Growth Hacking Success with Mario Nawfal: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! Brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Business Made Simple. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down growth hacking success. To drop these value bombs, I brought Mario Naufal into EO Fire Studios. Mario bootstrapped his first business to eight figures in less than two months, then built multiple businesses into the millions in crypto, taking companies public and growth hacking. And Fire Nation, today's value bombs are about how being successful is tremendously difficult.

0:37When you get it right, cherish it, appreciate it, and don't lose it. How you have to have a good product or service, otherwise you're just wasting your money and efforts and oh so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Mario and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented.

1:11The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Mario, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Fire Nation, what's up, what's up, what's up? Something that most people disagree with and probably most of the listeners. Being successful is extremely, extremely, extremely difficult. Many of you might really disagree with what I just said, but it took me a long time to realize this and to start appreciating the success that I have.

1:52I almost went bankrupt not appreciating it. When you close your eyes and start just doing the math, just Google how many millionaires and stuff there is in the world. and there's 7 billion people. Being successful is not easy. It's a puzzle. There's a lot of pieces. You have to time it right. When you do get it right, cherish it. Appreciate it. Don't lose it. I love that message. And I will say that you really do walk the walk, Mario. I mean, Fire Nation, if you consume any of Mario's content, whether it be on any of the platforms that he uses, you're always seeing him living in it. I mean, he is working.

2:26He is walking around, pacing through his house, like just talking about it. You can just tell Mario from, you know, the few times that we've interacted one-on-one. And then of course, the times that I've seen what you're doing in your business. And I'm on, you know, a couple signal and WhatsApp groups with you. And then also just watching your content that you produce. I mean, you eat, live, and breathe exactly what it is that you're focused on. And Fire Nation, like to be really, truly successful, like that's what it takes. And when you get there, you have to cherish it. Just like Mario said, I mean, it's the journey you have to enjoy.

2:59and then the success you have to cherish because sometimes it can be fleeting, but guess what? You have the tools to say, okay, now I know what I need to do next time to get there again. And as I mentioned during the introduction, we'll be talking today about growth hacking, which I think is something Mario has done fantastically well. We're going to talk about timing. We're going to talk about entrepreneurship and so much more, but let's just start with growth hacking. Now, in your definition, Mario, break it down for Fire Nation. What is growth hacking? So I made all my money in e-com. And then I got into crypto in 2017, launched a consulting firm that's doing really well, partnered a law firm, and I do a lot of investments.

3:39So that's a brief, brief overview. Now, in 2017, one of my business partners, his name is Kiril Kristalis, he starts telling me about growth hacking because he was applying it to my personal brand and to my businesses. And the things that he did caught my attention. that same year during covid i was in turkey when covid hit and the lockdown started so i rented a big villa in fetia on the beach in turkey 12 bedrooms and i started hiring all the best growth hackers around the world from from bob to kiddo to cohen christianas all these names people growth hackers would know and i brought them all under one roof all of them and we just started building the things they did have been insane my business is one of them the north equities is up to eight figures.

4:25Athena Capital is doing high seven figures. You got We Are Growth Hackers as a business is doing really well. Now, what is growth hacking? I'm hyping it up like crazy. Everyone talks about Facebook marketing, JLD. Everyone talks about Google marketing. Everyone talks about influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, but no one talks about growth hacking. And that's essentially gaming algorithms. That's it. We've talked about Clubhouse earlier. I'll give you examples. That's the best way to think about it. I'll give you business and non-business examples we talked about clubhouse earlier now everyone knows in clubhouse you have to get people or moderators that have a lot of followers to come up as a moderator to invite them up because they have a lot of followers it will ping their followers now technically that's a growth hack a very simple growth hack but it is a growth hack but growth hackers will take it a step further it's like okay when does it ping their followers if we take them up all right so what happens if we take them up bring them back down and take them up again it'll ping their followers again every time you bring them up that was in the early days of clubhouse so i would do that every 15 minutes in my room never had a room less than 2 000 sometimes sometimes up to a thousand people never below a thousand it was the biggest daily room on clubhouse seven days a week that's a growth hack another growth hack you know basic ones are sending thousands of messages on linkedin Instagram, Slack, Twitter, pretty much little to no cost.

5:50Now that doesn't have to be spamming. We have a very big difference here. At the end of the day, if the product or the offering or the messaging or the targeting is bad, it's not going to work. So growth hacking essentially accelerates what it is that you're doing that's working. If you have a good copy with a good message and a good value add at the end, a good product you're selling, then growth hacking would would pour fuel on that fire but if you've got a message or your copy is crap or or the product itself is not great growth hacking won't help we'll just accelerate something that's not good and it won't be it won't get the results you want essentially what growth hacking is man like it's just it's this gaming algorithm you've seen me do it from big cloud to clubhouse to to just basically online if you go on google right now you write best bachata dancer.

6:37I travel the world dancing bachata. I come up at number one or number two, depending where you are in the world and a whole bunch of other things, top clubhouse moderators, top bit cloud influencers. So that's how growth hackers game algorithms and it's been working really well. And you can do the same in real life, not just business. I want to ask you, Fire Nation, to think about some of the things that Mario just shared. Are you honing your skills in your focus? Are you getting better at what you're doing? Are you delivering the number one solution to a real specific problem slash pain point in this world?

7:12Because if you are, then growth hacking is going to work. Because guess what? When you find ways to growth hack and you find ways to arbitrage, then people love great products. They're going to use it. They're going to want it. They love great services. They're going to talk about it. They're going to become evangelist. And that way you can game algorithms that work for you. But if your product, if your service, if whatever's coming out of your mouth stinks, if it's just crap, then no matter what you do, it's going to be crap. Crap is crap is crap. Like it's really that true. So I really want you to realize, Fire Nation, it all starts with the quality that you're putting out, which is why, again, going back to the first thing that Mario and I were talking about is, are you eating it?

7:52Are you living it? Are you breathing it and it being your thing every single day? Because that's what it takes to become great at something. So we talked a little bit about what the power of growth hacking is, but let's even dive deeper. Like when you do kind of figure out the potential and you get growth hacking right, what's the power? You have a moat around your business. You have an advantage others don't have. Let's go with IBC, which is a crypto consulting firm. So IBC is now behind the biggest crypto project out there, from BitCloud to other platforms, similar to BitCloud, to all these little token offerings that everyone talks about.

8:26It's doing all the work behind the scenes because it's able to spread the news on Reddit, to be in all these different groups. So that edge is what growth hacking gives us. But as you said, man, if the product is bad at the end of the day, you're wasting your money. It's, again, the most important thing. If your product or service is bad, you're wasting your efforts. The foundation of business hasn't changed. Bring value to others, actual value to others, and do it consistently. That's business. Growth hacking allows you to, again, pour fuel on that fire and get that message across to more people.

9:05Fire Nation, we're going to talk about timing. We're going to talk about entrepreneurship. Mario is going to keep dropping value bombs just like he has been when we get back from thanking our sponsors. We all know that starting a business is hard, but there are tools out there that help make it easier. HubSpot is one of those tools. And just one way HubSpot makes starting a business easier with their all-new entrepreneurship kits. This all-inclusive kit gives you step-by-step guidance and frameworks to help you crush every stage of starting a business. I'm talking project management, professional email, and skill development templates, in addition to an entire solopreneur guide and freelance pricing worksheets.

9:45So next time you have a question about which step to take next, HubSpot's kit will have your back. Ready to get up and running fast? HubSpot is on a mission to help you do just that. And the best part is, HubSpot's entrepreneurship kit is free. Starting a business doesn't have to be so hard. Go to clickhubspot.com slash ENT to download the guide right now. So Mario, we're back and I want to hear your definition and your perception on the power of timing. And as usual, we love hearing specific examples on how the power of timing has worked for you and maybe even sometimes against you. There is nothing I'm selling right now that has anything to do with timing.

10:29Literally nothing. I'm genuinely just giving anyone listening right now my probably biggest strategy in business. And it's not only mine. Go on Google right now. Write Bill Gross. Bill Gross. G-R-O-S-S. Ted. He has an eight minute Ted speech. I've talked about it so many times. I've talked about it yesterday three times in three different interviews. I've spread that video so much, I'm probably responsible for half the million views. So, Bill Gross' video, and I'm not affiliated, many of you should know Bill Gross, researches the main reason for a business's success. And he started comparing all the main factors that you think about.

11:11Timing, business plan, funding, the team itself, the ID, all of them. the most important factor for a business's success was timing when you compare youtube to his business he started youtube before youtube and his goal was to become youtube but he started it too early where the internet was still very slow and it failed youtube started as a dating website but then pivoted to videos because that's what the the clients wanted the customers wanted and it is what it is today because the timing was right so getting timing right is not a necessity again i said earlier business is a puzzle just get as many pieces as you can timing is a big piece of that puzzle and when you're building a puzzle putting the right piece at the right time just makes it a lot easier to build a puzzle so you'd have a lot of scattered pieces everywhere so timing is exactly that just timing the right piece at the right time if you launch a restaurant right now not a bad thing if you launched it a year ago probably not the best but if you launch we talked about crypto a crypto consulting firm or or if you're a dev some crypto project you're probably more likely to succeed statistically why because crypto is blowing up it's really really early you know we talked about big cloud earlier jld and you're really early like extremely early in big cloud that's where you get the real returns but going and building a brand from scratch on instagram versus clubhouse instagram is not impossible you can still succeed it's just going to be more difficult clubhouse you know i blew up on clubhouse really quickly in a month i had 60 000 followers and the biggest daily room because the timing was right now getting the timing alone is not enough but again it gives you an edge that's what i said about growth hacking that's what i say about timing all these different things give you a head start give you an edge and moat around your business so you can beat your competitor.

13:05And the more of these pieces that you get, you know, getting timing right, using growth hacking if you can, and then, of course, getting a good idea, good team is important. The more things you add onto it, the more likely you are to succeed. And it goes back to my first point. Succeeding is difficult. I'm talking about financial success right now, like getting a lot of money. It's not easy. It's a very competitive world. It will become easier the more things you get right. Fire Nation, timing is a piece of the puzzle. It's not the piece, but it is a piece. And so it is something you need to factor in here.

13:40And definitely go check out that video by Bill Gross. It has over 4.4 million views. It's 6 minutes and 41 seconds, so it's not going to take up a ton of your day. And it could set you up for life, and that is so key. That first mover advantage that Mario was talking about, which is one reason why I personally got in so early with Big Cloud, because I saw, hey, this is going to have some early ups and downs. It's going to shake some people out. There's going to be some crashes. There's going to be some spikes. But people that are in it now and stay with it and go long-term, I mean, there's so many advantages.

14:10And, you know, as long as you're not leveraging and going on margin on certain things, for me, I look at certain things this way. It's like you can only go to zero when you invest in something. I'm not saying anybody wants to go to zero, but you can only go to zero. Say you put in like$10 ,000. That$10 ,000, yes, it can go to zero. but it can go to a hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars. So the upside is potentially infinite. And the downside is just, again, if you're not using margin or leverage, it's just back down to zero. So when you have that kind of core and explore mentality where the explore portion of your investment portfolio, you're willing to say, you know what, I can lose all this money.

14:49I don't want to, but I can. The upside is unlimited. Now, real quick, before we get onto the next topic. Can you give maybe an example personally, Mario, where you have timed, let's just say one thing right. And then when you timed one thing wrong, and again, not a deep dive into either one, but just a quick overview. Most of my businesses were based on timing. My first, first company, Fruity, and I got to eight figures in two years, seven in one. And that was in Australia. I didn't know a businessman. I dropped out of university. I was studying banking and finance when I saw some kid making a lot of money.

15:24I dropped out of university and I didn't know how to create a website, none of that. But I started selling different products and then I doubled down on what works. And then I ended up selling blenders and juices. Now, for these in over 30 countries, doing really well. But it started off selling the right product at the right time. Blenders and juices were blowing up at the time. Getting into crypto at 2017, I didn't know anything about crypto but it made a lot of money why because timing was right among other things but that was the main the main reason the main advantage i had starting out really early on big cloud you said it's long term that's another example now where timing went against me i've been so obsessed and timing everything in my life that i i just avoid anything where i see the timing wrong i analyze everything about anything.

16:15There's been businesses I launched where I didn't care about timing and didn't make it easy to succeed. So there's no major failures because of timing because I've always avoided a business where the timing didn't make sense. Fire Nation, I really hope you're understanding the power of timing as we're going through this where, again, sometimes if you launch something that's great and the timing's just off, you don't need to chalk that up as an L for you for life. if that could again been a big W, like it could have been for Bill Gross had he just launched the right time and the right scenario.

16:49So think about these different things. I mean, I completely know that time was a huge piece of my success with Entrepreneurs on Fire. I launched back in 2012, the first and only daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. I got the first mover advantage. I had my barrier so high that my competition was so low, meaning nobody was willing or able to do a daily podcast at the rate that I was because there is no clear path to victory. Like people didn't know that podcasts were gonna blow up and that just yesterday, Amazon bought a podcast for$60 million that literally has only been out for a few months.

17:24And then before that, Amazon bought another podcast for 40 million and Spotify bought Joe Rogan for 100 million. I mean, there's just crazy things going on now that to me, I'm kind of like, well, yeah, I knew that. Like, not really. I didn't know what was gonna happen with podcasting, but I thought it was a great platform. and I moved on it. So be a first mover. And Mario, let's talk about the BS, just the bull crap that's out there of entrepreneurship. That drives me nuts. You know, both of us spent a fair bit of time on Clubhouse and you go in all these different rooms and that's where it kind of triggered me.

17:59And you see the worst advice or the cheesiest advice given time and time again. And that's because as humans, we're imperfect. so there's two two reasons why many people give wrong advice ego and lack of self-awareness ego people think that because they have money they need to have the answer to everything and they start giving answers even if it's not accurate they start giving advice even though it makes no sense to the person receiving the advice but at least they're saying something at least they're giving advice and i've heard this time and time again they feel obliged to know the answer i love not knowing the answer i love saying i have no clue and then listening to someone else talk i adore doing that it's my way to learn so ego is number one self-awareness is another big no no no for anyone for anyone that claims to be a mentor and people listen to them if they're not self-aware you should definitely just think twice because they don't know what their weaknesses are I know what my weaknesses are.

19:02I know what I don't know. And if you don't know what you don't know, you're in a bad spot on a personal level and especially in a bad spot to give advice. So when in Clubhouse people used to always ask me and I used to do my rooms, who do we listen to? How do we find the right mentor? Look for someone that, don't look at how much money they have in the bank. They could be billionaires, but if they're not self-aware or they got too big of an ego the advice could be inaccurate so who i listen to on a personal level anyone that is humble enough to admit when they don't know something and someone who knows what they don't know so because of those two characteristics there's a lot of fluff a lot of false advice a lot of a lot of advice that relates to the person giving it but might not relate to someone else you have to also understand that a lot of people would think that because of certain things they're successful they forget the the power of luck and there's a lot of books about this they forget there's externalities that might have led to their success they didn't know or they might miss certain things that led them to being successful so they assume they succeeded for one reason they start giving this advice as hey this is the reason going to succeed.

20:22But it could be either misleading or it could be a small piece of a much bigger puzzle. So that's been a big thing for me. I'm just not really fighting it, but it's just something I'm talking a lot about is that you need to be careful who you listen to. Too many people getting false advice, man. I love that. And one thing that I really respect about Gary Vaynerchuk is he loves saying that, hey, I'm only great and really knowledgeable about two or three things. Like that's it. And I talk about those things over and over and over again. So yeah, I'm repeating myself all the time. Like I admit it, I'm repeating myself because these are the things that I know to be true and everything else that's outside of my lane, I just say, I don't know.

21:04And that, by the way, is a very freeing notion, Fire Nation. Like nobody's going to expect you or should expect you to know everything about everything because, hey, you don't want to be good at everything, but a master of none. You want to be a master at one amazing thing. And that Bruce Lee quotes, I don't fear the man who has 10 ,000 kicks. I fear the man who's practiced one kick 10 ,000 times. And I don't know if you follow anything about Naval, but he has a podcast, Mario, and he puts out some great things on Twitter as well. He shared something that really, I think, just takes this home, which is don't take for granted that rich people's advice is great because they might be handing you yesterday's winning lottery tickets.

21:45And guess how much yesterday's winning lottery tickets worth? It's worth nothing because it was a winning lottery ticket yesterday or last year or five years ago or longer because that person may have made it with that one great, lucky, awesome decision like me 10 years ago. So you can't just take that advice for granted. So Mario, you have a lot of stuff going on. I want to hand you the mic now as we close down this interview to share with us what you're really excited about right now, what you have going on, how Fire Nation can can get involved and then we'll say goodbye. You know, we have a website called We Are Growth Hackers.

22:20It's an agency offering growth hacking services, but we can just Google it and learn about it. So that's something you could do right now. But I want to give something of more value to the audience, something unrelated to really me. Business is based on two things, mainly based on two things. It's part of conscientiousness. Number one is working hard. I'm not going to really talk much about this. I think you can guess why that's important. but before working hard you have to calibrate your compass timing is one part of it doing the right thing at the right time so spend effort spend your time doing that researching what it is that you want to do is it the right time looking at other opportunities and then when you find the right thing start testing it testing it testing throwing a lot of pebbles when one pebble hits then throw the damn cannonball and start working hard consistently as bruce lee says so if you do this you've got a head start and then be careful who you listen to you mentioned Naval one of the most humble people you'd meet and one of the most intelligent people that you'd meet and one of the most self-aware people that you'd meet people like him you should listen to otherwise just be very very very careful avoid all those YouTube and Instagram videos about a person claiming they did X, Y, and Z to achieve success.

23:42Just ignore those. Be careful who you listen to. There's so much information out there. You have to protect what goes into that head of yours so it doesn't fill up with crap. So that'll be my two cents, man. So one more time as we close down here, where's the best way for Fire Nation to learn more about what you have going on, connect with you, learn more of your genius? Google my name, anyone listening, Mario Norful, N-A-W-F-A-L, and just ping me on any platform and happy to connect and just add you to my groups. It's Mario Norful. That's the benefit, Fire Nation, of having a unique name, Mario Nafal.

24:15That's N-A-W-F-A-L. Just Google it. Check out what he has going on. I've been conversing, interacting with, and following him for quite some time now, and you should too. So Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and you've been hanging out with MN and JLD today. So keep up that heat, and as Mario would say, calibrate your consciousness. And head over to eofire.com, type Mario in the search bar, and the show notes page will pop up with everything that we talked about here today. And again, Google his name, Mario, N-A-W-F-A-L. Mario, thank you, brother, for sharing your truth, knowledge, value with Fire Nation today.

24:55For that, we salute you, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, JLD. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Mario. And Fire Nation, if you've ever thought about creating a podcast of your own, the podcast journal is for you. It is a gorgeous faux leather journal that will guide you step-by-step in the creation and launch of your podcast in 50 days. Visit thepodcastjournal.com and use promo code podcast for a$15 discount. And thank you for listening to my podcast. And I will catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lance, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

25:38Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.