Everything has a by-product. Creative founders spot these by-products and capitalize on them. What’s yours?
What is your by-product?
By-Product: A secondary product made in the manufacture of something else.
Thanks Webster!
The lumber yard has sawdust as their by-product. It’s obvious because it literally piles up.
A by-product is much harder to spot when you work in the digital space.
Basecamp (formerly 37 Signals) pioneered this idea of a by-product for an online business. Their by-products are ebooks about building software, Ruby on Rails as an easier development language, and a project management tool that’s now valued at over $100M.
Mr Bezos has been an amazing inspiration for turning expenses on his income statement into revenue generators. See the graphic below of how Amazon turned every major cost into a new product line.
I’m half way through the book Titan (the John Rockefeller bio) and he was obsessed with by-products. His #1 by-product was waste from his refineries that no one wanted until the automobile went mainstream and he sold this waste as gasoline. Insane!
So, what’s your by-product?
As you work to make a ad campaign, close a deal, or deliver a software product – what’s your secondary work from that? What’s your sawdust?
Here are my by-products:
The Growth Marketer’s Playbook
The Growth Marketer’s Playbook was the sawdust from teaching digital marketing for 5 years at General Assembly and mentoring startups through startup accelerators. Essentially, it’s the 500 slides I created for presentations repurposed into a book.
This Newsletter
My email newsletter is a by-product of the research I do to keep my team (and myself) sharp as a growth marketer. I’m constantly searching for interesting case studies, blog posts, and podcasts to help us stay on top of our game. It’s easy for me to share these findings as an email newsletter.
Funnel Teardowns
Funnel Teardowns is the result of the competitive audits we do for our CRO clients at GrowthHit. Our partners love them so we thought we would share them with everyone. We walk through an brand’s conversion funnel and highlight what we like and don’t like from a CRO perspective.
Hit Lab Ventures
At GrowthHit, we have worked with over 100 companies which means we have seen some industries and business models we really like. These insights inspire ideas we would like to invest in or build from scratch. Hit Lab Ventures is the by-product of all our experience as growth marketers.
COMING SOON . . . Another By-Product
And I have one more that I am working on that I am excited to announce next year. Stay tuned!
Summary
You might be too close to your product to recognize it. But, while you make a product you’re also making something else. Maybe it’s knowledge. Maybe it’s the process. Find that thing. Repurpose it. and monetize it.