27 Hacks to Grow your Business (Minor/Majors)

In this week’s OpenMic session, we asked our audience to chime in with their best tips to scale a small business! We amassed an impressive list of ideas varying in price, effort, and outcome, all to increase brand awareness and revenue.   

Walk, talk, be your brand.

Jack Matthews

  1. Manage the ‘leaks’ or make sure you aren’t paying for subscriptions and other resources you aren’t using.
  2. Wear your swag! Throw your logo on hats and t-shirts for free advertising wherever you go.  
  3. At trade shows, sit in the front row and network… bonus points if you’re wearing the aforementioned brand shirt! 
  4. From the beginning, build a flexible brand that can expand and grow as your business does. 
  5. Ensure your title tags are correct and descriptive to get more exposure. 
  6. “Be good at what you say you’re good at” Gary Henderson 
  7. Always carry brand stickers in a briefcase or pocket to hand out–– they’re cheap, small, and give people an easy way to find you 
  8. Use existing customers to help drive sales– get them enthusiastic and generate more buzz!
  9. Host a party on one night of a conference as a private, “VIP” networking event.
  10. Hyperfocus when you first start; don’t try to do everything for every person; work on one project at a time
  11. Share the relationship capital– connections get you through the door and help bring your idea to life.
  12. Get known for your expertise then monetize it 
  13. Ask yourself, What would your big billboard say – being able to describe your niche in 5-7 words creates buzz and invites conversation.   
  14. Signs are very inexpensive and underutilized
  15. Even something as simple as making a larger name tag or something to stand out physically can get you noticed by the right people. 
  16. Search for one B2B deal you can make instead of looking for one hundred consumers.  
  17. If you want lasting success, don’t let your ego get in the way–  surround yourself with people smarter than you and build a strong team you can rely on.  
  18. Change the way you think – don’t underestimate the power of mindset. 
  19. Celebrate the small successes of yourself, your employees, and your business!
  20. Read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill 
  21. Always be learning from the people around you. 
  22. Experience your business from a customer perspective… and repeat the process often.  
  23. The power of No – say no to what won’t help you scale 
  24. Optimize your email signature, including important contact information. 
  25. Join an incubator or accelerator center for support and resources throughout the process.  
  26. Join every pitch competition you can, not to win but for exposure… you never know who’s in the audience!  
  27. Strong marketing and branding practices get you known for what you do and what service you provide 
  28. The ultimate hack for small business owners and entrepreneurs? Join startup.club for more discussions and resources like these and grow in a community of like-minded entrepreneurs!

Listen to the full conversation above!

  • Read the Transcript

    Serial Entrepreneur Club – EP68: 27 Business Growth Hacks

    [00:00:00] 

    You’re listening to the Serial Entrepreneur Club hour. We do this every Friday at two o’clock Eastern, and this is actually a clubhouse chat and podcast. We now are in podcast. If you go into the podcast network, your favorite network, you can search for serial entrepreneur club and we have over 60 episodes on there.

    I often say that if you do listen to all of these episodes, uh, that you’ll get an MBA in entrepreneurship because this show is really all about trying to figure out what is the secret formula? What is it that entrepreneurs do over and over again, to keep having a successful business? What do these serial entrepreneurs do? And that’s what this is all about. Today’s show is open mic, and that means we’re gonna, we’re really gonna open it up. Right? Mike and Jeff. [00:01:00] Sorry, Mike, Michele and Jeff, we’re really gonna open it up. So we want you and the audience today. If you have a tip or a trick or a hack, or what we call a minor major, please raise your hand and join us on stage.

    It’s gonna be a fun Friday, and we’ve got a lot of fun. We want to get to 18 ideas. Now I have seven minor majors. Um, but I’m gonna hold those back cuz we like to hear from you and the audience. Uh, if you’ve got, uh, an idea to help startups grow faster, now why do we call it minor major? We call it that because there’s minimal amount of effort funding that goes into this idea.

    So we’re not talking about ideas that are very expensive to execute on. We’re talking about ideas that are very inexpensive, that we can, um, come up with for our business. So what we want want very inexpensive, but to have a major impact. So we call it a minor major. And I have seven of ’em [00:02:00] myself, but I’m gonna hold back and to listen to, to you.

    Hey Solomon. Nice to see ya. We gotta meet you on stage as well. Solo Michele. Hey, Hey, real quickly. Uh, Colin, why don’t you make myself and Jeff moderators so we can help bring some of these fine members on stage? Nope, no, right. I’m joking. Of course. We’ll do that course. All right, I’m gonna kick it off cuz we wanna move fast here.

    So Solomon, you need to raise your hand and we’re gonna bring you on stage cuz I know, you know, a lot of these. All right. So, um, I’m throwing out one and one is, I know this sounds silly and it’s boring and everything else is like, you know, it’s real easy to just put like subscriptions and trials on your credit card.

    But I think we all know those all end up converting, even though you might not have min for it to convert, to paid monthly charges. You might not be using ’em. So I’m, I’m all about like managing what I’ll just [00:03:00] say the leakage, make sure you’re not paying for things that you don’t need. So that’s that, that’s it.

    I’m kicking off number one. And then I think we’re over to Jeff. Okay. So I’ll give one. Um, we’ve talked about a lot in the past and it’s really easy and it’s a no brainer. And it’s amazing that a lot of people don’t focus on it and that is wear your swag, get logo shirts, or logo, hats, and wear them as often as you possibly can, because you never know when you’re gonna get someone’s attention.

    You’ll be in an elevator. You’ll be walking down the street, you’ll be in a restaurant and someone’s gonna notice your shirt and your logo and ask. Yeah. Oh, I’ve heard of that brand or, oh, what do you do? And it’s a great conversation starter and it’s very inexpensive advertising, but remember, put your URL, your web address somewhere on the shirt, on the back or on the sleeve, but don’t just put your logo, make sure there’s a way for people to contact you if they see you [00:04:00] walking around in that.

    Yeah. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve people have it’s generated a conversation simply because I, you know, we have, uh, the name of our company on our shirt and, uh, we often do it at trade shows as well. And I’ll, and I’ll give one here as well when you’re out a trade show and this is something we sort of perfected Jeff, myself and Michele.

    Um, when you’re at a trade show, sit in the very front row in the middle. And I would say more than 50% of the time when we did that, they would often mention us in their speech, the speaker. So again, we’re now getting exposure. You know, sometimes in front of hundreds of people at an industry trade show for our company, and all we did was wear the shirt and sit in the front row took did, did, did, did that cost us anything?

    No. You know, I mean, it might have been, you know, a few steps to extra, you know, that front row that nobody ever wants to sit in. Yeah. That’s the one I’m talking about. [00:05:00] Olivia, do you wanna try one? Yes. I’m actually gonna piggyback on what you and Jeff have been talking about so far. Um, as a creative director, I can’t stress this enough, work on your brand as soon as possible from the beginning.

    And as you build your brand identity, think of the future and make it flexible, create a system for your brand. So you can expand in the future and not have issues with your.

    Oh, awesome. Okay. Well, I’m gonna jump off with another one here. Um, I talk about this one all the time and, uh, it’s one of the simplest things you can do costs you absolutely nothing and could have a huge impact on your business. And that’s makes certain that your title tags for your website are correct, and that they also can get you on the front page of Google.

    So you might have to add some, you might have to add some more long [00:06:00] tail to it, like make it more regional, for instance, uh, as an example, um, if you have a vacation rental in Fort Lauderdale, a title, a good title tag would be Fort Lauderdale, vacation rental, or sometimes this is a good little trick. We add the word best in front of it.

    Okay. So like our school, uh, that we own in Fort Lauderdale, like, um, Or if you have some other business, you can add the word best, best Fort Lauderdale school. That’s nice. If you can back up the best. I know in our, in the case of the school that we have, we actually have the highest rating on great schools.org.

    So I think we can back that up, but the fact of the matter is a lot of people will type that in best lawyer or best injury lawyer or best, you know, in this particular area. And so you want your title tags to get you on the front page of Google. That’s free traffic, and it only takes five minutes to do anyone else on the panel here got another one.

    Well, we’ve got Gary up here. I’d love to hear [00:07:00] what Gary has to say. Yeah, he’s a cane of, um, I would say dare I say, Gary of, you know, invention and, and, you know, getting a business off the ground. I’d love to hear what you have to say. Well, GM GM, everyone. I hope you’re having a great day. Um, I’ll give you one to get started.

    be good at what you do. I’ll give you an example. Um, last night, Josh Constantine had a, a chat here with the, um, the mayor of friends with benefits and it was a fascinating conversation and I retweeted or tweeted the fact that I was in the room with him. My community picked up the fact that I was in the room with him, and we had like 90 retweets on his tweet.

    He sent me a message today and asked me how I did that. I have a SAS that handles that stuff with me. So he’s a VC, former editor of tech crunch, potentially interesting [00:08:00] opportunity for me. So all I’m doing is being good at what I do. The best hack that I know is actually be good at what you say you’re good at.

    And when you do, you’ll attract people to come to you and it accelerates you really, really fast. Well, in some ways, you’re almost saying do less, right. like, in some ways you’re almost saying do less, but what you do do really well. Yeah, exactly. Right. You know, just, just be good at it. Like if you, if you’re gonna launch something, just make it good.

    Like make it really, really, really, really good. And then that way, when you do get an opportunity, you can show up andwhenever everybody else notices. Awesome. But by the way, if you’re in the audience or you’re on stage share, please share the room. There’s a button, second button from the left on the bottom.

    Share the room. I just did that right now. I’m certain, there are a lot of other people who are, who would be interested in this topic. Uh, Donovan, I guess, are you a Gary fan as well? Donovan, do you have a tip or trick? Well, yeah, I was just sharing the room. So, [00:09:00] uh, pushing buttons really quickly as fast as I can.

    Um, yeah, I’ve gotten tons of. In my lifetime and I already had the first part down that Gary talks about is the be good, but the make it good is the last thing Gary said, uh, when you launch it, that’s where even after all the coaching I’ve had and even all the coaching I’ve done, uh, cause I think when you teach, you learn a lot more, the make it good part, I think is, is what I would love to hear a little bit more about, even though I get tons of access to Gary.

    Um, and that’s how I’m actually making it better than I would’ve without access to a coach actually helps with making whatever we know, uh, evident that it’s good. I think that’s where Gary comes in is, is we have to actually let people know that we have something we’re good at, by the way we actually communicate it.

    So making it good is what I’m learning.[00:10:00] 

    All right. I like it. We’re rolling. We’re rolling. Well, now, Jeff, I could give you another one. Collin I’m I’m on a swag swag, uh, uh, mode swag mode today. Um, always carry around a pocket full of stickers for your brand. Stickers are cheap and small and easy, and literally always have them in your pocket stuff.

    Some in your wallet, stick some in the bottom of your purse or briefcase. Um, leave them in the glove compartment of your car because you’ll never know as you’re going about your day. You might see a cool spot to slap that sticker on. You might see, uh, uh, a place to leave it behind. You’re in a restaurant.

    Leave it on the table. When you leave, um, you walk into a hotel and there’s a table in front with flyers. For other things, put a stack of your stickers there too. People love stickers. They’ll take them, they’ll put them up. And again, just like I mentioned with the shirts, make sure you put your web address on the sticker, not just your logo, give people an easy way to find you.

    Well, it’s funny you say that, cuz uh, the school I [00:11:00] mentioned, uh, was called is called little flower Montessori and we have this magnet and the short forms LFM. So it’s a round magnet car magnet, and they’re so cheap to buy, but we hand them out to all the parents. And I can’t tell you how many I, of those.

    I see every day around the city of Fort Ladale. Oh, there’s, there’s an LFM parent driving by or there’s another LFM parent. So using your customers. So I’m gonna play on yours, Jeff, using your customers to help drive your sales as well, especially if they’re enthusiast. And I know in Gary, in your case, you have a lot of really enthusiastic, uh, people in your community.

    So using them to help generate more buzz and excitement. So you can expand that, um, that customer base. All right. Yeah. Gary, that’s really good. I can throw one out as well. Um, host a party. So I go to conferences a lot. and, or I used to, and I would host a private party. I would rent an Airbnb. I would hire a [00:12:00] bartender.

    I would open the bar up. I would hire somebody to cater it. I could put 70 to 80 people in a private party for about five grand. Cause you can find some relatively affordable food in an affordable alcohol and then talk about it and invite people before the event and then chat about it the whole time you’re there.

    I usually try to do it on the last night. Most conferences, they don’t do that much on the last night and I’ve made so much money hosting my own little VIP event on top of other bigger events. You know, I’ve been to Pubcon and I’ve done it. I’ve done it at traffic and conversion. I’ve done it at a lot of boutique conferences, but for a relatively small amount of money, honestly not to shade any of the events here, but cheaper than you can usually pay to exhibit at the event, I’ve always gotten more bang for my bucket, hosting my own party.

    And you don’t actually go through the, um, through the conference. You do not at all. You know, Michele, Michele and, and Jeff and I with.club would, would we [00:13:00] ran about four or five parties a year and we got really good at it. And what we would do, you know, if you’re in a Vegas hotel or something, is we generally get a slightly larger suite.

    And then what we would do is, um, order, um, uh, a food delivery service that would come in, bring the LL everything. And the parties were probably $500, right? Michele, like I remember, you know, carting up boxes of stuff and bringing them up the elevators, maybe $500. I’m serious. We had amazing, yeah. Parties doing that.

    Gary, I’m glad you, you brought that one up. It is so extremely valuable and it’s almost like, you know, a private party. It has more cache in many ways. Yeah. And that’s where everybody wants to be at the conferences. Anyway, if you, if you start traveling to events, people will start talking about where are the side parties?

    Where are the private parties? Did you get an invite? Did you get an invite? Um, so I it’s, it’s a great opportunity. It’s one of the best hacks. Yeah. And so much business is done at, at, uh, midnights at the, on the bar, [00:14:00] uh, in the conference. And that’s another idea right there, just right there is that, you know, we used to actually hang out at the bar in the main, in the main hotel.

    So we’d actually book the main whole hotel of the conference because you’re always there. And even though it was more expensive generally, and then we would hang out at the bar and more often not we’d have two or three or four deals done before one or two o’clock in the morning. All right, Richard, you are up business CEO.

    Hello, everybody. A lot of great, um, startup, you know, hacks here. I, I like these and kind of to roll into what Gary shared about. Be good at what you do. I think when you start out just hyper laser focus, pick one very, very specific niche, cause too many business owners they’re they think in desperation and are trying to be way too many items to too many people.

    Um, and, and a way to know that you’ve narrowed it down enough is that if you’ve narrowed it down [00:15:00] and you think that it’s too narrow, you even take it a step further. I’ll give you an example. If I wanted to say what my niche is, it’s, uh, business owners, their number one priority is their family. And I just leave it at that and that sort of gets other people having that conversation.

    So I think that would, that would sort of be mine. If I was to give someone something very, very, uh, specific to focus on and then to echo into what Gary said, what can you be incredibly. Top notch app. And then, then, then you’ll get traction and your business model will evolve from there. Yeah. We talked about this on the complete entrepreneur yesterday, this idea of being laser focused, so you can compete with competitors.

    And as an example, um, we competed with Google and back in the, and don’t that, that sounds crazy almost to say that isn’t it like, oh, we compete with Google and we actually won, um, because we focused on a very particular technology. And even though we only had 500 employees in our company focused on [00:16:00] this one technology where Google had 10, 20,000 employees and they had a hundred different technologies.

    So just that laser focus and, and it can actually make a difference. And, uh, and we saw that again with.club against.com. You know, even though we only got to a million names sold, it was still a pretty substantial, substantial business. Uh, a million.club sold before we sold it to go, daddy, Awesome Jack. I haven’t talked to you in so long.

    You’re on stage. Do you have a tip or a trick, a hack, or a minor major? Colin, my brother. So good to be here first and foremost. Thank you. Shout out to the you and the startup club. Everybody that’s here, guys. Definitely. If you’re in this room, let’s pink, some folks in this room, um, to the, you know, show appreciation for Colin and the startup club.

    Definitely, you know, I call it digital social currency. And, uh, you know, I think when you share the experience, you know, that that’s a growth hack in itself, you know, is when you take, you know, what you’re exposed to and you pass it [00:17:00] around, you know, relationship capital, you know, you build these relationships with people, especially on clubhouse.

    I love this half clubhouse. I love Colin. I love the startup club. I love all these beautiful people here on the stage. And it’s just like, you know, with business, you know, it’s at the end of the day, people do business with people they trust like and respect. We hear it all the time and I believe it’s all about, I’m a Leo.

    I just had a birthday yesterday and I believe it’s about relationships. Relationships, I believe relationships will get you through more doors. I’ve I’ve had many jobs in my life when I was, you know, younger young man. And it’s all about relationships. People ask me all the time, how did you do that? I made a relationship.

    I made a connection. I spoke, you know, um, you know, they say clothes, mouth don’t get fed. That was a quote from 50 cents book. He said, clothes, mouth don’t get fed. You know, he grew up in the, in the ghetto and he said, you know, you had to go out there and you have to talk to people. And I think that, you know, for me, I love to talk.

    I love to meet people and I’m a people’s person. And I would tell anybody that has a business. [00:18:00] You know, I love what one of my mentors grant Cardone said. He said to the extent you’re sold on what you’re selling is how well you’re gonna sell it. Right? And so if you’re sold on number one, yourself, you are your brand and you gotta, you gotta walk, talk and, and be your brand.

    And, uh, everywhere you go make those connections, that would be my advice to anybody that wants to take their startup to the next level. To build those relationships with people because businesses are done with people. You can find any business out there at the end of the day is gonna take people to make it more than an idea.

    And, uh, that’s what I would say. I would say it’s all about relationship capital. I kind of preach that everywhere I go. And it’s, and the reason why I preach that everywhere I go is because that’s, what’s made the difference in my life. I’m not gonna be up here talking about something that I don’t know for me, it’s always been about networking.

    It’s always been about making, you know, even if you go out, right, can you get one contact that night, right? Can you meet one person prime example yesterday I went and rode jet skis, right? I rode jet skis. That’s a simple activity, but I went out there and there’s a, [00:19:00] there’s a guy out there on the jet skis.

    And I got his number. You say, how do you get a guy’s number on a jet ski? You build a relationship in the time that you have, you make an impact and you just be yourself. You know, I love when I people say, be yourself, the world adjust right too, especially with social media today. Right. Too many people are just.

    You know, they come on these clubhouse, they, then they they’re, they’re trying to talk about something that they’ve never done. Right? And so I think that if you will think about relationships, right, anybody in this room can build a relationship with anybody by opening their mouth. And so if you believe in your products and you are sold on what you’re selling, you go open your mouth and you go tell somebody about it and watch magic happen.

    You know, watch the magic happen, watch the relationships form. And I mean, it’s a Testament to me being here today in the startup club. And, um, I just blessing really, it’s a blessing to be around such great minds. And I think guys, when you have access to people like people in the startup club, Colin, Michele, Jeff, you know, Olivia, Gary, you know, you better click on these [00:20:00] profiles, you better follow, you know, one of the things as well, Evan Carmichael, he’s one of the biggest YouTubers out there today.

    Millions of followers. He’s Al you know, he came in the startup club and did a room with us. And one of the things he said about relationships and about really getting your startup out there and building a brand. Is sometimes when we reach out to people, right? A lot of us today, when we reach out on social media, we’ll send a message.

    Right. But it will just be kind of impersonal. It’s just, Hey, how you doing? Welcome. Glad to have you here. What I wanna encourage everybody in this room to do is maybe start putting yourself on video, maybe start, really share, you know, sharing your message through video more. Cause I think, and send that instead of sending messages through people, send, send them a video, be personal show.

    ’em that there’s a person behind that name. And, uh, guys, I just love everybody in here. And that’s what I would say. My brother, Colin. It’s great to be here. All right. So, so I got a couple things from that. I mean, we have the, um, this idea of positivity attitude and it’s hard to have a positive attitude all the time when you’re on a startup, because so [00:21:00] many things go wrong and you’re hit with so in so many different directions, but that positive attitude, it, it transmits and it goes from one to another and good things do generally happen.

    So I picked that up from, from what you were talking about, it’s all about attitude and it doesn’t cost you a lot of money to have a good attitude. Um, and, and the other thing I, I picked up a little bit, there was sell your expertise, this idea, or this concept that we have expertise, everybody in this room, everybody in the audience has expertise, you know?

    And when, when, when there’s a particular topic and you have an, you have a thought about it on clapo, all you have to do is just raise your hand. And, and here’s a surprise. Maybe it’s for the, those in the audience. You may not realize this, but we really want people to raise their hand more often. We really work hard sometimes to get people on stage, just to share their expertise.

    You’ve got an expertise, share it, become the known in the industry for that expertise. And then you can monetize it. All right. Great. David, you did something with the [00:22:00] hands there. Talk about expertise. How did you handshake or clap your hands? David? On your icon. Hey, is that an app? Is that something to do with the, the new clubhouse upgrade or something?

    Like how’d you do that? Hi, they calling great to be here on this platform and so good to see you. Yes, you, all you have to do is you just go along and you take your icon and you just touch your icon. You press on it. And it’ll actually, um, there we are. I’m doing it again. And there we are. All you do is press on your icon in the middle and you’ve got it.

    Well done. Co you’ve. Got it. Well done. Michele and Donovan. Fantastic. Well done. It’s so amazing. So this is amazing new, uh, part of there we are. Everyone’s doing it. Whoa, everyone go for it, everyone. this is such a great, um, uh, platform and it, I love clubhouse and, um, the startup club. Great. Go join it. Go and click on that old green mansion at the top there and join, um, Colin and Michele and [00:23:00] Jeffrey’s room.

    It’s such a great room. You know, one of the things I was thinking about, um, What does your billboard heading say, what does your, if you had a huge billboard on the highway, what would it say? And that is what the secret is, because if you can define what your billboard has to say, oh, there we are, Don, Donovan’s having great fun there.

    Um, that would actually define your business because when you have to be so specific in your detail of what is the niche of your business, and you have to actually describe it in less than seven words, then you really get down to the cracks of the matter of what you actually doing, what pain point you are solving.

    And that is if you can do that, you are. All the way there basically, and actually defining what your niches and the, the people that you serve. So next time you’re on the highway and you’re driving along, have a look at the different billboards, see what the messages are, [00:24:00] and then start to create your own message.

    And the way to do that is look at what pain point you actually solve. And then basically describe that in less than seven words, and you will have it, you’ll have your own billboard, your message to the masses of what you do, and then to continue with that, create the conversation. In other words, get people talking about you.

    Um, I saw a billboard the other day saying Netflix is joking. That would create conversation. Wouldn’t it. If you saw that on a billboard, you’d say, Hmm. Okay. What does that mean? I saw a billboard saying Netflix is joking. What does that mean? Why are they joking? What’s going on? And you saw a conversation.

    So whenever you do this, try and create the conversation because that’s, what’s gonna get you around town. So there we are color, and there’s my little neck for [00:25:00] the growing your business. Go for it. Thank you so much for the platform. I love it. And we’re gonna wanna take those same seven words and put them in our title tags, because the billboard on the internet is Google.

    And when you type in, when somebody types it, in those words, on the internet, you’re gonna want to come up. And, and again, so many people do not have great title tags, but you did make me think of something else. Signs, signs. Are very inexpensive. And yet we underappreciate what they can do for our business.

    And we have a, an incubator in Fort Lauderdale. We put up a couple of banners, um, a one on each side of the building. So when the train goes by or the, the 10,000 cars a day go by, people can see that we have an incubator there. And then I also wrapped my car with the name of the incubator. It’s a Tesla and it’s been wrapped for about four years.

    And I can’t tell you how many people I bump into say, you know what? I’ve [00:26:00] seen your car all over Fort Lauderdale. I keep seeing your car. And it’s just me driving back and forth, you know, the restaurant or for lunch or going home or whatever, how much should I pay for that minor major? Right. So we’re gonna wanna think about how do we maximize the benefit if we have a location, a space, even my, the, the school I mentioned earlier, I’m using that as an example, We handed out lawn signs.

    This was a Jeff’s idea, I believe. And he helped to make the lawn signs for us. And, and we handed the lawn signs out seven years ago. We did it once, once only. And we did it once and it was so effective with comp the school sold out. It’s been pretty much sold out ever since. Um, and that just lawn signs.

    And again, that you get your customers to help promote you. They put lawn signs on their houses to say, you know, little dollar Montessori, uh, open house. And man, it was just a huge benefit. And, uh, that’s an example. Signs are very inexpensive, very cheap. And they’re a hack. What do you think David does that sort of go along the lines with your billboard?

    [00:27:00] Absolutely. Absolutely. And what you said about Google is exactly right. You know, when you have, when you open up your Google and you’re searching for something, basically you’ll find under your URL, the, a certain little text, and that’s basically what you wanna do. Remember you’ve only got three seconds to grab somebody’s attention even less than three seconds.

    So seven words is enough for three seconds, not longer, not eight words, not nine words, seven words, six words, even better. So think about that and think about it’s it’s, it’s not easy. It’s not easy. It’s not just like you pull it out the sky and do it once. You need to really think about it and, and refine it that over time.

    And you’ll find those words that will actually really get you, get you in your gut and actually get you to actually, uh, be able to really sell what you’re selling your niche. Your remember niche. Great. And remember, you know, you all, we all have, uh, this concept of very limited funds for our marketing and for [00:28:00] getting clients.

    So if we had say, um, we in South Africa call it a 10 cent piece, right? It’s a very small coin and you go and throw it into a big swimming pool, like a huge market. It’s not gonna be found, but if you go along and throw this 10 cent piece into a fish bowl, it will be found easily. So what you wanna make sure is that your customer base is that small fish bowl, because that’s when you’re gonna actually start to grow your business and get customers because you’re gonna be targeting your niche customers and your ideal customer.

    Well, that’s another story we can talk about that later. Great story. And there’s so many ways you can go. Exactly. All right, Thomas alpha, is it alpha omega energy? Thomas B, have you got a minor major for us? Yeah, you’re asking for some hacks. Yep. Yep. You got one, I’ll give some quote hacks. Don’t I’m not sure I have too many hacks, but, um, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll say two of them, [00:29:00] certainly.

    Um, in my picture, in my profile picture here, I, I am, uh, actually wearing my conference name tag and, uh, I noticed in a lot of these conferences I was going to, it was very, very hard to read. Uh, you know, you have the name at all these conferences, they put the name on there and he is, got this gigantic name tag and, and the name is so tiny.

    You can barely see it. And if you don’t have perfect vision, well, then it’s even harder. And then the name of the company and what they do is even smaller. And a lot of times they don’t even put that what the company does on there. So I was tired of, you know, struggling and squinting it and looking and trying to right.

    See what people do, and then go introduce myself and mingle, whatnot. So I, I decided to, to help with this, that’s ridiculous. I’m gonna make a big, gigantic, a three size name tag so everybody can see right away. What, what is this? And then I stand out a little bit and, uh, that became my, one of my [00:30:00] hacks, if you will.

    And a lot of people, uh, some people had some ne negative things to say about it. Some people, you know, some, some, uh, very negative things. Some people saying that they thought it was ridiculous or, or whatever kind of BS nonsense, but, um, and that kind of made me like it even more actually, which was interesting.

    And I took it, uh, with me everywhere that we’ve gone on our startup journey so far, uh, winning pitch competitions in multiple countries, winning tech stars, winning, uh, NA national startup competitions, international startup competitions, and E eventually, actually that, that sign. I brought it into a, a Bitcoin meeting and we got, uh, uh, the vast majority part of our investment that we’ve raised so far based on that sign, uh, in that meeting where I had nothing else, I didn’t, I didn’t write, I, I wasn’t even wearing a, a, [00:31:00] uh, tie or a dress shirt, just a t-shirt and jeans, but I brought my sign and that, that sign got us a, a $184,000 investment in Bitcoin, uh, from some, some Japanese pointers.

    And, and we built a hell of a lot of, of, of everything that we needed to build so far along this journey. So, um, I, that certainly became one of my hacks, uh, and okay. But I wanna let’s. Can we go, how big was this? Like, can you give us a description? Like, like I know the standard tag, you know, linear tag it’s it’s an, a three is, is the size.

    So it’s, what is that? A 3, 4, 4 pieces of a. Or a four paper, like your four pieces of standard paper coming outta your printer. That’s huge. Yeah. So you can see it in, in the picture. . So can I, I’m gonna ask a favor of you. Can you set, because we do a blog, we’re trying to capture these for a blog and the, the, uh, session on [00:32:00] startup.club.

    Uh, yeah, you don’t even have to listen to all the episodes. You can check out the blogs who, uh, Olivia and Mimi, uh, work behind the scenes here and never get enough credit. Um, do a great job. Uh, and if Mimi, if you’re in the audience, your stuff is amazing. And Olivia, I know you’re here as well, so that’s awesome.

    But if you could send us a, a picture to hello@startup.club, we’ll put that on the blog. I just think that would be so fun to, uh, to, to, to feature as a part of our blog. And this goes. This lines up well, with your thoughts, Jack, you know, you do something crazy a little bit, whatever, and then all of a sudden somebody likes it and now I wanna get a picture and then it goes on a blog.

    And next thing you know, the wall street journals calling up Thomas here and saying, Hey, can I, this is pretty cool. I’m joking around that a bit Thomas. Right. But the fact of the matter is good things happen, right? Yeah. I’ll do it. Why not? Right. Yeah. And I also, my other, my other hack is, uh, you know, I notice I can’t help, but notice.

    And I think a lot of people notice, uh, and, and, uh, it’s gotten a little bit severe. Uh, [00:33:00] I used to live in Silicon valley. I left Silicon valley. So I’m a Silicon valley refugee. I like to say. And a lot of the Silicon valley companies, they become quite anti-social and know, you know, they don’t wanna service the customer.

    They don’t really want to talk to people. It’s all software all over the internet and, and trying to build these funnels where they never actually deal with anybody. So I completely agree with the guy previously talking about relationships and this kind of thing. And I would say, even, you know, don’t be afraid to cold call.

    Go go out there and get it, go out there and get your customers right. And, uh, I chose the business to business, uh, business model, which is really great for growth because you have these huge, huge accounts instead of, you know, having to sell a million pair of pants to, to, uh, a million customers every single month, just to pay the rent.

    If you get one big customer in, in a B2B model instead of a consumer, uh, model. Well, uh, that big, big account can potentially, you know, cover all [00:34:00] of your sales for an entire year, depending on who you land. So, uh, go out there, go after it. And if you go, if you go yourself, right, it’s free. You don’t, you don’t have to.

    Uh, and I, I did a hell of a lot of cold calling, going to factories in the beginning, by myself, in industry zones, industry parks, and just going after it. And nobody wanted to go with me. Nobody wanted to do it. And literally I’ve, I’ve lined up literally and so much business sitting here waiting that most people could never possibly even believe that it it’d be true.

    I I’ve literally got $14 billion a year in customer demand interest to buy electricity from us, just sitting here, waiting for us to have the equipment, to be able to go and plug in all from literally all from cold, calling myself two, two feet in a heartbeat, going out there to get it and talking to people at quote unquote, building the relationships.

    But I didn’t even need to build any [00:35:00] relationships to get that because it, you know, if you have a, a product market fit, some product that the market actually needs, and that’s a fantastic growth hack too, is choosing something that actually the market needs and then building on that and then going out there, go getting after it, instead of, you know, trying to anti-social way go be social.

    You’d be amazed. What will happen? Don’t let anybody tell you different, just go after it and go, go do it. And it’s, you know, it’s awesome. This kinda model you’re gonna, you’re gonna grow. Have you ever seen w K R P in Cincinnati, herb tar. Do you remember him with his crazy suits and then one person, why do you wear these crazy suits?

    Why do you wear these crazy suits? And he says, cuz people will remember me. Why do you wear, why do you have this, this, this huge sign on the front of you? Cause people will remember me. Right? That’s what it’s all about your hat. I love the hacks. I just love this. Nobody forgets Don cherry. Oh [00:36:00] yeah. Okay.

    That’s Canadian now. We’re going Canadian. I’m Canadian. Hey, so you, uh, um, we all, no one forgets him. Of course. Ho Moham. Yeah, I know exactly Moham.

    So sorry. Mohamed, Mohamed. Yeah. I’m here. All right. Do you have a hack or a tip or trick a minor major for us? Um, you know, one of my, um, I have been, uh, uh, blessed to grow my company. Um, and I’ve been in the business for long time and I’ve started a few companies and I’ve come to the, um, at one point I had, um, about 31, um, retail, um, um, shops and I even opt in ch chains in China.

    I, I found that the biggest mistake I’ve, uh, I’ve found that, um, I short, I, I, I, I wish that someone have told me this [00:37:00] don’t sell yourself short. You should ask for the most money and invest in the best people and, uh, entrepreneurs. When they first start, when, when we all went through this, we think of ourselves as Superman and, uh, we can do it all.

    And, uh, unfortunately, uh, our ego gets in the way and you have a problem when you’re the smartest guy in the room. And you are as good as the people to surround yourself with this. And, uh, you might have the greatest idea and, uh, you have a great demand, uh, with the best opportunity since there’s a need.

    However, if you don’t have the right people around you and you have enough resources, uh, eventually you can’t adapt and you cannot, um, rejuvenate your business and, and be agile. And, um, it’s all about, um, improvement, uh, rather than, um, um, getting the top, but try to staying at the top. Um, that’s my, uh, my tip.

    Oh, that’s, that’s awesome. Uh, I think that, [00:38:00] um, yeah, if so many great ideas just rolling around here and, uh, that’s another one right there. It’s it’s all about that. All right. Very good. Um, we’re gonna move on to, uh, uh, I don’t have your name here. Oh, Helen. I can see, but I can see Helen that you’ve got something going here because.

    In some ways you’ve already hacked it. You’ve got this cool icon. You get your name up there. You’re promoting the company. And, uh, we’d like to hear it from you. Do you have a, a minor major that works for this group? Or you can share with this group. Uh, yeah. Hi, thank you. Thanks for having me on stage. I do for me, the biggest growth hack really happened years ago when I realized that it wasn’t so much the getting of different degrees and more certificates and, and all the knowledge and, and, and working harder and harder and longer hours, cuz that was the, the mode I was in for years.

    It was [00:39:00] really the realization that I had to shift my entire mindset around. All of it, really. And, and it came down to the deeply rooted internal belief systems that I was carrying and that all of us carry around success around money, abundance, all of it, including even relationships and whatever it is in our lives that may not be working to our liking.

    I always teach now and help with all my clients to really dig deep and uncover what deeply rooted beliefs are you carrying around all of that, because deep down you can work as hard as you want or can and push yourself to the limit and sometimes beyond and burn yourself out. And I’ve seen it with many clients that are severely burnt out, particularly high level executives I’ve worked with.

    And they’re just completely like at the end of their wits and, and, and feel like they’re hitting this brick wall until we uncover that there’s. Hidden blocks internally that are about, oh, well this, the level of success is not [00:40:00] possible for me. You know, it may be possible for someone else, but not for me.

    Or I don’t have enough knowledge or I don’t have enough this, or I’m not enough somehow at the root of it is always, I’m not enough. And then it’s deeply rooted childhood stuff. I, I find all these layer upon layer, inner child, um, you know, stuff around, uh, daddy or mommy issues. And a lot of actually generational trauma patterns also that play into this, believe it or not that I’ve seen as many as nine generations deep that literally kill the success at the root or, or prevent somebody from seeing the next level of growth or the next level of success.

    And no matter how hard you work until you really find those layers that are keeping you stuck, that are preventing you from moving forward, it’s just not gonna happen. No matter how hard you push yourself, you can get easily burnt out. And that next level will never happen. But once you clear that it’s almost like a fog gets lifted and suddenly the vision gets cleared or the opportunity starts to align.

    [00:41:00] I’ve seen it like so many times and in so many different ways, um, you know, where like I, even these really high level, like, um, CEO, CIOs I’ve worked with, or, you know, hedge fund owner that I was working with this, like Helen, I don’t get it. I cannot close this deal with my firm for we’re hitting our head against a wall.

    Once we literally cleared were turned out to be some inner child stuff with him and his dad and some belief systems about money and success that simply were invisible blocks that needed to be cleared. He literally like it. He’s like, oh my God, is this magic? I’m like, no, there is no magic to it. It, it is an energy thing because we are energetic beings.

    And we often forget that that we’re not just machines. We’re not just bodies running the routine and, and living in the hamster wheel. Once we connect that misaligned energy with the belief systems of what is possible, then suddenly it becomes automatically possible because there are certain universal laws that exist, whether [00:42:00] we choose to believe them or deny or ignore their existence, you know, just because gravity is something that we are taught about.

    You would still not fall off the earth, even if you didn’t know about the existence of that law. So it goes the same with many other universal laws that we just, um, simply may not have the level of awareness around, but they still exist. And once we do, uh, recognize them and start to, you know, peel away those layers that are preventing us from that success, anything is possible.

    And as I like to say, even the word impossible contains in itself, the root of I am possible. So that’s what I wanted to, uh, leave off with. Thank you for having me on your stage. I’m Helen I’m, I’m yield the mic. All right. That’s that’s amazing Helen. And, uh, you know, we do a show on, um, there’s many shows in startup club.

    There’s one that we do, uh, myself, but really headed up by Michael Gilmore called the complete entrepreneur. And we would love to, I’d love to do a show with you with you there, because I think this whole idea [00:43:00] of, you know, you always have to work harder and harder and harder doesn’t necessarily translate into more and more money or more and more success.

    and we see that with entrepreneurs and startups. So often they burn themselves out and that, that show we do it every, um, Thursday at five o’clock Eastern would love to have you on as a regular guest, just have you on stage. But I think we could do a whole show around that if you’re interested in doing that.

    Um, and if you wanted to email hello@startup.club and connect, that would be great. Um, Chris, you’re up next? Have you got a minor major for us? Well, good afternoon, everyone. How’s everyone doing today on fantastic Friday. It’s another great day to be alive and another gift not only to receive, but to give as well.

    Doing great, doing great. And you know, it’s Friday in Canada and I put, put my cottage and today is the, [00:44:00] uh, probably the busiest weekend of the year where people leave the city, cuz it’s the warmest weekend of the year. Generally. It’s called civic holiday weekend in Canada. And there’s very few people on clubhouse right now.

    They’re all scrambling to get outta the city.

    All right. Very good. Colin, thank you so much. Um, maybe it’s about recognizing what’s literally all in front of us. If we allow that to occur, everything that we want and need in our life has been given to us by life itself. Maybe it’s about starting it, maybe from that context of letting things be for what they are versus what they’re not understanding who you are.

    And I believe that’s the question we should always not only ask ourselves, but also ask of others because for, for months now I’ve been getting this from people from all over the world. Um, it’s like, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? What do [00:45:00] you do? I have to come right back and tell ’em. It’s not what I do is who I am.

    And if we can let that environment grow and thrive from what’s already there and just take people from who they are and, and meet them where they are. Maybe we can build a bridge to them and with them in such a way, not only does it work in their world, but also works in hours. And I truly believe laser gentleman to growth and thriving ability.

    Like no other time in human history can be done from a place of maybe transformation. And not only is that a gift to be shared, but everyone can have a hand in that. In and of itself. And maybe it’s about just recognizing this many path to success, many paths to growth, many paths to thriving. And it’s not just one way, because if we just had that one way, lace gentlemen, wouldn’t we all be doing it right here right now.

    And I truly believed him. If we can expand our minds and expand [00:46:00] our state of being, what can we not achieve and do not only in our lives and the li and then also in the lives of others. And maybe, maybe it’s about recognizing this, what we do in our lives. What if it wasn’t about us at all is actually about others.

    And then once, once we actually start doing. I truly believe our all our whole world will be open up cause of it. And not only where our world be changed for forever more, but it might just change someone else’s life because of the, maybe the story that we share, maybe it’s because about showing up the way that we do and maybe influencing them in a way that we’re is truly connective and recognizing not only that we can be connected to of the things that are in alignment to, to let’s say, meet to them and them to me, but also recognizing those misalignments, those things that are there, then we can say, Hey, I don’t see this eye die with you.

    And I’ll be like, okay, that’s okay. Not a problem, but I will [00:47:00] go to ’em and say, Hey, I wanna bridge that gap of misalignment. And if we get their grade, if we don’t get their grade, that’s not a problem, but at least you’re putting yourself out there. And I just totally believe there’s are great ways to move forward.

    Like no other time in human history, I. Wow. That’s, that’s incredible. I, I, I really like that, that we don’t. And I see that again with so many startups and entrepreneurs as they work so hard, work so hard and they don’t celebrate the successes. And it was my CEO coach who taught me that, you know, when you start your strategic planning session, always kick off with celebrating your successes.

    What did you do? Right that quarter, we all wanna focus on what went wrong and we don’t wanna spend the time to, to focus on what went right. And the second thing that reminded me of is, was one of our value statements, um, recognized greatness. And this, by the way, will not cost you one penny [00:48:00] in your startup simply recognize those who do a great job in your company and do it 10 times more than you do it currently today.

    I’m telling you we don’t do it enough. I was horrible at this. I probably still am horrible at this. Right. But the fact of the matter is if you can recognize people’s greatness, they will do great things and continue to do great things. And you’re recognizing the highest performers in the company. We had something at, uh, Hostopia.

    We had a very large call center of about two, 300 people and we had a five diamond award. And what would happen is that if you were employee of the month and we’d choose two employees per month to get the, and it was based on customer feedback. So if customers wrote compliments, they would be put into a committee and the committee would decide, you know, who would be the, uh, customer service employee of the month.

    And we literally had a, a, a pin that go on your shirt. You could wear every [00:49:00] day at the office. It was a picture of a two cow cause is the name two cows was the name of the company at the time. And, uh, we actually got a real diamond installed in over five slots. And once you had achieved all five of those slots, um, and they’re diamonds, but they were tiny.

    I mean, they’re $10 diamonds. They’re not that maybe $20 diamonds, whatever, but once you achieved all those five slots, we then had a company wide party. And remember we had hundreds of people here paid for pizza. It’s always pizza. It seems, but we paid for all the pizza for the, the entire company. And, um, we named that day after that employee.

    So that day became that employees, we named it after that employee and all of the, the entire company would celebrate and be so excited that they got the free pizza. And that, that this individual had worked so hard and achieved this and that didn’t cost us a lot of money recognized greatness. [00:50:00] It really is something we as startups and entrepreneurs need to do more.

    Chris, thank you very much, but he, well, Chris. Go ahead. Well, think about, think about this also too. Colin, maybe it’s about this. It’s about actually recognizing what’s actually truly there. That’s gonna be far more tangible than anything else. And what if it’s not about the money? Maybe it’s about recognizing maybe that the next currency of humanity is gonna be rooted in value, not money.

    Yeah. We could go into a deep conversation with that one, but we’re gonna move on to the heat. Uh, you’re up next. Be heats to you have a minor major forest. Hey, good morning, everybody. Great room. Um, I, I always love to come and, you know, sit in the audience and listen. Um, I think for a startup, every startup should read the book, thinking go rich.

    I think they should have that for every single employee. And that should be their, their, their Bible. I’m very surprised that why [00:51:00] Combinators have not made that mandatory for all their founders, cuz I think it could definitely solve a lot of problems and it could eliminate a lot of the challenges that they might have.

    Um, the other part of it is that I believe that a lot of, uh, founders, especially with the startups, I think they need to be thinking outside the box. When it comes to marketing, uh, it’s surprising how many founders I’ve spoken to, where they have never written a cold outbound, email marketing. They have never cold called anybody for, for business.

    They, they, they don’t know how to follow up. They don’t know how many, you know, times it takes how many contacts before you have a client converting. And then if they convert how many often you need to touch them. So you make sure that they continue doing business with you and getting feedback. Uh, I think those are the, the crazy part.

    But beside that, I think, uh, GoDaddy is taking over the entire, uh, domain industry. They just acquire DN academy and they just, you know, [00:52:00] took over dan.com. So Colin, what else are you gonna sell them? What else do you have cooking that you gonna sell? Go there. You need to be buying. They got that club as well.

    So they’re, they’re definitely growing and, uh, yeah, no, that’s, that’s a great hack. And, uh, there, there are, there’s so many good hacks today. The community, and this is, this is what clubhouse is all about. It’s, it’s all about learning from, uh, everyone else. And, you know, that’s a hack in itself, you know, if you’re sitting at home and you’re watching another Netflix show, that’s great.

    I do it all the time talking. I wrong, we gotta wind down. Okay. Would I actually go on clubhouse? And I listen to some of these shows on startup club. I, I love startups and I love to learn more. And, you know, for instance, there’s Jenny Kasson. She does this, she’s a lawyer. She has a great show on, on raising money every week.

    And then, uh, Jeff’s got this another show and these are all, a lot of them are recorded. Uh, you can see them in the recordings, or you can go to www w.startup.club. Um, [00:53:00] sign up to that email list because really we do have phenomenal speakers, Jack. I didn’t know about that speaker that you had on it.

    Would’ve been nice to have known that you had that gentleman on and to be able to promote that gentleman in the, in the show, but, um, who had the millions of followers. Uh, in any case, it’s all about hacks and growth and these don’t cost a lot of money. Um, I wanna share one more with you eat your own dog food.

    What do I mean by that? Yeah. Eat your own dog food. And I’m involved in about 15 companies, maybe too many. I have to admit it’s become challenging, but for instance, I needed eyeglasses. I’m 52 years old and I’ve never, I’ve been resisting, resisting, resisting, resisting. I find I said, okay, I need eyeglasses.

    And I own a part of an eyeglass company, a competitor to, uh, Warby Parker called hip optical. Very, I would say it’s more Eder designs and little bit more, whatever. So I [00:54:00] went to go and I went to buy the, the glasses and I did some tests and got figured out my site and had my, uh, an understanding of what I needed for reading glasses.

    So I logged in and I started to log in. I start using it da, da. And I said, oh, I’d like to pair sunglasses now. I don’t need any glasses for distance. but, but I, I clicked on it. I picked, it was one of five shades. I clicked on the shade. I clicked on the, it was amazing. It was amazing experience. But then as I was checking out, it said, uh, a prescription will be required after checkout.

    And I’m like, wait a minute. I don’t have a prescription for sunglasses for distance. So right there, that was a, that was a, uh, conversion killer. And we have a lot of conversion killers in our businesses today. So what we wanna do is we want to go in and we wanna buy our own dog food. You know, people would say, oh, I’ll just send you the glasses.

    I’ll send you the dog better. I’ll do whatever. No, I always buy the products myself on the website. I, I, I treat it like a customer and I experience it like a customer. We own vacation rentals. We have [00:55:00] about 15 properties. My intention is to try to stay in every property. Yes. And when I have friends who stay at my properties, I say, don’t be polite.

    Don’t be nice. I need you to gimme a hit list of what’s wrong or what could be better. Um, a gentleman just stayed at one of my, uh, properties in north Captiva and he said, you know what? I really didn’t like the shower curtains. You had shower, this nice house, really nice house. You don’t have shower curtains.

    Now. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know. He didn’t like shower curtains or people didn’t like that. And it has bad feel to it. No problem. We’re gonna, we’re replacing with glass. That’s the kind of, that’s what I’m talking about. Eat your own dog food, sleep in your own, uh, business. Uh, and when it comes to dog beds, that’s the other one, paw.com.

    You know, I’ve ordered, I don’t know how many dog beds and dog blankets and whatnot, but I literally test them. I put them down on the floor, uh, with competitors and see if my dogs like our dog beds better than [00:56:00] their dog beds. So it’s not just, it’s not just yourself doing it, but it’s also those around you as well.

    And that’s, that’s the next tip. And I do have two or three more, but I wanna go open. I’m gonna go to a popcorn style right now, Michele. Yes. Yes. The power of no, like don’t be, you know, don’t feel bad. Don’t be afraid to say no. Um, you know, no helps you get better. Like don’t, you know, let too many get in the way of getting done what you need to do and doing it well.

    So no is a very powerful word and it should be used.

    You’re just doing a pop popcorn style. Colin, you know, one, I don’t think anyone mentioned it because it’s, it’s almost too obvious and it’s somewhat old school, but a really good hack is your email signature email is still the killer app [00:57:00] and you’d be surprised how effecti. Links and other information and little bonus information can be in the bottom of your email signature.

    I often have a link to a video that I did during COVID, um, in my email signature. And I’m always surprised at how many people will respond. Sometimes people are trying to reach out to, and that’s what got their attention. And they’ll respond with a comment that was a really neat video. Um, you made it made me think back a lot of things, et cetera.

    So think about creative ways. You could leverage your email signature beyond just your logo and your phone number, but what can you put there? That’s gonna really get someone’s attention cuz people do notice it.

    Awesome. We gotta go real quick. Now join an incubator. I’m telling you, you can actually, NSU has an, a, a free incubator. You can program. You can go in, it’s like 10 weeks, you learn so much. [00:58:00] You make so many contacts. You, you meet in potential investors. You, you perfect. Your pitch. Join an incubator. Second to that is join every pitch competition you can.

    And, and of course, if you don’t win, that’s perfectly fine, but you’ve exposed yourself. These are free things. You can do. Join an incubator in every pitch competition. You can, I can go next with one. Um, if you have direct competition, experience the competition as a customer and find gaps, and then you can offer those fillers.

    All right. Popcorn style, Jack David, anyone who wants to pop come out with something right now. Yeah, I’ll share something. I actually went to a networking group, uh, this afternoon, well lunchtime, and one of the things they did, which was totally different to any other networking group that I’ve been to, they asked for each [00:59:00] person to associate their business, their name with their business.

    So in other words, like Jack, the handyman, um, Joel, the marketer, and to actually promote themselves in that way. So it was actually fantastic because you could actually see, okay, marketer, handyman, financeer accountant and so on. So that’s another hack to do is get yourself to be known as what you do and what the service that you provide.

    Uh, that’s one hack. And the other hack that happened during that networking group, which was also fantastic, was they asked each person at the end of their pitch to offer as a, like a free gift. Uh, to anyone. And obviously they had a little bit of a lottery thing there, um, a part of their service or something.

    So, um, what happened was, uh, I do podcast one of the things I do. And so I offered a podcast and it was amazing. The take up everyone, [01:00:00] oh, I, what a podcast. I want a podcast. And then, um, the guy got it. He was so excited. He came to me and he spoke to me about it. And we spoke about what, what, what was gonna happen?

    And he was reading and said, oh, I’m so happy. I won this podcast. And I thought, wow, that’s so great. And so many people did things that were just totally different. They thought out the box and they gave away stuff to actually promote their business. So there’s another wonderful hack. And it was very effective.

    I must say there was about, probably about 35 people there and each person gave something and, uh, made someone else very, very happy. So there is another great hack that reminds me of at Hostopia. Uh, we had something called you mods. Unexpected moments of delight and the most important part of that was unexpected.

    So I was actually in, uh, whole foods, never happened before I’m checking out I’m a prime member and [01:01:00] Bing, they gave me a, a package full of all these samples and say, because you’re a prime member, sir, you were giving you a package full of samples of this package full of gifts. And actually, you know, it was a bit cheesy, you know, gr granola bars and this, that, and the other.

    And I’m certain, they all paid for it, but you know what? It was unexpected moment of delight. Wow. That’s sort of nice, you know, and that’s a big company trying to pull something like that off, uh, you know, when you have an Airbnb, is there something you’re doing different that nobody else does. If you have an e-commerce site, do you send something a little bit different?

    Do you add something extra? Do you add a dogone or something? Just so that, uh, if it’s a pet product site, which we own, of course, pot.com, but do you do something different? Uh, and you know, there’s a company, or as a hotel in, in LA, they were someone walks out in a tuxedo and hands out popsicles to the guests.

    I mean, just freak them out, [01:02:00] freak them out. What are we talking about here? We’re not talking about a lot of money, unexpected moments of delight.

    Like you ready to go? Michele, Bobby, we could close it out here. If. David. You got one. I like, and David, we got David. I like you asking question. Yeah. So David, you got David Thomas and Vahe. I know you each, so let’s, let’s go through, go through the three of you and then let’s close it up. Uh, Colin, thanks, man.

    I was just gonna say thank you very much. Uh, yeah. I love your, uh, unexpected moments of, of, uh, delight. I love that. And I think that’s what exactly happened at this networking group and it actually really made the event really special. So love it. Thank you.

    All right. Great Thomas. Yeah. Where, where was that? I’m supposed to write this blog. I can’t seem to find it. And, um, [01:03:00] since you’re interested, I’m really going to, yeah, so, so it has just send an email. If you send an email with the pitcher to hello startup.club, then, uh, we’ll put that in the blog. Mimi’s gonna write the blog.

    You don’t have to write the block. We got, we got that covered. She’s amazing at you. See, excuse me. See your stuff@startup.club. She’s amazing. But we just want the picture and I think it’d be really cool to feature that. Cause that’s just insane. Like picture yourself, you know, I don’t know, like if you have anything like that, but you just exemplified the entire show with that image.

    Thank you. So, so happy to hear people appreciate it. I do. I think every startup appreciates that kind of stuff. Behe I know you were looking at jumping in here, is that correct? Or no, I, I was just gonna add to what Jeffrey said. If you add a signature to your email, that your deliverability goes up because ISPs they do now, they do.

    [01:04:00] Uh, you know, they, they favor that now that they, you know, they know you’re professional or you’re, you’re sending something because every attorney, every CPA, every advisor, when they send an email, there’s definitely a signature with links, phone numbers, contact information. So I think putting a signature in your email is very, very important.

    That’s awesome. All right, we’re gonna close it out. Now. I will say the ultimate hack is join startup club. It’s free again, it’s free and you learn so much. You interact with people. And if you want even wanna vet your idea, there’s shows where you can come on stage and vet your idea. Or if, if you wanna make network span your distribution, it is a really a great club.

    And today I think we proved the community when it comes together can really deliver. And I’m so proud of this because I signed a, a publishing deal with Forbes advantage. Late last year and I’m working on a chapter, uh, in the book right [01:05:00] now called minor majors. And, you know, I’d love to take a lot of these ideas and put that in the chapter and give credit for whoever.

    Um, whoever came up with an idea and, and maybe even maybe I can get your, maybe I can get your, uh, placard, uh, or whatever you call it. Uh, Thomas in, in the book as well. A photo of that, that would be sort of, sort of funny as well, but, uh, really appreciate that this isn’t, this is a great session. I love when we do open mic, we’re gonna do open mic a lot more because the knowledge of this community, when, when, when people come on stage and share, it’s incredible.

    And every one of you are welcome to keep coming back to these shows and come on stage. We really do like it. When you raise your hand and, and participate. Thank you very much. And we shall see you next Friday at two o’clock Eastern on the sir launcher club hour. Thank you. Thank you, Collin Michele. Bye everyone.

    Thank you. [01:06:00] Have a wonderful weekend and be well.

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