Patrick Campbell - From no marketing knowledge and $0 to a $200m exit - The Profitwell growth story - S3 Ep18

Brain-hurt scale = 7/10. Patrick Campbell's story is fascinating. From rural Wisconsin to the NSA and then bootstrapping a tech company to a recent $200m sale. Sounds crazy until you learn how his mind works and the sharp business intellect that's feeding success. 

In a world of social media influencers and industry commentator journalists, we can easily listen to conflicted advice. The truth isn't a dominant voice, so it gets lost. So today, you can hear first-hand from someone who has grown a business from scratch and all the ways they did it. What worked, what didn't. What is timeless, evergreen sage advice. And what wouldn't work as effectively today. 

And the TL:DR version of this episode is - if you adopted Patrick's business mindset, you'd save a large degree of wasted effort. 

One of the most important points we touch, is the dangers of buying into a playbook that's worked for another firm and trying to apply it without considering context. 

And the whole conversation weaves throughout the history of his business, from the genesis of Price Intelligently > Profitwell > Paddle. And all the things the team did to grow it in the early days. Versus how it ticks along today. 

Included is:

- how he thinks - how he approaches growth strategy that works. His growth mindset approach to marketing

- how he sits on $24bn/year of data from subscription businesses, and can tap into that accurate sample to base what he says in this talk with fact - not opinion 

- churn - is it only bound by macro brand factors or is it more complex than that?

- how to choose the right marketing freelancers or vendors - and how to assemble an effective team

- the dangers of playbooks and 'copy/paste' marketing

- the best ratio of planning to execution

- how he approaches which channels to use for growth. How it's changed over time and his current advice

- the difference between content marketing verses content creation

- attribution - measuring the right things with your marketing spend

- decision-making & hierarchies

- competitive intelligence

- first-principal thinking

- quilting 

Wait what? 

Listen