With their other offering, music. Musically, whats happening is very exciting. Ten years ago, artists would still go on tour as a way to sell records. Today, no one is making any money selling records. The only real money is in the live performance, and to have an intimate experience with an artist becomes very precious. Wesley, otherwise known as john wesley harding, has had a long music career, but his soldout cabinet of Wonders Cabaret Show at city winery is one of his favorite gigs. I think were up to our 92nd show. The whole idea of a comfortable evening out with good wine and good food is a good deal, too. The way our show is run and run here is tribute to the fact that theres a certain kind of thing that is perfect for this place. Dont blink because in an instant, city winery has one more trick up its sleeve. This well oiled machine quickly
big change when he noticed his customers buying a lot of beer tap handles, products that werent even part of the original plan. When you have customers calling every day, its hard to turn them away. Nice people. They want to give you money. Thats a good thing. Mark never could have guessed what his Best Selling Product would be when he started his Small Business in 1981. 20, 30 years ago, beer taps didnt play that big a part in the retailing of beer. And my feeling is that now its a huge part. I think we have been very lucky to have this marked find us. This market grew around us. The owner of mark supick and company in baltimore, maryland, said his clients are the reason he decided to sell his now popular custom designed Wooden Beer Tap handles. Before this, the Customer Demand wasnt that high. It came in the back door, it was an aside, and we made them because it was a good fit for
us. Mark originally focused on carpentry work, building pieces like cabinets for homes, but conversations with other Small Business owners pushed him in another direction. I had a couple local brewers come to me and say we want t handle. We made it for them. Thats when it took off. I just started doing it as sales work. Rather than drag his heels, he recognized the potential. Fortunately, it didnt require a major pivot in production. It wasnt difficult. We just did more of what we were doing. Also plenty of wood turning being done on site. We made beer taps which are lathe turned and go to the breweries and millwork, which is primarily lathe turned. We made stair parts, newals and spindles and handrails. As the number of orders for the handles grew, the team figured out a way to accommodate all customers, especially newer ones. The answer was to simplify the design. We are a wood shop, and were trying to focus on a definite
line of handles that say a Novice Brewer can come in and say i want that handle, that suits me. Or maybe i want that handle but this changed a little bit. Customers know theyre being heard, steven has a standing order, but he can always call with a request. Hell go out of his way. I think thats typical of a Small Business person. You know, your customer comes first, and hell spend the extra time to go out of his way. Im not talking about hundreds of tap handles, if i need ten, 20, hell supply them. With customers nationwide, mark said the company has reimagined its production by becoming more efficient. More orders than we ever had, so it was really by necessity to get it done and really keep from banging our heads against the wall. Staff has increased. When necessary, manpower can shift. We really sort of compartm t
compartmentalize each one. We have employees who only work on tap handles. It one of us would jump on temporarily. Joseph believes the company has found a way to balance its work flow. Were fairly flexible with a lot of the stuff we do, so we can adjust for Customer Demand as needed. Demand for tap handles itself has been steady. Those customers have also given the business stability at uncertain times. When the millwork fell off, it kept us going through that. The decision to grow the line has worked out so well that sales for the product now account for more than 50 of business. The one catch about following Customer Demand is that the business is headed in a direction that mark didnt predict. He admits that making the tap handles can be a bit repetitive. Its not stimulated so we try to move people around and make things interesting. That being said, clients are
speaking with their dollars. Im seeing companies we have been dealing with for years, their demand for tap handles has increased. They would ask for a small batch in the beginning, now their batch is now like once a month. Its interesting to see not only our Business Improve but their Business Improve as well. Thats why there are conversations about ways to increase production across the board. Since the mimwork side is plenty busy, its not like we do less millwork. Everybody is elevated. We just do more beer taps. The staff is keeping a watchful eye on beer flow to make sure every order is priority number one. We all want more visitors to our websites, Entrepreneur Magazine gives us five easy ways to get them. One, a blog can help you drive traffic to your site and give your visitors a taste of your brands character and voice. But make sure you have a plan in mind. You need to do it well and often in order to add value. Two, become a thought leader. Establish yourself as an expert in your industry by speaking at conferences and attending networking events. Three, change up your email strategy. Use sites like mail chimp, boom rang, and mail track to improve the quality of your email responses and followups. Four, form a partnership. You can align yourself with a successful business. Find ways that you both can benefit from the relationship and tap into each others customer base. And five, become a social media master. It doesnt have to be brain surgery. On whatever platform your Target Audience freak wnts, start a conversation and keep it authentic. All Fast Growing Companies have one thing in common. They have built products or provide a service that in the eye of their customers are simply musthaves. So what can you do to harness the strategy for your company to grow fast . Shaun ellis is the founder and ceo of Growth Hackers. Com. Hes also coauthor of the new book, hacking growth, how todayss Fastest Growing Companies Drive fastgrowing success. Thanks for wiig here. Before we start, define Growth Hacker for me. Growth hacker or growth hacking is really about understanding the full Customer Journey. And doing testing across that entire Customer Journey and contrast that with the typical marketing which tends to be more externally focused. So growth hacking takes it to a level where its focused on all levels of growth and having a team Work Together to test those levels. I want to go through urtips because it takes people on the journey. The first one you talk about is understand your musthave benefit. Dont you think when most companies launch a product they understand that or no . Its surprising that a lot of companies, when they launch a
product, they have an idea in mind of the value that people are going to get from the product, but when people actually use it, a lot of times they actually get more benefit from something that was unanticipated. So its really important to i would crowdsource that from your customers and try to mock sure that you first consider what products consider it a musthave and dig into why they consider it a musthave. What is the benefit theyre getting from the product . With that information, you really have now kind of a finish line as youre acquiring new users to bring them to that experience. Number two, you talk about determining a key Growth Metric. It seems obvious, right . Is it revenues, sales, users. What i have found is that people in Charge Change that key Growth Metric when the one they originally picked isnt working. Right . So at first, its users. Then they say, were not getting
users, fast enough so its visitors. If you cant get to your first one, do you have to stick to it or think this is going to be slower than i thought and i need to think about this in a different way . You can be flexible with it. The mistake a lot of Companies Make is that they are focused on a Business Metric or a business outcome, where what really drives Sustainable Growth is this customer value. We talked about this musthave benefit customers get from a product. How do you quantify that in a single metric that over time that metric is going to be a much better indicator of Sustainable Growth. If youre delivering value, people will come back and want more of that value. So maybe repeat not your typical Business Metric. Maybe repeat usage from your current customers . Kind of the best example that i can think of would be airbnb, they have for their in the growth hacking world, we call it a north star metric. For their north star metric, it
would be nights booked. Theres benefit for a host and theres benefit for a guest every time a night is booked. And so the more nights they have booked, the more value is being delivered. And the more likely that that growth is going to be sustainable over time. Got it. Build glass functional growth team. You take people from marketing, et cetera, and say youre the growth team . Right. So this is whats pretty cool, and facebook really pioneered this. Since the time they pioneered it, they built about another 400 billion in value in the business, its this idea that testing across kind of all of the levers of growth is really challenged because a lot of the people who control levers that sit within product, for example, are not going to be the marketing team. What you want to be able to do is have this Cross Functional Team that has permission to test really anywhere that can affect growth, and , so thats the big benefit is that by having this Cross Functional Team that
includes marketers, potentially designers, engineers, data, a data analyst, but being able to bring together a group of these skills that have permission to test across anywhere in the business to drive growth can be really effective for being able to unlock growth in areas that maybe are a little less obvious than going out and spending more on advertising. The other two is optimize the full Customer Journey and test growth levers. It seems youre talking about a mind set as anything else. Theres definitely a mind set. Its this Continuous Improvement mind set where you know everything that youre doing, particularly when it comes to optimization, theres a better way to do everything, and the only way to discover that better way is through testing and ultimately trying to see what the impact from that testing is on your north star metric. Any test that expands value
being delivered to customers is going to be a successful test. When i hear hacking, when you hear hack, your think tricks to change everything and make it better. Are there tricks people need to be using or tactics instead of tricks. These are big organizational thing. Right, this is really hacking in the sense of Just Creative problem solving. Its, so like engineering is another sort of hacking synonym, so ultimately, its about being able to use whatever resources that you have to come up with Creative Solutions to the problems that are holding back growth. Great. So good to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, j. J. , i appreciate it. When we come back, we answer your questions on how to make key hires when scaling your business. And well see if this Elevator Pitch for a lactosefree ice
cream product moves our judges. Will your business be ready when growth presents itself . American express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. Find out how American Express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open. Com. What are some key hires that an earlystage company should make in order to most effectively scale their business . In an earlystage company
your key hires are so important. Its going to depend what type of company you have. The types of company ive been involved in has been focusing initial on operations and marketing. If you think of supply and demand, those are so important in businesses that have some sort of product that youre selling, a marketplace, a service, i would say find a rock star markets and a rock star ops person. Hi. Im katy. And im gwen. Were the cofounders of minus the moo. I love ice cream but im part of the population that suffers from lactose intolerance. As a consumer i had to sacrifice
taste and texture. No lactosefree ice cream offered the same quality, taste and quality. We created minus the moo, the first premium real lactose free ice cream on the market. We use all the same ingredients as a lactose ice cream. Last year 20 billion was spent by lock toesfree people trying to help. Weve partnered with the Largest National food distributors in the world. Were raising 500,000 to introduce our brand into the mid Atlantic Region and to launch online shipping on minusthemoo. Com. You have fans over here. Im going to have to take those away from you. No. You put them back here now. Two numbers from you. One, two what did you think of the product . What did you think of the pitch . Which one didnt they eat . The chocolate. What i love is i had to suffer between one or the other. There was no option that you werent going to eat ice kreecr. Right. The rest of my life not eating ice cream . Lets go. Im a huge Ice Cream Eater so you had me at hello. That was an easy one and i was fascinated if there was a difference in flavor. I love the idea of the product. You defined it by your personal expectations. Its something you believe in. You maybe feel emotionally connected to it. A short time to make that point. You also talked about the need for the money and what its going zblsh give us the number. I love the idea for the product, and i love the way you presented it. Thank you so much. Thats good from him, too. I am lactose intolerant and ive always suffered. Its still ice cream, and then i deal with it later. I like the fact that you know your numbers. I always love when people come and have done their homework. You know the product and the market. Im going to give you a nine. A little seven. I want to see you work harder on presentation in terms of the things you say. And how you say them, but i love that you did your homework and thats easily resolved. This is amazing. It tastes so good. Im going to take it back. Congratulations to both of you. Best of luck. I also love the packaging. Thank you for your great advice. All of you out there, if youd like to pitch your company just like you just saw, even if you dont have ice cream to give us,
you can still come on the show. Send us a video of you doing your oneminute Elevator Pitch. Send it to yourbusiness msnbc. Com. Include a short summary of what your company does, how much money youre trying to raise and what you intend to do with the money. We look forward to seeing some of you on the show. Weve now got the top two tips you need to know to help you grow your business. Our guests are with us once again. Thank you for giving us your morning. Your tip is about being afraid. Yeah. Its a biggie. We could talk about a lot of transactional tips. Keep your budgets in gear. Make sure you talk to your customers. But ive had the honor of working with over 1,000 companies over the last 30 years and theres a behavior that gets in the way of quality decision making. Thats not anything to do with
the things that you think about are normal active items. Theyre about personal issues. Fear. Many of the startups i meet are fearful of things but they dont identify the fears. And in many cases they make decisions without dealing with those fears. I feel like if youre afraid, you start making shortterm decisions. Sure. Absolutely. How do you deal with it . You talk about it with your partner or team . I have a methodology of identifying the things that are going to kill your business, the things you dont want to talk about. Mostly ego gets in the way because you wont admit them and you hope theyll go away but they wont. And were all very good at convincing ourselves it will go away. Youre running and growing a business. Youve got some ego involved. Deal with the fears first. All right. Youre up. For me, the biggest thing that people do when they say okay, we only have this much money to make it work and then
were out of money, where can we cut . The one place people cut is on marketing. That turns out to be their biggest problem. If what you have to do is sell and you have a product you need in stores and you cut the one way to talk to your audience, theres a problem. Youre cutting off your nose to spite your face. Dont cut your Marketing Budget but look at different ways you can reach your audience. Are you spending a lot of money for sort of a Shotgun Approach when you should be picking people audiotape one by one . Perhaps use can change it. I think a lot of people waste money on marketing because they feel like they need to, and they may not be getting sales but they feel like theyre building their brand. Figure out how to spend the money better. Thank you both of you. This weeks your Business Selfie comes from linda oboyle. Shes a former Graphic Designer and opened her Lifestyle Boutique in 2016. Congratulations on. We love seeing your companies from all around the country. Pick up your smart phone, take a selfie of you and your business and share it with our audience. No professional shots, please. Send it to yourbusiness msnbc. Include your name, the name of your business, where you are and use the hash tag your Business Selfie. Heres one thing i took from todays show. When i was talking to shawn, his consulting bt about growth hacking, he talked about having a metric that everybody looks at that really you look at every day to see are you growing the way youre supposed to and making sure everyone in your Company Knows that metric. I cant stress how important this is. It gets everyone on the same page from engineering to marketing to finance. Everyone, if you know what kind of thing youre going to look at to say youve been successful. We try to do this in my company. Its not always easy, but you have to identify what it is. If you have any questions or comments about todays show, email us at yourbusiness msnbc. Com. We posted all the segments from today plus more for you. Connect for us on digital and social media platforms. We look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, we make your business our business. Will your business be ready when growth presents itself . American express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order
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