I just realised that I am a Growth Hacker. One of those moments where something just resonates strongly with you. So what is a growth hacker?
I spent 4 years working for a large advertising agency and never really fitted in. To be honest too much corporate b***s**t and spin with a polished veneer for my liking. It was all about thinking up fancy strategies and ensuring the clients were ‘fairly’ billed! The priority was to produce advertising for the client and hopefully win awards. If we generated any sales then that was purely a by-product.
I was not happy there, the worst 4 years of my working life until I finally said enough was enough and handed in my notice.
That was in 2005 and was the start of my becoming a Growth Hacker although I did not know it at the time – as the term was first coined in 2010 by Sam Ellis.
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So what is a growth hacker? A definition that fits me was coined by Andrew Chen – he wrote that growth hackers “are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of ‘How do I get customers for my product?’ and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph.
For years I have tried to clearly define that I am part marketer and part techie -I would say I am 66% marketer and 33% techie. In traditional recruitment this skill set does not tick the right boxes – to them you are either a marketer or techie and never the twain shall meet.
So this led to many frustrating years trying to find fulfilling, conventional employment. That was until that day in March 2005 I took the step to leave ‘conventional’ employment and do my own thing, forge my own path.
This path eventually led me to Keap / Infusionsoft in 2009. I was working with a traditional direct markting client and we needed to get online ASAP as our sales were plumetting due to the recession and the growing competition online. I needed a way to do email marketing, take orders online, deliver digital product, run memebrship sites and manage affilaites. Keap / Infusionsoft does all this and was a turning point for me.
At last I had found somewhere to ‘hang my hat’, somewhere where being both a marketer and a techie was a definite advantage. Firstly I needed the marketign know how to figure out how we woudl market and them I needed the techncial ability to master the techie aspect of Keap / Infusionsoft. For the first time in my career I was playing to my strenghts.
Since 2010 I have worked with a whole range of clients where I constantly juggle my role between marketer and techie and I am right at home. In January 2014, after using Keap / Infusionsoft for 5 years I took the step to become officially recognised by infusionsoft and I took the exam to become an Keap / Infusionsoft Certified Partner.
So after all these years I can now define that I am a Growth Hacker.
Wikipedia definition of what is a growth hacker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hacking
