3 Fast-Growth Lessons That Inc. 5000 Companies Follow to Make Business Boom

These may not be one-off tricks for hockey stick growth—but they are solid principles to employ in your business strategy. 

Like it or not, there are no shortcuts in life—nor in business. The companies that have landed coveted spots on the Inc. 5000 list were able to do so for a wide range of reasons. Some of them solved a tough-to-crack problem at just the right time. Others launched products that put them at the forefront of emerging social media trends. And countless companies that have made the list multiple times have charted fast-growth through a combination of tenacity, foresight, and agility.

One thing is clear: The formula for success for one business might not be the exact same as another. But some key principles for driving growth remain true across industry, company size, and business model. At this year’s Inc. 5000 conference in Palm Desert, California, three Inc. 5000 founders from three very different companies came together to discuss the commonalities behind their growth.

These are the strategies that work, according to The Woobles co-founder and CEO Justine Tiu, Van Leeuwen Ice Cream co-founder and CEO Ben Van Leeuwen, and Religion of Sports CEO Ameeth Sankaran.

1. Talking to customers and clients

When it comes to understanding what your audience wants, there’s nothing as effective as going straight to the source. That’s why Tiu, a former user experience designer at Google, asked her customers abundant questions in her crochet business’s early stages. “I would get on the phone with anyone who wanted to return the kit because I wanted to know why they were returning it,” she says. Beyond that, she’d ask customers how they found The Woobles and what led them to make their purchase.

Because Tiu and her co-founder—and husband—Adrian Zhang think of The Woobles less as a crochet kit company and more as a learning company, it was critical for them to understand what kinds of issues crochet beginners have run into when using their kits. “I’ll even teach you how to crochet myself, if that’s the issue,” she says.

Van Leeuwen echos a similar sentiment, adding that in-person communication is especially valuable when it comes to understanding what your customers want. For that reason, when he gets a chance, he works in any of Van Leeuwen Ice Cream’s nearly 70 shops. “I don’t just stand in the shop and see what everyone’s doing and say hi to customers—I really do the work,” he says. “Every single great idea I’ve had in the last 10 years about flavor innovation and how we build a store has come to me there.”

Not every entrepreneur has access to their end customer, though. That’s the case for media company Religion of Sports, which produces docuseries that have premiered on platforms like ESPN and Netflix. Because of that, Sankaran says that the company takes input from those streaming services about what’s resonating on their platforms and determines how it can best appeal to viewers with its own point-of-view. “We have our own creative team figure out, why is this going to make a difference? How are we going to cut through the noise of all clutter and the content that exists in the ecosystem?” he says.

2. Forge partnerships that work for you

Some collaborations—even ones that seem completely ridiculous at first—can be a ticket to virality. That was the case with Van Leeuwen Ice Cream’s 2021 Kraft Mac & Cheese flavor, which sold out of its 5,000 pints almost instantly. These kinds of partnerships have been “super effective” for increasing brand awareness, Van Leeuwen says, but they do require some strategy to pull off.

Not every collaboration involves working with a big brand. For example, Van Leeuwen recalls partnering with a local Brooklyn doughnut shop, and buying a bunch of doughnuts and mixing them into ice cream. That was deliciously simple, whereas celebrity and brand partnerships have a bigger barrier to entry. For that reason, Van Leeuwen says, it’s best to wait for them to come to you. “We’re opportunistic and reactive to all sorts of big collabs, whether it’s Kraft or Sabrina Carpenter.”

But that doesn’t always apply to licensing deals, says Tiu. Instead, to secure partnerships with impressive IP like Harry Potter, Peanuts, and Hello Kitty, The Woobles co-founders went to the annual Licensing Expo in Las Vegas and, after some persistent pitching, secured a deal with Pac-Man. Recognizable characters helped The Woobles to expand its audience, and in turn, to make even more deals. “We eventually got bigger licenses because we had a track record by then,” Tiu says.

Critically, Sankaran notes, you can’t build a reputation overnight—for example, his cofounder at Religion of Sports, Gotham Chopra, had more than two decades of experience as a filmmaker before launching the business. Gradually, the company was able to gain the trust of three critical parties: the professional athletes it aimed to spotlight, the sports leagues they played in, and the networks that it aimed to sell its content to. “It takes credibility to say we can satisfy all these parties,” Sankaran says.

3. Acknowledge mistakes, but don’t linger on them

Growth doesn’t come without some hiccups. “Our North Star is quality. And when we take our eye off quality, we think about other things,” says Sankaran. Religion of Sports, he says, made plenty of mistakes on the path to expansion, but his biggest lesson for other entrepreneurs is that “it’s never going to be easy, so don’t get lured in by what seems like it will be obvious and simple.”

Some mistakes aren’t necessarily glaring errors, but rather decisions that turned out to hinder growth in the long run. Tiu says that, in hindsight, The Woobles could have spent more money on advertising, as advertising costs have only risen since the company’s 2020 launch. Van Leeuwen says his company could have opened fewer brick and mortar locations, but in more desirable—and more expensive—areas.

The ultimate lesson of fast-growth is this: It will come with its fair share of challenges. And the only way to go is forward. “My dad says, ‘If it was easy, everybody would do it,’” Van Leeuwen says. “And I love that.”

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