Studies show that people who feel more “in control” of their work and work environment are less likely to suffer from stress and illness and see increases in productivity. Talk to your manager or team about ways you can build more flexibility and choice into your workplace. For example:

• Change where you work: Many people can work effectively and efficiently at home, in a satellite office, co-working facility, a park or a coffee shop. Working this way requires good mobile technology and the right protocols to pull off (so everyone knows how to reach you), but can be incredibly empowering. • Adopt a more flexible work schedule: Flexible work schedules are an alternative to the traditional 9 to 5, 40-hour work week. They allow you to vary your arrival

and/or departure times and include programs like job sharing or a compressed work week. • Move more: Take a look at how you work and explore alternatives to sitting in one position all day. Change your position often and move around frequently, e.g., stand at a table in the break room, walk during conference calls. • Adjust your work environment: Even if your organization does not provide desks that move up and down, making small adjustments, like moving or adding a computer monitor, turning on a task light or re-orienting furniture can make a major difference in your posture and your productivity.

Nurture “biophilia.” We have a strong desire to be in and among nature. It’s only natural – for most of human history we spent all of our time outdoors. This preference, often referred to biophilia, was introduced and popularized by E.O. Wilson, who suggests that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems. To take advantage of the nature-lover in all of us: • Add natural elements into the workplace by putting small plants or a water feature on your desk or nearby. These elements are soothing psychologically and reduce stress. • Move your desk or any workspaces occupied by people next to a window if possible. More natural light will decrease eye strain, improve well-being and if you sit close enough to a window, it can help reset your circadian rhythm and sleep cycle. • Use features in the workplace that mimic nature, such as pictures of trees and water, building elements that mimic shells or leaves, furniture

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with organic rather than geometric shapes, and wood with a visible wood grain. These features, referred to as “natural analogues” can have the same biophilic impact as the real thing.

HEALTH

Leverage “choice architecture” to improve eating habits. You know how you walk into a grocery store and find yourself buying food at the end of the isle? Or have you noticed how candy is located at child-eye level by the checkout counter? Foods that are easy to spot and presented well are not put there by accident, and food companies pay for the privilege. The secret is “choice architecture,” a term for different ways in which choices can be presented to consumers, and the impact of that presentation on consumer decision making. Here are some ways to do this in the workplace: • Reduce the number of unhealthy foods that are available. Work with your local food service provider or local restaurants to provide healthy options for meetings and events. • “Hide” unhealthy foods in the kitchen or breakroom by putting them in opaque or translucent containers (versus healthy food like fruit or nuts in glass containers). Companies who provide subsidized snacks are starting to opt for refrigerators with glass doors to encourage employees to grab healthy foods with a shorter shelf life (boiled eggs, salad, fruit) versus processed foods that can be left on the counter.

• Provide your kitchen with colorful plates. Why? Because people tend to subconsciously pile carbohydrates (pasta, potatoes, bread) onto white plates. It’s harder to tell how much you have on your plate if the food blends in with the plate color. Plates that are red or blue make food portions more obvious and we tend to eat fewer carbs that way.

Make getting healthy a team sport. Social influence, also known as peer pressure, has a positive impact on exercise behavior and our attitudes towards exercise. There are many ways to tap into this at work. For example: • Institute formal or informal “accountability partners” and partner team mates so they are accountable for helping each other meet career or health goals. • Create competitions between teams or different office locations to encourage more walking, biking or participating in team sports over the course of a work week. • Consider creating a community garden (if you have the real estate available). Studies show that people are more likely to eat more healthy foods if they have a hand in growing their food as a community, even more so than if they grow it on their own!

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HEALTH

Get rid of email. Email has become a tool for communicating all things to all people, and many complain that it is highly disruptive to getting work done. Often we are “copied” in emails what are not relevant for our work, and spend time answering messages late at night, even when those message aren’t urgent. It’s a stressful addiction. Some companies are looking for better tools to help their teams communicate more effectively and reduce the overtime spent answering emails constantly. I spoke with a leader that adopted Slack and Asana for internal communications. He claims to have recaptured at least five hours a week and saved “a day” of his team’s time a week due to more efficient communication and streamlined meetings. He still uses email for external communication, but inter-office email was dramatically reduced.

Bring your pet to work. A growing body of evidence suggests that pets in the office can have health benefits, improve morale, and even increase collaboration among workers. In some cases, pet owners may work longer hours if they don’t feel they have to rush home to let their dogs out at the end of the day. Randolph Barker, professor of management in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business has studied dogs in the workplace, and found that bringing them to work resulted in a measurable decline in stress among workers over the course of a day. Companies that allow dogs to work include Amazon, Ben & Jerry’s, Google, Clif Bar & Company, and Proctor and Gamble’s Pet Care Division.

Leigh Stringer is a workplace design specialist, writer and researcher who works for EYP, an architecture, engineering and building technology firm that specializes in sustainable, healthy, high-performance buildings. She is the author of The Healthy Workplace: How to Improve the Health and Well-Being of your Employees – and Boost your Company’s Bottom Line, available on Amazon and Audible.

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The First Two Rules of Leadership:

Don’t Be Stupid. Don’t Be a Jerk.

“Most of the leadership issues we have to address are because of stupid mistakes or the leader acts like a jerk.”

by David Cottrell

hose were words shared several years ago by a friend and colleague. Could successful leadership really be so simple? Since then, my observations have confirmed that, although other factors are important, the first two rules of leadership are that simple—don’t be stupid and don’t be a jerk. Long-term success ultimately depends on making smart decisions based on accurate information and treating others as real people, who have dreams, hopes, and desires to do well.

LEADERSHIP

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Every day thousands of people quit their jobs. They reach their limit and realize that enough is enough. They bid farewell to friends and co-workers. They exit a familiar, comfortable place and enter an unknown territory—new job, boss, peers, and environment. They are convinced that the unknown has got to be better than the current situation that they know all too well. They believe that anything, anywhere, would be better than where they are.

trying to accomplish, not paying attention to the needs of your team, or piling on more work and leading your superstars directly to burnout and checkout. Some of the most frustrating words for a leader to hear are: “This is stupid. Why are we doing this? If they had only asked we would have told them that this would not work.”

So, they leave.

The second rule of leadership is Don’t Be a Jerk.

During their last day on the job, they have an exit interview with human resources and are asked: “Why are you leaving?” They respond that they will be paid more at the new job, the benefits are better, the new job is closer to home, or the hours are better.

It may be a few years away, but imagine your retirement party. Associates from throughout your organization will gather to celebrate and extend best wishes to you. The room will be packed.

Don’t be stupid.

One by one people will make their way to the front of the room, grab the microphone, and begin talking about If you believe exit interviews, great people leave good the impact that you made on them. Some of the stories organizations to start over someplace else because of they tell will be funny, some serious, but every story will money or for more advancement opportunities. Why would they say anything else? After all, the person leav- personal. One person will probably speak about how ing doesn’t want to burn any bridges and has nothing to you provided compassion and encouragement during gain by telling the whole truth. Instead, they give reasons a tough time. Another may say that she is thankful that that are believable, but not accurate. Most exit interviews you demanded her best and would not accept mediocrity. Someone else will share that you listened to him and do not uncover the whole truth. changed your stance on an issue. Another person may recall the time you sent a personal congratulation note to Occasionally, the difference in money is significant enough to warrant a move, but most of the time it’s not her son for his graduation. Someone else may talk about about money or career advancement. Money is only one a time that you made a serious mistake but owned up to it, learned from it, and became a better leader because of piece of the puzzle, and perhaps a small one at that. the experience. Most people want more than just a paycheck — they want to feel good about where they work, whom they work with, and what they accomplish together as a team. The truth is that most people who quit and leave, or those who quit and stay, made a decision to quit their leader. Their resignation or disengagement has little to do with pay, benefits, distance from home, or long hours. They quit because something between them and their leader has gone awry. The obstacles overshadowed the desire and ability to do a good job and frustrations faced every day. Ironically, the very person who, on the first day at their new job, enthusiastically greeted them, shook their hand, and welcomed them as an important link on the team created most of those frustrations.

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Every leader gets caught up in the pressure of the moment and does things that — upon reflection — were pretty stupid. Dumb things like: hiring in haste, rewarding actions that work against what you are really

Other team members will begin their speeches with: I remember.. .; You took the time to. . . ; You helped me. . . ; I’ll never forget. . . ; You cared enough to. . . ; and so on. I doubt that anyone will talk about successful or failed strategies. No one will mention a successful or failed marketing program. There will be no toasts to celebrate winning an account. The evening will be filled with personal stories of how you treated each person individually. Meanwhile, in the same building, another retirement choose the bullying, arrogant, insulting, and uncomproparty may be going on. The party is a not a retirement mising leadership route. celebration. It is a celebration that a leader has retired. In fact, the leader who is retiring will not even be invited to the party. He did the same job and worked just as hard as you. But he chose to do it differently. He was a jerk. Leadership is demanding. If you want to lead a great You understood that leadership was not about you. Your team, you have to be great. If you want great, long-term leadership success you have to win with great class. primary interest was not in the accumulation of power The good news is that the rewards for being a great, — it was in developing your people to become their rather than average, leader are heavily skewed. People very best. The other retiree was more interested in the want to work for the best, buy from the best, and deal accumulation of power and wealth than helping those around him become their best. Typically, jerks are greedy with the best in almost every situation in our society. The rewards for being a great leader are enormous. People and interested in only themselves. They act and react without thinking. Jerks enjoy taking the easy road and are flock to winners.

Don’t be a jerk.

quick to blame others.

That is not you. You are a great person with honorable intentions, but sometimes you may come across differently than what you really are. Unfortunately, everyone occasionally and unintentionally comes across like a jerk. The difference between you and the real jerk is the frequency of jerk moments and how quickly you recover when your jerk moment appears. Hopefully, your jerk moments are rare, temporary, and you recover from them quickly. And, your team knows that regardless of the temporary jerk moment, you had their best interest in mind. The other retiree’s team knew that his jerk moment was just another ordinary day. You may be thinking that some jerks achieve extraordinary results. After all, you have heard that nice guys finish last. Yes, some jerks achieve extraordinary results. A marketing genius, fabulous communicator, and incredible visionary may achieve results while many of those around him considered him to be a jerk. LEADERSHIP Be aware that the people in your organization would probably not stick around for long if you 42

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If you want to achieve extraordinary results with class, follow The First Two Rules of Leadership: Don’t be Stupid. Don’t Be a Jerk it will help improve morale, decrease turnover, increase everyone’s job satisfaction, and you will have a whole lot more fun leading. David Cottrell is president and CEO of CornerStoneLeadership. He is the author of more than twenty-five books including the best-selling Monday Morning Leadership.

GROWTH INTERVIEW

IN CONVERSATION WITH Tiffany Dasilva Tiffany Dasilva has been in digital marketing for over 10 years (20 years if you count the first time she ever “SEO’d” a website). She started her career in SEO. After that, she moved to SEM, Social Media Advertising, Content Marketing, and then eventually CRO. Her expertise lies in SEM mostly. Q: You have been a growth hacker and helping companies grow. How would you define growth hacking?

cost conversion from $175 when we started down to $50 today.

In an SEO example for the same company, we took all the companies A: Growth Hacking for me is a bit major services and broke them out different than the “growth hacking” by location. We created backend everyone hear about when it comes landing pages that were indexable to early stage startups. For me, I by Google but not in the navigation. tend to come into companies a few We made sure the pages weren’t years in, right after they’ve received duplicate. We increased organic a couple rounds of funding. At traffic by 200%. As soon as organic this point we start looking at all traffic started to roll in, we made sure the activity that’s been going on that we were constantly testing and since the start, cut the things that tweaking those pages to ensure the don’t work and focus on the things best conversion rate possible. Even that do in order to scale. My job though it took a few months before becomes to look at every stage in Google indexed those pages and we the funnel and find the best ways to started move the needle whether its through showing acquisition, activation, retention, up on revenue or referral. the first page, Q: Give us some examples of we were growth hacking done by you. able to use A: I tend to hack away (no pun intended) on PPC campaigns. People this as a longer term strategy while the other tend to think that having a lot of keywords are the best way you make PPC campaigns were doing their magic in the short term. sure to get every last conversion. I like to focus only the keywords that When thinking of growth hacking convert consistently (even if it’s only strategies - break them up. What 1-2) and then spend my time making areas can you focus on for short the landing pages better in order to term benefits and what areas can you enhance the user experience, but focus on for longer term? People also to increase quality score (making tend to think of growth hacking as each lead cheaper). I’ve done this what can we do NOW, but I try to quite a few times, but in one case I focus on both.. I mean, 3-6 months was able to increase leads year over flies by in a startup - you want to be year 50-100% while dropping the prepared. 43

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Q: How can companies leverage growth hacking? What resources are required for this? A: Learn as much as you can about your target demographic and the people coming to your site. Analytics offers demographic, device, location, and keyword information that are essential to creating building out campaigns that speak directly to your customer. Their there to use! Take 10 minutes a week to look at them, and get to know the “Who” behind your data. Q: What challenges you have seen which hamper the growth of any business? A: This may come as a shocker, but instead of focusing on doing things quickly and throwing a million things at the wall at once, I say slow it down. Make BIG changes, wait 2-3 weeks, assess what happened and what changes you’ll make as a result. Without that time period to really understand what happened, you’re guessing which is detrimental to growth. If you’re not learning about your audience and the way they move around your site, you’re probably not going to grow to your full potential.

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“The hardest part is setting expectations, and trying to “slow” down in a startup, where people tend to focus on “getting s#$ done.”

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GROWTH INTERVIEW Q: Give us some tips on doing digital marketing at low or zero cost. A: I would suggest three things.

a bucket list of 2-3 things I want to do every year. Over the years, this bucket list has motivated me to travel around the world, jump out of planes, buy a house, and even create my own product. I love it because in January, it seems like it can never happen - but by the end of the year I’ve found a way a way to do it. (Note: It’s actually located on the bottom right corner of my agile white board so it stays top of mind the whole year.)

1. SEO: If you don’t have money, look at all the ways you can build out your site with well optimized landing pages. Can you add locations to your keywords? Can you create pages where you compare your company to the competition (Your Company vs. X). This is a great strategy to bring in organic traffic with people who 3) Read, Read, and Read some are looking for exactly what you’re more: Every year I read/listen to selling. 60 books. These books range from 2. Remarketing: Remarketing cam- fiction to business, self help to paigns are the best way to convert spiritual and even graphic novels to people who have already visited your mystery series. I think every book site and have some interest. Creating can teach you something - whether remarketing for Facebook & Google it’s on the page, or the way it’s can be cheap, and worthwhile. written. If a book is boring me, I 3. Authority Building Campaigns: tend to ask why. Is it the way it’s written? Are the chapters too long? Creating blog posts that bring When a book is so addicting, I together different experts speaking on topics that relate to your product can’t put it down - I stop and try to figure out what’s caused me to turn are a great way to spread the word. the page. By paying attention to Not only does your product get linked with that expect, but they may these little things, you’ll have more inspiration for the next ad campaign, also share your content with their landing page or even your own side audience. Don’t forget to add a exit projects! pop up with an offer to those who visit your site. Q: Digital marketing and growth Q: Can one apply growth hacking hacking is a big field. How do you for personal growth? If yes how? keep yourself updated? What are some good resources for learning A: There’s 3 major ways I’ve been Digital Marketing and Growth able to hack personal growth: Hacking? 1) Agile Board: Every week I jot A: When I am looking for new down all the things i need to do work information, I tend to go on & personally on post it cards and growthhackers.com, Search Engine stick it on the top of a whiteboard Journal, or PPC hero. However, I under “To Do”.Everyday I take 2-3 tend to try to learn as much as I can things from the list, and move it to by doing. Many of the things you the middle of the whiteboard under may be reading won’t necessarily “Doing”, and as I complete each work for your business so it tends to task I move them to “Done.” If be a bit of a waste of time for me. something doesn’t get done in 2-3 However, when I am stumped - I do weeks, I either give it to someone look at those websites for help. else to do for me or I completely remove it from the list. Q: How to find right business metrics for growing a business? 2) Bucket List: Since 18, I’ve had 44

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A: I only tend to look at two: conversions & cost/conversion. The best thing to do is ask the highest person you have access to, what matters most in their eyes. From there, you can assess which metric you have. Q: What are your secret tools for growth hacking? A: Hmm it wouldn’t be a secret then would it? ;) I would say Google Analytics & Screaming Frog. People tend to focus on so many testing tools out there and new tools keep popping up but I tend to stay with ones that have been tried and true over teh years.I find Google Analytics helps me to learn more about the visitors to my site, and especially the demographics of those who convert. While Screaming Frog allows me to look at the structure and content available on my competitor’s site that I can use to compete against them and prioritize content creation on my end. Q: Tips to find and hire growth hacker for any company? A: Look for a T-shaped marketer. Someone who has expertise in 1-2 areas, but also has experience in most areas of digital marketing. These are the people who not only understand the little details that make a campaign work, but also the big picture and how each area fits together.

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THE WAY I WORK