SCALE paths: Evolution tracks
Knowing your SCALE path is great, but how do you actually use it to have success? Evolution is the key.
Hi,
Knowing your SCALE path is great, but it’s only half the equation. The other half is knowing your evolution track.
We found there are five evolution levels in a business. Knowing both your SCALE path and your evolution level allows you to triangulate the advice you take and the advice you give to others.
Here are the five levels we found through our research. If you are not even ready to think about that kind of thing, then you would be a Level 0.
Level 1 - Founders at this level don’t even know how to start doing things because it’s so overwhelming. They are pulled in every direction and feel like they are drowning in information from every direction. In order to get out of this level, you need to start doing something and it doesn’t matter much what you do.
Level 2 - Entrepreneurs at this level have started doing things, which is great, but nothing is working. They are following all the best practices as best they can, but they are failing at everything they try. If you want to get to the next level, you have to find something that works and latch onto it.
Level 3 - Brands at this level have found something that works, but they are also doing all sorts of other things that aren’t working. To get out of this level, you need to shed everything that’s not working and double down on things that are working for your SCALE path.
Level 4 - Entrepreneurs at this level have fully embraced their path and are making money, but they are capped out at what they can earn without evolving beyond what they’ve been doing. In order to exit this level, you need to integrate other start building a team and/or bringing new paths into your business.
Level 5 - At this top level, entrepreneurs have built out a team and have all the paths working for them, and need to keep building out.
If you know you are a level 3 Arbiter (we call that a A3), then so much suddenly becomes clear to you. For instance, you know that the thing you should be focused on right now is optimizations to get from level 3 to level 4. You also know you should be focusing on finding the next hottest trend before the arbitrage goes away.
You also know that you should be focused on learning from other Arbiters who can help you embrace the qualities that will help you thrive. Conversely, if you’re a level 4 Arbiter (A4), then you know that you should be focused on learning from other paths to help you expand.
One of the biggest things that hampers founders is that they try to expand too quickly into other SCALE paths. While you should be testing things to find what works at level 2, once you have found those things that work you should be shedding everything else in level 3 to double down on what’s working to push through into success. Once you have had success, then and only then should you start adding other paths back into your business.
Each stage has its own growth metrics.
Are you at level 1? Then you need to settle and start somewhere, anywhere.
Are you a level 2? Keep testing and experimenting with different paths to find something that works for you.
Are you in level 3? It’s time to double down on what’s working and cut things that aren’t so you can focus your attention and find success.
Are you evolving into level 4? Now it’s time to start integrating new things into your business to allow you to build.
Are you at level 5? Awesome. Keep going and adding team members as necessary.
One thing to remember about these levels is that you can ascend or descend them. Founders often think that once they are a level 3, they can never descend back to level 2, but more often than not this descent is a major cause of burnout.
Strategies that have worked for years can suddenly start failing, which causes an entrepreneur to double down and double down again, losing ground with each iteration until they collapse in a heap from exhaustion.
This is why it’s so important to double down quickly once you find something that works, so you can create a stable income and then start incorporating other SCALE paths into your business before those strategies lose efficacy.
Most founders become stuck in level 3, getting distracted by shiny objects while their business stagnates and they fall back into level 2, only to continue that cycle again and again until they burn out. If instead we can double down on what’s working quickly without getting distracted, then we can push through level 3 and start building out systems in level 4 to make our businesses more resilient.
The vast majority of businesses we talk to are stuck between level 2 and level 3. They are either floundering to find something that works or using all their energy on actions that don’t work instead of focusing on those things that do.
Most founders will never get out of level 3 because they are bogged down with actions that have marginal efficacy to them. Instead, they are in a continuous cycle between level 2 and level 3. They are so tired that they can’t get enough momentum to achieve escape velocity into level 4.
But, let’s say you have reached level 4, how do you evolve beyond your own SCALE path? Focusing on one path for a while is great, and gives you something to fall back on in times of trouble, but a robust business needs multiple paths and streams of income working together so that when one fails they can pivot their business quickly.
We’ve charted evolution paths for each SCALE path, and while there are commonalities between them, each one is unique.
As we go through this, it’s important to remember that when we talk about “evolving into a new path”, we aren’t telling you to abandon your base path. Instead, you are incorporating aspects of the other paths into your business in ways that make sense to create a stronger business.
I’ve outlined possible evolution paths for each path, though you might see something different in your business that makes you take a different path.
Spotlighter
Launcher - Spotlighters are all flywheel, and Launchers are all funnel, so it makes sense to start your evolution journey by embracing your inner Launcher. The biggest problem for a Spotlighter is standing up and saying, “Did you know you could buy this?” That is the biggest strength of a Launcher.
Evangelist - Evangelists are all about shared language and developing a community of customers who can communicate with each other, which would be a huge asset for a Spotlighter, who generally have the ear of influential people and can move the direction of an industry already because of their intense grasp of their topic, but don’t have a shared language to bring people deeper into their universe.
Collaborator - Collaborators focus heavily on slow growth and super-fandom. They are building their own category across many years, which aligns with Spotlighter’s desire to be future-focused. However, Spotlighters are moving the industry to a point on the horizon that is inevitable, so that when the industry arrives there they are the authority. Meanwhile, Collaborators are shining a light on something that nobody even knows they need, which is almost antithetical to the ethos of the Spotlighter. For that reason, it probably makes sense to leave Collaborator evolution toward the end of your journey.
Arbiter - Spotlighters are very long-term focused, while Arbiters are concerned with immediate success. While we don’t think Spotlighters should immediately start embracing the short-term wins that come easily to a Arbiter, being able to capture attention by using existing virality can help funnel customers into the largesse of a Spotlighter’s catalog.
Collaborator
Arbiter - Getting better at opt-ins is something that will bring a lot more people into your universe. You already know how to turn casual customers into superfans, so let’s start by driving people into your ecosystem en masse.
Launcher - It’s really expensive to be a Collaborator, and Launchers are great at bringing cash infusions into their businesses. You need that since your plans are generally so epic in scope and span many modalities.
Evangelist - Once you have money coming into your business, you need a better way to engage with your customers by creating a shared language between them and facilitating ways for them to talk to each other. This is the strength of an Evangelist, and embracing that evolution can broaden the appeal of your work.
Spotlighter - Spotlighters are all about depth, and a big, massive universe needs a ton of depth. Whether it’s world bibles, shared universes, RPGs, or any number of formats, embracing your inner Spotlighter will help give your world depth that will delight customers and bring them deeper into your universe.
Arbiter
Evangelist - Evangelists are the most antithetical to Arbiters, but creating a shared language and making your marketing stickier solves one of the biggest Arbiter weaknesses, creating ephemeral products that stop generating revenue quickly. Evangelists are great at creating a shared language, and we think you should be incorporating that part earlier in your journey.
Collaborator - Most Arbiters want to evolve into Collaborators first, but Collaborators are the hardest and most expensive to get going, and the most superfan focused. That said, you know how to drive traffic, and now that you’ve gotten your products hookier, you can start turning all those casual customers into superfans.
Spotlighter - Since both Arbiters and Spotlighters are data-heavy paths, it’s relatively easy for Arbiters to start incorporating longer series and content marketing into their businesses.
Launcher - Since Arbiters are TOFU experts and Launchers are BOFU experts, you’ll supercharge your ecosystem by being able to create irresistible offers that your newly minted superfans will love.
Launcher
Collaborator - Collaborators take the longest to spin up for most paths, but Launchers are great at injecting cash infusions into a business, so it would make sense to start this work from the beginning of your evolution journey. You should also be thinking about creating your category across every launch from the beginning of your career. It will just take a long time to bring everything together, but for a Launcher, you should be thinking about your category from your first launch, and how to make each one feed into an overall whole. The more you can use your launches to complement each other, the better you’ll be in the long run.
Spotlighter - A Launcher is a funnel without a flywheel, and a Spotlighter is a great flywheel, especially when it comes to attracting new people into their orbit. Launchers desperately need somewhere to send people who get through their funnel and to warm new people up so they’re excited for their next project. Whether it’s a Spotlighter or a Collaborator, Launchers grow best when they have one huge universe or topic to pour all their work into so it keeps growing over time. Even if you’re launching a lot of disparate things, think about putting them under one umbrella so that all your effort isn’t wasted after each launch.
Arbiter - Arbiters are masters of the opt-in while Launchers are the masters of the irresistible offer. Once you have your ecosystem solid, then it’s time to keep funneling people in and learning how to do it on autopilot.
Evangelist - Creating a shared language between your launches will help you craft a narrative to bring your disparate projects together in an umbrella everyone can use to get excited about your work.
Evangelist
Spotlighter - You have a pretty great retention and escalation path for people to fall in love with. However, you’ll get a lot out of taking your shared language and creating longer series with better content marketing around them. Studying data like a Spotlighter will help you make better long-term decisions once you have some stability under you.
Arbiter - Since you already have great engagement, now it’s time to bring people into your universe. Combined with your inner Spotlighter, an Arbiter will constantly bring in leads and customers into your orbit.
Launcher - Evangelists take a long time to grow, but they grow quicker if they can create big spectacle launches that help bring attention to their work, and the more you can use evergreen tropes to help draw attention to your work. Both of these are huge strengths of a Launcher.
Collaborator - Evangelists are great at engaging with fans, and Collaborators are the ultimate superfan ecosystem. They are all about delighting their fans, and creating a huge epic universe across many formats for them to play in once they join up. While your ecosystem grows slowly, you can be using Collaborator tactics to help monetize them across many different mediums.
As you can see, the evolution for each SCALE path can be wildly different. There’s a reason why we didn’t number these paths. There’s a lot of fluidity between them as well, which might make you evolve two paths at once.
I hope you can also see how important it is not to start rushing into these evolutions before your base path is working well for you. It’s a lot of new concepts and modalities to add to your workflow when you haven’t had sustained success yet. You will likely collapse under the weight of it if you don’t have a solid stream of income in place first.
When I say you should be stripping those things that don’t work and double down on what’s working, that doesn’t mean forever. It means until you have consistent revenue coming in and have breathing room to start looking at the biggest picture.
Until you get there, you’ll be scrambling just to survive. Evolution comes when you have that space to grow beyond what you are doing, and that comes with time.
Even once you’re ready to evolve, you shouldn’t try to incorporate more than one SCALE path a quarter into your business, and maybe even one a year. Evolution is about the long-term stability of your business, which only comes after getting short-term stability in your business.
So, what do you think? Where are you on this path? Take the quiz and find out.
I feel like I'm on 4. I've cleared out a lot that doesn't work and am finding joy in what I'm currently doing. Now just need to build my team and find a way to effectively market what I'm offering.