About

The Fake Mark Twain quote that helped an international technology company break their yearly sales record and how ANY company can learn from it…
Hello, I’m Aaron

I’ll get to the Mark Twain thing in a minute, but you’re probably here to see if we’d get along.

I’m quite sure we would. I’m a fairly approachable dude. I like my morning runs, I prefer vinyl records over Spotify, and I will say – without hesitating –  that my children and wife are the most important things in my life.

But that’s not what you’re here for.

Let’s see if we’d really get along. These are the people I mesh well with:

  • people who are very good at what they do for others: their companies sell a product or service that’s one of the best in the market
  • people who’re willing to go against the grain: they have the courage to re-imagine marketing and sales
  • people who commit to change: if someone challenges their beliefs, they won’t be afraid to listen and think critically.

That last point is very important. If we work together I’ll challenge many of your beliefs.

If you’re fine with that, I’ll start challenging them here.

If you aren’t, feel free to stop reading. It was nice meeting you and this website will be here if you ever change your mind.

Onwards.

One of my favorite movies of the last decade is The Big Short. It touches on a rather sensitive topic but does so in a very honest and fun way. I like honest and fun.

I also happen to like pretty much any movie Christian Bale is in. But that’s for another day.

The film also has one of the most ironic bloopers ever.

This is one of the first frames in the movie. Check it out:

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

The movie’s been mocked by several movie journalists and for a good reason: that quote does not belong to Mark Twain.

To be precise, the exact quote doesn’t match any book or speech. It doesn’t belong to Mark Twain or anyone for that matter.

Mark Twain’s or not, it’s a powerful statement. One that I try to repeat often to myself, one of the pillars of Growth Simplified, and, most importantly, one that’s enabled the success of many of the leaders I’ve worked with.

I told you I’d start challenging your beliefs. Here we go:

You Shouldn’t Market Your Products

Believe it or not, people don’t care about you or your products.

Have you noticed what’s going on here?

Yes, this is the About page of Growth Simplified. It’s one of the most visited pages of every website. Yet not even my About page should be about ME.

When you clicked on that link you didn’t want to know what I cook for breakfast literally every Sunday or how much I love my children, despite those two facts being closely related. You wanted to know if we’d get along.

  • I could’ve told you about how I started working for my father’s business: a very successful business that was elite at what they did but had no sales or marketing support of any kind.
  • I could’ve told you about how that helped me build and manage multiple businesses over the past 20 years.
  • I could’ve told you about the highest ever annual sales that clients have had, the many people who have expressed gratitude for the work that we did together and how all of that is tied to a simple principle.

But that’d be me guessing what you’re interested in. And assumptions can be dangerous.

Growth Simplified is about finding out – not guessing –
what customers REALLY want

We are experts at creating customer profiles and turning them into actionable sales and marketing strategies.

I did that for my own companies before doing it for anyone else.

We’d be a good fit if:

  • You’ve hit a plateau with your current strategy and don’t know how to break through
  • You’re losing clients to better-funded or lower-priced competitors
  • You want to focus on fewer, better activities and eliminate low-value distractions
  • You want more ideal leads and more of those leads to convert into paying clients

By understanding my client’s needs and the outcomes that THEIR clients want to achieve or avoid, we’ve consistently hit 10x to 20x ROI with our clients.

The first step to achieve that is getting to know you. If I don’t believe that, for every single dollar you invest in Growth Simplified, you can make $10 to $20 within 90 to 180 days, then this isn’t right for you and we will respectfully decline.

Your time is very valuable and so is mine. Let’s make sure we’re a good fit.

Conversations that are customer – centric strategic and differentiated.  Conversations that work with, instead of against, human nature. Conversations that create the emotional connection required to turn strangers into friends, and friends into customers. If more businesses marketed and sold this way, less money would be wasted.

Everyone – companies, customers and communities – would be better off.

We are experts at creating customer avatar/profile/data into actionable sales and marketing strategy.

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