GE 201: How Sean Ellis Built GrowthHackers to 100K Members and Skyrocketed the Growth Hacking Movement (podcast)

Hey everyone, in today’s episode I share the mic with Sean Ellis, CEO of GrowthHackers. Sean was the 11^th guest on Growth Everywhere and this is his second time on the podcast. Sean has worked with Dropbox and Qualaroo and is also the author of Hacking Growth.

Listen as Sean discusses the importance of running weekly growth experiments for your business, why focus is such an important asset for any founder, how to scale customer acquisition, and what he’s learned about growth from GrowthHackers, Qualaroo and other multi-billion-dollar companies.

Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: How Sean Ellis Built GrowthHackers to 100K Members and Skyrocketed the Growth Hacking Movement TRANSCRIPT

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:36 – Leave a review and rating and subscribe to the podcast
• 00:56 – Eric welcomes Sean Ellis
• 01:19 – Sean shares about his background
  • 01:21 – Sean worked with two startups that grew to become companies
  • 01:54 – Most of Sean’s work is during the first year of a startup
  • 02:22 – Sean worked with Dropbox, Eventbrite and Lookout
• 03:02 – Qualaroo was acquired from Kissmetrics
  • 03:11 – Sean worked on Qualaroo and GrowthHackers at about the same time
  • 03:22 – Qualaroo informs the types of tests you need to improve your website
  • 03:38 – Sean sold Qualaroo to focus on GrowthHackers
  • 04:11 – Sean was more focused on selling Qualaroo quickly rather than making a bigger sale
• 05:15 – GrowthHackers is trying to help companies manage their growth by setting up processes, training, and software
  • 06:06 – GrowthHackers has their own community with hundreds of thousands of members
  • 06:32 – GrowthHackers is Sean’s passion project
  • 07:25 – GrowthHackers increased their monthly rate to $850
• 08:49 – Experimentation is important for learning how to grow your business
  • 09:27 – Running an experiment follows the same scientific process
• 09:45 – What’s the one constant thing you see every time in every business? – The PRODUCT dictates a lot of the potential of a business
  • 10:21 – The second most important thing is WHO is most passionate about the product
  • 11:02 – Sean then works to find out who else can benefit from the product
  • 11:14 – “It is about understanding the experience that leads to retention”
  • 12:06 – Sean worked on a company where he was able to grow the retention and customer base
  • 13:04 – Sean did a lot of testing to improve the onboarding and highlighted what lead to long term retention
• 13:46 – Sean’s book was written with Morgan Brown and it was about Sean’s processes as well as the best practices of the companies he’s worked with
  • 14:15 – Marketing a business involves public touch points
  • 15:05 – Sean and Morgan wanted to document how companies grow
  • 15:35 – Sean wants to share to people what growth hacking really is and how they can apply it to their own businesses
  • 16:18 – Sean started to write about his experiences in his own blog and the book is the culmination of all his work with these different companies
  • 17:10 – Sean is passionate about helping people scale and give the most impact
• 18:04 – The GrowthHackers Conference is a celebration of bringing people together
  • 19:20 – It is about sharing ideas between practitioners
• 19:52 – GrowthHackers University is built around the Growth Master Role
  • 20:31 – It is a self-paced course through Teachable for people who are running the processes of their companies
• 21:08 – Sean says the solution to growth is a multi-faceted one and each piece is important
  • 22:20 – Sean and his team manages the load by looking at each piece and finding what needs to be worked on the most
• 23:31 – What’s the most effective thing you are doing now in terms of customer acquisition? – The community was built on a Twitter queue
  • 24:15 – Aside from Twitter, the community is actively engaging with one another through different channels
• 25:18 – What’s one big change you made in the last year that’s impacted you or the business in a big way? – Selling Qualaroo
• 25:35 – What’s one new tool that you added in the last year that added a lot of value for you? – Segment
• 26:01 – What’s one must-read book do you recommend? – Presenting to Win and Influence
• 27:04 – What’s one blog, publication or podcast do you recommend? – The Everything Store, The Upstarts
• 28:53 – Connect with Sean on Twitter and on GrowthHacker
• 29:20 – End of today’s episode

3 Key Points:

1. The potential growth of a company relies heavily on the value of its product.
2. Business growth is about retention—understand what keeps your customers faithful to you.
3. Experimentation is KEY to growing your business and needs to be part of your process.

Resources From This Interview:

• GrowthHackers
• GrowthHackers Projects
• Startup Marketing blog
• Dropbox
• Eventbrite
• Lookout
• Kissmetrics
• Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success by Sean Ellis
• Growth Hackers Conference
• Growth Hackers University
• Teachable
• Segment
• Sean’s first appearance on Growth Everywhere: Ep 11: Sean Ellis, CEO of Qualaroo, On Why You Need To Understand ‘Growth Hacking’ Today
• Must-read books:
  • Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story by Jerry Weissman
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
  • The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
  • The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World by Brad Stone

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 Connect With Eric Siu:

• Growth Everywhere
• Single Grain
• Twitter @ericosiu