Jim Huffman is the CEO of GrowthHit, a growth marketing consultancy specializing in running customer-centric growth experiments. He is also the Co-founder of One Day Design, Handsome Chaos, and is the Host of the podcast If I Was Starting Today.
Jim is the author of the Amazon bestseller The Growth Marketers Playbook using his experience from growing two startups to over $10M in sales. In addition to these accomplishments, he has led workshops at Fortune 500 brands, including FedEx, Oreo, and Intuit.Jim is a Startup Mentor at Techstars.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How does GrowthHit serve clients?
- What is GrowthHit’s strategy for vetting brands for product-to-market fit?
- Jim Huffman shares how he decides which companies to work
- Why Jim started a company and a startup consultancy
- Balancing resources between an agency and startup studio
- Culture as the bond that holds everything together
- Why should you productize services?
- The benefits of partnerships in managing an agency
- How GrowthHit helps businesses market their services
- Jim’s mentors and memorable podcast guests
- Structuring a marketing funnel to drive conversions
In this episode…
Growth marketing is one of the most essential services agencies can offer their clients. However, to provide professional services, you must develop a structured growth plan for your agency. So how can you scale your business to optimize your services and maximize sales?
When structuring his agency for growth, Jim Huffman referenced Nathan Barry’s framework for wealth creation. This model regards agency growth as a ladder in which you begin as an employee, start to market services, productize those services, and then sell products before progressing into a SaaS platform. The wealth creation ladder allowed Jim to productize growth as a service by offering his clients web pages, ads, and emails. By implementing this approach, you can scale effectively and generate new clients.
Listen to this Inspired Insider Podcast episode with Dr. Jeremy Weisz, featuring the Founder and CEO of GrowthHit, Jim Huffman. They discuss Jim’s strategy for vetting companies for product-to-market fit, how he structures his agency and company culture, and setting up a marketing funnel to drive conversions.
Resources mentioned in this episode
- GrowthHit
- If I Was Starting Today by Jim Huffman
- One Day Design
- Handsome Chaos
- Jim Huffman on LinkedIn
- Yonathan Ayenew on LinkedIn
Special Mentions:
- Gino Wickman on INspired INsider
- The Ladders of Wealth Creation: A Step-by-Step System to Up Your Earning Power by Nathan Barry
- Tommy Griffith on If I Was Starting Today
- Rob Sobers on If I Was Starting Today
- Mike Michalowicz on If I Was Starting Today
- Andrew Wilkinson on LinkedIn
- Adam Weiler on LinkedIn
Books Mentioned:
- The Growth Marketer’s Playbook: A Strategic Guide to Growing a Business in Today’s Digital World by Jim Huffman
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
- Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
- Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters
- The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss
Related Episode(s):
- [Top Agency Series] Sales First, Marketing After With Joel Erway, Founder of The Webinar Agency
- [Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech
- Automation Solutions with Wade Foster, Founder of Zapier
- Delivering Value and Overcoming Adversity with Patrick Campbell Co-Founder of Profit Well
- [Venture Capital Series] Investing in Early Stage Startups like Pipedrive, Zevia, Kevita, & More with Zac Zeitlin of New Ground Ventures
- EO Chicago | How To Start a Beauty Brand From Scratch With Anthony Standifer, Co-Founder of mSEED Group
Sponsor for this episode
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Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Jeremy Weisz 0:19
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of Inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I’m going to introduce formally Jim Huffman of the GrowthHit company Jim I always like to mention other episodes people should check out. And I’ve had some top agencies on Joel Erway founder The Webinar Agency and Kevin Hourigan, Spinutech that he found his company in 1996 that some SAS companies on Zapier was on Profit Well, which I heard just got purchased not too long ago, and Pipe Drive, those are cool ones. Also, before we hit record, Jim and I were talking about Anthony Standifer, who is in manufacturing, and so you can check that episode out and many more on inspiredinsider.com. And before I introduce Jim, this episode is brought to you by Rise25 and it Rise25 we help businesses give to connect to their dream 100 relationships, and how do we do that we help you run your podcast. And you know, for me, we are really an easy button for people to launch and run their podcast. I’m the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to do that over the past decade than the profile the people and companies I most admire on this planet and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should and we’ll talk about Jim’s podcast actually, too. You can go to Rise25.com email us anytime with any questions you may have. You know John Corcoran, and I’ve been doing it for over a decade. Happy to answer so [email protected]. Check it out. Jim Huffman is CEO and Founder of GrowthHit and it’s a growth marketing consultancy. That’s generated over $250 million in sales for their clients. And he’s going to startups from idea to over $10 million in sales. He spent over $4 million on Facebook and Instagram ads. He’s also the author of The Growth Marketers Playbook. Jim, I think he even pushed Seth Godin off of a number one spot for a couple of days, which is a big feet if you know Seth Cohen’s got a lot of clout in the space. In Jim is also startup mentor, textos, General Assembly and more. He’s led workshops at Fortune 500 brands like FedEx, Hot Wheels, and Intuit. And if he wasn’t busy enough, he’s also co founder of one day design, in handsome chaos. So in his podcasts you could check it out is If I Was Starting today. So Jim, thanks for joining me.
Jim Huffman 2:49
Jeremy, thanks for having me. You’ve had some amazing guests. I’m excited to be included. But really excited to chat with you today.
Jeremy Weisz 2:57
Me to tell people about growth it and then what you do there.
Jim Huffman 3:00
Yeah, so GrowthHit is a growth marketing agency. So business owners or marketers hire us to work with their company to be there, plug and play growth team and simply put, we do three things. We can optimize your website. Otherwise as as conversion rate optimization, we do website design and development. We run your paid ads on social on Google, we do email automation, but really we’re trying to run that growth strategy trying to be that plug and play growth team. So we’ve been we’ve been at it for almost six years now. So but yeah, that’s little bit about growth hit
Jeremy Weisz 3:35
ideal clients that work with you. So I go to the website, it seems like you have DTC brands, you have E commerce, you have SAS, you have lead gen. Is that accurate?
Jim Huffman 3:46
Yeah, we like catching companies. We have industries we like but it’s really a phase like it’s you know, are you pre or post product market fit, we take some that are pre product market fit, but they that can be dicey, but it’s really after you truly have something special and you’re looking to scale and grow. For example, a company that we have some clients that just raise an ARB round they’re looking to grow other like b2b companies that are really expanding out of their their geography, we’re we’re helping them we love e commerce. We love Legion when it’s a wide ranging appeal product. And we love SAS as well especially if you have like self service pricing where we can do a lot of testing. So yeah, that’s a little bit about the client base.
Jeremy Weisz 4:30
That probably helps you do your job easier if you have someone probably market fit, you could do something you can look at their website make you know some the CRO tweaks to it and then pour the fuel on it to run ads and I just want to encourage people if you go to their website, Growthhit.com And you can scroll to the bottom and they have a funnel tear down and you can kind of experience at least I felt that way Jim I could experience where you Your mind is at and how your thought processes by going to the funnel tear down. So you can scroll all the way down to the bottom and click on that. And they have lots dozens of these funnel tear downs that you can actually see how their mind works through the, you know, through those screenshots. And I’m wondering, how do you bet the companies, you know, for that to make sure that they have product market fit?
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