Author: Grant Duncan

Categories
fitness laughingatme remotework

Revolutionize Your Workday: How to Build Your Own Outdoor Walking Desk

My new invention: The Outdoor Walking Desk! 🚶‍♂️

I wrote up a free instructional kit for you to be able to assemble your own (link below) 👇

Tired of being stuck inside all day, sitting at a desk for hours on end? If so, this is the perfect solution for you!
—–
I do all types of work while using this outside. Email, writing, meetings, reading, coding, etc. The only tasks that are hard are those that need pixel-perfect design.
—–
If nothing else, humor me by downloading the free PDF & sending it to someone who would laugh. It’s my first time creating something like this 🤞

Whatcha think? Love it, hate it, think you’d use it? 
Seen me walking around Silicon Valley with this?

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgeneration facebookads linkedinads

Unlocking Marketing Success: A Comprehensive Guide on Creating Demand & Scaling New Pipeline

New launch: my detailed playbook on “How To Create Demand and Scale Net New Pipeline” (free, no email required)

This 2,500+ word article goes into specific strategies and tactics about:
– Defining your ICP & unique POV
– Details for building advanced audiences
– Ad optimizations, frequency, and metrics
– Example ads
And more!

This is one of the most all-encompassing Marketing pieces I’ve created. And shoutout to Blake Strozyk and Silvio Perez for helping me write it up!

Finding something useful in it? Comment with favorite emoji to let me know 🚵‍♂️
Have a question? Ask away!

Categories
flightdeals ihaveweirdhobbies travel

Revolutionize Your Travel Planning with My Innovative Free Flight Deals Email Service

My third invention: a free flight deals email service 🛫

It’s like Scott’s Cheap Flights except you choose destinations, you can save way more filters, and you don’t need specific dates.

Also, it shows a chart of price trends for your search with all the filters included.

Try it out for free! (link in comments)

——————
More details in case you’re curious:

– You don’t need to search specific dates. You can choose something like: 10-15 day trip to London sometime btwn June and September
– You can search over a rolling year of flights
– Avoid getting alerts for annoying 5 AM flights you wouldn’t take
– Other services show avg prices without including any parameters. You get to see a chart of price trends for your search with all the related parameters.

——————
An example of parameters:
– Round trip: SFO,SJC,OAK <-> LHR,FRA,BER
– Anytime within 2023-03-11 to 2024-02-28
– With the nights in destination ranging from 6 to 16
– Depart on a: Thursday or Friday
– Departure time from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM
– Arrival time from 8:00 AM to 11:00 PM
– Return departure time from 8:00 AM to 11:00 PM
– Return arrival time from 8:00 AM to 11:00 PM
Also available: airline, # of layovers, price cap

——————
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that a friend and I created a flight deals iPhone app that launched a few weeks after the pandemic started (yes, we did not foresee that in our planning lol). We eventually had to shut it down because of cost and flight API issues.
Thankfully, an email service is very affordable to run, and I’m using a new flight API!

This is the final hobby project I’ve created during my two weeks off before starting the new job. Won’t have much time for them soon, but they’ve been energizing to work on 🤓

Categories
startups svb

Surviving the SVB Collapse: Impacts and Implications on Startups, Hiring, and Venture Capital

Be prepared for all the potential implications of SVB collapsing…

– How many of your software vendors will still be in business in a few weeks?

– Even if you don’t bank with SVB, how will your customer churn be affected by this if you have startups as customers (that may go bankrupt)?

– Will there be a firesale of startups to bigger companies b/c they can’t make payroll?

– How will this change hiring when potentially thousands of employees are laid off in 1-4+ weeks?

– How will future VC investing change if much of their dry powder money waiting to be invested is gone?

– How will startups fare if their runway is cut in half (or worse)? Even if a startup used 2-3 banks and one of them was SVB, that could still dramatically cut their cash runway.

– How will LPs of VCs (universities, nonprofits, pension plans, etc.) be affected by some of their returns being wiped out?

What are other implications?

My heart goes out to all those affected…

Categories
b2bmarketing design generativeAI

Utilizing Generative AI for Innovative Advertising: Insights from our Discussion with Refine Labs

So fun to speak with Refine Labs’ Cassidy and Carl about how we’re using generative AI for ads, the website, videos, and more!

Generative AI should become a big part of your workflow. Otherwise, you’ll likely get left behind…

Give it a listen and comment / DM us with any questions or ideas!

Categories
b2bmarketing newjobsameme

Joining the Future of Surgical Care: My Journey to VP of Marketing at HST Pathways

Exciting news: I’ve joined HST Pathways as the VP of Marketing!
 
HST is a ~$50M Bain Capital-backed software company focused on helping surgery centers.
 
A few of the reasons why I joined:
 
-Great and growing company (size, growth rate, profitability, culture, etc.)
 
-Strong alignment on marketing philosophy with my new boss, Nick Latz
As an example, even the job description mentioned demand creation and capture and said “You are a continuous leader, seeking out peers and thought leaders like Chris Walker and Dave Gerhardt to learn from.”
 
-Team and culture – the Marketers & execs I met all seemed sharp, engaging, and collaborative. The kind of people who I want to spend many hours with.
 
-Products & industry – Being able to help people provide better care for surgeries is very motivating. Plus HST’s products are game-changing for surgery centers (especially for those moving from on-premise solutions).
 
 
It’s going to be a fun ride! I’ll continue to build in public and provide actionable strategies and tactics.

Categories
b2bmarketing leadership

5 Powerful Questions to Boost Trust and Connection in Your New Team: A Tactical Guide

Building trust is critical, especially when you start a new job. Here’s a tactical way to foster that:
In your next team meeting, have everyone answer these 5 questions:

1. What was your first job? đź’Ľ

2. How many siblings do you have? 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

3. What were the places you grew up in? 🌎

4. Share a challenge you faced growing up. 🚧

5. Share something no one knows about you. đź’ˇ

This helps people open up about their personal life a bit & creates a better connection.
Someone has talked about battling cancer while others have talked about their guitar collection. To each their own level of comfort.

I do this every time I join a new team.

Also, whenever a new person joins my team, they answer the questions in their first team meeting, and then I have others on the team share something no one knows about them (so it’s not just the new person sharing).

Shoutout to Chris Duncan for first suggesting these questions to me!

Categories
Uncategorized

Brand Designer Hiring: Who Should They Report To? Insights for Scaling Your Design Team

I’m hiring a Brand Designer. Do you think this person should report to me or to the Sr. PMM?

Pros for it reporting to me:
– Gives the Sr. PMM more time to be executing herself
– Easier setup to scale Design for more senior growth in the future

Pros for it reporting to Sr. PMM:
– She gets opportunities to grow in people mgmt more
– I get more time b/c I’m managing one less person.

Todd Barr or others, thoughts?

Categories
b2bmarketing creativedesign generativeAI

Boosting Ad Engagement: How Generative AI Creates Scroll-Stopping Ads

Are your ads scroll-stopping? Or do they just blend in?

Omar and I spoke with Cassidy Shield and Carl Ferreira of Refine Labs about how we think about creating scroll-stopping ads & how we used Generative AI to do so.

Watch the full episode link in the comments.

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgeneration

Unlocking Success: A Modern Approach to ROI Calculators and Marketing Strategies

Me: “Are you good with ungating the new ROI calculator? I think this will get us the most people to go through the whole process & share the PDF with their colleagues.”

CRO: “Yep.”

Me: “Great, next topic.”

So nice to have Marketing philosophies aligned in a new job rather than need to persuade people of a modern approach to Marketing. Thanks Nick Latz!