One of the things we try to teach founders that have joined http://www.Traction.VC to get weekly growth tactics, is that there are no silver-bullets to grow your business. The mistake that many new founders make is reading a success story somewhere and trying to copy that success word for word.

We’ve seen this first-hand as one of our subscribers copied our service word-for-word and started sending out the exact content that we were investing time and effort in to craft. I decided to write about why this approach is not the way to apply growth tactics.

So how should you apply growth tactics? You might have heard of Pablo Picasso’s quote:

“Good artists copy, Great artists steal”. But what does this mean?

Every artist is influenced by those that surround him. They get inspired by other people’s work. We all are a product of our surroundings and build on top of what’s around us. However, if you copy someone else’s work, you are just trying to do everything exactly the same. If you steal an idea however, you make it yours. You interpret it in a new way, that works for you. It becomes something new. Something better.

Stop copying, start stealing. The way to get value out of growth tactics, is not to copy other people’s success, but to steal their lessons. Make them yours. Try to figure out why it worked for them. What are the key lessons that you can apply to your business. You might be in the exact same space, yet find a totally different tactic to work for you because of the different network of people you can tap into. Always be digging deeper into growth tactics and steal them like a pro to be great.