Growth Lessons

Jens Lennartson was a travel photographer for 12 years before he became an action figure and then a marketing expert.  Hear all about his intriguing journey, his innovative marketing techniques, and his top tips for Tweets on Twitter, on this Growth Lessons Podcast. To read the growth lessons newsletter go to growthlessons.co and to learn more about our community go to launchmba.co

Harry Dry dropped out of university and has no formal marketing training.  He told us that “originality is overrated” which was surprising as one of his earlier projects was Yeezy.Dating, a dating app exclusively for Kanye West fans, which went viral and made news headlines around the world. With his latest project, marketingexamples.com, he has secured a corporate sponsor and amassed over 58,000 subscribers to his marketing tips newsletter. Find out how he pulled this off, his top tips for content creation, and which is the best font for newsletters, in this lively and inspiring AMA. To read the growth lessons newsletter go to growthlessons.co and to learn more about our community go to launchmba.co

Are you trying to build sexy projects that change the world?  What's amazing is that Rohan Gilkes stopped trying to build a life-changing business and now he is helping people change their lives by starting an everyday business.   Rohan went from accountant to entrepreneur in 1 year and has multiple million-dollar businesses.  His breakthrough business? A home cleaning service. His strategy? Content, community, and courage. Enjoy this open and insightful AMA to hear how Rohan handles his fear of failure, the 10 questions he asks himself before starting any new project, and his top tips for starting a business in 2021. To read the growth lessons newsletter go to growthlessons.co and to learn more about our community go to launchmba.co

Alex West (@alexwest) has a goal - to achieve personal and financial freedom.  In this AMA he talks to the Launch MBA community about the lessons he learned building and failing at almost 20 projects in 2 years until his last project gained traction and he went from $0 - $2000 monthly recurring revenue in just 6 months. To read the growth lessons newsletter go to growthlessons.co and to learn more about our community go to launchmba.co 

Ever been told you need to stop experimenting, pick one idea and focus on it? I get told this every week. Mike Rubini is fascinating. He does the exact opposite. He doesn't want one big business, he wants (and has) lots of small profitable businesses. His main priority is simple: earn enough to allow him to play jazz whenever he wants. To achieve this he has gone from running an agency to becoming serial solo founder who focuses on building and running profitable SaaS (software-as-a-service) products. He currently has five profitable products active, and several more he's shut down or sold. For bite-sized summaries of these conversations in your inbox each week, subscribe at growthlessons.co.

In this episode I talked to Andrew Davison who has an interesting story of finding a lucrative niche as a freelancer and then building upon that by starting a Zapier agency. For those of you who don't know what Zapier is, it's an automation tool which allows you to plug together various other commonly used tools and automate repetitive tasks. For example, you could have it create Trello cards every time you get a new email, create and send invoices every time a customer job is marked complete, or notify you by text when you make a new sale. Zapier calls itself the glue of the internet. Andrew is known in many circles as "the Zapier expert". We discuss how he became synonymous with a niche and how he's leveraging this to make a successful business. I hope you enjoy it. For bite-sized summaries of these conversations in your inbox each week, subscribe at growthlessons.co.

I recently came across Dan on Twitter and reached out to him for an interview. He was super friendly and open with his advice. The crazy thing is, if a startup had grown as quickly as Dan's newsletter, you'd be reading about it everywhere. But he's built a 350 thousand dollar side hustle almost completely under the radar.  He talks about how he got started, the realities of sending an email to 100,000 people every day, the power of being mediocre, and gives some fantastic advice for growing a newsletter business. For bite-sized summaries of these conversations in your inbox each week, subscribe at growthlessons.co.

One recurring theme I’ve noticed from a lot of founder stories is the importance of producing content. Content helps you to build an audience, which then makes it easier to launch a business. The problem is, producing content is time consuming when there are so many other things to focus on.  This is where I learned a lot from Brett. He has leveraged content to source users for his company, Marpipe, but he’s done it in a smart way - using automations and other techniques to generate original content that converts into leads for his business. There’s so much to takeaway from this conversation, I hope you enjoy it. For bite-sized summaries of these conversations in your inbox each week, subscribe at growthlessons.co.

In this episode, my first ever podcast(!), I talk to Kevin Wagstaff, founder of Spectora, a SaaS startup which went from zero to $20k MRR in its first year building software for home inspections. It’s a fascinating story which touches on topics close to my heart - the power of choosing an underserved market, and having laser customer focus. I apologise the sound quality isn’t great, it was recorded from a Zoom call. I hope you enjoy the conversation. P.S. If you listen carefully at the end you can hear my 18-month-old daughter telling us to wrap things up! Want the short version? I send out bite-sized email summaries of all my Growth Lessons interviews. Sign up at GrowthLessons.co.