Digital ad spend is up 31% this year.

More competition, more expensive clicks.

How to master 5 FREE marketing channels:

There are 5.14 billion Google results for "how to build a startup."

Most are a waste of time.

Here are 5 that are pure gold:

1) Learn from Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and other top entrepreneurs.

Essays, videos and interviews on startup topics including fundraising and growth from the best founders of our

2) Join a community of like-minded entrepreneurs.

Success stories, case studies and camaraderie as hustlers build side projects and MVPs in public, sharing what they

3) Find the right freelancers to get your product off the ground

Graphic designers, software engineers, content creators, marketers and more.

I've hired great people from around the world using this

4) Learn how to market your business

Facebook's Ad library lets you see the ads running for any company in the world.

It's a powerful tool to understand your competition and get ideas on how to position

22 startup principles to scale your company in 2022:

1) The obstacle is the way

Every hard problem you solve is a moat that others will shrink from.

Most people don’t have the stamina for hard work.

Challenges completed are insurance policies against competition.

2) Sell your story, not your product

Your company isn’t a product, it’s a story.

Great stories attract great employees and great customers.

Sell your story.

3) Focus on leverage

Points of leverage are areas where inputs can disproportionally affect outputs:

- A better conversion funnel impacts all sales
- A better sales process impacts all revenue
- A better onboarding process reduces churn

4) Focus on customers, not competitors

Success comes down to whether people will pay you to solve their problems.

Competitive intelligence is useful to understand where other attempts to solve a problem fall short.

But the customer’s actions speak loudest.

Writing Emails to Professor; Important tips & Samples for your consideration

Every year, Profs get several emails from students & difficult to accept all. You want to ensure yours is concise & deserve a response. This thread will provide insight & some samples you can use.

1/n

Your opening statement; Here, please briefly introduce yourself & connect your interest with the Prof's own (refer to sample attached). Mention one or two of the Prof's research areas that you've checked and find interesting.

2/n

Following this, let them know what you've done in the past: Demonstrate your experiences & tools you use (this is important for them to gauge your fit). E.g: I have good experience working with neural networks, ensemble forecasting & published a paper in ABC Journal.

3/n

Lastly, quickly summarize what you'd like to research & state again the skills you've got that will be a good addition to their lab. E.g: I'm interested in conducting research on improving model prediction in AI (the Profs interests). I use Python, ArcGIS & R for modeling.

4/n

SOME IMPORTANT POINTS TO CONSIDER

1. Your email should not be verbose. Ideally, I'd keep within 3 paragraphs (something one can read in 2minutes)

2. You can attach CV & Transcript, but not in a drive or folder. Have it there as an attachment, they decide to open it or not

5/n

How to write a cover letter?

Here is a general structure you can use.

🧵👇

◻️ 1. Opening

- Dear Sir / Madam
- Dear *company name*

◻️ 2. Reason for writing

- I am writing to express my interest in the position of...
- I wish to apply for the position of...
- I am writing in response to your advertisement for...
- I am writing to enquire as to whether there are any vacancies...

◻️ 3. Introducing yourself

- I am currently working on... / I am currently studying...
- At present, I am working for... where I am responsible for...
- I have been working in my current position for the past(time)

◻️ 4. Talking about your education/experience

- I graduated from University X with a degree in...
- The nature of my studies has prepared me well for a position such as...
- As you can see from my CV, I have worked for... and gained experience in... working on...

1 - Why do I care about new customers when my industry obsesses with catering to best customers via omnichannel theory?

Good question!

It goes back almost 30 years.

2 - Ok, I was working at Lands' End in 1991. One of your Circulation Managers had a challenge. She had two segments of customers she mailed, and one she didn't. She knew how the mailed segments performed, but needed an estimate for the segment she didn't mail.

3 - Estimating segment performance for an un-mailed segment was easy ... I had done this work at the Garst Seed Company in the late 1980s. So I performed the exercise for her.

4 - And my results were accurate enough that I was asked to analyze other issues.

We had a division that mailed 2 catalogs in a quarter. What would happen to the two catalogs if a third catalog was mailed?

I recommended a strategy ... an A/B test.

5 - Say the first catalog generated $5,000,000 in sales and the second catalog generated $5,000,000 in sales. What would happen to the 2 catalogs if a 3rd catalog was mailed, and how much would the 3rd catalog generate?

1/ One of the best things I did in 2020 was to join a growth marketing program called @growclass

I’d seen it hover around online, I saw some friends talking about it. But I thought, wow, that looks great but it’s too expensive for me at the moment.

[continue thread ...]

2/ Then I kept coming back and getting more nervous because the more I looked at it the more I wanted to join.

It finally came to a point where I felt an irresistible urge to join the program. And I remember I was on the landing page 10 minutes before the program closed.

3/ And I immediately thought to myself: “I need to learn how to make people interested in career coaching feel like Growclass made me feel just now”.

4/ Then I tried to think about it as an investment. “If Growclass helps me gain 10 more students over the next 12 months, it will pay for itself.”

5/ Well things have changed significantly since then.

I was inspired by others to raise my prices significantly. Now my prices are triple what they were when I first started (and waaaay undercharging).

But the copywriting and website tear downs have made a big change for me.