The three stages of growth hacking according to Sean Ellis

Would you consider Luke Lazarus to be a Growth Hacker?

Interesting, the question is, however, how this really relates to smaller start-ups? He's talking very generic to be honest.

Can anyone suggest few books on Growth Hacking?
Seen multiple videos, still sounds like a jargon to me.

The three Stages: Product Market / Fit - Stacking the Odds - Scale Growth.

Product Market / Fit With this I start with ME - do I need this in my life? Can I find other people offering this? If so, how could I do it differently. If it doesn't pass the ME test, I generally do not move forward.

WHY "ME" ME general translates to an amount of experience, or an interest. Looking for something to sell because you can make money vs selling something you actually use OR would use makes a WORLD of difference.

If you weight 110lbs and have never had to watch what you eat ever in your life.. you probably should not be selling weight loss programs - there is no base of experience to draw from.

If you drink coffee and have an interest in trying different beans and different methods for brewing coffee... The whole niche of coffee might be for you.

From here you communicate with others about your idea... Being the 110lb guy and asking your friends about selling a weight loss program, they will probably laugh at you right?

Ask the same people about what do you think about coffee.. and people are going to know you are a coffee nerd and think that's a great idea.. or THEY might like coffee and like the idea.

This whole process is about aligning YOU the marketer and your strengths and knowledge, with MARKET - what will people have an interest in ( because you do ) and what will they buy?

Next we have Stacking the Odds In the video he speaks of "Must Have" that can be translated to core audience... OR people with the same or greater passion or knowledge than you have.

Lets lets go with Coffee here. I love it. I like the process of making it in a number of ways. I love the "Wine snob" element of it all with the different characteristics of each of the beans etc. I KNOW there is demand... because I buy it, and I know there is a line at starbucks and I sell coffee mugs on eBay ( all of these things being true ) It would not be a stretch for me to get a sublimation printer and create my own mug designs ( I have actually done this )

I love tasting coffee's from around the world, would other people enjoy that? I would say the answer is yes... I can go search for such a thing say a sampler pack of coffee from round the world.. and low and behold.. not such an easy item to find... THIS would be a what I call a hole in a niche.. Someone, anyone could fill this gap, and probably make a killing.

There are literally holes like with most things. Take a diet plan.. a term like "vegetarian weight loss meal plan pdf" in the "Diet World" that's a pretty decent hole - jump to "1500 calorie vegetarian meal plan pdf" and the hole gets even bigger. in both cases ( the second is better ) there is massive potential with the right amount of knowledge / self education to put together a good solid piece of content.

Lastly we have Scale Growth Because there is ( should be ) an amount of self interest and education behind the idea there will be a passion that translates to whatever form of media you share this with. Be it written of video... knowledge and experience can be read between the lines. Joining that knowledge, with an idea that has an amount of demand is and will always be easy to scale.

Far easier for me to scale Coffee beans from around the world than it would be for a diet program. I personally have NO CLUE what it means to diet... In my 52 yrs on this earth I have never had to "Watch" what I eat. I will never, and I repeat NEVER sell a diet product in my life for this very reason.. I have absolutely no working knowledge of dieting or counting calories or whatever else they do.

So what does "SCALE" look like. I build a site around coffee. I write content about coffee.. share images of my mugs and images of coffee beans from around the world on Insta... make some tictocs on the many different ways to make coffee and start with that. Fire a response every time coffee or mug is mentioned on twitter.. and then I start running ads against the knowledge I have gained by my free reach we call "Social" and its off to the races selling French press coffee makers cuz my french press tictoc went bananas - and YES it is really that easy.

THAT is growth hacking... joining what YOU like, with what MARKET likes and then looking for the point of leverage to pull on to SCALE your business.

I think something that gets missed here is often times the ideas of "Growth Hacking" are shared be Million and Billionaire CEO's of big companies... but the very basic of principles apply to any and every one, just scaled back. We are not going to run $100,000 in ads next month.. but maybe $100 In the Micro ( us the small time marketer types ) or the Macro ( million and Billionaire CEO ) the game is the same the scale of dollars is the only thing differrent.

Hope that Helps!