Thread by @Harris_Bryan

Today is the seven year anniversary of starting Growth Tools!

Summary:

2013: Try everything
2014: How do I sell product?
2015: 1st product (course).
2016: 2nd product (Saas).
2017: What do we want to be?
2018: Now I know! Focus.
2019: Hire leaders. Gas pedal!
2020: TBD

The first sale I ever made:

Was for creating an animated video. That I outsourced to a guy on Upwork. Shortly after I started preselling a course on how to make these videos.

(That’s where the name Videofruit came from)

I took the @AppSumo Monthly1k course. Used it to find the video idea.

Sold the video to a friend running a local political campaign. That turned into a few grand in work and a cool story.

Details: videofruit.com/blog/newsjacki…

Later that summer I ramped up sales of the video service. Sold my first major contract to @Kissmetrics.

$3k per month for 4 videos. I turned their blog posts into YouTube videos.

The first two videos I made for them:

1:
2:

This is how I cold contacted @neilpatel in then summer of 2013 and made that sell:

videofruit.com/blog/3kpermont…

Getting that contract was the first big inflection point. Had no idea how to do what they wanted. Couldn’t do it and the day job.

So I quit in September 2013.

My last day:

Then I bought a cheap webcam, watched a few Wistia tutorials and started trying to make YouTube videos for @Kissmetrics.

The original setup:

Later that year it became obvious that I didn’t want to be a video agency. So I started trying to figure out how to sell digital products.

The course I pre-sold that summer came out. But no idea how to sell it.

How to get random people on the internet to buy?

I became obsessed with answering that question. I studied everyone.

Goal = Get people I had never met to buy my course.

I would spend the next 2 years finding the answer.

Here is a link to the original @gumroad checkout: gumroad.com/l/meh-value:

Started studying every succesfull online marketer I could find.

1. See what they do
2. Write about it
3. Try to replicate it
4. Blog on the results.

Here are a few of the first ones I did:

1. @garyvee: videofruit.com/blog/gary-case…
2. @PatFlynn: videofruit.com/blog/pat-flynn…

After 6 months of that, my takeaway was this:

- Everyone disagrees on best path
- Everyone has an opinion
- Different stuff works for everyone

The one constant was that EVERYONE had an email list. And everyone said to focus on your list.

So I did.

My goal of 2014 was to grow my email list.

Target = 10,000 subscribers by end of 2014.

(Earlier in 2013 @noahkagan featured me to the Appsumo list as a case study for the course I had bought earlier that year. That brought in my first 200 subscribers.)

As I was researching list building methods, there was one article that I kept coming back to over and over.

quora.com/User-Acquisiti…

Specifically this part:

"Partner with similar companies and create benefit for them to email their free users"

I had no cash to spend on ads and didn't know anything about SEO, but I felt like I could do this.

After all, my first 200 subscribers came from an accidental partnership (being promoted as a case study).

So, I set out to do more partnerships.

That year I partnered via guest posts, podcast interviews, webinars and case studies with:

@HubSpot
@Leadpages
@Kissmetrics
@nevmed
@noahkagan
@garyvee
And others.

Here are a few links:


okdork.com/get-first-100-…

By fall of 2014 the list had grown to 6,000 subscribers from these partnerships. And it became clear that selling a course on video production wasn't the my future.

That course topped off at $15,265 in sales.

And I retired it.

Then I went to my list and asked them what they wanted me to make for them.

1. I proposed an idea
2. Some pre-bought it
3. Used their feedback to refine it
4. Launched it

Result: The Vault.

Posts about it:

1. videofruit.com/presell-valida…
2. videofruit.com/blog/intro-vau…

That was my first "launch". I had no idea what I was doing.

But it was the first time I had sold a product to an audience of people who followed me, knew me and liked me. And it changed everything.

That launch did $25,000 in sales in 5 days.

I rolled into 2015 clear on 2 things:

Thing #1. Selling to an established audience was amazing

This tweet by @david_perell sums it up well:

https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1231358138596708352?s=20

Thing #2: I needed a flag ship product.

So, I used the same validation playbook to go to my audience and ask them what they wanted.

Resounding answer? "Show us how to build an email list like you did."

That's when my first flag ship product was born: An online course to help people grow their email list, Get 10,000 Subscribers.

Over the next 3 years I ran 7 open enrollments (aka: launches) for that product.

But the first was the most surprising moment of my adult life.

Over a 10 day open cart period it brought in just over $200,000 in sales. It was mind bending, totally unexpected and the one of the most exhilarating and simultaneously hard 10 days of my life to date.

Here is a recap I wrote shortly after:

videofruit.com/online-course-…

Over the next 6 years we would go on to launch 12 diferent products in an effort to figure out what we were going to be when we grew up.

The 2 most popular were...

1. Slingshot: Create product launch plans in minutes.

2. SmartBribe: Drive new traffic to your site

A couple milestones a long the way

1. 2016: Hiring business coach (Casey Graham). Helped me get clear on if I wanted to grow a lifestyle business or a self sustaining asset.

2. 2017: Hiring our first full time employee, @tim_o_harris. Relative. Huge inflection point.

3. 2017: Hiring our first A+ fit employee @codegoalie. Was next level. Whole team needed to be that.

4. 2018: The long term vision of the business came into clear focus for the first time. We're a coaching company. Do that. Build team for that. Build an asset. Can run wo me.

5. 2018: Sales troubles supporting the team. Layoff 2 people. Including Tim. That was hard.

6. 2017 & 2018: Learning to CEO: Vision, people, finances. New systems. That paused revenue growth for 2 years. But set foundation that was needed.

7. 2019: Finally tired of the Videofruit name and rebranded around Growth Tools

8. 2019: Doubled down on lead gen strategy of free tools. Suite of 10 tools. Bring in 10,000+ leads per month.

Current Day: We are a 1 product company again.

Coaching company. Create custom digital marketing plans for online businesses. And then coach then through execution. Typically 2x revenue in under 12 months.

Specialize in training businesses (courses, memberships, coaching)

Our mission is $100m of client revenue growth. We are getting good at tracking that. Want to become world class at:

1. Radically transparent at client results
2. Best digital marketing coaching company on the planet

All cannons pointed in that direction.

Here is a revenue chart of since 2013:

And that's the story of Growth Tools.

/thread

Anything you're curious about or questions you want to ask?