Hartley Brody

In general, code is written once in a few minutes (or hours) and then read and maintained for years to come. Ensuring that the code you write today is readable and makes sense to other engineers down the line is a Really Good Thing and you should always keep readability in mind as you’re writing code, even for small one-off scripts.

This is an adaption of an article I wrote on the engineering wiki at Buffer, where I work as a growth hacker.

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In the moments immediately after yesterday’s bombings, there were lots of volunteers and bystanders who didn’t expect to become heroes, but did. Their immediate actions saved lives.

Every single citizen should know CPR and how to handle major blood loss events. If you don’t, please please read up and take a class. Spending a few hours learning these things now could give you the skills that end up saving the life of a loved one or a stranger.

It only takes a few hours to learn, and then you can go on with your life. But when a moment of potential tragedy catches you off-guard, you won’t become a passive, helpless observer. You’ll be a life saver. An unsuspecting hero.

Here are some excellent ways to get started:

The American Red Cross offers a class called “CPR, First Aid, and AED for Lay Responders.” It takes five hours and is an excellent way to spend a Saturday morning. Everyone should take this class, or a local equivalent.

NOLS Wilderness First Responder Course is probably the most comprehensive first aid course you can take, short of becoming an EMT. These classes usually take a solid week and are focused on backcountry first aid, when getting someone to a hospital isn’t an immediate option. This is more for people who find themselves in remote situations.

Many larger schools offer student-run ambulance associations which you could either join or take classes with.

Read articles like this one on How to Use a Tourniquet or some of the questions on the First Aid tag on Quora to build out more of an intuition for how our bodies work and things to be aware of when administering first aid.

I’ve seen lots of people posting statuses about wanting to help in some way, maybe donating blood. My advice: take a first aid class as soon as you can. God forbid you ever need to use your training, you’ll have the opportunity to be someone’s hero.

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What do you want your users to do after they sign up?

While getting people into your product is obviously A Very Good Thing, it isn’t time to pat yourself on the back just yet. To build an awesome product experience and an engaged user base, you really need to carefully focus on what happens after a user has signed up.

Once they’re in the door, you want to show them value quickly. Help them avoid common pitfalls and show them how to get the most of your product. Walk them through the process of moving from beginner to power user to evangelist.

Not only does this make for happy users, but it also make it easy to ask for referrals, product reviews and up-sells, while simultaneously avoiding churn and abandonment. That all sounds pretty awesome, right?

I’ll walk you through a few basic ideas and then we’ll look at how some of the hottest startups have built out their post sign up funnels.

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When most people set up their personal WordPress blog, they’ll pick a theme, throw the Google Analytics tracking code on it, and stop there. And while WordPress gives you a decent website out of the box, there’s a lot left to be desired.

With an extra hour or two of setup, you can have a well-optimized, secure blog that pulls in new visitors and keeps out intruders. Most of these things are one-time setups that you won’t have to think about again.

These are the tricks I’ve learned after setting up dozens of WordPress blogs for myself and for friends — some tiny niche sites and some massive content destinations attracting 10k+ visitors a day.

Before you get started, make sure you’re running the latest version of WordPress by going to Dashboard > Updates and checking for any upgrades.

Since the WordPress software is the most used CMS on the internet, it’s a huge target for hackers and spammers, and new security updates come out frequently. You wanna make sure you’re starting with the latest, most secure version.
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I’m really excited to announce that, on April 1st, I’ll be joining the awesome team at Buffer as a growth hacker.

I’ve been an avid Buffer user for a long time, and I’ve been following their company blog for all of the life hacking and interesting social psych Leo writes about.

They’re a small team that’s made a huge impact already — 10 employees, 550k users, $100k MRR — and are a fairly well known name in startup and social media circles.

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One of the rookie mistakes first-time entrepreneurs often make is to assume that visitors on their website are ready to buy their product or service right away. I’ve made this mistake myself.

But in reality, the average visitor to your website isn’t ready to make a buying decision… yet.

In order to grow a successful business, you need to understand the concept of “the funnel” and the stages that fall between “casual website visitor” and “evangelical customer.”

This concept of a funnel is something that applies especially well to B2B products, since your prospects will tend to move more slowly and make more deliberate decisions.

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I’ve always been one to shoot from the hip. I go with my gut, and then reevaluate if necessary. After all, smart people change their minds a lot.

But I’ve found it’s also really easy to get stuck overthinking some things. What tie should I wear? Which apartment should I live in? What do I want to do with my life?

Sometimes there are so many options that we’re overwhelmed. Sometimes we get competing feedback from our trusted advisors. We waste so much time thinking about it, that we never pull the trigger. Opportunity passes us by.

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