Course Agenda
Startup Growth Blueprint (Main Course)
Week 1, Video 1
WELCOME! Watch First!
Please watch this video before jumping ahead. It's a
quick video in which I cover some important details
about the course.
Week 1, Video 2
Knowing Your Outcome
Before you do anything, you need to know your outcome
- that is, where do you want to end up and how will your
startup take you there? In this video that's exactly what
we'll cover. I'll also share, in detail, how I created a 4 year
plan the helped me achieve my main outcome of
financial freedom as I was building one of my previous
companies.
Week 1, Video 3
Extreme Productivity Framework
You've got a lot on your plate as a startup founder, so
being productive and working on the right things is
critical. When it comes to growth, you can't leave
anything to chance. In this video we'll look at a simple
3-part framework you can use to 3x your productivity
while working fewer hours and getting more done.
Week 1, Video 4
The 4 Phases Of Growth
Every startup grows through 4 predictable phases of
growth. In each phase there are very specific things you
need to focus on to keep your revenue growth going in
the right direction. In this video I'll give you an overview
of each phase and talk about the key things to focus on
to get from the phase you're in now to the next phase of
growth.
Week 1, Video 5
Managing Your Psychology As A Founder
Your psychology is without a doubt the most important
thing to master as a founder. A great psychology will
help you achieve your outcome much sooner, while a
poor psychology will lead you to give up before you
reach your goals. In this video we'll look at the
mechanics of how to deal with problems and also 5 ways
you can deal with stress when problems do arise.
Week 1, Video 6
The “PCM Triangle” Explained
Great startups that experience hyperbolic growth know
what their best customers look like, how to reach them
at scale and the exact products to sell them to generate
maximum revenue and profit. The PCM triangle is a
framework any founder can use to give their startup the
best shot at not just continued growth but also market
domination with customers who love your products and
become raving fans.
Week 2, Video 1
Your Perfect Customer Persona (Part I)
There are probably millions of people or businesses who
want to buy what you sell, but not all customers are
created equally. In this video we'll look at crafting a
survey to determine what your perfect customer
persona looks like, so you know everything about your
best customers (based on how much they've spent with
you) and can refine your marketing channels to reach
more people or businesses who "look" exactly like they
do.
Week 2, Video 2 Your Perfect Customer Persona (Part II)
We've surveyed our best customers. Now it's time to
analyze their survey responses to determine the
common attributes of our perfect customer. We'll then
use those attributes to build out a "real" representation
of someone who represents our perfect customer
persona. We'll give them a name and photo and we'll
know everything about them.
I'll also walk you through how I did this exercise before
creating this course and you'll no doubt say "Wow, that's
me" when you see my perfect customer persona that I
used to decide what to include in this course.
Week 2, Video 3
Finding Your USP
Using feedback from your best customers, you can craft
your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP for short. In
this video I'll explain what a USP is, why it's important
to create one and of course, how to do that from scratch.
Week 2, Video 4 Building Your Customer Advisory Board
Continual feedback from your most profitable
customers is critical to build out your strategy and
product. In this video I'll walk you through how to build
your own customer advisory board and tell you a story
that changed how I perceive customer feedback - from a
company worth $1.5B today.
Week 3, Video 1
The 8 Rules Of Great Products
A bigger range or more features rarely wins you a
market. In this video we'll look at the 8 rules I've learned
over the last 15 years that lead to building great products
which are loved by your customers. It doesn't matter
whether you build software or sell jewelry online. The
same rules apply.
Week 3, Video 2
How To Validate New Ideas Before Launch
Before you launch a new product, you need to test for
demand. If the demand is there, you then proceed to
create/source the product and launch. In this video we'll
look at how to test for demand before you invest
anything in product creation or sourcing.
Week 3, Video 3
Competitive Analysis
You can learn a lot just by observing what your
competitors are doing. In this video we'll look at
identifying your competitors and we'll "spy" on what's
currently working for them so we can apply the findings
to our own business.
I'll also share an example of how a competitive analysis I
did for one of my previous companies helped us raise
over $100M by including it as one of the key slides in our
pitch deck.
Week 3, Video 4
Determining Product-Market Fit
There are two stages to any startup - pre and post
product-market fit. In this video we'll look at what
product-market fit is, why it's critical to achieve before
you invest in marketing and look at surveying your
customers to determine if you have it right now. If you
don't, I'll step you through the process to get it.
Week 3, Video 5
Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter Score (or NPS for short) is a standardized
way to measure customer happiness. In this video we'll
look at what it is, why it's critical and how to automate
collection of NPS surveys from your customers, which
creates a regular feedback loop of high-quality feedback.
Week 4, Video 1
Understanding Your Metrics
Before we dive into the tactics, let's spend some time
understanding three things: the AIDA funnel, your
purchasing funnel and your funnel metrics. Once you
understand your metrics, specifically your LTV:CAC,
you can decide if it's time to ramp up your marketing
spend or spend a bit of time first fixing your leaky
funnel.
Week 4, Video 2 The K.L.T.B. Framework
How do you find more customers? You start by
understanding their problem and helping them move
closer to their desired end state even before they buy
from you. That's what my K.L.T.B. framework does and
that's what we'll go through in this video.
Week 4, Video 3
How To Tell A Compelling Story
Your brand starts and ends with the story of why you
created your startup. In this video I'll walk you through
the process to create your story. We'll then talk about
how to structure your "About Us" page and we'll look at
examples from Uber, Spanx, Harry's, Giphy and other
fast-growing brands.
Week 4, Video 4
Automated Content Funnels
The key to creating a customer is to get them to know,
like and trust you before they buy from you. In this
video we'll look at how to do that on auto-pilot using
automated content funnels. I'll show you one of my
funnels and we'll create an entire funnel from scratch
using Mailchimp and Hellobar in about 20 minutes.
Week 4, Video 5
Blog Posts With Swipe Files
We can turn your blog into a machine that pumps out
hundreds or even thousands of email subscribers per
week. In this video I'll show you how, using Mailchimp
and Leadpages.
I'll also take you "behind the scenes" of my blog where
you'll see how a single blog post drove 5,747 new
subscribers to my email list in 2 weeks. All using the
simple strategy we'll go through in this video.
Week 4, Video 6
Squeeze Pages & Lead Magnets
Sending traffic to your home page is one of the biggest
mistakes most people make. Luckily, you won't. In this
video I'll explain what a squeeze page is, why it works so
well and why you should send all cold traffic to it. We'll
also create a squeeze page from scratch and wire it up to
your automated content funnel in Mailchimp.
Week 5, Video 1
Facebook Ads + Audiences (Part I)
What's the best way to reach potential customers who
have money? Right now it's via Facebook Ads. It doesn't
matter if you sell to CEOs, moms, doctors or teens,
Facebook Ads is an incredibly sophisticated platform
you can use to target anyone. In this video we'll get
familiar with custom and lookalike audiences - the two
key pillars that allow you to target potential customers
who "look" like your existing, best customers.
Week 5, Video 2
Facebook Ads + Audiences (Part II)
Now that we know about custom and lookalike
audiences, let's jump right in and create our first
campaign. We'll setup our targeting, design our ads and
push everything up to Facebook using Power Editor.
Week 5, Video 3
Facebook Retargeting
We've created our ads and they're live. Now it's time to
use Facebook's custom audiences to retarget people who
may have seen or clicked our ads, but not yet completed
the actions we want them to take, such as buying our
product.
Week 5, Video 4
Slideshare Presentations
Slideshare gets 60M visitors per month. The good news
for us? Most presentations on Slideshare are junk. In
this video I'll walk you through the strategy I used to
launch one of my companies with Slideshare. I spent
$350 and created $308,000 in lifetime value in 10 hours.
All with a few presentations and some smart traffic
seeding.
Week 5, Video 5
Contests With Complementary Companies
How can you take advantage of social media to create
something that has a great shot at going viral? You find
a few companies who sell products that compliment
yours and together you launch a contest. In this video
we'll look at how to do just that - and I'll share a story of
how I used a contest to add 3,000 customers to one of
my previous companies for under $1,000.
Week 5, Video 6
Creating & Upselling Adjacent Products
Your customers have bought from you once - but they
want to keep buying from you. It's easier and cheaper to
sell more to your existing customers, so let's do that. In
this video I'll walk you through my framework to decide
what to sell and how to create additional products so
you solve more problems for your customers and bring
in more revenue.
Week 5, Video 7
Wrapping It All Up
Congratulations, you've made it to the end of the
course! In this video I share some words of advice about
taking action and committing to success that I've
learned from my various coaches, mentors and advisors
over the years
Hiring Accelerator (Bonus Course #1)
Video 1
WELCOME! Watch First!
Please watch this video before jumping ahead. It's a
quick video in which I cover some important details
about the course.
Video 2
Who A-Players Are And Why They’re Critical
Let's start by discussing what an A-player is and what a
makes them critical to the growth of a startup. We'll also
look at what motivates them (autonomy, mastery and
purpose) and discuss B and C-players, who
unfortunately make up 95% of all available candidates
for an open position.
Video 3
Define And Live Your Core Values
Your core values and culture are a huge part of what will
attract A-players. In this video we'll look at creating your
core values and how they form the foundation of
everything you do when it comes to hiring.
Video 4
How To Write Great Job Ads
Most job ads are bland, boring and all about what the
company, not the candidate, needs. In this video we'll
look at how to craft short, compelling job ads that make
the best candidates take the next step, which is checking
out your careers page and applying for an open
position.
Video 5
Create A “Transcendent” Careers Page
Your careers page can (and should) be so much more
than just your open roles. In this video we'll learn why
your careers page is critical and I'll teach you how to
build a killer careers page that looks like those from
household names like Airbnb, Apple and Chipotle.
Video 6
Streamline The Interview Process
A bad interview process will turn off an A-player quicker
than anything else. In this video we'll look at how to
audit and improve your entire interview process all the
way from when a candidate applies to when their "butt
is in the seat".
Video 7
Spot A-Players During Interviews
There are 7 key questions you can ask during in-person
interviews to identify A-players. In this video I'll walk
you through what they are, how to ask them and the
kinds of answers to expect from great candidates.
Video 8
Building An Internal Referral Program
Your existing best employees will refer their friends for
open positions, but it ain't about a referral bonus. In
this video we'll get inside their heads and understand
what it takes to get them to refer the best people they
know for open roles.
Video 9
Mastermind Effective P.R. Stunts
What's the fastest, most affordable way to attract a
stampede of A-players to your careers night and to apply
for open positions? You guessed it, P.R. stunts. In this
video I'll walk you through my entire framework and
share two examples from my previous companies where
we spent $20K to generate well over $200K of media
attention and hire at least 15 people.
Video 10
Host An Amazing Careers Night
A careers night is a great way to get lots of great
candidates into your office to really feel what it will be
like when they join your company. In this video we'll
walk through how to plan the night, what to say on the
night, how to collect leads from interested candidates
and a lot more.
Video 11
Wrapping It All Up
A few final words on hiring and believing in yourself,
your company and your vision before we wrap this
course up.
The Capital Course (Bonus Course #2)
Video 1
WELCOME! Watch First!
Please watch this video before jumping ahead. It's a
quick video in which I cover some important details
about the course.
Video 2
Start With The End In Mind
When it comes to raising money, you need to be ready
to play the long game and think 7-10 years ahead. In this
video we'll look at exploring what your own personal
outcome is from launching a startup and make sure it
aligns with raising money.
Video 3
How Venture Capital Works
Have you ever wondered how venture capitalists have
hundreds of millions of dollars to invest? In this video
we'll go through the entire flow of capital so you can
understand how VCs raise and deploy their capital.
Video 4
How Funding Rounds Differ
There are certain expectations from investors for each
stage of fundraising, depending on whether you're at
seed, series A, B, C or beyond. In this video we'll look at
how each funding round differs and what you'll
typically focus on at each round.
Video 5
“Manufacturing” Investor Interest
Reaching out cold to an investor never, ever works.
Instead, you want to strategically generate inbound
interest from the investor. In this video I'll walk you
through two very different ways you can do that. The
first is via clever use of the media and the second
involves the founder at one of the investor's portfolio
companies where they're already on the board.
Video 6
Creating The Perfect Pitch Deck
Creating a perfect pitch deck is critical - it acts as the
background when you're actually pitching. In this video
we'll look at what's required to create a pitch deck that
gets you funded, plus we'll look over 3 real pitch decks.
One from a previous company of mine as well as decks
from Buffer and Square.
Video 7
Delivering A Killer Pitch
OK so you're in front of potential investors. Now what?
You deliver a killer pitch, that's what! In this video I'll
walk you through how to do just that.
Video 8
Negotiating Term Sheets
When it comes to finding the right investor, being able
to negotiate term sheets is critical. In this video I'll walk
you through the 10 things you need to consider when
negotiating.
Video 9
Closing The Round & Working With Investors
You've negotiated your term sheet and you're ready to
move forward with your new investor. But before you
pop the champagne, you need to work through the
contract, get the deal closed and plan your board
meetings. Here's how.
Video 10
Wrapping It All Up
A few final words on raising capital, what you've just
learned and the all important next step you need to take
before we wrap this course up.