At StacDek, we think about business growth differently. We focus exclusively on value-driven growth, not short-term surge growth.

The simplest definition of Value Driven Growth is that your business grows because you do a great job of giving customers and employees what they really want. Surge growth, on the other hand, never lasts because it relies on clever marketing, increased ad spending, and publicity stunts, to name a few. Value-driven growth is what leads to consistent year-over-year organic growth.

When we use the term "Value," we are referring to what people want from your business. If a customer wants to buy motor oil from your auto parts shop, what he values isn't the motor oil, he wants his car to run well. When someone buys from your business, they are saying that what you are selling is more valuable to them than the money they are handing you. What they find valuable is the effect your product or service has on their lives.

Now I am going to share the most important point of the StacDek Framework right now, and it's very simple. If you can give the customer more value than they expected with each transaction, your business will grow naturally because they will tell their friends to buy from you. This seems easy enough, but most businesses don't know how to do it. We will dive into exactly how to apply this simple principle to your business in the StacDek Framework.

The primary function of a business is to create, deliver and capture value. 
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Businesses grow when they create and deliver meaningful value for their customers while making enough money to operate and grow their business. We have a tool called the value cycle, and it helps you map out how your business creates, delivers, and captures value. If there's a gap in the value cycle, then your business will struggle to grow or even stay afloat. For instance, let's say you do a great job of giving the customer value, but you don't charge enough, your business won't last long. Employees need to get value from your business too. Let's say you don't pay them enough or don't give them a good work environment, your business will fight turn over, and your employees will be subpar.

Businesses fail to grow when they can't create, deliver or capture sufficient value. To sustain growth, your business needs to master the Value Cycle.

Read the section below to learn about the three main principles we address when evaluating what's blocking your business's growth. 

All the other business growth principles fall under three primary principles. These principles are like gravity, you can ignore them, but they still affect you. 

1. Sell something people want to buy.
2. Tell the right people what you are selling in the right way. 
3. Have a business model that's repeatable and scalable. 

The three growth principles sound pretty simple, but when it comes to applying them to your business, they can get incredibly completed. We will give you examples for each principle that will help you understand how easy they are to overlook in your own business. Through the StacDek Framework, we condense the wisdom of thousands of business books and MBA programs into a series of exercises that help you identify why you're not seeing growth and how to turn it around.

Any business that masters them will grow. I will give you an overview of each of the principles and then some real examples of how ignoring them created growth barriers for companies.

1. Sell something that people want to buy.
This seems too simple to even be worth noting, but most failed businesses were trying to sell something that people didn't really want. Countless marketing dollars are spent each year to grow businesses that are selling something people don't really want. Sometimes people sort of want it or don't have a better option, and that makes business owners feel like they are on the right path. More often than not, an assumption about what customers should want has more influence than the actual evidence of what customers really want. Remember, just because a business has sales doesn't mean it's selling something people really want. 

Example: Many commodity service businesses (like plumbing, accounting, and lawn care) have customers and revenue, but they don't really grow. There is no question that people want the services they sell (leaky pipes fixed, taxes prepared, and grass cut), but what each service business sells in these cases is not just the service itself. Because customers can buy the same service from a lot of different companies. Commodity service businesses are selling what we call Secondary Value (we get into this more in the Framework). These service providers are selling the unique way they deliver their service. If you're selling a commodity service that millions of people need, but you aren't seeing growth, it's most likely because you are not delivering that service in a way that the customers really want.

There are simple tools that you can use to make sure that you're growing your business around products or services that people want. However, most businesses aren't selling what they think they are selling. We talk about this in-depth in the workshop; it all comes back to selling value. Your customers are buying the value your product or service creates for them. Do customers want a toilet plunger, or do they want an unclogged toilet? Does anybody really want teeth whitening strips, or do they want white teeth? You get it, the point is you have to sell the value the customer wants to buy, and if people aren't telling their friends to buy from you, then chances are it is not as valuable to them as you may think.

Example (details have been changed to protect client anonymity): I was hired to consult with a company that spent 3.5 million dollars creating and trying to grow a health food app. They had identified that people didn't like how hard it was to find and manage recipes on most health food apps so they built theirs to solve that problem. After several years I was hired to help them figure out why more people were not buying the app. After a series of meetings and working through some of the tools in the StacDek Framework, it became clear that while they had made it easier to find and track recipes, they hadn't done a good job of stocking the app with really tasty recipes. People were buying the other apps primarily because the recipes tasted good. The value customers really wanted (healthy food that tasted really good) wasn't effectively met through this new app.

"Selling something that people want to buy" is about creating the right kind of value for your customers. It's not rocket science, but it is one of the main reasons businesses fail. We go in-depth on this in The StacDek Framework, and we walk you through a process to discover how your company can sell more of the value its customers want to buy. 

2. Tell the right people what you're selling in the right way. 
How many times has a promising product or idea failed because it failed to reach the right people? 

There is a concept that is essential for determining whether you have found the right customers. It's called Product Market Fit (PMF), and it means that you are selling the right thing to the right people. This is such a powerful concept that in the tech world, it is the holy grail for any startup to attain. I believe that it's time for the concept of Product Market Fit (PMF) to be a central priority for every business regardless of size, industry, or years in business. If you sell something to people or companies, then you must always be able to answer the question, have we found Market Fit (PMF) yet, or are we still looking? Every time you release a new product or service, you need to ask the question, "have we found product market fit?"

However, finding the right market to sell your great product to isn't the only challenge; you have to make sure you're telling people about that product in a way that they can understand.

The best example of this is when Apple released its "Think Different" commercial. Have you seen it? If not, stop reading and YouTube it. Prior to that commercial, Apple had been buying huge spreads in magazines and detailing every feature of their amazing computer. The problem was those spreads, and product details didn't seem to do anything for their sales. Then they released "Think Different," and suddenly Apple wasn't selling features and specs no one could understand; now they were selling the idea that their computers were for people who, "think different." This was the beginning of Apple becoming the computer of choice for creative professionals. That ad was when Apple started telling the right people about what they were selling in the right way.

How well do you know your customers? If you have a great product and the right market, then what do your future customers need to hear to be motivated to buy?

So many businesses try to be right for too many different types of customers. Trying to sell to the wrong people leads you to accidentally hide what's great about your product.

Example (details have been changed to protect client anonymity): I was hired to help a high-end custom home builder figure out what was keeping them from growing. They had been in business for almost 20 years and saw barely any growth year over year. When I started working with them, it became clear that they were trying to run two different types of businesses at the same time. They built high-end custom homes and lower-cost homes in developments. Their customers sang their praises, but potential customers were confused about what exactly they were selling. People wanting high-end custom homes thought they primarily built low-cost homes. They weren't clearly telling the customers they wanted to work with what they offered in the right way, and it got in the way of their growth. All along, they had wanted to build only high-end custom homes, but in the early days, they had started taking on lower-cost home builds to keep the lights on. This is an understandable situation, but they needed to focus on telling the right people about what they offered in the right way if they were going to grow their business.

If you aren't clearly telling the right people about what you are selling in the right way, then it will be a major barrier to your growth. In the StacDek Framework, we walk you through the process of figuring out if you're talking to the right target market. If not, we will show you how to find a better target market that fits what you're selling and your business model.

2. Have a business model that's repeatable and scalable.
There can be confusion about what a business model is since many people use the term, but they often mean different things. The most important thing to remember is that your business model outlines how your business works. The five big questions a business model answers are:

1. Who buys the company's product or service?
2. What does the company sell?
3. How does your company produce and deliver its products or services?
4. How does a company connect its products with its customers?
5. How does your company make money?

In the StacDek Framework, we look at the nine elements of any business that need to work together in unison to make a business model repeatable and scalable.

A repeatable business model is one that will continue to work the same way for a long time. Many businesses get started using unrepeatable business models. For instance, they landed their first big client through a connection they had but couldn't land more clients in the future. Or a business gets started and grows because they have access to new technology, but before long, its competitors will have access to the same technology. If an unrepeatable business model isn't turned into a repeatable business model, then it will either fail or barely hang on for years without growing.

A scalable business model is one that will work the same way when you have a thousand customers as it does when you have 100 customers. For instance, if you sell handmade furniture from one manufacturer, your business is only as scalable as the amount of product the manufacturer can supply. If you have 1000 people wanting to buy your furniture but only 500 pieces to sell, then your business model isn't scalable.

There are a lot of factors that determine whether a business model is repeatable and scalable. In my experience, most companies don't know if their business model is or is not repeatable and scalable. In large part because they never asked some very important questions.

Here are the nine parts of a business model that we evaluate in the StacDek Framework. 
Target Market
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1. Value Proposition 
2. Customer Touch Points
3. Customer Relationships
4.Revenue Streams
5. Core Resources
6. Core Activities
7. Critical Partners
8. Cost Structure

If you have a great product that people really want, but you don't have the right price point, then you have a business model problem. Lots of businesses fail because part of their business model isn't scalable or repeatable enough to produce the outcomes they want to see.

Example (details have been changed to protect client anonymity): A startup hired me because they wanted to launch a highly disruptive software product that helped work teams stay in touch and manage projects. They knew they wanted to have a strong growth plan in place to help them take market share. Through studying the market and the competition, I decided that they needed to offer a free basic membership to allow people to try the product before buying it for their whole team. This is what the customers they were targeting expected from a software company. But the company's operating cost wouldn't allow them to offer the free membership; in fact, it required them to charge more than the competition for every membership package. This became a huge growth barrier for them and ultimately forced them to change their product and go after a much smaller market that was willing to pay more. The cost of delivering their service was misaligned with their target market, so they had a business model issue that was a growth barrier.

So many businesses create great products but have business model issues that keep them from being able to grow. As you go through the StacDek Framework, you will map out your business model, and we will help you identify if there is a business model issue slowing the growth of your business.