7 Deadly Sins of Growth Hacking, Mastering the Art of Standing Out, and How to Founder

0:01 Today we are talking about growth hacking, entrepreneurship and what it takes to be a great founder, and we have the perfect guest to help us talk through that today Anthony Franco. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric. Thank you for having me. Glad to be here. So why don't we start off by you sharing just a minute or two, a little bit about who you are and what you do? Yeah well, I'm a serial entrepreneur. So when somebody asks me what do you do, I say entrepreneur, which usually they get the look on their face like so you're unemployed, and sometimes that's true. I've started and exited six companies, all of varying sizes and degrees.

0:43 Now I guess my tagline, you could say is I start, I launch, scale and exit companies, and now I help other founders do the same. That's great, and it's not for the faint of heart, is it? This is not for those who are not really in it to win it right. Yeah, entrepreneurship for some reason has gotten this glamorous brand for lack of a better term, and it's really not glamorous, it's hard, it's lonely. Entrepreneurs I mean, if you want me to go dark, entrepreneurs have higher rates of divorce and depression and suicide, and so, yeah, don't go into it for the ego boost.

1:25 It's the wrong career for that. Yeah, it's almost. Why would you do that? Unless you realize the rewards at the end of the journey. But it's also sort of like stringing together a thousand hard days of work to have that glorious outcome is what a lot of people don't realize is that overnight success isn't usually part of the equation. Yeah, yeah, and most entrepreneurs. If they're being honest. You'll ask them why are you an entrepreneur? And they'll tell you because I couldn't get a job otherwise. I think the key to being a great entrepreneur is being able to sell and market the idea for your company.

2:08 Yeah, for sure, in so many different ways, and so we're ready to be inspired. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how you have done this successfully some of the marketing, the growth hacking that you're the most proud of? Yeah, there's a lot. It's really funny. We talk about growth hacking and there's books written on growth hacking and the books have lots of great examples. The problem with those examples and I have one to share the problem with those examples is, once it's out in the universe that this worked, it's now no longer a hack, now it's just noise because everybody's doing it.

2:50 So I'll give you an example of what a growth hack is. So we in my last company, we attended a conference and we did a lot of conferences. We got a lot of leads from enterprises, from conferences, from conferences, and if you've ever been to a trade show, there are hundreds or thousands of booths. That it's just. You get inundated with information from one company to another. Our positioning at the trade show was we helped companies improve their software's user experience. Companies improve their software's user experience. So the UI, or what's also known as the front end, the counter to that is, everybody else there was talking about how to improve their backend, their database, their code, their infrastructure.

3:51 So we came to the conference with a couple of thousands pair of boxer shorts and on the back of the boxer shorts we wrote in big bold text don't just focus on the back end and we handed those out. Our employees were wearing them all around the trade show and we were the bell of the ball. And we were the bell of the ball. Now, if we did that 10 times, it's no longer funny, right? It's no longer novel. So the problem with any quote marketing tactics that come out like that is you have to be novel, you have to be able to stand out, and if you're doing what other people are doing online, offline, it doesn't matter. You're not going to stand out. Therefore, you're going to spend a lot more on it.

4:32 Frankly, you're going to spend a lot more on advertising and marketing because you're trying to rise above the noise and just and you're just paying for impressions at that point. Yeah. So it seems like the key is to number one be committed to coming up with something that is creative or a growth hack like that, that is unique and that will help you stand out in a sea of other people that is trying to get their message out as well. Right, if you're not doing something unique, you know it's it's. It's hard to stand out. So how do you recommend people come up with some of these unique ideas to stand out? Do you have a process for coming up with it?

5:13 Yeah, it's kind of like asking somebody to be funny on the spot. It's really hard, right? It's really hard for you to like the process to come up with really creative ideas. There are people in the world that do that for a living and they earn really good money. So one is hire a true creative director and you don't have to hire them Like go out and find an agency that's willing to give you a little bit of their creative director's time for a fee. Another is ask yourself do a lot of competitive research and ask yourself what's missing? What's the missing message in the sea of people that I'm competing against, what are they missing?

5:55 What's the first principle message that they're missing? One other hack that I'll share is when you're messaging something, when you're trying to get somebody to lean in, there's something that I just recently discovered. When you're messaging something, when you're trying to get somebody to lean in, there's something that I just recently discovered. I call it the seven deadly sins of growth hacking, and the way to think about that is if you take the seven deadly sins and you wrap your hook or your message around one of the sins and get your ideal customer to picture themselves committing that sin, you have a good hook. So if you look at pride, it's like beating your competition.

6:38 If it's sloth, it's getting them to picture themselves on a beach with a margarita right, and those aren't literal ways of doing it. But one way to kind of give you a creative framework is framework that in getting your customer to picture themselves committing one of the sins that's really interesting and I think this idea of coming up with something that is unique, that helps you stand out, is something that people can try to replicate out is something that people can try to replicate. I'll give an example. When I went to the PodFest conference in Orlando two weeks ago, the company that I host this podcast with, buzzsprout they host about 100,000 podcasts there was like 100 companies exhibiting this event, including a number of their competitors, and they did something really creative to stand out where they had like a line.

7:35 They were the only booth that had a line going out of the exhibit hall of people who wanted to meet with them, and what they did was they decided to do a giveaway. That was very unique. They came up with this key chain, a leather key chain, and they put they custom made it for customers and they put a QR code on one side and on the other side they put the logo of your podcast and they burned these leather keychains on site with an engraver and they're like it'll take us like three minutes for a key chain and they made them for their customers, which was a great way to help their customers do marketing.

8:17 But it was also something very personalized for their customers and it really just made people love them and it was a unique thing rather than just like a t-shirt. They also gave out t-shirts they have really cool Buzzsprout t-shirts but they thought beyond just giving out a t-shirt. They also gave out t-shirts they have really cool Buzzsprout t-shirts but they thought beyond just giving out a t-shirt with their name on it and said what can we do to give out something with our customer's brand on it that will help them market their podcast? And so I think that's just a great hook because you had to email them your logo. I would assume now they have your email address. It's really good. I love it. It's a great, great tactic. So I think you can do a lot of things to stand out. It's just coming up with those ideas.

8:58 Like you said, it takes a little bit of thought, a little bit of planning. It takes some intention. I love your suggestions about hire a creative director or work with an agency, one of the things that is actually a bit helpful for me. I hate to admit this, but sometimes I've hired millennials on my marketing team who just you know they're more intent in tune with everything from the memes to like what's funny, like your example, like, and I think that generationally, you know you can get different people on the team and when you sort of challenge them to come up with a creative idea, that's the sort of marketing stuff that people really like to do right. Yeah, I mean, this is really the. When people think about marketing and wanting to do that as a career, this is the kind of stuff that they're wanting to do, right?

9:42 Nobody wants to write technical manuals and feature and feature bullet lists for a product brochure, which is much more of what marketing is really about. But this, this, you know, the creative, the true creative how to stand out. That's really the fun, meaty part of marketing. Absolutely so. Let me shift a little bit and ask a question, since you're an expert and being an entrepreneur and helping founders with advice on how they can get exits, like you've done multiple times, what advice do you have for entrepreneurs and founders about how to sell and market their business Like broadly, what advice do you have for them, given where we're at here in 2025?

10:31 Yeah, so you're leading the witness a little bit, because this is kind of what I do. So I would say hire somebody that knows what they're doing, but it doesn't have to be me. There's a lot of great M&A experts, business brokers, out there that can help them, help you position your business for sale. But having an expert for this look, you're going to exit your business once. If you're lucky, you have a few exits and it's not your core strength and also trying to position your business for sale takes you out of the business, which is the last thing that you want to be doing. When you're trying to sell it, you want it to be growing through the sale, not shrinking because you're not paying attention to it. But some of the tactics in order to position your business for sale.

11:14 First of all, for most businesses not all businesses for most businesses, you're bought on a multiple of profit it's called EBITDA and so you need to make sure you're profitable, otherwise, why is the company buying you? Now, there's rare circumstances when companies are bought for strategic reasons that don't have profit, and I take those listings on as well. But those are the edge cases, not most of the circumstances. So other things that you can do. Make sure your books are super clean, because your books are going to be reviewed by the lender that's going to be lending the money to the buyer. They're going to be reviewed by the buyer. They may be doing quality of earnings reviews and having clean books just kind of has a level of trust that you're already presenting with Another.

12:02 If you can, if you have the opportunity, make sure you have great revenue diversity. In other words, don't have more than 20% of revenue and preferably a lot less with one customer. That can be a red flag or a risk flag. Also, if you're trying to exit your business and you don't want to continue on with the business, then it has to be credibly true that you're not a requirement for the business to continue. So that means you have to kind of start to work your way out of the business earlier than when you want to exit. If you want to leave and the buyer's coming in and saying, well, you're the critical component of the business, what am I buying?

12:46 That's going to really hurt your valuation. I think all of that is great advice. I think all of that is great advice and the follow-up question is if the people buying your business is based on your profit and having good revenue, what's some of the best advice you give to founders about how to grow their business with marketing? To get to that point, I know there's a lot of different channels, there's a lot of different tactics, but you have to get to a certain point. That's interesting, right, and I think a lot of businesses get to a point where they can take it part of the way and then they feel like they've hit a plateau, and so I'm just curious if you've worked with people in that situation and if you've helped them get that growth so that they could then ultimately get their exit.

13:35 So encyclopedias of books have been written on how to grow your business. There's no simple one. The one answer I usually give to founders and when I have a couple of minutes only you have to go sell. If you want your business to grow, then you grow it, you figure it out, you get your nose into it and then, once you have it figured out, you're then allowed to start delegating it to either salespeople or a marketing person or a marketing team. But if you're hoping that you can hire an agency to help you grow without you understanding your customer, why they buy, how they buy, what are effective keywords?

14:24 If you're buying keywords, what's an effective sales pitch? What are the motivating factors for what? You have to know it at your core as a founder. You have to understand why people buy and how to get them to lean in, and most of the time the limiting factor is that the founder just simply doesn't know why people buy from them. So go figure that out first and then you can start scaling. I think that makes a lot of sense. The lesson is that the founder is really the head of sales and the head of marketing to start with, and once you have mastered it, then you need to focus on scaling it with getting people in the business or getting agencies or other helpers to help you scale it.

15:09 I often say when people ask about founders, I'm like the founder is really the chief marketing officer at a lot of companies until they get to a certain size, when it makes sense and they've scaled it, and then they can delegate it like you're saying and I don't know that everyone just naturally thinks about it that way, but I think it makes sense that that is the formula for success, right? Yeah, you are the chief revenue officer period success right, yeah, you're the. You are the chief revenue officer period. Absolutely Well. Is there anything else that you wanted? to share today that that I didn't ask, that you think would be helpful for folks Usually. I like to end on the notion that, look, I, I hang around a lot of founders.

15:51 I'm I'm pretty active here in the Colorado entrepreneurial community and I can just say, if you're an entrepreneur, I know you're lonely. It's a lonely gig and that's a normal feeling. Go find other founders to hang out with. There's nothing better than hanging out around people that aren't having the same problems but are having to conquer the chaos just like you are, and there's nothing like hanging around other entrepreneurs. So go to meetup. Go to go find local groups. Vistage is a great option. I run a founder podcast called how to Founder. It's a proxy for not being lonely. So visit us at howtofoundercom to watch what we talk about.

16:33 But yeah, go surround yourself with other entrepreneurs and that actually helps quite a bit. I'm going to link to your website and your LinkedIn so people can get in touch easily via the show notes if they'd like to continue this conversation. Really appreciate you joining today, sharing your stories, your advice and your insights. Thank you very much for being on today. Thanks for having me, Eric.