- Mahmoud Newsletter
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- Officially Beehiiv Partner
Officially Beehiiv Partner
+ Interview with Lex
Yo! Adiós amigos. I have some exciting news to share with you guys.
This week, I moved to a new house in my city, I got fresh chocolate cookies, I got my guest pass to join Growthtrackers community, I made a new connection with Lex Roman, and I’m officially a Beehiiv Partner.
P.S: this newsletter has been written and curated while listening to the Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the ‘Romantic Period’ Frédéric François Chopin.
Lex response on my comment on her YouTube channel (how things started)
In today’s email:
Founder Series: Lex Roman building the Low Energy League 🐢
The Growthtrackers insider 🔥
Dollar Shave Club Acquisition 🪒
The 6-Elite Traits to Hire People 🙄
Good News: Beehiiv Partners Program 🐝
What I have been listening to this week 👂️
Subscribe to Mahmoud’s Hive and share it with a friend, new good things are coming in the upcoming weeks, stay in the loop.
As a growth marketer, I’m always on the loop to find new ways to nurture my mind with good energy, good people, and fascinating contents. Today’ founder series story about Lex Roman, the founder behind the Low Energy League.
Pack your bag to get your energy fueled, she’s good.
FOUNDER SERIES
Lex Roman, Founder of Growth Trackers and The Low Energy Leads Show
Lex beginnings were in 2007. She spent 10+ years leading growth projects for tech companies, and currently, she’s working with creatives who are scaling to sustainability as an agency or expanding beyond 1:1 services.
Lex Roman, Founder of Growth Trackers and The Low Energy Leads Show
Her main goal is to empower creative entrepreneurs to book more clients by making smarter marketing bets. She helped a lot of businesses thanks to her expertise in growth marketing experimentation for service-based businesses.
Now, she lead the GrowthTrackers programs and community through new learning methodologies to integrate business owners to have successful marketing experimentations.
I found golden content on her newsletter and podcast, the Low Energy Leads Show, where she shares weekly free advice on improving lead pipeline and lower the bar on how business owners and small businesses can get leads for their businesses without going crazy.
She’s not Italian, but she will save you stop throwing spaghetti 🍝 at the wall and prove what works for you predictably. Let’s hear Lex’s thoughts:
What unexpected skills or experiences have helped you as a community person?
When I think of community, my first thought is about my local community. I operate communities online too but what has been surprising to me is how much they intersect with each other.
I spent many years leading street outreach teams around Los Angeles and working with people coming out of prison, homelessness or both. Through this work, I was also able to see some very experienced community organizers in action and I could watch how they facilitated wide ranges of viewpoints and turned it into meaningful collective action.
These experiences have had a massive effect on how I work with communities of any kind. I learned a lot about how to more deeply listen to people when they share what they need. I learned how to adapt in a personalized way around the kind of support someone else wants. More recently, I am learning that I need to release more control over things and allow others to guide direction (even in my paid community).
What qualities make for a great Growthtracker?
I mean, I think all the Growthtrackers are great :) The Growthtrackers are a very unique group of people who are immensely thoughtful about their work, passionate about supporting others and creative in how they reach their audiences.
People attracted into Growthtrackers are typically quick studies who know what they want to be achieving but are finding they want more structure to their growth path. The era of “move fast and break things” has faded and entrepreneurs want more strategy around what we’re doing every day and how that leads to more revenue, more referrals, more client retention. Growthtrackers are self-driven and guided by their own vision but they also appreciate what I’ve come to call “the braintrust factor” of sharing openly and building alongside other entrepreneurs.
How do you factor accessibility into your growth process?
This is actually a big reason why I started my own growth program. When I worked in Silicon Valley, I saw three glaring problems with the growth space:
1) It was super dominated by a very small homogenous group of people.
2) It was synonymous with hustle culture and,
3) It was ignoring the global harm it was causing.
It’s very hard to find a sense of belonging in a space like that. Rather than make people conform, I want to embrace who they are and walk alongside them. It’s not easy to do that, especially in a program as small as mine, but it’s important to me that if people want to be growing their business, that they have an option to get the right guidance and acceleration at their own pace.
Some of the tangible ways we do this include offering materials in more than one way (video, transcripts, slide decks, worksheets). Offering sessions at more than one time to accommodate timezones. Allowing cameras to be off and not demanding full presence, including 1:1 sessions in addition to group sessions so people can get personalized attention and not feel pressure to share always in a group setting.
This will continue to be important and we’ll continue to get better at it!
Low Energy Leads | Low Energy Leads is the weekly newsletter featuring the Low Energy League live show, latest growth marketing advice, community activities, tools and tips for staying booked your way. |
GROWTH TRACKERS
Marketing Lab to the test!
Growthtrackers Live is a free livestream event hosted on Fridays at 12 PM (UTC) on YouTube and LinkedIn to put your marketing ideas to the test! Join to learn how to make smarter marketing bets when you join Lex for a sneak peek of Growthtrackers. View past sessions here.
What if you could take the guesswork out of which marketing methods will work for you?
You’d stop wearing yourself out on Instagram reels,
You’d know with certainty what to outsource,
You’d have more leads coming in already sold on what you offer.
Growthtrackers will illuminate your path forward to ramp up your sales.
Growthtrackers Community: is a supportive membership for creative entrepreneurs scaling from solo to next stage.The Growthtrackers method will illuminate your path to better lead flow. Join and grab your free Guest Pass to Growthtrackers and try it out for yourself!
ECOMMERCE
Why Comedy is the Most Effective Way to Advertise
The price of razors was sky high, and Dollar Shave Club saw an opportunity to undercut the competition by selling cheap razors over the Internet. To promote their fledgling business, the principals created a hilarious marketing video that they put on YouTube.
This viral video cost $4,500 to make.
Dollar Shave Club was acquired for $1B.
Creative marketing wins with startups.
— Andrew Gazdecki (@agazdecki)
2:19 PM • Oct 26, 2023
The video immediately went viral. Subsequently, they began selling subscriptions so fast that they sold out in 6 hours — and crashed their website. That video led to more videos, which led to a television campaign, which led to the sale of the company to Unilever for about $1 billion dollars. Viewed more than 28M times to date, here’s the video that started it all.
GROWTH MINDSET
The 6-Elite Traits to Hire People 🙄
Brett Gelfand hired over 80 people in the last 8 years, he shared 6 elite traits. Let’s dive into his explanations.
Adaptive Quotient
Intrinsic Motivation
Rejection Resilience
Curiosity
Extreme Ownership
Good Operators Under Uncertainty.
1. Adaptive Quotient
AQ represents someone’s ability to adapt to change. The business world is constantly evolving. Thus, companies should look for people who can pivot quickly, learn new technologies, and adjust to new information without being thrown off their game.
Adaptation > Intelligence
𝟮. Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic motivated people naturally seek challenges, look for ways to improve themselves, and they’re self-starters who push boundaries.
Always choose intrinsically motivated people over extrinsically motivated ones. You’ll save yourself countless hours (and nerves) in the future.
𝟯. 𝗥𝗲𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 R𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲
Every entrepreneur knows rejection is the inevitable part of the journey.
Employees who have a history of bouncing back from rejection have a unique blend of:
Optimism
Creativity
Persistence
They don’t see a closed door, they see an opportunity to find a key or build a new door.
5. Curious People
A-players are curious by default. If you’re hiring, this means you will have first attentions on the people who were curious ‘enough’ about your business, understand it, asking questions, searching for ways to improve, having the capability of suggestions, and developing a plan to fix their mistakes.
If they have a childlike curiosity, hire them instantly.
4. Extreme Ownership
People who takes 100% responsibility for their action worth your $$$$.
Seek people who:
Admit mistakes
Take ownership of their actions
Develop a plan to immediately fix their mistake.
If they’re blaming others for their current situation, they aren’t the right fit.
𝟲. 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘆
A-players are not kids who need hand-holding.
They understand:
What you want
What they need to do
How they need to do it.
While making accurate assumptions at crossroads, invaluable in the long run.
GOOD NEWS
Beehiiv Partner Program Announcement 🥳
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m officially a Beehiiv Partner. Beehiiv is the fastest growing consumer company for newsletters. The newsletter platform built for growth by newsletter people. If you’re considering starting a newsletter, start writing on Beehiiv.
Yesterday, I applied to join @beehiiv partner program
9 hours later I'm accepted (thanks TG).
2 goals in map:
1. Build and scale my newsletter ops growth service boutique to help eCommerce brands grow.
2. Grow and monetize my personal newsletter to 10k subscribers by 2024.
— Mahmoud Ait Elkatab (@meetmahmod)
9:04 AM • Oct 28, 2023
PODCAST
What I have been listening to this week
How my favourite DJ became the worlds best DJ with only one arm: Black Coffee ☕️ (A Diary of CEO podcast)
Samaria - Ancient Journey Fantasy Music (beautiful ambient oud for focus, studying, and reading)
Game of Thrones Music & North Ambience | Winterfell - House Stark Theme
Networking for introverts: Conversations (Low Energy Leads)
Codie Sanchez Reveals 4 Profitable Business Ideas Men Are Sleeping On (MFM podcast)
How Tyler Denk Took Beehiiv from 0 to $750,000/month in 2.5 Years (Founder's Journal podcast)
22 ways to get leads without social media (Low Energy Leads)
What did you think of this week's newsletter?
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In case you're new: Who's Mahmoud?
For those who don’t know me well, here’s my quick background:
I’m a guy who growing up was so simple but had full an adventurous childhood . I was just OK at everything, and I was completely forgettable.
My first title ever was “BATMAN”, awarded ‘thanks to’ my sense of courage to jump from the second floor of my grandma’s house, in 1999.
My girlfriend, called me ‘My Batman’, because she know that story only, not because I work in two jobs, one by day and the other by night (don’t tell her).
I run the “Afterwork Lab”, a small newsletters growth and email marketing lab to help small businesses and eCommerce brands create, design, and grow good inbox experiences using Beehiiv.
I have been featured on Dar Dixon’s podcast to share my story building a new line of fragrance (Aug 2022). Dar Dixon is the Award Nominee Best Actor WFA 2023.
Inside, I always wanted to be special somehow at something, but I never found my thing.
I got obsessed, and decided to try to get rich, and make my first million dollars, but I realized it takes years of making my crafts.
Now, I’m 30, and get to spend my days working, investing in eCommerce brands, and creating content like this to share experience, and for fun for the next generation. My goal is to be the best version of myself and be the mentor I wish had when I was in my twenties.
Outside of my marketing work, I’m a writer, photographer, and serial maker. I’m driven by a love for lifelong learning and ceaseless passion for the written word.
Ciao, bello! Until next week, have a dope Thursday.
— Mahmoud Ait Elkatab