Was just watching Treehouses CEO Ryan Carson talking about how he runs an $8 million dollar business with no managers and 4-day-workweek - Super interesting! Cliff notes: 1. On acquiring the first 100 users - Becoming an ‘overnight success’ takes years of hard work. - Ryan built up a good network by being the ‘connector’ through his conference business. - Treehouse was launched at one of his own conferences. - The single biggest source of success he’s had was building up his network through MeetUps and conferences. Give them so much value and then ask them to buy later. - Start a MeetUp with 10 people first. It starts small and then builds quickly. - - You can get a projector and then invite someone to speak – offer them value. - Give them free drinks at the end. 2. Books to read - How to Win Friends and Influence People – key book to Ryan’s success. People start to think you know what you’re doing as you continue to grow (for better or worse). - Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook – a book full of case studies on giving value first and then asking later. - The Great Game of Business – great for if you’re scaling your business and if you’ve moved into a CEO role. 3. Business Strategies - Treehouse uses a blended model for attribution. - They spend a lot of money on YouTube advertising. - It took them a very long time to build internal marketing tracking tools. Ryan wishes they would have done it a lot sooner. 4. On having no managers. - They communicate through their internal Reddit-like forum called Convoy.They first had an internal discussion about this and it was very fruitful. - Lots of excitement and concern at the same time. - People at the frontline know what’s going on best – Ryan and his co-founder Alan have a small say with hires. - Ryan and Alan set the high level goals each month. 5. On getting things done using no manager - To get things done, people start projects inside of Flow. Think of these as setting goals and defining what needs to be done to get there. You then add who you need inside the project and then people decide whether they want to join or not. - Each day, there’s an e-mail sent to the entire group noting what new projects have started. Lots of insightful things being proposed per day. - You now have 60 people thinking like owners instead of having a small group of people dictating everything. - The feeling is chaotic but it has been shockingly effective. 6. The 4 day work week - No matter how much you work, there is always going to be more work. - Ryan figured if they worked smartly, they could cram 5 days of work into 4 days. - People say they have 20% less time than competitors. Ryan’s response: Ryan wants to build a long term company and it sounds crazy but it works. - The 4 day work week also enables him to spend more time with his kids, which is more valuable than sending a few more e-mails. - The whole benefit of being an entrepreneur is to have a universe that you control where you can have fun and personal time. 7. On attracting world class investors: - He met Ryan through Kevin Rose through his conference business. They became friends slowly. Ryan ended up showing Treehouse to Kevin. Kevin then said he wanted to invest and then introduced him to Chamath Palihapitiya, former VP of Growth at Facebook and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. Ryan recommends AngelList becomes it makes it easier to raise a Seed or A round. - Meeting people in person changes everything because it establishes a real relationship. 8. On Entrepreneur’s Organization - The big benefit is having a forum of other entrepreneurs because you can talk about all your business or personal problems. - You’re not allowed to give advice in the forum – people share experiences instead. - It’s small group therapy for CEOs. - There are spousal groups as well. 9. If Ryan could go back and change anything from when he first started Treehouse, he would build the measurement tools first to understand things better.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:02:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015