For those of you that are new here, every week I send what I call a 1x1x1.
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One learning, reminder, or interesting thought from my week.
One interesting find/tool from my week.
One image from my life.

Let's dive in 👇

Thought from the week

Business update - How We 4x'd MRR in 8 Months: Tiny Tweaks, Big Gains

I love it when you can find little levers in a business that drive meaningful changes.

One of our businesses Pono Ventures has been on a growth tear this year creating good (and some bad) results.

I think there are three simple things we did that are driving the performance:

1. Focusing on specific industries - We made a call to focus on specific industries that have budget and can benefit greatly from high value growth marketing services. Bulk of our client base is financial advisors as a result.
2. Hire a great operator - We hired a really great operator to focus on the business. He tests quickly, is eager to learn, started building out a team, and all around has been doing a great job.
3. Increasing value for clients = increasing the size of our deals - This shift has tripled our average deal size. The questions we asked ourselves before making this shift:
   • What are the largest gaps and challenges our clients have when it comes to growth?
   • What are services we can offer that accelerate our pace towards reaching our revenue targets?

It's not all rainbows though.

This new focus is driving increasing revenues and cashflows but we're seeing an increase in one of my least favorite words in the book of business; Churn.

I hate churn more that I hate mushrooms on my steak. I mean, who eats a fungus off the ground anyways?

The services that generate larger revenues are less sticky and easy for clients to churn out of if:

A) They've gotten everything the need from the service

B) They migrate to an alternate solution

This is motivating the team to strike more of a balance, selling more boring/sticky services to make sure we're keeping churn in a healthy place.

It’s wild how the smallest tweaks can lead to the biggest shifts. Sometimes, it’s not about blowing up the whole business model—it’s just hundreds of tiny adjustments that end up making the most massive impact.

Interesting find/tool of the week

Shout out to Andrew Garner for this find. These AI phone services are getting crazy good. Just listen to the sample call.

Image from my life

We celebrated our great friends Eli and Becca's wedding this past weekend. Beautiful couple. Beautiful venue. Beautiful community.

See you all next week!