[Growth Report] Revenue Dips For 1st Time After Turning the Ship (Kinda on Purpose)
Part of the journey of a high-growing company is experiencing—or getting stuck in—the growth plateau.
This time, it was our turn.
After 9 months of growing like crazy, in February we actually saw our revenue flatten out for the first time.
As you know, almost a year ago we relaunched our Done-For-You Sales Funnel service. And recently, we repositioned it as an instant, all-in-one digital marketing team that gets all your digital marketing tasks and projects done—all while you get to sit back and watch us do the work.
Seriously, you only need to tell us what you need, and we’ll get the work done for you so you can focus on what matters the most: continuing to scale your business.
And the best thing about it is you get to check the progress of the work in real-time through the AutoGrow app.
But even though we dropped revenue by 9.88%, we had 4 new clients signed up for our service, 2 new hires, and 2 painful firings...
But what caused us to not grow this month is exactly what happens to most business owners and entrepreneurs like you...
In this month’s growth report, I’ll tell you...
- How we generated $30,213 in February (and how we’re already working hard to grow that number in March).
- The critical factor that most business owners, startups, and entrepreneurs like you make that leads to the dreaded growth plateau.
- And the goals we’re aiming to achieve for this month.
I’ll also tell you some interesting lessons learned and big wins that I’m sure you’ll relate to.
Like every month, join me in this growth report for February January.
Growth Plateau—a Natural State of Any Business
If you’re a Marvel fan, you’ve heard the line from the wealthy business magnate, Tony Stark, “Part of the journey is the end.”
For AutoGrow, the end is not part of our journey, but hitting rock bottom and the growth plateau it is.
After 9 non-stop growing months with our monthly subscription service, for the first time, our revenue actually dropped.
But you know what? That’s ok. And I’ll tell you why.
Most successful businesses experience changes—good and bad. It’s a natural part of growth. And when you grow too much too fast, that can lead to minor (or huge) setbacks.
In our case, after generating our revenue record of $32,000+ in January, February wasn’t such a great month in terms of revenue. We made $30,213.
This was because we’ve been turning the ship, so to speak. We’ve been focusing on how and where to row that boat—in terms of repositioning AutoGrow’s service.
We relaunched AutoGrow’s service in May 2019 as a Done-For-You service. But now, we’re repositioning the business as an instant, all-in-one digital marketing team that gets all your digital marketing tasks and projects done.
We’re no longer positioning our service as a Done-For-You service because we were attracting the wrong clients. And that was making scaling the business a bit difficult.
But with our new value proposition—getting your digital marketing tasks done while you see the progress of the work through the AutoGrow app—we’re expecting to see 3 sign-up trials convert to paying clients per week.
Big Wins & Big Goals
The business has been running this last month without as much input from Matt, AutoGrow’s CEO. And that’s certainly a really big win from February.
CEOs and business owners should work on their business, not in it. And that’s something Matt has been slowly trying to do.
While the team has been focused on each member’s responsibilities, Matt has been able to keep coding the AutoGrow app.
Even though it’s already live and team members and clients are already using it, we still need to nail some new features like live chat, notifications, and the new UI design.
This will help us work towards achieving our goals next month. And one of those goals is to sell our service as a product. And for that, we completed a full redesign of our website.
All of our landing pages were updated in terms of design and copy so our offer is now more clear for our potential clients.
We’ve already seen 4 sign-ups for our $7 for 7 days trial after the full redesign of our website.
And here’s the new homepage by the way. Doesn’t it look irresistible? Like you want to sign up for the trial immediately?
Redesigning our website has helped us keep rowing the boat towards our end goal—10X the business in 2020. And with a lot of work I’m sure we’ll get there sooner than later.
And speaking of goals, another one we’re aiming for next month is to redesign our blog. You know how important it is to improve your landing page design to boost conversions. So we’re optimizing all of our landing pages to give our visitors a better experience. And so we’re planning on giving our blog a bit of a makeover in the coming months.
And we also relaunched our landing page to keep promoting our webinars. You know, the weekly live demo webinars Matt has been hosting and where he explains everything AutoGrow can do for your business.
We’ve had tons of great responses from these and if you want to learn more about what AutoGrow can do for you, I’d encourage you to register for one now. Plus, it’s free!
Hire Slow, Fire Fast
Another area of the business where we’ve made really good progress is with our hiring funnel.
You know how, if you own a people-driven business, hiring the right people to your team is a fundamental part of growth, right? Well, as your business grows, you won’t be able to sustain it with the same number of people. Eventually, that number will have to grow as the workload increases.
And that’s why we’ve been focusing hard on retaining and adding solid team members to the team and saying goodbye to the ones who simply aren’t a fit.
And that was another big win for this past month—letting go of some people who were more of a bottleneck for the company.
Sometimes it’s better to fire people (and do it fast) rather than keeping those who are holding the business back.
And that’s a common mistake most entrepreneurs and startups make. They don’t fire fast. They keep their employees on even though they’re not performing well.
And did you know that not firing team members who aren’t a fit for your business can cost you time and money?
A study by Harvard Business School found that avoiding a hire who isn’t a fit or letting one go can quickly translate into as much as $12,500 in cost savings.
So you better start visualizing how much money one employee who’s holding your business from scaling can actually cost you.
We actually hired on a trial basis an automation expert and a designer and we’ll see how that goes next month.
For now, we’ve been lining up applicants to keep filling the content writer and designer’s position. And we’re expecting to have 10 candidates lined up each month.
And documenting our processes have been key in bringing in new team members.
As you know, onboarding one employee can cost you $3,000 according to LinkedIn. So you know how much money, time, and effort you need to put into training someone.
For us, documenting every single process and the systems we use in the business have helped us onboard new hires in a more efficient way.
In February, we were 11 happy team members from all around the world.
Seriously. People from Australia, Ukraine, US, The Philippines, Nigeria, and Venezuela make it possible every day that you, busy business owner or entrepreneur, get your digital marketing tasks done (and done right) while we do all the work for you. Plus, you get to check the progress of your account in real-time through AutoGrow’s app!
And if you’re uncertain about what we can do for you, you can always reach out to us to see how AutoGrow works.
Conclusion
With our new service repositioned as an instant, all-in-one digital marketing team that gets all your digital marketing tasks and projects done, we’re expecting not only to grow revenue. But we’re also expecting to grow the number of trials per week and convert them into clients.
Retaining all clients’ accounts has certainly not been easy. Managing the full team has not been easy either.
But what has remained easy is to do the work for our clients and do it right.
And doing the work through our app has been simply awesome. We’ve already received some compliments from our clients using the app and acknowledging how useful it is.
For the next month, we’ll keep working towards our end goal of 10X the business, improving our hiring funnel, and we’ll also continue to host our weekly LIVE demo webinars every Tuesday to keep getting clients to sign up for our service.
I think it’s pretty great how we’ve been consistently growing although this month revenue dropped. Yet I’m not ready to predict the future because it’s a tough business model to scale this fast.
But certainly, we’re working hard to share with you next month’s growth report with helpful lessons that can help you grow too.
Leave a comment below and let me know what you got from this article that was most beneficial.
And until the next growth report, let’s keep AutoGrowing.
Keep AutoGrowing, stay focused.
Mariana Lessmann
