VIN CLANCY

Growth Hacker 

[vinclancy-blog]

If you aren’t thinking about strategic growth, I guarantee you in twelve months you’ll be doing the same things, for the same types of clients, making the same type of money.

There’s nothing wrong with that if this is your part-time job, but I know most of you reading this will want to be growing so that you have more freedom, can work on the projects you want to do the most, and be part of something that’s growing.

And, if you’re a startup, well the mantra is literally “growth or death”.

So here are some examples many successful companies use to keep track.

Set your yearly goals, six-month goals, three-month goals, and one-month goals.

I know you’re thinking “I just want to get a few more client for investment so I can eat, how am I gonna worry about what’s happening in six months’ time?”

Sure.

But what if you’re in the same position in six months?

Without strategic thinking, you will default to the things you know already.

There won’t be growth activities, but maintenance activities.

Your brain will naturally default to things it knows already, not the unknown activities which could be difficult.

It reminds me of what Peter Thiel said: “Write down everything you want to achieve in the next ten years.

Now see if you can do it in the next six months”

So you can see how by sketching out these months, you can start to filter into what needs to be done each week.

And each day.

As well as organizing the year/6/3/1 month goals with my project manager,

we decide what needs to be done each week, and each day. (You can see the system we use in the picture below)

Once you’ve decided what needs to be done, it’s then a case of discipline.

How many of you reading this have ever made to-do lists and then not completed it?

I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot of you, ha.

So, what went wrong?

You may not like the answer, but it’s true: You may have a discipline issue.

You need to have a system for reporting back to someone.

It could be your intern, your wife, anyone!

This works for managing people below you (who report to you) and reporting to people above you (i.e. your managers)

to create accountability:

(n.b. this starts with knowing your goals at the start of each day)

This is what I did today

This is what I did not do today (and why I didn’t manage it)

This is what I’m having a problem with

This is what I’m going to do tomorrow

So simple.

I saw Mark Pincus of the legendary gaming company Zynga speak in Silicon Valley recently.

One thing stuck out: He used the EXACT system I mention here to scale up all of his companies.

He was saying “micro-management is extremely under-rated”.

Most startups don’t do micromanagement, and most startups fail.

I’m not saying it’s a perfect system, but in lieu of you being an experienced manager, it’s a great second prize.

Do you see how this system ensures you get things done, even if it’s painful?

And yes, I know it’s not easy.

Here’s the thing.

You don’t need to do ALL of the above.

You don’t need to KNOW all of it.

This article was about the specifics of why you should build systems for your company, whether you use the above systems or not.

This article was about how it’s possible to achieve consistent results through simple actions.

A lot of people have been saying “I can’t even get the basics right, and now you want me to build a system? I don’t have time.

Here’s the thing: The time will pass either way.

You choose whether you want the time to pass as you “make things up as you go along”, or within a system for success.

These don’t take too long to create, and just require a basic level of discipline to make happen.

Now I want to hear from you - what action are you going to take to get started?

Let me know in the comments below. Now if you found value in this article, please share it with at least three people you know – especially if they need to grow their companies fast.

It’s easier to get started on this journey when you have other people on the path with you.

I’m a big fan of accountability buddies - Where you and a friend or mentor hold each other responsible for completing tasks.

To learn all of the systems I use to grow my businesses (+ if you want me to mentor you for the next three months!) sign up to my new coaching course here: (limited places) http://vinclancy.com/coachingprogram

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What will be your legacy? What are you working towards to? Are you interested in ramping up your biz? Then check my mentoring programme at http://vinclancy.com/coachingprogram

[vinclancy-blog]

MY THOUGHTS ON MASS PLANNER & INSTAGRESS CLOSING DOWN (Seeing as everyone is asking me)

1) I ШіЅН you could get serious results off one account through automation.

This is not the case.

IF you rack up hundreds of accounts like me, Justin Wu or Dan Stephenson have done, you can do amazing things.

One account hardly makes a dent in anything (Sorry everyone)

Caveat: Maybe you, as a one-off, found a client or a sale through these methods.

One-off's don't build empires

2) Too much focus on vanity metrics.

I'm in a private Facebook group where creatives spend the whole day fretting that their likes have gone down, rather than doing any of the real work to get their product/brand out there.

Even when I could get hundreds of Twitter followers per day, I still focused on public speaking to bring leads in, as it brought in the $$$$$'s.

3) Like my friend and fellow growth hacker Josh Fechter said a little while back, you're going to need real engagement and relationships at some point.

I LOVE shortcuts and hacks, but if you can't be bothered to show up every day and write content, you're just another randomer.

There are many people trying to do what me, Josh Fechter, Dan Meredith do, but almost all are copycats and it shows. We're trying to do three very different things with our audiences, but it shows that we care about our audiences

Like I say, so many of the "six-figure gurus" spend almost all of their margin on Facebook ads as thats the only way people will listen to them. Sad!

4) For everyone who used them to run social media agencies on autopilot: Sucks for you, but legit if you want to make big money you should be building a personality brand around yourself, teaching others, and selling info products/books/webinars, having occasional masterminds, etc.

This scales up into crazy money much easier.

It's very hard to make comfortable six-figures off clients, especially in a crowded space like social media.

So it could be a case that "the medicine was sick, but the patient needed it" Which brings me to my next point

5) For almost all small businesses, building a Facebook group should be your main priority to get daily access to your tribe, test out product ideas, find out what people are into BEFORE you launch it, send ACTUAL LINKS THEY CAN CLICK ON in posts, etc.

6) Regarding links, Twitter can still send 'em. Has 316 million active users per month.

3 billion visits per month.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said on a recent earnings call that bots are allowed on the platform !

Twitter is not in fashion is the main reason most people ignore it.

My philosopher said recently, Twitter is the "girl you call up when you're drunk and horny as it's a guaranteed thing, but it doesn't feel all that good using it".

As a marketer, it's not my job to say whether anything is right or wrong, cool or uncool, just whether it works. (Anyone who needs guidance on Twitter DM me)

7) Instagram are brilliantly shutting down virtually every avenue of organic growth right now (I say brilliantly as a business person, they must have anti-growth hackers in there as they have been brutal this past six months) with declining power of comment pods, like pods, power likes, shoutouts, ghost banning and all sorts of nice stuff.

Good luck to you if this is your main channel of growth.

8) Anyone who let/lets a bot touch their main Facebook account is mad- this is your single most important asset on the internet, ever

9) IN B4 people say "So what are you gonna use? You do this stuff!" Well, I'm gonna use the one that's based in China, far out of the reach of anything else.

Always have, always will.

10) Finally, I've said so many times that growth hacks don't last forever.

Despite all of the above, I'm sure Massplanner has changed some people's lives.

Many of you heard about this/similar services and chose not to put the effort in.

Now the chance is gone forever.

Next time there's a chance to learn/do something, consider going for it, maybe?

--

Like I always say, you should only ever be focusing on:

> Building product/service, and

> Selling that product/service

Everything else is peripheral. But if you can growth hack, you should.

Thoughts?

[vinclancy-blog]

HOW I GOT FLOWN TO NEW YORK CITY IN A DAMN HELICOPTER 🚁

(A short story of the power of secret sauce, & determination)

1) I spoke at a date I booked myself in San Francisco.

2) I was recommended by someone who had seen me talk in SF to give a virtual webinar for (collection of super-successful businesspeople) Young Presidents' Organization

3) I had just came offstage for my famous keynote in Germany where no-one laughed at my jokes when I had to do the virtual webinar

4) There was no wifi so I had to tether and do an hour-long presentation (expensive!)

5) Then I got asked to speak in Philadelphia for Young Presidents' Organisation as they liked my webinar

6) Then after I spoke yesterday one of the attendees demanded I meet him the next day

I told him I couldn't as I was speaking at Growth Marketing Conference in New York and had booked my flight

He told me fuck the flight meet me and my team and I'll fly you in a helicopter  from Philadelphia to NYC so you make it on time to speak

lol

So I did the meeting (with my awesome wingman and Philly native Kyle Benoit)

We didn't even have to "do" anything in the meeting

Meeting was basically me saying a sales letter, Kyle talking about building a bot, and them asking for a further proposal

And we got to the chopper!

I was close to tears in the air

I said to Kyle: "F**king hell, I was living on $100 a week four years ago, this is mental"

Point is?

I could've just fronted and gone "I'm making it BIG" and some entrepreneur showoff nonsense when I send this video

But (again, selfishly) by telling the truth I know I stand out 10x from everyone else in my space

Truth is

Success is long, hard, and comes via the most random directions

Every success story is a black swan & couldn't've been predicted

I know people/close friends putting on mad fake displays

Fake it 'til you make it works

Take from that what you will

It will only get you so far though

My only secret sauce in America is public speaking, I keep wanting to retire as it craters all other productivity & projects I'm working on, with an ROI that can at best be described as "fuzzy", but I'm aware it's my secret sauce and I'd be *NO-ONE* in America without it, I guarantee y'all that

The client we pitched will be the biggest client my agency has ever got when it closes

And if it doesn't?

It's been amazing just to have this experience

My 100-date world tour only has one date left

It was a reaction to having spent four years doing nothing but work in my bedroom

Not allowing myself the things every other young person takes for granted

I've had many of the best times of my life across these 99 dates, ten countries, 39 cities - made so many new friends

I'm only at the beginning of my "getting rewards" cycle

One thing I love doing?

Calling my Mum to celebrate the big wins (video Whatsapped her from the air and showed her Manhattan on my video call!)

She was amazed at the story (and the name of the client which I can't reveal), and said:

"What happened to you today would never, ever happen to you in Britain as a working class person.

You'd have had to have gone to Oxford or Cambridge.

Those Americans are amazing"

I don't know if that's true, Britain has plenty of successful niches, maybe I just work a little better in America for whatever reason.

Point is

Keep hustling and moving until you find the place where things *just work* for you.

Could be a new country, could be a new product, could be a new girlfriend, could be a new co-founder.

I do the talks on auto-pilot, I could click through my slides blindfold,

I know every joke by heart (sorry to everyone who thinks I'm quick and making them up on the spot ha)

But things are now in place and almost on autopilot

Keep pushing

Don't give up

Make your helicopter story happen

Vin Clancy xx

[vinclancy-blog]

Starting Your Own Company in 2017? Burnout Is Good

“When I give a speech at a corporate event, I often ask those in attendance, ‘Do you know how to tell if you’re doing the job?’ As heads start whispering back and forth, I provide these clues : ‘If you’re up at 3 A.M. every night talking into a tape recorder and writing notes on scraps of paper, have a knot in your stomach and a rash on your skin, are losing sleep and losing touch with your wife and kids, have no appetite or sense of humour, and feel that everything might turn out wrong, then you’re probably doing the job” - Bill Walsh

I’ve been close to or at the point of burnout for the last few weeks. Being this close to burning out excites me, as all the major breakthroughs I’ve had in the last couple of years have come when I’m at this point. Some thoughts on burnout:

Most entrepreneurs never hit the point of burnout. Go to a meetup and observe London’s startup scene getting stuck into the free booze. Would you invest in their company?

Burnout is a rare phenomenon because virtually no-one works hard enough to achieve it. Everyone wants to be the next Steve Jobs, but would you work 90-hour weeks like his team (pretty much) did, eventually getting sweatshirts made to commemorate this feat.

You don’t have time/energy to get drunk if you’re an entrepreneur. You don’t have time/energy to see friends, but you should schedule to see your family once a month.

You can probably have a relationship (if you’re in one already) if they’re very understanding. You probably can’t create a healthy (new) relationship while building a new company/agency. Use Tinder.

Nuance is how you win. I could tell you every growth hacking secret in the world and it wouldn’t matter unless you were committed to tweaking, testing, and understanding why things work, and how you can affect it for your specific purposes.

Likewise, you’ll only discover the “Secret sauce” that makes your company better than everyone else after a LOT of experimenting. To a certain extent, 90% of startup success comes down to market research.

When you start to feel burned out, you’re probably very near to a major breakthrough. I’ve been giving talks on growth hacking marketing for the last 18 months, which have been quite successful; they are all about how shortcuts can help you win quicker. However, you still need to work from the moment you wake up until the moment you go back to sleep in order to achieve big things.

When you’re burned out, you have a voice in your head which will tell you “I just cannot do anymore work.” Now we’re getting somewhere! At this point you’ll examine everything you do to see what can be gotten rid of e.g. low paying clients/unnecessary work/anything else that takes up more time that it should (remember what I said earlier about getting drunk?).

Now you’ll focus on the really important stuff, or you may take a new direction completely. Maybe you’ll do a personal development course, or hire a coach. Only by giving it everything do we realise what we need to do.

Caveat: You need to stay relatively fit (Regular exercises of sit-ups/push-ups/planking do the job for me, while cycling to all meetings in Central London) whilst working every minute of the day or you don’t get the upsides of burnout I’m talking about here (healthy body=healthy mind). Don’t ask me why this is true, it just is.

Burnout is one of the byproducts of investing in yourself. The interest tends to accumulate later than you think, in unexpected and awesome ways.

Caveat #2: You can’t aim to be burned out. It’ll just hit you one day. You can work towards it by giving yourself the best possible chance to be in peak condition to work on your project: Give up caffeine and alcohol. Don’t watch entire seasons on Netflix. Eat the same good foods each day so you don’t have food comas/energy slumps. Cut out all distraction (working from home is very under-rated, or an environment with as little distraction as possible (i.e. co-working spaces and coffee shops suck for this reason). Stop having meetings face to face (Skype will do in 99% of cases.) If you’re working near to burnout on your startup, investors will come to you. If you run an agency, do everything on Skype, only leaving your house/office to do public speaking (which you should get good at).

If you put all of the above in place, it will show when you speak to anyone about what you do for a living, and in the work you do. People will wonder how you achieve what you have. And the answer is almost always: You were on the verge of burning out for days, weeks, months, but carried on anyway.

The very definition of entrepreneurship is often stated as “living a few years of your life like most people won’t so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t”. Burnout can’t and shouldn’t last forever, but it’s going to get you far nearer to where you want to be.

Do you agree? Let me know in the comments 😘.

[vinclancy-blog]

How to avoid hype: 5 myths about “Hustle” you need to be aware of

1) He/she who hustles the longest wins.

No, no, no. If you’re hustling on a bad or copycat idea, no amount of hours will save it. Surrounding yourself with mentors and smart people will help you work on the things which matter the most. True hustlers aren’t attached to ideas that don’t serve them.

2) He/she who hustles hardest wins

Great businesses are about winning through a secret sauce, which are normally getting a massive return for putting in little effort, in some way or other e.g. a contact which gets you a sale within a week which would take someone else six months to arrange and close; Many of the social media hacks we talk about in Traffic and Copy, etc 3) Hustle is working hard

SEE BELOW picture: Hustle is a verb meaning to push roughly; obtain illicitly or by forceful action, can you honestly say you do that? Like I always say, all the big american startups are built off the backs of spam. Hell, when I met the founder of the Make-a-wish foundation in L.A. a little while back, he spoke about the time he needed Disney to be on board so after weeks of not getting through to the right contact, he called up and told them he had an arrest warrant for someone at Disney (he was a police officer at the time). he could’ve lost his job if that went badly but he took the risk, and was rewarded with getting the deal with Disney. Hustle almost always pushes you past your comfort boundaries 4) People understand what it actually means

If you use the word “hustle” with anything like a smile on your face, you’re likely doing it wrong. Hustle is not washing for days on end as you want to spend every minute working at your laptop. Hustle is eyeing up disappointed text messages from potential lovers and friends on your phone as you’re being so neglectful in your mission. Hustle is a blind faith in what you’re working on, F the consequences if it don’t work ‘cos you ain’t gonna let that happen. To try a lot of things takes time, and an appetite for risk.

Its similar to people who glamorize drinking all the time. If you really did drink all the time, you wouldn’t glamorize it, it’s just something you feel irresistibly drawn too, and you should hate it a bit.

Caveat: The word can be used to motivate other team members, if you must, but it’s always better to lead by your actions, not your words. Once they see the hours you’re putting in, they’ll get it 5) Hustling is an attitude

Not really. It’s channeled into a series of very specific actions consistently which produce big results. Hence, watching videos talking about broad ideas of hustle will not help you. Inspiration is far more powerful in specific areas you can do your hustle in and get quick results. Hustle without specific results will leave you heading back to Facebook for more “inspiration”. Meanwhile nothing actually gets hustled.

[vinclancy-blog]

Not Convinced Copywriting Is Important?

Above is one of my favourite quotes on the value of creating original, surprising, and engaging copy, from super-successful entrepreneur Derek Sivers, who sold the company he talks about below for a reported $22 million in 2008:

When you make a business, you’re making a little world where you control the laws.

It doesn’t matter how things are done everywhere else.

In your little world, you can make it like it should be.

When I first built CD Baby, every order had an automated e-mail that let the customer know when the CD was actually shipped.

At first it was just the normal, “Your order has shipped today. Please let us know if it doesn’t arrive. Thank you for your business.”

After a few months, that felt really incongruent with my mission to make people smile. I knew could do better. So I took 20 minutes and wrote this goofy little thing:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year”. We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY. COM!!

That one silly e-mail, sent out with every order, has been so loved that if you search Google for “private CD Baby jet” you’ll get over 20,000 results. Each one is somebody who got the e-mail and loved it enough to post on their website and tell all their friends.

That one goofy e-mail created thousands of new customers.

--

TASK: Go and look at the copy on your website or newsletter. Is it as good as the above?

If not, change it.

[vinclancy-blog]

10 Sad Truths About Online Marketing

Product/market fit and knowing WHY your customer would want your product is everything. Example: People who had raised millions on Kickstarter with a Facebook ad agency referred them to my friend. She gave them thousands, zero results.

You can not get neutral advice from your internal team/your investors, or coaches you pay a lot of money to. That’s not to say it’s bad advice, but neutral advice comes from people who have little interest in your company (i.e. customers and coaches who don’t rely on you for their basic income!)

You already know what you should be doing, and yet you’re not doing. Normally because it’s hard work and involved some form of heavy management or selling. Plz stop writing this and go and do that thing NOW and come back to this article. (Example for me: When I started Planet Ivy in 2012, we had the feeling both mobile and Facebook were going to continue to rise, but we had it to good with other platforms. Then the fun ended, and any publishers who weren’t in Facebook’s pocket didn’t survive. Some would say it’s not good to be in Facebook’s pocket, but it’s the ONLY way ad-driven publishers can get the volume of traffic (10 million+ visits a month) to get more rounds of investment/meet an eventual acquirer.

Most marketing advice is not for you if you’re starting out your business or have a very small team. Hence, 90%+ of current marketing advice starts with: “Ok, firstly, you’re gonna need a fairly large budget to do Facebook/Google ads. It takes a while to experiment until you can profit, but is scaleable when you do!” They’re not even wrong, it’s just likely irrelevant to you if you need a significant amount of traffic, or a lot of customers paying you a small amount of money, or in a high competition area. This marketing advice is aimed at getting money from big agencies and brands. There’s a famous marketer who does this a lot. His name slips my mind right now…

You probably have a sales problem not a marketing problem. There are so many companies who want to pay me for marketing help, so many I have to turn away. They generally need to pick up the phone/hustle/do public speaking/create partnerships/use influencers. And they come to me asking me to hype their Twitter and Instagram. They want to hide behind the screen, as ever. If you have a Saas product, hire Charlie Price to get the cold email bandwagon rolling, that has some serious scale to it.

You’re too scared to be your authentic self so no-one cares what you’re posting on Facebook. Quit looking at other groups and blogs and copying their generic posts. Remember THEY aren’t getting any traffic either, so why would you copy them? Like I always say, only get advice from people who have done the exact thing you want to do. For instance, my current mentor, Dan Meredith, is doing many of the things I want to do:

Runs multiple businesses

Can be authentically himself, i.e. swearing, personal life in the open, also not so much selling to brands/big companies so doesn’t need to pretend to be professional (I hope he gets what I’m saying here, haha).

Core audience exists via his personal Facebook and Facebook group.

Very talented at partnerships and mathematical understanding of the internet marketing space, and other relevant spaces he’s involved in.

Writes all day long, everyday, and finds a way to get paid for it.

7. You don’t know where the “whitespace” is in your industry, i.e. the growing areas no-one is touching right now. Doing a music startup? Musical. ly has over 10 million users, low barriers to entry, can get crazy bang for your buck with influencers. Ditto Kik, not yet overrun with agencies like Instagram and (soon) Snapchat. Can you say where the future of your industry is going? This is critical. This all sits in the “strategy” level that goes ABOVE your marketing, and allows you to see past short-term marketing strategies.

8. The “top” people who teach online marketing- Russell Brunson, Ryan Deiss, Mie Dillard etc? Their formulas and systems likely work, you’re just too lazy to make them happen, or too lazy to fix your boring product.

9. You’re stuck inside your head and don’t have a coach or impartial person to tell you why your marketing ideas will fail (again, you must be speaking to someone who has done this before to make this a valid opinion).

10. You don’t make any changes when you read these posts. Some of you aren’t even writing these down. I take time out from working on money stuff to make these so you can win, so please do it!

Any more sad truths you guys can think of? Would love to know.

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TRYING TO BUILD A BUSINESS ON A BUDGET OF $0 IS STUPID - HERE IS WHY, AND SOME WAYS YOU CAN AVOID THIS

I imagine everyone clutching their purses and diving into the comments right away after reading that headline after the number of times I've said "paid traffic is for losers" and my obsession with organic traffic.

It's a strange theme that I've noticed which I thought I would talk about today: Entrepreneurs who want to spend ZERO to build a company. Some are naive, some expect revenues out of thin air, and others go "But you did it while you were on welfare!".

So, to clear this up:

Living off beans and bread and government assistance (etc) only works for one type of company: a venture-capital backed startup company, where you go from zero to $250,000+ in investment literally overnight like we did. If you're a revenue-generating company, this scenario won't work.

People have been messaging me saying they can't afford the $100 Secret Sauce bundle (https://www.secretsaucenow.com/) but desperately want it. If you can't afford this one-off price, how will you afford the absolute basics most companies will need, every month?

These costs vary from company to company, but normally include something like:

- Social media scheduling software

- Company branded email accounts

- Accountancy (We'll presume you use legal/solicitor on-demand only)

- Info products/coaching/accountability from experts which can 10x your revenues

- Paying someone to help with product in some way (programmer, manufacturer, copywriter)

- Gifts for potential clients/perks to keep your own staff happy

- Intern(s) costs

Not having the above leads to amateurish decisions (like not having a good-looking website) and even worse, you trying to do everything yourself, which will massively slow you down.

Ways you can make money to support your early-stage company:

- Coaching/consulting others using your industry knowledge

- "Side hustle" e.g. buying things from dollar store/car boot/yard sales & eBay/Amazon’ing them

- Government grants/loans (I took £1,000 government loan at a tiny % interest rate at the start of Planet Ivy which was a brilliant decision) - Most countries have these, believe it or not

- General Ebaying and selling most of your non-essential possessions is a good idea

- Borrowing money off the three F's -  friends, family and fools (I know this is controversial)

- Extending/getting a bank overdraft (relatively low interest rate, and not a complete disaster like a credit card if you can't pay it back immediately for any reason) I was about - £2,400 when that first round of investment money came in

I know there are people who are dead broke and starting out, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's a good idea to divert some of your brainspace working on your product for working capital, it will make your life a LOT easier in 2017.