In 2009 I started a web services agency called Todaymade and started blogging as a way to help promote our business. That blog eventually moved to CoSchedule when we launched in 2013.
Fast forward today, and that blog has gone on to generate more than one million email subscribers and more than one and a half million page views per month. It built CoSchedule. In fact, the experience of starting it, and then handing it off to our marketing team, inspired me to write a book about how we did it called the 10x Marketing Formula.
Since the book published last March, however, I really haven’t been writing much at all. Though I do contribute twice per month at Inc.com, I tend to write from the perspective of a CEO at a Martech company. In short, I end up writing about marketing and not a lot about startups.
Which means that I need a better a place to share my knowledge of business, technology, SaaS, and building startup growth, and that’s where this blog comes in.
In my free time, I like to work with other startups and share my own experience and knowledge about building market-leading products, implementing growth marketing tactics, acquiring customers, and navigating core hiring and business strategies. This blog is designed to complement that work.
Over the years, I have also used blogging as a way to add clarity to my thinking. It is a great way for me to sort out the frameworks and techniques that have worked for me, and turn them into something that I can hand off to others.
Writing about what I have found to work (and not work) has frequently started great discussions and debates. At times, it has completely changed the way I approached the work and things that I did on a daily basis.
I’ve decided to name this blog ‘Results, or Die!’
This was a line a used in my book, and I think it really gets to the heart of what we are all after.
When you start something new you have to produce results (a.k.a customers, leads, whatever) or else you will die.
This is true for everyone, not just businesses.
When building marketing teams I’ve always used this same lense. Marketing teams have to produce results or else they will eventually die. In their case, death means that they will eventually be replaced or downsized, but the effect is the same.
Of course, what we’re really talking about here is growth. Growth equals results, and growth can be really hard to come by.
What I’ve learned over the years is that while growth is hard, it isn’t about tactics and hacks. There are no quick tip blog posts that will generate consistent growth (even though we love writing and reading them).
Growth is a mindset. It comes down to recognizing what isn’t growing, developing a set of ideas on how to fix it, and then implementing those ideas one idea at a time until you find one that sticks.
The only rule is that you can’t stop trying things. You can’t stick with things that aren’t working. That may sound simple, but it can be really hard.
Sometimes diagnosing what isn’t working is the biggest problem.
Sometimes there are things that we take for granted. Everyone else does them, why shouldn’t they work for me as well?
Growth is about becoming a great problem solver, and sometimes in order to solve a problem, you have to be willing to tear down everything you already built in order to find something else.
As someone who has been doing just that for over ten years, I have decided it is time to share what I have learned. It’s time to write down what I think it takes to produce consistent results.
Because without results, you die.
And, dying stinks.
So, thank you for reading, sharing, and (hopefully) subscribing. I hope that this can be a help to you and others on the startup journey.
Let’s go!