The "More Better New" Framework: When to Pivot Your Growth Strategy

‍

You hit a plateau and assume you've saturated the market.

Revenue growth slows from 40% month-over-month to 10%. Your ads stop working as well as they used to. The low-hanging fruit is gone. Investors are asking for updates. You start looking for the next channel, the next platform, the next big bet.

This is where most founders make their first scaling mistake.

The three levers you have

When growth slows, you have three options. Do more of what works. Get better at what you're doing. Try something new.

Most founders jump to "new" before exhausting "more" and "better." This is backwards.

More means volume. If Facebook ads are working, can you spend twice as much? If cold email converts, can you send 10x the volume? If content marketing drives leads, can you publish daily instead of weekly?

Better means optimization. Can you improve your ad creative? Tighten your targeting? Fix conversion rate bottlenecks in your funnel? Train your sales team to close at a higher rate?

New means different channels, platforms, or approaches. Can you expand from Facebook to Google? From B2C to B2B? From organic to paid?

The order matters. Doing more of what works is the highest-return activity. Getting better at what works is the second-highest return. Trying new things is the lowest return because you're likely starting from zero.

Why founders skip to "new"

There's a reason everyone wants to try the next platform. It feels like progress. You're taking action, exploring options, being entrepreneurial.

It also lets you avoid the hard truth that you haven't fully exploited what's already working.

Doing more requires discipline and operational excellence. If Facebook ads work at $10k/month in spend, scaling to $100k/month means you need better creative production, more sophisticated targeting, stronger financial controls, and the mental fortitude to keep doing the same thing when your brain craves novelty.

Getting better is even harder. It requires you to admit that your current execution has room for improvement. Your conversion rate could be higher. Your targeting could be tighter. Your sales process could close more deals. These are skill gaps, not market constraints.

Founders don't want to hear this. They want to believe the plateau is external. The market got saturated. Competition increased. The algorithm changed. Anything but the possibility that they haven't mastered what they're already doing.

The Rule of 100

Here's a practical heuristic. If you're spending less than $100k/month on a channel, you haven't saturated it. You've barely scratched the surface.

Let’s call this the Rule of 100. Any marketing channel that works at small scale has more room than you think. Facebook has billions of users. Google processes billions of searches. LinkedIn has hundreds of millions of professionals. The idea that you've "saturated" a channel while spending $5k or $10k per month is absurd.

What you've actually saturated is your current approach. Your creative is getting stale. Your targeting is too narrow. Your offer doesn't resonate with the next cohort of customers.

This is a "you" problem, not a "market" problem.

The solution is to get better at the channel before you abandon it. Refresh your creative every two weeks. Expand your targeting to adjacent audiences. Test new hooks and angles. Hire someone who knows the platform better than you do.

Most founders won't do this. They'll convince themselves the channel is tapped out and move to the next shiny object. Then they'll repeat the same pattern and plateau again.

The size of the pie fallacy

Founders also misunderstand market size. They look at their addressable market and think they need to reach everyone. This is the Size of the Pie Fallacy.

Let's say you sell project management software to marketing agencies. There are 50,000 marketing agencies in your country. You've reached 500 of them. You conclude you've captured 1% of the market and have 99% left to go.

This logic is flawed.

Not all 50,000 agencies are reachable through your current channels. Not all of them have the problem you solve. Not all of them are ready to buy right now. Your real addressable market for your current approach might be 5,000 agencies, not 50,000.

But here's what founders usually miss. Before you've fully penetrated that 5,000, you should get better at reaching them. Improve your messaging. Build more trust. Create better content. Make your product easier to buy.

Only after you've optimized your approach to that segment should you think about expanding to a new segment or channel. Otherwise you're just spreading the same mediocre execution across more places.

When to actually try something new

There are legitimate reasons to explore new channels. You've hit a hard ceiling. You're spending $100k+/month and returns are diminishing. You've optimized every lever you can find. You've tested everything.

At that point, new makes sense.

But even then, you should approach it methodically. You're not abandoning what works. You're layering on additional channels while maintaining what's already proven. You're diversifying, not pivoting.

The other time to try something new is when you have excess capacity. You've mastered your current channel. It's running on autopilot. You have time and budget to experiment. You can afford to fail.

This is different from trying new things because you're frustrated with current results. Frustration leads to abandoning working strategies too early. Excess capacity leads to smart expansion.

The bottom line

Growth plateaus are feedback. They tell you that your current approach has limits. But those limits are usually about execution, not market size.

Before you jump to a new channel, ask yourself: Have I done more of what works? Have I gotten better at what I'm doing? Or am I just bored and looking for the next thing?

Most founders choose novelty over mastery. They'd rather explore new platforms than optimize what's working. This is expensive. You're starting from zero every time you switch channels, and you're leaving money on the table by abandoning proven approaches before you've fully exploited them.

Do more. Get better. Only then try something new.

‍