On September 4th, 2018 we changed the A records from staging.growthmentor.io to www.growthmentor.io embarking on a mission to change the world create a mentorship platform, unlike any seen before.

12 months later and here I am writing the obligatory “one-year” reflection post.

But instead of making this post about us (what we’ve learned, our stats, and all the self-centered startup drivel) we’d much rather write about how GrowthMentor has impacted the lives of people from all around the world.

If you distill GrowthMentor down to its essence, it is people helping people.

These are the human stories that were made possible thanks to this platform.

Four main types of Growth Mentorship

Oh the data we have collected!

The arena of Growth has many different components (pirate metrics anyone?)

So we knew the session topics on GrowthMentor would vary quite a bit.

We probably didn’t think it would be this diverse though…

GrowthMentor Session Topic v2 - B

We have narrowed it down to 4 main types of mentorship : Marketing, Tool Related, Startup and Career Advice.

You will notice that career advice does not have it’s own piece of the pie.  That is because it falls under different areas based on what type of career someone is considering.

“I’m thinking about starting a career in UX.  I’d like to speak with than a seasoned UX professional and talk things through.”  

Some calls are very focused on one specific topics, while others cover the gamut and touch upon all four areas!

“I have a day job and am thinking about leaving it to focus 100% of my efforts on my SaaS startup.  I would like to start with some content marketing and test the MVP with some paid ads before making a major move.”   

Marketing Mentorship

This category outweighs the other ones in % of session which makes sense since the notion of growth marketing is what this whole platform is based on.

We’ll break this category down into sessions done by founders / co-founders and marketers as these 2 ‘roles’ make up the large majority of our member base.

Marketing Mentorship for Founders

Let’s kick things off with solo founders.

This platform was built for solo founders.

We use the tagline “It’s like having a board of advisors at your fingertips” and we ain’t lying!

 

Dani was incredibly helpful. She reviewed materials I’d sent before the call, and had actionable insights based on the materials and the discussion. She not only focused on the specific requests, but asked pointed, open-ended questions that helped give me perspective as a solo founder.

Tela Andrews | Permanence Labs

Two of the tightest resources in life – time and money.

Speaking with a mentor can save you both!

I had a fantastic mentoring session. Foti took the time to look into my product beforehand and provided spot-on advice and practical recommendations. His knowledge definitely saved me lots of time and money. Besides, his friendliness and enthusiasm gave me an energy boost. It was my first time on Growth Mentor, and what an experience!

Benjamin Rey | Ilini

Founders most likely live, breath and sleep their product, so guess what?  They are biased.

Having a fresh, unbiased set of eyes looking over your work is so imperative.

Lucas was really helpful in helping us understand and flesh out a better value proposition for Encharge.io He came prepared with some concrete ideas about our site layout, structure, and copy. The call was supported with a value prop spreadsheet which I’m going to use to guide me when redesigning our homepage. Highly recommend Luke if you need to help with CRO!

Kaloyan Yankulov | Encharge.io

Speaking out loud and explaining an issue you are having to a third party can really stir things up.

Get unstuck by presenting your situation to someone new and hearing what they have to say about it!

Extremely helpful. I wasn’t too sure what I was getting into when I signed up but after speaking with Mark I am glad that I did. Very smart, experienced, and knowledgeable in multiple industries. Basically he nailed exactly what my issue was with marketing and I have been spinning my wheels for the last 6 months. I really enjoyed speaking to him and Mark couldn’t have been nicer or cooler. Great guy who is here to truly help and didn’t push any product or service on me. Just genuine concern and helpful insight into my company. 10/10.

Will Gordon | Search Partners

GrowthMentor sessions can start off one way and end up focusing on something totally different.

When you invite a mentor to look at your product, you may be opening up a can of worms!

 

Bartosz helped me with much more than I was expecting. Although my initial request was about setting up my first PPC campaign, he pointed out a few important problems with my home page and provided a few valuable suggestions. Throughout the whole session, Bartosz showed genuine interest in my success. He is also a very friendly and open person, a real pleasure to chat with.

Artem Smirnov | flyent

Our expertise filter makes it easy for founders to hone in on the perfect mentor that will help them with exactly the area they are looking to improve.

I enjoyed my session with Ellen! If anyone out there needs help with electrifying their email campaigns, I would strongly suggest you set up a session with Ellen. She gave me powerful tips on how to increase my email openings and response rates.

Corey Hubbard | DreamHighr

We encourage you to speak to many different mentors to truly get different perspectives.

Get a second second opinion from seasoned pros.

My main goal of the call was to validate some ideas that I had received from another GrowthMentor (Foti), regarding initial traction. Mark confirmed the approach and added onto it by suggesting additional (free) resources that I was unfamiliar with. What stood out was his eagerness to help and his experience in the field. It’s clear Mark knows what he’s doing and that he loves helping others getting forward. He went as far as recording a video with feedback on both the marketing website and email list, so it could be shared with the team – and he seemed to really enjoy doing it (that’s important to me). Thanks Mark, you’re a star and I look forward to our next contact.

Lodewijk Veldhuijzen | Anything App

Marketing Mentorship for Marketers

Our second biggest group of users are marketers.

Why would a marketer need marketing help?

The smart ones know that they aren’t the top-dog authority on all things marketing.

They look for a second opinion and enjoy brainstorming with other professionals.

My call with Matthew was fantastic. It’s clear right from the start that he’s super knowledgable and helpful. He shared some great ideas for UGC SEO, and was also helpful in assessing my ideas. Great guy with clear track record of performance. Will follow-up with him ongoing! Highly recommend!

Jacob Elbaum | Voice123

Want to impress your boss?

Run your marketing ideas by someone with more experience than you.

Bahram is an amazing marketer and a very interesting person to talk to. I asked Bahram to share with me some ideas on how to start a new role at a SaaS company and our discussion went beyond all my highest expectations. He knows everything about SEM and SEO and has awesome ideas on how to improve both and all the rest as well. Highly recommend to anyone who’s looking for advice!

Anna Pogrebniak | AddSearch

Using GrowthMentor’s filters, you can get really specific with your search and find a mentor that has experience in your exact industry.

I highly recommend Daniil, after a good session about B2B SaaS marketing. He listened to all I had to say about my specific situation and then came up with great ideas and suggestions. Exactly what I needed. Thanks!

Adam Loke | Coder Society

Tool Mentorship

Tool fatigue is real.

How can you possibly stay up to date with what’s going on the world of MarTech?!

PPC is a the most popular session topic on the platform.

Some members go broad…

 

After the first call with Liliana, I can say she’s a TOP PPC expert. In the 30 mins we had, Lili was able to identify the main problems I was having in my campaigns and propose practical solutions to optimize them and move forward. She has a great vision when it comes to paid advertising, and you can see that right after you start talking to her… so I highly recommend her!!! 🙂

Daniel Aguilar | BigSEO Marketing

While others go very specific into one tool – like Facebook Ads or Google Ads.

Foti is a very experienced marketer and a patient & extremely helpful mentor. I had been struggling with a Facebook Ads issue for two days, trying to figure out why we weren’t having any conversions. Twenty minutes with Foti and we figured out the problem. Awesome experience, can only recommend it to everyone.

Jessi Christian | Coachilla

I’ve been running google campaigns for a while and Lynn pointed out some easy areas to optimize. He helped me cut through everything the Adwords console offers you. Great help!

Russ Adz | Canvastry

You can harness the knowledge of seasoned tool experts and hack your learning curve.

Instead of spending hours reading blog posts and watching videos, simply book a call and go through things 1:1 with an expert.

Very knowledgeable and highly experienced. I needed some help with Mixpanel, not only did Max help me refine my understanding of the tool but how to think about the whole tracking plan so that it is tool agnostic, can save you hours of pain, development time and ultimately from bad data (which is worse than having no data)!

Emils Veveris | EW inc

This particular session was booked to learn about Intercom.

Audrey was really insightful and helpful. It was great to speak with someone who was really knowledgeable in areas where I have no idea what I’m doing. I would highly recommend Audrey!

Kyle Sale | InquireOf

Startup Mentorship

Startups and Growth go together like peanut butter and jelly.

If you are starting out a new business, you better have a growth strategy or your business might not be long for this world.

The mentors that are on this platform are all chosen very carefully.

We have thrown a few specialty startup mentor wildcards in the mix with all of the growth marketing professionals, knowing that they would be helpful for our member base to speak with.

The main session topic booked in the startup realm is ‘pitch preparation’.

Manish was very knowledgeable regarding health care business start ups. He was extremely easy to talk to. He was a great communicator in speaking as well as listening. He enlightened me to ideas and concepts that I had no knowledge of. I felt that I had chosen the perfect growth mentor for my small health care business proposal and startup.

Dina Tanga | Encore Rehabilitation Services

Do you have questions on funding and how that whole VC thing works?

Yeah, me too!

The session with Eric helped me get answers and an outside perspective to the questions that were bugging me, that I wouldn’t have been able to get from my own network. Eric was super patient and I could feel he wanted to help me solve my challenges. I recommend Eric to anyone who needs help in his area of expertise.

Daniel Kunz | Wayste

Since we tout ‘startup friendly pricing’, we have a lot of bootstrappers in da house.

They are self funding and have to keep their costs low.

Asking someone who has been there before is the best resource for this case.

Aazar helped me by giving multiple ideas for marketing my startup at conferences. They were all things that I can implement with a small budget, and sound very promising. If you are looking for advice in regards to growth hacking, this guy is someone you should chat with.

Tyrel Johnson | ShotCrew

One of the biggest mistakes that startups make is going ahead with building a product that may not be in demand.

Run your idea and strategy by someone with experience in the industry you are looking to enter before spending a bunch of time and money on it.

I’m launching a retail product, and Mark has helped me with a lean blueprint to check for product-market fit with minimal investment. It was nice meeting you and thanks for the help, Mark!

Bogdan Pol | Moqups

Speak with a mentor about when to execute certain components of your launch.

Launches on places like Product Hunt should be well thought out before hand.

I requested a consultation with Nichole to learn more about the Product Hunt launch. She helped me quickly understand the basics and even prepared a document for me on the essentials I should keep in mind. The consultation was super helpful as it dispelled some myths I had in mind about the topic. I am very happy with the progress of understanding the Product Hunt I was able to make with just this one call.

Jan Kuzel | SatisMeter

Startup stress can be crippling.

Often founders don’t have anyone to turn to who understands what they are going through because their friends and family all have “normal jobs”.

Nathan was more than helpful with my issues of being stuck in progress and growth. He listened to my problems and event took the time after our session has finished to follow up with amazing new ideas for me to grow and reach more people, which I would never think of on my own. Sometimes it really helps to talk to someone that see your problems with fresh eyes and that leads to new paths we would never do on our own. So happy to have met Nathan and hope we will chat again! Best, Sanya

Sanya P | Ellwed

If the time has come to expand your team, get some feedback from an expert in the area you are looking to hire in.

 

Had a really great chat with Alek. He walk me through the steps of hiring a good UI designer, shared great tips and resources on how to improve our overall UI process. Thanks again.

Katerina Bojkov | EmbedSocial

When it’s time to put that go-to-market strategy together, get advice from someone who’s successfully launched products time and time again.

The session exceeded my expectations! Oren was very attentive to understand the business and main challenges in the first place, then he gave the best practices for B2B, shared his own experience and specific tactics I can apply in my Go-To-Market strategy. The session was useful not only for me but all my team as I immediately tried different approach. Also, Oren has a great way to explain complicated concepts in a very simple and cheerful manner, it helped me so much when I discussed it with my tech colleagues 🙂 I absolutely recommend Oren to all GrowthMentor members!

Egle Zuzeviciute | Exacaster

Career Mentorship

Thinking of getting into marketing as a profession?

Maybe you want to leave your day job and start a life as a freelance content writer traipsing around the globe.

Talk to people who have done it before and have lived to tell the tale.

Had a fantastic, super actionable session with Nichole. Perhaps the early climax was when they told me I should be charging at least (AT LEAST!) $100/hour for copywriting, whereas I had listed $30/hour as a goal. I believe I gave some type of surprised expression and we had to backtrack for a moment so I could tell them I was just starting out as a digital nomad, but from there Nichole started typing in and elaborating on some practical strategies for how I could arrive at this priorly inconceivable goal. Now I have a roadmap for the next several months! Will obviously be checking in for earlier, but it was great to get on a call and think big with them.

Aidan Goltra | Freelancer

Growth mentors make excellent marketing career coaches.

Being able to speak with Dani was a huge help. I was trying to piece together what the next steps in my career should be given my previous experience, current skillsets and future ambitions. I signed up for the session because, unlike other mentors that I have an existing relationship with, I knew Dani would be able to look at my situation and hear my questions from a completely impartial viewpoint. Dani helped to reframe my current thinking about how to evaluate opportunities and gave me tangible suggestions and exercises to take away from the session and move forward with. From there, I was able to figure out my next steps and shortly after landed in my new role as Head of Marketing at Leapsome where I couldn’t be happier. Thank you, Dani, for your help and support!

Andy Parker | Leapsome

Even if you are already very established in your field, it is still a good idea to get an outside opinion on your next move.

Just wrapped up my first call with Patrick. The conversation was incredibly helpful and instructive. Patrick has a wealth of knowledge about product design and strategy and is genuinely interested in sharing his experience and expertise to the benefit of mentees. As a career changer looking for advice on my job search, Patrick was both reassuring and inspiring as well as constructive in his feedback. Strongly recommend connecting with Patrick.

Lilly Hanscom | Tradecraft

Sparring

Bonus category!

This is our founder Foti’s favorite way to use the platform.

Getting on a call with someone and shooting the (marketing) shit.

Sharing thoughts, commenting on each other’s work and coming up with new ideas together.

With GrowthMentor membership, you can schedule calls with the free mentors as you like.

So if you think of a new idea, simply get online and schedule a call.

You have these amazing people just a few clicks away!

Kosta and I have had a practical conversation about the nature of entrepreneurship – if there’s such a thing as going “too fancy” with tools, and the grind of getting initial customers. Prior to the conversation, I had prepared a list of topics. I thought it would be too large of a list to cover, but during the first 20 minutes of the call, we already had gone through most. A very useful conversation where he dropped some unexpected wisdom-bombs on how to keep people engaged with your organization. Much appreciated. Thanks, Kosta!

Lodewijk Veldhuijzen | Anything App

To prep for this post, I went through ALL of the 684 reviews that have been left so far.  There are many more that I would have loved to mention, but then we’d be here all day.

Compiling them was also surprisingly emotional for moi.

Seeing all of these people reaching out to strangers for advice.  Putting themselves out there with their ideas and vulnerability is so admirable.

And then of course the fact that they were indeed helped and did get value from their request is another emotion all together.  I just wanted to reach out and hug each and every mentor.  I am not a hugger at all, so that is just how happy/proud/moved I was.

Ok, enough of the mushy stuff.  I have a massage appointment I need to get to so I can properly celebrate ONE YEAR OF GROWTHMENTOR!