From Fear in 2020 to Hope in 2021, Sean and Ethan Discuss the Transition Over Coffee

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, we (Sean and Ethan) invite you into our virtual living rooms for a cup of coffee and a bit of a change from our usual conversations with CEO’s, heads of growth, and leaders from the world’s fastest-growing companies. Our goal with the podcast is always to make growth more human, accessible, and actionable for our listeners. So as we start this new year, we wanted to look forward to what is next in the world of Breakout Growth through the lens of our own struggles, fears, accomplishments, and learnings. Like many of you, during this tough year of transition, we have had rollercoaster rides of our own, and in this conversation, we start by sharing what we learned as we worked together for the first time in 20 years to launch a network-effects project to help underserved college students navigate through the pandemic. It felt good to do good, but it also forced us to sharpen our data skills, hone in on value delivery for end-users, and evolve our processes for rapid iteration. It was a scary time because while we enjoyed making a difference, we also knew that we would ultimately have to rethink our approach to our own careers. Sean was coaching and training growth teams around the world and Ethan was pivoting to a similar career from his success leading the mobile app, RoboKiller. We had to adapt so that we could help companies accelerate growth despite the emerging challenges. The journey has not always been easy, but it helped us to better develop our understanding of a set of core principles for sustainable growth, which we are excited to share over the coming weeks on a new website that will complement and expand on learnings from the podcast. We discuss these and many other topics, as well as the new things we are excited to learn in 2021 so that we can continue to provide valuable insights into the world of growth for our audience. We discussed: * Fear and transition in the face of Covid-19 (01:00)* Working together and putting growth skills into practice in response to the Covid-19 pandemic (4:08) * Sharpening our data skills as Sean launched GoPractice for the US market with Oleg Yakubenkov (7:00) * Upskilling ourselves and teams; the importance of being able to pull your own data (8:09) * What we learned interviewing leaders from the world’s fastest-growing companies (15:20) * Translating key learnings to make an impact on our clients and their businesses (17:33) * Adjusting our workshop formats to meet the demands of a remote workforce (21:05) * Forming North Star Metrics and making them useful within an organization (25:15) * The pursuit of “fit” (Product/Market, Language/Market, Channel/Market, etc. (35:30) * Guiding principles that we will highlight on our new site, BreakoutGrowth.net (42:42) * How value sits at the center of every growth engine and drives organizations forward (51:00) * What we are looking forward to learning and sharing in 2021 (55:00) And much, much, more . . . Get full access to Sean’s Substack at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe