Have you ever wondered what it's like to step into a cutting-edge tech company’s VP of Growth’s shoes? In this post, we invite you to dive into Alex Paul’s captivating world, thriving in an environment where innovation and adaptability reign supreme. Join us as we unravel the complexities and dynamism of a role that goes beyond conventional titles and job descriptions. Let’s go!
Let’s start by defining the role
Labelling my job is up to you — I personally don't like the term "Growth Hacker" 😅. However, this term helps many people better understand what drives me as the "VP of Growth" at Leadzai.
My general mission at Leadzai is to help the company diversify its offerings. This is done by validating the demands of directly acquired customers and scaling up to become the global go-to provider of affordable, top-notch campaigns for small business owners. This mission is exciting and demanding since I am helping establish something new parallel to Leadzai’s existing (and very successful) partner-focused business area. Apart from that, I don't have a clear set of static responsibilities; I just try to constantly achieve concrete goals that help us get closer to the ones related to my mission. For this, I use various skills, tools and mental models from performance marketing, programming, web automation, data science, entrepreneurship, psychology and others.
One constant focus is to improve our funnel performance cost-effectively, positively impacting our profitability. The first months have been successful — and I have complete confidence in a future scenario where the term “Leadzai” is globally used by SMB owners just as frequently as “WhatsApp” — all within the next two years.
Little Routines, Massive Goals
I will be honest and say that I currently barely follow any routines. At the current growth stage, things are very dynamic and the people or teams I collaborate with change frequently, depending on the milestones being achieved or questions answered. I look at company subsystems daily and try to understand them better with the help of many mental models that I apply to data or observations.
Eventually, I find variables suitable for further testing regarding their ability to reduce risk or cost while maximising profit or value for our customers (which I believe go hand in hand). I do not limit myself to marketing or product-related subsystems. For example, let’s say I identify the emergence of some type of risk regarding OpSec (Operations Security). In that case, my intuition kicks in, and I might become obsessed with solving the problem before I continue with a project I could afford to pause.
The fundamental driver for me is to prove that goals previously considered “insane” or “delusional” can be achieved through figuring out the right “configuration” of tactics, communication, timing (and some luck).
I believe that decisions lead to success, not actions. And I think that decisions are predominantly questions that have not yet been answered. I often perceive the execution of decisions as annoying because I am mainly driven by making new decisions, validating and learning from previous ones, and then starting the whole cycle again. But coming back to finding the answers to questions, I believe the only bulletproof way is to find answers in data - which brings us to the next part: my daily activities involving data in different ways.
Common Daily Activities
I frequently write scripts in Python (I’m a big fan of Google Colab) or JavaScript to automate workflows. I am also a heavy user of the dev console in my browser (for debugging things like tracking). I love data mining and always try to find some sweet approaches to gather datasets I then analyse with Google Sheets or pandas (Python). I use Google Sheets for basically everything since I feel there is barely any valuable tool that can’t be built with it. I dislike using standard marketeer tools because I think they are often bloated. This also applies to marketing intelligence tools — I feel gathering data from existing APIs is way simpler. On top of all this, I am addicted to writing down thoughts, observations, or other types of notes, which, in time, become diagrams or more concrete action plans.
The number of meetings I attend varies greatly and depends on the current focus. There are times when I will only have 1 to 2 meetings weekly, but this also has to do with my preference for asynchronous communication, which I consider more efficient.
Dealing with Ambiguity
As a "growth hacker", there are only two ways you can be perceived long-term in a corporate environment: as someone who wins or somebody who loses. You can't do this job long-term if you don't work daily to be mentally strong, stable, and focused on the result you want. At the beginning of my career, I found this very difficult. At some point, I discovered that meditation, breathing exercises (I have been enthusiastically practising the "Wim Hof Method" for years, including ice bathing in winter) and other strategies are not enough to face the massive pressure that goes hand in hand with enormous challenges.
I feel that the power and fruitful impact of hard work and mindful learning are underrated nowadays, especially regarding the impact on our ambiguity tolerance and “locus of control”. Making the wrong decisions feels horrible sometimes, but I try to cultivate the habit of reframing “mistakes” as something positive: they’re data that points us in the right direction. I am just a human and will always fight against fear, but the more goals I achieve through hard work, the more confident I feel about success in uncertain scenarios —pretty simple.
Are you intrigued by Leadzai's captivating journey? Explore our career opportunities here if you're ready to make a lasting impact.
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