These are all of the Business Tips for Explosive Growth that consistently helped my startup’s apps grow to 1 million users.
Learn the details behind each of these 78 entrepreneurship tips, including detailed case-studies on the tips below, in my book, Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned Growing To 100 Million Users & Losing $78 Million, which was recently ranked as one of the Best Business Books For Growth-Hacking and Best Startup Books Of All-Time.
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- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Find something that people are doing inefficiently and create a solution that makes it substantially easier (ten times easier) to achieve the same result. Does your product accomplish this? #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Once you’ve figured out how much start-up capital you need, double it. #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Make the unknown known by creating a worst-case scenario plan. You’ll discover that the situation is rarely as bad as you initially thought. Do you have a worst-case scenario plan? #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: First-mover advantage is useless if the timing isn’t right. Have you thought about ideas, products, or features that failed in the past—simply due to being too early—that may work now? #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Your first few hires will set the tone for your culture. Secure elite talent ASAP and hire carefully. Are you confident your last few hires are the right cultural fit? #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Learn how to validate an idea with as little time and financial investment as possible. Do you have a plan to validate your ideas cheaply? #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: A few fanatical customer advocates are worth more than hundreds or even thousands of casual signups. Fanatical users will supply word-of-mouth growth, while providing the necessary feedback to iterate on the product. #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Having a remarkable product is not subjective. Either people remark and it grows organically or they don’t. Are people remarking about your product? #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: A marginally better product is worthless. It needs to be at least ten times better. Have you quantified how much better your product’s core offering is than the competition? #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: You can often find success at the intersection of passion and expertise. Are you passionate about the problem your product solves? #BusinessTipClick To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Have you looked outside your industry for new solutions and approaches to solve the problem in order to create the 10X experience?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you know what your product’s “aha” moment is? If not, figure it out, and focus on optimizing that experience for all users.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Are there projects you’re keeping alive by ignoring the sunk-cost principle (or for emotional and non-practical reasons)? If so, shut them down now to free up more valuable time and focus.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Perfect is the enemy of shipped. Creating the perfect feature indicates making lots of assumptions without gathering user feedback and data, and will take significantly more time. Are you continuing to work on features that are polished enough to put in front of customers now ?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Building product and testing features without robust analytics is like driving blindfolded—it won’t end well. Do you have an effective dashboard with all your key metrics?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Can you identify the one thing about your product that users want more of? Have you tested offering this to them for free if they get some friends to join?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: When writing copy, sell the benefit, not the feature. Are you selling the benefit?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: If you’re not running tests, start now. Do you plan to run at least three tests in the next thirty days?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Many of today’s billion-dollar companies succeeded by growing on top of other platforms. Are you testing integrations with emerging and established platforms?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Have you targeted a partnership that would provide massive visibility and growth for you?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Your growth strategy can’t be an afterthought. A great product with a poor or traditional marketing plan will have poor results. Do you have a growth rocket strategy?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: If people are complaining about something, it means the product is good enough that they care about it. The real problem is when no one’s complaining. Is anybody complaining about your product?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Read all your customer emails, because there’s a pot of gold in them if you look closely enough. Did you read all your customer service emails last month?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you have every employee (including management) spend one hour per quarter with customer service, listening to calls and answering customer emails?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Try to hire employees who will also use your product, because they will have some of the best ideas and will outperform non-user employees. Do at least 20 percent of your employees use the product regularly?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Hold a monthly brainstorm session, ideally with a theme such as “new features” or a specific goal and encourage the entire company to participate. When was your last company-wide brainstorm?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Better late than never is a bad plan for site reliability. Users are ruthless, and if your product doesn’t work, they will go somewhere else, fast. Are you actively addressing site reliability?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: When a competitor starts copying your features, you can pretty much write them off completely, as it means they ran out of innovative ideas. Are you copying features?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: If your largest source of revenue stopped paying you or disappeared, could your business survive for at least six months? Come up with a contingency plan now.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Revenue tests take several months to reveal their true impact and long-term ramifications on user growth and retention. Do you wait until your crucial tests reach statistical significance before reaching conclusions?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Never start charging for something that users are used to receiving for free. They will revolt and cause irrevocable damage with bad reviews. Do you have any plans to charge for features you are currently giving away for free?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Come up with new features to charge users for instead of monetizing previously free features.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Write down the five people you spend the most time with. If you become the average of them, would you be happy with that outcome? If not, it might be time to upgrade your inner circle.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: When a billionaire wants to work with you, never say no. Are you fully exploring opportunities to work with a billionaire?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Don’t be pressured into making any decisions or signing any documents you’re unsure about. Rushing into a poor decision or agreement can be catastrophic, whereas missing an opportunity will not be.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Leverage is everything in a negotiation. Understand when you have it and when you don’t. Are you maximizing your leverage before key negotiations?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: The best time to raise money is when you don’t need to. Is the company financially stable enough where you can walk away from a bad or mediocre term sheet?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Investors are a lot like jealous exes—they want you a lot more when someone else is interested.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Whenever you can take some money off the table (especially life-changing money) do it.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Don’t hire someone you wouldn’t want to have a beer with after work. Do you want to enjoy a beer with most of your coworkers?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: The threshold question when evaluating a current employee is would you hire that person again if you could do it over? If not, let them go. Are you in the process of letting employees go who don’t pass the “re-hire” test?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Can you describe your product’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition) in one concise sentence? Is it truly remarkable?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Have you asked your users to describe your product in one sentence? Did at least half of the responses refer to the same concept?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Ask if users have already recommended your product to a friend. Do you know what percentage of your users have recommended your product to a friend? If they said no, try to find out why. Perhaps you just haven’t made it easy enough for users to share your product—an easy fix.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Are you actively measuring your NPS (Net Promoter Score)? Is your NPS above fifty? Don’t waste time and money by trying to market and grow a product that has a poor NPS.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Marketing a product with a low NPS is essentially saying to potential customers, “Hey, my product sucks, come check it out.”Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you know what single user action or experience compels users to come back to your product repeatedly? If not, figure it out now, because this could be the most important insight you need to grow your business.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Growth without retention is worthless. However, retention without growth is a problem any entrepreneur should love to have, because it means people love the product. Do you know what your 1-day and 30-day retention is?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Don’t spend significant money on marketing until your one-day and thirty-day retention is well above average for your industry.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you have any features that are rarely used? If so, do you have a plan to obliterate them in the next thirty days?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you have a process to actively evaluate new features? If not, implement CIO (Celebrate, Iterate, Obliterate) ASAP.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you have a concise and inspiring vision and mission statement?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you have documented core values? Does every employee know them? Are you doing anything to actively reinforce them?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you offer fifteen-minute in-office massages to all employees at least monthly? Trust me, do it.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Figure out what motivates every employee, and understand that their motivations may be different than yours. Are you asking each interviewee and employee what would make them more excited about coming to work every day?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Don’t be afraid to test any idea, because you can rarely guess what will and what won’t work. Have you tested an idea recently that somebody from your customer service team was passionate about?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: What is the one goal that, if achieved, would solve most other problems? Do you have a plan to obsessively focus on and achieve that one goal?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Small goals lead to small ideas. Double or triple your goals and use a company-wide brainstorming session to solicit ideas.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do your employees have ways to be creative and try their own ideas? Do you have a monthly hackathon?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you have any internally developed tools that may be a better business opportunity on their own than your current product? Are you doing anything to pursue them as a new opportunity?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Have you made a list of fun, taboo, or controversial topics in your industry? Do you have a plan to get data to prove or disprove them? Issue a press release highlighting the controversial data and you’ll have an explosive growth story.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Schedule a company brainstorming session to come up with ideas for a top ten list about your industry or product.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Have you identified trending news stories that you can inject your company into? Are you actively providing the writers with a new angle or fresh data?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Anticipate newsjacking opportunities by identifying upcoming concerts, festivals, sporting events, conferences, annual events, and trade shows. Do you have a list of at least three upcoming opportunities for newsjacking?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Speed is key and the big boys can’t keep up. Have you contacted key writers to tell them you will provide any data and survey information they need within a tight timeframe?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: : Can you quantify how much superior your core product offering is than the competition? Is it 10X better?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Are your most talented people working on the biggest opportunities instead of the biggest problems?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: When creating a new product, create a separate account with funds earmarked exclusively for the new initiative. Do you have different accounts for different products?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Make sure any potential investors are fully aligned with your strategy and vision. Talk to the companies behind their failing prior investments to see how the investors behaved when the going got tough.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Raising debt can be very dangerous. Try to avoid it entirely, if possible.Click To Tweet
#ExplosiveGrowthTip: Focus on building solutions to problems, rather than building new products or features.Click To Tweet - #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you have all your media and product information (listed above) easily accessible on one page online for the media to access anytime?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Do you have a few “friendly users” on standby, ready to speak positively about your product to the media?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Have a meet-and-greet at your office with key reporters and bloggers. The most social employees should be there to mingle and show off what they're working on. Have you met personally with key reporters yet?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: The corporate setup is crucial. Are there any structural issues with your company setup that are holding you back, and are you addressing them now?Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Have you and all your employees read Contagious, by Jonah Berger? If not, have everyone read it ASAP!Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Find a fun and positive way to include your targeted blogs or influencers into a data story. They just may connect with you on it!Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: Does your business have a moat, a sustainable competitive advantage around it? If not, formulate a plan to create one.Click To Tweet
- #ExplosiveGrowthTip: If you want more out of life, or have any fears that are holding you back, attend the Tony Robbins event, “Unleash The Power Within.”Click To TweetGet Explosive Growth on Amazon to read about the context behind all of these Explosive Growth Business Tips.
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