What You'll Learn Today

In 5 minutes, you'll be learning about the following:

1. How Robinhood Grew their Waitlist to 1 Million People Before Its Product Even Launched
2. Wine List's Counterintuitive Pricing
3. ​The First 90 Days of Being a CMO [PODCAST]
4. Your Quick Guide to The Best Ad Creatives
5. Kathy: the AI Competitor Analyst [Tool]

What did everyone enjoy last week?

The most clicked link was ... ​You Can Do Hard Things - A letter to my 2 daughters (and Founders) [PODCAST]​

Cheers,

Jim Huffman, GrowthHit CEO
​(Want a friend? Let's connect on Twitter or LinkedIn)

WHAT IS YOUR NEXT BIG IDEA? ​
​3 Startups to Inspire Your Own

1/ Upmetrics: AI-Powered Business Planning​

The Takeaway: Takes the tedious tasks of creating business plans, financial forecasts, and pitch decks off an entrepreneur's plate

2/ Kite: On the Glow Concealer​

The Takeaway: This brand prioritizes one product, using UGC and PR instead of ads. Lesson = Focus on perfecting your main product before expanding.

3/ Kathy: the AI Competitor Analyst​

The Takeaway: Stay ahead without being a full-time detective with this tool that tracks competitors' new product launches, hires, funding, and more.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SIMPLE BUSINESS WORKSHOP

​​How to 5X Your Revenue and Work <20 Hours a Week​

As entrepreneurs, we start our businesses to have more freedom but can quickly find ourselves working around the clock.

If you're tired of "doing it all" and want to simplify your business so you can work less than 20 hours per week while surpassing your revenue goals, click here to register for the Simple Business Workshop.

In this free, interactive workshop you'll get the exact system that Steph Blake, founder & CEO of the Simple Business SchoolTM used to:

• Go from working 80+ hours/week to <20 hours per week with 1 team member
• Make 6+ figures in one year without ads
• Retire her husband from his 9-5 job at 30 years old
• Run a simple & successful business as a "multi-passionate" entrepreneur with ADHD

HOW TO GROW YOUR STARTUP ​
​2 Growth Tips to Scale Your Biz

Here are the growth tactics, hacks, and stunts to help you grow your startup:

1/ How Robinhood grew their waitlist to almost 1 million people before their product even launched​

Robinhood is a commission-free stock trading app that launched in 2013.

Despite facing nearly 75 investor rejections, they secured $3 million in seed funding from Index, Google Ventures, and Andreessen.

The Execution

The website promoted "Commission-free trading, stop paying up to $10 per trade," with a simple email sign-up for a waitlist.

It featured a gamified system showing users their position in line and a referral program to move up the list.

This straightforward process led to unexpected high traffic, largely due to coverage on Hacker News.

The Results

Within a day, Robinhood had 10,000 sign-ups, growing to over 50,000 in a week and nearly 1 million by launch.

By Q4 2023, it had 10.9 million users.

They raised $5.6 billion in total funding, went public in July 2021 at a $32 billion valuation, and reported $19 billion in revenue in 2023.

The Takeaways

1/ Gamification works: The referral program incentivized sharing and engagement.

2/ Nail your value prop: Clear messaging on commission-free trading attracted users.

3/ Capture demand early: Building an email list ensured direct customer engagement.

​

2/ Wine List's Counterintuitive Pricing​

99% of pricing tiers ascend left to right: Cheap. Middle. Expensive.

Wine List is the 1%. A mistake? Nope.

Founder, Josh Lachkovic, had a theory:

We’re anchored to the first number we see. And we scan left to right. So a more expensive left price makes your right price appear cheaper.

In layman's terms, £99 feels cheaper when you see £189 first.

He ran A/B tests and (to my surprise) found a statistically significant increase in overall conversions

​

TOOL OF THE WEEK: ​
​Your Quick Guide to The Best Ad Creatives​

This is a resource to brands and marketers looking to quickly locate creative best practices to inspire their online marketing efforts

PODCAST: IF I WAS STARTING TODAY

​The First 90 Days of Being a CMO​

Jim shares a fantastic LinkedIn Live conversation with Growth Hit's head of growth, Jordan Summers. They dive into a very tactical discussion about How to succeed (not get fired) as a newly hired Head of growth for a business, brand, or startup.
​
​TOPICS DISCUSSED IN TODAY’S EPISODE​
​

• The first 90 days
• Starting Strong
• Quick wins vs long term goals
• Mistakes to avoid
• Building trust
• Defining KPI’s
• Marketing and sales
• Business health vs growth KPI
• Building a team
• Deploying frameworks
• Qualitative vs quantitative research
• Non-linear leaps

Would you like to be featured on my podcast? Email me at newsletter@growthhit.com​

BUILD IN PUBLIC​
​NEAT BUILD IN PUBLIC - RECAP!

We acquired Neat, the sweat-proof apparel brand, in September 2023, and it's been a whirlwind ever since!

​Here's a speedy scoop ​

September 2023

• ​Big News: We snagged Neat Apparel ​

October 2023

• ​Growth Magic: Unveiling My Hack for Neat's growth ​
• ​Influencer Oops: My not-so-shiny moment ​
• ​Growth Secret: Neat's No-Brainer Offer ​

November 2023

• ​Sale Scoop: Neat's Black Friday & Cyber Monday wins ​
• ​Sneaky Peeks: Neat's fresh look & feel, from products to cart​
• ​Why Neat?: All about the IP intrigue ​

December 2023

• ​Do Ugly Ads Work? You tell us ​
• ​90 Days Since Acquiring NEAT: Here’s What We’ve Learned​
• ​How Do You Make Good UGC Ads? (Examples from Neat) ​

January 2024

• ​Flew 2,856 miles for the ultimate photo shoot, ended up spilling coffee on our model.​
• ​Will This Sweat-Proof Shirt Ad Convert? (Let's see )​

February 2024

• ​The Ad That Could Change Everything for Neat’s Clothing ​
• ​Oops, We Ran Out! The NEAT (Accidental) Marketing Magic of Low Inventory ​

March 2024

• ​The 5 Pillars of Growth: A Sneak Peek at Neat™’s Growth Plan ​
• ​Paid Search: Can We Optimize Neat’s Google Ads for Success? ​

April 2024

• ​We Did It! The All-New Neat’s Website is Here (and It’s Awesome!) ​

May 2024

• ​Neat hits 4 figures in one day!​
• ​Neat is running out of stock (again). Preorder or Waitlist?​

June 2024:

• ​The $153 Mistake vs. the $24 Miracle: What We Learned About Paid Ads​
• ​Crushing it : 3.64 ROAS for Neat (Last 7 days)​
• ​Zero to Sold Out: How We Aced Our Core Shirt Launch!​
• ​How we took Neat’s conversion rate from 0.6% to 3.4%​

July 2024:

• ​Neat Reveals: The Email Welcome Flow for 50% Repeat Purchases​
• ​What color shirt do you want​
• ​Head-to-Head: A Preview of Neat’s Social Media Ads​
• ​Investing in the Right Move: A Recipe for 10X Growth​

August 2024:

• ​Neat Sweatproof Shirts: Gone But Not Forgotten​
• ​Pre-Order Test: From $100 to $1000 – Scaling for Success​

What's new this week

Jim Huffman @JimWHuffman Well, we have a NEW top performing ad for our brand, Neat. 🤔 Why do you think this ad works? It's out performing my water balloon video and our handsome model video? #entrepreneurship #marketing #digitalmarketing #growthmarketing #marketing #startup 7:56 PM • Aug 7, 2024 0 Retweets 0 Likes

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​
(Need help growing with paid ads? Hit us up at @growthhit )

Want more updates on how we're growing Neat?

A BONUS FOR YOU ​
​Something Fun . . .

Top Growth Tools & Resources​
​Tools and Resources

Here are some tools we find helpful:

• Best Testing Tool - Convert​
• Best Ad Creative Tool - Ad Creative AI​
• Best Email Marketing Tool - Ripple AI​
• Best Growth System - GrowthMarketingOS​
• Best Copywriting Tool - Smartwriter.ai​
• Best Cold Email Outreach Tool - Smartlead​
• Best CRM Tool - PipeDrive​
• Best Communication Tool - Slack​
• Best Project Management Tool - Asana​

LOOKING FOR MORE?​
​How Can I Help?

• My Agency - GrowthHit​
• One Off Task: Growth Task​
• My Operating System: GrowthMarketingOS​
• Podcast - If I Was Starting Today​
• My Book: The Growth Marketer's Playbook​