Here are the 10 GrowthMentors of June

1. Tyler Foo

Describe yourself

Hey, I have been in online marketing for more than a decade now. My specialty is in online advertising. My biggest win back in the day was making an insane 1000% ROI from Google Ads. Facebook ads is still my favorite platform though 🙂 I’ve started many different ventures throughout the years on my own, so I’ve learned & experimented with lots of different strategies to grow and market the businesses. I think outside of the box, so don’t be alarmed when I give ideas that are a bit out of the left field. Currently I lead the advertising team at Mindvalley.

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

I have a lot of knowledge & experience I’ve amassed over the years and would like to see them being utilized.

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

Constantly looking for ways to grow, never settling, be appreciative of how far you’ve come but never content, always aiming for something higher.

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

Facebook ads, online advertising & automation.

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

“The problem was that our creative strategists always had to request data from us whenever we ran split tests on new creatives that they ideate. Since we have a different attribution model, we couldn’t rely on conversion data within the ad platforms and had to stitch the data somewhere. With the power of Airtable, automations, Google Sheets & Supermetrics, I was able to setup a system where the strategists could get access to the data they need on Airtable without having us to manually pull the data for them ever again.”

View Growthmentor Profile

2. Greg Perowne

Describe yourself

Greg here. I’m the senior director of operations at nesto, a mortgage fintech. Along with prior experiences as an Uber launcher and GM of a leading mealkit startup, I’ve experienced the challenges behind rapid scaling across several core business functions.

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

I hope to share the knowledge and wisdom earned in experiences ranging from well-funded to scrappy save money at all costs startups living the challenges of rapid scaling.

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

A growth mindset means building processes, tools and platforms that solve today’s problems for the next 10x of growth.

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

Business process and organizational design.

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

“Mortgage sales are traditionally a lengthy interaction. Brokers are the scarcest resource, requiring lengthy licensing and significant experience in order to be effective. In tackling this, by going against the grain and reducing scheduled sales call length from 60 minutes to 30 minutes enabled a 50%+ increase in productivity. * decreased dead time when calling an unqualifiable lead * forcing function on the sales staff to further leverage customer information in the sign up flow, and deliver a more value-added customer interaction * decreased impact of other team/company meetings on availability * more structured and consistent call structure to incorporate sales best practices * retain availability to schedule follow up calls when necessary to explore further details.”

View Growthmentor Profile

3. Dan Shaffer

Describe yourself

Hi! I’m a creative problem solver with a passion for driving results from marketing departments. From SEO to marketing automation, I’d love to brainstorm some cool stuff together!

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

I love mentoring, but I love learning from and being inspired by those who I mentor as well!

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

Growth mindset – the power of yet! – is probably the most important mentality to have anywhere marketing is involved. You can change anything and grow anything you want, you may just have to be creative, solve some problems and jump a few hoops before you get there.

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

Hurdles someone may face with brand new ideas. I’ve had lots of ideas that weren’t as easy as I thought once I started digging in – having a mentor that would help me forsee these impact areas ahead of time would have saved a lot of hassle and loss of time!

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

Traffic of successful website went from 5k users/month to 800k/month.

View Growthmentor Profile

4. Daphne Tideman

Describe yourself

Hi, I’m Daphne, Head of Growth at Heights and former Head of Growth Consultancy at RockBoost, a growth hacking agency. I joined RockBoost as #1 and helped grow it to 25+ employees. After 5 years and writing a book about growth consultancy (Growing Happy Clients) I decided it was time to work in-house. I joined Heights to create a new category of Braincare and have been loving it ever since. I love to talk and write about growth from growth strategy to stakeholder manager to CRO and paid advertising.

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

To help more startups grow and to help others in the same way others have been pivotal in my own growth.

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

Growth Strategy and Mindset because all the fancy hacks don’t matter if you don’t get that right. For me Growth Strategy is not just about which loops help you grow and how you test but how you manage stakeholders and build growth into your whole organisation.

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

The key to growth mindset is how you approach failures and learning. That you keep going when it is tough and see every failure as a chance to learn. No matter your years of experience having a strong growth mindset means staying humble and realising you can learn from everyone you meet.

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

At Heights we were struggling to convert website visitors in the beginning. I noticed from an analysis that the conversion rate when someone did the brain health survey was 4x that of someone with a similar time on site. So I found a way to integrate it into our home and product page that not only improved our customer base but also skyrocketed our email list.

View Growthmentor Profile

5. Casey Hill

Describe yourself

Growing up my father, grandfather and cousins all ran businesses. I was exposed to the world of entrepreneurship early and since then have been passionate about either running small ventures or helping others grow their companies. Each business has unique growth hurdles and I love the creative problem solving in driving people impact.

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

For the last decade I have been passionate about helping organizations find unique and innovative growth levers.

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

A growth mindset means that you constantly are looking for ways to improve. You measure and set tangible goals and you learn from the failures.

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

It would be scaling your organization through non-paid channels (LinkedIn, Quora, podcasts, webinars etc). I have done many podcasts, written courses and consulted orgs as an advisor in that space.

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

Everyone was talking about creating podcasts to drive growth but I realized that in order to really get massive exposure the key was tapping into other podcasts that already had prominent followings. At first when I tried this it was hard to find contact information and LinkedIn pitches were limited. I eventually discovered a unique flow through a platform called ListenNotes and booked my team on 208 podcasts in 2020, driving millions of views.

View Growthmentor Profile

6. Justyna Ciecierska

Describe yourself

I’m a generalist with a knack for building growth strategies. My superpowers: questioning the status quo & getting sh*t done. I worked as a growth hacker for big corporates like Cisco and SMBs like Foxford. Now I am managing a growth team at a creative growth agency.

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

Helping others and seeing them succeed gives me a gigantic energy boost.

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

Not being afraid to fail, being humble and not biased.

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

Actionable growth strategy – because it’s so difficult to make strategies actionable and get stuff done.

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

“I had to take over a client from my colleague who was going on vacation. We had a very tight deadline but in the 3 weeks of working together, I aligned the entire client team and led them towards the successful launch of their event. In the retrospective session, the client said this: “We hired your agency because we thought you would do the job for us. But since you joined the team we found your AHA! moment. You showed us principles, strategies and tactics instead of simply executing tasks. It’s like in this proverb: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. You taught us how to fish and this is priceless.”

View Growthmentor Profile

7. Lavinia Franzetti

Describe yourself

“I am Customer Growth Director at Gousto, now one of the UK’s unicorns: I lead the Growth Tribe, a cross-functional unit made up by finance, analytics, tech, marketing and insights. Outside Gousto, I am a Marketing and Strategy Consultant to Lookiero’s Leadership Team and an almost qualified coach! I have lived the scale-up story twice, and also experienced the big corps world (once was enough!). Deeply care about organisational culture, culture in general, purpose-led growth, and sustainability. ​.”

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

Most of my growth has been owed to the wonderful mentors and coaches I was lucky enough to have. I find this the most impactful and meaningful way to understand your authentic leadership style, get perspective and grow. I am a mentor and a coach but would like to do this at a scale and help guide more people, where I can!

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

Growth mindset means to me thriving on discovery. This means that you get the best out of yourself when you are learning new things, about your own self and about others and the environment. You’ll seek constantly that novelty because you know is what will move you forward. You won’t feel defeated if you fail, as you would have learned anyways. You’ll deeply desire just knowing more.

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

How to build the right culture for growth teams.

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

Writing a manifesto for my team with the principles we wanted to adhere to!

View Growthmentor Profile

8. Mike Tatum

Describe yourself

I’m a growth marketer who obsesses over the possibilities automation brings to marketers like me and marketing teams in 2021. I believe automation is what can give founders and startups the ability to scale quickly and I’ve found huge success with it at SurveyMonkey and other businesses I’ve consulted for.

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

I honestly just love growth marketing and helping solve problems informally with my LinkedIn network has done more to make me a better marketer than anything else.

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

To me, a growth mindset is all about seeing the opportunities and obstacles in front of you but choosing to focus your attention on the opportunities.

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

It would definitely be HubSpot. I am a legitimate HubSpot nerd and I’ve built some incredible inbound marketing systems using their technology. I love helping people get the most out of it (especially because it’s not cheap).

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

“We were looking to drive more video engagement with a video course we created at Kinsta and I built a HubSpot workflow that pulled in where people stopped watching in the video course and sent them a follow-up email that prompted them to jump back on where they left off. It took some complicated logic in HubSpot to make work, but it had a huge impact for our content marketing at the time.”

View Growthmentor Profile

9. Eugene Hauptmann

Describe yourself

Hey there, I’m a faith-centric technologist, a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, advisor, and mentor. I work with early stage founders to help overcome tech and product challenges.

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

I mentor and coach early stage founders to address their engineering and product challenges. Growth is the next thing we talk about!

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

When you have a big vision, and you practice what you preach.

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

Building and setting your product team for success.

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

“Problem: an early-stage startup didn’t have access to prospective users. Solution: crawl and parse a bunch of slack groups to generate a graph of the qualified prospects.”

View Growthmentor Profile

10. Ryan Wardell

Describe yourself

“Hey – I’m Ryan. I’ve spent the past decade or so starting, growing and selling online businesses. I sold my previous startup in 2012 and since then I’ve mentored at startup accelerators in the US, UK, Australia and Germany. These days I run a community for growth-stage SaaS founders and help them get more customers using cold email outreach, partnerships, PPC and conversion rate optimization.”

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

To help early stage founders, especially in SaaS.

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

Being scrappy & finding creative ways to generate revenue. Most startup advice you hear is Silicon Valley-centric and only works when you’re able to raise huge amounts of funding from VCs. For everyone else, getting to profitability ASAP is critical – and that means generating revenue.

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

How to get your first $10K in monthly recurring revenue as a bootstrapped SaaS founder.

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

“For a previous client, I generated a 14% increase in revenue in 6 weeks through CRO experiments. As for others – actual growth hacks tend to be specific to a particular business. One of my clients made a fortune out of turning hobbyists into a vast army of affiliates, but this wouldn’t work in other niches. I’m not going to say any more publicly as this is still a very crucial marketing channel for that client.”

View Growthmentor Profile

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.