Growth // Codex Newsletter

A Weekly Digest Dedicated To Helping You

Produce // Promote // Profit

Better // Smarter

Welcome back Rogue,

Where do you stand on expertise?

At a dinner many decades ago, a physicist named Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to the toast, “To physics and metaphysics.”

Reason being, “metaphysics” meant psychology, philosophy, basically, truths you could recognize just by thinking about them. Wood, with a laid-back sympathetic smile, says “The physicist has an idea. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it seems to make. He consults scientific literature. The more he reads, the more promising the idea becomes. Thus prepared, he goes to the laboratory and devises an experiment to test it. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are checked. The accuracy of measurement is refined, the error bars reduced.

He lets the chips fall where they may. He is devoted only to what the experiment teaches. At the end of all this work, through careful experimentation, the idea is found to be worthless. So the physicist discards it, frees his mind from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else.”

Raising his glass, he finishes his thought “The difference between physics and metaphysics, is not that the practitioners of one are smarter than the practitioner of the other. The difference is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory”

We can’t have it both ways – we’re either resilient and relentless or entitled and armchair philosophers

The time for resolutions, shortcuts, and magical quick fixes sold to you by a “guru” in a Lambo is over (except maybe on Instagram)

DISASTER, yes

Messy, SCARY and TONS OF CHANGES, also yes

Now imagine they spent months and months, maybe a year arguing over how it would be done

Here’s a quick tweak you can make today. Write everything down, pick one thing, focus on doing that, and only that for 3 months.

If you like it, try it for a year. If you don’t, pick something else for 3 months.

You with me?

Ok, let’s channel this into improving how // what we

Produce

He who builds on the people, builds on the mud – Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

 

A common pain point you and our fellow Creative Misfits shared was “growing brand” which led a lot of folks to create content – for those that fell in love with the process but forgot the steps to ensure they created for the right people this created a whole new set of problems

People wanting it all for $free.99

There’s a beauty to serving the right people, it’s what inspired us to start the all-new Growth // Society (first 50 people can join for free, just click here $20 a month after that)

But, serve the wrong people, try and solve the wrong problems, and you end up not communicating the value you intended to 

If you don’t click the image I’ll summarize it for ya, someone who has spent years learning, working, and now sharing his expertise had people crying because he was charging $9.99 for his hands-on course… yep you read that right

Bitching and moaning about investing $9.99 in themselves from someone who does what they want to

If you love coaching, teaching, here are 3 MAJOR mistakes I’ve begun correcting:

• I was giving away coaching for free when instead, I could’ve packaged up my expertise instead of giving out hours at a time. This is probably the most common mistake I made without even realizing it.
• I’d get excited with potential & start working for free (CEO’s were more than happy to let me keep making that mistake).
• Spent way too much time helping the wrong people – imagine spending 1 week trying to convince someone with their head in the sand that the solution was within reach
• Last but not least, I wasn’t teaching them to value my time/ support

While I in no way shape or form consider myself a guru I do consider myself driven to help those who have that magic and enthusiasm to experiment in them. I had to learn to solve problems that matter to them to take on the problems that mattered to me

Learn from my mistakes and try this instead:

• Document your most recent wins // losses
• Try writing out your experiences
• Record yourself reading it using your voice recorder app on your phone
• If you’re not camera-shy, record yourself on your phone breaking down one experience in under 2 minutes

You’ll discover which medium is the most natural for you, and material if you elected to outsource more content creation, AND, you’ll also have a more insightful piece of content, most people are regurgitating the same info over and over, just like their competitors

People don’t want more, they want different

P.S. If you’d like to check out, or just catch up on previous issues, they’re available here

P.P.S *If you love reading, or audiobooks, we’re ecstatic as hell over Libby – it’s your local library, on your phone, check out Libby on the app store here *

Alright bitchachos, let’s move on to improving how we

Promote

Pro Tip:

When it comes to how folks advertise, market, and brand – there seems to be this inescapable tendency for many a brand to talk at us. You know what I’m talking about – the billboards we ignore, the mailers left at our doorsteps, the Facebook // IG ads that cause us to roll our eyes – and it’s not just costing them, it’s costing us because the more expensive it is for them to do business, the more they raise prices to make up the difference

Via hunchads “According to research – the starting CPM cost in 2019 was around $5.12. … With more and more Facebook advertisers each day, the CPMs are definitely rising. But that also leads to more and more people giving up on their Facebook campaigns or reporting bad results. Not everyone is ready for Facebooks’ price increase.”

And this isn’t the only way their bad judgment affects us negatively, there are others who instead of improving how they promote, work harder to cut corners like this douchebag extraordinaire 

Promoting // Advertising // Marketing // Branding smarter comes down to simplifying it all – and listening more than you speak

Part of my work requires that I look at how people spend, why they spend, what they spend it on, and where they spend. Digital worlds have made that exceptionally fun (for me) because instead of running a test where I watch fast-forwarded foot traffic studies, I look at behavior in real-time, on the web

As we speak, Growth // Haxx is spearheading a Business recovery program for LA County, and while we’re based out of Miami, through the art of simplification and tech, we’re able to bring about massive results because we focus on cutting out bad habits to better serve our people

When you make it a habit to listen to your people, you not only avoid wasting time and money, you also gain a whole new insight that makes your work feel like play – as one of our first Angel investments, Sassy Bird does with their customers

 

One of the things Sassy did was

Go to reviews left on other restaurants and started deciding which complaints they would tackle in their location

Then they began highlighting people’s favorites menu items via picture content

Then they combined the hospitality with their premium (and fcukin delicious) favorites as a way to get peoples mouth watering

THEN, they show their people love with contests, giveaways, and shoutouts – the results have been inspiring and up until this month, we haven’t done any major advertising

Now, for this weeks segment on improving how we

Profit

Pro Tip:

“A brave man acknowledges the strength of others”

⁃ Veronica Roth // Divergent

As mentioned above, we’re in the Angel Investing game (now). The Angel investing space. the Venture Capital (VC) firms, Shark Tank on tv, and several other mediums out there help their people exceptionally well, but not all. As we speak, 98% of VC funding goes to the same people, up until recently, we, along with others in our spaces have largely tried different ways to navigate the space with little to no help from those already in positions of power

Side note: One VC firm went from ignoring us to offering me a limited partner (LP) opportunity in a matter of weeks once they realized what was going on lol

Make no mistake, there will be more massive shifts in where capital (money) goes in the next 5 years – and it’s those who are quicker to adapt that will not only make it – but flourish

Having been on both sides of the investor // founder dynamic, here’s what you can do to maximize your profits and avoid doing business with an asshole

Make sure you have your monthly revenue documented

Lookup similar companies in your area // business model

Lookup similar companies to you that are for sale on sites such as Microacquire 

Here’s a behind the scenes listen to a brainstorming session with Arnab Barua, founder of DUX: An Interactive Instructions platform

Alright you creative misfit, that’s enough for this weeks issue

Now go on, there’s much work to do, much progress to be made my friend

Here’s to escaping avg 🤟