Business hacks, tactics and tricks - practical guide

What is the aim of this course?

The success of many companies depends on figuring out a clever way to grow, earn, or operate that will drastically change the game and stack the cards in their favor. One of the ways to learn those hacks, tactics, and tricks is by trial and error. The other, more efficient one boils down to observing the successes and failures of other companies and applying the learning in your business and industry. I will show you plenty of examples of how others did it, so you can save time and money on hurting yourself and your business   

In this course, I will show the most useful business hacks, tactics, and tricks that have been used by well-known companies as well as others, not that famous but very innovative.

This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from the Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried out or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated a total of 2 billion of additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who are now Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that, my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 315 000 students, including people working in EY, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Adidas, Napers, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange, and many others.

I teach through case studies, so you will have a lot of lectures showing examples of analyses and tools that we use. To every lecture, you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excel files, as well as additional presentations, and materials shown in the lectures, so as a part of this course, you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modifications, be applied by you or your team in your work.   

As a preparation, we have gone through 200 case studies of companies – some of them well known, others less popular yet very interesting from a tactics and strategy point of view.  I tried to get the best, most useful things and grouped them into sections for easier consumption. In this course, you will definitely find inspiration on how to crush it with your own business.     

I do not like to over-complicate things, so in every lecture, I will be quite straightforward. Most lectures will also have a lot of additional resources: links to important lectures, detailed data, and examples.  Every lecture is a separate example of how to use a specific tactic/hack in real life. I will show how a specific company has used this hack in practice. The idea is to have everything that you need for creative thinking in one place. If you don’t find something that you need, let me know - I will try to prepare something, and I will add it to the course     

Why have I decided to create this course?   

For our teams, we have created courses that help you understand and analyze businesses. We have started to use them extensively, also with customers that we work with and their teams. Since we made them available to a wider public, we got many requests, especially on Quora, to share more examples of applications and case studies. We try to minimize repetitive work, so we decided to take this course in order to cut down on the questions we are getting.   

This course is based on our extensive experience in supporting and running different businesses.       

In what way will you benefit from this course?   

The course is a practical, step-by-step guide loaded with tons of tricks, hints, and examples that will show us where you can go with your business. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience, as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that, thanks to the course, you will know:   

• What business hacks, tactics, and tricks can you try in your business?   

• How to estimate the potential of such hacks and tactics on your business?   

• How to build a coherent strategy and set of tactics?   

• Why are some companies successful in their industry?   

You can also ask me any questions either through the discussion mode or by messaging me directly.     

How is the course organized?   

The course is divided into the following sections:   

• Introduction. We begin with a little intro to the course.

• Behavioral contracts - motivate desired behavior. In the second section, I will show you how you can motivate others to do what you want them to do. By building a proper referral program, loyalty scheme, or customer onboarding process, you can totally change your business   

• Low-Cost Model. In the third section, I will discuss the details of the low-cost model and when it makes sense. I will also show you the execution of this model in airlines and retail.   

• Non-standard advertising space. The next section will show you how, in an innovative way, you can promote your business without spending much on      advertising   

• Stand on the shoulders of a giant - how to use 3rd party platforms. In the fifth section, you will learn  how to leverage 3-rd party platforms to get fast and cheap access to crucial resources (i.e., market)   

• Remove barriers. You can grow your customer base or increase retention of current ones by removing barriers between you and the customer. I will show you examples of how you can remove those barriers   

• Create a barrier to entry. One of the most important things is to create barriers between your customer and potential competitors. I will show you examples of how to do that.   

• Community. We have a separate section on community and its role in business. In many business models (esp. online business), customers come for the product, but they stay for the community.     

• Innovative selling. In this section, we will talk about how you can change your business by changing the model in which you claim the money from the customer. The choice of revenue streams also defines the selling model   

• Start from a niche. Most businesses that are successful start in a small niche where they can work in peace on product-market fit and on their business models. I will show you examples of very successful companies that have applied this hack in practice     

• Strategic Partner. By getting a strategic partner, you may change your odds of success. I will discuss here the pros and cons of strategic partners’ deals. We will show some known examples and their implications.     

• Create a much higher standard. 10x the standard can help you build a drastically growing business   

• New revenue streams. At some point, it makes a lot of sense to create new revenue streams on top of what you already have. I will discuss how others have achieved this   

• Do things that do not scale. As a startup at the beginning, you will be forced to do things that don’t scale. I will discuss here the implications of this strategy   

• Create sales first. You don’t have to rush into production. Sometimes it makes much more sense to start with simply creating the sales/distribution machine and only after that jump into producing /sourcing the product/service that you want to offer.   

• Others   

We will be adding new sections in the coming months and expanding existing ones   

You will also have access to many additional resources   

• Links to interviews and presentations with more detailed data   

• Data showing the impact of some of the hacks on the business   

• Links to books worth reading