At the time, he thought it’d be a good idea to feature on my previous startup and that’s how we were introduced. Nonetheless, when he did a takeover on our Snapchat channel, I saw how disturbingly brilliant he was at Growth Hacking; something I wanted to emulate myself.
A failed startup & ~1 year later, I had the golden chance to work under him at NUMA as a Growth Intern.
This blog is everything I’ve learnt from him in my short stint of ~5 months at NUMA, under his personal tutelage.
You probably know someone who sucks so bad at what they do, be it marketing, running a company, or even something as trivial as playing FIFA, yet think they’re above-average at whatever it is they’re doing. If you’ve encountered someone like this in your life, then congratulations! You’ve just witnessed something called “The Dunning-Kruger Effect”.
The Dunning-Kruger effect in simple terms means — When someone thinks they’re above-average/amazing at whatever it is they’re doing, but in reality they’re actually shit heads.
Now, the reverse is also true. Some think whatever they do is not that great but in reality they’re crushing it and everyone around them notice & applaud it.
I hate tooting my own horn, but I had the extreme case of the opposite. I wouldn’t say I was crushing it (If you’ve worked with me, I leave this for you to decide) but at the same time, whatever I was doing wasn’t particularly easy either.
Growth Hacking isn’t easy (what is easy anymore?), It goes way beyond digital marketing. (If you’re a digital marketer reading this, come at me bro.)
We deal with all the stages of the AARRR funnel from Acquisition all the way to Referral, as compared to a digital marketer who is solely in charge of Acquisition efforts.
But I digress, my point being:
Growth Hacking involves having a combination of a lot of different skills that digital marketers don’t possess and traditional marketers, of course couldn’t give 2 fucks about.
Stuff like:
Pricing
Behavioural Psychology
Wireframing & Prototyping
Basic or sometimes even Intermediate knowledge of code — HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL, Python being the most common languages in a Growth Hackers arsenal,
Digital Marketing (obviously) etc. etc.
Tough stuff right? These are only some of the skills I mentioned that a Growth Hacker needs to know about.
When I was interning at NUMA which is where Rishabh was a Growth Hacker in Residence, he made me realize that I was in fact doing far better than I would give myself credit for. Classic Dunning Kruger effect in action. I think we all tend to suffer from this in 2 ways:
1. assuming your job is so easy, even a 5 year-old could do it, or
2. assuming someone else’s job is so easy, you could do it without even breaking a sweat.
Maybe I’m rambling a bit here, but either of the above scenarios have a few exceptions obviously. In short:
Don’t be that shit head who thinks he’s the best thing to happen to man since sliced bread.
How do you beat “The Dunning-Kruger Effect”? 🤔
Get feedback from the ones you work with about your performance on a regular basis & make sure you’re grounded in reality. Or as my new boss puts it eloquently,
“Don’t drink your own Kool-Aid.”
I’m in the process of not drinking my own Kool-Aid while also making sure I don’t over-play the humble card.
Accepting-All. 😃
Sometimes shit doesn’t happen the way you wanted it to. Or as Mike Tyson would say,
“Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.”
It’s easy to feel dejected when things don’t happen the way you wanted them to.
But, what if you did the reverse? 🤔
That’s what Rishabh does so well. With him, hardly anything ever goes wrong due to his meticulous planning. But even when something goes awry, he never lets it get to him. Instead his time is spent in analyzing if said situation can be fixed/mitigated. If not, he pretends like nothing ever happened. Imagine, being so carefree that nothing ever affects you.
That’s what it feels like to be fucking invincible.
This is something so profound & simple, yet almost everybody behaves in the opposite way: reacting to everything that affects them.
Everybody has their locus of control — There are things within your control and external things that you have no control over. Simply focus on changing whatever is in your control and screw whatever isn’t.
Here is a simple how-to guide on “How to Accept Everything for Dummies”:
1. Is the problem/situation outside your control?
2. If yes, fuck it.
3. If no, identify how to fix/mitigate said problem/situation.
4. Repeat.
Growth Hacking. Obviously. 📊
It’s easy to learn a few tricks off the internet & change your Linkedin bio to say “Growth Hacker.” Why? Because, I did so myself.
Before working under Rishabh, I saw Growth Hacking as whoever has the biggest back of tricks/hacks wins and less about the process itself. But Rishabh taught me:
It’s not about that trick up your sleeve.
Growth Hacking is more of a mindset than about the hacks themselves. It’s about creating a process around it, charting a strategy, brainstorming and executing those experiments until you find something that works. Then, scale the most promising experiments.
Rishabh has the perfect answer for what growth hacking is and isn’t here.
Working under him made Growth Hacking very systematic and process-driven for me. No longer do I focus on the hacks themselves, but rather on the process of brainstorming experiments and then executing them 1 by 1 till I find something that works.
How do I put Growth Hacking into process myself? 🤔
Simple, make a copy of this spreadsheet (I.C.E. Prioritisation Framework) that Rishabh & I use to prioritise our experiments. They’re tons of prioritisation frameworks but I find the I.C.E. framework works best for me.
If you’re confused about what the I.C.E. Framework is:
I — Impact. What kind of impact will this experiment potentially have? Rate this out of 10. Ratings are of course based on your intuition.
C — Confidence. How confident are you that your experiment will work? Again, rate this out of 10.
E — Ease. How easy is it to execute this growth experiment. Same drill, rate this out of 10.
All you have to when using the spreadsheet is assign a ICE Score to each of your experiment and then select the experiment with the highest average ICE score as your first experiment. Then, repeat this with every experiment over and over again. Simple right?
Again, this is a starting point for you to use to start putting Growth Hacking into process for yourself.
Want to learn Growth Hacking? Take this course to get started. It contains lessons like:
Basically, it’s the concept of owning less shit. Or in the words of the legendary Tyler Durden,
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
Rishabh explains it much better than I could here.
To practise, I recommend giving this a read. It contains 72 ways you can start living as a minimalist. Great staring point to begin practising minimalism.
Ain’t nobody got time for stupid 💩.
Are you hardly working or are you working hard? Both are inherently wrong.
Working hard for the sake of working hard is a recipe of disaster. It’s being busy for the sake of busyness. I get why people do it, because I did it. If people see you cranking 14hrs/day on 5 cups of coffee, people automatically assume you’re a hard worker & your boss is wondering when, not if, you should get a raise.
That’s what Rishabh despises. He measures work in terms of total output producedand not in terms of total time worked. It’s a good metric to optimize for and here is why it makes sense:
Anyone can work 14hrs/day and end up doing useless stuff like checking social media, email, attend useless meetings, etc etc all day and not produce any actual work. But, if you optimize for output produced, you automatically do things that will affect your end outcome. You prioritise.
Here are a few things I’ve learnt while reading about productivity (some of which I picked up from Rishabh) that I’ve applied myself:
1. Finish your most important task first thing in the morning. This is the time you have the most energy & willpower.
2. Don’t do stupid shit like checking emails first thing in the morning, logging into Facebook and keeping the tab open all day, don’t be busy for being busy. Do Tip 1 instead.
3. Be ruthless with your time, cut out time wasters — be it your colleagues, your friends who can’t stop calling you, or your Instagram (no one cares about the photo of the cheesecake you had yesterday) and work with a lot of energy & focus till 6pm, then get out of the office.
The time obviously varies for everyone but I find that after fully focusing from 9–6, my productivity starts to tank. Experiment yourself, see what works for you.
4. You will get more done when you do the right things with unwavering focus and cut out stupid time wasters from your time.
5. Anything that prevents you from completing your most impactful tasks is a distraction which must be dealt with appropriately which brings me to:
6. If you have a task and it doesn’t help you achieve your end outcome or doesn’t really help achieve anything crucial for you, eliminate It, delegate it, or do it after completing your most important things.
Wrapping up
Rishabh was the IP Man to my Bruce Lee, the Guardiola to my Messi. I can go on, but you get the gist.
Working with him has been nothing short of an amazing experience both personally & professionally. It’s an opportunity only a few are lucky enough to get, and I immediately grabbed mine.
If you get a chance to work with Rishabh, don’t even think about saying no. Seriously, don’t.
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