Implementing B2B GTM playbooks for SMEs that work today based on a billion monthly views we manage in-house.
CEO
@wpdevrix
&
@growthshuttle
Angel investor.
This "Thread of Threads" aggregates my frameworks, lessons, and analyses across 6 core categories for B2B executives:
1. Go-to-market strategies
2. Scalable thought leadership
3. Diversification
4. Investing
5. Learning lessons
6. Data insights
I'll add more. Let's start:
What are the core pillars of Product-Market Fit?
1. UX
2. Feature Set
3. Value Proposition
4. Underserved Needs
5. Target Customer
Here's the tactical guide to attracting better prospects:
Why is
@elonmusk
able to run several companies simultaneously? ๐ค
Managing multiple companies (or even jobs) is not just about being smart or working hard.
Right now, I own 5 companies, invest in 11, advise several, and heavily rely on core rules. ๐งต
A couple hours since my latest newsletter blast I had
@helloparshwa
touching base on WhatsApp ๐ฅ๐ฅ
Growth Blueprint grew to 6,300+ founders, leaders, angels, experts. I'm aiming at 10,000 before the end of the summer.
Jump in:
Traditional education failed us all.
It never taught us how to build, grow and manage a successful business.
Or even basic money management principles.
I want to change that for 2,000+ new startup founders joining the ranks this month.
Feeling grateful for all the stellar creators out there making enough to just sit on a beach and chill (instead of dropping bits of know-how on Twitter, LinkedIn, email newsletters. ๐
This thread is dedicated to 10 of my favorite creators today. ๐งต
Working with 400+ consulting clients, recurring problems and pain ups are raised with almost all of them.
These are 18 core topics we evaluate and refine with businesses generating $750K to $50M in annual revenue.
(I charge $6K - $20K for 4-12 weeks of advisory.) ๐งต
Partnerships yield rocket-high ROI with longer retention and better margins.
But don't confuse the concept of "networking" with building partnerships.
And set the right KPIs in. Here's how.
B2C marketers struggling in B2B? ๐คฏ
Transitioning from direct PPC conversions to 9-month-long sales cycles is a different job altogether.
Discover the key differences moving upstream and why making the switch can be a minefield.
Stuck with inefficient sales channels in the new year?
Here's a detailed (4,500 words) guide walking through 30 different lead generation strategies for service-based B2Bs:
The eCommerce boom, startup growth, and angel investing ecosystem of Europe - in today's interview for
@TheRecursiveEU
One of my favorite media outlets on startups and innovation across the Balkans and Europe!
The full story and my specific angle:
Writing a business plan for your new startup or launching a new product line?
Here's a free copy of my 71-page ebook uncovering every section of a successful business, actionable questions to guide you, and bonus access to weekly management tactics.
We tried to avoid using WordPress... and we failed. ๐ณ
I spent 10 weeks exploring WordPress alternatives for both startups and growing projects.
All of my efforts were in vain. Here's why.
1. Memberships
I ran two surveys on community and memberships and gauged differentโฆ
7,390 subscribers of the Growth Blueprint receive weekly macro news and stock updates, angel investing opportunities, site acquisition deals, and tactical management tips.
Are you maximizing 2023 so far?
Discussing the global macro challenges and business direction this year for
@Forbes
Five Critical Trends Impacting Enterprises In 2024 - Forbes -
@ForbesTechCncl
Plenty of room to innovate in the investing space.
Examples:
1. Dividend-based investing deals ๐ฐ
A cross-section between convertible notes and royalty investing. Instead of chasing fast growth and exits, aim for sustainability, profitability, and stability.
I had a fewโฆ
Are you ready to face the uncomfortable truths shaping your business's future?
In this
@Forbes
article, we explore fourteen questions every executive must ask themselves to navigate the ever-changing business landscape.
Get ahead of the curve. โคต๏ธ
@YEC
The official 2023 Annual WordPress Survey is out:
Last year gathered merely 3,400 submissions.
For 43% of the web, passiveness means that a handful of people set the direction for the leading CMS.
Spend 5-10 minutes to vote this week.
Just published a 4,000+ word guide on everything you need to know about businesses:
What are they, different categories, core business problems, setting up an LLC, hiring, automation, and more.
Dive in:
I spoke at 4 different podcasts this week, and brand building vs. silent building was the key topic at hand.
Many dropshippers are afraid to brag about their stores - including public store pages or posting reviews online.
This causes resistance at scale. Why? ๐งต
Decided to launch my startup and leadership newsletter Business at Scale this week and we're already 1,200+ subscribers in.
Building a community of founders obsessed about growing and helping one another.
Want in?
A question to my US friends owning firearms:
Where do you hang out with other guys talking shop, reading relevant news, looking into munitions, browsing events?
9 out of 10 business sales are off-market: sold without a public listing.
Why?
Tons of great businesses are not for sale unless they get an estimate and a network of serious buyers.
Here's a free business valuation tool for you:
I had a lot of fun printing family photos for the kids with the pocket Printpeer printer!
It's how I support
@tryrushapp
stores by being an actual customer of products we order track for.
This is a great label-maker as well. I'll be printing a couple of stickers for myโฆ
Leading a workshop on angel investing for this edition of Tech Investors Academy organized by
@seed_blink
As the Eastern European investing ecosystem is still in its infancy, I'll share what I've gone through to date and opportunities available on the platform.
20 years of WordPress - happy birthday to the largest platform on the Internet!
Flashback to WordCamp Europe 2014 and
@photomatt
speaking on-site in Sofia.
Special thanks to
@mikelittlezed1
for co-founding that awesome CMS with Matt ๐ฅณ๐
Super stoked to be featured in
@Forbes
Bulgaria (print & digital) this month with
@wpdevrix
being on the frontline.
Great job team and thanks to our amazing clients for believing in us. ๐
Our
@wpdevrix
clients generated over 10 BILLION page views last year.
Here are the key lessons learned across our ecosystem of publishers, eCommerce stores, B2B sites, and franchise networks.
Planning to consolidate a few micro-hubs/search pages on my site, including:
1. Companies I follow/invest in raising a pre-seed/seed now
2. Funds/angels I work with
3. Portfolio companies/partners currently hiring (careers)
Helpful or not? Newsletter-worthy?
126 Steps to Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur: The Entrepreneurship Fad and my experience over the years.
Would love to get some feedback from the early readers since it was just published today!
via
@amazon
Amancio Ortega, the founder of Zara, pioneered fast fashion and amassed $113.4 billion in net worth.
All while busting most myths on success principles and how to make your own luck.
His life story is an inspiration - here's how being different can't stop great ideas. ๐งต
The number one site acquisition category with the highest search volume in 2023 was Blogs.
Content sites ranked on top in Flippa's list of most desired acquisitions.
@photomatt
talk about blogging being back!
As an async advocate, I'm thrilled with the latest
@fellowapp
release ๐ฅ
@aydin
sold me on Fellow 2 years ago and I've since promoted the tool to dozens of startups and SMEs, including a feature in an
@Entrepreneur
async article of mine.
What's Fellow? ๐งต
B2B is recovering in Q2:
We see this across our portfolio and market data proves it.
Tracking down market data and trends in an uncertain market is integral to informing internal decisions and leadership actions.
โ๏ธ My digital agency
@wpdevrix
launches outbound campaigns,โฆ
Been going back to my SEO roots starting November and full dive in this month.
Whatever anyone says, social algorithms get played ALL THE TIME.
SERP fluctuations happen all the time, but SERP top 10 needs to be high quality, always.
So quality > playing algos.
Flippa just announced a new category in their portfolio of digital assets for sale - newsletters!
Every marketer knows that email ROI is hardly beatable - $40 per every dollar spent. Retention, continuous nurturing, upsells, all contribute to the value of building a list orโฆ
Just reached 1,000,000 answer views on
@Quora
๐โ๏ธ
I got serious about Quora in Dec 2016 and wrote over 700 answers since, reaching the 1M milestone today. Here's the detailed overview of my journey and lessons learned:
So
@RollWorks
, together with
@forrester
, reported that 58% of B2B marketers implementing ABM closed larger deals at higher net amounts.
Overlap that with a SiriusDecisions research noticing greater than 100% increase in engagement by C-level leaders.
Our demand generationโฆ
It's been an eventful week - and today, we're celebrating 13 years of growing DevriX ๐
The army of DevriX troops keeps crushing the biggest challenges for:
๐ข Some of the largest publishers on the planet on 4 continents;
๐ข Multinational 8-figure WooCommerce stores operatingโฆ
Meta is asking a 5X - 8X multiplier on revenue if current users switch to the new paid subscriptions.
Why?
Ad-free subscription plans are launched in Europe due to EU regulations around privacy:
Costs are estimated to be around $10/month, or $120/year.โฆ
Working on Businesses 101 this week:
What is a business?
Business financial principles
Bootstrap vs. VC-funded
Types of businesses
Top business problems
How to start a business
Scaling to $100K, $1M, $10M+
Hiring/outsourcing
Automation & delegation
Do you consume more short-form content on social or long-form (blog posts, articles, ebooks)?
Here's how to leverage the skyscraper technique for organic growth (and repurpose for different channels after):
Does learning stop after graduation?
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Jack Ma, Elon Musk, and thousands of other world leaders read at least 1 hour a business day.
This is called the "5-hour rule".
As a learnaholic myself, I'm deeply saddened byโฆ
People who have spent the past 20-30 years accepting certain cultural habits for normal may find it hard to adapt to a different style of work or communication.
Bad news for "no code" builders - thousands may shut down their businesses before the end of 2024. ๐ฌ
Why?
A combination of vendor lock-in (
@bubble
) + no high-level understanding of business profitability and viability. ๐งต
#startups
#nocode
#vendorlockin
Don't underestimate the power of a single purchase.
I've spent over $160,000 on ebooks, courses, cheatsheets, tools, services, and everything in-between.
And it's rarely about the content. ๐
The value is in the connection.
Most creators and influencers are NOT successfulโฆ
I spent a whole month eating once a day around 5pm. Aside from losing 9kg (~20 pounds), I feel full most of the time and don't starve to death throughout the day.
Not sure I'll sustain that much longer, but it feels a lot better than I thought.
How to transition from a dreamer (visionaire) to a doer?
1. Build an action plan
2. Aim for weekly wins
3. Small but mandatory daily steps (call 5 prospects or email 15 people)
4. Track down KPIs
5. Obsess around the value prop
6. Iterate your offer
7. Make it better
8. SCALE
@levelsio
Spent an unusual hot week in Amsterdam until Friday and couldn't take afternoon naps as the hotel only had a fan.
But across most of Europe it's usually a UI problem not messing with the facades of old buildings I think.
@meencat
@ThugDebugger
@jehicks2
Principal developer, architect, team lead, individual contributor - various ways to escape management nowadays. After more than a decade of incapable managers, lots of companies tone down the push in this direction.
Just launched my 8-week business accelerator course!
The free email training is designed for entrepreneurs and SMB owners/managers eager to improve their business strategy and management skills, advance in sales/marketing and get better at what they do.
Ever heard of NASA? Well, they're migrating their main website to WordPress! ๐
Recently, I came across some fascinating news that I couldn't resist sharing. NASA, yes, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is moving its main website to WordPress! ๐
This is a hugeโฆ
Topics I discuss on Twitter. Which one will help you the most?
I couldn't add more than 4 options, so there it goes:
1) Running and scaling businesses
2) WordPress for SMEs
3) Freelance tips (and remote working/productivity)
4) Hiring and interviewing for junior devs
Here's a truth that most won't admit:
Your in-house marketing team can never compete with an agency.
Why?
Simple. Agencies work across different businesses, constantly innovating and picking up new strategies.
Data > Skills.
Experience trumps insularity; always.
I spoke to an agency owner over the weekend looking for a job.
This is the 7th similar conversation I have in the past 2 months.
Especially with smaller teams (3-8 people) and newer agencies (2-3 years in the market).
Agency owners usually come from a hard skills background:โฆ
To the sky and beyond!
Excited to bring WordPress one step closer to operational management and business process management for growing businesses ๐ฏ
@GrahamStephan
An old anecdote back from my adolescent days:
- How much does a pack of cigarettes cost?
- About $4.
- You smoke one daily! Had you invested that, you'd be driving a Maserati!
- Well, since you don't smoke. Where's your Maserati now?
Here's my story with
@mercury
while unpacking that great package from their core team.
What started as a denied application turned into a great collaboration thanks to great leadership example and solid customer service ๐
Running a special Kindle Countdown Deal with my entrepreneurship book available for $2.99 until the end of tomorrow - grab a digital copy for less than a cup of coffee today:
As an avid divergent of traditional norms and clichรฉs, I'm always digging the bday cakes
@h_bancheva
preps ๐
(Last year it was a savory protein cake that rocked!)
Extremely pumped having
@CalEvans
at the
@wpdevrix
office today!!!
Today's demo is on the WordPress REST API in practice, and I'm so proud that our dev team is able to tap into his endless expertise as a part of our dev training program โฅ๏ธ
Soloprenership was one of the happiest phases of my life.
But I don't regret scaling up, building a 50-person agency, launching my consultancy, bootstrapping and investing in more businesses.
Why? ๐งต
"First Access" by
@Flippa
launched today!
๐ข Access to private listings
๐ข 21-day private market negotiation
๐ข Automated NDA approvals
๐ข Verified buyers talking to sellers in the first 3 weeks
๐ข A private environment for known brands
Launch chat with Flippa CEO
@blakenow
24.64% of LinkedIn ads traffic is fake. ๐ญ
Bots and automated script traffic represent a quarter of all LinkedIn ad clicks you're paying for.
Reported by
@stackedmarketer
and aligned with Lunio research (rounding at 25%), paid ads are once again under scrutiny on efficiency andโฆ
Here's a cynical take on
@photomatt
's replies this week:
Unlike other ecosystems or communities, WordPress would look the same in the next 3-5 years even if Matt turns into a nuclear superpower and goes completely rogue forever.
What's the worst that could happen?
1.โฆ