About Anirudh
Anirudh Narayan is a growth specialist that has helped over 10,000 aspiring entrepreneurs and 50 startups in US, Latin America, Africa and Asia with launching their idea, reaching product-market fit and scale. His core specialties lie in user acquisition, funnel optimization, growth hacking and business development. Anirudh’s previous experiences involve Growth at Rocket Internet, Shutterstock, Lean Startup Machine as well as mentoring at accelerators like Numa. He has also taught digital marketing with SimpliLearn and UpGrad. He also is the author of the latest high flying book, Scale Smart: How To Get Your First 1,000 Customers In India. Anirudh currently helps entrepreneurs launch and scale their business through bootcamps, courses, consulting services and products with his platform growthspartan.com. He was recently featured among the Top 500 Growth Hackers in the world.
Chit Chat session
Kindly enlighten our readers about your debut book, ‘”Scale Smart: How To Get Your First 1,000 Customers in India”
So the book Scale Smart is like a startup manual or a startup handbook for all Indian entrepreneurs. I think there are a lot of inspirational books out there but not enough “how to” books for the Indian startup ecosystem. Given we are trust deficit, our purchasing power isn’t as high as the US , our behaviors are different. Our ecosystem is special and book does a solid job on giving the startup a road map on how to get their first 1,000 customers in India.
For example, it takes you from I have an idea, what do i do next and how to scale using each marketing channel. For example, How Did Chumbak get 500,000 community members, How did Crowdfire get 5 Million Followers on Twitter or How did ShoutMeLoud make $50,000/month using Content Marketing.
Plus it isn’t just my analysis or reverse engineering, but created after interviewing the founders of Byju, InMobi, Practo, Freshworks, Freecharge and 20+ others. The book is suited for both B2B and B2C type of companies that are looking to scale both online and offline.
How much research and efforts were required on your part to complete this non-fiction book?
I think the first step was identifying the problem to solve. People wanted growth examples, marketing strategies and success stories broken down by marketing channels which were specific to the Indian ecosystem. So I thought the best way to solve this problem was to actually interview successful entrepreneurs in the Indian ecosystem and then try to disseminate this information in the form of a book. I started interviewing entrepreneurs in April 2016 and to interview close to 25 entrepreneurs took close to 5 months. So had all the information by September 2016.
But I was able to finish the book only by May 2018. Primarily because the book took a couple of pivots. Initially it was going to be each of their growth stories as chapters but after feedback, I soon realized people didn’t care enough about that. They wanted to know how to scale their startup. Next the thought was should be make it a B2B or a B2C book. But I don’t think I was ever going to write two books. So after a couple of pivots and almost giving up in the middle for six months, the book finally came to fruition after two years since the journey began.
What according to you is different about your book?
I can say this objectively that there isn’t a single book tailored to the Indian ecosystem like the book Scale Smart: How To Get Your First 1,000 Customers In India. I think what makes it different is that it is actionable, it gives you over 100 tips that you can implement right away and it breaks it down per marketing channel. Like for example, What was Chumbak’s Facebook strategy to get them 500,000 members to What was Crowdfire’s Twitter strategy that helped them get 5 Million Followers. I think its highly actionable. Plus the book has a ton of images, tabulations and bullet points that you can easily digest as a reader. Suited for people with low attention span.
How do you manage writing along with your profession?
I gave up in between for six months so I may not be the right guy to narrate a story how to best manage work and book writing. But the way to do this is, make this the first activity of the day. Like start early when you’re feeling fresh. It could be 9 AM – 10:30 AM. But no matter what that time is dedicated to writing. No emails, no instagram, no distractions. Plus you want to pick a spot that is your writing spot. So you start associating writing with that spot. Also don’t write on your bed. Over a period of time, your bed will become a place of work which doesn’t help you compartmentalize.
It’s also important that you set deadlines and know how much you need to write on an everyday basis. I was working with US clients so I would do a lot of consulting work from 11 AM – 7 PM while doing book writing before that.
What is the most fulfilling part of writing this book? And what is the most challenging?
The fulfilling part is talking to all these entrepreneurs and getting their insights. Golden information. Plus meeting them face-to-face was quite inspiring. The other fulfilling part was creating the framework for the book and sharing some initial chapters with my early adopters who liked what they saw. The positive feedback is always huge validation to continue writing the book.
The most challenging aspect was being consistent. I wish book writing was a team sport where you could share you ups and downs with your team members. But instead its you against your goals. It’s a lonely road. So being motivated to write everyday can be hard.
Self Publishing vs Traditional Publishing, which one do you prefer and why?
I think a lot of it depends on the book. But the advantages of self publishing is that you can launch the book in three months from the time you finish your manuscript and authors make anywhere between 30-50% of every book sold. Plus if your book is a complete online play, it makes absolute sense. But no support with self publishing. You don’t know what a good cover would look like, how to market the book or you don’t have any help with editing.
The flipside is traditional publishing. You get distribution across 100’s of stores in India, get help with editing and design and even marketing with the book sometimes. But the royalties you’re playing with an author is like 7-15%. Its supremely low. Plus the book might take a year to go live which can test your patience.
I would recommend learning how to market a great book and then try self publishing your first book. If the book does well, it can get picked up by a traditional publisher faster. Also, most people end up ordering books on Amazon/Flipkart today, so focus on getting the book out quickly and really market the book well.
Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so, what are they?
- Make sure you write for at least 30 minutes a day. Once written, take feedback on style, value and grammar. Iterate from there and see what people like.
- Create a time at which you’ll write everyday no matter what
- Have an accountability partner or write for someone. When you’re accountable to someone else, you end up creating content often.
- Find your niche i.e. find what you like writing about. And then write a lot.
What is the next book that you have planned?
Honestly I am not sure if I would write another book unless I know I can repurpose that across platforms in the form of Audiobooks, Courses, podcasts, checklists, blog posts and other formats. But if I did I would write about “How To Get Good At Something Quickly” or “How To Achieve Any Goal” Or “The Venture Capital Playbook in India” or “How To Sell 25,000 Copies Of Your Book”
