do you know about Micro-fulfilment? 

In short, it's the solution to delivering on consumers ever-growing expectations for online shopping. 

Micro-fulfilment centres can help save on expensive real estate because they are set up in compact locations: Like the back of supermarkets and other existing retail locations! This allows retailers to fulfil orders faster, with lower overhead costs by using a mix of automated and human lead workforces. 

If you have an Ecommerce store or want to get into that space, this is something you may want to explore further. 

In this week's issue: 

• Big updates and what's coming your way this week in Furlough!
• Find your path to scale.
• A deep dive into Enterprise SEO.
• Resistance is futile: Keep moving forward.
• Are you saying "NO" more than you say yes?
• Last Week's Best Bits.

💎 Join Furlough on Discord 💎

Big updates and what's coming your way this week in Furlough!

 The first ever Furlough road trip was taken this weekend! 

From the heat of Miami to freezing cold Ohio, founders Joe and Ophir were invited to All Star! 

For those of you who don't know, All Star weekend is a festival held in the middle of the NBA regular season. During the festival there are a variety of exhibitions, basketball events and performances surrounding the NBA All Star game held on Sunday. 

During the trip they plan to further our efforts by creating more meaningful partnerships for the Furlough community.

We can't wait to hear all about it this week. You just know there will be some fascinating stories told in this weeks upcoming events!

Speaking of events...

We have an announcement! 

Today Joe will be hosting a 2 hour jam packed bootcamp all about the Full Stack Marketing Process. 



Our email team managed to get a sneak preview and we have to say: You don't want to miss this! 

If you want to learn more about marketing or have a business that needs a boost this event is for you. 

The next bootcamp will be hosted over on the Metapreneurs Discord at 5:00pm UTC

Find your path to scale

Would you take the chance to build a billion-dollar company? 

Before you scream YES… 

Just know that you will sacrifice years of your personal life, your social life, and your physical/mental health. 

Still, sound fair enough? 

We agree. 

That’s why we were super excited for last week’s Startup Booster session. 

The founders Anton & Miro are currently building Platypus (a SaaS platform that helps startups quickly and efficiently find their path to scaling). 

The idea for Platypus started a few years ago when Anton & Miro first met at their previous startups. 

(Both startups scaled up from $0 to being acquired for billions of $$) 

So they know a thing or two about what it takes to reach that level of success. 

They also know that many startup founders have difficulty using experimentation to find their true path to scale to that level. 

Not only is it time-consuming to gather this much data about your target market, but there’s also the topic of staying focused and delivering on your promises (because testing will never end). 

So how would you measure success as a startup founder? 

By knowing your path to scale + completing tasks along the way. 

We know that Anton & Miro are going to absolutely blow this roof off this product but before they get there we noticed a few things… 

From a business perspective: 

1. They’re still in the process of developing the product (but they have a clear path to going from ideation to realization) 
2. They will look to acquire funding to manage the costs associated with building a product of this magnitude (i.e. hiring a qualified team of developers isn’t cheap)
3. They need to create a clear roadmap for the development of the product (i.e. timelines to develop lite/full versions, map out specific features as well as the customer journey)

From a marketing perspective: 

1. They also have to develop clear pricing tiers (for lite + premium users as well as individuals + teams) 
2. They need to incorporate customer personas within the tool (this will allow their marketing efforts to be that much more concise) 
3. They need to develop their target customer personas (i.e. will Platypus be effective for startups of all sizes)

We are super excited within the community to be a part of this company’s growth. 

Mainly because the startup culture is changing. 

In the old days there used to be anonymous founders that would go out of their way to stay hidden from the public. 

Nowadays, it’s changing to this amazing collaborative process with other like-minded people. 

As you can see, that’s why Furlough keeps preaching GROWTH THROUGH COLLABORATION.

So stay tuned as we continue to touch base with the team at Platypus!

Tune in this week as we're going to be diving into Server Owner Tycoon (A server management game looking to change the way communities interact with one another).*

Join us in the #Furlounge this Tuesday @ 2 pm for some high-level marketing insights!

If you're a founder looking to get your startup boosted, then send a message to one of the community managers in the Furlough discord to join the waitlist (Spots are LIMITED).

A deep dive into Enterprise SEO

As if SEO isn’t complicated enough, there are many different kinds of SEO you can use to optimize your website based on your content, website size, and what stage your company is in. There is local SEO, SaaS SEO, startup SEO, and enterprise SEO. This week’s lesson was focused on enterprise SEO.

Enterprise SEO is for large websites with thousands of pages. Because of the size your scope changes and your job becomes more technical when attempting to get Google to index your pages. 

• It requires a different strategy for pushing out content. 
• Much of your content will not get indexed due to the sheer amount of pages. 
• Technical SEO becomes more important on these large websites and can contribute to requiring a larger budget for maintenance hours. 

What are some of the aspects of enterprise SEO that most differ from SaaS?

• Because of the amount of pages, you are no longer able to structure your content in the hub and spoke model. 
• Enterprise websites will have products, reviews, how to, and just significantly more pages that you will have to work on getting indexed before they can be optimized. 
• The larger the website, the more technical the SEO process will become.

What are the different methods for testing your website for indexing and optimization?

• There is single variable testing, multiple variable testing, and baseline testing, to name a few. 
• All of these are ways for you to ensure that any tests you undertake are actually positive or actually negative by testing with different methods. 
• Because there are so many pages, you are able to group similar pages into batches to perform tests so you are able to see which changes reflect positively. 
   
• An example of this would be AB testing (a form of single variable testing):
  • You have a group A of pages and a group B of pages, in group A you can change all the titles, and in group B you change the keyword density.
  • After leaving the changes for 1-2 weeks you are able to see the results and determine which element change was more impactful for your website. 
  • While doing this, the more similar the pages are within the groups the more accurate the results will be. 
  • In this type of single variable testing it is good because you know what element you changed and how that impacts your ranking, so it is easier for you to backtrack if needed.

An important thing to note is that Google continuously updates its results, and your position can change hour to hour and day to day, so keeping this in mind, you need to eliminate as many variables as you can. 

• It is not always productive to look at your ranking as this can change frequently, what is important to keep track of is the impressions and click through rate. 

No query is too small for our SEO master, Eli! If you're stuck you can always count on him to answer your burning questions!

Resistance is futile, keep moving forward.

Building a startup can be discouraging since it takes longer to see the benefit of work versus a traditional job setting. The mission is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. When you keep moving forward, your growth becomes exponential!

This week’s highlights:

During the session we discussed the new projects for Furlough, the importance of overcoming resistance in a startup, and much more!

Some of the exciting new projects for Furlough:

• Web 3 is coming. Web 1 was about broadcasting or publishing information. Web 2 allowed sharing and collaboration. Now Web 3 creates  ownership through tokenization. With tokenization you can take action.  
• The Furlough DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) is on it’s way. The DAO is a way to provide a service. 
• The DAO will include a treasury which involves voting and possibly complimentary perks such as brand audits. 
• An EXCITING new venture of Furlough is the gamification of education. Furlough is dedicated to educating people through its Academy and gamifying the education will allow more people to participate. 
• We talked about Furlough becoming a startup accelerator. Furlough already offers mentorships and guidance and we are currently increasing connections between investors and businesses.
•  We discussed the possibility of Furlough as an Incubator. Some services an incubator provides are helping startups by providing workspace, seed funding, mentoring, and training to grow their business.

Pushing through resistance:

• Success requires patience. Joe asked a thought provoking question: “would you rather have $1 million now or 1 penny doubled everyday for a full month?” With patience one penny can become $5.4 million over time. 
• Putting in the effort now to grow the company will provide exponential rewards and persistence is key. 
• Joe shared his most valuable life lesson: The formula E+R = O. E is an event, R is your reaction to an event, and O is the outcome of an event. Your reaction creates the outcome of a situation.
• Joe used the formula to reach success himself. Joe started at the bottom of a Marketing Agency. His boss got fired. Joe’s reaction to this event was to step up and take responsibility and take over his boss’s responsibility. This one favorable reaction accelerated Joe's career path to new heights. 

Notable tips and upcoming events:

• Referral is the best compliment you can give someone.
• When creating advertising talk to 1 person not to an entire audience.

Join us on Wednesday at 2pm EST for another Mastermind session full of value. 

Are you saying NO more than you say YES?

Have you ever had to say no to a potential customer? 

Are you getting on calls with everyone that asks? 

These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself when you scale your business. 

Last week we missed out on having a brand audit. 

Simply because we had other commitments (IFYKYK).

So we figured we would take the opportunity to discuss business development. 

Lately, we’ve been spending a lot of time on building out systems/processes recently (so should you). 

These systems are meant to make your business more efficient and require less input over time. 

But the main theme we’ve been discussing is how many people build systems before having any actual data to work off of. 

Your systems should be a reflection of you (the business owner) + your time (the most valuable commodity). 

Now how does this all tie into business development you might ask? 

You should be building systems for EVERYTHING. 

From lead generation → training → hiring → completing a service etc. 

This is because most businesses these days struggle in nailing down the fundamentals.

Your business is only as good as its clients, and if you have none then you can imagine how your life would be different. 

As you start to grow and prepare to scale to the next level, you (the business owner) need to focus on where your time is being spent. 

That means not getting on a call with every person that asks unless they have been qualified beforehand. 

How do you qualify a prospect: 

1. Is the prospect in need of your service? 
2. Can the prospect(s) afford your product/service? 
3. Can the prospect(s) make the decision to purchase your product/service? 

These are just the baseline questions you need to answer. 

But if you want to get really deep into it…

Here are some bonus questions:

1. Does your prospect know they have a problem? 
2. Does your prospect have a growth mindset? 
3. Do you (the business owner) have enough time to deliver results for this prospect if they became a client?

These questions are completely customizable but you can see the types of questions you need to know before you make any commitments. 

If the prospect doesn’t meet these qualifications then you NEED to be disqualifying them. 

You should be saying NO to prospects more than you say YES. 

But only if you want to run a high-quality business. 

So the choice is yours… 

If you've got any suggestions in terms of effective strategies for lead generation, let us know in the #growth-hacking channel we would love to hear them!

Until then, come check out this week's Brand Audit session this Thursday @ 2 pm for some high-level marketing insights!

If you're a brand looking to get your 2022 action plan, then send a message to one of the community managers in the Furlough discord to join the waitlist (Spots are LIMITED).

Last Weeks Best Bits

Get ready to experience this weeks best bits from our community:

STRATEGY: Best business books on strategy.
BRANDING: How to build a brand.
TOOLS: Improve your research with eye tracking.