The Power of Compound Marketing with Dan Norris

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On today’s episode, I am talking with Dan Norris. Dan is the kung fu master that taught me a lot of the foundational writing, creation, and storytelling skills that are the foundation for this podcast, my books, and a lot of the work I do. It is very exciting to have him on the show. Dan continues to be a prolific creator at WP Curve and we get to hear about his WP Curve origin story and life since the startup. He is still applying many of the same marketing strategies he used to grow the startup in many different areas with lots of different successes.

Dan Norris is a serial entrepreneur, award-winning content marketer, international speaker, and the author of 5 (soon to be 6) number 1 Amazon best-selling business books. In June 2013 after failing at entrepreneurship for 7 years, he founded wpcurve.com, a worldwide team of WordPress developers, providing unlimited small fixes and support, 24 / 7 for a low monthly fee. After becoming profitable in 23 days, WP Curve grew to a team of 40, 850+ customers and passed an annual run rate of over $1m AUD within 2 years and a year later was sold to GoDaddy.

Dan currently works full time as the Co-founder and CEO of one of Australia’s fastest-growing craft beer breweries, Black Hops Brewing. In 2015 Black Hops brewed the world’s first beer for the biggest entertainment franchise on earth, Call of Duty. In 2018 Black Hops was voted Australia’s Champion Small Brewery at the AIBA awards, Australia’s number 1 beer competition.

We discuss:

[03:04] Dan shares about his defining moment.
[05:16] His first book was very successful and created a platform for so much more success.
[06:45] Our stories can be very powerful for our business. Learning these stories over time and how to frame them can shape your business and your outcome in huge ways.
[09:53] He realized that Black Hops had the potential to grow into something big and they needed a business person.
[11:06] They have used a very transparent brand based storytelling approach for growing their brewery.
[11:53] If you are able to do it in the online marketing world where it is so ultra-competitive then you can take those skills to a physical product where it is a bit rarer and create a good opportunity.
[12:51] He used to create content and see what would stick and now they have different communities that they are creating content for.
[13:34] It is important to do things that compound in value as opposed to a more transactional approach. He does things that compound over time and build up things that are very hard for competitors to replicate.
[16:39] Creating the book Compound Marketing was more of a hobby for him.
[17:26] His approach to writing books is that if he has something that feels good enough to write about then he is really driven and motivated to do it.
[18:56] Marketing a book is a huge amount of work.
[21:02] The more beautiful and fulfilling moments in life are when you are able to create something out of curiosity and fun.
[21:35] Double down on the things that get traction. If you have a business that is taking off you have an enormous advantage.
[22:25] Look for opportunities and momentum. When you see those things double down and focus on those things. At the end of the day if you want to be a business owner you have to create something that people are going to pay for and create value over a long period of time.
[23:51] The people who are successful are making a lot of stuff. If you are not actively creating a lot of things, that is definitely the place to start. You have to create something that gets traction.
[25:53] Dan shares what is next for him.