Growth Hacking is a Mindset
The most important thing to understand is that growth hacking is a mindset. Without this mindset, all the concepts lose their power. Many amateurs on this topic will tell you that it’s all about tools and smart hacks. But I believe that understanding the journey on how to get to these hacks is a skill that is way more powerful! You can only do this with this new mindset.
Execute at a very high tempo, even when it’s not perfect yet
Many people talk about the growth hacking mindset, but they aren’t living it. One of the mindsets is to execute at a very high tempo, even when it’s not perfect yet. Take this post for example. It’s far from done, but because it’s already live I can improve it every day. It’s already being indexed in a search engine.
Bust most importantly, it gives an opportunity to work on my business, even when I’ve got a couple of minutes. Because growth doesn’t happen at once, it’s a result of small steps of improvement. I’ve got two small children, and I don’t have time to sit and write for hours. But when a post is live, I can definitely write a couple of paragraphs every day. When you do this consistently, you will see that over time all the actions have compounded and will pay themself back massively.
A willingness to be uncomfortable
You will get the same results when you keep doing what you’re always doing. Something has to change if you want to grow. Therefore you are heading in an uncomfortable direction. Because if it were comfortable, you would already do it. This is the point where most people in growth get stuck. They don’t know how to handle uncomfortable growth situations.
These uncomfortable situations are the places where you can find the hidden goldmines of growth. In my book, I constantly talk about the hidden goldmine that’s in front of you. But how do you get to that gold? Would you search for that gold in places where many have been before, or are you more likely to find that gold in territories where nobody went before?
A big mistake that many growth hackers make is that don’t understand the change management component of their work. People want to change, but don’t want to be changed. But when the hidden goldmine can be found in uncomfortable places, it means you have to guide people through that change.
There’s no place for ego
When I was speaking in Germany in 2016 there was one time, when I was able to make a German audience burst out into laughter. I told them to share the book Ego is the Enemy with their boss. Why? Because I’ve seen in many circumstances that ego is a massive blocker of growth. It can be very expensive when your ego get’s in the way.
