It was my first day in Paris, the start of what I would soon realize was going to be the most important trip of my life.

I was at a Paris Fashion Week event my friend Valentin was co-hosting, and I was wholly unprepared for what was about to happen.

When I arrived, I said hi to Val, a few of the other friends in my Paris crew (mostly members of Val’s team for Unlockt & Exposed), and soon found someone I was looking for - Pierre.

Before I tell you what happened, I have to first tell you that Pierre and I have what I would call a special bond. We’ve shared crazy nights together in Paris (here you’ll find a video of us opening a wine bottle at ~2am from a previous trip), and long days in LA bouncing between locations like the Chateau Marmot & my friend Ben from Wombo’s.. uh.. castle, in Culver City, lol.

And I also think you should know, Pierre recently became the youngest ever creative...

1. AI SEO
2. Traditional SEO via Organic Reddit Content
3. LinkedIn Organic
4. LinkedIn Paid
5. Short-form via agencies that create large proprietary creator networks and software to optimize the practice
6. Streaming platform SEO (Spotify, Soundcloud, Prime Video, etc.)
7. Delivery app SEO (UberEats, DoorDash, Gopuff, etc.)

If you’re exploring interesting marketing or growth concepts, I’d love to hear from you and trade notes.

If you’re interested in chatting generally or potentially becoming a client of Growth Partner Network, drop me a line at sam@growthpartnernetwork.com.

This one’s on a different type of growth.

Growing up so isolated from human interaction and I’ll say.. friendship.. definitely changed me for the better.

Because of my lonely childhood, I have what I would call an intense appreciation for people who are nice to me. I didn’t experience that often as a kid.

But with high highs, come low lows.

So when a human disapproves of something I do, especially one I’ve known for a quite a bit, it’s what I would describe as a vivid, emotional experience.

So, imagine working with about 200 startups, and having the vast majority of your campaigns fail, after typically an exciting 1-2 months filled with joy and anticipation, only to quickly be thrust into – well, you know. The opposite…

It was about 10 years in someone told me that the large digital agencies in LA – like Adquadrant, Hawke Media, and MuteSix, retained clients for an average of 3...

I have a friend who, for the sake of this blog post, I’ll call Todd. He’s a very accomplished “growth guy”, or as I like to say “attention guy”.

He once told me the story of how he got to where he is now, and I have to say, it’s probably one of the most jaw-dropping entrepreneurial stories I’ve ever heard.

So, I’ll share it here, because I figure it would probably help anyone interested understand the way I look at growth, and that’s one of my main purposes with this “blog”.

Long story short, “Todd” bought up ~1,500 sponsored articles, mostly back in 2017 & 2018, that soon started making him around $3.5m/mo from the affiliate links in them. And I assume his costs to maintain the operation… minimal.

By “bought up”, I mean he paid a contributor at a publication to write a “piece” that’s usually just a listicle plastered with affiliate links. For those unaware of the term, a listicle...

It took me a long time to “wake up” to the realization that I was scared of being perceived.

I’ll do my best to explain, but it’s relatively complex.

I grew up with no friends, and so devoid of human interactions, that I was scared to be seen eating alone in the lunchroom at my high school (2,000 students, ~500 per grade), that I used to eat lunch alone in a bathroom stall then go to the library use the computers during lunch period.

But to do so, I need to brave the lunchroom floor to get to the person in charge of allowing students to “sign out” to go to the library, and ask for their blessing.

I can’t really describe it, so I’ll just say it sucked. Big time.

But, as I’ve come to realize more about the true nature of reality as we know it, I’ve come to the conclusion you must rid yourself of as much fear of perception as possible.

One way I practice is by wearing sunglasses...

Don’t worry all day about keeping your mouth closed.

People stare, so what?

It makes life 100x more enjoyable.

Relax. Trust me. They stare in a good way, lol.

Been doing this shit for about 6 months. Trust lol.

P.S. I recommend getting comfortable wearing sunglasses at night so you get over your fear of perception problem.

You’re almost definitely trapped, in your own mind.

Good luck.

Growth is an incredibly interesting concept to me.

As someone who has been helping startups with growth for about 12–13 years, I can confidently say: most founders do not understand it well enough.

The first company I ever helped with growth was Uber. The second was Airbnb. The third, Electronic Arts. Since then, I’ve worked with about 200 companies — mostly venture-backed.

And when I talk with founders, it quickly becomes obvious who actually understands what growth is… and who is just making assumptions.

And let me be clear: I believe assumptions are one of the dumbest things human beings do all day long. Every. Single. One. Including me.
So, with that all said, let’s dive in.

Business Chess vs. Growth

Few founders I meet are clearly thinking deeply about growth in what I consider to be, the correct way.

They’re playing a different game. I’ll call it “business chess” to simplify...

In my career, I’ve probably had conversations with around 2,000 venture-backed founders, and worked with about 200 of them.

On most calls, founders tell me about their vision, their products, their origin story, and their market. But those aren’t the things I care about. However, I listen, intently, to try to understand where they place their focus, what they feel is important to share, where their priorities lie, what motivates them, their theories, their goals, their strengths, their weaknesses, because I learn more by what they don’t say, than what they do.

What these founders don’t usually know, because they view me as an agency, a gun for hire if you will, is that I’m scanning for whether not I think they’re real, for lack of a better way to put it, so I can decide whether or not I want to spend my time with them. Especially now, that we’re living through the early days of what I...