How to Create a Growth Model for Your Business w/ Peter Schroeder

UX Marketing

Welcome to the podcast. Today we have Peter Schroeder who is the head of growth at Onna, and we are going to discuss growth. Maybe it's maybe some other things as well, but first and foremost, let's just get some context on you. It's kind of a weird time that we're living in. So, Peter, how are you holding up with all this Corona virus stuff going on?

Hey Blake, thanks for having me and thanks for checking in. it's a crazy time, in tech. I say to my team and I say to everyone every day, we're very fortunate to still be working, and I think that we get the lighter end of everything that's happening. So yeah, just staying positive, saying grateful every day.

and I think we should, we should all do the same on a daily basis.

yeah, definitely. hats off to everybody out there, all the nurses and doctors and everything. Obviously right now, a weird time we're living in. Yeah. The show must go on and let's. Let's give some people some ammo that they can take right now is a great opportunity for side hustlers and people working online to either start a project or continue building it and having a little bit more time at home to do that.

So let's help them grow a little bit. But, but before we get into the details and getting ahead of myself a little bit of context on your career, if you could just give us a snapshot of your career so far, where you've been, where you're going, and where you are, how you got to where you are now.

Basically.

Yeah, absolutely. So, coming out of college, I very much so had that entrepreneurial spirit where, I was inspired by startups. I was inspired by tech companies. and I started, I tried starting a company that was essentially a messaging unification platform that brought all your text messages, your emails, your social media DMS into one place.

and it really gave me that startup feeling that startup hustle and kind of grounded me on what it takes to get a company off the ground. So did that for about a year. didn't end up getting the traction that I wanted. but I used that time and experience. owning a project and trying to build a company to, make my way into the tech world.

So ever since then been at a couple of tech startups, which has brought me to my current role at Oana where I'm heading up growth. And essentially what we do at Oana is where the central information layer for most tech companies. So if you think about the average tech worker and how many different enterprise applications they use on a daily basis, there's just.

Tons of data getting created, especially at this time as we work from home. All this data that lives in Slack, Microsoft teams are emails, a sauna. It's just data getting created everywhere. So Ono helps you bring all that data together, right? and do a couple of different things. We help people do, like eat discovery compliance.

So that's like GDPR, CCPA, enterprise search, knowledge management. So just really taking control and understanding your data. .

What would you consider to be your professional super power yourself?

Yeah, so am I professional superpower, at least to this point in my career, has been. Building and standing up and moving on to the next, repeatable, growth engine that companies, so just going into new channels, building repeatable processes that's driving leads, driving pipeline, driving repeatable revenue, and just moving on to the next thing.

And I think that's very much. A growth mindset that a lot of growth marketers and people who work in marketing should have is everything needs to be built up to be repeatable and scalable. and then after you work on one thing, and it's very much like a testing. Framework that you should have with everything that you're standing up, but come into it with a hypothesis, test that hypothesis, and also have a definition of done.

So, in most experiments, actually, every experiment you need, like what that definition of done is to be able to say, Hey, this works. we should. Double down on it, or Hey, this didn't work, we should quit and move on to the next thing. So, that's where I've spent the majority of my career. That's where I continue to work and grow.

The team at Oana is just building up those repeatable engines.

I love it. So let, let's dive into it then. I like to usually start with the foundation first and then build on that. So let's get really basic here. When you say growth model, what are you referencing? What does that entail?

Yeah. As I mentioned, you need, you need hypothesis to be able to test, to be able to grow these engines.

So you need a plan, right? You look out at the year when we're going into 2020 the year right now. Like, where do you want to test? What do you want to try? What's the timeline look like? What are the resources you have? So you have to take a holistic view at your company, the resources you have and the goals that you have in place.

And you have to create this. Timeline to get there. what does it look for most early stage companies, most scrappy entrepreneurs? It's, it's this big ugly spreadsheet. and you know, your business the best, you know, the data that you have, but you're just really mapping out. And I like to start at the highest level, highest level goal.

What's your goal for your business like, and then from a marketing perspective, like. I mean, the goal for your business is almost always revenue. Then from a marketing perspective, how much pipeline do you need to, attain that revenue goal? And then really you're just reversing the funnel. How many, opportunities do you have to meet that pipeline goal based on how many opportunities you have?

How many meetings do you need to book based on how many meetings you need to book? How many leads do you have to drive? so it's really building out that typical funnel that you hear most people talking about. Based on that, you look at the resources you have and you're able to apply your resources to different stages of the funnel.

So obviously salespeople go further towards the bottom of the funnel. They're the ones who are taking the meetings, taking it through the funnel to close the deal. Your marketing team, your SDRs, they're the ones driving that demand at the top of the funnel. and making sure you're driving those leads and booking those meetings.

And so it's really a whole team effort, but really what a growth model. It's just holistically taking a look at everything that your company has, to be able to, you know, go to market with, with the product and the people that you have, to reach your overarching goals. And, that's me explaining it the best I can without looking at it.

But just, it's, it's your, it's your go to market plan essentially.

And I'm curious, before we even dive further into that, what parts of that go to market plan or your marketing strategy should be established before you even mentioned a plan for growth.

Okay. Yeah. You need to know what you do best and where you need to look at is like.

What have you done to succeed to this point? Where have you seen the most success like that? That's the place that you start in. That's the place you need to continue to double, you know, 10 X down until you're not seeing results anymore. Because if something's working like that's, that's the Genesis of growth.

Define things that are working to grow your business. So if something's already working, like that's where you start. That's where you need to allocate your marketing efforts. That's where you need to allocate your team is like onto the things that are really working. As for how you think about marketing and growth, you know, I think, I think they're the same thing, like marketing growth.

It should all really be aligned because what marketing's job is, is to drive demand, to drive demand to grow the business. So, That doesn't mean that marketers have to do social media. If it's not fruitful and it doesn't work for them, that doesn't mean that marketers need to push a newsletter every week if they're not seeing any results like it is marketing's job to drive demand and drive growth to the business.

and, and so I think that they go hand in hand. And marketing always should have that growth mindset because. That's essentially their job. It's not like we hire marketing departments to do this template in, you know, routine of marketing activities that everyone does. no, like marketers are there to drive the business forward from our revenue perspective.

and I think that's where a lot of marketers get it wrong. And so it's really just having that growth mindset will really differentiate you as a marketer. And it's my hope that soon it won't. It's my hope that people that just start to think about growth and marketing hand in hand. but I think we're getting there.

I guess from the perspective of an entrepreneur or a side hustler or even somebody just building out there, their personal brand, these people we love, we love to set lofty growth goals, and at the beginning we usually don't actually have a realistic perspective or, or any reference point as to what our goal should be.

Have. Have you found any. Right. Got already framework to set realistic growth goals. Do not have any reference point on. You're totally starting from zero.

Yeah. I think that there's like there's benchmarks, industry standards experience that that can replace like lack of data. I think that you should always aim to have like a data driven approach, but in the absence of data, You can be realistic. You're not going to go from. The zero to 20 million this year. You know, if you don't have any customers and you don't have a product or anything, like being realistic is, is something that can ground you a little bit. I don't know if there's like a framework out there. It really depends what you do, especially as you're talking about like.

early stage entrepreneurs that are still figuring things out because in those early stages, so there's still a lot of rain to grow, a lot of room to pivot and be able to find traction in different areas. So, like if you're, if you're going zero to something, like your first year goal could be to find product market fit.

And then you could put, you could associate a number with, like, when most companies find product market fit, if you found product market fit, if you're at like a million dollars revenue, like it's not unrealistic to want to double this next year. And I think that just being like, realistic with your goals, but aggressive at the same time because, it's that, it's that theory that when you, when you box your mindset in, like if you say, we have to reach towards this goal, It's very much so, something that you work towards, something that you grind towards. It's the, for example, we all know from school and we have like a month to do a project and it's due the next day and the night before we crammed for 12 hours and we finish out the project. It's like, it's the same thing with goals.

We have to set goals, That are realistic, but also aggressive and like stretch are. Stretch our efforts because you know, as a business, we don't want to cram the last couple of weeks of Q four to hit our goal. We want to be working like all years towards this aggressive goal to consistently compound our growth and hit that goal at the end of the year.

And I, yeah, I mean, I totally agree with that and I, I would love to even potentially do a little thought experiment here with you and give a specific, specific example of this. So. If I were to tell you like I'm just starting out and I have this idea. Let's say I'm building out an email marketing software, so just software as a service for podcasters specifically.

That's my niche and I found a small product market fit like that. That's all there, and now I'm starting to set up my growth model. For that particular example, what would you look at first? Like what? What would your process be for coming up with what the model's going to look

like. Yeah. So you said that you have product market fit.

Like my first question would be like, you know, what are your key customers? Like why have they found value? I think that like as you build out your growth model, then an average as you found product market fit. that's really when you can start doing some key exercises in positioning. so you have a really niche software in a very commoditized, overall space and category.

But you understand your niche really well, and so you can position, you can build out those personas, you can understand your buyer, you can understand why people love you and why people are buying you and why people are hopefully talking about you and giving you word of mouth referrals. And then you can amplify that.

I mean, the other thing when you're thinking about growth modeling too is like you need to address like the total addressable market of that niche. Like how big is that total addressable market? How big can you grow? How much can you grow with model in that market before you have to expand before you have to introduce a new product before you have to, Enter new markets, existing markets. So I think that, the big question there, at least for me would like revolve around positioning and what direction you go and how, how long your runway of growth is. Because. if your total addressable market is only, you know, a year or two out, you can growth model pretty easily how to get to there, but then it becomes more of a question of how do you sustainably grow the business past then?

Or is it really only your goal to capture. And dominate and sustain that total addressable market and grow with it as it grows. So that's the other thing about, about growth marketing too, is it's very rooted in like understanding your business and understanding the market, and understanding your customers as a whole too.

Hm. Are there specific channels that. Are particularly good to start out with. I know that it really depends on the business, obviously what the growth model is going to be. Like. You mentioned sometimes social media doesn't work as well for certain companies and et cetera, but are there certain channels, you know, SEO or Social media thing is paid, paid advertising that should be looked at first before moving on to more complex strategies?

I think that it really. Depends. And you know, your market. So I think that, let's use your example, about which we just talked about. I think like a great place to start for a product like that would be like actually advertising on podcasts and like getting organically on podcasts and talking about podcasts.

Like people who understand podcasts are most likely the ones who like understand it and are probably going to start it. So, yeah. as opposed to a few selling, You know, a physical product that, you know, podcasters don't necessarily care about as much. Like those people might want to start with more like Instagram ads where they can really get targeted and granular and refined with their messaging and their audience.

So, yeah. I think it's about taking a really good, hard look in the mirror about your company, what you do, what you do well, who you sell to, and then where those people live. So I think it starts with like an audience analysis, but. I really don't think it's one size fits all. You have to understand what you do and you have to understand your audience.

So ultimately, I think, would you agree that in order to create a growth model that actually works for your business, you basically have to be channel and platform agnostic?

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. You have to be. Willing and able and agile enough to test and experiment and, you need to be able to do a little bit of everything.

That's the other thing is like, the most fruitful channels you'll ever find is when you're early to different channels, the fur and like, the great example is the people who are first to podcasts, it's like, reap the most benefits because like. Tim Ferriss and the Joe Rogan's of the world were their first, like they're the ones who has a mass, these massive audiences because they were the first ones to build.

So yeah. there's definitely a first mover advantage that you have to be nimble enough have enough courage, to invest early in different channels and platforms.

Are there any platforms like that that you see right now that you, that you're really trying to push and to at least experiment with?

Okay. It's tough. I mean, in this world we live in, as of the last few weeks with coronavirus and everything. The people who invested in virtual events, a year or two ago are the ones we're really reaping the rewards right now. Everyone, and this is, this is how we should think about it too, is all these events are getting canceled over the next couple months, and a lot of people are moving on virtually.

And. I think the people who think that events will just go back to business as usual when this is all done, are the people who are going to lose that. That's not the way history writes itself. this is a new paradigm shift. This is exposing people to. Virtual events, virtual conferences, virtual content that they'd never experienced before.

so I think the people who start adopting virtual events and virtual conferences in the right way right now, could, could see, okay. Big returns from it in the coming years as, our world sort of shifts that way.

I have one final question here. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask this, and I'm sure you've probably been asked this before.

Any time that I meet anybody that I know that they're like ahead of growth or their growth marketer, things like that, I have to ask, how do you feel about the term growth

hacking. Okay. growth hacking. I think that gross and girls hacking are two different things. how I think about girls hacking is.

Growth hacking teeters the line between, you know, black hat and like gray hat growth. Like it really, it really steps the boundaries. Like growth hacking to me is, stringing together softwares to automate growth in ways that haven't been done before. What's like a current growth hack tech stack that I think of, I think of using like Bombora buyer intent data.

Coupled with a data aggregation tool, like You know, I dunno if it's segment or say per year, to be able to trigger, automatic email sequences based on buyer intent using an outreach platform like sales loft or outreach or something like that. That's very gross hacky where you're stringing together really modern, cutting edge technologies to, testing results like.

Well, what is, what is growth? Growth is growth is just building sustainable, repeatable growth engines from a, from a sales and marketing perspective to drive revenue, right? It can be traditional channels. It can dip into that growth hacking world, but I am not offended by this term growth hacking. I think it's just overused.

I think that there's some people that that use it really well there. There's a girl, I consider him a growth