Hi, Dani! You did unpack flawlessly. =) Your point bringing the importance of empathy is gold. Many times is not see as a key as needed. Thank you so much! Ale

In 5 years I see myself running or working within a business that's aligned with my values. While I'm using this time to travel, explore all possibilities, really understand my values, and discover my own "why" that will make me happy in the long-run, I also have a dream to one day open my own spa where I can help people learn how to relax. I could see it turning into a spa, yoga, co-working space. So all of my efforts more or less get me closer to this dream.

Regardless of my plans, I absolutely plan to share what I learn along the way and help others (re)ignite their own paths of self-discovery and personal growth.

I decided I wanted to travel the world after I moved to California. About 2 years in, I said out loud to my boyfriend "Hey, let's quit our jobs and move to Europe." It was on a whim and totally not thought through, but then we took the next year and a half to begin mentally preparing for such an adventure.

So, it was kind of on a whim, but as I started thinking more about it, I got excited to learn from other cultures and debunk what I've conceived in my mind as societal norms.

My brother and have a joke that when one of us is feeling stressed, we ask "Societal pressures getting you down?" and the more that question came up, the more I questioned... why do I believe these pressures to be the norm and should I?

Exploring other cultures is a way to see what other "societal pressures" do or do not look like so that I can help form the world I want to create for myself. Now that I've been in Greece for a few months studying the history, I've come to really resonate with Socrate's thinking.

"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us." -Socrates

Hi Pascal! Thanks for the questions.

Toughest part of being head of growth at GrowthHackers was figuring out the biggest area of opportunity within the business to focus on. With limited resources and infinite possibilities, we were constantly managing our FOMO. With the online community, annual conference, NorthStar software, blog, training courses, jobs board, Sean's book Hacking Growth, and at times consulting, every person coming to GrowthHackers had different expectations and needs to be met.

Out of curiosity, how do you deal with one-star reviews?

The top lesson I learned about driving sustainable growth in my personal life is that growth REQUIRES rest and reflection. What I consider the inflection points of life... the taking one step back to make sure you're even on the right staircase to move forward.

Sometimes when I mentor others, I ask about the last time the took time to relax and clear their head. Like REALLY clear their head. Most can't remember or share that they can't seem to "turn it off" and they feel guilty that they should be doing something else.

We're now in an always on society and the art of relaxation takes work, but boy is it worth it. When we take some time to take a step back from the hustle, we can think clearly and get some much needed perspective on our why. A strong why will help us build resiliency when the times get tough. If we never take time to really understand this about ourselves, our growth will be short-sighted, burnout will be inevitable, and our lives will not be as fulfilling in the long-run.

Hi Ashley!

Thanks for the great question. There are many nuances that go into sustainable growth, including a major one: nothing grows forever. Sure, fish grow until they die... but they do eventually die. Companies are no different. Nuances aside, I'm going to share what I think will be most important lesson for sustainable business growth in the 21st century.

Sustainable business growth starts and ends with a "why" that's repeatable, ethical, and responsible. In an age where consumers have so much available education and purchasing power, companies not only need to focus on how to drive repeatable revenue to support the business, but they also need to ensure they're not producing negative social and environmental externalities, or phrased in business terms, long-term risks and future bad PR.

Some companies do not have profits, people, and the planet embedded in their why OR business model and it's difficult to sustain growth when their customers become aware of business practices that don't have their current and future best interests at the core of the business, or when the business runs out of money because it didn't consider the one thing keeping its doors open.

Good to see a new metric in a row with Moz's DA & MJ's CF/TF. I think it's good to have one more metric, but the thing is that most people don't understand the differences in calculations, using the wrong metric quite often. For example, many people simply don't realize the difference between Citation Flow and Trust Flow and simply use whatever score is better/higher fooling other people (and often themselves). As far as I understand, this one relies on good old PR algo - ok, good to see the "pure" metric of link strength/link juice. Though it's interesting to see that it's kind of better than DR in terms of SERPs correlation, taking into account Moz was trying to build PA/DA with such correlation in mind :)

Great read! Thanks for sharing

Why do you feel they're one of the most innovative startups in the world?