Brain-hurt scale = 6/10. A long time ago, back in the good ol’ days of the Google internet, I learnt the power of affiliate marketing first hand. Affiliate strategies let you take advantage of an assumed message source separation. This is where the customer assumes the source of the message is not the advertiser.  Example, you pay the owner of a blog site within your niche, for the privilege of tapping into this pool of visitors in various ways. Prospects trust this more, because the message isn't coming from you the brand, but from a trusted source. So it will have a far more powerful effect on persuading people to buy. You’ll learn about this technique and much more, in this interview with Blake Hutchison, CEO of Flippa. 

You'll have to excuse the quality of the audio. I had a slim chance to grab him in between sessions of a retail conference. so I bundled him into a nearby room to have a quick chat.

Flippa.com is a self described global online marketplace where people can buy and sell digital assets as well as entire businesses. In this episode, we wanted to go deeper into the use of acquisition as a growth lever. These assets could be an entire business, but also things like a social media account, a blog or even source code. Flippa is one of the world's largest marketplaces for digital assets, where a lot of savvy marketers and business owners prefer to purchase assets, which they then leverage, instead of going to the trouble of building them from scratch. 

So we wanted to talk about the acquisition marketplace movement in general, but also explore all the different ways acquisition can be used strategically as a growth driver. With thousands of transacted businesses over the years, there’s no shortage of examples we tease out during the conversation.

Blake has been brought into the business recently, but he has a history of working with some of the top firms both in Australia and in Silicon Valley, from director of sales BDM roles at Lonely Planet in San Francisco to head of partnerships at Xero. More recently, he's moved into GM and Chief Revenue Officer roles before ending up as the CEO at Flippa. It becomes quickly obvious how competent he is about all things growth, marketing, sales, strategy as well as the tech startup process.

We talk about everything from the mistakes people make when buying businesses, the types of assets that are sold, and how people can leverage a really key competitive advantage that is often missed at larger, more bureaucratic firms which we both see as a key to modern growth in the years to come.

This episode really follows on nicely from the Peter Li episode, which covers more the  corporate M&A space. This corporate market has a very different dynamic to this market which may have smaller transaction prices but is far larger in terms of total volume.

Until these online marketplaces came along, it was an underground market full of brokers and people in the know. Flippa and Microacquire are the platforms which are modernizing and scaling this market and there are many opportunities out there, easily within reach for those who are wishing to capitalize.

"I am going to love doing this podcast. Because I don't expect to ever be hired into an investment bank or in-house M&A team ever again, I can be brutally honest." We talked further, but he had me at 'brutally honest'. That was the moment I knew we needed to interview Peter and uncover this murky world.

An overlooked way to quickly grow a business is to simply acquire customers. Customers which belong to another business. This tactic is overlooked because it's traditionally been the exclusive domain of investment bankers and management consultants who only deal with large companies. But recently, there’s been a groundswell of activity spurred by the tech industry as well as the emergence of micro-acquisition marketplaces. Acquisitions are frequently used by tech companies to buy capability, patents and for many reasons other than a short-term earnings boost.

So we talk with ex-M&A specialist, former real-estate salesman, army cadet, investment banker, and now, founder of a medical service company, Peter Li. And he exposes the M&A industry, warts and all, never shying away from a good dose of self-deprecation or telling it like it is. So you’ll learn all the dirty tricks, the conflicts of interest, and tactical plays that goes on in this secretive, right-knit, murky world.

So if you’ve wanted a crash-course in the world of M&A, or you’re looking at being acquired or thinking about acquiring another company, this is a must-listen episode.

What does Mumm Champagne and M&A have in common?

Why is the real estate and the investment banking industry so similar?

What is the old school M&A space vs the future led by tech companies?

Why are the best businesses to acquire almost never advertised for sale

Learn the basic stages in the M&A process.

Why most acquired businesses don’t create any value for the acquirer

Which acquisition marketplaces are growing quickly

Why did AGL reject Founder of Atlassian, Mike Cannon Brooke’s takeover bid?

Don’t worry, we don’t get into a technical discussion about financial or legal jargon but stay on a strategic decision-making level throughout with lots of practical examples, mostly from the Australian business scene.

So merge your consciousness with this podcast for the next 50 minutes and acquire newfound wisdom. 

“It’s easy to make bad decisions with data” he said straight off the bat. In today’s tech infected world, it can seem vogue to tout the fact that you’re data-driven. Kind of like it’s a badge of honor that provides an air of superiority over the other ill-informed business heathens. But what is data? What isn’t data? Are the people who call themselves data-driven, actually data-driven underneath? This is something we had to get to the bottom of.

I came across Willem Paling after I saw a presentation he published on how cutting brand search advertising for one of Australia’s largest insurance conglomerates made no difference to the business’ performance. This was something I had also tested personally with client campaigns, but without the same rigor or scale.

So who better to talk about segmentation and targeting than with someone who’s literally built out data infrastructure and carried out experiments himself?

Apart from that, what really sold me was his background. His PHD centered on hard-to-measure variables - check. He was a fan of epistemology - check. He’s worked with both product, services and SaaS companies - check. Large and small businesses, early and late stage. Academia and private enterprise. Multiple and disparate industry sectors - check Strategic planning - execution and measurement - check.

So what you’re about to hear is of course, a discussion about segmentation and targeting. But - to do both well, you really need to have a solid grounding in data analysis. So we talk a lot about how to use data to create value. And on the flipside, how not to use data, in a business context.

What he says is so dense, don’t be alarmed if you have to listen to what he says twice or three times - I know I did - even as I was editing the videos.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway for me from a strategy perspective was how subtle competitive advantages can be these days. He confirms to be that the businesses who are succeeding with are increasingly focused on building more certainty into their decision making via scientific methods  - all of which ultimately rely on great data and data analysis.

I’m sure you’ll enjoy doing down this rabbit hole as much as I did.

Don't fear - this isn't an episode about accounting but rather how understanding some financial fundamentals can make you a far better marketer or growth professional. This is the point where marketing professional's career otherwise plateaus. If you've ever had trouble getting initiatives or projects approved, often it's not political. It's just that the business case is weak. So I thought that if we can understand how accountants and finance think - marketing and growth professionals will be able to get more projects they know are valuable to the business, approved. And as you'll find out, both camps think very, very differently. In fact they naturally clash in many core areas from mindset to through to general approach and responsibilities. So who better to speak with than Jason Andrew. He's a CA accountant, corporate finance qualified, business owner and marketer who has personally executed a lot of the marketing for his own businesses. What is accounting? How is it different to Finance? What numbers and metrics should we all understand before pursuing our growth-related projects. What hard lessons did he learn about marketing and growth on his entrepreneurial journey? Vice versa, what hard lessons should growth and marketing people learn about the accounting and finance profession? After this episode you'll see eye to eye and at the very least understand how both disciplines can work better together. 

In between the strategy and channel episodes, we feature some interviews with active practitioners. After the Robin Daniels (ex WeWork CMO) episode and two other entrepreneur interviews, it was time for another. 

So today we’re talking with Matthew Hammon, Australian ex-pat who now lives in New York. He’s earned his stripes over the years, leaning on an early entrepreneurial journey which started at the ripe old age of 12 in Melbourne, Australia. Having founded and run his own businesses over the years, completing numerous degrees from Marketing, to a Masters in Intellectual Property law to a soon to be completed MBA in America, he’s not only street-wise but has the book smarts to match. In fact he’s just been poached to work at one of the largest tech companies in the world which is harder to get into than Harvard. There's a reason why multiple tech companies have hired him, including Labelbox, Cognizant/Evolv, Appian, Yelp, Google and even a private equity investment company

He's a practicing B2B growth marketer who's deeply embedded within the growth scene in North America and was available for a very rare two day window while between jobs. 

So if you are realizing the limitations of listening to generalist fortune-cookie advice sprouted by populist industry commentators and instead want to know the truth, listen to this episode.

We discuss everything from top-level strategic approaches, through to tactics and how to successfully navigate the practical political environments within which we all have to operate daily. This includes, channel strategies, attribution, product-led growth and more. 

So how do you market and sell B2B products successfully?

How do you ensure your strategy and tactics are ratified by the executives you report to?

How do you best measure and attribute marketing expenditure to core business objectives like sales revenue?

How do you bridge the gap between sales and marketing departments?

How do you climb the ladder of success in one of the most competitive countries in the world?

Like this…

This is our second episode on the topic of pricing strategy - the first of which was Jon Manning in Season 1 which we also recommend you to listen to first. 

We could only cover so much in the last episode so in this episode we cover some of the other areas to round-out our understanding of how to use pricing strategy as a growth-driver.

Any growth strategist worth their salt knows that pricing strategy can’t really be isolated from the larger business machine - product, packaging, sales, marketing etc. In particular, pricing and the product offering are inextricably interlinked.

So this is where we start the discussion, and as you’ll soon hear, Kimberley Haley delves a lot into behavioral economics and packaging strategy.

Throughout her career, she’s been a pioneer of executing value-based pricing as well as moving the industry past theory and into applied practice. Today she shares with you what she has learned from being on the front lines - including failures and successes along the way.

Her experience as a SaaS pricing expert has extended past 15-years and included many different industries, products and services. This makes her a goldmine of information. She knows exactly how to explain how pricing works in practical contexts. While she specializes in mostly software pricing these days, what you'll hear can be applied equally across all sectors - especially services. 

She isn't a talker - she's a doer. In fact this is her first podcast interview! And Kimberley doesn’t disappoint. She explains how each one of her pricing projects is unique, and details how she’s both built and implemented profitable pricing models to hundreds of specific use cases in order to maximize returns.

This is all commercially sensitive and highly confidential work of course - so none of the famous companies she does this work for can be mentioned, but I do convince her to disclose a bit of her secret sauce. This includes an interesting story about leading a pricing strategy and deal desk team for a $1.7B B2B data & analytics organization that featured over 40 different product lines.

Kimberley is someone who has designed pricing strategies to optimize returns for many different sales distribution channels and product lines. This includes, how to redesign discount policies to minimize value erosion, implement renewal programs to improve retention, and how to use quote-to-cash automation to accelerate the sales cycle.

What is value - how do you break it down and optimize it?

So what is a value-engineer - and why do all the highest growth tech companies in the world hire these roles?

How do the companies whose products you use weekly - manipulate your purchase behavior through intentional pricing mechanisms and their superior understanding of behavioral economics?

Why are subscription pricing models so hot right now and why are traditional companies experimenting with them?

What's the story behind AT&T’s packaging which customer’s hate, forms the basis of a Southpark episode, but is a roaring commercial success?

What are the best pricing books to read?

You’ll learn all the dirty little secrets of the business world which cause us to buy - more often, and at higher prices than we probably might like to.

Some of the first forms of recorded advertising was the SPQR insignia that Roman soldiers displayed on the Standards they carried into battle - Similar inscriptions are, to this day, still visible on the tops of manholes around Rome.

Signage and other forms of outdoor advertising are perhaps THE original form of advertising. This topic is Charmaine's area of expertise and we start this discussion talking about the history of outdoor advertising which goes back millennia.

Currently, she's the CEO of two organizations: The Outdoor Media Association, and Move (an audience measurement tech company).

Charmaine has just had to endure perhaps the most challenging period of her professional career. As you can imagine, it was a hard sell, convincing people to advertise outdoor when everyone was locked inside, all the while advocating for a local industry that accounts for $1bn in annual revenue.

So we needed to get a crash course into the world of outdoor advertising. When to use it, how it's different to other mediums, it's strengths, it's weaknesses, how to do it well and how it can go wrong. 

So what is outdoor advertising?

Which outdoor medium is particularly good at targeting time-poor, c-suite executives.

What are ghost signs and why did a Scotsman crowdfund an outdoor campaign targeting a visiting head of state?

We find out what she thinks of Minority Report and Bladerunner 2020 as well as discuss neuroscience, measurement methodologies and even erectile disfunction!

What is LTS in the world of outdoor? What is the critical difference between outdoor and other ad mediums which was recently revealed by neuroscience research.

How did Spotify manage to crush Pandora in Australia using outdoor?

Gain a better understanding about the world of Outdoor in all of it’s largess.

If you think positioning strategy is a bunch of fluffy brand-purpose-laden statements mixed with a few dual-axis, positioning maps, you’re in for a  rude awakening. Because as you'll soon discover, that's not what professional positioning strategists do.

Kimberly A. Whitler is perhaps most famous for her book on this topic, and positioning strategy is what we initially aim to talk about, but what comes out in the wash during this discussion are lashings of strategic wisdom any senior leader, serious about growth would be interested in. She has a wealth of experience spent working with brands like Coca Cola, P&G, Gartner, Forbes and even the US Department of Defense before more recently, becoming an academic. It's this combination of empirical research discipline and practical experience that forms such a killer combination. This episode is jam-packed with plenty of detailed explanations and stories from her career.

Kimberly is currently an Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and her approach is exactly in the hitting zone of this podcast. She’s staunchly focused on work that helps boards, CEOs, and CMOs leverage marketing for strategic advantage. Unlike career academics however, she’s not someone who drafts research papers for papers sake. Her work is meant to be implemented, measured and critiqued in the real world. It’s for this reason her research wins award after award.

Her book about Positioning is a must-read and I'd argue, probably more robust than the seminal book by Al Reis’. There’s also nuggets of gold to be mined in her various online Forbes articles too which have collectively garnered over 4 million views.

What mistake did Nike make with their brand position on a very divisive topic in North America? 

Is brand purpose valuable or is it just a bunch of a virtue-signaling PC corporate hogwash?

Why is it critical to understand the difference between supply-side orientation, demand-side orientation, output orientation and through-put orientation?

Why should you view positioning like a battlefield or the game Battleship?

How you can use positioning strategy to attract employees in the hyper-competitive labor market?

How do brands get brand purpose wrong?

Which critical skill do CMOs need before they can progress into senior roles?

Why shouldn’t you source your positioning strategy from an ad agency?

What’s her take on the fad of ‘category creation’ within the tech sector?

What questions should you ask when hiring a CMO to avoid hiring a dud?

Lots of questions. 

Lots of answers. 

Press play

Sean Ellis, the OG who coined the term 'growth hacking' explains the key determinants to growth for both SaaS and traditional businesses. In under one hour, you'll find out the macro version of why this approach to growing any business is so effective. I really don't need to write any more here. If you are a founder, a business owner, a growth professional, product manager or marketer and you're interested in the non-BS side of the growth discipline - you need to press play. 

Over and out. 

Why does Rich Mironov disagree with Elon Musk regarding his statements about product? Is PLG a real thing or just another cult-buzzword? What are the secrets behind creating successful products which sell themselves? 

Rich Mironov is one of the OG's of the product strategy and management world. He started working for tech companies before tech was cool. Before Product Management was even a term. And his experience over the years has spanned decades. He worked on AI in the 70s. He was arguably the first to sell web.sql software and has one of the original blogs of the internet. 

So do great products sell themselves? How do you craft products to give them the best chance of commercial success.  

Essential listing if you are a founder, you work in product, work in marketing, work in growth or part of agile software teams.