Bootstrapped Startup Creating an 5-star SEO Strategy (that works)

We had the privilege of catching up with Elston Baretto who worked with our coach, Amar to learn about and build his own SEO strategy tailored to his business. Below is our fun (a little long) interview with Elston - enjoy!

Intro

Q. Charlie, long time. Tell us a little about yourself and what makes you unique as a founder!

A. I’m Charlie, a community builder based in London, UK. My two main focuses are Ramen Club: a paid community for bootstrapped founders, and Indie London: a free, London based community also for bootstrapped founders.

Q. Interesting. I don’t often meet a lot of community builders. Tell me, what makes growing an online community particularly challenging?

A. Similar to marketplaces, you face the cold start problem. All communities start with just you, so it can be tricky to convince people to join in the first place. But even past that, keeping people engaged over the long-term isn’t easy. There are so many things vying for people’s attention, that making people want to spend time in your community and build relationships there is only getting harder. These are solvable problems, but still problems nonetheless.

The Problem - Unguided direction to growth

Q. Before you were coached by Sparrow, what were your main roadblocks that kept you from growing your revenue?

A. When you haven’t built a successful business or community before (my definition of success here is building something valuable to your members that also lets you quit your job), and are not super experienced with the kind of marketing required, you lack knowledge and conviction of the best approach. There’s tonnes of information out there now, but it’s hard to know what to focus on, and when to continue vs. give up on what you’re trying.

Q. Before Sparrow, what other alternatives did you try? How come they weren’t as effective for you?

A. I had tried out other coaches in the past, but I honestly found myself questioning their advice fairly often, as they hadn’t gotten the results I was looking for themselves. It puts this big question mark next to their feedback that made me still question what I was doing. This tended to be less effective, and the trust I had in my Sparrow advisor Amar meant I hesitated far less.

The Results - Revenue growth by 50%

Q. During your regular check-ins with our coach, how did your startup’s revenue increase over time?

A. Our revenue grew by 50% in a 4 month period, which I was super happy with.

Q. What parts of your startup’s growth strategy did you learn to improve during your time with your Sparrow coach?

A. I learned some killer insights on things like:

• How to approach cold and warm email messaging

• Which parts of our strategy to focus on and not bother with yet

• Creating ‘marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing’: such as the MaidSummit ZenMaid does

• The importance of focusing on marketing activities that not only work with your target audience, but you personally depending on your personality type

Q. What made it particularly fun and interesting to work with your coach? What’s something that you admire about his experience that helped you see things differently?

A. Amar is just a great guy generally, as well as being super experienced. I think his all around business experience (not just regarding marketing) was very insightful, having 1:1 conversations just lets you get a deeper level of understanding that isn’t possible at surface level (e.g. listening to them on a podcast).

Q. What made you pick Sparrow in particular to help you grow your revenue?

A. I was attracted by the caliber of the advisors, and I trusted Mash (who is very personable) to help me find the right one and provide a great service.

Q. What kind of founders would you recommend Sparrow to? The more specific, the better!

A. Probably two groups - founders that have already gone from 0 to 1 (created a business with paying customers), but want expert marketing help to take it to their first $5k-$10k MRR. And also more advanced founders (say at $10k+) who are thinking of building a team and building the systems to go 10x from there.

Highly recommend founders to try out Sparrow’s one-on-one approach with growth coaching. I can see why I and others like myself find this useful :)

Q. Anything else you would like to mention about your time with us? :)

A. Sparrow is a great service, I highly recommend you try it!