This newsletter could be a failure

Hi there 👋,

Welcome to the 1st edition of Growth Waves 🌊.

I thought long and hard about where to start and what was the ultimate growth advice I could give you. No pressure 😅.

What if it fails? What if everyone unsubscribes?

The truth is: even with all my research about what you want to hear about, it could fail, and that is ok.

So that is the topic for today: failed growth experiments.

What happens when an experiment fails

Sometimes when we see a failure, like an A/B test where the variant completely flopped, thoughts rush through our heads:

• How did I get this wrong

• I was so certain this was going to work

• I really don't want to share this with the team...

In the end, I blame the word. Failure. It sounds negative, just plain bad. So either we need to change that association or focus on learnings:

Failure -> Learnings

From there, we can focus on moving forward. Not ignoring or being scared of failures, but focusing on what we can learn.

Part 1: Ask yourself three questions:

1. What is the hypothesis behind it?

Too often, we create broad hypotheses “if we talk about the benefits, the conversion rate will go up.”. When you do this, it suggests a whole area doesn’t work for you.

One failed Facebook Ad doesn’t mean Facebook doesn’t work for you at all. The same goes for experiments. You need to get specific with your hypotheses about what an experiment is and isn’t teaching you.

2. What did and didn’t work?

After the experiment, break it down into the different areas to understand why it didn’t work:

• Audience (is it the right audience)

• Platform (is it the right platform to reach your audience)

• Messaging (is it how we are communicating)

• Friction (is it too big a step we expect people to take)

• Execution (is this the right execution of the idea)

Figure out what exactly is the reason it wasn’t a win rather than a blanket statement: it failed. Matt Lerner, the founder of Startup Core Strengths, has a great video explaining how to do this step by step:

3. Is this an area where you have seen success or potential in the past?

If you have seen huge wins in the past or have a lot of data to back it up, it could be worth experimenting with further. It just might have been the wrong execution of the experiment.

Part 2: Create a learning culture

The next step is to make learning from experiments part of your DNA.

In your growth meetings, ensure everyone shares at least one key learning and how that is going to feed into your following experiments. At Heights, we even shared a team failure at the full company meeting every week.

I think it is also key to keep morale up when your overall growth rate is down, as these are the moments where failure is the scariest.

Recommendation

In every newsletter, I will also share a book, individual or newsletter to check out related to that week's topic.

A lot of this week was about mindset, yet most of the books I've read about mindset are great but hard to apply. So I wanted to give you a more practical suggestion:

Follow Brian O'Connor and check out his newsletter:

Here is why: Brian is one of the most eager-to-learn people I know. He has taught me so much and is like a sponge, soaking up everything he learns and applying it. He is never scared to fail and is constantly experimenting

Not only that, he has a great eye for spotting interesting growth stories and learning from there, like:

• What Ryan Reynolds can teach you about low-cost marketing 

• How Steve Job turned Pixel from a failure to a $7.4 Billion business.

That is it for this week! Help me keep learning by dropping me a quick email to let me know what you think,

Daphne