Average Joe shows tech founders anyone how to extract secrets.
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How far can one business secret take you? Some tech startup success stories point back to moments of quiet insider-knowledge discovery or bits of information that made all the difference for the founders and the growth of their companies.

I believe one secret helped Dropbox achieve mind-boggling growth from a small, 8-person team to a startup worth over 10 billion dollars.
I sat down with Sean Ellis, left, the originator of growth hacking, to hear first-hand how Dropbox went from an 8-person crew of early developers to a global brand worth over $10 billion. He shares the true backstory, involving a key conversation he had with a buddy. That one conversation brought with it a revelation... a secret. It was a marketing experiment observation that seemed to be replicable and yielded enormous returns. This secret technique was just a tiny speck of information in reality. But for the right situation, and the right operating environment, the propensity and value of the secret became magnified.
Sean Ellis, Shawn Livermore
6 months after that key conversation, the secret was unleashed into the marketing experiment, leading to a glorious 300% increase in signups. This was a pivotal moment for the company—one that many believe helped it to achieve a near unstoppable avalanche of growth for several years.

This is just one example of how a minuscule and seemingly insignificant observations can make all the difference for a fragile and growing startup. There are countless other situations where fragmented and asymmetric bits of information can lead to tremendous growth opportunities.
It is easy to resist the effort of capturing and cultivating potential business secrets. Most of the work we do is in alignment the known, obvious, and practical. By practicing a craft according to already-proven models, success can be replicated. But this eventually breaks down as the subject matter strays from an existing, known quantity, out into the ether of the new. When you're building the new, it often requires new models for growth, new angles for communication, new figures for math, and even new math altogether.

Average Joe takes a hard look at secrets, how tech startup founders and entrepreneurs can find them, and how to model creative and ideation processes with secrets in mind. It's a key element of the Slow Create Framework Canvas document, and can make a significant difference when working through your subject matter over the long term.
Book Details

Average Joe Concepts

The Myth, Unpacked

Explaining the myth of the tech genius: Tech founders who have special powers or unusual abilities. It goes back to 1840 with Thomas Carlyle's Great Man Myth...

The Great Man Myth
A Great Person with Something More
The Tech Genius
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Tech Genius Candidates

So who are these tech geniuses? And how is it possible to do what they have done? We look at the tech founders and the world-changing software platforms they've built.

The Internet Entrepreneurs
The Software Developers with Charisma
The Pathological
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Intelligence in Tech

How genius, intelligence, and psychometrics have shaped the tech industry, and how intellectual capacity and cognitive abilities are completely unrelated in technology startup outcomes and viral success stories.

Intelligence and Tech
Psychometrics
Genius Showing the Way
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Slow Create Framework

How do the greatest creative minds in the tech industry work their magic? How did some founders create breakthrough products and apps like Slack, Dropbox, Gmail? We look at creativity in tech and introduce a brand-new thought framework to help anyone create and innovate.

Person vs. Process
Little-C Creativity
Canvas, Pipeline, Funnel
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Mindless Work LADDER

As a key component of the Slow Create Framework, this acronym will help anyone ideate and create in ways that are closely aligned with how the brain actually works.

Default Mode Network
Resting State Functional Connectivity
Optimizing Your Creative Daydreams
Curate and Refine Your Ideas Efficiently
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Inflections

Resulting from the endless cycling of patterns, details, and secrets, the inflection is an insight that can lead to new business opportunities or improvements on existing systems.

Technology, Adoption, Belief, Regulatory
How to Contextualize
Examples of Each
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Finding Secrets

How far can one business secret take you? I believe one secret helped Dropbox achieve mind-boggling growth from a small, 8-person team to a startup worth over 10 billion dollars.

Characterizing Secrets
How to Find Secrets
Truffle-sniffing pigs
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Sustainable Mystique

Instead of hype and hustle, develop your own sustainable mystique which burns clean and does no harm. Anyone can go from stuttering left-brainer to polished, insightful, and fascinating.

The Triad
How to Generate Sustainable Mystique
Crossing the Gap to Inflections
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Reaching Fascination

Using the Sustainable Mystique Triad, and the Slow Create Framework, anyone can learn how to work, think, and speak to fascinate.

SCF Artifacts Leading to Fascination
Bubbling-Up Inflections
Articulate Progress on Interesting Problems
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“This book is a must-have for all tech start-up founders and entrepreneurs.”

Sean Ellis, originator of Growth Hacking

“A brilliant piece of work for product teams and creators.”

Jeff Sherwood, Product Consultant

“My brain hurts. The concepts in this book are so good.”

Chris Andrade, Tech Startup Advisor

“I want my entire company to read this book.”

Troy Hoffman, CEO

Watch the Book Trailer Videos

Book Trailer #1

The Tech Genius Is A Myth

Book Trailer #2

Average Joe Conceptual Fly-Over

Trailer 2 (COMING SOON)

Global Book Frenzy Apocalypse

Join me on the journey, from average to genius.

-Shawn Livermore
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