Simplifying the newsletter, scaling B2B ecosystem, $149/mo plan until Nov 30

November is busier than ever, in a post-elections mode and amidst a long Black Friday week (we know that firsthand scaling DevriX accounts big time).

A lot to unpack here, though everyone’s attention being spread out also means very limited feedback on my weekly bulletin, which will lead to shrinking the efforts in the meantime.

Newsletter shrinking - what stays?

If you like specific sections and segments you want to stay in the Growth Blueprint, hit Reply and let me know. Seriously, with 6,800+ subscribers, a dozen votes can go a very long way.

Otherwise, I’ll keep it “leaner and meaner” with the next one. Also, Vlad (the key newsletter assembler of stock and market data + great investment/M&A opportunities) will be pursuing new career challenges in a more creative field of work starting in December, so we wish him all the best in these new endeavors and will streamline the newsletter unless you vote to keep some segments in 👇⌨️

$149/mo advisory plan expires at 23:59pm on Nov 30

After closing a dozen new members for the Strategic Circle plan, we’ve got a new handy page covering what’s included:

There are several reasons I push for this lightweight program - which is currently running at loss with low-cost back and forth:

• Free advice isn’t worth much. I see this over and over - in a pool of free tips and recommendations and social, it’s generalized and isn’t taken seriously. When I pay $1,100 for FIFTEEN minutes of someone’s time on Intro, I make sure I take diligent notes, post them in my todo list, PM system, my email, and for my team to act upon. Not what I do with free tips.

• Lack of feedback on social and even first-party data. When I got serious about this newsletter ~5 years ago, I doubled down on first-party data in the ever-growing social pool of haiku posts and 3-second scroll downs + reels. Social feedback is noisy if at all present, and moving to first-party is what makes a difference. The newsletter isn’t getting regular enough feedback unless I meet you through other channels or newsletters and we chat about it. So it’s read, but the feedback loop isn’t there. Slack works a bit better.

• Hard to deliver personalized value. A lot of my content is practical and tactical, but each case is unique in itself. Whether you make $200K or $500K or $2M or $10M makes a difference. Is your team on-site or remote? Product or service company? Commodity or innovative? Selling remote or on-site? US or local markets? All of these vastly shift the channel distribution and the GTM strategy - and going 1:1 directly makes all the sense.

• Low ticket to growth services. Our work with DevriX and my long-lasting Growth Shuttle accounts is exceptionally high quality, but retainers aren’t cheap. There’s a reason we have a handful of ongoing accounts with us since 2016, 2017, 2018. When quality is there, shifting away isn’t practical. But building up opportunities takes time - so the lower ticket solutions are the gateway to testing the waters and unlocking opportunities after.

My personal goal with all businesses is delivering a 10X+ ROI on work. With my $1,800/mo advisory plan, I primarily target $3M+ ARR businesses (up to $50M) since I aim for a minimum of $200K added value to the business in the first year (a 10x on the $20k annual).

It’s challenging to get this bump on a $500K business - hence going upstream.

The lower ticket plan is easier to make a difference on - even though it eats up my time and only makes sense at scale. The added value is not the financial investment, but the feedback loop, core problems I can consolidate into new guides and courses, and additional opportunities to build mutual case studies or reviews together. That’s why it’s low cost for $100K - $500K startups and solopreneurs.

🧑‍🏫 It’s still $149/mo for all of 2025 if you join by Nov 30 evening (coupon code BFPROACCESS50 )

Growing the B2B Ecosystem

The digital network we’ve been building intensively this year has expanded and now lives as a separate hat of digital properties and solutions:

After running service and content businesses for over a decade, we’ve expanded the portfolio with new directories (acquisitions and new builds), 4 standalone SaaS tools, several SaaS forms across the media sites, and a few other bits and pieces to plug this all in.

It’s taking a while to ramp up, but some properties are already seeing organic traffic just 7 days after registering the domains. With a consolidated effort of heavy content publishing, link building (internal and external), cross-promotion, and some organic and paid social, these are growing steadily and are set to make a strong turn in 2025.

We get new sign ups and submissions several times a day for products and directories launched in November. That’s a pretty strong signal.

The new parent hat sits under b2becosystem.com as we’re iterating daily across the entire portfolio in the process.

Bottom line, the Q4 season is hectic and busy as usual, but I’m making some strong pivots into different lead funnels and gateways this time to streamline the process and broaden the pipeline.

And final PSAs:

• If you want to retain the long-form newsletter below, reply and let me know what you like the most

• Want to work directly with me, 100% async in my Slack solving problems directly for you - join the Strategic Growth Circle before Nov 30

Yours,

Mario

✍️ The US as a Funded Startup or Unicorn Valuation - Operating a country is far from trivial and I don't claim to be an expert there - at all. But running a P&L in the red in any business is a red flag - unless it's VC-funded and chasing a hockey stick growth for MAU, free or not. This model crumbled in the past 2 years globally. Optimizing for efficiency + a lean economy are dictating the new success levels.

✍️ 9 Essential Digital Marketing Trends Every Business Needs in 2025 - Learn how to optimize your marketing analytics, master account-based marketing, and build a strong brand positioning. Discover the latest 2025 strategies for email campaigns, SEO tactics, and targeted advertising, as well as the role of video marketing in customer engagement.

📧 Visual Capitalist - Visual Capitalist is one of the fastest growing publishers globally, focused on topics including markets, technology, energy, and the global economy. Sign up here!

📧 WPTavern - is the broader Town Square newsletter for the masses. I recommend it to people outside of the community, too. WP Tavern is a warm and inviting community where those interested in the software can hang out with fellow WordPressers to engage in enlightening discussions. Sign up here!

📃 Goldman Sachs’ marketing overhaul raises internal debates. Goldman Sachs has undertaken a significant marketing transformation under Chief Marketing Officer Fiona Carter, including a website revamp and high-profile sponsorships. These initiatives have sparked internal discussions about their costs and effectiveness.

📃 Executives Leverage Social Media to Engage Investors. CEOs in the U.S. and U.K. are increasingly using platforms like LinkedIn to present authentic, relatable images to investors and customers, moving away from traditional corporate communications.

📃 Wall Street's Anticipation of U.S. Election Outcomes. The 2024 U.S. elections between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are poised to significantly impact business and finance sectors, with Wall Street preparing for potential shifts in policy and market dynamics.

📃 Top Marketing Mega-Trends Shaping Business Strategies. Key marketing trends include the integration of AI, the importance of first-party data, and the expansion of personalization, all of which are influencing how businesses engage with consumers.

📃 Holiday stats by X: If you’re running ads on X, you might want to check their latest shipping insights, with stats such as 24% of users more likely to recommend products and 39% more likely to purchase advertised items.

📈 Investors’ hopes that president-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Scott Bessent as U.S. Treasury secretary perhaps signaled a less radical economic agenda may already have been tarnished.

Trump’s pledge late Monday to slap 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% on those from China has caused a wobble in markets.

• S&P 500: $6,021(+0.57%)

📈 Market mortgage rates fluctuate as the economy evolves, policymakers and investors digest new data and lenders decide how much risk they’re willing to tolerate on a given day.

That includes Federal Reserve decisions. In early November, the central bank cut interest rates by a quarter-point following a half-point reduction in September. The Fed had hinted it would lower rates more in 2025, but the reelection of Donald Trump could reroute those plans.

• 30-year mortgage rate: 7.03%(+0.07)

• 15-year mortgage rate: 6.30%(+0.05)

📈 Federal Reserve officials expressed confidence that inflation is easing and the labor market is strong, allowing for further interest rate cuts albeit at a gradual pace, according to minutes from the November meeting released Tuesday.

The meeting summary contained multiple statements indicating that officials are comfortable with the pace of inflation, even though by most measures it remains above the Fed’s 2% goal.

📰 Here are some of the most prominent headlines this week:

• Israel and Hezbollah agree to a ceasefire deal, President Biden says.

• President-elect Donald Trump says he plans to enact 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and add to existing tariffs on China on his first day in office.

• President-elect Trump chooses Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute, to be agriculture secretary.

📈 SeedBlink Secondary Market surpasses €3,7M in transaction volume - As we look back on SeedBlink's secondary market performance in 2024, it’s clear that the platform is entering an important phase of growth. Let’s see some of the offers this week":

• Sense4Fit- Sense4Fit is upgrading the fitness experience by combining AI, blockchain, and community engagement to offer a comprehensive, gamified fitness ecosystem. With a user-friendly app, franchise gym locations, and fitness summits, Sense4Fit aims to make fitness more accessible and engaging.

• Mewery - raising €750,000 in a pre-seed round to scale its unique cell-cultivated meat platform leveraging microalgae. Backed by Credo Ventures, Purple Ventures, and Big Idea Ventures.

• SiGaN - SiGaN, a Swiss DeepTech startup, is developing power electronics solutions designed to make electrical devices more efficient and sustainable.

Note: Got a round going that you want to feature - your own business or a portfolio company? Get in touch.

Let’s see the latest offers from Flippa. Don’t forget to sign up for their newsletter for daily/weekly/monthly offers such as these.

Leading SalesForce and NetSuite Integration SaaS - This integration platform as a service (iPaaS) generated a $713K TTM revenue and has clients ranging from nonprofit foundations and small businesses to billion-dollar enterprises, servicing over 21+ industries globally.

• Monthly profit: $40,872

• LTV: $3,000

• Business age: 15 years

Pain Relief & Wellness Ecommerce - This ecommerce business featuring posture correction and pain relief products has driven a TTM revenue of $1.5M.

• Monthly profit: $24,141

• Average order value: $52

• Business age: 4 years

Healthcare Digital Marketing Agency - This marketing agency specializes in SEO, Google Ads, and lead generation for businesses in healthcare, funeral, and home services.

• Monthly profit: $7,867

• Average client contract value: $1,041

• Business age: 3 years

Need My Help?

I'm involved with a number of initiatives - here's what I can do to help you:

🌐 Scalable and secure WordPress? DevriX provides WordPress retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo for anything from support through engineering, CRO, performance, security, to fractional CXO services and managing the data stacks of large corps.

🚀  Want to scale and optimize your business? Growth Shuttle offers personalized advisory plans starting at $600/hr. Tap into my personal pool of business know-how and my data warehouse of industry data.

👥 Want access to my blueprints/books and a weekly Slack planning session? Join my Community and grab my Entrepreneurship book. 

📈 Looking to start a US company? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.

📊 Have you tried buying and selling digital property? Have a look at Flippa’s marketplace. They offer a vast variety of online businesses for any buyer’s interest. Or if you’re ready for an exit, Flippa provides you with the necessary tools to list your business and close the deal.

💼 Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink and use Equity to manage your equity.

💡 Eager to incorporate my recommended solutions? Track my angel investments. Sharing, applying for open roles, or writing reviews helps a ton.  And anything else I try to publish on my blog and my courses here!