Leadership · Phase 4: growing
Growing: which leap makes you unbeatable?
You work out how much is still left in your current market, then choose one leap to a new product, segment or country.
Worth reading first: The five growth phases
Does this sound familiar?
- Revenue rises sharply every quarter, and costs rise almost as fast.
- You've opened a second product or a new segment, and you don't know whether it's distracting from the first or strengthening it.
- Customers in another sector or another country are asking for your product, and you don't know whether to say yes.
- Your leadership team joins in every discussion, but the big decisions still end up back with you.
- There are five opportunities on the table, they all look good, and you've no way of choosing between them.
Who it's for, and when
For founders and leadership teams whose product has proven itself and whose delivery runs without the founder. Customers buy again, refer others, and the question is where the next revenue comes from. You've just entered this phase when your first market is starting to fill up, or when customers from another sector or country come knocking on their own. You're nearly through it when each extra euro of revenue costs less than the one before: that's where Scaling begins.
The model
In Growing, the question for the market is: which leap makes my company unbeatable? Your product works and delivery runs without you. Now you're looking for the next layer of revenue: a new product for your existing customers, your product in a new segment or country, or a second revenue model.
Every leap starts by doing the sums on your current market. How many companies are there of the type you sell to, how many do you have, and what do your customers still buy elsewhere? Igor Ansoff put the choice into four boxes: selling more to the customers you know carries the least risk, a new product in a new market the most. Only once your current market is running out is a new market the cheapest way to grow.
In this phase, growth still costs proportionally: more revenue means more people and more costs. That's normal. What holds you back now is a habit from Organising: you guard the processes and check every decision. A leap needs a leadership team that decides for itself within the intent, so you have time to choose the next one.
Boldcaster, the growth phase model (2026), boldcaster.com/groeifasen. The leap comes from Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, Blitzscaling (2018), and Verne Harnish, Scaling Up (2014); the choice between product and market from Igor Ansoff's matrix (1957).
Your strategy
Two layers. At the bottom, the rhythm: rocks, KPIs and the week, and your leadership team runs that. At the top, one or two leaps a year, with a three-year goal above them. You say out loud which opportunities you're passing up this year.
You as a leader
The director. You stay close to the leap, for example with the first customers in the new market, and you step back from the day-to-day work. You give them the intent and let the leadership team choose how.
The people around you
An A-player in every key seat, and a leadership team that makes real decisions, about money too. You give a leap to someone who's done something like it before or knows the new market, not to whoever happens to have time.
Your system and AI
AI as a head start: seeing what a segment buys faster than your competitors, where you lose quotes and what a new market needs. A market analysis that used to take weeks now takes an afternoon.
Pitfalls
Leaping before your current market is used up
A new country or segment feels like growth, and selling more in your own market feels like standing still. Yet the new market is almost always more expensive: building a name from scratch, new salespeople, new mistakes. Leap with half your own market still open and you pay twice. And if you stay stuck in operations at the same time, or don't give your leadership team real power, you'll be on your own in the new market.
The leap disappears into the total
Total revenue is rising, so the new product or segment seems to be working. Nobody works it out separately. That's how the old market quietly pays for a leap that loses money on every customer. Give each leap its own sum: revenue, direct costs and your people's hours.
Watch and read
The man who came up with blitzscaling on what a fast leap asks of the founder: different choices, and accepting that growth is inefficient at first.
Watch on YouTubeAnsoff's four boxes with an example: why selling more in your own market carries the least risk and a new product in a new market the most.
Watch on YouTubeDominate your own market first, then move step by step into the one next to it: the order this phase calls for.
Watch on YouTubeRead
Blitzscaling
Reid Hoffman en Chris Yeh · 2018 · ISBN 9781524761417
On the leap: when speed matters more than efficiency, and what that asks of the company and the founder. Written for Silicon Valley, so take the questions and leave the scale. Just over 300 pages.
View the bookApply it
- 1
Work out your current market
Write down three numbers: how many companies of the type you sell to there are in your area, how many you have now, and what a customer buys from you on average each year. Then ask five existing customers what they still buy elsewhere that you could supply. Now you know, in euros, how much is still out there.
- 2
Put your opportunities in the four boxes
More of the same to your own market, a new product for your customers, your product in a new market, or both new. For this year, choose at most one leap outside the first box, and write down which opportunities you're passing up.
- 3
Test the leap with ten customers before you build
Put the new product, or your existing product, in front of ten customers in the new segment, with a price. Anyone who signs or pays counts; anyone who finds it interesting doesn't. Within a quarter you'll know whether the leap holds up.
- 4
Give the leap to someone on your leadership team, with the intent
Say what you want to achieve and why, and how far they can decide on their own, money included. They choose how. You sit in on the first customer conversations and then step out. How to do that is in the lesson Mission command.
Mission command
Examples
The sum to take with you: a wholesaler
A wholesaler of technical parts supplies 180 machine builders in the Netherlands and Belgium. There are about 900 of them. A customer buys €42,000 a year on average: €7.6m now, and around €30m with machine builders who aren't customers yet. On top of that, the 180 existing customers together buy about €5m of consumables from someone else. So opening up in Germany isn't the cheapest way to grow. They add consumables to the range and put two salespeople on the 720 machine builders they don't have yet.
A software company
A company with a booking app for vets has a third of Dutch practices as customers. The leadership team wants to expand into Germany. Doing the sums shows that half the customers still do their staff rotas in Excel. They build a rota module first, sell it to forty existing customers within a quarter, and put Germany in the three-year goal.
A consultancy
A building physics firm works for property developers and wants to serve housing associations too. The founder wants to lead it himself, because it matters. He gives it to a member of the leadership team who spent five years at a housing association, with the intent: three housing associations on a framework contract within a year, without the developers waiting longer for a report. The founder joins the first two meetings. The new segment gets its own line in the numbers.
Do this in your own business
Everything up to here is free. What you fill in for your own business, you keep in Boldcaster.
- You look back on a situation from your own work. Only you can read what you write.
- You set a date with yourself, and on that day the app asks how it went.
- You assign the lesson to your team and see who has done it.
- The quiz counts towards your progress, and you see which lesson comes next.
Four weeks free. You'll land straight in this lesson.
Quiz
5 situations. You need 4 of 5 right. You can try again at any time.
1.Your revenue rose 40 per cent this year and your costs 35 per cent. Your accountant advises you to stop opening new markets until things run more efficiently. What do you do?
2.Three companies in Germany ask whether they can buy your product. In the Netherlands you have about 15 per cent of your market. What's your first step?
3.The member of your leadership team who runs operations wants to open a new segment and knows that world well. You think it's too important to hand over. What do you do?
4.At the annual session there are five opportunities on the table: a new product, two new segments, Belgium and a subscription model. How do you choose?
5.Your new product has been running for a year. Total revenue is growing, but nobody knows whether the product itself makes money. What do you do?
Nothing is saved here. In the app, the quiz counts towards your progress.
Not sure where to start? Take the growth scan