The Vague Playbook for Growth

Examined Through Growth Case Studies

Drew Jackson

April 16, 2025

đź‘‹ Hello friends,

Thank you for joining this week's edition of Brainwaves. I'm Drew Jackson, and today we're exploring:

Strategies for Growth

Key Question: What are the best strategies to grow as a company? Do such strategies even exist?

Thesis: There are an infinite number of strategies for growth as a company. The “best” of those will always depend on the unique circumstances, so an exact playbook is an incredibly naive approach—instead consider skills to help people evaluate potential opportunities.

Credit University of Maryland

Before we begin: Brainwaves arrives in your inbox every other Wednesday, exploring venture capital, economics, space, energy, intellectual property, philosophy, and beyond. I write as a curious explorer rather than an expert, and I value your insights and perspectives on each subject.

Time to Read: 19 minutes.

Let’s dive in!

A quick state of the company union:

As a business, there are a multitude of ways to create value for your customers and capture a portion of that value as profit. Generally, value capture requires either differentiation (which allows for an increased price) or a cost advantage (in comparison to competitors).

Labor—people, employees, contractors, etc—are critical to creating this value. Understanding how to effectively incentivize laborers to maximize value creation and capture is critical.

Competitors can quickly arbitrage a company’s value, so the ability to create sustainable value is based on the company’s niche in the market and who it competes with for business.

Each company has a strategy, or multiple strategies to create and capture value as a business. Only a small subsegment of a company’s potential strategies for creating and capturing value have the potential to create sustainable, long-term value—per Hamilton Hemler’s 7 Powers framework.

Just because these strategies can create sustainable, long-term value doesn’t mean they will. There’s still a large amount of uncertainty that goes into a business’s future. Over the company’s growth lifecycle, the sustainable implementation of these value creation and capture strategies is paramount to long-term success.

The Vague Playbook for Growth

Packy over at Not Boring recently wrote an article criticizing following playbooks in life. I wholeheartedly agree with his take.

Bryan Hobart and Tobias Huber, in Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation, state, “Once the formula was understood, however, it stopped working as well.”

So today I’m not going to give you an exact playbook for growth—far from it. In fact, I’m only going to illustrate my points through real-world case studies, which themselves are highly subject to the specific context, environment, time, and space they were in—so unique that they will never be exactly repeated—so their playbook cannot be followed.

What ultimately drops out of these examples is a vague, primitive framework for growth, nothing more.

It would be like if you imagined what an exact map to the moon would look like except without all of the specific details: leave the surface of Earth > pass the atmosphere > go into space > travel through space > land on the moon.

Nowhere in there would it tell you where to launch from, how to build your rocket, what trajectory you would have to take, how much fuel to bring, which people to pilot (if any), what your rover needed to look like, how televised your launch needs to be, what color your spaceship could be painted, or whether or not to bring your golf clubs.

That would be an exact playbook—we don’t do those around here. In fact, all we really do is point you in the wide direction of the potential end goals (sustainable, quality growth) and know that the uniqueness of each situation will necessitate unique approaches and solutions for the rest.

Welcome to the big leagues.

Credit Locale Magazine

Case Study #1:

Question to critically think about during this section: What is value? How can I use the concepts of value to grow as a business?

Jenny Baker (a pseudonym), the founder and owner, learned how to throw pottery at a young age from her mother (who learned it from her mother). Jenny estimates that pottery has been in her family for many generations.

Throughout her life, Jenny had been going to many different community pottery studios but never found one that fit the experience she was looking for. They were all dirty, dark, overcrowded, understaffed, and lacked the collaborative community structure she desired. People would come in and put in their headphones and do pottery alone, silently.

As such, she started thinking about starting her own pottery studio in 2021 (for context, her husband is an entrepreneur, so it runs in the family). She began by creating an extensive business plan, diagramming the layout she wanted for the studio, researching the permitting and licensing processes, and overall trying to understand all of the underlying processes that go into starting a business.

When she was more prepared, she reached out to a local real estate agent. Within a month, the agent contacted her about a local spot opening up in a high-traffic, popular area. She loved the space and signed the contract in 2022.

Shooting to minimize costs, she performed all of the renovations herself, slowly crafting the studio into the place she envisioned. The ABC Pottery Studio (a pseudonym to protect the business identity) opened at the beginning of 2023.

Almost all of the first clients were beginners, allowing Jenny to build up a community of people who were relatively all at the same level of expertise in pottery. This allowed them to learn and grow together, forming tight bonds of project collaboration and growth.

Many of these customers are incredibly loyal, subscribing to her monthly membership program to get open-studio hours where they can learn from a class currently going on and/or collaborate with the other members to learn new techniques.

Throughout the growth of ABC Pottery Studio, Jenny has built a large curriculum, teaching regular classes, and has driven most of the overall strategy behind day-to-day operations. Her collaborative work style helps drive the community-oriented culture at the firm.

In addition, Jenny has connections with many local artists who display their work at the front of her business to all of her customers. These local artists support and are members of the studio, elevating the level of other members through collaborative efforts.

The ABC Pottery Studio offers a variety of levels of courses from beginner to expert. In addition, Jenny has begun to offer classes in other mediums that complement pottery, such as glass blowing, gardening, woodworking, and more. These other mediums, combined with the pottery classes (e.g. you can make a pot and then learn to plant a Bonsai tree in it) create unique offerings that other pottery-only studios can’t offer.

As the studio has grown in popularity, Jenny has been able to build relationships with materials suppliers in order to source large quantity, low-cost shipments of raw materials (e.g. clay, glazes, kiln materials). Other pottery studios in the area still go through distributors, paying 3-5x more on average for their materials.

These elements have led to a large growth in memberships and walk-ins. Jenny has built a collaborative community of people who enjoy pottery and are in her studio often (some come multiple times a week). This community entices other people to join her studio and take classes through a network effect, increasing the overall demand for her offerings.

As many people who come to her studio work 9-5 jobs, the studio is very busy from 5-10 pm. Seeing an opportunity to utilize their daytime capacity, Jenny has expanded to offer corporate classes during the day, allowing her to increase demand without impacting her regular clients. These corporate classes are also a great way to drive customers to sign up for additional classes or memberships.

Credit CoastAL Orange Beach

Case Study #2:

Question to critically think about during this section: What is the role of employees/people in business? How can I use the concepts of personnel to grow as a business?

Recently I had the chance to interview Arnon Oren, owner of a variety of restaurants and catering businesses in California. Arnon had many valuable insights regarding his journey and specifically how the role of employees worked in his business. Some insights are below:

Q: Across all of your businesses, how do you pick your employees? What advice would you give someone in any industry regarding this?

“We’re people-focused.”

Arnon’s passion is the people he works with. Early on, he tended to lean into people’s potential a lot—he was hiring a lot based on people’s future potential compared to people’s capacity (skill level and experience).

From his experience, his balance was a bit off—it was too much towards people’s potential. He initially thought that someone’s capacity, ability, skill, and experience could catch up faster than it did.

Now, Arnon is realizing more and more, especially in the culinary business, that you cannot expedite learning, or in his words, you “can’t pressure cook learning.”

His business is very hands-on. You have to touch the produce, cook the food, be with the people, see the clients, and feed the clients. Hands-on takes time, it takes experience to learn. There isn’t a way to learn this from a book, you have to just do it again and again and again.

“If I were to give somebody hiring advice: make sure you’re hiring people with the right skills for what you need with experience in what you need. They need to have passion, especially in our business. Their potential is only going to get them so far.”

Arnon has had great success in this approach (hiring based on potential). Hiring someone talented who is interested in excelling and allowing them to do so will often produce success. However, it doesn’t always work. “We are very interested in the development of passionate people who work with us and we always see the potential in them—it often leads to beautiful results. And then sometimes it takes on a different direction so we just need to be aware of that and look for a balanced approach of finding skilled people while also allowing less skilled and very passionate people to be growing with us.”

Overall, he’s tried to be very people-focused. If you treat people well, they’ll stay on longer.

Arnon doesn’t have major problems with turnover (uncommon in the culinary industry). Around 80% of the crew currently at his restaurant was the original crew when it was founded 1.5 years ago. In addition, the average person working in their catering company has been there for 3-5 years.

Lesson #2: The Balance Between Current Capabilities and Future Potential

I’ve never had to hire an employee before, so it was very interesting to hear Arnon’s hiring philosophy.

Throughout his career, Arnon has probably hired hundreds of employees. As he touched on, each employee has an amount of future potential—their ability to grow and develop in the role and in the business over time—and an amount of current capabilities or capacity—their current abilities to perform the role adequately, including their skills, talent, experience, and mindset in the role.

Ideally, you would want to only hire employees with high potential and high capabilities as they would be the best of both worlds. Yet, those people are rare to come across.

If you are unable to fulfill your hiring needs with people from that bucket and need to look into other buckets, what should you do?

Arnon began with the bucket of individuals with high potential and lower current capabilities. In his opinion, especially in the service industry, he potentially should have made a different decision.

In his industry, it’s difficult to teach capabilities, so hiring people who already have capabilities, but a lower potential, in his opinion, would sometimes be a better option. It’s a delicate balance—a good mix between employees with more potential and those with more skills can be a recipe for the most success.

In another industry, one where capabilities are more easily taught, Arnon’s initial philosophy probably would work very well.

Credit Oak & Iron Brewing

Case Study #3:

Question to critically think about during this section: How do competitors and markets influence businesses? How can I use the concepts of competitors & markets to grow as a business?

Charlie Howard (a pseudonym), grew up in Utah, in the area where his business is now located. As a Utah native, he didn’t have much exposure to beer growing up due to the state’s restrictive alcohol laws. After trying and eventually falling in love with beer, Charlie developed an interest in homebrewing.

Growing up, Charlie’s family was full of musicians and his father owned a dance studio. As a teenager, he played in a metal band with a friend before developing an appreciation for jazz.

Charlie studied business management in college and spent many years managing restaurants. His career evolved from restaurant management to local business consulting, where he would help others design and set up restaurants. This background gave him extensive experience in both the business and culinary aspects of the food service industry.

While he worked in restaurants and as a restaurant consultant, Charlie continued to brew small batches out of his home. Eventually, he decided to take a bet on himself and started his own brewhouse, Neighborhood Brewhouse (a pseudonym).

The brewhouse is a mix between a restaurant and a brewery, featuring an in-house brewing system plus a small-batch system. On the top level of the building, there is the restaurant, providing classic pub food, inspired by Charlie’s restaurant experience.

Charlie wanted to combine his three passions, restaurants, brewing, and jazz all together in one operation. So, the brewhouse hosts regular events, including jazz nights 2-3 times a week (attracting some of the best performers in the state), standing-room-only trivia nights, and board game nights. To maintain an accessible atmosphere, Charlie doesn’t charge an entrance fee to hear the music, assuming that most people will naturally order food or a drink.

The Neighborhood Brewhouse emphasizes locally sourced ingredients in their brews and in their food, maintaining close relationships with local farmers and suppliers.

Charlie’s staff has a notably lower turnover rate compared to businesses in the area, which Charlie contributes to competitive wages, benefits including 50-100% paid health insurance, and a management philosophy that grants staff autonomy to create their own recipes and products. This autonomy has resulted in some of the most popular dishes and brews, including Mint Chocolate Beer (one of their best-sellers). Charlie prioritizes candidates who align with the company’s culture over those with extensive work experience. This approach often challenges him in identifying suitable employees.

Despite facing challenges like recent price increases due to economic pressures, the brewhouse maintains a loyal and diverse customer base ranging from local college students to senior citizens in their 80s and 90s.

Charlie describes the brewhouse as a “passion project” rather than a venture primarily motivated by profit. He states explicitly that he “didn’t do this for the money” and that while the business provides him with a good lifestyle, he’s “not going to get rich off this.” His approach prioritizes quality, culture, and personal satisfaction over rapid growth or maximizing profits.

The unique market characteristics of Utah and the competitive landscape in the area have significantly influenced how Charlie positioned and operated his business. The state limits draft beer to 5% alcohol content, with higher-alcohol beers requiring canning/bottling. Rather than investing in packaging equipment, Charlie adapted by selling other local breweries’ higher-alcohol beers to complement his draft offerings.

Charlie positions Neighborhood Brewhouse in the market by emphasizing differentiation rather than direct competition. He explains that this differentiation is found in creating unique experiences for your customers. Charlie has found this through experimental and artisanal beer recipes, regular cultural events, and a diverse atmosphere.

When asked about a large competitor down the street, Charlie discussed how he has deliberately positioned the Neighborhood Brewhouse as an intimate alternative to this larger, corporate-feeling chain. He states that the competitor is “not a bad place, it’s just not fun”, highlighting how he’s identified a market gap for a more personalized, authentic experience.

Utah’s tourism market significantly shapes the business as it’s a hot spot for out-of-towners. Charlie has developed a reputation as a destination for tourists seeking an authentic local experience.

Credit Mesothelioma Help

Case Study #4:

Question to critically think about during this section: What is quality growth? How can I use the concept of quality growth to grow as a business?

In 1857, the Saucona Iron Company was founded in Pennsylvania by Augustus Wolle. Due to the Panic of 1857, they dissolved and moved elsewhere in Pennsylvania, changing their name to Bethlehem Rolling Mill and Iron Company.

In 1861, the company’s name was changed to Bethlehem Iron Company and construction of their first blast furnace commenced. The furnace was operational 2 years later. The first rolling mill was built during this time, and the first railroad rails were rolled in 1863. They completed a machine shop in 1865 and another blast furnace in 1867. During these early years, the main products produced were rails for the rapidly expanding intercontinental railroad and armor plating for the U.S. Navy.

The company continued to expand in the 1880s, although they were slowly losing market share in the railroad market to growing U.S. competitors such as Carnegie Steel and Lackawanna Steel.

Following the end of the U.S. Civil War, the U.S. Navy quickly downsized. However, by 1881, increasing international incidents highlighted the poor condition of the U.S. fleet and the need to rebuild.

Members of the government contact Bethlehem Iron Company with a proposal to erect a heavy forging plant to produce the steel necessary to provide for these ships. In 1886, Congress passed a bill authorizing the construction of two armored second-class battleships, one protected cruiser, one first-class torpedo boat, and the complete rebuilding of two Civil War-era monitors. Bethlehem secured both the forging and armor contracts in 1887.

Bethlehem Iron Company began construction of the first U.S. heavy-forging plant in 1888. By 1890, Bethlehem was delivering gun forging to the Navy and was completing the facilities to provide armor plating.

For the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Bethlehem Iron Company provided the iron used to create the world’s first Ferris wheel, representing the largest single steel forging ever constructed at the time.

In 1899, after many successful years of growth and development, the company’s corporate management believed that Bethlehem Iron Company should switch to steel production, leading to the establishment of the Bethlehem Steel Company. In 1901, following an acquisition, Bethlehem Iron Company ceased operations.

After some complex corporate restructuring, some more mergers and acquisitions, and other logistics, in 1904 the popular entity Bethlehem Steel Corporation was finalized and would be publicly traded from 1906 to 2002. Through this consolidation, Bethlehem Steel Corporation became the second-largest steel provider in the United States.

Bethlehem Steel Corporation installed the Gray rolling mill and produced the nation’s first wide-flange structural shapes, ushering in the age of the skyscraper and establishing Bethlehem Steel as the leading supplier of steel to the construction industry. In 1908, they developed the revolutionary “I-Beam”, also revolutionizing skyscraper construction.

In the early 1900s, the corporation diversified beyond steel, managing iron mines in Cuba and shipyards throughout the United States. In 1913, Bethlehem Steel acquired Fort River Shipbuilding Company and became one of the world’s major shipbuilders. In 1922, Bethlehem Steel purchased Lackawanna Steel Company.

Leading into World War I and World War II, Bethlehem Steel was a major supplier of armor plate and other steel products to the United States armed forces. Some historians cite that Bethlehem Steel was the most important company to America’s national defense in the past century, stating that we wouldn’t have won World War I and World War II without it.

As the United States approached a shortage of steel, Bethlehem Steel expanded sourcing operations to Latin America, profiting greatly from the move (30%+ profits).

During World War II, Bethlehem Steel ranked 7th among all United States corporations in the value of its wartime production contracts. The 15 shipyards produced over 1,100 ships (more than any other building during WWII) which was nearly 20% of the Navy’s fleet. They employed as many as 180,000 people.

Following WWII, Bethlehem Steel’s plants continued to supply a wide variety of structural shapes for construction trades and forged products for defense, power generation, and steel-producing companies.

The steel industry in the United States prospered during and after WWII as many foreign steel industries were crippled. Bethlehem steel was producing 23 million tons of steel annually and was considered a staple of United States industrialism.

This economic prosperity sustained Bethlehem’s growth. The company’s steel helped build iconic structures including:

The following 50 years included competitive pressures, decline, and ultimate dissolution of the company.

Credit Wallpaper Magazine

Case Study #5:

Question to critically think about during this section: What about business isn’t uncertain? How can I use the concept of uncertainty to grow as a business?

Bean & Balance (a pseudonym to protect the business identity) began in 2006 in Bob Smith’s garage (a pseudonym). He began this passion project right before his daughter was born, building a shop attached to his garage to start roasting coffee beans. Expanding his operations, he managed to find a slightly used, good condition 3kg commercial coffee roaster.

His business started relatively small, just roasting coffee in his garage and selling it at local farmers’ markets. After 18 months of operating out of his garage, state regulators came and told him he didn’t have the proper licensing to be able to roast coffee out of his home—pushing him to start looking for a commercial location.

There wasn’t anything special about the location he found, but it did have a small door that opened into a foyer (which many small businesses shared) that contained bathrooms. The important part: there was enough space to meet the basic regulatory requirements.

To minimize costs, Bob did the construction himself, building a mini space simply to roast coffee. For the next 10 years, he roasted coffee every Saturday in his little shop, occasionally going around to the local farmers’ markets to sell his wares.

Many of his initial customers became attached to the brand and the story, emphasizing the local business aspect—providing many word-of-mouth referrals. Coming into 2020, this had formed into a large cult following.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. As he was reliant on in-person purchases and farmers’ markets, Bob’s business struggled. Bob took the initiative and established a vendor account on an online platform to sell his coffee beans, significantly enhancing his sales and improving his grasp of market demand.

This insight allowed for more strategic inventory management, reduced waste, and lower raw materials and shipping costs (many economies of scale). Due to this, he estimates his sales increased by around 30% in 2020.

During this time, the owners of the complex he was in decided to list the property, and it was sold to a local development firm. All of the businesses within the building needed to be vacated as it was going to be demolished to build a new apartment building.

Luckily, Bob had made a good connection with a local personal care products brand. Through this connection, the owners decided to stay together and started looking for a space to relocate.

Each location they looked at was already on the market for sale by the owners, a situation they did not want to endure again. This pattern continued until they heard of a new location by a friend who knew the landlord.

The space was much bigger than they were looking for, but they decided to take the gamble, moving their businesses and equipment there. This new combined entity became the Community Hub & Co. (another pseudonym), a place for locally produced products to be sold by their owners in a cooperative space (think of an indoor farmers market).

Their initial business model was that these local business operators would rent out a 10x10 space in their shop and run a storefront through there, able to sell their products without having to take on the extreme risk of a stand-alone store.

They quickly realized even this idea would be too much for most small businesses, as most local entrepreneurs didn’t have the capabilities to fill that space. Instead, they began to build a lot of shelving units and would rent out each shelf for $100-$200/month to businesses in the area.

If you rented a shelf, you were responsible for keeping your products in stock. They would facilitate the sales, but business owners needed to supply the product and manage any advertising efforts.

Walking into the business today, you would see the Bean & Balance coffee shop and roasting operations at the front, the personal care business operations at the back, and then around 20 different shelving units with over 50 different local businesses’ products housed on them. Their stock ranged from salsa to wine to art to pastries.

At the onset of this new entity, they had to do a large amount of advertising at local farmers’ markets to invite people to join the space, but now their demand is high enough that they have been able to tone down the marketing efforts.

For unit economics, if you own a shelf, you receive 95% of the profits associated with the sale of your products, with the other 5% going to management fees and the payment of the person facilitating the sales.

Now, 4+ years into the project, their business is going very well. They host many community events in the space, have frequent customers (many who are repeat customers), and attract many passersby from the local area. Some of the local businesses which had shelves have now grown big enough to expand to their own, stand-alone locations across the city—however, each still keeps a commemorative shelf at Community Hub & Co. in remembrance of their humble beginnings.

Credit Medium

The Comprehensive Guide to Creating Lasting Value as a Business

As you can see, the comprehensive guide is anything but that.

The value is in its simplicity.

By choosing to respect and highlight the uniqueness of each business, this guide fails to provide a 2000+ step-by-step procedure that perfectly hand-holds an entrepreneur into an extremely successful business owner.

Because that’s not how it works in the real world.

Instead, this guide represents ways entrepreneurs can think about business strategy decisions. It takes a step back to discuss the ideas of value, quality, uncertainty, and more—factors that each business owner deals with constantly.

In a way, this guide should rather be labeled the “The Introductory Guide to Beginning to Think Critically About Business”. Much more vague, yet infinitely more helpful.

“That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

- Steve Jobs, Interview with Business Week, 1998

That’s all for today. I’ll be back in your inbox on Saturday with The Saturday Morning Newsletter.

Thanks for reading,

Drew Jackson

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