Here are the 18 Growth Mentors of October

1. Mia Čomić

Describe yourself

I am a curious, creative, and growth-driven inbound marketer with 7+ years of experience, primarily focused on content, SEO, and social media.

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

I love exchanging ideas, helping others, and connecting with people with a growth-oriented mindset.

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

Having a growth mindset means you are committed to lifelong learning, always aiming to become better while nurturing a low ego and recognizing opportunities to level up wherever you go.

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

I would mentor someone on content marketing because I am highly experienced in that field. I have tested many hypotheses throughout the years, developed my own frameworks, and worked in both B2B and B2C.

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

I have developed a way to increase response rates from subject matter experts when it comes to gathering insights for roundups. The key is to crush the stereotype following marketers – that we have a hidden agenda or want to pull wool over people’s eyes. Honesty in approach, along with being straightforward and investing the time to craft relevant and personalized questions – that’s the key to success. This is how I managed to get responses from amazing professionals from LinkedIn, Netflix, Spotify, Bumble, Amazon, and more. If you honestly want to open a dialog in the industry, experts will recognize that. Past track record of similar successful, quality content serves as your social proof.

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2. Daniel Cardona

Describe yourself

Best marketing hack? Become a Father of an 11yo and teach her what she wants to learn, not what you think is the best for her, copy that to your own business.

What I’ve learned so far, is that marketing is all about creating a good story, understanding the users that are going to connect and love the story, and delivering the message on the right platforms.

Currently, I work as a Head of Marketing at Vozy, a voice bot SaaS platform that allows companies to give time back to customers by speeding up phone conversations

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

I discovered that if you help people narrow their story and explain complex processes ina simple way, that’s compound growth for the ecosystem: clear positioning = more customers = more problems solved = happy mentees and mentor 🙂

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

If you have a VIEW you have it all:

• Vulnerability: You do not know it all, act accordingly
• Impartiality: the art of asking a question without looking for a particular answer
• Empathy: Manage oneself to understand how can you make others happy (including your customers)
• Wonder: Explode your curiosity in everything that you do, and you’ll find the answers you’re looking for”

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

Asking better questions, that is the beginning of it all, you can have the tools, the frameworks, the people, but if you ask the wrong questions you’ll find wrong answers.

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

We needed to raise USD $1M in 3 months for an NGO I was working with, usual donors were off, and we got no money to run ads or promote the purpose of the team.

We ask 3 digital companies to help us out (Hunter.io, prospectin, rocketreach, Drift) we create a funnel (LinkedIn Inbox + Email x Team members) with a video of the guys we were trying to help + Calendly link to one of our team members.

We get into the inbox of top sustainability leaders across LATAM, we close partnerships, create events, filled our goal 1 week prior to the deadline, and exceed it (1.2MM gathered).

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3. Thomas Stoffer

Describe yourself

Hey I’m Thomas and for over 5 years I’ve been helping all sorts of clients truly understand their audience’s needs and create/adapt digital experiences based on that.

I believe 99% of the digital experiences we have are poorly executed. I would like to help you become part of the 1% and therefore get a huge advantage from your competition.

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

I want to help others improve their digital experiences (products, websites etc.)

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

A true mindset for me is too look at an entire company in complete freedom. This means that all options to change a business’ course, looks and ways should be on the table. Additionally true growth needs to hurt a little before you’ll benefit from it, so it should be okay to try and fail.

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

I’ll help you understand your audience and create digital experiences they’ll actually love to use.

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

For one of my clients in the recruitment field Google Analytics showed that a huge percentage of the sales came from job boards. While the client wanted to double down on the investment for their jobboards in my customer research two other important platforms arose.

Firstly, the majority of the applicants stated they noticed the company’s good social presence. Secondly, almost all of the applications told us a referring colleague, friend or family member was the most important reason to not only apply, but also sign the contract with the company.

Instead of doubling down on jobboards, the client setup a rewarding referral system and spend more money on social media & branding. This way we were able to increase the amount of applicants hugely.

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4. Baptiste Lilles

Describe yourself

Hello, I’m Bap – I worked 5y in marketplace/SaaS startups. I had the chance to focus on different challenges across marketing, growth, product and scalability. I can be available to help anytime 🙂

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

Build network, help “friends” facing issues or challenge I worked on.

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

SMB, Marketplace, SaaS together; but also each of them independently.

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

Growth is a passion and I would be happy to help everyone sharing the same spirit.

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

Reinventing the wheel when we focus on optimizing the same over and over.

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5. Denny Hollick

Describe yourself

Hey I’m Denny – I’m a polymath that loves trying new things, leading teams, building stuff that gets people excited, and marrying ideas to solve problems in creative ways.

I’ve been a founder of a Techstars supported startup, led marketing at Canada’s first Robo-advisor, and led growth and product work at larger enterprises looking to innovate at scale. Today I lead Customer Marketing at Unbounce with our strategic growth team.

I love helping people nail their product marketing, find new unsaturated growth channels, and build a habit of continuous improvement in their work.

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

I enjoy meeting other marketers who have the same problems I do/did, and talking through problems and ideas.

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

A growth mindset for me is to be in the habit of regularly evaluating what could be better, and taking actions towards that. It’s a state of constant curiosity and a desire to grow.

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

How to build a happy, high-performing team – I get the most joy out of seeing others grow and teams thrive. I also end up learning a significant amount myself along the way since people, teams and organizations are complex organisms and none is exactly the same.

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

Without any development resources and only 10 weeks, I had to build a digital ‘lending’ product proof of concept for a bank whose customers were extremely debt adverse.

With my team, we created several new products that were unique for lending products as they solved specific problems and tested them with fake landing pages. Most failed, but 1 or 2 got really great feedback (specifically, an education loan called the ‘level-up loan’ to help you get your next promotion) Using a bunch of no-code solutions and 3rd party vendors we launched the product in a few weeks, had thousands apply, and started seeing conversion rates over 25%.

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6. Ani Manukyan

Describe yourself

Hey there! I’m Ani, a Growth Consultant. Currently, I’m also the Global Marketing Lead at Bird Control Group. I believe that success= hard work + dedication + a pinch of luck. What I’m really passionate about is building/setting up teams for (international) growth, finding the business growth bottlenecks, and structuring companies for rapid growth.

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

Serve the start-up & scale-up world by providing growth mentorship and inspiring those who are crazy & brave enough to change the world with their innovative solutions.

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

Being able to talk less, listen more, and act fast. Data levels all arguments – so put aside opinions and validate assumptions.

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

Setting up & coaching (growth) teams for success, lead generation campaign planning, budgeting, conversion rate optimization & growth strategy.

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

Changed hiring plans of a startup that they haven’t thought of before. This would change their entire marketing & sales strategy. It was very risky but eventually, it paid them off by unlocking new market opportunities (inc. internationalization) and significantly improving their growth rate.

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7. Farrah Fan

Describe yourself

I’m an ex-scientist turned CMO who has worked in large multinational companies as well as SaaS startups. I take my learnings from my diverse experience to help companies grow through experimentation and scaling success. I believe the key to unlocking growth is understanding your customers through qualitative and quantitative data in order to maximize value for your customer.

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

I want to help others to benefit from the hard lessons I had to learn through my career so they can get to success faster.

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

A growth mindset is one that is always looking to learn and grow, knowing that we all have the capacity to get better at what we do every single day.

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

growth strategy

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

We were attempting to scale out our paid search program on hundreds of thousands of products and were limited by the number of keyword and product matches. Because of the sheer quantity of products, you cannot do this manually. We were able to use our internal database that matched our products to competitor products and use keyword tools that allowed us to get those keywords that our competitor’s products ranked for and bid on those. Unlike traditional competitor keyword campaigns which required you to bid on branded keywords costing you a lot of money because of low quality score, these were mostly unbranded mid-volume keywords that were cost-effective to bid on.

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8. David Bielik

Describe yourself

I’m founder of NerdyData.com (source code search engine) which I’ve been working on (profitably) since 2013. I’m also a full-time product manager, and specialize in web SaaS, Javascript, and helping startups find PMF.

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

I enjoy problem solving with early startup founders as a way to give back from my learnings over the past 8 years as a founder myself.

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

Seeking the truth and running experiments to answer some of the many questions you’ll have while building a product.

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

Building a product for your first 10 users and finding the right fit for feature development.

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

At an old job, I built a tool that crawled and indexed a competitor’s client-specific javascript files to show off their poor performance and data leakage. It was promptly followed by a legal threat and job offer from that company.

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9. Frank Jiang

Describe yourself

My name is Frank and I’m a co-founder of SWIDIA, a specialized growth marketing team with a hyper-focus on scaling users for consumer Series A-C startups. The team has played instrumental roles during the growth stages of digital marketplaces like Cameo, Radish Fiction, STEEZY, as well as food/delivery startups like Chowbus, Foxtrot, and Kraft Heinz Innovation. I enjoy launching new ventures and design businesses with the latest growth approach tried-and-true on the frontline of venture-funded startups. We live in quite a time where change is the only constant, and nothing fires me up more than figuring out the inner-workings of all these moving pieces and creating the most direct approach that cuts through the noise.

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

As growth function becomes increasingly important to high-growth and established businesses alike, I’d like to share what I’ve learned from the frontlines of growth marketing and enable more businesses to grow confidently.

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

A growth mindset requires both the art and science. On one hand you need the rigor of science – the analytics, the logic, the pattern recognition, the iterative and experimental approach, the clues that lie among the web of data; on the other hand, you need the sentiment of an artist – the empathy, the social listening, the culture, the relevance, the sensitivity to trends. Growth is such an integrated function today touching marketing / product / dev / branding / strategy that there are plenty of growth approaches and styles with various weights assigned to each area, but they share one common ground – the relentless problem solving and an open-mind to both accept and develop creative solutions.

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

Often times we place way too much emphasis on the solution. The best practice. That one formula that solves all the problems. That one optimization framework that does it. Sometimes we forget to look within, finding ourselves, finding our own way of thinking and own style. I’d love to help someone find her own way of problem solving. You are unique. You have your experiences, preferences, biases, and approach. Understanding oneself makes seeking solutions externally that much easier, and that’s such a low-hanging fruit that packs tremendous potential.

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

When a brand was looking to validate 10+ product ideas through some interview platform/agency that charges a ton for each meeting, I advised them to spend 10% of budget on running FB/IG ads on landing pages of these ideas generating leads, invited leads to participate in interviews (for free through Mailchimp drips), then spent another 10% of budget on incentives to join the interviews. 20% of budget got us 3x participants who already went through a round of pre-selection / qualification through paid ads (at scale, split-tested demo and value props also). Some of them became power users and all persona for the chosen product idea actually used the names of these participants.

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10. Ari Bencuya

Describe yourself

I’m a serial entrepreneur with experience on both sides of the table. I love working with early stage startups to help path out how they can get to their first or second investment. I’ve built 4 companies and exited one.

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

I really enjoy meeting new people and solving problems for early stage startups.

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

A growth mindset means understanding that your aim is always to get 10x bigger. The goal becomes to create a scalable path from 1 to 10.

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

Early stage market fit

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

Started a podcast for micro-influencers to help expand our products reach.

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11. Ashley Kemper

Describe yourself

Hi there! I’m Ashley, the Head of Marketing at Double. Previously I spent six years at Asana building marketing teams across web, SEO, and paid acquisition. Before that I held roles at a marketing agency, the Digital Media team of National Geographic, and various publishing companies. My favorite marketing challenges to solve are ones blending complex data analysis with customer insights and marketing instincts.

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

I’ve been lucky to have amazing mentors who provided me with invaluable insights early in my career, and I’m hopeful that I can do the same for others!

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

Having a growth mindset means being curious, determined, and impatient when it comes to driving results for your campaign or company.

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

UX strategy

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

We were rearchitecting our self-serve signup flow at the same time we were launching a new programmatic campaign optimization data pipeline. Navigating both launches while also being sure we’d understand the relative impact of each took some serious cross-functional coordination and data tap dancing to pull off!

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12. Etienne Gillard

Describe yourself

I am an entrepreneur with more than 25 years of success and failures. Born and raised in Belgium, I lived 18 years in Spain and moved to the US by the end of 2012. A few years ago, I started mentoring early-stage founders nurturing them as first time CEOs. I enjoy learning from them while sharing my experience in business development, product development, team building and sales.

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

I started my first business in High School, another one with a friend while in College, then I moved from Belgium to Spain and I co-founded an Edtech company. A few years later, I moved from Spain to the US and founded a Fintech startup. For the last 25 years, so many experts helped me nurturing my learning curve, now it is my turn to give back. For the last 5 years, I have been enjoying mentoring others startup founders.

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

A growth mindset is the willingness to keep learning and improving your soft skills while you never stop discovering and testing new tools and techniques.

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

Building teams. To be successful you need a team who always does the right thing even if no one is watching.

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

For one of my ventures, we wanted to test a new concept. In two days, without spending money, we built an empty shell MVP, launched a landing page and got our first leads the following week.

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13. Barry Magennis

Describe yourself

Over the last 12 years I have helped companies grow and scale using SEO through a data and process driven approach.

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

To help people and build a network of connections.

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

Growth mindset is believing and growth is always possible. To never give up even when you want to.

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

How content can be used to scale your organic traffic.

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

I needed to repeatedly export huge amounts of data from Google Search Console in order to identify low hanging fruit for SEO. This typically took around 10 minutes to set up and the data set size was restricted to 1,000 rows. I had a developer friend build a web app that now takes me less than 1 minute to get the data I need and up to 10,000 rows. Not only that but it also crawls the URLs in the data and fetches meta information, and tells you whether that particular keyword is in your meta data. Its https://pulse.boostlabs.co.uk

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14. Vahe Baghdasaryan

Describe yourself

I’m a Product and Growth Marketing Manager, working with B2C and consumer startups. I worked or advised companies such as SoloLearn, EduDO, Skyeng, Wakie etc. Currently, I head lifecycle marketing operations at CoinStats. My passion lies in optimizing retention and engagement for growth.

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

To help other growth professionals in their journey.

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

Having an analytical mind, and trying to solve problems in unconventional ways.

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

The topic would be how to optimize retention and engagement. Most of my experience is in that field, and in another hand that’s my passion!!

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

My current company is in the fintech industry. We require our users to connect their investment accounts to our platforms to get thoroughly detailed analytics and advice on how to grow their crypto investments. Many users were dropping off the portfolio connection flow, and our team didn’t know the reason. We were doing redesigns or creating onboarding flows. However, it didn’t help. When I came, I started gathering quantitative and qualitative data from our users, and after analyzing these, I understood that there is a trust problem. They didn’t fully trust us to connect their portfolios to the platform. So, in the stage of the connection flow that had the highest drop-off rate, I suggested adding statements that described why we needed them to connect the portfolios. Now, we see that the drop off rate is significantly lower than before.

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15. Srinivas Kumar

Describe yourself

I started digital marketing as a career 10+ years back when offline retail and offline events were thriving. In hindsight, i can vouch this was the best thing that happened to me. Now, its time for me to share my plethora of learnings in the digital advertising space and add value to you and to your business.

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

Its a pay back time for me. In my 10+ years of performance digital marketing experience, my best learning came from practical experiences where lot of my senior’s/peers shared their knowledge, compared to books or certifications. I believe the same holds true for many individuals like me. So its time i share what i know so they dont do the same mistakes again, but do different ones.

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

Learn–> Do–> Test–> Fail Fast> Repeat

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

PPC ( Google ads) would be first choice as i specialize in that for 10 + years running campaigns globally.

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

In 2018, when my company started to focus on developers to sell their Maps APIs, i conceptualized, executed a 360 degree virtual hackathon calling all developers to work on problems taking Maps APIs as one of the components. When brands were still talking about physical hackathons, i thought of virtual hackathon ( well ahead of times.. ). With 14K+ participants generating revenue for the company and filling up tech talent pool. I got a global recognition for the effort as well for the same.

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16. Patrick Burke

Describe yourself

I’m a growth marketer and content creator with over 13 years of experience at global ad agencies and startups. Over my career, I’ve worked on some of the largest brands in the world across verticals ranging from travel to tech, and food to finance.

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

I enjoy meeting new people and sharing my experience and expertise with others and I believe in paying it forward.

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

A growth mindset for me is the never-ending pursuit of self-improvement. It includes an unquenchable thirst to learn new things and sharpen your existing skills and knowledge. Cultivating a growth mindset means maintaining a deep curiosity about yourself, the world around you, and your place in that world.

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

Content marketing. Akin to free mentoring, I believe that providing content to help educate or entertain is the best way to make connections and contribute to the community, rather than seeking to sell from the first time you meet someone. Content is the cornerstone of a great brand experience and throughout my career I’ve been fortunate to be at the forefront of the discipline and witness the evolution of marketing from brand-led to user-led, which has made the internet a better place to spend time. I live and breathe content creation as a strategist, copywriter, photographer, and expert on distribution on all channels.

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

Working at MullenLowe, I was tasked with creating a new content hub to drive mass awareness to one of our client’s in the crowded and competitive world of recipe websites. From speaking to consumers, I discovered that one of the main challenges they had was quickly finding a recipe once they’d arrived on the homepage of a recipe site. So, to stand out from the crowd, I came up with the idea of building the website around a 3-step quiz to help people find tonight’s dinner and pull them deeper into the website. The quiz asked users what their main ingredient is, what type of cuisine they were in the mood for, and how much time they had, and provided 10 recipes to match each search combination. As a result, it engaged users with an 85% completion rate, 4+ minutes per session, and over 5 pages per visit. I chose the name “What’s for Dinner?” because it both matched the product experience and there were hundreds of thousands of Google searches for that term each year. In under a year, Whatsfordinner.com reached over 10 million people and achieved a top 3 ranking for the everyday question the site’s named after.

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17. Julia Zhusman

Describe yourself

Hi, I’m Yulia – Deputy CPO in the international crowd-sourced same-day delivery company Dostavista (called Borzo outside of Russia). I built an amazing team of Product Analysts in this company, who are also researchers, so basically it’s an R&D team. Also, I manage Product Operations and consult Product Managers.

As a deputy CPO, I supervise organizational changes, process improvements, and methodology training. I’m a data-savvy and data-driven, strategically thinking Product Manager and my teams are using the same approach:) I can consult on Product Analytics, help with researches, give advice on building key metrics trees or finding growth loops in your cases. Also, I can share my experience with hiring and motivating a product and analytics dream team to the point where employees have outgrown me as experts in their fields (it feels amazing, by the way!).

I love inspiring people and would be glad to share my experience with you.

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

I love inspiring people and good at it, I’m attentive listener and glad to share experience with more people.

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

For me working with a growth mindset means answering challenges, making bold experiments, and continuously learning from them. Also, I’m adept in data-driven approaches and for me, growth and data-driven approach are interconnected.

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

Data-driven product management.

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

Top of my achievements in Borzo:

• Resolved top 1 reason of couriers payments unfairness – got rid of direct relation between courier and client pricing, reorganized pricing functionality in the system. Courier payments per hour became significantly more stable and fair (interquartile range decreased 3 times).
• Initiated, controlled development, testing, roll-out, and related experiments monitoring for one of the top company projects: routing of orders with wide delivery intervals. The routing solution improves utilization by 15-30% and the margin increased correspondingly.
• Identified orders visibility problem in the couriers & orders matching algorithm, replaced it by another one. Assignment time became more stable (75th percentile of assignment time decreased 2 times). Cancellation rate during low supply periods (holidays, high season in big cities) decreased 20-30%.

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18. Jahnavi Ray

Describe yourself

I’m an analytical and ROI-driven business expert with experience in developing cross-functional integrated campaigns for various industries using diverse marketing channels. I have over fourteen years of global experience building strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including sales, product managers, partners, customers, and vendors. I am a lifelong learner and constantly seeking ways to exchange the knowledge.

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

As an immigrant, I had a hard time establishing myself in the industry despite of experience – my 14 years in the field has now enabled me to make it comparatively easier for others and help them with innovative growth strategies and tactics to do better in their jobs.

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

Growth mindset is being agile and open to the world of possibilities. It is a shift of mindset from knowing everything to learning anything that would enable me to be smarter, more efficient and more collaborative in any environment. Learning from anything, anyone, anytime, and every single day adds substance to my existence!

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

Demand Generation

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

I turned a brand awareness conference into a lead generation machine, and enabled even the leadership team who attended the conference to find leads for sales. This resulted it to be one of the most successful conferences for the organization!

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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.