Strategies For Scaling A New Business Model

How to scale past $50,000 per month (without rebuilding everything): 1. The Scaling Trap That Kills Growth You hit $50,000 per month and panic. "My offer won't scale." "I need a complete rebrand." "Time to pivot everything." Wrong. You don't need surgery when you need vitamins. Your offer isn't broken. It's just not optimized. 2. The 10X Customer Value Rule I gave myself this advice when I was stuck at $60,000 per month: "Stop trying to get more customers. Start trying to get more value from each customer." One client paying $10,000 is easier to serve than ten clients paying $1,000. Scale value, not volume. 3. The Offer Evolution Framework Here's how I evolved my offers without rebuilding: Phase 1: Single service ($2,000) Phase 2: Service + retainer ($8,000) Phase 3: Full system ($18,000) Phase 4: Done-with-you ($36,000) Same core value. Different packages. 4. The Three Lever System Most founders only pull one lever: price. Smart founders pull three: Lever 1: Price (charge more) Lever 2: Volume (serve more customers) Lever 3: Value (stack more services) Pull all three simultaneously, not sequentially. 5. The Customer Lifetime Value Multiplier I was on a call with a founder doing $45,000 per month. He was selling $400 courses to 112 people monthly. I asked: "What if 20 people paid $2,000 instead?" Same revenue. 80% fewer customers. 10x easier to serve. 6. The Offer Stack That Changes Everything Instead of one offer, create three: Starter: Your current offer ($2,000) Standard: Starter + systems ($8,000) Supreme: Everything + access ($18,000) Most choose Standard. Your revenue triples overnight. 7. The Pricing Psychology Secret Don't raise prices gradually. Jump boldly. Going from $2,000 to $2,500 feels incremental. Going from $2,000 to $5,000 feels transformational. Big jumps force you to add real value. 8. The Value Ladder Strategy Map your customer journey: Step 1: Free content (builds trust) Step 2: Low-ticket offer ($500) Step 3: Core service ($5,000) Step 4: Premium program ($18,000) Step 5: Elite mastermind ($50,000) Each step makes the next feel inevitable. 9. The Offer Evolution Checklist Before you rebuild, ask: • Can I add exclusive access? • Can I bundle existing services? • Can I extend the time commitment? • Can I include implementation support? Usually, the answer is yes to all four. 10. The Retention Revenue Revolution New customers cost 5x more than keeping existing ones. Focus on: • Upsells to current clients • Referral programs that pay • Annual contracts vs monthly • Alumni networks that buy again Retention is the real revenue multiplier. — Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost it to your network and follow Matt Gray for more. Want to learn how to build a sustainable founder-led brand that grows, even when you’re not around? Join my free live Workshop on August 21st (7 days away) to steal my homework: https://lnkd.in/ebWd-wdi

Most founders make this expensive mistake: They hire first, automate later. That’s how you burn cash, slow down growth, and create inefficiencies. This is the OLD way of scaling: ❌ Hiring a VA before setting up AI workflows ❌ Building a sales team before automating lead gen ❌ Spending on support before deploying AI chatbots The truth is that most tasks founders hire for repeatable and predictable tasks. That means AI + automation should handle them first. Before hiring, ask yourself: ✅ Can AI do this? (content creation, email sequences, data entry) ✅ Can automation handle it? (lead capture, scheduling, follow-ups) ✅ Can I templatize this? (SOPs, decision trees, no-code workflows) A few examples of scaling this way: → Instead of hiring a social media manager → Use AI to create, schedule, and repurpose content automatically. → Instead of hiring an SDR → Automate lead gen, personalize outreach, and book calls on autopilot. → Instead of hiring customer support → Deploy AI chatbots + a knowledge base to handle 80% of tickets. Once automation is maxed out, then and only then should you hire. The new way of scaling is simple: 1️⃣ Automate everything repeatable (AI & workflows) 2️⃣ Outsource complex but process-driven work (freelancers, contractors) 3️⃣ Hire for creativity, strategy, and decision-making (core team) So before every hire, ask the right questions: → Does this role drive revenue or efficiency? → Can we automate this instead? → Will this person reduce workload or just add to it? Because profitability isn’t about more people, It’s about fewer inefficiencies. PS: I just put together a guide on how to “hire” your first AI assistant. Comment “AI” and I’ll send it over!

Scaling from 50 to 100 employees almost killed our company. Until we discovered a simple org structure that unlocked $100M+ in annual revenue. In my 10+ years of experience as a founder, one of the biggest challenges I faced in scaling was bridging the organizational gap between startup and enterprise. We hit that wall at around 100~ employees. What worked beautifully with a small team suddenly became our biggest obstacle to growth. The problem was our functional org structure: Engineers reporting to engineering, product to product, business to business. This created a complex dependency web: • Planning took weeks • No clear ownership  • Business threw Jira tickets over the fence and prayed for them to get completed • Engineers didn’t understand priorities and worked on problems that didn’t align with customer needs That was when I studied Amazon's Single-Threaded Owner (STO) model, in which dedicated GMs run independent business units with their own cross-functional teams and manage P&L It looked great for Amazon's scale but felt impossible for growing companies like ours. These 2 critical barriers made it impractical for our scale: 1. Engineering Squad Requirements: True STO demands complete engineering teams (including managers) reporting to a single owner. At our size, we couldn't justify full engineering squads for each business unit. To make it work, we would have to quadruple our engineering headcount. 2. P&L Owner Complexity: STO leaders need unicorn-level skills: deep business acumen and P&L management experience. Not only are these leaders rare and expensive, but requiring all these skills in one person would have limited our talent pool and slowed our ability to launch new initiatives. What we needed was a model that captured STO's focus and accountability but worked for our size and growth needs. That's when we created Mission-Aligned Teams (MATs), a hybrid model that changed our execution (for good) Key principles: • Each team owns a specific mission (e.g., improving customer service, optimizing payment flow) • Teams are cross-functional and self-sufficient,  • Leaders can be anyone (engineer, PM, marketer) who's good at execution • People still report functionally for career development • Leaders focus on execution, not people management The results exceeded our highest expectations: New MAT leads launched new products, each generating $5-10M in revenue within a year with under 10 person teams. Planning became streamlined. Ownership became clear. But it's NOT for everyone (like STO wasn’t for us) If you're under 50 people, the overhead probably isn't worth it. If you're Amazon-scale, pure STO might be better. MAT works best in the messy middle: when you're too big for everyone to be in one room but too small for a full enterprise structure. image courtesy of Manu Cornet ------ If you liked this, follow me Henry Shi as I share insights from my journey of building and scaling a  $1B/year business.

Most founders never break $10m. Not because they aren’t smart or hardworking. They just don’t know how to scale. I took AppSumo from $3m to $84m in six years. Bootstrapped. Here’s the exact framework I used to do it: ~~ Before we dive in—this post is just a preview. I broke down these frameworks in depth with Greg Isenberg on his podcast. I'll share the link to watch in the comments. == 1. The "9 Steps to 9 Figures" Framework Scaling happens in three phases: • Startup ($0-$1M): Find product-market fit. • Scale-up ($1M-$100M): Build a machine. • Grow-up ($100M+): Protect the legacy. Each phase requires a different skillset, mindset, and strategy. == 2. The Triple, Triple, Double, Double Formula Triple your business three years in a row. Double your business twice in a row. Here’s is the roadmap: Year 1: $1M → $3M Year 2: $3M → $9M Year 3: $9M → $27M Year 4: $27M → $54M Year 5: $54M → $108M == 3. Find Product-Market Fit first You don’t have product-market fit until it feels like you're wearing a meat suit in a dog park. If you’re still convincing customers to buy, you aren’t there yet. When you can’t keep up with demand, now you’re scaling. == 4. Retention before growth Building a business without fixing churn is like building a skyscraper on sand. Every 3% increase in net revenue retention DOUBLES your company’s valuation. Before you scale, fix retention. Otherwise, you’re filling a leaky bucket. == 5. The 80/20 Growth Rule • 80% of your resources on what’s already working. • 20% on new experiments. At AppSumo, one small test—switching from credits to cash payments for referrals—became an 8-figure revenue channel. Test small. Scale what works. == 6. You only have two bottlenecks If you're stuck, your problem is either: • Sales – Not enough leads? You don’t have a marketing problem. You have a product problem. • Delivery – Selling more than you can fulfill? You’re scaling chaos, not a business. Fix these first. == 7. Hire to scale revenue, not to discover it. Most founders hire too soon. Your job is to find the gold vein. Your team’s job is to mine it. Hiring too early = You burn cash. Hiring too late = You burn out. Hire only when scaling becomes the bottleneck. == 8. The Shield vs. Sword Framework for decision-making Rate every decision 1-5 on: • Impact (Sword) – How big is the upside? • Effort (Shield) – How much work is it? Only pursue 8+/10 ideas. If it’s not a clear win, it’s a distraction. == 9. Build an executive team that replaces you Your business only has two core functions: • Sales (CRO) – Gets Customers • Delivery (COO) – Keeps Customers Pro tip: Hire first in your zone of genius. Why? Because you’ll know what excellence looks like. == 10. The founder is the hardest worker. The CEO is the laziest. If your calendar is full, you're still a founder. A CEO’s job is to think 3-5 quarters ahead while the team executes. If you’re in meetings all day, you aren’t running the company.