In more than a year of weekly blogging, we’ve had a handful of posts stand out above the rest…
For the last 60 weeks, I’ve published a weekly post on this blog.
Just as our sign-up form promises, I’ve been sharing our “aha” moments, our “oh shit!” moments, and everything in between.
As an exercise, we compiled our most popular, shared and controversial posts of all time. We did this for three reasons:
- To give new readers an easy “digest” of posts to start with.
- To give long-time readers an appendix of important posts to revisit when they become more relevant to them.
- To try and get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t.
What we’ve found is that generally, the posts on this list have one of these two characteristics:
- They challenge one of people’s Three B’s: Behavior, Beliefs or Belongings
- They solve a problem that’s a deep burning pain for a lot of people
It was fun looking back and putting this list together, and I hope it’s as helpful for you as it was for us…
7 Lessons We Learned Going from Zero to $30k/Month in Under a Year
One of our earliest posts, this piece sets the stage for how we got to where we were around the time we launched the Journey to $100K blog.
It includes a spreadsheet of some of my favorite blogs around that time, along with a couple of powerful activation and onboarding hacks that we still use today.
The Pricing Model That Increased Our Free Trial Signups by 358% (and Revenue by 25%)
Pricing was a huge struggle for us early on, as it is for many startups. It took us a lot of failure to get to a pricing model that finally worked. This post shares our earliest pricing experiments (a couple of which still make me cringe), and how we settled on the model that we use now.
How We Got 1,000+ Subscribers from a Single Blog Post in 24 Hours
This is still the most commented-on post in this entire blog. And it makes sense: this post explains how we turned this blog into a success, including the exact scripts that we used for promotion and how we got top influencers to share our content.
Whenever someone emails me asking how to get more people to read their blog, I send them this post.
Why I Turned Down $5 Million in VC Funding
A post about a topic that a lot of founders grapple with: should you try and raise money for your startup? In it, I share a five-question framework that I found helpful in dealing with the issue myself, and that ultimately led me to turn down a big chunk of investment.
How We Grew Conversions 100% by Rethinking Our Design Strategy
A start-to-finish primer on how we approached our marketing site redesign, from resources we learned from and customer development tactics we used to messaging and copywriting approaches that helped. While our site has changed since, the strategies in this post remain critical to every design process we do.
Some people are surprised to learn that Groove is a totally distributed team; in fact, no two team members are in the same city.
This post shares the reasons for building Groove as a remote team, why it works well for us, and what you may want to think about before deciding if remote work is right for you.
8 Things Every Non-Technical Founder Should Know How to Do
I’ve been dismissed and told that I won’t succeed with a software company because I’m a non-technical founder (without a technical co-founder). In this post, I share eight big lessons I’ve learned over the years starting three companies as a non-technical founder, including the most important skills I’ve had to learn.
It’s Lonely Being a Single Founder
An introspective post at the emotional side of solo entrepreneurship. Loneliness is a part of being a single founder for almost all of us, and it can be rough. I share four ways that I deal with it and don’t let it get in the way of running a business.
Our Startup’s 12-Month Growth Strategy
Planning is critical to the success of any business. I lay bare an internal document that shares our goals and strategies for the next 12 months.
If you read the blog posts that come after this one, you can see many of those strategies in action.
We Deleted Our Facebook Page. Here’s Why.
This one ruffled a lot of feathers. We did the unthinkable and deleted our company Facebook page.
This post explains why, and it remains the most controversial post on this blog, as well as one of the most shared.
Customer Development for Startups: What I Learned Talking to 500 Customers in 4 Weeks
If you asked me what the single most important thing I wish I knew when I started in business was, I’d show you this post.
I dive deep into the importance of spending time talking one-on-one with your customers at every stage of growth, and share some of the ways that we do that.
How We Got Over Our Fear of SEO and Improved Conversions 20% in the Process
SEO was a beast that I was afraid of for a very long time, mostly because I didn’t understand it, which in turn made me view it as shady and underhanded.
I couldn’t have been more wrong, and this post explains why I got over that fear, and how focusing on SEO — even a little bit — has brought big returns for our site.
Why I Walked Away From a $12M Acquisition Offer 18 Months After Our Startup’s Launch
This was a tough post to write. I share the story of how a company offered to buy Groove for a significant sum of money, and why I made the difficult decision to say no.
Lessons Learned Growing a Startup From Zero to $100k/month in 2 Years
Our team hit a huge milestone when we accomplished the “goal” that this blog originally set out to reach.
The post goes into detail about the lessons that we’ve learned as we’ve matured as a business, including what the most important and high-ROI efforts have been for us over the last two years. I also share the blog’s new goal, and some exciting news about ways we’re improving the blog for the future.
I Hope These Posts Are Valuable To You
It’s been an amazing journey sharing our experiences every week for the last 60 weeks, and I’m excited to keep going.
I hope that this post helps some of you catch up on what you’ve missed, or revisit some things that are more relevant to you now.
Enjoy!
