Here are the 15 Growth Mentors of December

1. Amy Hebdon

Describe yourself

I’m a Google Ads conversion expert with nearly 20 years experience in AdWords. I have a strong background in conversion optimization and an executive MBA with a specialization in data and strategy. Digital marketing is messier than we tend to think, but I’m here to make it easier.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

Google Ads is my superpower and it’s a great feeling to help people turn a challenge into a success story.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset is ultimately the belief that we can improve things. In the context of marketing, it’s eschewing the conventional for even better results.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

How to use Google Ads to grow your company. Traditional marketing tactics don’t work with paid search, and people waste a lot of money and effort chasing metrics that won’t build their business. I can turn that around.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Most companies have to choose whether to priortize campaign efficiency or volume. One of my clients is in a different situation – there is so much efficient traffic that expansion into new audiences uses budget that could otherwise drive better ROAS. I built out a segmented budget strategy with unique KPIs for each tier. The result is $0.02 clicks with 150:1 ROAS for highly efficient campaigns, and dedicated budget for top of funnel awareness efforts.

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2. Anne Miller

Describe yourself

With 35 years sales and presentation training, coaching, and consulting experience, my greatest business pleasure is helping people stress-test their presentations to win the maximum amount of business possible.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

To help young companies win business more easily.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Growth mindset mirrors my lifelong favorite quote from Michelangelo: “I am always learning.”

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

If I could mentor someone on just one topic, it would be presentation strength. Presentations, which are often make or break events for businesses, too often fail because they are poorly thought out, lack instant engagement, lose listeners, and miss the momentum that builds to a win. I am not an expert in many areas, but I do know how to help create presentations that sell.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

One of the biggest challenges a presenter can face is a senior level, skeptical, close-minded,”know it all” audience. Before you can get to your message, you need to shatter their smugness and open their minds to new ways of thinking and do it in a way that does not alienate them. I met prospects like this often in the worlds of investment banking and business consulting. I solved this by opening with a visual of a box with 16 square in it and asked them how many squares they saw. Instant responses: 16. I asked them to look again. One or two responses: 17, 21. At this point, everyone was looking for the extra squares. I said, actually, there are 30 squares here and then quickly showed them how there were 30 in the box and then quickly analogized to my message.

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3. Ekaterina Shpadareva

Describe yourself

Hi, I am Ekaterina and I am currently leading Growth and Marketing teams at Mimo and teach digital marketing at Yandex.Practicum (it’s an online bootcamp). I love working with startups and share my expertise on how different products can be ‘grown’. I especially love working with mobile products. I am skilled in full-stack marketing-led and product-led growth. I’d say my approach to growth is hypothesis-, data-, and user-research-driven. These elements help me create a strategy and the product setup that enables growth and revenue.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

I love sharing my experience and knowledge and help startups, especially the ones with the great missions.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

It’s about a desire to question, experiment and improve the performance of your marketing and product. Whether the inspiration comes from your users, data, or even your gut feeling, for me a growth mindset means that you’re passionate about 1) increasing the value that your product brings to users in the first place, 2) trying to most efficiently acquire users that benefit from your product, and 3) are constantly searching for the best way to communicate your product’s value.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

I love working with EdTech products. However, would also love to help and work with companies whose missions focus on climate change, saving wildlife topics.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

It’s hard to cut it to one solution, as it is instead a series of steps for me. But some examples would include increasing conversion to purchase by 57% within 6 months, that included the redesign of the whole checkout flow. Or increasing customer LTVs by 65% in 9 months through constant experimentation with pricing, value proposition, paywalls redesign, re-packaging the set of paid features, and learning lots from our users. I also love working with viral growth loops and some of the experiments have helped us decrease CAC by around 30% through virality and word-of-mouth improvements.

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4. Felice van Steenbergen

Describe yourself

Hi, I’m Felice nice to meet you!

I help international B2B and B2C start-ups, scale-ups and corporates with their growth using my background in marketing and international business development. In my free time I like learn more about data and new tech such as Voice and A.I. and their potential applications within marketing and business. Looking forward to e-meet you and help you reach your business goals!

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

I’ve worked with both corporates and startups on growth, and want to free up some time in my calendar to give back moving forward.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset boils down to “proven curiosity”. Trying new ideas/experiments to reach your goals, while measuring everything properly so you can formulate your success based on data instead of opinions and assumptions. It’s a great tool to see where to spend most of your efforts.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

The Growth mindset and process within teams. Having worked with teams in various sized companies, I’m able to translate business strategies and models into actionable plans and enjoy the stakeholder management to get everyone on board.

Describe an out-of-the-box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

By approaching their clients differently, I managed to get an agency payment for overtime they had put in out of contract, plus generated another €106k in up-sells for them. It shouldn’t be “out of the box”, but putting your customers first really makes a difference!

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5. George Kapernaros

Describe yourself

Hey! As of December 2021, I’m the new Conversion Lead @ Kilo.health, owner of GK, a boutique e-commerce marketing agency, and ex marketing director of divbrands.io. I joined divbrands as the third employee and helped the company grow to over one hundred employees and contractors in less than 3 years. To date, I’ve been involved in over 200 e-commerce projects, some of which were multi-million winners. I’m deeply passionate about coaching and personal development and have served as a Toastmasters Officer for two years.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

I find joy in sharing what I know and meeting entrepreneurial people.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

To be forever curious, eager to validate assumptions, cool with being wrong, and (actually) derive joy out of your work.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Conversion copywriting for sales pages, advertorials, emails, and Facebook ads because I’ve successfully done it with extremely high traffic and advertising budgets (time and time again).

Describe an out-of-the-box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Less than a year ago, I wrote an advertorial that was so successful it ended up encouraging (and funding) the creation of a new department for a past client of mine — changing the mindset of a 500+ employee company about the value of messaging.

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6. Katharina Mueller

Describe yourself

Hey! I’m Kat, originally from Germany, but I have lived on 5 different continents and with very diverse teams. I geek out on women empowerment, entrepreneurship & mindfulness. Besides being an entrepreneur and early-stage start-up consultant, I published a book, became a certified yoga teacher and Clinton Global Initiative University student.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

To inspire/motivate future entrepreneurs and prevent them from making the same mistakes I did.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

To me, a growth mindset is essential to stay curious, courageous, innovative, passionate, and to think outside the box.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

How to be a powerful and mindful founder/leader in your business.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Following the drastically increasing mental health issues under Covid-19, I spontaneously brought a team together to build the best mindfulness app without meditation. With zero coding experience, we launched an app on TestFlight and hosted a podcast, where I interviewed inspiring guests from around the world, talking about the five senses and how it relates to mindfulness.

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7. Michael Stroe

Describe yourself

I help ecom brands and SaaS businesses improve and optimize their current marketing and paid media advertising using multi-channel strategies, at all stages of their sales funnel.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

I enjoy the process of knowing new businesses and industries and finding strategies that work in that environment.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Continuously iterating on current capabilities and using all available resources to drive better results, which in turns provide more opportunities to increase capabilities. A lifetime mastery process.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Growth strategy. Depends on the individual cases if it’s through paid or organic methods.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Figuring out how to spend another $400k in about 20 days in paid media, without basically destroying the app install costs on an account already maximizing acceptable CPIs by spending $200k.

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8. Noel Andrews

Describe yourself

I’m a location independent, freedom loving entrepreneur and business owner with a serious love of rooftop bars.

With 18 years experience in hiring and leading large teams across large corporates to small startups I know what makes the difference to hire and keep the people you need.

Deep and open conversations are a must for me so whatever challenges people are facing I’m all in for going deep and figuring out how to solve it whether it’s tactics or dealing with our own challenges and head sh*t that so often blocks our way.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

To help others grow and succeed through the benefit of my own experience.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Not willing to accept the status quo. If the words ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ make you squirm then we’ll get on well!

You might want to grow in many different ways for many different reasons but ultimately you want to be better.

For me, it’s perfectly possible to be happy with where you are and what you’ve got whilst still striving to be improve.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Business growth through hiring great people.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Dealing with the challenge of how to do hard things that don’t scale, especially when it comes to very personal marketing like videos.

Finding ways to inject this into your daily routine that also then makes your clients like the results even more!

In this case I do my personalised Bonjoro’s whilst walking around London and it turns out the more casual I am the more people like it and the better results I get! I’ve now taught this to multiple other business owners all getting great results.

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9. Paola Veglio

Describe yourself

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In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

As a marketer with 15+ years of experience in both big tech and startups, and thus often getting pinged for help and advice by founders/marketers, I find myself loving the process but also needing “a better system” around it.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

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If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

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Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

–

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10. Pete Boyle

Describe yourself

I started out as a copywriter helping SaaS brands increase lead gen. That led to more conversion focused copy – specifically sales pages and email sequences.

Over time I took a step up to managing strategy and have headed the marketing and growth teams for various startups – some venture-backed, others bootstrapped.

Now I analyse successful marketing and growth strategies and turn them into replicable systems for others whilst growing my own offers.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

Been working in growth for ~10 years and one of the most fulfilling things I’ve found is helping others with their growth problems.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

The key to a good growth mindset is staying humble and willing to be wrong. You’ve got to be open to learning – no matter how experienced you are. And you have to listen to the data and feedback you’re getting, even if it goes against your own beliefs. Add to that a healthy desire for speed, and you’ve got everything you need to hit your growth goals.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

The growth model their business is built on. Too many people focus on improving a single asset and see marginal gains. When, often, the problem isn’t with asset A, but how asset A leads to B, and then C.

I see so many brands losing cash because the model they’ve built has assets that don’t work in concert. It’s a fix that can have huge upside for your brand – even if each individual asset isn’t best in class.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Churn is something. that gets little love in growth (weirdly because it’s so damn important).

I was approached by a Fintech brand that had very high churn. They didn’t know what they could do.

After looking at the commonalities between their longest-serving and most profitable users, it turns out that almost all were using and relying on one particular feature.

We interviewed a few to get the language right, then built out a new welcome sequence (email and in-app chat) to get new users to action this seemingly perfect feature ASAP.

After implementation, churn dropped, revenue went up.

I now advise all brands to look for their key ROI feature and get new users to action in ASAP.

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11. Simone Righini

Describe yourself

I can help you to discover your unique value proposition, that works for both SEO strategy and PAID Ads.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

Be in contact with the best people in my field.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

We all try to adapt, but we actually grow when we leave behind useless beliefs and expensive assurances… to see clearly what’s missing in our behaviour.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Career path

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

My mind won’t work like that 🙂 All the complex problems need more than one person to be solved. I have some geniuses in my team, and they all need to cooperate in order to really think out of everyone’s boxes.

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12. Stefan Repin

Describe yourself

A big proponent of the full-funnel b2b marketing approach. I’ve helped over 10 companies with their challenges in the past 2 years. What is your problem? Let’s solve it!

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

Want to help the community grow and develop my own knowledge.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Learning every day. No matter from business cases or life. Goals and OKR’s are important but a growth mindset will keep you up at night. A growth mindset is you improving 1% every day no matter the weather outside. If you’re smart enough to learn from those who have more experience than you and brave enough to learn from failures, and disciplined enough to learn from successes, then you’re growing.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

B2B growth marketing

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

One of the companies I worked with was looking for a bootstrapped way to grow their database of tour guides. I realized early on that their best shot would be a combination of email marketing and a custom-built tool.

We ended up building a tool that would parse information from many job boards with potential clients, enriching this information and sending super personalized cold email campaigns with open rates of 87% and over 25% win rates.

Another example is a demand gen campaign we did for a software developer. We wrote an article about how to improve your eCommerce website, retargeted people who read the article with a proposal to use our tool which made their store load faster. Then we would pitch them another small tool that would improve their UX for free and finally, we pitched our main service and closed almost 50% of those!

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13. Vicky Yu

Describe yourself

Hi, I’m Vicky and I’ve worked as a data engineer, data scientist, and most recently a data analyst. I first started writing on Medium @madfordata to discuss my experiences and provide advice I found lacking during my data analytics journey. I’m a data geek and love connecting business challenges with data to provide actionable insights.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

Share my experience and advice to help others achieve their full growth potential.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset means being open to trying new ideas and improving on the status quo to find a better option.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

How to determine actionable insights with data to drive business performance.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

A machine learning model is typically used to predict the behavior at a user level but I used a model as a way to speed up a data analysis problem instead. For an interview take-home assignment, I was asked to find “an interesting insight derived from it that would help the movie studio’s business.”

There were 25+ movie attributes in the data file and looking at each attribute one by one would have been too time-consuming to meet the deadline. Instead, I built a GBM model and used the feature importance list generated as a model output to determine the top attributes most important for movie profitability. By using this out of the box approach I reduced the turnaround time and exceeded the original ask by finding multiple insights that could improve the studio’s profitability instead of just one.

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14. Yvo Wander

Describe yourself

I’m an entrepreneurial marketeer with a Dutch no-nonsense mentality and a desire for impact. Let’s work together!

After several years of working as a Marketing Consultant for large corporates, I was sick and tired of the slow pace of growth and marketing that I encountered. I knew there must be a better way and I was dedicated to finding it.

Starting up Dapper Rhinos in 2019, we were constantly looking for better ways of working and delivering impact for companies using Online Marketing and Strategy as our tools. With the skills that we gained along the way, we have grown by 500% since to a team of 15 and are working for a variety of local startups and corporates like Microsoft and Logitech.

Now I’d like to share my knowledge and experience in Marketing, Strategy, and building a highly effective team with impactful companies!

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

I’d like to help impactful companies reach their full potential.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset is always thinking 3 steps ahead and a strong desire to change the status quo.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

“I want to grow my start-up or proposition. Where do I start”. Especially since there are so many things to think of when growing your business, it’s difficult to find what are the most important elements to keep a focus on. I’d like to help out finding what growth marketing strategy matches your business and what is needed to build a highly effective team.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

For (almost) every company that I work with, their own product is the holy grail (sounds familiar?).

So what I always tell them is that their product is awesome, but no matter how awesome it is, a customer never buys it because of the product features. It’s always about a problem that’s solved or a ‘gain’ that’s created.

A very out of the box and eye-opening session, in this case, is a Value Proposition Interview, asking questions about:

1. What is the core audience?
2. What jobs do they need to fulfill?
3. What pains and gains do they cross in doing their jobs?
4. How does the product help to solve a pain or maximize a gain?

After these sessions, we use the new insights for any type of communication (e.g. Advertising, E-mail automation) and reach engagement levels they’ve never seen before.

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15. Zev Asch

Describe yourself

I am Zev, a seasoned business coach, mentor and advisor with four decades of hands-on experience growing small businesses. I have worked with different companies in various industries. My clients benefit from how I’ve grown multiple companies throughout my career.

I don’t believe in a one-marketing-fits-all approach. Instead, I tailor my work for each business and focus on vision, culture & practices, customer needs, and competitors.

I have a solid academic foundation (Honors B.A. in Psychology and an MBA in Marketing), as well as academic teaching experience as graduate marketing professor and Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Touro College’s Graduate School of Business.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

To make a tangible and lasting difference in the lives of clients (and their employees if they are the business owner).

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Growth mindset starts at the top with business ownership/leadership that has the courage to be bold, disrupting, and different.

A recognition that average is not good enough and that to rise above the noise requires a culture that recognizes employees, empowers them to think and embraces failure.

An understanding that growth is a function of multiple areas within the business working in sync (marketing, sales, customer service, operation).

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Marketing – Sales – Customer Service continuous improvements. How to take what you have and make it even better. It starts by identifying and assessing what is working, not working, and where improvements are needed.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

I believe in simplicity and often, the best solution is right in front of you, something you missed because you’re too ‘busy’- My super-power is intuitive problem-solving and therefore, I don’t believe that most solutions require an ‘out-of-box’ approach.

One client was spending over $100K a month on Facebook advertising. A quick analysis of their customer base showed that they only had 1,100 customers. Their FB following was over 1,000,000 fans. I pointed this discrepancy, suggested that we reduce the FB ad spend to $25K and focus on engaging and connecting with the fan base first, before we push them to buy. The results was massive reduction in marketing expenses and higher conversions.

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Interested in becoming a growth mentor?

What we’re looking for:

• Growth marketers, product managers, and designers, with extraordinary track-records of success
• Inspirational founders that have “been there and done that.”
• Friendly people that take joy in helping other people.
• At least 5 years of demonstrable experience working in growth.
• GrowthMentor is a #givefirst platform. You should be cool with mentoring for free until you have three reviews.