Hi, guys. I'm Marisha Lakhiani, and I'm, chief work officer at a company called Mindvalley. So Mindvalley is an EdTech company.When I first joined it, we were doing 30,000,000, and now we're doing 150,000,000 in annual subscription. So, so it's been a really amazing growth journey. And, what I wanted to talk to you about is, like, what is the most efficient way to scale an organization? Right? Because a lot of times I speak to companies and they kinda get it wrong by splitting themselves so thin, and then try to do everything at the same time. But at the end of the year, when they look at the numbers, they're like, it didn't work the way I thought it was gonna work. Right? So in this session, I'm actually gonna cover the strategies you can implement today to see growth today. Okay? So but so as I I was talking about my job. 

Right? So my job is mainly to grow the company, 40, 50 percent year on year. Now when you're doing this, it's really important to understand, like, growth and revenue is not the only thing. What is more important than that is to grow it in a way that's efficient and sustainable. Right? Grow it has to be sustainable and optimized. And that means you have to do the right thing at the right time all the time, time. And it can be very, very hard because as marketers, we're meant to measure thousands of metrics, like, every day. And we have to go through, like, metric after metric after metric after metric. 

And it creates, like, this information overload and, like, cognition, like, like, it it just creates this overload. Right? So it's important to to know what can you what do you need to focus on? What is the the core things that you need to focus on so that you can actually move the needle in the right way? And you're not trying to do everything all the time. Right? And this brings me brings me to, like, the most important principle in marketing, 80 20 rule. So what is the 80 80 20 rule all about? The 80 20 rule suggests that there's actually 20% of your efforts that are gonna bring in 80% of your results. All effort is not the same. Right? 

And when you break this 20 20 80 20 rule down to marketing, it comes down to 2 metrics, just 2 metrics that you need to pay attention to and optimize to exponentially grow your business. Okay? And what are these 2 metrics? These 2 metrics are your cost of acquiring a customer and your lifetime value of a customer. And when you optimize these two metrics, you can actually exponentially grow your business in the most sustainable way. Now as a rule of thumb, the ratio has to be 1 to 3. That means if your lifetime value is $3,000, then you your willingness to acquire a customer should be around $1,000. Right? So that's a healthy rule, 1 to 3. Now I just wanna tell you a little bit about myself. Right? So at Mindvalley, I'm chief growth officer, so I got promoted. 

I got promoted every year until I became chief growth officer. And we've grown the the company to 17,000,000 students worldwide. These students are located in a 192 countries. We even localized. So we even grew, our our our content in local markets. So we we we we dub all our content in Spanish and French and German. And this is last year's around, a 120,000,000, and this year's gonna be a 150,000,000. So all of this was done without any investment by self funding, by making the revenue, and pumping it back into the right things. But how is this possible? This was possible because we didn't try to do everything all at once. We tried to focus on what was the right levers to move. Right? So this is why when I talk about the 2 most important things you need to focus on, it's going to be your cost of acquiring a customer and your lifetime value of a customer. 

Now what is your cost of acquiring a customer? Right? So this is your total marketing cost divided by number of customers you acquired during that period. Okay? So that's your that's your cost of acquiring a customer. Now you should go one step deeper and think about the CAC per channel. So, for example, my biggest channel is advertising. So I obviously wanna look at what is my advertising CAC? What is the cost I'm acquiring a customer on all these advertising channels? So you should do that per channel because then you know which channel to focus on and which channel not to focus on or which channel to invest more in. But why this is important is because over the last 5 years, your CAC has grown 60%, and it's going to double in the next coming years. 

So if you're not actively thinking of ways to bring this number down, you might find it hard to stay in business in the long run. So this is why this number is so important. And it varies. Right? So your cat can vary based on your industry. Your CAC can vary based on your business model. Ideally, the longer the sales cycle, the lot the higher the CAC. So if you have a sales cycle where you're jumping on a call with a customer, there's multiple follow ups, you gotta speak to 3 different people in the organization, your CAC is going to be high. Right? But if you just have a sales page just like the ecom, someone sees your product, they just buy right away, and there's not much touch points, then your cap will be much lower. 

Right? So it varies. But, again, your rule of thumb is 1, 2, 3. Now here are some really amazing ways that you can drop your CAC almost immediately. Right? So I'll tell you how. Right? So number 1 is organic revenue. Okay? So a lot of companies that I speak to, they don't focus on organic. They are so focused on paid that they are completely neglecting organic, and that's not healthy. So a healthy business has 70% of its revenue coming from organic and only 30% coming from paid or advertising. Right? So if you don't have those ratios, you need to really rethink your strategies. And why this is super important also is because of these two statistics. Right? So the first statistic is that your customers are spending a 147 minutes of their day on social media. K. A 147 minutes of their day. 

That means, literally, they're awake 12 hours. They're spending more than 2 hours of this 12 hours on social media. So if you're not on social media connecting with them, you're missing out. Okay? The second thing is that there's been countless studies on this, and 75% of customers, before they actually make a purchase, go to your social media to check if you have the trust, the credibility, the authority, the social proof. They go and validate you before they make that purchase. So social media is not just a vanity metric. It's not just a nice to have. It's not just putting content out there. It's actually a trust badge. And if you're not thinking about the trust that you're putting out to your customers on social media, you're playing the game wrong. 

So this is why if you have any social media team and they tell you follow accounts is a vanity metric, all that stuff, ask them to check again because your customers are checking you out before they're even buying anything with you. Now the good news is that there's a lot of social media channels. Right? You don't have to focus on everything. You need to figure out which one resonates with your customers the most and focus on mastering that channel and then just using that content to cross pollinate the other channels. But you need to master 1 channel. Right? The second strategy is growth loops. So I I love growth loops because growth loops are basically a sustainable way for your existing customers to bring another customer into the ecosystem. Okay? So what this does is it basically creates, like, a self sustaining cycle of growth. Now the best example of this is Trello. Right? 

So imagine if you go and create a Trello board now for your work and you share it with your team, because you're not gonna work on it by yourself. You're gonna share it with your team, you're basically getting 5 or 6 people or 20 people to join Trello with you. So this creates a growth loop, and then the company can just scale organically. Right? So think about how you can build a growth loop within your product or your organization because this is this creates a very healthy self sustaining cycle of growth, and it drops your cap down. Next is referrals. So referrals are an incentivized way for your customers to refer other customers. So it's kind of like a growth loop, but this is incentivized. Okay? So you know referral programs. 

Like, the most iconic one is probably Dropbox, where if you share a Dropbox with someone a friend, you get extra space, they get extra space. But then when do referrals, there's 3 things you can get wrong with it. So these are 3 things I want you to pay attention to when you're building your referral program. The first thing is that it has to feel organic. It has to feel like it's part of the user journey. It shouldn't feel like it's an afterthought. Like, suddenly, you have a referral program, but I wasn't ready to refer because I didn't even like your product. Right? So it needs to feel, like, very organic. The second is that it needs to provide 2 people incentives. Right? So it's a person that the referrer and then the referred person. 

So both people need to feel incentivized for it to work really well. And the third thing is it needs to be easy. So it shouldn't be 10 steps where I have to paste the link and I have to write a copy, and then the copy has to go in or click on WhatsApp and then share it somewhere else and copy it. It's just it cannot. It has to be 1 or 2 clicks. Like, super simple. Like, I need to click a button. Now the copy is done for me, and I can literally share it with my friend and and they know what to do. Right? So it has to be easy, and a lot of people get that wrong. Number number sorry. This is number 4. Number 4 is AB testing. So AB testing is, like, probably one of the best ways you can drop your cap. Right? 

And if you look at big companies, like you look at Airbnb, Netflix, all of these big companies are running between 500 to a 1000 tests a week. Okay? So question is how many tests are you running? Are you running 1? Are you running none? Because if you're not running tests, you're missing out. But when even when you're running tests, there is mistakes people make. Okay? And sometimes you might run a test and you see, like, oh, I I pushed it live, and it said it was gonna lose 30% more revenue. But then when I ran it put it live, there was not that much impact on my business. That's because you're running tests wrong. And the way to run tests correctly is you need to pay attention to these two things. Right? First is, what is the duration of your test? 

Because some businesses, their massive peak cycles or their massive sales cycles are all Monday. Monday is, like, seasonality. Right? Or Friday or it's between 12 and 1 PM. You know? So there's gonna be parts of the the your your the time, parts of the week where there's optimum sales or or less optimum sales. Right? So you need to run your test over a significant amount of time so that you can actually capture these these different periods. Right? You can't just run on a Monday. You need to run it for at least, like, a full week or 2 full 2 weeks. Right? So making sure that you've you've nailed down that duration. 2nd is that you need to also pre calculate the sample size. You You can't run a test on 5 people and then decide which if it's a winner or not. Right? 

You have to run it on a on a significant sample size. So there's actually calculators online that you could use to kind of precalculate and preplan your test so you make sure that you you whatever results you get are gonna be are gonna hold true every single time you run this test, and it's not gonna be a false positive. It's not gonna be a false negative. Number 5 is partnerships and affiliates. Okay. So, basically, partnerships and affiliates are a way for you to tap into other people's list. Now you can do that in 2 ways. You can do that by building a partnership with the brand that's complimentary, or you can do that by building an affiliate where you pay somewhat pay for sale that is made. So anyone sends traffic to you and if the sales are made, you pay them a commission for the sales that are made. So there's 2 ways of doing this. 

A really great brand that is really has massive strategies around affiliate and partnerships is GoPro. So if you look at GoPro, you the most iconic partnership is GoPro and Red Bull. And you may notice they're both chasing the same audience. They're adrenaline junkie. The the audience is the same. But what they're doing is trying to leverage each other's list and use utilize both their brands to cross pollinate and help one another out. Right? So think about your industry. Think about your brand. Think about who's complementary in your space and who can you partner with that has a significant list size where you can cross pollinate and share traffic and and, you know, work together on certain projects or sponsorships so you don't have to fuck out by customers. 

The next important metric that you guys need to pay attention to is your lifetime value of a customer. So how is this calculated? So this is basically calculated by how much and how frequently a customer spends with you in their lifetime. Okay? So this is about a little bit about retention as well. Right? So you need to think about how many times can I get them to buy other things, and how long can I hold their attention and keep them engaged with my business? Now there's multiple ways you can grow your lifetime value of a customer, and I'm just gonna cover these, 10 in in today's session. So number 1 is subscription. Okay? So subscription is basically a great way to do this because you're creating recurring revenue. So it's not like a it's more than a one time purchase now. 

You are getting them to come back every month or every year, and there's repeat business. Right? And a business that really went booming with this is is Adobe. So in 2012, Adobe was transactional. They moved to subscription in 2013, and they became this whole, like, cloud subscription, software. And, before the they they pivoted to subscription, their lifetime value was a 1,400 dollars 1,400 dollars. After they pivoted, they grew their lifetime value to $10,000 from the same customers. So there's massive potential in subscription. Right? But you gotta see, does your business model fit it? And how can you fit? How can they make you can how can you make it work for your customers by giving this giving them this consistent value? Next is upsell. 

So upsells, downsells, cross sells. These are, like, traditional terms in marketing, and stuff. And, like, the one of the best examples for brands that a brand that does this really well is Amazon. Right? So if you go to Amazon, you're gonna notice that Amazon actually has this section where it says, people who bought this also bought this. Okay? That's a great example of an upsell. It's like, if you bought this, you're also gonna you're also gonna like this. Right? And Amazon also has downsells. Right? So if you go to, like, buy a book, you'll also see a section that says, oh, you can buy you in new or you can buy used. And used is a downsell because it's to cater to people that don't want to pay full price, but they want the product. You know? 

So Amazon has built a really great, downsell system, by doing that. Amazon also does really amazing cross sells. So if you go to their their their their any product page, you're gonna notice they also have these, like, all of these other items that they recommend you. They're like, oh, increase your gig. Oh, you know, add this other stuff. Add this, like, bag. Add this this case. Add another battery. Add all these things. So they keep recommending products that you can add because what they're trying to do is cross sell your other products. Right? So this is, again, a great way of of doing cross sells. So if you look at Amazon and study Amazon, they do amazing upsells, cross sells, down sells. Next is autobumps. So autobumps are basically like a one click add on to your checkout. Okay? 

So what this does is it helps someone to add on another item that's just very complementary to their existing purchase, right, without having to go through multiple screens and making it super invasive. Now an example of this would be if someone is buying a yoga mat. Okay? If someone's buying a yoga mat, what is the next problem that they have? It's like, how do I carry my yoga mat when I'm traveling? So your auto bump could be yoga straps. Right? And it can be 10, $20. So, like, no brainer offer that you can just add on and say, would you like yoga straps? Click here to add on yoga straps to your your your your checkout. Right? So this is a great way to get your customers to spend more with you. So just making sure you're just adding auto moments, just simple products that you can add on that solves another need. Next is email flows. 

So email flows, these I'm talking about, like, our autogenerated emails. Right? So autogenerated emails actually have the highest open rates than any other emails because usually it's about a purchase. It's about a transaction. It's about it's about something that is of value to the customer, so they tend to open it because they know they're not really being sold to in those emails. Right? So now since they now that they have the highest open rates, when utilized correctly, they can generate 320% more revenue than traditional launch emails. The thing is a lot of brands don't utilize their auto generated emails. So auto generated emails are emails like your cart abandonment emails, your your product your category your category abandonment. You can do back in stock, low in stock. 

You can do your welcome email, like, you know, a price drop. Like, you know, this is what you do next, like, new things added. Like, all of these kind of things, they have this is traditional auto generated emails. Right? But if you use them correctly, you can use them. It can be a great way for you to generate extra revenue from your clients by making upsells, cross sells, down sells, product recommendations, you know, different different kind of promotions and offers. Next is campaigns. So campaigns are like auto generated emails, but they're slightly different. They're not auto generated. So these are seasonal. So an example of this would be, like, your Black Friday, your Valentine's Day, new product launches, any special offers discounts for seasonal for Mother's Day, Father's Day, things like that. Right? 

So these are also a great way to to generate extra revenue from your your list or your your customers, right, by by giving them new offers, something to something to to engage with. But when you're running these campaigns, there's 2 things that can really skyrocket the performance of your campaigns. Right? Two things. First thing, scarcity. So what is scarcity? Scarcity is, like, limited time only. So this offer is only valid for 24 hours. This offer is only valid for 48 hours. So limited time only. Right? The second is is, like, low stock. So you I only have this this last three pieces left last five pieces left. You see ecom, they do this really well. It's like only 10 spots available. You know, last 5 pieces left. All of this creates scarcity, which is which is really, really good for for businesses, right, or or for your performance of your campaigns. 

So whenever you're running your next campaign, make sure you have these, like, scarcity and urgency triggers in your emails because they're gonna help increase the performance of your campaigns. Number 8 is upgrades and downgrades. So upgrades and downgrades are basically a way for you to give ownership to your customers so that instead of churning leaving you, they have control over their purchase, and they can upgrade and downgrade based on their flexibility. So a really good example of this is ClassPass. So ClassPass actually did a study, and they were like, okay. Let me introduce upgrades and numbers, and let's see if I was able to retain more users over the long run. And they said it actually worked really well for them because before, what people were doing is that they would just cancel their class pass when they were traveling or when they were tied to cash or when they were not really using classes. 

But by upgrading and downgrading, they can just upgrade when they're in when they are freer and wanna consume more classes, and they can downgrade to less a lot less classes when they felt like they were traveling or they didn't really have much time or they had a lot on their plate. 

So by giving that ownership to a customer, you can keep them longer term in in the ecosystem as a customer because you're giving them the flexibility to decide how they want to use or consume your product. So think about yours your your program. It really works well with subscriptions, but think about how you can offer them upgrades and downgrade option, or even, like, various plans that they can they can they can participate in based on their needs. Next is loyalty. So loyalty and retention is huge. It's it's it can drive your your your revenue up, like, 50%. It's it's insane. But the thing is, how can you do a loyalty and retention program right? And this is really about rewarding again, like, 80 20 rule, rewarding the customers that are driving the 20% that are driving 80% of their revenue. Right? 

So if you keep them loyal, they can generate most of the revenue that you need for you, right, through that repeat business. So think about how if you don't have a loyalty program already, think about how you can implement one for your existing clients. Can even do this for b to b. You can do this for for ecom. You can do this for any type of business. There's literally no right and wrong way to do it, but it's really about rewarding the 20% that are are powering that are that are your power users. Next is bundles. So bundles are basically a way for you to put together complementary products and get customers to try out various product offerings. Right? So I put this example of of Harry's. That's a men's skin, men's care products. And the reason why I did this is because they just did it perfectly. Right? 

So what men's men's care men's skin care products like, what do men really care about? Convenience. Right? So who would appreciate bundles better than men? No. Because so if you think about what who they were targeting, they were trying to provide convenience to men that didn't wanna go through different different brands and figure out which products to use and, like, do I need 3 step? Do I need 5 step? Like, what do I need to do? I just wanna clean my face. Right? So, so what they did is they just offer these simple bundles. Like, you have a 2 you have, like, a 3 step. You have a travel kit. Just simple, convenient offers where men can just go in and be like, okay. This is it. Let me just get this and then solve my problem. Right? So bundles are a great way for instead of just getting in to buy one product, but to get them to buy the full suite and try out all the products, you can build long term loyalty over these various product offerings. 

So think about your business. Can you offer a bundle for your products? You most probably can. Right? I've seen so many different brands do this, like bundles of 3 t shirts. You know? But, really, it's just to to get people to try multiple things at the same time. And as a recap, scaling a business is not very hard. It's actually very easy to do. And the reason why we sometimes struggle is because we are spreading ourselves too thin, trying to focus on too many things at the same time, but not doing enough of the things that matter. Right? And the two things that matter the most are your cost of acquiring a customer and your lifetime value of a customer. Time value of a customer. 

And when you just double down on these two things, you can scale your business exponentially. And, to leave you with, I actually write a newsletter about this every single week, and these different strategies and stuff like that. So if you want to follow me and follow my newsletter, you can scan the QR code now, and you can learn with me every week. Thank you.